Update from the President
Beverly and I, along with Bob and Dyanne Dick, are heading to Australia to attend and participate in a national leadership conference. Attendance is expected to be in excess of 70. We have been preparing for this conference since last August. The theme and content focus is on training tomorrow's church leaders. We want to continue this theme through the next round of US regional conferences that will start this winter.
Bob and Dyanne are already in Australia. We had planned to travel together but our flight was grounded by bad weather in Wisconsin and we missed our flight from Los Angeles to Brisbane. So I write this a day later, as we will be shortly boarding here in Los Angeles for Australia.
We really look forward to this event and appreciate the Brisbane and Gold Coast congregations along with others in Australia for hosting and organizing this event. Following the conference, Bev and I will travel to Perth and finally to Singapore before returning home, while the Dicks will visit the Melbourne congregation.
You can follow our visit to our churches on our TravelPod blog at http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog/victorkubik/19/tpod.html
Other News
We are on a two month schedule for our traditional co-worker and subscriber letters. Annually, four letters are to co-workers and donors while two are to the entire Beyond Today mailing list. The letter we're sending out this week is for the smaller list. In the letter, I speak about Britain's exit from the European Union which will still take some time to be fully implemented.
We now have more donors and co-workers than members, which is a good harbinger of growth. The letter this coming week will be sent to more than 15,000 people who have already contributed.
Aaron and Michelle Dean have left for the United Kingdom where they will visit our ministry, congregations and hold seminars with our leadership. They will also be visiting with their daughter and son-in-law who are on assignment with his job in London.
Our Ministerial Education Program committee is working on the Labor Day Leadership Weekend as well as the Pastoral Development Program to be held at the home office in November. We hope to include a few newer international pastors who will benefit from the program.
We want to streamline our Ministerial Education Program with a faculty that will manage our online training, pastoral training, seminars and more. We will meet about this at the end of July.
Darris and Debbie McNeely are going to conduct two leadership seminars in Malawi and South Africa in early August. I am so thankful that they are willing to go and perform this very vital service for the future development of our churches in these countries.
Thoughts From the Anne Frank House
During my recent church visit to the Netherlands, Bev and I visited the Anne Frank House.
Earlier this year, I read Anne's diary and became totally engrossed in the details--how she hid in a building in the middle of Amsterdam for two full years from reprehensible Nazi occupiers. Anne was 13 when she and seven others went, full of life, hope and innocence. I didn't want the book to end!
Who can read it and not be affected, particularly in this day and age when savage terror stalks the planet, converting international airports and public gathering places into bloody arenas of death?
Sadly, she and her family were ultimately betrayed, crammed into filthy train cars, and packed off to a ghastly fate. With deportation and a one-way trip to the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen death camps awaiting her, she was still relentlessly optimistic.
The Diary of Anne Frank has been translated into 67 languages, with 30 million copies sold. One million people visit the museum in Amsterdam every year.
Anne Frank did not survive Bergen-Belsen. But her words did. So what can we learn from this history? While the anti-Semitic barbarism was evil enough in World War II, at the same time insufferable cruelty engulfed much of the globe. If you read Inferno, Max Hastings' monumental book of personal stories of World War II, you will come upon instance after seemingly endless instance of mindless brutality. One such account describes how a Nazi soldier chokes back tears as he confiscates all the collected food and produce from a Ukrainian family. The desperately needed food will now go to Nazi armies. He cannot look the elderly Ukrainian grandparents and young children in their eyes, for he knows that he has personally condemned them to a slow death by starvation.
That is important to me, because as a young child growing up in Minnesota I heard many stories like that, even though I didn't want to. My parents, Ukrainian refugees, survived forced labor induced by the Nazis. I was born in a United Nations refugee camp in Germany and came to the United States at the age of 2. I repeatedly heard the stories of my parents' experiences as teenage slave laborers. They suffered greatly, especially towards the end of the war. But, they survived. Many of their friends did not. This was their day-to-day reality.
Anne Frank's words resonate strongly with me. The mindless cruelty faced by Anne Frank and my parents is alive and well. It lives in Syria. In Bangladesh. In many places in Africa and Asia. Whether we want to know it or not, it's everywhere!
The world does not want to hear these words. Instead, they loudly echo the words of the prophet Isaiah: "Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us" (Isaiah 30:10-11, New International Version). The New Living Translation renders verse 11 as "Forget all this gloom."
So what is our response?
Having the young innocent words of Anne Frank now part of me, I am soberly grateful to God. I needed to read her words. The experience refreshed a deep and profound sense of gratitude that God preserved His Holy Word for us today, for it is only by the Word of God that we can have any hope or any understanding of why things are the way they are. With the precious knowledge of the plan of God, we too can be relentlessly optimistic, even when we read of mindless cruelty or government leaders who have lost their way.
How can such barbaric behavior be possible in an enlightened world? People ask: how can God answer for this?
Through God's Word, we understand that this is NOT God's world! The apostle Paul clearly identified a cunning and frighteningly powerful spiritual adversary as the "god of this age" (2 Corinthians 4:4). That "god," the ancient fallen archangel known as Satan, hates the plan of God and its purpose "in bringing many sons and daughters to glory" (Hebrews 2:10, NIV). Satan hates this marvelous plan and works tirelessly to block its completion.
But, thank God, Satan will fail. God will complete the work He has begun in us! (Philippians 1:6). As children of God, we will indeed be "of the same family" as our Elder Brother, Jesus Christ! (Hebrews 2:11, 1 John 3:1).
Armed with this incredible knowledge, I must now ask: are we relentlessly optimistic? This is why Jesus taught us to pray first "Thy Kingdom Come!" We declare and await that Kingdom, when all will be set aright.
Our recent personal appearance campaigns make this truth publicly plain. In uncertain times, people want to know what is going on and what will happen. That is a main purpose of prophecy.
While we are told to watch (Matthew 24:42), we are also directed to be constantly focused on becoming more like God. As Paul writes to us today: "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:2, NIV). Here is what Jesus says of those who overcome: "Those who are victorious will sit with me on my throne, just I was victorious and sat with my Father on his throne" (Revelation 3:21, NLT).
Once God's Kingdom comes (Matthew 6:10), there will be an entirely different environment. Right now, the world is in a place where a future holocaust is possible. In an age where the world is ruled by a twisted being who hates all humans, a sequel to Anne Frank could well come.
But we have this confident promise: the day will come when all will spiritually and profoundly "connect the dots" of who we are, who God is, where we're going, the purpose of our being and what we must do. It will all fall into place in a coming world ruled by Jesus Christ that is not a fantasy, but a reality. In the meantime, we have our role, and God will give us the strength to fulfill that role, a role of overcoming and being victorious. This is an important part of the proclamation message we share with this confused and suffering world.
