These are my comments relating to some of the articles found at www.forerunner.com.
Check back for my random thoughts on eschatology, world missions, God's Law and Society, theonomy, Christian Reconstruction, pro-life activism, evangelism testimonies, Neo-Puritan theology and social theory, revival and spiritual awakening, church history, and so on.
I saw a preview screening of it and it's excellent. It is opening on a limited release of 1000 screens around the country. For a documentary, that's a record. It even beats Algore's and Michael Moore's films for the largest weekend opening. Christians who believe in the inerrancy of scripture are duty bound to support it by buying up a lot of theater tickets to ensure it gets a wider screening and a longer run.
I suggest that you make an outing of it and invite your friends this weekend. You can go to http://www.expelledthemovie.com/ to see where it is playing at a theater near you.
For the past few months, I've been doing a Tuesday night Internet radio show with a few friends on http://christianhillbilly.com/. If you want to come on and discuss controversial issues, it is a fun and profitable way to spend an hour. You just need a Skype account, which takes about two minutes to set up at http://skype.com/. Last Tuesday, we discussed Ben Stein's EXPELLED, showed a few clips, and answered questions and objections. The chat room was packed and we had more listeners than since I started with this.
Or if you'd just like to listen in next Tuesday, the show What Do You Believe? is from 9 to 10 pm EDT.
- Jay Rogers
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RANDOM AFTER THOUGHT: I sent the above email out to a few dozen friends and a couple of them took exception because I wrote that "Christians are duty bound" to see this movie. I suppose I could be accused of hyperbole, but I have always believed Christians are duty bound to support the arts. Back before the separation of church and state, in Christian countries, the church got tithe money directly from taxes collected by the state to support the sicences, the arts, missions, education, hospitals, ophanages, and so on. Now the Catholic Church still supports these things in Catholic countries. The state doles out money to the church's heirarchy who then support the church run institutions.
I don't think the state should be involved in any type of Christian welfare because as they say, "He who pays the piper calls the tune." It's also sinful and tyrannical to force taxpayers to support socialized programs they disagree with -- which is exactly what leftists force us to do today through liberal programs even though "separation of church and state" is their mantra.
Rather this responsility rests solely with churches and Christian individuals. One of the reasons why we are losing our Christian culture in Protestant countries is that the church's view has become that the civil government needs to support these institutions directly. The church does nothing but build the church. Therefore, entertainment, education, the arts and virtually every institution that shapes the hearts and minds of men is given over to crass humanism. But don't let me get up on my soapbox about this. Yes, you are duty bound to support the arts when there is a lone film in a vast sea of filth and anti-Christian degradation that seeks to uphold the truth.
Christian ethics taught in Ukraine's public schools
I've used here the higher quality embedded video from Current TV. If you haven't see Current, it's a cable TV channel that uses mainly viewer created content -- short pieces about almost everything. The way it works is that people upload their videos and viewers can "green light" the video if they think it should be shown on TV. If a video gets enough green lights it gets shown on the cable channel. This would be a great promotion for this vital ministry to Christian teachers in the public schools of Ukraine. The link is here. You will have register a user name and password to vote, but it won't take more than a minute. ___________________________
For the first time in 90 years, Ukrainian students have the option of studying Christian ethics in the public schools. Christian ethics for the school curriculum was an initiative proposed by Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko shortly after the Orange Revolution in 2005.
The program calls for voluntary participation and is supported by the leaders of Ukraine's largest Christian denominations. One Baptist church association, "Hope to People" of Rivne, Ukraine, sponsors teacher training at several fellowship camps throughout the year.
In the summer of 2007, I attended one of these fellowship camps for teachers of Christian ethics as a public high school teacher from the USA. The camp was held at the Vodogray resort in the beautiful Carpathian Mountain region of western Ukraine.
I asked the principal of a school in Kharkov: "Why is the culture and attitude toward religion of eastern and western Ukraine so different?"
"It's not the same, eastern Ukraine and western Ukraine, because the western part of Ukraine was added to the Soviet Union later on, about 20 years. And this is why they could keep their national culture and national language as well. They resisted the communists who pressured them so that people here might speak Russian only. The Ukrainian language was forbidden as a language at school and even as a language of common fellowship."
If you are interested in more information about the teachers camps or getting involved in missions to Ukraine in general, please email me.
Richard Dawkins and PZ Meyers expelled from EXPELLED?
I've been following the atheist blogosphere reaction to the movie EXPELLED closely. Last night, PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins tried to enter an advance screening. Myers was asked to leave by security and rushed out gleefully to blog about it. As a pro-life activist, I have to admire his moxie, but I would have gone the whole way and gotten arrested if it were his event.
There is a rich, deep kind of irony that must be shared. I'm blogging this from the Apple store in the Mall of America, because I'm too amused to want to wait until I get back to my hotel room. I went to attend a screening of the creationist propaganda movie, Expelled, a few minutes ago. Well, I tried … but I was Expelled! It was kind of weird — I was standing in line, hadn't even gotten to the point where I had to sign in and show ID, and a policeman pulled me out of line and told me I could not go in. I asked why, of course, and he said that a producer of the film had specifically instructed him that I was not to be allowed to attend. The officer also told me that if I tried to go in, I would be arrested. I assured him that I wasn't going to cause any trouble.
Here is my open letter to PZ Myers.
As a big proponent of the film EXPELLED, I don't see any irony here at all.
If anyone wants to see the Myers and Dawkins clips that badly, you can just go to my blog.
I saw the movie on Tuesday and was given a DVD with over 30 minutes of raw clips. We were told as teachers to show it in class and use it as a debate opportunity for our students to discuss the issue of censorship, and so on. Of course, they want it to go to people who will promote it and get our friends to come out to see the movie. (Yes, it's a vast right wing conspiracy!)
The DVD has the infamous PZ Myers interview in which you say your goal is to destroy or marginalize religion. (If I was really smart, I would have bought 100 of these and sold them to on EBay to militant atheists for $20 a piece as "movie contraband.")
Movie producers often do promotional test screenings before the release. Certain types of people are invited and some are not.
It would be no different if you tried to crash an advance test screening of Indiana Jones or Star Trek except the security would have been tighter. And yes, you should have been arrested if you trespassed in any private function.
On the other hand, you are making a mountain out of a molehill, the clip you wanted to see is already on my website.
What is ironic is that you can see the parts you really want to see the most -- there are numerous clips out there already -- and you are making it sound as though it's a huge conspiracy to bar you from the debate.
What is happening with EXPELLED though is that some movie reviewers want to crash the gates early so they can pan the film and pronounce it DOA -- as did Roger Moore (no, not 007 -- he would have gotten in) the Orlando Sentinel reviewer.
It strikes me as odd because most reviewers who are allowed into advance screenings have the professional courtesy not to publish their reviews until the week the movie premieres. No such courtesy here. The political stakes are too high.
The MAIN reason the media is not invited to these screenings is because the film is in raw form and is not ready for the general public yet. We saw a high-res DVD version that was not quite cinema quality.
All the secrecy and the buzz is working toward a big box office. I know all you anti-ID-ers are warming your insides over this imagined "incident," but how does it really work in your favor?
Controversy sells. More people are going to see the movie as a result. That's what we all want, right?
If I didn't believe in a higher intelligent design, I'd see it as a great cosmic irony.
ADDED at 10:55 am: See Jeff Overstreet's account of Dawkin's protest during the movie.
Yesterday, I went to the movie theater in Orlando’s Downtown Disney, about seven miles from my home, to see an advance screening of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed with Ben Stein. The film opens on 1000 screens in a limited release on April 18th. Stein’s documentary begins with a survey of university professors who were either fired, denied tenure or otherwise "expelled" for using their academic credentials as a platform for discussing Intelligent Design (I.D.) with their classes, publishing articles or just linking to I.D. websites.
This movie is a “must see” for anyone who cares about the first amendment right to free speech in the public market place of ideas. Hopefully, a successful opening will spur the documentary to run across thousands of more screens in North America and the world.
The thrust of Stein’s exposé is that academic debate on I.D. is being squelched by a scientific elite who nevertheless admit that they have no settled theory on how the original living cell could have arisen spontaneously. More dramatically, the film shows that the same evolutionary philosophy that denies intelligent design in the universe is at the heart of moral relativism, eugenics, genocide, euthanasia and abortion on demand.
One of the most powerful vignettes in the movie occurs when Stein, a conservative Jew, tours one of the Nazi prison camps where thousands of people were gassed and incinerated. The woman giving the tour refuses to make any moral judgments about Hitler or the Nazi officers in charge of the genocide campaign even when pressed by Stein to give her opinion.
Without a Creator or an Intelligent Designer there is no real basis for holding an objective opinion on morality. “Might makes right” becomes the moral force for the advancement of humanity even when “inferior” minorities and the handicapped are selected for extermination. The film proves that the Nazi eugenicists were fueled by a radical social Darwinism. Yes, Hitler really believed he was working for the good of mankind.
Another long needed yet neglected topic briefly explored in Expelled is the origin of birth control and abortion in our own country through eugenicist Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. As a pro-life activist, I am encouraged to see this brought into public consciousness in a major film. Sanger, in fact, was a vocal advocate of eugenics. The film doesn’t delve deeply into the fact that when Sanger wanted to solve the “Negro problem” through a campaign of sterilization for black men prior to World War Two, she corresponded with Nazi eugenicists. Expelled at least cracks the cover on an ugly chapter in American history that continues today in the guise of “family planning,” a code word for the slaughter of millions of unborn babies funded in part through taxpayer support of Planned Parenthood.
Expelled also documents the fact that many well-known evolutionists see religion as a hindrance to the advance of science and openly admit they are actively working to suppress and eradicate religion in public life. The film’s point of view, of course, is that there is no incompatibility. On the contrary, the hypothesis that there might be an intelligence or an ordered design to the universe actually paves the way for better science. It inspires a passion for science in people who believe in a Creator God in some form, which happens to be over 90 percent of the American population.
The film is intellectually fascinating and moves along at a good pace. It makes hilarious use of juxtaposed "b-roll" clips from classic movies and antiquated educational documentaries to illustrate its frequent salient points. An unrelenting off-beat rhythm keeps the viewer entertained.
The most enjoyable part of the documentary for me was the interview with atheist scientist and bestselling author of The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, who seemed nonplussed by Stein’s questions delivered with deadpan irony. The viewer of course knows that Stein is sympathetic to I.D. So it’s amusing to watch that curmudgeonly reptile Herr Dawkins squirm at Stein’s calm and deliberate interrogation. The interview results in unintentional humor that reminded me of This Is Spinal Tap or Monty Python’s “Dead Parrot Sketch.” Dawkins could not have played a better British humorist even if he had made an attempt.
“How did life begin?”
Dawkins says he doesn’t know. Of course, “no one knows” exactly how the complexity of cellular life could have arisen from non-life. But he believes it. He has to. There is no alternative.
Couldn’t it have been the Hebrew God?
Absurd!
What about the Holy Trinity? Allah? One of the Hindu gods?
Dawkins bristles with frustrated incredulity at the very idea.
Could a model that includes an intelligent designer be used at least hypothetically to explain the origin of life?
Finally, Dawkins admits a viable hypothesis of I.D. is possible. A race of higher intelligent life forms from outer space could have “seeded” the earth with life, but this higher intelligence must have evolved itself over billions of years. This, of course, is begging the question.
If this higher intelligence alien race evolved, then how did the original life form come into being in the first place?
Ironically, Dawkins refuses to consider that it could have been God who started it all because God himself could not have "sprung suddenly out of nothing."
So goes the tenor of several other evolutionary scientists who likewise refuse to admit an alternative to the Neo-Darwinist theory on the origin of life. No one really knows. One scientist hypothesizes that the first DNA molecules could have “ridden on the backs of crystals” as they were being formed.
Aliens? Crystals? An ancient mud puddle struck by lightning?
Yes ... Maybe ... Perhaps ...
God? Intelligent Design?
No!
Controversy over Dawkins’ interview was reported in a New York Times article in which he claimed he was set up by not knowing the thrust of the documentary. However, the producers gave the interviewees the list of questions beforehand and each was paid for his interview. One of the producers who attended the preview in Orlando quipped, “They all cashed their checks and no one returned the money they were paid for participating.”
Expelled spurred controversy a full year before its release. Yet no critic will be able to fault it on its quality, appeal and pure entertainment value. Aficionados of Michael Moore’s films – those diatribes that use twisted conspiracy theories and selective editing to achieve a leftwing political purpose – are already panning the film on its content alone as “propaganda.” This is, of course, hypocritical because all that Stein and his producers are asking is for a reasoned debate on I.D. and for new evidence to be considered without the risk of the questioners losing their jobs as teachers and professors.
The controversy and attacks are ironically what the producers need to stir up interest in the film. This will in turn make I.D. a viable option whose time has come. Expelled will weather a few attacks, which will give it a respectable box office return, always a better fate than to be quietly ignored. This is the same phenomenon that propelled The Passion of The Christ, The Da Vinci Code, and Fahrenheit 911 to be the highest grossing films of their genre. Apparently, the enemies of I.D. intend on making Expelled a huge success even though their de facto support is “not by intelligent design.”
At the airport, Alexei wanted to take a picture of both of us because he guessed we might never see each other again. I had said I probably wouldn’t come back to Ukraine next year or maybe for a few years. But I am determined to go back again sooner than that even if it is for a shorter time.
My Flight Itinerary
Kiev to JFK/NYC – Flight #89 – 11 am to 2:25 pm EST JFK to Tampa – Flight #1277 – 4 pm to 7:05 pm
I got to Tampa on time even though the second flight was delayed. It was great to see my wife and be home again!
I slept very late and then we ate blini (Ukrainian pancakes) with black currant jam from berries grown in the garden. I walked out into the garden and admired the job I did last week in the vineyard rows. The grapes looked nice without the weeds. In the afternoon, we swam in a side channel of the Dnieper, which is near the house. We packed up about 100 more Creeds books and had a supper at Maxim’s house with Nadia and Oksanna.
Later I slept again or tried to while the rest went swimming again for about an hour. We ended up making it back to the flat by 11 pm. On the way we saw a lot of drunk people walking along the sides of the road. Many Ukrainians just drink all weekend long. There is really nothing else to do in the villages, I guess.
As I write the last chapter it is 1:40 am. I have to get up at 7 am to get to the airport by 9 am.
Vita wanted to go to the new mall in the afternoon so we drove to Kreshatik and I spent some hours in this new mall. I bought a matryoshka doll for my wife and a few other gifts. When we got back to the flat very late, Alexei surprised me by saying that we were going to the Dacha at 12 am. Here you can see some video of people out in Independence Square on a sunny Saturday afternoon.
At about 1:30 am I was looking at the Milky Way, which is something I don’t see in Kissimmee because of the night glare. I stayed awake a long time looking at the bright stars and I saw a satellite. I was listening to silence. You don’t often hear silence at night anywhere, but this was an exception. I suppose that if I had a few hours of this type of silence that all the noise inside my head might drain slowly away. It’s strange to hear nothing. If you listen hard enough you hear a noise that’s not there. It’s just the blood pressure inside your head – a vague low hum. Rarely can I ever hear silence.
Mission to Ukraine 7/20/2007- World War Two Memorial, Kiev
Here is the second part of 7/20/2007 excursion in Kiev. This is the World War Two Memorial, but in the former USSR they call it the “Great Patriotic War.” The statue of mother Russia is actually taller than the Statue of Liberty in New York.
Mission to Ukraine 7/20/2007 - Monastery of the Caves
I mailed two boxes of Why Creeds and Confessions? books – 80 copies – to Rivne and Ivano-Frankivsk. I was excited that I was able to use the post office for the first time. I knew only how to say, “I want boxes,” and “How much is it?” But I was successful. It cost only $5 to mail a big box of 40 books and the boxes were $1 a piece. So some things here are still a bargain.
I also went into the city again one more time to shoot some video. I walked to the Monastery of the Caves and the WWII Memorial, places I’ve visited about eight or nine times before – but I wanted to get good digital video. I still think this excursion is one of the most beautiful places to take a walk in the many cities of the former Soviet Union I have visited.
I love the iconography and architecture of the Orthodox Church. Of course, I don’t pray to images, but it’s amazing that everywhere in the former Soviet Union there are churches. To see a nation that suffered 70 years of atheistic communism that is so rich in Christian symbolism everywhere you turn is a reminder that the glory of God fills the earth.
I liked especially one icon you can see clearly at about 7:10. It is a painting of John the Baptist. It says Sv. Ivan Predtecha (St. John the Forerunner). I was born on the feast day of John the Baptist, June 24th, and my mother actually named me after John the Baptist. I found out about this a few years after I started with The Forerunner. So I like the identification with John, the "burning and shining light" (John 5:35) and I’ve always enjoyed this icon. When we first named the Russian Forerunner, it was called Predtecha (“Forerunner”) – but we renamed it Predvestnik (“Foreteller”) – because it is a more contemporary word in Russian.
I felt well enough by evening to take a trip with Alexei and Vita to Gydro-Park. Vita went swimming at about 11 pm. I did not. I love the Dnieper River in the summer time, but I didn’t feel well enough to experience it this time.
You can see some long distance close-up shots of the beaches along the Dnieper in the next video. Some of the beaches are actually very nice especially if you can get away from the places that are packed with people.
The next day I was really sick. Since I live in Florida, which is extremely humid in the summer, I don’t notice 85 to 90 degree dry heat as much as I should. We have many 80-degree days in January and February here. But I had become so dehydrated that I couldn’t seem to get enough water to slack my thirst. Since it was the hottest week in Kiev so far that summer, I had tried to get cool by sleeping without my shirt. I woke up at 3 am shivering and had to get dressed into warmer clothing and get under the blankets. Still I couldn’t stop shivering. I woke up in the morning with a fever. We took my temperature. It was 103 degrees, or some equivalent in centigrade, which Alexei said was “impossible.” It was kind of scary for a while.
I slept most of the day and all of the next night. I woke up for a few hours in the evening and could feel my fever starting to break. I was sweating, but I felt better. I had really pushed myself by going two days without sleep when I first arrived. I had gone on excursions almost every day and ate everything. So it’s not surprising I finally got so sick.
Mission to Ukraine 7/17/2007 - St Andrivsky’s Cathedral, Kiev
I walked down Andrivsky’s street. I had never been inside the old cathedral before, so I bought a ticket and went in. My church in Sanford, Florida is St. Andrew’s Chapel, so the connection is interesting. According to legend, the Apostle Andrew preached to the Scythians in this region. Supposedly, he stood on this hill and prophesied that a great city would be built on that spot.
I bought some Ukrainian folk souvenirs for my wife, which we have in our kitchen now. I ate at McDonalds and found the value meal cost about five dollars, which is about the same in the United States. Still it was packed with people.
Mission to Ukraine 7/17/2007 - St Sophia's Cathedral
This was my big day in Kiev. I wanted to take a lot of video with my digital camera. Although I have similar analog video from 1991, 1997 and 2000, it’s not the same quality. You can see some of these on the Predvestnik web page.
I took the metro to Kreshatik and switched stations – went two stops north – when I came out of the underground, I was lost. It turned out that I was not far from where I wanted to be, but I took a roundabout way of getting there. My idea was that I should find the Dneiper River by walking due east and then walk south along the river until I found McDonald’s. This took about an hour. I finally found the tramline that goes up a steep hill to St. Sophia’s square.
I walked around Sophia’s monastery and climbed the bell tower. I took video from the top and figured out the route I’d have to take to get to Andrivsky’s street. There is a huge Hyatt with a glass front in that old square now – horrible! I was thirsty all day, but waited for a few hours to until I found a place to buy water. This turned out to be a big mistake. I had suffered some dehydration and I paid for it later on.
On Monday, I decided to take it easy again. I read a book and slept. At night, we went grocery shopping and saw some of the new stores in Alexei’s neighborhood. Kiev now has “Epicenter K” stores, which are similar to our Home Depot. The warehouse size store even has the same orange motif. It’s amazing to see things like that compared to the communist run economy they had in the summer of 1991. That would have made interesting video, but Alexei was starting to wonder why I needed to take video of everything we did.
Mission to Ukraine 7/15/2007 - Independence Square and Kreshatik in Downtown Kiev
The next day, I got up late and worked in the “vineyard” for several hours. This is just a small plot that consists of two rows of grapes. I learned how to use a scythe to cut grass. We cleared all the weeds away from around the grapes and ate lots of cherries and other fruits in the garden. I made just a few video clips of the grapes vines after they had all the weeds cleared away and a couple new fruit trees that Alexei planted. This clip is part of the video for the previous entry on 7/14/07, but it was taken on 7/15/07.
At night I met with Roman Medvid, another former editor of Predvestnik at about 9 pm at Kreshatik in the center of Kiev. We ate sushi in the new mall, drank Jamaican Blue Mountain espresso, and talked about my “Life Without Crime” series. Roman drove me back to Alexei’s flat, but I got us lost twice. Every apartment building and street from the Soviet era looks about the same to me. We had to wake Alexei to come out to the street to find us. It turned out that we were at the right intersection, but I got my sense of direction turned around 90 degrees. In any case, it was the first time in over seven years that Alexei and Roman had seen each other – an odd but good enough excuse.
I stayed at the flat of Slavik in Rivne overnight and took a morning train to Kiev. It was a four-hour ride and cost only $10. The total cost of my time in Ukraine was only about $600, which included transportation to Mukacheve and a day trip to Lviv. It is much more expensive than in 1991, of course, when I spent less than $100 in four weeks, but it was still a great bargain.
I arrived in Kiev and met Alexei Salapatov at the main train station where the van lets off. There was a new Orthodox Church on one side of the train station. I saw the odd sight of an Orthodox priest blessing a new automobile with holy water. When we got to the downtown area of Kiev, we took a quick tour of the city by car. There are lots of modern changes since I was there seven years ago. Some have essentially ruined the historic character of some parts, but other areas have been restored beautifully. We drove to Alexei’s flat and then drove out to a village where Alexei and his wife Vita have a dacha (country house).
I spoke to a guy named Maxim for a few hours while Alexei made shashleek. Maxim has a house next door and is a computer technician who speaks very good English. The highlight of the barbeque was when Alexei’s hand held grill broke and he dropped most of the meat into the dirt.
The Salapatov dacha is a 2,000 plus square foot two-story structure still under construction upstairs. It is three times the size of their flat and they spend most weekends there especially in the summer. We stayed up late talking to Maxim and his wife Nadia and her sister Oksanna until about 1:30 am. I understood almost nothing being said, but it was fun.
Mission to Ukraine 7/13/2007 - Evening Service in Rivne
We drove all the way back to Rivne in Roma’s father's Lada. It was the same route I had been on before coming from Mukacheve and I started to recognize some towns. It was a good trip.
I went back to Hope to People and met Slavik who is the director of the Bible Seminary. He told me that in the early 1990s there were very few books for seminary students and a high interest in ministerial training. Now with a little economic prosperity, there are many more books each year and waning interest. I left him with a few copies of my book and all of the DVDs I produced with Eric Holmberg, including the rough version of The Real Jesus. Since that time, we have sent them about 100 copies of Why Creeds and Confessions? From what I understand, it is well received.
There was also a Thursday night church service going on in one of the sanctuary rooms of the Hope to People center. The service was or some of the students who had just returned from a youth camp. They were sharing testimonies about what God had done among them at the camp. Here you will see part of the worship service and communion.
I slept in a dormitory that is in the Baptist church building that night in a room with it’s own shower. It was my first night in two weeks sleeping in a place with complete privacy so I enjoyed that. The next day, we spent the whole time seeing the old part of the city and the highlights were climbing the “High Castle,” which is actually the highest hill in the city that used to have a fortification in the time of the Turkic invasions. There is no castle there anymore. Roma’s brother told me a funny story about how the mayor of Lviv wanted to spend millions of dollars to restore the old castle as a monument.
The plan was put down by legislators who were pressured by people who pointed out, “There are still people in Lviv without electricity and running water and they wasn’t to rebuild an old castle? What for?”
I thought about it for a few seconds, “Maybe just in case the Turks invade again?”
We also toured the center of the city and climbed the “Bell Tower” the highest building in the city. Climbing all those stairs was a good work out. We ate in a western style cafeteria that had good food and flat screen televisions everywhere showing Russia’s version of MTV.
Mission to Ukraine 7/12/2007 - Two Church Services in Lviv
While we were in the downtown area of Lviv, we went into an Orthodox Church where there was a wedding going on. I later found out that many of these churches are actually Eastern Rite Catholic from the time of Polish control of the area, but I don’t know which ones. To me they are indistinguishable.
We went to a church service at night at their Baptist church. The church building was converted from a Lutheran church after the Soviet Union absorbed western Ukraine. Two Chinese-American pastors from Lexington, Kentucky spoke. One was asked to give a report about the Church in China even though he said his perspective was that of a Chinese-American.
The other pastor told the people that the world is getting worse and worse, Jesus is coming soon, we have a mansion in heaven, and so on. Of course, everyone said “Amen!” But I say, “Bah!" See my articles on postmillennial eschatology if you want to understand why I don’t receive pessimistic teaching about the progress of the Gospel in the world.
In any case, they were precious Christian preachers who were traveling in Ukraine preaching in Baptist churches.
I was able to arrange a rip to Lviv, a city in northwestern Ukraine on the Polish border. I had heard a lot about the city and had always wanted to visit there. We left on a morning train and it rained all morning. Finally, when we arrived in Lviv, it stopped raining. I met the father, brother and grandmother of Roma. The grandmother is a Baptist from the time of communist rule. I have always been fascinated by Christians who saw times of persecution in the old Soviet Union.
She served us lunch and then she grilled me on Presbyterian doctrine for a few minutes. She was the typical brash Ukrainian, but I like these conversations. I gave her a copy of my Why Creeds and Confessions? book and later I found out she really liked it. She received about 50 copies for distribution in her church. The family told me that if she liked my book then it is a big compliment because she's really tough.
We drove into the center of Lviv in an old but well preserved Lada and had a tour of the downtown area. This is the longest video so far, but it has lots of good stuff. Toward the end there are some flash camera stills in old cathedrals where there wasn't enough light for video.
Mission to Ukraine 7/11/2007 - Hope to People Ministry in Rivne
My cold is still raging, but I went into the office early we had a prayer meeting and a staff meeting. I talked to the Hope to People sports director – also named Sasha. (That’s four Sashas to remember now!) He told me about the soccer camps and the need for American Christian kids to come over and spend time with the Ukrainian young people. They had made a
I went with Alyona into the center to get some medicine and we ate some nice cakes. In the afternoon, I was able to talk to Nadia, the mother of Roman, for over an hour about the magazine for teachers. I was able to encourage her a lot by just explaining about my own problems publishing in Ukraine and how we overcame them.
Her story is a lot like Predvestnik in a way – hard work and frustration in the beginning, but the job will get easier.
You’ll see at the end of the video, the Hope to People Center and their bookstore. As someone who was involved in publishing in the Soviet Union in 1991, it’s amazing for me to see the number of books there are now available. I am excited to see classics such as the works of Charles Haddon Spurgeon in addition to the usual contemporary titles.
Mission to Ukraine 7/10/2007 - Hope to People Ministry in Rivne
I woke up with my nose stuffed up. I felt really exhausted. I decided to spend the morning sleeping and reading. I had not really had a day of rest on the whole trip. In the afternoon, we got a ride to Misha’s house and had lunch – mostly vegetables grown in their garden. We talked about Hope to People and what I could do for them.
Basically, they are looking for relationships with Americans who will devote their time to helping with their outreaches. Hopefully, these blog entries will serve to explain to missions minded Christians the great opportunity that is there. You can contact me for more details.
I heard about at least 20 ministries related to Hope to People including three churches, an orphanage, various summer youth camps, a Christian ethics department and the ministry to Christian teachers in the public schools which includes a new magazine. They asked me to write one article base on my experiences as an American at the youth camp. That article I published on my blog last August, “Teaching Christian Ethics in the Public Schools of Ukraine.”
We then went back to the Hope to People center and I spent some time in Alyona’s office checking 10 days of email until we both got a ride home from John Whittemore. I read and wrote some more in my journal and went to sleep early. I spent some more time in the Word today and I felt better.
Again, I didn't take any video, but here is a biography of Pastor Misha Dubovik.
Mikhail Dubovik was born in 1967 in Ukraine (Kharkov). He was brought up in a Christian family. Mikhail has been a member of Evangelical church since 1982. In 1992, he graduated from the missionary department of the Donetsk Bible College, after which he was a missionary in Elista, Kalmykiya, for two years. He was head of the missionary department of the "Hope o People" ministry since 1995 and since 2000 he has been a director of the mission. M. Dubovik is a missionary pastor of the church "Community if Good Shepherd, Rovno. He graduated from the Ukrainian Bible Seminary, master of theology. Mikhail has a wife Inna and three children.
Mission to Ukraine 7/9/2007 - Hope To People ministry in Rivne
Monday was my busiest day in Rivne. Unfortunately, this was the only day I decided to leave my video camera behind. We walked a few blocks from Sasha’s flat to the Hope to People center. I toured the facility with Sasha and then had lunch with his brother Misha, who is a pastor of another church, and Olyona our interpreter. Three churches working together in various outreaches run Hope to People. The center is a huge Soviet era three-story building with three wings. Most of it is gutted and they are slowly working on renovating all of it. They have added a new wing that is going to serve as a larger sanctuary. About 20 ministries, including three church sanctuaries and a Bible Seminary are housed there.
We then drove out to see John Whittemore at the house of Sasha (my roommate at the camp and a church administrator). He runs an orphanage out of their house. He has a beautiful garden surrounding all sides of the house and the boys who live at the orphanage have done most of the work on the house. They did a beautiful job on the house with lots of nice tile and plaster work. He brought me into to a cellar where they had hundreds of cans of pickles. I asked him if they would ever eat them all and he said that in just one church summer youth camp they ate this many.
Then we went to see another building project in a village on the outskirts of Rivne. They had bought an old Soviet-era insane asylum campus and are planning on turning it into a youth camp. There were lots of cherry trees on the land and there was a large fellowship hall that is being restored. Misha was saying that American missionaries come over in the summer and work on the buildings.
Then we went to see one of the sister churches of Hope to People. They had a three-story building project going in one of the districts of the region. This was a church with a lot of young people. This pastor – also named Sasha – impressed me the most. He was the one who was most outspoken about being an ardent Calvinist. We went to his home group at his flat. This was the typical Ukrainian home church with people crammed into a small living room with a table in the middle for snacks and tea afterward. I gave my testimony again and answered questions for about an hour. Some of the members of this church have been together since the early 1990s. This went until about 10 pm.
I don't have video of this day, but here is some information about Pastor Taras Prystupa.
Taras Pristupawas born in 1959 in Ukraine (Zdolbitsa, Rovno region). He was brought up in a Christian family. Taras has been a member of the evangelical church since 1976. In 1992, he was ordained for pastoral ministry. Today, he is pastor of the church "Community of Good Shepherd," Rivne, and a chairman of the board of directors of the International Public Charitable Christian Organization "Hope to People." He graduated from the Ukrainian Bible Seminary, master of theology. Taras has a wife Nadezhda and six children.
By Sunday, I had reached the peak of my cold and to make matters worse we had a nine-hour bus ride in the heat – with no open windows due to Ukrainian superstitions about drafts – all the way to Rivne.
Some parts of the bus ride were fun though. We stopped at one spot in the mountains that was beautiful. I talked with Anna because she was one of the only teachers who could speak English. We also stopped in a big farmer’s field and had a picnic lunch.
I arrived at Sasha’s house at about 10 or 11 pm. Sasha is one of the youth workers in the Hope to People ministry center in Rivne. I played a little bit with their young daughter who apparently loves having visitors. We had supper and went to bed.
07.07.07! -- On Saturday morning the team from Memphis left. There are a group of five women who have come to a Ukrainian Christian summer camp a least once a year for the past five years. One of the women, Marilyn, has a husband named John Whittemore who works in Ukraine just about full-time as a missionary.
I took a walk up into the mountains and saw the waterfall that the Vodogray Resort is named for. The English equivalent is something like “croaking water.” I like these shots a lot because I will be able to use them for backgrounds for text graphics in future productions. I already used one shot of the Carpathian Mountains in The Real Jesus DVD.
Later we went to the pool again. I read some literature on this that said in effect: “One of the wonders of Beregovo region is thermal mineral springs which have curative properties and can cure 86 known diseases.” Then it went on to list the diseases and I could recognize most of them in Ukrainian because of the Latin cognates. This time I swam ten laps and soaked in as much of the salt and minerals as I could. Unfortunately, it didn’t cure my cold.
Between laps, I sat on the top of the ropes and I talked to Olga and Oksanna again. They know about as much English as I know Russian, so we taught each other languages in the pool for about an hour. I’ll always remember that. It was hilarious and I hadn’t smiled and laughed like that in a long time.
That night I was completely knocked out. I slept for an hour or two and could not wake up. I heard the campers laughing at a slide show from the week – really crazy laughter. Finally, they woke me up to go downstairs and I got a ceramic medallion from the teachers from Kharkov. It has a relief of the castle in Mukacheve on the front and, “To John from the people of Kharkov – 07.07.07”– written in Ukrainian on the back. I am looking at it hanging from a bookshelf in my office as I type this.
The movie EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED opens today in the USA.
