Personhood Florida - How to circulate ballot petitions

Cal and Corrie Zastrow train volunteers in Longwood, Florida.

Watch this video and then download a copy of the petition at:

http://personhoodfl.com/resource-kits/

1. Post this video on your web page or blog. (Get the code at YouTube.)

- or -

2. Forward the url to every pro-life Christian you know.

Let's get Personhood initiatives started in 35 states!

The Freudian Cult of Victimization

I was recently having a discussion with a young woman who was explaining how people like her had been victimized by a church denomination I used to be a member of 20 years ago. I am open to such discussions whenever I believe they can bring people toward reconciliation. In the course of the discussion, she made this intriguing statement. (Since it was posted on a public message board, I cite it here only for the purpose of showing an example of a common idea.)

Truth is objective, yes -- but postmodernism does contain in it this very real truth (which is, as far as I can see, it's only objective statement) -- that for humans, objectivity is a myth. Only God can be truly objective; only God can be the arbiter of truth. We humans are finite and fallible, and the kind of wisdom we are called to walk in is not the wisdom of objectivity -- because we are limited to our own heads, tied by our own cultures and experiences.

The postmodernist idea that we are too flawed to know truth is nonsense. We can't know all of God's truth obviously, but God gave His Word to us so we can know truth. Jesus prayed to the Father on our behalf:

"Sanctify them by your Word. Your Word is truth." - John 17:17

God enables us by the Holy Spirit to understand truth. Yes, we are limited by fallibility and sin. But truth is transcendent and objective and we can know it. However, I am glad for the recognition of postmodernism's inherent contradiction: If we still insist that objectivity is a myth, then we must at least admit that we can never be too sure about that!

Freudian Cultism and "Christian" Counseling

One of the most destructive postmodernists in history was Sigmund Freud. Likewise, one of the biggest problems in the church today is pastors who want to counsel church members along the lines of psychotherapy, rather than instructing them to obey what they already know God's Word says to do. Unfortunately, the philosophy of counseling that has come into the church is traced directly from Freudian psychoanalysis.

Sigmund Freud taught that there is an unconscious mind that is chaotic. There lies buried unresolved conflicts from our childhood that were constellated around one of three "psycho-sexual stages." With the exception of the "startling insight" that bad parents can cause problems for children even later in life, Freud was wrong about almost everything.

Freud was a buffoon.

His personal life showed that he cared only about himself and fulfilling his own need for carnal gratification. He taught that neurotics need to vent their repressed memories and that healing can come only through catharsis. This is completely wrong. In fact, the more we dwell on past hurts the more ingrained they become. Sometimes it helps people to have their feelings validated. "Of course you feel that way, you are right to feel that way! You would be crazy not to feel that way!" It feels like a relief to hear that, but it doesn't solve the problem ... ever.

No matter how much we vent our repressed feelings, this is not the way to heal inner emotional conflict. In fact, prior to Freud no one taught this. It's not biblical and it's never been proven that it can help to restore emotional and mental health. Almost all studies show that psychoanalysis does little more than make the patient dependent on it. At $100 an hour. What a racket!

Healing comes only through forgiveness and prayer.

Where does it say that in the Bible?

"And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil."

- Matthew 6:12-13

All of us deserve hell, so when we realize that we can forgive even as God forgives us, then that becomes a source of joy, healing -- and most importantly -- deliverance from evil. But if we keep talking about how much others hurt us, then we haven't really forgiven, nor have we accepted God's power to deliver us from evil.

If another Christian has hurt me, I believe in seeking justice through directly confronting the person who has sinned against me. If he refuses to repent, then I should go a second time with a witness. If he repents, I have won my brother. If he still refuses, then I can tell it to the church. Or I can just walk away from the conflict with a clear conscience (Matthew 18:15-17).

Whenever I have done the right thing in confrontation, God always has given me a sound mind about it in time. And whenever the person has refused to see his error, God has always brought providential sanctions on him further down the road. And whenever I have thought someone else wrongfully confronted me, I have stood my ground and God himself has shown who was right in the end.

God is great. God is good. God is just. In the grand scheme of things, if you just obey what He says, no one can ever rip you off.

We all need to be a bit more like Joseph and David and a lot less like Judah and Saul.

The problem is that we have this cult of victimization that teaches us that we need to dwell on our hurt, nurture it and then use it to validate our status as a loser. Somehow we think this makes us a winner. It's all Freudian nonsense and Christians should know better.

This cult of victimization has a very strong pull. People go on daytime television and spill their guts to an audience that only loathes and pities them. They think that by portraying themselves as losers that some type of justice will prevail. But the catharsis they experience as the American viewing public dines on their wretched bile makes them all the more loathsome.

Then Jerry Springer appears at the end of the show and says:

"Well, what did we learn today?"

We learned, Jerry, that a God-hating, womanizing coke-fiend from Austria named Sigmund Freud still has the ability to wreck havoc in American culture even though he's been dead for 70 years. And more tragically, the church is partly responsible.

"And God bless you, Jerry! See you next week!"

What is postmodernism?

Postmodernism is a separate but similar philosophy to modern atheism. In fact, postmodernism as a philosophy is inherently difficult to nail down. If we take the broadest possible definition of postmodernism, then it can be applied to modern atheism – especially the pop-atheism that is promoted among young adherents.

Modernism was a 20th century movement whose proponents felt the traditional forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated. Postmodernists have gone a step further in the rejection of traditional philosophy begun by the materialists, existentialists and modernists by also rejecting anything that resembles a traditional belief system.

Postmodernism is a philosophy that emerged from the 1960s characterized by experimental thought that is not bound by absolutes. Postmodernism can be seen as a spin-off philosophy from earlier materialism propounded by Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and Marx. It can also be seen as a form of existentialism, essentially an attitude of liberation from traditional philosophy. Postmodernism rejects outward reality as meaningless and absurd, preferring the reality of the inward experience.

Most young postmodernists don’t know what the word means and are epistemologically unaware that this is their worldview. It’s seeped into their consciousness through their miseducation in our failing socialist government schools, their insipid reliance on the vapid Internet and cable-television media to provide them with all knowledge, and the banal cult-hero worship of their atheist gurus.

Atheists see themselves as being rationalists. In reality, they are the most irrational people I've ever encountered. There are the several related ironies here.

1. They claim to love reason and logic, but are unreasonable and overly emotional.
2. They claim that Christians cling to blind faith, and yet their propagation of lunatic conspiracy theories is endless.
3. They are obsessed with logical fallacies, but don’t know what a logical fallacy is and commit them constantly.
4. They claim to respect research and authority, but don’t have a clue on how to do proper research and will abandon a debate when faced with solid scholarship that refutes them.
5. They start endless arguments, but quickly change the topic when they have no rebuttal and resort to ad hominems and strawman arguments when they have no other place to run to.

These are all part of a pattern of mock dialogue I’ve noticed when dealing with atheists on the Internet.

“You need to read some books” and “You need to do some research,” are common replies. Despite the fact that I have read some books and not only do research, but teach it as part of a graduation requirement, these young postmodernists haven’t read any books. They’ve watched a video such as Zeitgeist that references amateur sources that borrow ideas from each other and recycle these same silly arguments over and over.

Accusations of “lying” and “dishonesty” are also common. They reject that ultimate truth actually exists, but assume someone is knowingly lying when they simply disagree or hold to opposing presuppositions. There are frequent incidents of “begging the question” or assuming their conclusion within the premise to the argument. In short, it’s difficult to argue with someone who says that you need to “do some critical thinking” who himself hasn’t learned to think critically.

I’ve come to the conclusion several times that it is a bad idea to begin a dialogue with these people. After viewing some of the nasty web wars among atheists themselves, I realized that the goal can never be to prove something to be true with these people. Only Christian compassion can be a motivating factor,

A while back I had an interesting commenter named “Thomas” on one of my YouTube vlogs, who succinctly hit the nail of the postmodernist syndrome on its head. I wrote Thomas and told him I had a difficult time defining postmodernism. I wanted to study it in order to devise a strategy to poke holes through the arguments of these “20-something” postmodernists.

I replied:

Thanks for your comments on postmodernism. I am looking for a way to be more articulate on this topic. Most of the atheists who respond to my vlogs are thoroughly postmodern. They proclaim themselves as a voice of reason, but are most unreasonable and anti-rational. I try to explain to them that they are motivated by emotion and then use cynicism (not true skepticism) they have heard elsewhere with no real critical thinking on their own. But for some reason postmodernism is hard for me to pin down. Maybe because it is so irrational? Do you know of any good resources on this that would help me to study it.

I copy here Thomas’ first reply, which is obviously written off-the-cuff, but is useful and could become a blueprint for dealing with postmodernism if it were to be developed. What he describes here is not simply just a way of dealing with atheists, but all liberals, some neo-conservatives, and especially liberal theology in the guise of popular Christian movements, including everything from the Jesus Seminar to the Emerging Church movement.

I’ve edited and rearranged the material in a few places. At the end is a reading list of books I’d never heard of. In return, I suggested that he read Van Til and Bahnsen, whom he had never heard of. I always find it interesting when I discover people who come to the exact same conclusions I do on esoteric subjects using a completely different road map.

What is Postmodernism?

1. Anti-Reason - The very nature of Postmodernism is anti-reason. They make lots of claims yet cannot live up to them because it's a cult of ignorance. I'm not kidding. It's really that bad.

Postmodernism abandoned reason for "feeling" which is why their first line of argument is ad hominem, strawman fallacies, and non-sequiturs. Unfortunately for their cause, their arrogance makes them believe they are the voice of reason.

2. Anti-Realism - They choose faith over truth. A useful historical example is that the grand failure of Marx is found in his claim that Marxism is a "scientific socialism" whereby he laid bare four predictions. He was wrong in each case. Marx was a buffoon. He said Marxism was scientific yet Hegel denied reason for spirit (feeling) and evidence for faith. Marxism is based on an anti-realist, anti-reason philosophy.

The very nature of Postmodernism, going all the way back to Rousseau, denies the achievements of the Enlightenment. This is why every Leftist revolution has failed. To the Left, they've chosen to use feelings and faith to guide their economic and moral principles since the French Revolution. Ancient Christians knew that this wouldn't work. Jesus said, "My kingship is not of this world; if my kingship were of this world, my servants would fight." There was a strong case in Christian morals for Reason. Of course, as much criticism as the Left heaps upon Christians, I was surprised myself when I found the contrary to be true (I was studying Islam and comparing it to Christianity and Judaism). Christian scholars from the beginning believed in moral judgment through Reason. This is echoed in Cicero (more clearly I'd say) and predated by the Greeks.

Why morals? To the Postmodern collectivist (followers of Rousseau and Kant), morals are only valid when we all reach a consensus (a democratic majority or a collective will). This is a logical fallacy. Morals are often taught as lessons. Why? The purpose of morals are to instill us with the judgment to determine the better behavior.

Therefore, it's fallacious to suggest that we can change the outcome of a behavior simply by agreeing that it's good (argumentum ad populus). And this is why all collectivist societies are the worst human rights violators. Because morals are based on whim rather than principles. It suggests that if we get enough people to agree that misogyny is good, slavery is good, homophobia is good (all hypersensitive leftist subjects) then the nature of collectivist morals, or morals by consensus demands it to be true. Typically, I'll trick them (because they're arrogant) by pretending to agree that morals are based on consensus. I'll say it and nod my head (it's an old trick to gain trust through body language). Then I'll prove it wrong. The disconnect with morals and principles and the Postmodern Left is found in their unhealthy obsession with collectivism, Nietzsche in particular. Everything was reduced to "values."

Values are another sticking point for the Postmodernist. To drive something home I'll remind him, ad nauseum, "Those are your values, not mine. That's what you do. That's what you love. Not me." To the Postmodernist, they believe (again wrongly) that values are a social construct (BTW, if anyone ever says “social construct” you can pretty much call that nonsense). They say this because they're anti-realist. Divorcing from both reason and reality the Postmodernists are morally bankrupt. Morals require us to discriminate, to choose the better of available options based on principles and evidence. The Postmodernist denies that either are valid. To the Postmodernist then, all behaviors have equal outcomes (I point this out just to get them to scratch their heads). Because without reason or the mind being able to reliably and accurately interpret the world then all behavior is mere chance. I'm just as likely to get hit crossing the street with my eyes closed then looking both ways. Which brings us to relativism.

The most pernicious feature of Postmodernism, and the one that sends real scientists on the warpath, is relativism. The Postmodernist, denying reason and evidence, also categorically denies that any truth can be found. It's interesting to note that Jews and Christians both believed (Christians more so) that God created the Universe with immutable laws, so perfect that God could not break them. This is why Muhammed said, "the Jews have fettered Allah." To the Muslims, Allah can do anything, including be wildly inconsistent. To the Christians and Jews this was not so. The Laws of Nature are immutable, therefore, it's possible to discover and interpret them. Human beings are imperfect but the universe is not. Thus the Western World was ready to embark on a journey of scientific discovery with Jews and Christians leading the way. To the Postmodernist, however, the universe itself is a matter of opinion. This is the most baffling but if you read all of their literature you'll find evidence time and again they believe that reality is a matter of opinion. This is why you'll state a fact and they'll say, "That's your opinion." This is the slipperiest and most intellectually detrimental characteristic of Postmodern anti-rationalism. It can destroy a person's ability to function in modern society. Interestingly enough, their collectivist interpretation (that is, cultural or group awareness suggests that reality is a social construct) is also found in Islam. Another oppressive, totalitarian, murderous ideology that explicitly states (like Rousseau to Marcuse) anyone who does not convert is either killed or subjugated. That's collectivism for you. The ways I've found to deal with relativism is to be irreverent, sarcastic and mocking.

To the Postmodernist, language is not a form of communication, but a weapon to deliver intellectual force (whatever that means). The Postmodernist will attack for no reason, then change subjects just to keep attacking. When they're losing ground they'll resort to value-relativism or what Eagleton would call theoretical pluralism. An example would be if you said, "You're indoctrinated," they'll say "We're all indoctrinated." Well, not we're all not indoctrinated. But they say that because in a relativist world, there is no right or wrong and everything meets in between. Of course, it's only relativist when they're losing an argument. So I point this out. I make it explicit. I'll tell them straight up they're retreating into theoretical pluralism. Invariably, because these elitists are impressed with obscurantism, they'll ask, "What's that?" Then I'll tell them, correct them, and continue with reason, evidence and logic.

If there is a rule #1, I guess it would have to be - never initiate the conversation. The reason is because talking to a Postmodern self-defeatist is a waste of time. If they initiate the conversation it's because they have a grievance to monger. It means they care because their feelings are being broadcast. Use that. Then challenge their knowledge about it. For some reason, I have yet to know why, but these Postmodernists tend to crumble when you give names and dates to support your arguments. I think it's because they're just a bunch of name-droppers. They don't know Oedipus from Homer. They learned him from Freud. Use specifics and remind them they're wrong and they don't know. They need to be broken down shotgun style and stuffed with double-ought. The only thing they have is faith, break it.

Reading List

Here's a list of books I've read to understand Postmodernism (Read in this order):

1. Higher Superstition - by Levitt and Gross - this is the book that started it all. The Postmodern Left failed to gain ground in the hard sciences during the communist revolutions at various colleges (a strategy developed by Marcuse). They did manage to dominate the humanities (much to my dismay). After years of establishing hegemony (a Postmodern watchword) they sought to expand their sphere of influence. These frauds met began meeting fierce resistance. It started with this book.

2. The Sokal Hoax anthology - this isn't exactly the best book but there are so many essays to explicate it helps you develop an instinct for their nonsense. Spoiler Alert!! Sokal wrote an essay that was utter nonsense. You might say, "So what?" which would be very Postmodern, but only the thesis was Alan's. The rest of the essay was quotes from Leftist luminaries. In other words, they can't even understand each other.

3. Fashionable Nonsense - by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont - the best part for non-scientists (like myself) are the intermezzo chapters which breakdown the nonsense into logic for laymen, explain their faults, exposing their frauds, and illustrating their fallacies.

4. Liberal Fascism - by Jonah Goldberg - not a great piece of scholarly work but it familiarizes you with the various political movements, philosophers, and movers-n-shakers of the Left that were Fascists. What this book lacks is a strong voice to carry its message. What it has is a plethora of quotes from Fascists and the Leftists today whose own politics are indistinguishable.

5. Explaining Postmodernism - by Stephen Hicks - Easily the strongest work to date. Hicks tracts a philosophic line from Rousseau to Rorty, explaining their various assertions, their weaknesses, and why successors were desperately needed. Hicks book is remarkably lucid, candid, and funny. More importantly, it's brutally honest. Postmodernists are in serious denial and Hicks throws it in their face. He explains why they choose the tactics you've described (though, if you've read everything up to this you'll have figured it out for yourself anyway). The most compelling features of this book are the three theses, which are laid bare, then thoroughly supported, and cogently argued. This is a MUST!

Enjoy your readings,
Thomas

P.S. The best book to explain the descent into ignorance (though not entirely Postmodern but the Western World as a whole) is The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom, Hating Whitey by David Horowitz and Illiberal Education by Dinesh Desouza are good companion pieces.

What percentage of the world is atheist?

There are numerous takes on this. Some will say there are more atheists than we imagine because in strongly Muslim and Catholic countries, atheists are ostracized and won't publicly announce their views. On the other hand, over one-third of the world was raised under atheistic communism in the past century. Religion was discouraged and believers were persecuted. All things being equal, the common survey number of 2 to 3 percent seems about right.

It also depends on how you define the term. An atheist believes there is no God. But many people who are not traditionally religious believe in a higher power or a spiritual force of some type. If we extend the definition to those who have no opinion, who lack belief, or who have no religion, the number is obviously much higher.

A 2005 survey published in the Encyclopædia Britannica found that the non-religious made up about 11.9 percent of the world's population, and atheists about 2.3 percent. It's reasonable to suppose that there is a gray area between these two groups with some non-religious people claiming to be atheists and vice versa.

Further, in some cultures, such as in Russia and Scandinavia, it is considered impolite to be "aggressive" in sharing your inner thoughts, beliefs and emotions. Those surveyed might tend to shun the question by simply claiming no religion.

Atheists often like to point out that in these countries, which they consider to be much more civilized and advanced than the rest of the world, the number of atheists is thought by some to be more than half of the population. These are mainly northern European countries, such as Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, France, Estonia and Germany.

A few Asian countries such as South Korea and Japan are cited too, however, the religions of Buddhism and Shintoism do not worship God or gods, so those surveyed cannot be compared culturally to the atheists in the west. The same is true with communist countries such as Russia and Vietnam where atheism was enforced even to the point of imprisonment and death. So it's even more surprising that Cuba and China, which are among the worst offenders in persecuting believers, have only a 7 and 8 percent atheist population respectively.

Europe is an anomaly though with its high atheist population. I've often wondered why northern Europe is so Godless. I suspect there is a factor that most people don't realize: government enforced tithing.

In many European countries, there is a national church and the tithe is essentially another tax. There is a clause in the law that allows people who are not members of the national church to opt out. If you were born in the country, whether you were baptized or not, the government counts you as a national church member. Unless you declare yourself to be a member of another religious group not supported by the government or a non-member, this is another socialist tax levied on your income. Lutheran Church members in Germany, for instance, have the ability to opt out by literally declaring themselves to be apostate.

So in fact, the world atheist population numbers are skewed as the result of a tax dodge.

If we look at Sweden for example, there are surveys stating that atheists make-up 85 percent of the population. I've found that unbelievable, and perhaps there is one reason to think it's not really true. According to the Wikipedia entry on the tithe:

Until the year 2000, Sweden had a mandatory church tax to be paid if one did belong to the Church of Sweden which had been funneling about $500 million annually to the church. Because of change in legislation, the tax was withdrawn in year 2000. However, the Swedish government has agreed to continue collecting from individual taxpayers the annual payment that has always gone to the church. But now the tax will be an optional checkoff box on the tax return.

In most of these European countries with a high atheist population, there is a state Church and tithing is compulsory. Anyone who wants to stop paying tithes has to declare in writing, in a local court or registry, that they are leaving the Church. They are then crossed off the Church registers and can no longer receive the sacraments. The tithe is less than the biblical ten percent in each of these countries varying between 1 to 9 percent.

When we contrast that with the United States, we see that there has never been a compulsory tithe. In contrast, churches here thrive in comparison to Europe. In addition, the tithe is tax-exempt and income tax deductible. It could be argued that socialism and civil government enforced tithing weakens the people's faith; while voluntary giving strengthens it.

Give, and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure--pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return.

- Luke 6:28

Eastern European Nationalism

I posted some videos of my trips to several cities in Ukraine in the summer of 2007. These are on a travel log at YouTube, which you can watch below. When I first posted these, I did it for my own reference and enrichment, since I thought virtually no one would watch them. Now though, I've had thousands of viewers and many of the comments are arguments from Ukrainian and Polish nationalists over the correct spelling and pronunciation of the cities; which church has the religious monopoly in the region; and which country had its land stolen first.

You can scroll through all 23 videos here:



Just two examples of the responses I have been getting:

I would like to bring your attention the name Kyiv should be used instead of Russified Kiev.

Whenever you arrive to Kyiv Boryspil International, you will never miss four big shining letters KYIV on the top of the airport building. When you drive further towards the city, you will be greeted by the board Kyiv welcomes you on the side of the speedway. You may think these changes occurred after the Orange Revolution. Let me reassure you that this was already the case in earlier nineties and long time before it.

"KYIV" spelling is the only official Ukrainian spelling, used by the Ukrainian government, So that makes it OFFICIAL and correct. The fact is that the majority of foreign governments, embassies, and numerous academic and business organizations use "KYIV" not "KIEV." The US Embassy uses "KYIV."

The fact the Ukrainian Parliament, Verkhovna Rada, through many of its Commissions allows only one spelling, Kyiv. Probably, the most important argument is the Constitution of Ukraine, which clearly states that The capital of Ukraine is the City of Kyiv. In fact, it can be argued that those who persistently use Kiev instead of Kyiv could be accused of Russian Nationalism and clinging to Russian communism.

There is also the debate over whether it is Lvov, Lviv or Lwów:

I hope that one day someone will be decide about American and British territories. Maybe you should describe what means expulsion from own home/house and what means suffer in Russian Siberian gulags and in German Auschwitz camp like it was in my family.

Americans should leave own cities and give them to Eskimos and Indians. In New York should live only the Dutch because they established Manhattan. Berlin should be Polish; Paris and London Italian because were established by Romans; Russian Nowgorod by Swedes.

Polish and Hungarian roots go deeper in one region of Ukraine than Ukrainian roots. Kievan Rus conquered these region which belonged to us (Poles and Hungarian) from beginning. Before Christianization of Poland it was Polish tribes lands -- western Slavic, not eastern -- so not Ukrainian.

If you will decide about Poland again give this ugly German Wrocław/Breslau to Germany, which by the way was destroyed by Russians, and give us our Lwów. Nobody asked Americans and British for Wrocław.

Polish government never acknowledge that Lwów is not a polish city. It is the only one big Polish city which wasn't destroyed by Germans and Russians communist during WW2. The oldest monument in Lwów is from Polish times, because Ruthenian Lviv was had mainly wooden buildings.

Americans and British had no right to sold us to Russian communist after how we fought for freedom so many allied counties and nobody help to us. People in eastern Europe hate when Americans and other western countries decide about our land. Serbia likes Russians because of Kosovo independence.

My response: In English, there is no "yi" dipthong. Kyiv is the foreign transliteration of the Ukrainian spelling. However, both the Russian and Ukrainian spellings are in the Cyrillic alphabet. Kiev is the English transliteration according to common spelling rules. "Kyiv" simply has not caught on in the West. Very few people recognize it over "Kiev."

A Google search for Kyiv "yyilds" 4 million web pages, while Kiev yields 40 million.

I can't pretend to have any expertise in these conflicts that go back over many centuries. I can only give the honest point of view of the "ugly American."

The American author and satirist Mark Twain wrote: "There is not an acre of ground on the globe that is in possession of its rightful owner, or that has not been taken away from owner after owner, cycle after cycle, by force and bloodshed."

Of course, "hyi" is using hyperbole to prove a point. No nation has come into existence without displacing another nation at some point.

What I write "hyir" is also a satire. If "wyi" take your principle to the logical conclusion, then every ethnic nationality that ever conquered or colonized a "pyis" of land ought to give it up to the prior tenant. Then that nation should give up its claim to the prior one. And all the way back to Adam.

If "thyiz" nations don't exist today in pure blood we ought to honor them by changing the names of all our "cityiz."

Chicago ought to be returned to the French and be called: Chicagou. The French then ought to give it up to the Chippeway Indians as Shiggaugo. Then the Crees ought to have it and it should be revert to: Shiggaugo-ong.

And so on.

Many cities in Russia and the former USSR have been renamed to reflect their pre-Revolutionary names, St. Petersburg (Leningrad), Nizhny Novgorod (Gorky), etc. Americans don't have a problem with changing names of foreign countries as many times as they request. We think it's strange that we've been "America" for over 400 years and only added "The United States of America" in 1776. We are the "New" World, yet Europeans still can't decide what to call themselves.

Often our spelling and pronunciation of names is different from the nationalist spelling. Wien becomes Vienna; Mumbai becomes Bombay; Rocia becomes Russia; Ookraine becomes Ukraine. But we don't usually spell foreign place names contrary to our spelling rules or else we simply mispronounce them depending on their spelling.

Unless they are English or Irish -- but that's a different story.

An investigation into the writings of Jay Rogers (a video)

http://akaariesashkuff.com/akaBlog/?p=134

Amazingly, this is an investigative video report, fairly well-done, that critiques one of my articles on Witchcraft and Abortion. In the video, the videographer claims he came to Melbourne to investigate the claims of my articles. I am fascinated by lengths to which people will go who are fascinated by me.

My offensive articles are here:

http://www.forerunner.com/champion/X0038.html

Due to a misquote in the field, the international director of the evangelical Forerunner.com was referred to as “Jay Roberts” in Scene 3 of the Beyond Logic Network’s experimental film series. The correct spelling of his name is “Jay Rogers.” We apologize for any misrepresentation or confusion this may have caused. The original summary of this episode reads as such: Following yet another lead he had picked up during his work with the preachers in Turlington Plaza, [Aries] Ashkuff investigates a so-called “witch cult” that has taken root in Palm Bay, and visits the private residence of their high priest.

BTW: I finished watching Lake of Fire and in it Pat Windle is seen standing in front of my house claiming (not naming names of course) that I got a voyeuristic sexual thrill out of watching women come to get abortions because I never had had sex myself -- (or maybe she was talking about someone else?)

Of course, that is nothing new. It was one of Pat's favorite temper tantrum talking points. But it was kind of surreal to see my house in the background and her pointing at it.

My response: These people can say whatever they want, just as long as they spell my name right!

Unending Persecution of Christians in Pakistan

The following is a report sent to us from a young woman who is doing the on-line Urdu (Pakistani) version of The Forerunner.

http://forerunner.com/urdu/urdu.html

You may also view some videos here. Although these are not in English, you can see what is going on and know exactly what to pray about.





Report by: Nosheet Gloria, Toba Tek Singh, Pakistan
Affected Areas: Korian and Gojra, District Toba Tek Singh

30 July 2009

A mob of Muslim Extremists burnt about 75 houses of the Christian People over the alleged desecration of the Holy Quran in Azafi Abadi at Chak 95-JB on Gojra-District Toba Tek Singh, later on Thursday, Christian leaders said.

It was a routine happy morning of 30th July 2009. In the wake of this economically depressed situation the peasants were heading towards their fields to seed therein with the hope of harvesting the fruit of their day to day struggle. The children went to the school to accomplish many of their forefathers’ dreams which had not yet been realized for generations, and the women were busy in their household activities, wishing to complete their household tasks before their children come back from the schools and before their men come back from the fields for their lunch. Nobody knew until then what that day was going to bring to them.

Everything seemed to be happy till the noon time, and still nobody had any idea of the great danger coming upon their heads. It was when Mukhtar Masih, Talib Masih and his son Imran Masih were allegedly reported to desecrate the papers inscribed with the Holy Quran verses at a wedding ceremony of their relatives.

An official newspaper “Dawn” said that 50 houses were damaged when the mob in a frenzy of rage held a jury where the alleged convicted of desecrating the Holy Quran Talib Masih was asked to offer apology over the incident.

Talib denied the incident and refused to apologize. Resultantly hundreds of people mobbed together and attacked the Azafi Basti.

Before the arrival of the mob, the residents had fled which gave a walkover to the mob which put on fire 75 houses. The ablaze also burnt many a cattle.

District Police Officer (DPO) Inkisar Khan fielded MPA Bilal Asghar Warraich and Maulana Noor Ahmad to calm down the mob. The DPO also suspended the Gojra Sadar station house officer at the demand of the mob.

The mob blocked the road to block the entrance of fire brigades to the village. Federal Minister for Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti and Punjab Minorities and Human Rights Minister Kamran Michael visited the locality on Friday and urged both sides to remain peaceful.

They said the Christians would be compensated for their loss. Minority MPAs Rafiq Pervaiz and Khalil Tahir Sandhu also visited the village.

DPO Inkisar Khan said a case has been registered under section 295-B of the Pakistan Penal Code against Mukhtar Masih, Talib Masih and Imran Masih without any arrest.

Local ulema and traders demanded the arrest of the accused and announced a complete strike on Saturday (1st of August 2009). Former MNA M Hamza condemned the violence against Christians as well as the alleged desecration act. In a press statement, he demanded a judicial probe into the incident..

Labour Party leader Tariq Mahmood, National Workers’ Party Punjab Secretary Rana Azam, Labour Qaumi Movement’s Shabbir Ahmad and Kissan Committee President Chaudhry Fateh Muhammad and other remarkable officials condemned the violence.

1st of August 2009

A mob of Muslim Extremists burnt about 100 houses of the Christian People over the alleged desecration of the Holy Quran in Gojra City-District Toba Tek Singh, later on Saturday.

When the incidence in in Azafi Abadi at Chak 95-JB was being condemned from right and left and by the officials of the government and by the TV channels, no rescue measurements were taken to avoid any other possible sad incidents. Almost everyone was talking in every corner of the region that the mob of the Muslim Extremists is very likely to attack again. The extremists were reported to have inquired from the people walking on the streets and roads if they were not Christian. They even were present in bus stops, taxi stands and other public places to take the Christian people to task. Some people were beaten just because they appeared to be Christian. In Pakistan normally black colored people are considered to be Christians. But there are some Muslim people as well who are of black skin, and they had to pay the penalty for their black color in spite of the fact that they were Muslims.

In spite of these facts no security was provided by the government, the result of which was that another sad incident was given a chance to take place. A mob of 1500 to 2000 people has been reported to have gathered for a peaceful political procession. They purposefully chose the place from where they could have accessed the Christian Locality easily.

The procession started moving dramatically, giving all indications of being attackers and incited their prey to concern about their security. It was blamed that Christians opened fire upon the mob first and the mob, in response, put the 100 houses on fire, killing 10 people including 4 women and 2 children with the fire, blaze and suffocation.

Chief Minister’s delegation consisting Dost Mohammad Khosa and Minority’s Minister Shahbaz Bhati visited the locations for sharing their concern and condolence over the great loss and promised the Christian Communities and steps will be taken to ensure that the lives and the belongings of the Christian Families shall be given all possible security. The Christian leaders and people shared their concern in their loud voices that such incidences are taking places in spite of all the vows and promises of the Government. Each new coming government does not care about things, and that the governments wait till the things are destroyed and then the officials only come for sharing their condolence.

Legal cases against the DPO (District Police Officer) and other concerned authorities have been filed who showed their all negligence which ended towards this sad incidence.

Mixed reports are coming from right and left. Some people say that it was Political Procession who got furious, while others believe that it was planned attack by the Taliban of Afghanistan.

We request you to pray for us all. We know and keep our faith in the fact that we are persecuted in His name. I believe that God is in control of everything, and He gives power to His people to fight against the Satanic powers.

I would like to request you to keep us in your daily prayers, and also please pray for the leaders of the Christian Community so that they may play their positive role to ensure the lives and belongings of the Christian People.

May God richly bless you and keep. May He smile for you and shine His face upon you. May His light keep burning in your heart!

Lord's Blessings,

Nosheet Gloria

The Wrath of Angels & Exposing Late Term Abortion

A video produced by Eric Holmberg and Vorthos Forum (a/k/a The Apologetics Group, Reel to Real Ministries) got the attention of the Margaret Sanger Papers Collection website at New York University.

http://www.nyu.edu/projects/sanger/sightings/index.html

Margaret Sanger: Solid as Barack

Sanger’s name has cropped up in several right wing blogs that attacked Barack Obama for his support of a woman’s right to choose. For instance, on Aug. 24, 2008 in Human Events Online, Senator Obama was condemned for opposing the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, legislation that would require hospitals to care for infants who survive an abortion. Obama, who viewed this as an anti-abortion rights law, recognized that doctors already have a legal and ethical obligation to preserve life in the rare instance when a baby survives an abortion procedure. Nevertheless, the columnist warned “somewhere in hell, Margaret Sanger is filling out her absentee ballot.” Similar attacks on Sanger and Obama appear in a YouTube video that links them to a plot to eradicate the black race through abortion www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI67MuPwsX0, and yet another piece on black genocide.

Another of the videos produced by Vorthos Forum, "A Tale of Two Babies," points out that Obama did not vote for Illinois' version of the "Born Alive Infant Protection Act" because he feared it could be used to curtail abortion rights. The struggle to outlaw all late term abortions of viable infants ought to be the next step in the pro-life movement's focus.



I am now reading the book, Wrath of Angels, which chronicles how the pro-life street activist movement branched off the political lobbyists. The book then focuses on the so-called "violent fringe" of the pro-life movement. Having known some of the people in the book personally, I see not everything is accurate. But the book reads like a novel and is interesting if you can read between the lines of two "pro-choice" journalists attempting to be objective. (I recommend the book because it has some good insights that I agree with and I'll be posting a review later on.)

Many pro-lifers saw the reality that Roe v. Wade was far too sweeping a measure of judicial activism. It had to be repealed either by stacking the court with constructionist justices or with a constitutional amendment.

They saw that we do need to dramatically change public opinion first. To get a human life amendment to the Constitution was and still is too big of a step. Baby steps need to be taken. Exposing late-term abortion is a key first step. Even though it's only two or three percent of all abortions, the legal victory is not what is important. It is getting the vast majority of the public to see the humanity of a viable child and to provoke outrage at the legalized killing of these little ones. Right now most are in the dark. Many think it is already illegal. Others cite the "danger to the life and health of the mother" exception. We heard this lie in many of Dr. George Tiller's eulogies, for instance. However, a viable baby never needs to be aborted. In the case of a danger to the life of the mother, the baby simply needs to be delivered (by c-section if necessary) and cared for. In the vast majority of cases, these little ones can be saved.

But according to Planned Parenthood's research arm, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, are the list of reasons women had not obtained the abortions earlier in their pregnancies. The results were as follows:

71% Woman didn't recognize she was pregnant or misjudged gestation
48% Woman found it hard to make arrangements for abortion
33% Woman was afraid to tell her partner or parents
24% Woman took time to decide to have an abortion
8% Woman waited for her relationship to change
8% Someone pressured woman not to have abortion
6% Something changed after woman became pregnant
6% Woman didn't know timing is important
5% Woman didn't know she could get an abortion
2% A fetal problem was diagnosed late in pregnancy
11% Other

Dr. Tiller, of course, was lauded as a saint by abortion rights advocates because of all the women's lives he saved. But according to Planned Parenthood's own statistics, this simply isn't the case.

In the second chapter of Wrath of Angels, "The Struggle for Roe," the authors explain how prior to 1973 some states had loopholes in their restrictive abortion laws to allow for the "mental health of the mother" to be an exception. All that was needed case of the "danger to a mother's life or health"

The book also points out that the original language of Roe v. Wade allowed abortion in cases of the danger to the health and life of the mother, rape or incest in the the first trimester of pregnancy; and danger to the health and life of the mother in the second trimester. A key component of allowing this was the "right to privacy." During the oral arguments, Sarah Weddington conceded that if the humanity of the child could be established she would have no case.

Doe v. Bolton then extended the right to be defined as a private decision between a woman and her doctor under the protection for the "right to privacy." This was the slippery slope leading over the cliff to what almost all now consider to be infanticide. At this point, there was assured a "right to abortion" through all nine months in any case in which the doctor and the woman decided that her health dictated she could not bear a child. Mental health and "thoughts of suicide" are often cited, for instance.

We need to consider that the so-called exceptions to abortion (rape, incest, the health of the mother) are accepted even by many so-called pro-life advocates such as Sean Hannity and John McCain.

Many "pro-life" politicians and pundits are actually pro-Roe, but merely anti-Doe. Their argument is that these exceptions are no more than two or three percent of all abortions.

"Wouldn't we would gladly take that victory than none at all?"

Or so the argument goes. However, it is a defensive tack that cannot result in a reversal of our current culture of death. The abortion matrix needs to be exposed from the other extreme two or three percent -- those infants who are killed after viability (now at about 22 to 24 weeks). On the surface, it seems too small a victory to pursue. However, securing the right to life for any unborn infant can ultimately reverse Roe at least back to it's original intent. We must do that by establishing in the public consciousness the humanity of these late-term babies that are being slaughtered by the thousands each year.

If we can do that we have a secured beachhead and ultimately we may end up saving millions.

Dr. Peter Hammond and Frontline Fellowship

I had a couple of dynamic spiritual experiences this week. The first was meeting Dr. Peter Hammond of Frontline Fellowship, South Africa. Dr. Hammond is a personal “hero” of mine and is doing more to promote true Revival than anyone I can think of. He spoke of his mission’s work in Africa – the vision is no less than “All of Africa for Christ.” Hammond understands that Revival isn’t simply life-changing on a personal and pietistic level, but nation-changing and world-changing as well.

I highly encourage people to visit their website: http://www.frontline.org.za/

Other resources are available here: http://www.reformationsa.org/

Not only are there numerous messages available for download, but sermons have also been prepared as power point presentations that you yourself can present and teach to your small group or church meeting. When presented under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, these presentations are truly life-changing, nation-changing and world-changing.

Dr. Hammond emphasized the following points:

1. John Calvin, although he is not primarily known as a social reformer and an evangelist, was more full-orbed in his theology and social theory than most people realize. Calvin’s view on justification by faith and a resulting sanctification translated into the increase of Christian efforts to reform the society of his own day and in succeeding generations.

2. John Knox and the Scottish Covenanters are primarily known as the founders of the Presbyterian movement. Yet this revival was not just a reformation of doctrine in the Scottish church, but also a spiritual awakening that affected the entire country of Scotland. This was the first nation in modern history that was literally converted en masse to Christ. According to Iain Murray, author of The Puritan Hope, there was not a household in Scotland in which one of the members experienced a profound conversion to Christ. The nation itself was born-again and the people of 16th and 17th century Scotland covenanted with God.

3. The English version of the Presbyterians, the Puritans, were responsible for bringing this vision to England and America. Men such as Oliver Cromwell, William Bradford and John Winthrop changed not only the politics of the west, but their lives resulted in a greater evangelistic thrust for the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

4. In the 18th century we can say much the same about the lives of George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards. Their preaching of the Gospel, far from being a “salvation-only” message, affected all aspects of society.

5. By comparison, today’s Calvinists (and we evangelicals in general) are frozen in our devotion to God. We tend to neglect fervent prayer, emotional expression in worship and evangelism. If they were alive today, the Calvinists of the past would hardly recognize today’s Calvinists as being representative of their lives’ work.

6. We are currently undergoing a paradigm shift in the evangelical church from pervasive and being an ardent dispensational premillennialism to a postmillennial activism. This shift in eschatological outlook will be vital to the future of Christian cultural transformation.

7. The greatest century of missions was the 19th century. The world missions movement was initially fueled by the postmillennial hope. The eschatology of the founders of modern Protestant missions was almost universally optimistic. The result of this postmillennial worldview was claiming the nations for Christ.

8. The prospects faced by William Carey, George Mueller, David Livingstone and others in plowing the rocky soil in Africa, Asia and other “dark continents” was thought to be “dismal.” The immediate result of their efforts was a handful of converts. If these men had the eschatology and vision of today’s Christians, they would not have had the long term outlook that enabled them to persevere. The great irony is that by the end of the 20th century, hundreds of millions of Christian converts have streamed into the kingdom of God. These men didn’t live to see the fulfillment of the promise, but believed. Yet most Christians today are seeing the fulfillment, but don’t have their hope.

9. Frontline Fellowship’s vision is the transformation of all of Africa and the world. Neo-Puritanism is having an impact in these nations from children in home schools and church schools to the highest levels of government where presidents and high ranking officials are being impacted with world changing Gospel teaching.

10. In Sudan and other places, Christians are being martyred for their faith. What should be our response to this? We need to elect politicians with the backbone of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan who stood up to communism, not to appease anti-Christian tyranny, but to defeat it. Our attitude toward militant Islam should not be a “turn-the-other-cheek-pacifism.” Military action by African Christians in defense against Islam is not only permissible from a New Testament perspective, but mandated to defend the faith. There could even come a time in America when Christians may have to take up arms against invasive regimes, false religions and an oppressive government in our own land.

Gallup Poll: Most Americans now pro-life

The first time I participate in a Gallup Poll I change history!

Last week I got a phone call from Gallup asking for ten minutes of my time in order to participate in a poll. The first question was about whether I approved of President Obama, so wanting my voice to be heard on this issue, I persevered to the end. Almost every demographic question possible was asked including: "Do you consider yourself pro-life or pro-choice?"

Imagine my surprise about a week later when I read this news item:

The latest Gallup poll on abortion found that 51 percent of those questioned call themselves "prolife" - the first time a majority of US adults have identified themselves as such since Gallup began asking this question in 1995 ... Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,015 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted May 7-10, 2009.

This might seem like a trite statement to say, "I changed history," but people really are influenced by public opinion polls. If the trend continues the pro-aborts can no longer say, "The vast majority of Americans are pro-choice!"

If there is a lesson to be learned here it is that if you want to be a world changer, you must often participate in the process, no matter how mundane it sometimes feels.

Countering Bible Cynicism

My ongoing conversation with Bible skeptics has taught me a few things.

The first and foremost is that most aren't skeptics in the true sense. A skeptic is one who calls accepted knowledge into question or tries to find alternative theories to explain the data on hand. Christians need to have a healthy skepticism toward the Bible, not in order to disprove it as God's Word, but to challenge faulty interpretations and to test how well we are able to defend the integrity of scripture. While I've had a few good conversations with skeptics that were rational, what I've found most often is blatant cynicism.

Cynicism is characterized by a mistrust or mockery of established conventions. The cynic doesn't use inquiry or constructive argument, but mainly sarcasm, verbal abuse and a host of logical fallacies. Oscar Wilde described a cynic as, "A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." A cynic is one who wants to take the easy path toward being considered an intellectual without doing any of the heavy lifting. It's a philosophy of misdirection in which the cynic feels proud of his ability to debate merely because he is able to call everything into question without really contributing anything positive toward human knowledge. I wanted to here post three of the most common cynical statements I encounter and some of my brief responses to them.

1. Jesus never really existed. This was the thesis of Bruno Bauer in the 1890s who claimed that Jesus was not a historical person but was an amalgamation of pagan myths. Sir James Frazer followed in the 1920s with his book, The Golden Bough. Although Frazer did not doubt Jesus was a real person, he tried to match many of the Gospel stories with pagan myths showing that the New Testament stories about Jesus had no basis in history. The problem with the Jesus Myth hypothesis is that it was almost universally rejected by scholars soon after it appeared.

When I first encountered this crackpot hypothesis, I had a several months' long debate on my discussion board, which you can see here:

http://www.forerunner.com/discussion/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=31

Rather than run over a lot of old ground each time I get this objection, I simply offer two challenges to the Jesus Mythist.

1. Can you name a single writer prior to the 1800s who claimed Jesus never existed?
2. Can you name even five Ph.D.s teaching history at the university level who claim Jesus never existed?

If they can't offer names, I won't continue the conversation. One recently called my tactic "hypocrasy" (sic) because I am a creationist and creationism has been disproved by modern science. What amazes me here is that he fails to see the difference. There are hundreds and perhaps thousands of Ph.D.s teaching science who are creationists. We are a minority, but creationism isn't a position that has no credible proponents.

What I usually find when I challenge these young unthinking postmodernists is that they don't really understand the meaning of their thesis. They either confuse the Mythist position with that of Historical Criticism -- that Jesus was a mere man. Or they simply haven't thought the position through, but are driven by an emotional desire to prove Christianity wrong. In very few cases are Jesus Mythists willing to admit that their hypothesis isn't based on any historical testimony or documentary data. What they do instead is to change the subject to dozens of other objections. It's hit-and-run atheist activism. I encourage those who want to be involved with apologetics not to waste time with people who do not want to argue through their position and answer hard questions.

2. The New Testament was not written until well after the death of Jesus. I've even heard a few who are convinced that the New Testament was not written for "hundreds of years" after Jesus. Just a brief bit of background on this position should be considered. In the 1800s, it was the German Higher Critics who first began to push the proposed date of the New Testament into the second century -- even to the later decades. Some were motivated by anti-Semitism. The simply couldn't fathom the idea of first century Jews founding the religion of Europe. The late dating was not based on documentary evidence or historical testimony. Instead their conjecture was founded on form criticism and source criticism -- the idea being that the critic could read into the text what type of person wrote the book, when it was written, and which sources (often non-extant "phantom" documents) the author used.

Reading the Higher Critics or their modern counterparts is aggravating because they will completely dismiss all documentary evidence and historical testimony out of hand. Documentary evidence is in the form of actual manuscripts and fragments of the New Testament. Historical testimony is the records left by first and second century church fathers who quoted from and left commentary on the New Testament.

First, in the late 1800s up to this day there have been about 100 manuscript fragments discovered that date from the 115 to 300 AD. The earliest manuscript is a copy of the Gospel of John called the Ryland's fragment. Since this is considered to be at least a copy of a copy, and John is thought to be the last Gospel written, this puts the Gospels squarely in the first century. The latest possible date for the three synoptic Gospels according to the data then is the 70s and 80s. But we should stress this is the latest possible date. Nothing precludes an earlier date.

Second, the universal testimony of the church fathers beginning with Clement of Rome in the first century has the bulk of the New Testament written by the named authors prior to 70 AD. Some have the earliest Gospel being written by 40 AD. A skeptic may doubt this and certainly liberal scholars want to prefer the later dates of the 70s and 80s, however, there is no testimony from the ealry centuries that even hints at a later date for any of the books of the New Testament. The best the cynic has is an argument from silence. Since conservatives can't prove conculsively a specific date for each book, then the dates must be later. Of course, this is not logical.

The weakness of the cynic's position is that he believes the argument from silence "proves" something when in fact, in studying historical events you can seldom prove a negative. The true skeptic ought to admit that the worst case scenario is that we cannot know for certain the exact date of the New Testaments -- we must make educated guesses.

3. The Bible isn't true because people don't rise from the dead. The belief in miracles such as the resurrection can have a rational basis. However the atheist is irrational in that he wants to interpret the world from a purely naturalistic viewpoint. Yet naturalism has no explanation as to how the universe could have been formed from nothing or to how the beginning of a universe created out chaos and random order, can result in a universe of increasing complexity and order. To hold to a faith that has no basis in collected data is irrational.

On the other hand, Christianity is rational. Jesus Christ the Living Word (or the LOGOS) is the unifying principle of all human knowledge and is the basis for all rational thought. Christianity does not deny scientific and rational thought. All philosophy up until the time of Immanuel Kant was rational in nature. Western philosophy was divided into two groups -- Christian and Greek pagan. But both groups were looking for a “unifying principle” that would unite the study of both the seen material and the unseen spiritual worlds. To Christians, this unifying principle was Christ, since the LOGOS was both a linguistic (Biblical literature) and logical (the God-man Jesus Christ as a real historical teacher) answer to the problem of the natural/spiritual dichotomy.

When Immanuel Kant wrote Critique of Pure Reason, he rejected the idea that there can be a principle that unites all fields of knowledge. He was actually arguing for an “irrational” system that tells us that we must forever accept a total dichotomy between the visible and invisible worlds. Modern philosophy and liberal theology now sees the two worlds (the noumenal world and the phenomenal world) as two airtight compartments. If the spiritual world exists, we cannot know anything about it through rational thought according to Kant.

Georg Hegel came along soon after and proposed that all truth is a synthesis between thesis and antithesis. That is, there are no objective truths, just what we end up agreeing upon after argument and debate. In fact, we make up new truths in the process. Thus Kant and Hegel together ended up creating an irrational basis for human philosophy that can never explain how the universe fits together as a whole. Even in the world of science, history, education, literature, and politics, people now see a divided universe that exists in many small compartments, but cannot be understood as a whole. People seek to understand the "many" while denying the "one."

Hitler was simply echoing Hegelian thought when he said: “Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it” and “How fortunate for leaders that men do not think” and “The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.”In other words, the “lie” becomes the new “truth” if most people will just believe it.

What Kant and Hegel did was to open the door to irrational thought in the form of existentialism and postmodernism. In fact, we are already well down the slippery slope to irrational philosophy.

What is irrational is the modern reliance on a Kantian, Hegelian dualistic view of the universe that excludes what we cannot measure scientifically as "irrational." The cynic has gone so far down the rabbit hole of existentialism, that he doesn’t even understand the irrationality Kantian and Hegelian thought. In the long run, his position isn’t a philosophical or religious problem at all. It’s a moral problem fueled by irrational passions.

Puritan Storm Rising!

Here is an experimental bumper for a video documentary on how the Reformed theology of the Puritans has influenced culture and politics. It's loosely related to the online publication, The Puritan Storm.

An Account of Britain’s Sea Battles

“For the King and His Crown Rights!”

Of all the valiant captains who served in His Majesty’s Navy in the 18th century, none is so resiliently popular as Sir Edward Winthrop, who was in his day the most feared and respected man on the high seas. Edward Winthrop’s famous declaration — “For the King and His crown rights!” — fired the hearts of his brave sailors who served under his command.

In one famous sea battle, three pirate ships took Winthrop by surprise on a return voyage to England. But Winthrop’s badly provisioned ship maneuvered cleverly to run one pirate crew aground on a coral reef, sunk another with one cannon volley, and quickly out ran the third. Several days later, they found the three crews hiding in a nearby cove together on one ship. With great indignation, the captain bellowed out his famous words — “For the King and His crown rights!” A fiery deluge of smoke and lead descended on the pirate ship, demolishing one of the last pirate crews in the Caribbean. Winthrop’s “take no prisoners” philosophy was what made him feared by all the enemies of the King of England.

The ship which Edward Winthrop commanded, the H.M.S. Ecclesia, had an even longer and more illustrious history. By the time of its decommissioning in 1830, the Ecclesia had fought in over 100 battles and had been restored or rebuilt many times. Her name first appeared on a rustic galleon 250 years earlier. Only the U.S.S. Constitution (or “Old Ironsides”) even closely rivals the Ecclesia’s fame and longevity.

Yet most Americans today are vaguely aware, at best, of this great monument to the expansion of British civilization. The Ecclesia first appeared in the battle of the Spanish Armada in 1588. At that time, the Ecclesia was an old unmaneuverable ship used for powder storage and supplied other ships in battle. Smaller ships, called “sea dogs” under the command of Sir Francis Drake, ran circles around the larger Spanish galleons in the English channel. With superior seamanship, English and Irish sailors quickly sank the majority of the Spanish fleet, clearing the paths of the high seas for the King’s dominion of the New World.

A smaller, fitter Ecclesia was commissioned in the early 1600s to protect convoys of settlers off the shores of Virginia, New England and later Georgia. Decked with tight rows of cannons, the ship fended off any threat to the colonial settlers. She fought many battles in the Caribbean, defending British settlements, and sinking many Spanish ships. Not only was she used in battle, settlement and commerce, but the Ecclesia returned to English port often bow laden with Spanish gold, winning several of her captains great honor among the monarchs of England. In all, three captains of the Ecclesia were knighted: Sir Calvin Edwards, Sir Luther Robinson and, of course, Sir Edward Winthrop.

Of interesting note to historians, Edward Winthrop was named by his parents in honor the first captain of the Ecclesia, Sir Calvin Edwards. Edward Winthrop’s father, Francis, also served as a crewman on the Ecclesia. Oddly, Francis Winthrop was both a distant relative of Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop and Sir Francis Drake. Sir Edward Winthrop’s mother was a distant relative of John Knox, the Scottish Presbyterian reformer. Thus this illustrious family rose in fame with the exploits of the H.M.S. Ecclesia.

During the reign of England’s Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, Francis Winthrop sailed with a Puritan crew under the command of Captain Cotton Blackstone. The fame of the Ecclesia began at this time, when she helped to run pirate ships out of the Mediterranean Sea.

In the 1730s, under the command of Captain Isaac Howells, the Ecclesia ferried Christian missionaries to Georgia during the administration of Governor Oglethorpe. It is rumored that George Whitefield took a brief trip on the Ecclesia which ended abruptly off the coast of England when a mast cracked in the high winds. This record conflicts with the sea log of another ship, however, and it is impossible to tell from Whitefield’s writings whether he sailed on the Ecclesia since he had long before abandoned his practice of keeping his journal.

Under Sir Edward Winthrop’s command, the Ecclesia rose to the zenith of her fame. Winthrop had a reputation among his men as being stern in discipline, but fair in its dispensation. On a south sea voyage, one crewman threatened mutiny, an offense for which, according to maritime law, he could have been keel-hauled or set adrift on the high seas. Instead, Winthrop cast him in irons until he could receive a “fairer trial in the Christian courts of Britain’s capital.” During the trial, the court found conflicting testimony and set the man free. When some of Winthrop’s crew protested the ruling, Sir Edward supported the court’s decision, saying, “When common law proceedings are made a mockery, though it be only in the case of one man, the entire nation may soon suffer shipwreck.”

Winthrop hated the slave trade to the Americas most of all, which he called “the execrable sum of all villainies.” After slavery was outlawed in England, some British subjects still took part in the illegal West Indian slave trade. On one occasion, Winthrop apprehended a British crew aboard a slave ship off the coast of the Canary Islands. He interrupted his journey to Cape Verde in order to cast the British subjects in irons. His wrath was never more severe, as he commanded his men to give the slavers five lashes across the back each day of their voyage back to England. Quoting scripture, Winthrop sentenced them: “For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.”

When Winthrop died in 1828, pirates had long since become a rarity. But occasionally, a crew would prey on lone ships carrying rum and molasses. Ecclesia’s last captain, Darby Scofield, suffered an attack by one of these rare pirate crews in the Virgin Islands. Unfortunately for Scofield, the ship was long overdue for repairs. Had the Ecclesia been more seaworthy, Captain Scofield may have stood his ground and fought. But he believed that the ship was at the end of its service and he doubted the loyalty of his men under attack. Furthermore, their cache of powder was not sufficient for a drawn out battle.

After suffering only one canon volley, the Ecclesia began to take on water. Scofield commanded his crew — “It’s no use boys to polish the brass on a sinking ship. Abandon!”

Ecclesia’s crew sought haven on island within view. The pirate crew, though fewer in number, boarded the ship and managed to repair the cannon holes by running her aground at low tide. When high tide surged in, the pirates had commandeered the Ecclesia. Indeed a sad chapter in the annals of British sea lore!

A convoy carrying some men who had been under Sir Winthrop’s command appeared within a few days. Miraculously, the crew of the Ecclesia were rescued and the convoy set out in search of the pirates. Less than one week later, the pirate crew raised a white flag at the first sight of the British fleet and three high flying Union Jacks.

The scene stood in stark contrast to Sir Edward Winthrop’s famous battle cry forty years earlier. The episode was an embarrassment to the crown, for the Ecclesia had never before lost a battle. A few months later, the British parliament voted unanimously to retire the H.M.S. Ecclesia rather than restore and recommission her.

The ship was bought by a Presbyterian church in Brighton and the lumber was used to construct a meeting house and a parsonage. The house of worship stood for 53 years and bore a plaque with the likeness of Sir Edward Winthrop. Underneath the image is inscribed the ironic question: “What is Christ’s Church? — A wrecked pietistic vessel, or a Puritan battle ship?”

---

NOTE: This tale is not a true account, but is an allegory used to illustrate the point: “What is your church?” Soon after circulating the first draft, I found that some still did not get it. Hence this footnote.

Flames from John YouKnow

Every once in a while I get flames (hate email) from people I don't know and neither can I tell why they are so upset with me.

Okay, maybe not once in a while, it's actually more like daily.

It could be a response to one of several stances I've taken on abortion, paganism, witchcraft, homosexual politics, and so on -- this time it was my Christian Reconstructionist leanings. But I found out only after several emails went back on forth. It's an example of how to engage a God-hater in the opposite spirit -- something we too often forget. I often can't resist getting in a few little jibes at the expense of the self-professed enemies of God -- as David, Paul and Jesus sometimes did -- but sometimes it's useful to think about the fact that these people are God's enemies, not our own.

Here is the exchange (I have corrected his spelling):

Dude, you are a complete lunatic, you do realize that right?

It would help me a lot to know what you are referring to -- an article I wrote, an article written by someone else on my website, a video?

Lol, you are overly nuts. Let's all live like the bible says. What a dumb@$$ approach to take on life. Listen, I could care less what delusions that you have bu the minute you start trying to enforce your views on anyone else we have a problem. You have no evidence at all for your view on life, none, it is true only because you say it is true. Go live in Iran if you want to live according to strict religious principles. It's funny because you don't even realize it, but you are....just....like.....them.

Where have I tried to "enforce" views on people? No one can control the thoughts or the conscience -- only God can do that.

@$$#*!% You have formed a "political group" that has the aim of turning America into a society governed by laws of the Old Testament. So while you do not have the power to enforce anything on anyone at present, given the opportunity you would force all to submit to a mythical book, written by men more ignorant of the ways of the world then the modern eight year old. God controls nothing. How dense can you be? What evidence do you have that God controls ANYTHING? What a %#*&! You make me laugh.

The goal of Christian Reconstruction is regeneration -- changing people's hearts thorugh true faith and true repentance from sin -- then for a grassroots reformation of society. You cannot change a society by capturing political power and then legislating righteousness from the top-down.

(More to come ...)

The Evolution of Jesus Mythicism

Here's a ministry idea. Someone with a YouTube account ought to read this on video. Do a rant in your own inimitable tone. Make sure you cite the author because when it goes viral he'll be wanting royalties. I didn't write this. This is from a guy named Vinnie, who obviously has some kind of gift. Don't ask me what it is though.

Just a note for people who don't get this. I constantly get responses to my Real Jesus video series from young postmodernist atheists who insist there is no proof that Jesus ever existed. I know that makes no sense, but welcome to the 21st century. If you do get it, then you agree with me that this guy Vinnie is brilliant.

Mythicism in 27 to 30 A.D.

Yes, mythicists go back to the first century where they were constantly arguing with Jesus about whether or not he existed. Nothing he could do would prove his existence to them. They asserted and reasserted that he did not exist.

One guy who was a real "Freke" traveled to Australia and came back and told Jesus triumphantly "No one has ever heard of you in Australia. Ergo, you do not exist."

Many of Jesus friends (maybe even 500 of them!) testified that this man was in fact Jesus of Nazareth to them but the mythicists accused the men of fabrication and mass hallucination. They were stubborn and unrelenting and would not give up their hyper-skepticism.

Men and women came claiming to be Jesus' family but the mythicists argued that their testimony was invalid unless backed by a scientifically controlled and carefully conducted DNA testing.

Jesus invited the mythicists over to his house one night for supper and when he was done entertaining them he tried one last time to prove his existence to them. But not even the wine they drank loosened them from their hyper-skepticism. Led by their leader "Doherticus ben Earl" they dogmatically asserted that unless he could show them a valid driver's license with his picture on it they would not accept his existence.

Since he had no clue what a driver's license was he was silenced and his opponents assumed victory and taunted him with drunken slurs like "Na na na na na. You don't exist. Na na na na na."

Mythicism in 30 to 70 A.D.

Many who who knew Jesus of Nazareth and followed him during his lifetime believed he was an actual person and they found him to be a great teacher and they continued to follow him after his death and carried on his message.

But the mythicists kept arguing against his existence. They now asserted that the Christians invented the story and they accused them of being Christians! "Because you are followers of this man you are clearly biased and nothing that you say he said or did can be considered as evidence. What could a follower of Jesus tell us about Jesus?" they retorted.

One day during this time period some Gentile converts interpreted something they heard attributed to Jesus to mean that shellfish and pork were now clean. But this only fueled the debate as popular mythicist "Petros ben Gandy" used this material to argue against the historicity of Jesus' existence. He stated, "I lived next door to Jesus and ate with him often. He never declared shellfish and pork clean. You or whoever you heard this from are clearly making this material up just as you make up these claims that Jesus was a real person. He could never provide us with a valid picture I.D. and I doubt you can do any better!"

Jesus' brother James become quite popular and continued to argue that his brother was a real person during this time period but he could never provide the mythicists with their required evidence of a DNA test as he knew not what a DNA test was.

Mythicism from 71 to 95 A.D.

Jesus' original followers were all dead and the mythicists ran rampant during this time period. Anything anyone said about Jesus was considered hearsay because no one was actually there to witness it. The mythicist's mythicist-children now demanded primary-contemporary source data. Anything less than that would not even be considered!

One Christian brought forth some documents that contained a lot of material on Jesus. He said these documents should constitute evidence for the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth. Much material inside them was embarrassing and there wasn't really any valid reason to think that all stuff was woven from whole cloth (let along the really embarrassing stuff like Baptism by JBap) but the mythicists were not swayed. At first they weren't sure how to treat them and they argued that no one ever heard of these documents and they have no name on them so they must not exist. Christians then decided to name them and the mythicists changed their argument. Many of them now speculated that these documents were late second century documents that wouldn't be written for another 100 plus years. This position became central to the mythicist case. It was canonical you could say. "Do you really expect us mythicists in the year 83 A.D. to accept these 2nd century documents that won't even be written for about another 100 years as evidence? What do you take us for? Idiots?" That quickly became their standard response.

Mythicism from 96 to 2000+ A.D.

Nothing has changed and Jesus is now sitting in heaven laughing in heaven at the sight of this nonsense.

A Muslim Turk converts to faith in Jesus Christ

In this series, Yuce Kabakci tells of his conversion to faith in Jesus Christ as well as his vision for planting churches and ministries in Turkey. He explains that even in a "secular" Muslim country, such as Turkey, there is a cost for discipleship.

I'll be posting some more information on Yuce and his vision in the next few days.

Hollywood: Tearing Down the Idols of the Entertainment Industry (Russian language video documentary)

In 1999 and 2000, I spent several weeks working with the staff of LOZA-TV, the first Christian video ministry in Russia. I proposed that their first video should be a critique of the many videos coming from the west into Russia. Hollywood: Tearing Down the Idols of the Entertainment Industry is an examination of the American entertainment industry, particularly the western films that are immensely popular in Russia and the former Soviet Union.

Few Americans realize the influence of our art, music and film on Russian culture. To many Russians, American freedom means nothing more than financial affluence coupled with sexual promiscuity, drug use, and criminal activity. This is exactly what they see portrayed on American television shows such as Beverly Hills 90120, Santa Barbara, and Dynasty. This is what they see in music videos and a myriad of films. Many Russians believe that this is an accurate portrayal of the American lifestyle. Yet freedom comes self-control and a responsibility born from a strong faith in God.

Hollywood was produced in Vladimir, Russian in the summer of 2000, and later won “Best Documentary” at the Christian Broadcasters Awards in Moscow. The pastor of Loza Church and Ministries, Victor Victorov, narrates a script that has been translated and adapted from Reel to Real’s Hollywood series written by Eric Holmberg. I’ve included the entire video here with the script that was translated from English into Russian.

You can view the video series with the entire script in English at my website:

http://forerunner.com/predvestnik/hollywood.html

© Video cover artwork is by Erik Hollander and was used by permission.

22 Weeks premiere in Orlando

I went to the 22 Weeks premiere in Orlando. This is a film about the Baby Rowan story.

I was asked to videotape the question and answer session after the showing. Film maker, Ángel Soto, Patte Smith of Sanctuary Ministries and John Stemberger of Florida Family Policy Council were on the panel. Three other people brought camcorders, so the resulting videos should be interesting.

It occurred to me right now that technology is making it easier for people to work together towards a cause in a grassroots manner. I have loose ties to all three of these people, but I find it interesting that the Q&A video itself is a cooperative project that will now be seen by thousands of people that cost virtually nothing but our time to put together. That could never have happened ten years ago.

For now, you need to see this series I did earlier this month based on Patte Smith's interviews we shot in the spring of 2007.

An Imprecatory Prayer Proclamation: Barack Obama

As Barack Obama takes office, we are reprising an initiative we launched in 1994 with President Clinton. It is called an Imprecatory Prayer Proclamation. It was used extensively by the early church Fathers notably St. Augustine and later John Knox in the 16th century. Here you have it in file format and via email. Our goal is to get 300 signatures by January 20th. Just email us through the SGI website at www.s-g-i.org.

Best Regards and God Bless,

Jeffrey A. Ziegler, President: SGI

The SGI Presidential Prayer Proclamation 2009

1. Whereas: The providential history of mankind is covenantal in nature, comprised of Divine blessings for obedience to the Law-Word of God, and negative sanctions for transgression of the same, and under consideration of the historic precedent of public covenantal proclamations regarding the unlawful actions of civil magistrates established by John Knox in 16th century Scotland, the combined members and associates of SGI have during the month of January 2009, conducted concerted and public prayer for the President of the United States, Barack Obama, along covenantal lines, having the Davidic imprecatory Psalms as our form and pattern.
2. This proclamation serves as a synopsis of our activity.
3. Resolved: To the end that the President of the United States, Barack Obama, fulfills his duties as the covenantal head of this nation along Biblical lines; we as Christ's ambassadors pray and proclaim blessing. That is, if the President executes his duties in a fashion that would not be tyranny to good works and would uphold the abiding validity of God's moral law as delineated in the Ten Commandments along with the justice-mercy ethic derived from the New Testament, we do declare that blessing, honor, and good success would be upon him, his associates and policies.
4. Resolved: In that the President of the United States Barack Obama has thus far sought the codification of behavior condemned in the infallible Law-Word of God, specifically homosexual "marriage" and tax-funded state-sanctioned murder in the form of abortion, we as Christ's ambassadors proclaim negative sanctions. That is: if the President continues to hold in disdain the Law-Word of God by ratifying evil and by such ratification holds our lives as citizens of the republic in bondage to the same idolatry, we as Christ's ambassadors do pray that Barack Obama would now repent and cease from his cruel persecution of innocent pre-born babies and his tyrannical oppression of God's people who would not be part of his pro-homosexual agenda. If the President ceases not from his malicious cruelty, we then earnestly pray that his days in office would be few and another man take his office, and that the name of Barack Obama would remain a reproach to all succeeding generations of Americans.

Join SGI in The Presidential Prayer Proclamation! Write to us by sending an email through our website www.s-g-i.org. When sufficient signatures are received (300) a framed copy of the proclamation will be sent to President Obama!

SGI
PO Box 787
Madison Ohio 44057

www.s-g-i.org

A Memorial: Norman Johnson

My favorite uncle died this week and I am in Fort Myers, Florida to attend a memorial service. I was asked to read a scripture passage and say a few words about my uncle.

A reading from the second letter of Paul to the Corinthians:

"We know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and place us with you in his presence. Everything indeed is for you, so that the grace bestowed in abundance on more and more people may cause the thanksgiving to overflow for the glory of God. Therefore we are not discouraged; rather, although our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal. For we know that if our earthly dwelling, a tent, should be destroyed, we have a building from God, a dwelling not made with hands, eternal in heaven" (2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1,6-10).

Norman Johnson was the son of Gustav Johnson and Emily Raposa. His father's parents were from Sweden and his mothers parents were Portuguese. As a young child, he and my mother learned more Portuguese from their maternal grandmother before they learned English. There is a story that my grandmother used to tell that my mother and Norman were left with their grandmother for a long period of time when she could not be with them. And Norman's mother, my grandmother, was surprised one day when she sat them down to say their prayers at night that Norman and my mother began praying in Portuguese rather than English.

Norman lived in Tiverton, Rhode Island; Falmouth, Massachusetts and later the Boston area. He later moved to Fort Myers, Florida to be closer to his two daughters and several grandchildren. I am my Uncle Norman's only nephew, he had four neices, and four children, Lisa, Debra, Keith and Lynne. I grew up in Massachusetts and was very close to Norman's family often spending weeks at a time with my cousins in Rhode Island and Cape Cod where they lived. We were all close since we were very young children. I have always believed that those early bonds cause you to love people even if you miss seeing them for years at a time as adults.

The scripture passage I read has to do with the resurrection. It's a biblical passage that is commonly read at funerals. However, I chose this passage because I wanted people to know that Norman believed in the resurrection because he experienced it. Many people of the Christian faith have a testimony about their salvation. But it is unusual for people, especially men, to talk about a conversion that happened toward the end of their life. But people who knew Norman as their hair stylist or friend would often hear him speaking openly about this experience. I was surprised one day to hear Norman talking about what he called his "addiction to gambling." Many people who join these 12 step self-help programs are encouraged to look to a higher power, but Norman decided that his "higher power" wasn't a vague force or an idea about God, it was literally "Jesus Christ."

"Jesus Christ saved me from my addiction to gambling," he told me. I was surprised at that because my cousin Keith and I had been members of an evangelical church for several years and I had never heard Norman speak about his faith so plainly before.

So this is the reason that I chose this passage to read. It speaks of the final victory of faith over death. Norman believed that God could save him from addictions and problems he faced. Even when he was diagnosed a with terminal illness, he believed he could overcome it. I am sure that at some point Norman told almost everyone he knew about what God had done in his life. He was not a perfect man by any stretch of the imagination or some kind of a super-saint -- none of us are -- but I know that he spoke to many people he met about his faith and the victory that Jesus Christ gave him over his sin. He didn't do it in a preachy way, but only because he wanted to people to share the joy he felt in being free.

The resurrection is thought of by most people as a future event. Most people believe in some type of life after death. For Norman, the resurrection life was something that he knew was real because he experienced it during his life. And for that reason, the scriptures tell us, we are not discouraged, but we can have great courage to face any problem or illness, even death.

For me that is the most important thing about the life of this man that I can celebrate.

What is Imprecatory Prayer?

Imprecatory prayer is essentially praying the Psalms of the Bible and specifically naming the enemies of God who refuse to repent. In scripture, imprecations are prayed for political leaders or powerful people who threaten the peace of God's people.

However, imprecatory prayer is directed primarily at God's covenant people, not the unconverted or those who are not part of the covenant. The imprecatory prayer asks the blessings of God on His people if we obey the Law, and curses of God if we disobey. Throughout the Bible the blessings and curses of God are delineated as part of God's covenant. Deuteronomy 28 and 29 contain lists of blessings and curses for God's people. Many of the Psalms of David also contain imprecations.

The Beatitudes of Luke 6:20-26 contain the curses of God (in the form of "woes") as well as the blessings:

Blessed are you when men hate you,
And when they exclude you,
And revile you, and cast out your name as evil,
For the Son of Man’s sake.

Woe to you when all men speak well of you,
For so did their fathers to the false prophets.

- Luke 6:22,26

Paul commands us to pray and sing the Psalms (Eph. 5:19) – all of them, especially the imprecatory Psalms that call down both God’s destruction and conversion of the wicked (Psalms 74, 83, etc.). In fact, imprecatory prayer has been part of the liturgy of various church denominations for centuries – especially in funeral services.

One of the most famous examples of this is the Requiem by Mozart.

Confutatis maledictis
Flammis acribus addictis,
Voca me cum benedictis.

When the accursed have been confounded
And given over to the bitter flames,
Call me with the blessed.

A vital feature of imprecatory prayer is repentance in order to receive God's blessing. But another feature is rejoicing over God's judgment of sinners. In the 1990s, I published a series of articles in The Forerunner about imprecatory prayer and applied it to the abortion issue and pro-life activism.

Author Ray Sutton calls this the "Covenantal Lawsuit:

One of the greatest concerns is the “wicked people” – abortionists, pornographers, statist politicians, etc. – who stand in the way of the visible reign of Christ (Heb. 2:8ff.). How should they be dealt with? Because the Biblical covenant commands Christians to be lawful, they are not allowed to use violence, except in the event of self-defense and a legally declared war by proper civil magistrates. Are they, therefore, left only with what some Christian activists call “a smile and a ‘God loves you’”?

No. The Bible specifies a special kind of lawsuit that can be filed with God against the wicked called a covenantal lawsuit. This Biblical concept is consistently used by the prophets. In a covenantal lawsuit, the blessings and curses found in Deuteronomy 28 are turned into accusations against lawless covenant-breakers and enemies of the Church, calling down God’s sanctions on them. Yes, a covenant lawsuit asks God to remove the wicked. God removes the wicked one of two ways: by conversion or destruction. So, a covenantal lawsuit is not “unloving.” But it is a Biblical method for taking dominion when opposition is met! A Christian’s greatest weapon in the face of opposition is not a “carnal” weapon but a spiritual one (2 Cor. 10:4), the covenant itself turned into a lawsuit before God (That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant)

The imprecatory prayer can take the form of a proclamation signed by church ministers and members calling political leaders to repentance. In the 1990s, many Christians became interested in how this could apply to the president because of his avid pro-abortion agenda. Bill Clinton was a member of a confessional church, which made him, at least confessionally, a Christian subject to sanctions of the church.

To be consistent, we ought to pray for all our leaders in this manner, not just the ones we don't like. For instance, if John McCain were to be elected and continued to support embryonic stem cell research, homosexual rights and so on, then the church would be responsible to call the president to repentance.

This could take the form of praying specific imprecations (curses) found in scripture if the president does not uphold God's law. The prayer would be published and the president would be warned and implored to obey God's covenant.

An example

Psalm 109:8 is a prayer of King David when Saul was persecuting him.

"Let his days be few,
And let another take his office."

This is essentially what I believe we should pray when John McCain (who is a church member and claims Jesus as his Savior) is elected. If he were not to be proactive on the pro-life issue as promised, then he would be under God's judgment. The church's responsibility is to proclaim this publicly through imprecatory prayer.

An explanation

The above is intended as an explanation to the many who have responded to an earlier blog post in which I referred to imprecations in passing. This can be wrenched out of context and framed in terms of "praying for so-and-so's death."

That is technically correct, but if taken out of context, it is a misleading way of phrasing it.

It is important not to take imprecatory Psalms and prayers out of context. I advocate praying imprecations precisely as stated in scripture. Of course, the reaction to church leaders who advocate imprecatory prayer is always going to be negative, especially when understood in the context of a liberal or atheistic worldview.

I may also be presumptive in thinking that most Christians understand the following:

1. That Christians understand election and reprobation -- I am afraid that most think that all may repent if we just give them the benefit of the doubt and pray for them long enough. But it is possible that John McCain is not one of the elect and no amount of time and prayer will change this. If so, then it is better that he be removed from office and a Christian that upholds God's law would take his place.
   
2. That most Christians understand that no one can really pray effectively for God to "kill" anyone. God is sovereign and He isn't moved by prayer. It is just the opposite. God moves us to pray according to His will. That is why it is important to pray both blessings and curses of the covenant when we pray for our leaders (and especially for ourselves). If you read David's Psalms (especially Psalm 7) David prays that God would judge him if he is disobedient or has sin in his heart.
3. That people understand that John McCain is not pro-life. A lot of people think he is. I'd just recommend researching his record. Some say he's pro-life about 75 to 80 percent of the time.

So let me know really what you think.

Is John McCain pro-life?

Is imprecatory prayer hateful?

Does the church have the responsibility to pray both the blesings and curses of God for our leaders?

Forerunner Vision

The following is my from my newsletter which is sent out via snail mail to our ministry project supporter every so often. The rest is self-explanatory! - JCR

Dear Friend of The Forerunner International,

Greetings in the victorious name of Jesus Christ, the King of all nations!

As you might know, the name “The Forerunner” comes from the ancient church’s title for John the Baptist. I have always thought of The Forerunner as a ministry that has both a prophetic and evangelistic calling. Like John, we are to be a “bright and shining light” that will go into the whole world “in the spirit and power of Elijah” to preach the Gospel.

When I first started in media ministry in 1987, I published a little newsletter that went out to about 100 people in our church and elsewhere. I used to dream about the day when publications and videos I produced would be used of God to reach millions of people around the world. I had many encouraging words from pastors and church members about my calling. Of course, this was before desktop computers, the world-wide-web and non-linear video editing platforms were available to me.

Reflecting on the providential events that have occurred since that time, I spent a few hours recently reading newsletters from the 1990s that reported on my short-term missionary trips to Russia, Ukraine and Tatarstan. I was struck and encouraged by the impact we had on young people in this huge region of the world where the Gospel was virtually unknown at the time.

I wrote in the summer of 1995:

When I arrived in Nizhny Novgorod, a city several hundred miles east of Moscow on the Volga River, I was surprised to find that Predvestnik is well-known in the churches. I was immediately invited to preach in three churches on the basis of what I had accomplished with Predvestnik. One pastor, named Vladislav, told me that it was his favorite Christian publication. When I was introduced his church, I saw through a show of hands that many people had read Predvestnik.

Further away from the big cities, such as Moscow, people are more open to the gospel and Christians are more open to receiving and distributing literature. It's not as though we have become famous, but Predvestnik is having a great impact in cities where we distribute more than a few hundred copies. We receive testimonies from remote areas telling us that the newspaper is received "like a great treasure" and that it is passed from hand to hand. We have made a small explosion in the former USSR with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

While many ministries are doing similar work, what makes The Forerunner unique is that we have always sought to teach Christians to use biblical principles to transform society while retaining an evangelistic focus. We have always tried to hit topics that are vital yet neglected by the church in our post-modern age. I’ve been encouraged to see that the most popular articles on our website are those that I feel most strongly about, and I yet wondered at the time of their writing if people had “ears to hear.”

I thank God that these articles and videos are now being translated into the languages of nations where such Christian media is rare. The most encouraging aspect is that I did not have to recruit most of the translators, but several helpers have contacted me to volunteer their service or ask permission to use our materials. I believe that eventually The Forerunner will not even depend on me to continue, but will be run by freelancers all over the world who will take on designated assignments as part of their ministry. I believe it is God’s plan to raise up young people from strategic areas of the world who will work together to promote the vision and purpose of The Forerunner.

A Brief History of The Forerunner

The Forerunner was originally a newspaper founded in 1981 four years prior to my conversion to Christ. It was published and distributed through Maranatha Campus Ministries. The vision for the publication was campus evangelism, but it became more focused on the ideal of the Reformation and teaching young people and Christian leaders to have a total biblical worldview. I became a Christian in 1985 and soon started to pursue my dream of publishing Christian media. I began working as an associate with editor Lee Grady in 1989. Then I worked directly with Bob and Rose Weiner to continue the publication until January 1994.

Around that time, I moved to Melbourne, Florida and founded Media House International, a non-profit Christian foundation with the purpose of publishing foreign language edition newspapers and newsletters: Predvestnik, The Mandate, The Champion, El Campeón, and so on. In the 1990s, I spent much of my time raising necessary support for Predvestnik and similar projects. Our main project was the Russian language newspaper.

1999 to Present

In 1999 and 2000, we concentrated on publishing books and producing several videos in the Russian language, one of which, Hollywood, won “best documentary” at the Christian Broadcasters Awards in Moscow in 2000.

In 2001, I was married for the first time (“to one wife”) and my life changed drastically. For seven years, I have been working full-time as an English teacher. I like this pace of this life in that teaching pays the bills without any worries or surprises. As a teacher, I have 180 non-work days each year in which to be involved in missionary projects. Recently, I have concentrated on video production ministry, finishing an apologetics DVD called The Real Jesus. In 2007, I also took a three-week trip to Ukraine to attend a Christian teachers’ conference.

One of the reasons why I haven’t written as much recently is that video projects are now funding themselves through sales and I have little need for extra personal support. However, if you want to help with the plan to expand The Forerunner’s missionary projects you can purchase DVDs from our website or you can give a tax-deductible donation. That is the purpose of this prospectus.

Prospectus: The Forerunner in 2008 and 2009

Here I want to outline what I’d like to accomplish in the next two years.

Funding

Last year, our income came from three main sources.

1. Generous donations from people like you who supported my three-week trip to Ukraine in the summer of 2007.
2. Sales of DVDs through our website — especially several titles I produced with Eric Holmberg, The Real Jesus, God’s Law and Society, The Beast of Revelation: Identified, and a book I co-authored called, Four Keys to the Millennium.
3. The Google Adsense program at on our website and YouTube channel.

Although it’s not a huge amount of money, this is residual income that is consistent from month-to-month made from publications and videos I’ve produced over the years. The website now has over 2000 articles and the plan is to make continual improvements that will facilitate changes and growth.

Widening Our Scope through Internet Media and New Technologies

In the one of the editions of The Forerunner in 1992, I wrote an article called “The Fiber-Optics Revolution” that described the coming popularity of the world-wide-web. At the time, I thought that we would soon get 100 percent of our media through the Internet. This would come to pass in what I predicted would be “five to ten years.” We have finally started to turn the corner of this “revolution.” Streaming video sites such as YouTube have only taken off in the past two years and there is a new wireless technology looming on the horizon that will replace high-speed cable modems.

The coupling of high-speed wireless with new video technologies will have its greatest impact for the Gospel in third world countries, many of which are vital mission fields. An important factor in the fulfillment of the Great Commission is that it will be possible for us to develop face-to-face relationships with foreign nationals while training them to be evangelists in their own culture.

While several people have volunteered to help us out of their own burden to do the work of the Lord, I’ve also discovered that many media projects I have envisioned can be “outsourced” over the Internet to students in foreign countries. I’ve already employed a few people who are happy to do work for just a few dollars an hour. For a ministry that depends on a small budget to finance this work, the appearance of many “freelancing” websites employing third world workers is a providential answer to prayer.

As an example, I was recently faced with the daunting task of converting the entire Forerunner.com site to a content management system (CMS). The Forerunner site was first constructed in 1996 and I have since put up about 2000 articles in an antiquated format. I saw that the CMS conversion could be accomplished with just a little knowledge of website formatting. However, I estimated that it would have taken me at least 50 hours of work. I wasn’t too excited about the spending a few hours a week here and there until it was finished.

In the meantime, conversion to CMS was a must in order to streamline and modernize what had become an unwieldy website. The older format was holding us back from making needed changes to the site. After praying for an answer, I found one of the many “freelancing” sites run by Asian workers who bid on these types of projects. In a short time, the CMS conversion was finished. This method of outsourcing tasks has a virtually unlimited application and I am excited about some of the possibilities.

Video – The advance of video production technology in the last 10 years ago is nothing short of astounding. For a fraction of what it cost just a few years ago, we are able to produce professional quality DVD productions. From 1998 to 2000, I worked on several video projects with Eric Holmberg and Reel to Real Ministries. I also took two trips to Russia to work with Loza (The “Vine” Church) to help found one of the first Christian video ministries in that country. Reel to Real is now known as The Apologetics Group (TAG) and the ministry’s influence is greater than ever before. I recently became a board member of TAG and I am acting as a script writer, video editor and producer. We recently completed the DVD, The Real Jesus, with Eric as host and narrator. We now have several more productions in the works.

I have been pleased at the response to the apologetics, pro-life and teaching videos I’ve posted on Forerunner.com, YouTube, Facebook and elsewhere. I’ve received many comments from people we have been impacted. In fact, I wanted to share one comment I received recently:

You guys are awesome. These YouTube videos helped change my mind from pro-choice to pro-life … I like to keep a pretty low online profile. But I really enjoy your videos. Your videos … are what did it for me, as well as watching the March for Life on TV. I will be walking in next year's March for Life in San Francisco.

From: “Ajax,” a viewer who asked to remain anonymous

Foreign Language Internet Projects – The Internet has opened up a much wider audience than ever before possible through print publications. Forerunner articles that would long ago have been discarded now have daily readers in almost all countries of the world. At one time, I hoped to print foreign language editions in many countries. We were able to see this with Russian, Spanish and Chinese versions, as well as a few issues in Indonesia, Brazil and South Africa. At present I am beginning to outsource the translation work of our most highly read articles, the ones that have proven to have the highest impact.

The Pakistani Forerunner – Urdu is the most widely spoken language among Muslims with 270 million speakers. It is the national language of Pakistan as well as among people in Bahrain, India, Oman, United Arab Emirates and even in Guyana. Although Urdu is widely spoken there are very few Urdu language sites on the Internet. Our first project is Why Creeds and Confessions? Foundations in Biblical Orthodoxy, a book that has already appeared in the English and Russian languages. We are working with an Urdu woman from Pakistan, Nosheet Gloria, who has a burden to translate the best articles from The Forerunner.

The Turkish Forerunner — Yuce Kabakci is a young minister from Turkey – a nation of 70 million people with only about 3500 church-going Christians. He is in fact, the only the third pastor from Turkey who has received seminary training. He has also translated a number of Reformed classics as well as some recent works into Turkish. We are working together to build a Turkish language section of The Forerunner website. This will become significant in the coming years since Christian literature in this “gateway” nation to the Muslim world is rare.

Russian Forerunner – The goal is to get the remaining articles from 20 issues of Predvestnik, the Russian language Forerunner, on-line. There is some work to do in converting the Cyrillic text of our earlier issues to universal fonts. We also have two book translations that will soon appear on the Russian section of our site. Then I hope to constantly post fresh content on this site by working with a Russian editor and translator who will share our vision. The number of people with Internet access in the 15 nations where Russian is spoken is growing daily. This exciting prospect means that we can reach more people than ever before for relatively little money.

Brazilian Forerunner – A young man from Brazil, Felipe Neto, contacted me to ask permission to translate several of my articles into Portuguese. We will use these articles at the Forerunner.com site and work to get more articles into Portuguese. Many people are surprised to learn that Portuguese ranks as the eighth most spoken language in the world, and the third among western nations (behind English and Spanish) with close to 200 million native speakers. It is the national language of seven countries in four continents around the world including Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal, and São Tomé and Príncipe islands. Although there are different spoken dialects, proper Portuguese as a written language is identical in all these countries.

Spanish Forerunner – A few years ago we published a single edition newspaper called, El Campeón that was distributed in Peru, Costa Rica, even Cuba. A Baptist ministry from Chile has also published some of my articles in Spanish. They produce a beautiful magazine called La Verdad (Word of Truth). I was greatly encouraged to see some of my content in their Spanish magazine. We want to translate hundreds of articles and find a Spanish freelancer who will work to build a Spanish section of The Forerunner.

Chinese Forerunner – The Mandate was a newspaper that we helped publish in English for Chinese international students studying in the United States in five editions. There were also two Chinese editions. Now we want to translate all of the articles from The Mandate into Chinese.

America, Return to God was a 128-page magazine/book edited by Thomas Wang (who is known as the “Chinese Billy Graham”). The publishers asked permission to reprint five articles from The Forerunner. I was blessed to see our ministry featured alongside ministers I look up to such as D. James Kennedy, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, and Gary DeMar. This book was distributed to 400,000 people in an English language edition in the United States. Now their plan is to publish the magazine in China and Christians will be encouraged to pray for revival in America! Of course, we'd like to include this material at our website.

Increased Cooperation with Ministry Partners

While using an “outsourcing strategy” to cost-effectively jumpstart several projects, I also hope to find many like-minded Christians in foreign countries who share our vision to preach the Gospel worldwide through the media. I believe that there are many Christian students and young pastors around the world who just need encouragement and networking opportunities.

Instead just one “Forerunner” ministry, there will be many.

Our focus is now to encourage the development of the following strategies:

• Cooperating foreign language websites who are translating our materials
• Foreign language Internet articles and videos hosted at www.Forerunner.com
• Dubbing of our DVDs into several foreign languages
• Training foreign nationals to produce videos relevant to their own culture

I believe it is God’s will for us to advance the kingdom of God by cooperating with like-minded Christians and ministries. I hope that you will prayerfully consider supporting the following opportunities. God has opened a door for us that is already resulting in greater fruitfulness and effectiveness than ever before.

Yours for Christ’s victorious kingdom,

Jay Rogers

Ministry Opportunity: Internet Evangelism Among Muslims

The following is from my former pastor in Boston Massachusetts, Gregg Detwiler.

I have a ministry colleague from Sydney, Australia who works among multicultural communities of Sydney. He also has an extensive "Internet Evangelism" ministry. In his last email he mentioned that he has a backlog of 300 emails from Egypt and 300 from Israel who are waiting for a response to their spiritual questions on how to take their next spiritual step. Are you willing to help respond to spiritual seekers from around the world? If so, my friend would be very happy to speak with you. Please let me know if you are interested and I will give you his contact information.

For more information contact Dr. Detwiler directly at the following email address: gdetwiler@egc.org

R.J. Rushdoony video with Portuguese subtitles!

I recently wrote a prospectus on The Forerunner and what I hope to accomplish with media within the next year or two. Beginning to get much of our material into Spanish and Portuguese is part of the plan.

An Internet friend in Brazil has been translating some of the articles from our site which you can read at Monergismo.com.

His plan is to get all of God's Law and Society and The Beast of Revelation: Identified dubbed into Portuguese.

I am impressed and excited about this since this is someone who I did not have to recruit to fulfill a dream of mine. I thank God for sovereignly orchestrating His plan.

"But the path of the just is like the shining sun,
That shines ever brighter unto the perfect day."

- Proverbs 4:18

EXPELLED: Loved by viewers, hated by critics

I was looking at Yahoo user reviews of the movie Expelled. One wrote:

As an observer, I have never seen so many extremes in reviews. Virtually either an "A" or an "F". No middle ground. This makes me really want to see this movie. Especially the F reactions are so extreme and closed minded that Stein must really punch their button. I gotta see this baby !!!

It's amazing that so many reviews here run in one or two directions. The ability to make a certain segment either hate or love a film is a sign of a good film. It just reveals the worldview that you are coming from -- if you hate it, it is because it exposes your worldview in a negative light, not because it's a bad film.

Below is a clip from one of the most powerful and controversial parts of the film.



Now here is atheist Richard Dawkins responding to the one of the film's premises that social Darwinism was at the heart of Nazi eugenics and the Holocaust.

.. natural selection is a good object lesson in how NOT to organize a society. As I have often said before, as a scientist I am a passionate Darwinian. But as a citizen and a human being, I want to construct a society which is about as un-Darwinian as we can make it. I approve of looking after the poor (very un-Darwinian). I approve of universal medical care (very un-Darwinian). It is one of the classic philosophical fallacies to derive an 'ought' from an 'is.' -- Richard Dawkins

Note that Dawkins doesn't deny that Hitler's attempt to breed a "master race" isn't logically derived from Darwinism. He simply says that we must not be Darwinists in this one instance. He doesn't explain how his rejection of Darwinism based on ethics is any different from the criticism of Darwinism by Christians who reject the idea of evolution as a random process without a Designer. At least the Christians are logically consistent.

A Documentary Film Record - EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED on 1000 screens today!

The movie EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED opens today in the USA.

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.

You can also watch a clip from Expelled here.

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

_________________________________________

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.

EXPELLED is such a movie.

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.

Mission to Ukraine 7/23/2007 - The Flight Home

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!

Mission to Ukraine 7/22/2007 - Last Day in Kiev

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.

Mission to Ukraine 7/21/2007- Kreshatik, Kiev

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.

Mission to Ukraine 7/19/2007

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.

Mission to Ukraine 7/18/2007 - Kiev

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.

Mission to Ukraine 7/16/2007 - Kiev

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.

Mission to Ukraine 7/14/2007 - Kiev

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.

Mission to Ukraine 7/13/2007 - Second Day in Lviv

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.

Mission to Ukraine 7/12/2007 - Trip to Lviv

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 Pristupa was 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.

Mission to Ukraine 7/8/2007 - The Road to Rivne

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.

Mission to Ukraine 7/7/2007 - Vodogray Resort

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.

Mission to Ukraine 7/6/2007 - Evening Service

Before the evening service, I passed out about 110 copies of my Creeds book and signed about half of them. You can see the remaining stack on the table at 3:30.

I thought it was very funny being asked to sign the book, but that is a custom with foreign missionaries when they visit churches there. They treat us like celebrities. I had 25 minutes to talk about my work with Christian Youth International and Predvestnik in the 1990s. Then I shared an outline of the first few chapters of my book on the names and attributes of God and worldviews. I applied this to the Apostle Paul’s sermon in Acts 17 in which he outlines the basic worldview of Christianity.

A lot of people were happy with the book. One history teacher told me that he really liked it because it outlines 1500 years of church doctrine and history in just 200 pages. I hope the people who got my autograph will read the book.

Mission to Ukraine 7/6/2007 - Mukacheve Castle

We ate lunch at this outdoor barbeque restaurant in Uzhgorod that had all these funny signs and odd decorations. Here Elena offers her opinion on Ukrainian rap music.

On the way back from Uzhgorod, we stopped at another castle in Mukacheve that is on top of a high hill in the center of the city. There we had a tour of the museum inside and heard about the history of the castle and the Carpathian region. At about this time, I started with my sore throat.

Mission to Ukraine 7/6/2007 - Uzhgorod

On Friday, we had our morning service and we went on a bus ride to Uzhgorod. This is a city on the border of Slovakia about an hour northwest of Mukacheve.

On this trip, I got to talk more to Anna. In one of our conversations, she talked about how her family owns a small potato farm and how hard it is to dig potatoes. You can see that about 90 percent of the teachers in the camp were women. That’s a higher percentage than the typical school in America. Part of that imbalance is due to the income level. You can make a living in Florida as a teacher at about the average income level, but in Ukraine it is less than that.

In Uzhgorod, we went to a botanical garden an outdoor village museum. Part of the time I hung out with Oksanna and Olga again. They are the two who are reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Ukrainian. The village museum is kind of a restored community showing lots of village building styles from the last 200 years.

Mission to Ukraine 7/5/2007 - Carpathian Mountains

The next day, we had our morning meeting and I met a man from Ivano-Frankivsk named Dmitri who is a former deputy major and now leads a Reformed ministry and church in the downtown area. They are evangelists who are concerned with reaching out and treating children who are born with AIDS. Dmitri was holding a conference for people who worked with AIDS victims at the same camp. Their website is www.solidarnist.com.ua. I also talked to a Missionary from a Christian Reformed Church who is working with the Hungarian Reformed churches in Mukacheve.

We then got on a bus and headed off on a three-hour trip to a mountain with a spring fed lake at the top. It was raining and I walked about quarter of a mile up a steep incline in the rain. Then it started to pour when I reached the top. On the way down, I ran into one of the teachers, Anna, who is from Rivne. I found out she is married to a policeman. She was nice enough to let me share an umbrella with her. We had a good conversation about what it is like to teach in America and Ukraine. We had potatoes, bread, sausage and tea in a café at the bottom of the mountain. I got soaked and few days later came down with a cold.

At night, I saw Dmitri again and he attended the service. Pastor Taras spoke on Acts 17 (Paul's Sermon on Mars Hill) and Exodus 20 (Ten Commandments). The theme was how to preach the Gospel to people of pagan backgrounds.

Mission to Ukraine 7/4/2007 - Beregovo

In the afternoon, we went to see a museum in the nearby town of Beregovo, but it was closed. So we wandered around the center for about an hour. This was the Hungarian district and had a lot of old building with plaques in Hungarian and other languages. This part of Ukraine was originally part of Hungary and then Poland. We talked to a few natives who spoke some Hungarian for us.

I talked to Elena the whole time and another interpreter (whose name I forget now) and an English teacher named Anna. Elena is from Izmail, a city on the border of Romania and is a member of a Presbyterian church. She knew Mykola Faryga before he came to the United States. Mykola was a member of my church in Orlando – a protégé of R.C. Sproul, who is now in Kolomyia, a city in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine, getting all of Sproul’s books and many Reformed classics into the Russian and Ukrainian languages.

While waiting for the bus, I took a video of some Gypsy boys who were begging on the streets. Gypsies can be dangerous, but Elena wanted to give them some dried apricots to eat instead of cash.

We had a night service and I had my first full night of sleep in four days.

Mission to Ukraine 7/4/2007 - Morning service

In the morning, we had the Bruce Wilkinson teaching video series – a series on teaching from a Christian perspective dubbed into Ukrainian. Honestly, I only found it tolerable. I say this because most of my summers for the past seven years have been spent in similar seminars for teachers. It was good information on teaching from a Christian perspective and I am sure that the Ukrainian teachers benefited from it. But it just seemed a waste of a few hours in the morning to have to watch a video in a seminar that I could get in the United States.

Before lunch there were discussion groups in which we were supposed to pick up on one of the seminar topics. I was asked to lead one of the groups.

I spoke on Hebrews 10:24,25: “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.”

I said that “the Day” is meant to mean the final judgment, but in the context of the passage it contains a possible allusion to the destruction of the Temple. (Hebrews is written on the occasion when Jewish Christians in Jerusalem wanted to abandon their fellowship in the face of persecution and go back to worshiping through Temple sacrifices.) I said that it is possible for an entire Christian civilization to be destroyed and replaced by a pagan culture. I explained about the social revolution that took place in America once prayer and Bible reading was banned from public schools in 1962.

We discussed how ironic it was that President Yuschenko mandated in 2006 that Christian ethics classes be taught in the public schools in Ukraine – and that we are here in a conference of over 100 public school teachers who are bringing a Gospel witness into the public schools.

It reminded me of how in 1991 I stood in the office of the largest printing house in Ukraine, while Alexei Salapatov talked to the director about how we could print our Christian newspaper, Predvestnik, all the while a larger than life painting of Lenin glared down at me from behind the director’s desk. The painting had Lenin standing at a desk with papers clenched in one hand and the other leaning on the desk with more paper, and ink well and a quill pen.

All during the conversation between Alexei and the director, I understood nothing, but saw only Lenin glaring down at me in absolute anger and defiance at the fact that we were proposing to print a Christian newspaper on his state owned printing press. Later I was surprised to find out that the director helped Alexei to print Predvestnik and even gave him preferential treatment.

As I was sharing some of these things, I had totally forgotten that it was Independence Day in the United States.

Mission to Ukraine 7/3/2007 - Mukacheve

We arrived at the Vodogray resort at about 7:30 am and no one at the camp was up and about yet. We had bread and sausage for breakfast with some fresh tomatoes and cucumbers – the typical Ukrainian breakfast. So in all this was about 36 hours of travel with almost no sleep. After my breakfast I was shown to my room that was shared with Sasha who is one on the Hope to People administrators. Sasha has a great heart for people and is always full of joy.

I have to also interject here that all my previous missions trips have been with charismatic churches and ministries. I don’t see any difference in one group being more “spirit-filled” than the other. Hope to People is a Reformed Baptist ministry, but after spending two weeks with these people, I see that they are no less full of the spirit than Pentecostals and Charismatics in Ukraine. The myth that there are two kinds of Christians – spirit-filled and non-spirit-filled – is nonsense both from a biblical and practical viewpoint.

I also find it strange that since I haven’t been to Ukraine since 2000, I am picking up this travel diary for the first time in the last seven years. I am looking at most of what I wrote from 1997 onward. It is nonsense. It was focused on how much money we needed to continue the mission and many ambitious plans that never came to pass. Part of the reason is that it was not focused on the Almighty God and what He can do. The lesson learned is to focus more on the “now” that God has given and this exciting adventure called the Great Commission. It isn’t dependent on our finances or plans to complete. I won’t write about how much money I will need to accomplish future plans – I am just happy to serve God with the gift and prophetic message He has given me.

The Vodogray Resort is in the Chynadyevo settlement about half an hour outside of Mukacheve. I took a hot shower for the first time in 36 hours. It felt like I was an animal transformed into a human being. I then slept from about 9 am to 2 pm – very fitfully because Sasha would walk in and out of the room humming a tune. At that point, I hadn’t met him yet, so it was odd to have a stranger in a room where I was trying to sleep. But by 2 pm, I had had enough sleep to wake up and go to lunch.

I ate with Pastor Taras Prystupa and I was really happy to have some hot soup. Taras’ son spoke some English, so we talked. We went on a bus ride to Mukacheve and I had a couple of good conversations with a principal of a Christian school in Kharkov named Sasha who is Taras’ brother-in-law. We talked about the attitude of western Ukraine and how opposed to Soviet rule and speaking Russian they were. He told me that teachers in the time of communism who refused to speak Russian were fired. On the way back, we had a conversation that started with him asking me if I was a Calvinist. That was a memorable conversation. I can still recount most of it, but I won’t do that here.

We arrived at a salt-mineral-hot-spring swimming pool in the afternoon. I later found out that there are only three such springs in the world. Two are in Russia and Ukraine. I talked to Elena from Izmail about teaching in Ukraine. I also met Alyona who works in Hope to People as an interpreter and is a member of a Messianic Fellowship. I went to the pool and swam about six laps. I met Oksanna and Olga in the pool too. They are the young women in the video reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Ukrainian.

In the evening, we had dinner and went to a meeting hall. I was able to give my testimony for about 15 minutes and taught from Matthew 7:21-23 and Luke 6:47 – the “Lordship passages.” That night I went to bed at the usual time, but as a consequence of jet lag, I was “up” at 4 pm after only 5 hours of sleep.

Mission to Ukraine 7/2/2007 - The Road to Mukacheve

This is my video log from my trip to Ukraine in the summer of 2007. I shot five hours of video clips in three weeks. My goal was to make a short clip about a Christian teachers conference in Mukacheve from July 1-8, 2007. In the process of doing that, I realized that there are a lot of things about Ukraine and missions work that people who have never been there and done that will never appreciate. Hopefully, this will give people a glimpse into what life is like in Ukraine and what is happening with the “Hope to People” outreach to Christian teachers.

I wrote in a blog entry last summer about the Hope to People teacher’s conference in Mukacheve, a region in the westernmost part of Ukraine in the beautiful foothills of the Carpathian Mountains. The situation is that since the so-called Orange Revolution” the public schools in Ukraine are required to teach ethics classes from a Christian perspective. Many teachers are recruited to teach these classes without having a Christian background themselves. About 100 teachers are invited to come to a one week long camp each summer to connect with other teachers many of whom are evangelical Protestant and traditional Eastern Orthodox believers.



Here is my day-to-day account of what happened on the trip with accompanying video footage. I realize that a lot of this is for my own reflection. I’ve been on 12 short-term missions trips to Russia and Ukraine and have made short video accounts of our missions, which you can see here. But this is the first one done on a more personal and subjective level. I have put just the raw video clips here to illustrate parts of each day and each excursion.

Some of my family have seen these videos of our sight seeing excursions and have asked me, “Was this a missions trip or a vacation?” The format of the camp for teachers was protracted meetings in the morning and evening with teaching workshops and preaching. But the afternoon excursions were the fun part and the most interesting subject for video. In my second two weeks, I wanted to visit some places in Ukraine that I had never seen before. I traveled to Lviv and a few villages outside of Kiev and Rivne. A big part of missionary work is networking with different ministries and developing relationships. I was able to find some good Reformed ministries throughout Ukraine who are helping distribute our books.

What I hope will come out of this is getting more Christian teachers from America to go to Ukraine and take part in these summer camps. If you find any of this interesting or want more information about the camps, you can leave a comment or message me.

My Flight Itinerary – July 1-2, 2007

I used to enjoy these flights a lot more than I do now. They are always hard, but this time the service on Delta wasn’t too good. I prefer European airlines on the flight overseas, but Delta was the cheapest flight this time. I used to get summer flights for around $700-$800 and sometimes as low as $550. Last year European flights were at an all time high. The least expensive flight to Ukraine I could get this time was over $1200.

Here’s the time I spent on jets and in airports:

Departed from Tampa at 12:30 pm, 7/1/07
Departed JFK/NYC: 5 pm, 7/1/07
Departed Amsterdam: 9 am, 7/2/07
Arrived in Kiev at 2:30 pm, 7/2/07

Subtract a seven-hour time change and that is 19 hours of flights and airports! I then waited in the airport for over two hours for my ride to arrive. I met a nice older American who works on airport construction in Ukraine. He showed me how to use my SIMM card cell phone to call my wife in the United States. It’s pretty amazing because in 1991, you were lucky to be able to get a phone call on a landline out of the Soviet Union. Now Ukraine’s cell phone service is everywhere even in remote areas. I later tried it in the mountains and it worked fine.

Just after that my drivers, Roma and Oleg, called to say they’d be late. Right after that Alexei Salapatov, the former editor of the Russian Forerunner, Predvestnik, called to give me the same information. I was really happy the cell phone worked and I didn’t mind having to wait two hours – I’ve actually had worse experiences than that – but I began to get a little impatient after 4 pm. Finally, my drivers arrived at Borispol airport and we drove into Kiev, which is about 45 minutes from the airport.

We met Alexei in Kiev to pick up about 120 copies of my book, Why Creeds and Confessions? which we had printed in the Russian language seven years ago. Part of the plan was to present these at the teacher’s conference and finish distributing the remaining copies. We were finally on the road to Rivne by 6 pm. We needed to stop for gas once and the restroom and, of course, shashleek (shish kabob) on the road. So we got to the Hope to People ministry center by 10:30 pm.

I was asked if I wanted to sleep in Rivne or go directly to Mukacheve, another seven-hour trip, and I decided that since I was already messed up by jet lag another seven hours wouldn’t matter. There would be plenty of time to sleep in the Carpathian Mountains.

Then it took about two hours of waiting and driving around Rivne. We had to take Roma to his house and then Oleg took me to the western district of Rivne where my next driver Vadim lives. Vadim was able to start driving at 12:30 a.m. with his wife Oksanna and son, Tolik, who is about high school age. I was unsure about asking this man to drive all night with no sleep, but he assured me that he was once a professional river and was used to it. We got less than two hours outside of Rivne and Vadim announced that we were 25 percent of the way there. I fell asleep for a few minutes. This was the third time I had had a short sleep in over a day. I had slept for about an hour on the transatlantic flight and for a few minutes on the way to Rivne.

I woke up to see the nice two and four lane highways outside of Rivne had turned into these twisted, half-paved back roads. This shocked me because of the stark contrast. We drove at a slow pace for about three more hours until we came to the south of Lviv.

The last three to four hours of the trip were amazing as we stopped several times in the Carpathian Mountains. I had only coffee and pistachios to eat. The scenery in the mountains in the last two hours was spectacular.

C.S. Lewis on the Liberal Higher Criticism of the Bible

"These men ask me to believe they can read between the lines of old texts; the evidence is their obvious inability to read (in any sense worth discussing) the lines themselves. They claim to see fern-seed and can't see an elephant ten yards away in broad daylight."

C. S. Lewis, "Modern Thought and Biblical Criticism," Christian Reflection, ed. Walter Hooper (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1967), p. 157.

Special deal on Amazing Grace (DVD)

Amazing Grace: The History and Theology of Calvinism, is a DVD produced by The Apologetics Group. I recently helped to remaster the DVD and I have about 100 copies on hand for the special price of $12.95 -- a great deal for a four and a half hour presentation.

Here's a description of the video and ordering information.

Amazing Grace:
The History and Theology of Calvinism (DVD)
Two discs, three parts, over four hours of instruction!

Just what is “Calvinism?” Does this teaching make man a deterministic robot and God the author of sin? What about free will? If the church accepts Calvinism, won’t evangelism be stifled, perhaps even extinguished? How can we balance God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility? What are the differences between historic Calvinism and hyper-Calvinism? Why did men like Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Spurgeon, Whitefield, Edwards and a host of renowned Protestant evangelists embrace the teaching of predestination and election and deny free will theology?

This is the first video documentary that answers these and other related questions. Hosted by Eric Holmberg, this fascinating three-part, four-hour presentation is detailed enough so as to not gloss over the controversy. At the same time, it is broken up into ten “Sunday-school-sized” sections to make the rich content manageable and accessible for the average viewer.

Part One explores the history of the debate. It begins with the pivotal dispute between Augustine and Pelagius and continues through the semi-pelagian controversy; focusing particularly on the debate between Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus. The history section ends with a definitive historical explanation of the issues that arose during the Calvinist/Arminian controversy. By examining the five points of Arminianism and the Synod of Dort’s response, the viewer will clearly see that the Protestant Church understood how the Gospel would be compromised if Arminianism prevailed.

Part Two opens the Word of God, our ultimate authority for life and faith. The five points of Arminianism are put on trial as what would later come to be known as the “five points of Calvinism” are clearly and forcefully presented.

Part Three asks and answers the provocative question: If Calvinism is true, if God is absolutely sovereign; then why should we evangelize? It also explores the vital issue of how to and to whom the gospel should be presented so as to be faithful to the great doctrines of God’s sovereignty, man’s depravity, and the miracle of amazing grace.

Rich in graphics, dramatic vignettes, and biblical analogies, this presentation also features many of the finest reformed thinkers and pastors of our time: Dr. R.C. Sproul, Dr. D. James Kennedy, Dr. George Grant, Dr. Stephen Mansfield, Dr. Thomas Ascol, Dr. Thomas Nettles, Dr. Roger Schultz, Pastor Walt Chantry, Dr. Joe Morecraft, Dr. Ken Talbot, Pastor Walter Bowie and Dr. R.C. Sproul, Jr.

Two discs, three parts, over four hours of instruction. Price: $12.95

Questions from Anne Rice author of Christ the Lord, Out of Egypt

Here's a cool ministry idea. Vampire horror fiction writer, Anne Rice, underwent a spiritual conversion to Christianity a few years ago. She still has a lot of liberal ideas, but I find her testimony and some of her right ideas fascinating.

I read in an article that she spends several hours a day answering email. I wrote her a couple of times and she answered me. Go to her website and answer some of her questions to Christians. I'll be interested to hear what you wrote and how she'll respond to you.

http://www.annerice.com

The following questions are in blue and my answers are in black.

ANNE’S QUESTIONS
From Anne, May 31, 2007:

Dear Ones,

THESE QUESTIONS ARE PRINTED OUT AND DISPLAYED RIGHT BY MY DESK. YOU NEED ONLY MENTION THE NUMBER OF THE QUESTION IN YOUR SUBJECT LINE when you answer. I deeply appreciate your response, and…LOOK FOR MORE QUESTIONS IN THE FUTURE.

1 - Do you go to church, and if so why?

For many years, I found it difficult to find a church I agreed with. I was formerly a member of a campus ministry that split up in the early '90s. I continued in the same vein of this ministry as a writer, editor and publisher of Christian literature in Rusian, Spanish, Chinese, etc. I have since become a producer of teaching videos and DVDs. A few years ago a customer recommended that I attend R.C. Sproul's church here in the Orlando area -- St. Andrew's Chapel. The tradition of this church is classical Calvinism and is different from what I am used to. However, I feel I am being spirtually "fed" here in ways I haven't experienced elsewhere. I drive over an hour to attend Sunday services and I don't make it every week due the distance commitment. Recently, I committed myself to tithing at this church and want to grow with this church in the destiny that God has for me. You are probably familiar with The Last Days According to Jesus by R.C. Sproul. If not, it's a must read -- it picks up in the same vein as J.A.T. Robinson and Kenneth Gentry's thesis.

2 - Has organized religion brought you closer to God? Has it hurt you in your search for closeness to God? Can you explain?

I was brought to God through the Holy Spirit, but the church has played a vital role in my learning and growth. The church has hurt me in many ways -- the very institution Christ left on earth to advance the Great Commission often puts too many restrictions on who may minister, how we may minister and often strives to maintain the status quo. Of course, some restrictions are biblically mandated, but most churches aren't really involved in equipping the saints for works of service. On the other hand, there are a small minority of great churches who understand that the dominion mandate means fostering self-government and family government first by training individuals to become mature (perfect) in Christ. Then we can be the world changers we were called to be in the ecclesiastical and civil arenas.

3 - Has organized religion helped or hurt you in your own spiritual journey? Can you explain?

Helped mainly. The church is the avenue of everything I do. Well, not really the organized, visible church. Most of my projects and missionary efforts are independent of my local church. I look to the church for teaching, fellowship, spiritual experience in worship. This encourages me and puts me in touch with the Holy Place behind the veil. Otherwise, I would have no vision -- neither independant nor within the organized religious structure.

I know that I am supposed to come to the church with an attitude of service and not wanting just to be "fed" -- but too often I've had a hard time synching with the direction of the local church because their vision seems to be to build the local church. I believe in building the kingdom of God. As we strive to do that, God adds to the church. So I try to fulfill my passion for ministry independently and have stopped looking for an avenue through the local organized church.

However, "the church" as Luther described it -- the invisible, mystical body of Christ -- is always present whenever I work with my brothers and sisters and in everything I do. The "church" is present as I am writing this email to a sister in Christ and "wherever two or more are gathered in My name." So in that sense the church is vital.

4 - Catholics: are you concerned about the looming priest shortage? Are you threatened with the closure of your parish? What do you feel isthe solution to the priest shortage, other than constant prayer for vocations?

I am a former Roman Catholic and my wife ands most of my family are Roman Catholic. Actually I am catholic, but just not Roman Catholic. My view of this is that we need good priests, not just more priests. Ditto for us evangelical Protestants. We have a serious shortage of clergy truly trained in biblical study. In fact, my view is that since we are all priests, then it's the quality not the quantity. American Christianity has become 3000 miles wide and an inch deep. So just having more ministers of any stripe is not going to solve the problem.

8 - All religious readers: Do you have a gay son or daughter, gay in laws, gay friends? How do you feel about what your church teaches about gay people? How do you feel?

Yes, I have friends, co-workers, students and relatives who are homosexuals. I feel that as a Christian I must reach out to all people, love them and hope they will know Christ. My view is that all sex outside of marriage is fornication and those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. The commandment against adultery deals with all sex outside of marriage, not simply homosexual activity. My belief on "gays" is that biblically they do not really exist. It's not a sin to feel a same sex attraction any more than it is to be tempted to have sex outside of marriage. We all deal with these temptations -- so "gays" are not a special category or a "race" of some type. It's been a big mistake of the church to recognize that there are "gay" people. I think we need to recognize that there are no people who are "born homosexuals" anymore than there are "born heterosexual adulterers."

The practice of homosexual behavior ought to be condemned. However, a person who is repentant of a sexual sin should bear no stigma or be discriminated against. The key word is "practicing." All have sinned. Are we practicing sin or striving against it? For instance, the idea of ordaining "non-practicing homosexuals" is ridiculous. We ought to talk instead about ordaining "non-practicing" sinners.

9 - All religious readers: Are you living with a mate outside of wedlock? Do you have a son or daughter who lives with a girlfriend or boyfriend outside of wedlock? Are your parents living together outside of wedlock? Do you have unmarried friends who live together? How do you feel about this? How does your church feel about it?

My pastor, R.C. Sproul, recently started to preach a series on marriage because there are so many couples co-habitating as church members in our culture -- and our church is sadly no exception. We have many couples who want to divorce and remarry at will after "no-fault" divorces. I think that biblical illiteracy has caused this problem as well as the refusal of churches to practice church discipline. In fact, if you really want to see the low state of the church, you ought to spend a few Saturdays praying in front of an abortion clinic. I have some friends who do that faithfully, yet don't get to church every single Sunday. Ironically, it's a "church" experience like no other. You'll see lots of Christians with pro-life bumper stickers and license plates (we have "Choose Life" plates in our state) lined up to get abortions on Saturday morning. When local pro-life activists have confronted the pastors of these women and their partners, they've basically held the line that abortion is a grave problem and we can't solve it simply by disciplining these people. We should not condemn them. And so on. Some of our local abortionists claim to be Christians. Many of them think they are doing a service to babies by "sending them to heaven." So when you write that there is no simple answer to abortion, I disagree. A good place to start would be to simply get the church to stop aborting its children.

Teaching Christian Ethics in the Public Schools of Ukraine

From July 1st to July 8th, I traveled to Mukacheve in the Trans-Carpathian Mountain region and participated in a “teacher’s camp” put on by Hope to People Ministries of Rivne, Ukraine. Every American knows the Carpathian region, which stretches from Poland to Romania, from the images of Gothic castles that are the backdrop of numerous legends such as Count Dracula. This westernmost area of Ukraine was historically part of Poland and Hungary until it was most recently absorbed into the Soviet Union in the 1940s.

Everyone also knows that prayer and Bible reading has been restricted or banned in American public schools since the early 1960s. I found it ironic that as an American public high school teacher, I was asked to speak to a group of over 90 Ukrainian teachers many of whom teach “Christian Ethics” classes in the public schools of Ukraine. This program was implemented two years ago after the so-called “Orange Revolution.” The new presidential administration of Ukraine now contains a strong evangelical Christian presence. One of its first acts was to take some steps to counteract the negative effects of western materialism among the nation’s young people. The national government decided that Christian ethics classes would be offered in the public schools.

Some school districts in Ukraine are taking steps to see that students are taught biblically based ethics. The program is an elective course and is strictly voluntary. I was told that there is such a demand for these courses that some teachers with no church background are asked to teach the courses.

Not surprisingly, the first studies on the effects of this program have shown a desirable effect in the both the behavior and the academic achievement of the students who have taken these classes. Contrast this with the sharp decline in academic achievement and a rising incidence of numerous social maladies among American young people since the 1960s. In one off our lesson discussions, I had the chance to share on some of the studies that have been done since 1962 when prayer was eliminated from public school that have shown the sharp increase in divorce, single parent families, births to unmarried women, abortion, child abuse, drug abuse, teenage sexual activity, juvenile violent crime, and so on. This is of course coupled with the sharp decline of academic achievement shown in standardized test scores.

I don’t believe that simply the removal of the Bible and prayer from schools was the direct cause of all this, but that these trends were part of a social revolution in America that started at about this time. I said that I see it as a great irony that I was able to talk to teachers in a formerly atheistic country that recognized that moral deterioration was due to the lack of instruction in Christian ethics.

Of the teachers at the camp, about 30 were from evangelical churches. The rest were either Eastern Orthodox or else had no church affiliation at all. However, many of the attendees were superintendents, principals, department heads and leaders in education. Pastor Taras Prystupa began these training camps for teachers and librarians ten years ago. In the beginning most of the attendees were unconverted, yet a relationship has been developed and most of the teachers return each year, for a week of instruction, fun excursions in the afternoons and nightly biblical preaching and teaching.

Some teachers have professed faith in Jesus Christ as result of hearing the word of God preached at these camps. Others have come each year and have developed a relationship with the Christian teachers and have become more open to the Gospel message as a result of this ministry. The focus of the camp is evangelistic in nature.

The following week I traveled to Rivne, which is located in northwestern Ukraine. I spent a few days getting acquainted with the many ministries of Hope to People. In addition to the outreach to teachers, there is also their work with an orphanage, a youth sports ministry, numerous summer camps for youth, a new magazine for Christian teachers, a seminary and Bible school, and some building projects – a future youth camp, a church building and the Hope to People Center – a Soviet era building that is being slowly renovated to house the outreach ministries.

I was told that the main need is for workers and people who will come from abroad on short-term missions trips. Having American Christians stay and work even for short periods of time is a great encouragement to these Christians in a nation where less than one percent of the population is evangelical.

If you have an interest in taking a trip to Ukraine in 2008 to take part in a Christian teachers camp – or if you are interested in working with youth or just seeing what is happening in this vital mission field – you can contact me and I will put you in contact with Hope to People.

The Lord's Prayer in Ukrainian

I haven't posted to my blog in over a month because I was in Ukraine for three weeks in July 2007. This video was taken at an outdoor museum in Uzhgorod in the Transcarpathian region. I bought this embroidered hanging that has the Lord's Prayer in Ukrainian. I was pleased that I had learned enough Ukrainian and Russian to recognize the prayer immediately. I had my new friends, Oksanna and Olga, read it in Ukrainian so I could practice the correct pronunciation. Enjoy!

PREDVESTNIK - The Russian Forerunner & LOZA-TV - The Vine TV

This is a fundraising video I produced about six years ago for two missionary projects I was involved with from 1991 to 2000. Although I am not funding these projects currently, the video is important from a historical standpoint. Predvestnik was only the second nationally distributed evangelical Christian newspaper or publication in the history of the Soviet Union. The Perestroika reforms made this publication possible in early 1991. Prior to this there was no freedom of religion or press in the Soviet Union.

Likewise, LOZA-TV was the first Russian video ministry of any Protestant Church in the Russian Federation. Only CBN, based in Kiev, was producing evangelical Christian video in the Russian language at the time that LOZA-TV was founded. Our first production, Hollywood, won an award at a Christian Broadcasters event in Moscow in the fall of 2000. I hope to upload all of this Russian language video at a later time. Contact me for more details.

Part of missionary work is learning to be creative with the resources God gives you. Still this production is close to my heart as it represents the work I accomplished in eleven short-term missionary trips to Russia and Ukraine. I am involved in another project in Ukraine right now that is in its beginning stages. I hope to make another trip to Ukraine sometime before too long.

What Ted Haggard's fall could REALLY teach Christians

I usually ignore scandals in the church and don't write about them mainly for two reasons.

1. Sin in the church is not news.
2. Unless it occurs within my own local church or denomination, I am not qualified to pronounce a public judgment -- only the elders of that particular church should do that.

However, I wanted to use this scandal as an illustration of why I left the so-called "evangelical" movement a few years ago. I joined an Reformed church that I consider to be truly evangelical. A truly evangelical church literally preaches the whole Gospel.

The Ted Haggard scandal and the response by "evangelicals" shows the major problem with evangelicalism. The Law of God is not considered to be part of the Gospel -- and is even considered to be an enemy of the Gospel.

The following linked article ("What Ted Haggard's fall could teach Christians") is typical of the reason why the evangelical church in America is in such a bad state. It totally ignores the fact that Ted Haggard was a pastor and leader of an international Christian ministry. It treats him as if he was "Joe Public" pew sitter in need of moral guidance from his peers.

It ignores the biblical law regarding qualifications for elders and deacons. Invariably I hear such pietistic drivel whenever a major Christian leader commits a sin that the Apostle Paul said "deserves death" and was punishable by stoning in the Old Testament.

I have to laugh at evangelicals who say that swift steps must be taken to ensure his restoration to ministry. And woe to us that we could not have fostered an atmosphere in which he could have been more open about his sin and received help!

We are also told by Haggard that all he did was buy some illegal drugs (that he never used) and receive a back rub. Here's the infamous "I didn't inhale" excuse once again. Yet most assume he was removed by his elders for hiding something that is more egregious than this. Otherwise, he would have simply denied that he did anything seriously wrong and voluntarily submitted to rehabilitation or counseling to deal with some personal problems. We are obviously not hearing the whole story and he is still covering something.

Now we are told by some pietists that God is judging him for his "judgment and anger" because he opposed "same-sex marriage." This wrongly assumes that we should forgive Haggard for a crime he has yet to confess and that he was "intolerant" of homosexuals in his own church.

The simple fact of the matter is that the interim pastor at Haggard's church admits that they allow openly homosexual members of their church to receive communion. These people are not subject to church sanctions and Haggard himself fostered an open and "loving" attitude toward sodomites.

It's similar to a pastor I knew in Melbourne, Florida who was never supportive of the pro-life activists in his church because he didn't want people to think of him as intolerant toward the "pro-choice community." It might hinder his ministry toward them. Later during the height of a so-called "revival" in his church in the 1990s that was chronicled by major Christian media, he was exposed in the sin of adultery with the daughter of his church's founder.

The simple fact is that if you are an adulterous pastor, you need abortion to cover your sin. If you are a homosexual pastor, you need male prostitutes in your church to service your sin. And so on.

But this is nothing new. The kings and patriarchs of Israel allowed temple prostitution to go on and rarely enforced the sanctions of God's Law. The kings of Israel multiplied their wives and committed open adultery. What is new is the pervasive pietism among conservative Christians that ignores the Law of God in favor of something they think is "more compassionate" than what God himself requires. It's not enough for us to ignore and violate God's Law, but we also must portray God's Law as harsh and judgmental and beneath our modern sensibility.

Can Haggard be forgiven? Yes of course, that is the heart of the Gospel. Ted Haggard can even be used of God again in some sort of service role in the church or in public life. And if he repents, he can be used soon. But there are temporal judgments for those who commit crimes against the Law of God. He should never again be allowed in an ordained ministry position. In a nation that loved God's law, he would receive some type of civil penalty as well.

We are in such a bad state not because sin is rampant in the church, but because we have forsaken the only valid measure of righteousness and judgment that can bind our conscience -- and sadly I need I define that -- the Law of God.

Seven Steps to Reforming a Dysfunctional Ministry or Church

I like to focus on my successes, not my failures. Rarely have I written about negative experiences. In my last entry, I defined the “martyr syndrome” as a breakdown in dysfunctional ministry relationships that end with volunteer Christian workers feeling victimized. Wherever there is conflict, there are always two sides that share some of the fault. I’ve always tried to leave relationships on good terms even though there was a fundamental disagreement. A few times I’ve successfully returned to work with the same people I thought were impossible to work with. Don’t burn bridges, that’s my first piece of advice.

I’ve obviously written this for my own benefit as a guide to reform. But maybe this has happened to you or someone you know? I’ve tried to briefly spell out what people can do to avoid the “martyr syndrome” -- that feeling of “victimization” when ministry relationships do not work out.

1. Beware that all people are selfish in some way. Is there a person on the planet that is not selfish? We all share in original sin. No one is exempt from selfish behavior. Most people who are “unselfishly” serving in ministries are actually fulfilling a need for spiritual and emotional fulfillment. Some enjoy the reputation of self-sacrifice. But we should avoid the “martyr complex.” If we blame others every time we willingly sacrifice and yet are taken advantage of or underappreciated, then we have already received our reward. In claiming that all others around us are selfish, we hypocritically exhibit a more extreme form of selfishness. The remedy is to be careful that we not look for our reward from men, but should look to God.

2. Avoid obsessive compulsive behavior. A lot of times the self-proclaimed “experts” are merely those who exhibit obsessive compulsive behavior in one area of expertise. Lots of energy is expended and much gets done in a short time. However, this personality trait almost never stays on track consistently for more than a period of time. The principle of the Kingdom of God is that we must build “little by little” (Exodus 23:30).We must be covenantally faithful with what God entrusted to us over a long period of time (Proverbs 13:11). Then we cannot lose anything if we invest our lives consistently in serving God’s purposes.

3. Avoid unrealistic expectations. A lot of times a ministry project can seem exciting and new to a young volunteer. But be aware that the ones who found and maintain ministries often have to suffer through long periods of what seems to be unfruitful labor before they see any results. Ministries should also be careful not to frustrate and under-appreciate volunteers. Sometimes the encouragement of having some new blood in an organization can lead to a demand for too much from people who aren’t equipped to handle the pressure.

4. Write up a contract of some type. Define the terms of service before any “ministry” work gets done. What is the purpose of the project really? Is it solely to advance the cause of missions? Is it to raise money for a general fund or salaries pertaining to ministry work? Who is in charge of the project? What is the agreement? What happens if the agreement is not followed? Even if there is a written contract, the person in charge will often change the terms when it suits him. In this case, can the worker leave the contract without either side suffering damage? Is there a third party that may arbitrate as a witness if genuine damages occur? These are the main issues to be considered in such a contract.

5. Let God repay you. If we willingly harm other people in our thoughts, acts or words, then God will punish us if we do not repent. I have seen this happen continually in my life. I thank God I am not by nature a vindictive person and God made me somewhat thick-skinned. In every case that I have been wronged, God will always repay me. In any case, we should always seek to reconcile relationships with people we have wronged in any way. At the same time, we need to understand that some people don’t want healing and reconciliation. It’s hard to let that go if you have a heart for God, but sometimes sifting is biblical and necessary.

6. Honor your elders. The people who lead your ministry or church, whether they are ordained or not, likely have more years of experience and wisdom than you do. They are fallible human beings to boot. Yet even when you disagree with them because they are flat out wrong, they still may have something to teach you. Sometimes we even learn by a negative example. Nevertheless, if we persevere in ministry work, God may eventually place us in a position of authority. When that happens God will see to it that people will treat us in the same manner as we treated others.

7. Check your motivation. What are you doing serving a ministry in the first place? Do you want only to please God? Is it for a sense of spiritual fulfillment? Is it to get recognition? Are you there for training purposes so you can benefit in another endeavor later on. If you are looking for a reward, what type of reward do you expect? There is nothing inherently sinful about doing things that will benefit us, but in the end we will get a reward beyond measure if we will only accept what God gives us and be satisfied to do His will.

Is it just me that is dysfunctional or is it my church/ministry?

Let me spell out an all-too-common scenario. A bright young Christian arrives on the scene as a volunteer worker for a small struggling, yet anointed ministry organization. He (or she) gives a few months or a few years of his young life as a “full time worker” and selflessly dedicates his precious time. He sees the ministry make some headway due to his unique set of skills. The founder of the ministry is pleased and gives the young worker a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars to help complete a project. Due to the messy organizational skills of the leader and the lack of a well-defined plan, the project either falls by the wayside or stalls once it is more than half finished. The level of frustration rises on both sides. The young worker realizes that his own financial situation has grown dire due to a growing amount of time spent sacrificially without an adequate salary. He feels he has wasted his precious time and will never see the fruit of his labor. He leaves the ministry he previously admired with a bad taste in his mouth and then slanders the ministry founder to numerous friends and acquaintances.

I’ve seen this scenario -- or something similar to it -- play out a few dozen times in my Christian experience. It is not a syndrome peculiar to a certain type ministry or church denomination. The “martyr syndrome” seems to be everywhere. I would define this as ministry burnout when unrealistic expectations are not met and a “victim” mentality ensues. Here’s a good set of articles from the Emmanuel Research Review that describe this syndrome as being pervasive and makes some good suggestions for reform: “Is it just me that is dysfunctional or is it my church?”

Where does this happen most? Youth ministries that recruit full-time Christian workers that are required to raise their own support are more prone to this than others. The conundrum comes when a worker is responsible for his or her own support, but is nevertheless placed in a situation that demands a high level of commitment. Young Christians have the greatest amount of zeal, but they are also the most naïve. They are therefore prone to spiritual abuse and often place unrealistic expectations on themselves. When things don’t work out exactly as imagined, this is either an opportunity to learn and mature or it can be a pitfall for bitterness as well.

As a high school teacher in a lower income area, I deal young people who come from dysfunctional families all day long. It is not surprising that given the high level of dysfunctionality in our culture that we find this syndrome among young adults who are placed in ministry situations.

Thoughts on location, location, location

I was recently updating the God's Law and Society Study Guide for an on-line version available at: www.forerunner.com/law/glsbook.pdf. The introduction has a brief biography and contact information for each of the Christian leaders featured in the presentation. I was amazed that almost every one of the addresses of these people had changed in the past five years. In most cases, it was not a move across the country, but a P.O. Box or a website address.

If this book had appeared in print format as we had originally planned, almost all of the contact information would have changed and it would be useless to the reader. Thankfully, God has graciously given us electronic text and the Internet and such information can be instantly changed.

I have had the same mailing address since 1993 and the same website and email address since 1996. The mailing address is a small inconvenience in that I have moved a few miles away from Melbourne. But I keep the mailing address because it is printed in books, magazines, newspapers and video format in countries from the United States, South Africa, Latin America, Russia, Ukraine and literally around the globe.

Similarly, I was offered $7000 this summer if i would sell my domain name: www.forerunner.com. When I refused the first two offers the negotiator wanted to continue. I explained that they were not even close to what my domain name is worth to me. Although that was no small amount of money to refuse, it is less than what I would have to lose as far as contacts and new opportunities to connect with people. In the past year alone, the web site has had over one million visitors. That's the fruit of 20 years of editing a publication of some type. I look at my physical address in the same manner. I wonder how many people lose contact with ministries because they are constantly changing their mailing address, email and web domain? As in real estate, location is everything.