United Church of God

Update from the President: August 22, 2019

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Update from the President

August 22, 2019

God has been doing a Work in Eastern Europe and the Baltic republics before and throughout the history of the United Church of God. We held our first Feast of Tabernacles in Tartu, Estonia in 1997. Elder Johnnie Lambert and his wife, Hazel, of New York came to help that year. After the Feast, Johnnie made a decision to devote his life to serving this part of the world. He has now become the senior pastor not only for this area, but for the Scandinavian and Nordic countries as well. The Lamberts have traveled to Estonia for the Feast almost every year since their first 1997 visit, as well as making three or four annual visits since. He purchased a residence in Tartu where he has set up an office with printing capabilities to produce and mail United Church of God booklets and our Bible Study Course.

I applaud their years of faithful and sacrificial service as they have preached the gospel and visited those who God has called in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Through mailings of printed literature from Tartu, we serve neighboring Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the other former Soviet republics with spiritual food in their native language.

One of Johnnie's most notable achievements has been spearheading the translation of much of our literature into the Russian and Estonian languages. Almost half of UCG's booklets have now been translated into Russian. We produce the Beyond Today magazine in these languages as well. Natasha Teague has coordinated this effort from the home office. Natasha first came to the Feast in Estonia in 2000 from Belarus and has since moved to the United States.

I've asked Johnnie to write a report to you about the challenges of doing the Work in this part of the world. The people here are near and dear to me and I'd like to share this account with you.

You can see a history with photos of the Work at http://kubik.org/estonia where you can see and read about the work from its start in UCG until 2011.

From Johnnie Lambert:

Greetings from Tartu, Estonia,

For those of you who have no idea where the country of Estonia is located, it is one of the three Baltic States which also includes the nations of Latvia and Lithuania. Estonia lies between Poland to its west, Russia to its east, and south across the Baltic Sea from the Scandinavian country of Finland. My wife Hazel and I, along with my son Bryant and his wife, Linda, are finally back in Estonia since the Feast in October last year. Unfortunately, a few days after the Feast here in Tartu where our church office is located, I suffered a stroke and was hospitalized for nearly a week. My original plan after the Feast was to stay in Estonia and do our quarterly church literature mailing which we have been sending into Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and much of the Russian speaking countries for nearly 15 years. However, because of my health, I was forced to return home and subsequently have had several heart-related procedures done including an aortic valve replacement on May 13th at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.

Bryant, Linda, Hazel and I had hoped to return to Estonia for the Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread, but because of my ongoing heart problems we were not able to return until now in August. However, with our brethren's prayers, God's help, and His blessings, we have returned to catch up on mailings of the Beyond Today magazine, various booklets and the UCG Bible Lessons.

Fortunately, the days are quite long this time of year in this part of northern Eastern Europe. Estonia is on the same latitude as Anchorage, Alaska, affording us late nights and the ability to work past sundown printing literature on our new Xerox printer. Linda and Hazel work far into the night placing the literature into envelopes in order to prepare them for their mailing into places as close as Estonia and as far away as Ukraine, Belarus, and other far-reaching Russian-speaking countries of Eastern Europe and Russia itself. It has been a wonderful bonding experience for all of us. Even though Bryant and Linda reside with us in the same house in New York, this has provided us a wonderful opportunity to re-connect with preaching the gospel together as a family.

You may ask yourself why are we still preaching the gospel with printed literature and not relying totally on the Internet. We certainly rely on the Internet for the way we mostly reach out and make contact with those whom God is calling in this area of the world. We do send our literature over the Internet. But we provide printed literature for those who don't have the everyday access to the Internet that so many in the Western world take for granted. There are still a few people in the far reaches of Russia who do not yet have Internet in their homes, although this is changing daily. So we still believe it is important to sustain a lifeline of printed literature to assist those people.

As the end time of this age approaches, and governments inevitably take control of the Internet, certainly a side effect could include the most efficient way to suppress God's truth. Printed literature may become the last and only way to preach the gospel at the very end time before the return of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

As with most other modern-day Israelite countries, including the United States, the response to God's message of His coming Kingdom of God and His calling to His way of life here in Estonia has sadly fallen on spiritually deaf ears. However, this is no reason to stop what we are doing. All we can do is to continue in the instruction of Matthew 24:14 with no questions asked: "And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come."

Brethren, we each have individually been called out as the "ecclesia" and are called "sanctified" at the end of this age. Only God can make something sanctified. To be sanctified means that you have been called and set apart for a holy purpose by God. This means we each have been called and given the opportunity to have a part in preaching the gospel at the end of this age, if we choose to.

We live in a world which is spiritually sick, dying and in complete decay. Just this month, we once again witnessed in Texas and Ohio more mentally disturbed young men commit horrific acts. They are a product of a world ruled by Satan, seemingly having no concern for anyone else except for themselves—or else they would have never conceived of the evil things that they perpetrated against their fellow human beings. These horrible events, among many others, reinforce how much we need the return of Jesus Christ at the end of this age and it is a blessing to have the opportunity to help preach the gospel of the coming Kingdom of God at this end time. That is why each one of us needs to be "about our Father's business" "preaching the gospel to all the world as a witness" and being a "light to the world" and "cities on a hill which cannot be hid." Only then, after we have fulfilled Christ's end time commission, with God the Father's approval, can Christ return to this earth which groans and travails for His second coming.

Johnnie Lambert, regional pastor for Eastern Europe/Scandinavia