Author: GCI Media

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

February is Black History month in the USA, in which we acknowledge the contribution that African-Americans have made to this country (a similar celebration is held this month in Canada). For example, the recently released movie Red Tails tells a little known story of African-American aviators who were a part of “the Greatest Generation” and helped defeat the enemies of democratic freedom in the Second World War.

Some people in other parts of the world may wonder why America devotes a month to recognizing the achievements of just one segment of our population. However, the contribution of African-Americans to this nation has not always been acknowledged. In fact, for a long time it was quite the opposite.

We owe the celebration of Black History Month, and the study of black history, to Dr. Carter G. Woodson. Carter Woodson was born to parents who were former slaves. He spent his childhood working in the Kentucky coal mines and enrolled in high school at age 20. He later went on to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard. Dr. Woodson was disturbed to find that history books largely ignored the black American population. If they were acknowledged it was generally in ways that reflected their inferior social position. Woodson set out to set the record straight. His work influenced the young Martin Luther King.

The awful stain on our nation’s history that was slavery is now in our past, but the effects linger on. It is only in my lifetime that some of the most glaring injustices have been addressed. One of my close friends and colleagues, Curtis May, who is just a little older than I am, spent his early years in Alabama. He experienced the prejudice, humiliation and indignity of segregation. Curtis now heads up The Office of Reconciliation and Spiritual Mediation. This ministry (online at http://atimetoreconcile.org/) is steadily gaining respect and recognition as it seeks to promote forgiveness and understanding wherever there is need of reconciliation and healing.

When I consider this aspect of our past, it leaves me asking how we, a people who sing proudly about “The land of the free and the home of the brave,” and who pledge allegiance to a republic that promises “Liberty and Justice for all” could have allowed ourselves in the past to be so blind, so prejudiced and so stupid. Advocates of slavery and segregation even used the Bible to support their arguments. Could anything be more contrary to the “ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18)?

However, the problem of racism (and the related problem of ethnic prejudice) is not limited to one nation and is not just a black/white problem. Black History Month reminds us that people everywhere are capable of inhuman behavior. Remember Auschwitz, Kosovo, Cambodia, Darfur and Rwanda, to name just a few atrocities in our time. These are signs of the fallenness of all humanity.

Christianity and racism are incompatible. We must work to not just overcome racism, personally, but eventually to obliterate it through our message and example of love and reconciliation. Our own denomination has had to grow in this. We owe a great debt to our pioneer African-American elders, like the late Harold Jackson and Stanley Bass, and also Abner Washington, Maceo Hampton, Leslie Schmedes and Franklin Guice who, though well up in years, continue to make substantial contributions to the life of our denomination. The patience, humility and courage of these men and their families, and many like them, have helped GCI grow in understanding of the evils of racism and ethnic prejudice. I am deeply grateful for the unique contribution my African-American brothers and sisters have made, and are making, to our denomination.

As Acts 17:26 reminds us, “from one blood [God] made the whole world of humanity” (Aramaic Bible translation). We are one people with a common need for forgiveness and salvation. Thank God that we have one Savior and, therefore, a common destiny. God values us all and Jesus paid the same price for each of us. That leaves no room for prejudice, segregation or discrimination of any kind.

So, as we are reminded this month of the significant contributions and the unique sufferings of our African-American neighbors, let me encourage you to take some time getting to know more of that history. Let us pray for the eradication of the lingering injustices still found in our nations. Let us thank God for the ministry of reconciliation our Lord Jesus has given us. And let us look for opportunities to extend that ministry in the power of the Spirit to those within our fellowship and beyond.

Love from my family to yours,

Joseph Tkach

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Richard Frankel, one of our pastors in the Chicago area, sent me this cartoon (reproduced here with permission). I just had to share it with you.

The cartoon highlights how some preachers distort the Gospel. The Gospel means Good News and good news is supposed to make you feel better, more hopeful, not make you want to curl up into the fetal position with fear!

Fear is, of course, a motivator. It is easy to manipulate scripture into an intimidating doomsday message, which will get attention and gain a following. However, when the prophecy fails, we rarely if ever, hear those preachers apologize for their false predictions. Most often we just hear justifications and excuses, as they try to maintain their authority by reigniting fear.

Remember Y2K? As the new millennium approached there were dire predictions that many older computers could not process the date change from 1999 to 2000. This, it was suggested, would lead to catastrophic failures, and a world crisis. Many leading preachers jumped on the bandwagon, warning that the computers crashing would signal the beginning of the tribulation. Some were even selling dehydrated food and water purifiers to be prepared, or encouraging folks to stockpile propane and withdraw cash from their banks.

A well-known televangelist told his viewers the Holy Spirit warned him about Y2K. Another described Y2K as “the biggest problem the modern world has ever faced.” He forecast a financial crisis that would bring the world economy into a state of meltdown the likes of which no living human has ever experienced. Yet another distributed a packet on “The Y2K Time Bomb,” including a video, “A Christian’s Guide to Y2K.”

When the fateful moment arrived very little happened. The worst report I recall was that 150 slot machines at racetracks in Delaware stopped working. In Australia, two bus ticket-validation machines stopped working. The worst damage occurred in Germany where 20 million bankcards became unusable. Some customers temporarily lost use of their email and their home pages disappeared. One US spy satellite had problems for a few hours. But the world as we know it kept going. The doomsayers were shown, once again, to be false prophets.

It isn’t just Christians who do this. Predictions about catastrophe happen in almost every religious tradition. Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Zoroastrians all do it. The early Central American civilizations such as the Toltecs and Mayans, and Native American Indian cultures like the Hopi, Navajo, and Lakota Sioux all had tragic prophetic speculations.

The latest end-of-the-world obsession concerns the Mayan Calendar that ends a 144,000-day cycle this year on Dec. 21, the day of the winter solstice. The number 144,000 sounds biblical, so the doomsayers are once again out there warning us to expect something drastic to happen. Unfortunately there will be some who will be taken in by it. Fear, it seems, is never far away.

All this totally misses the point and the purpose of prophecy. As an angel explained to John in Revelation 19:10: “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” And the testimony of Jesus is good news – of his salvation and forgiveness and eternal life. This means that the Gospel is itself the true prophetic word.

Does the Gospel, then, deny or overlook the “bad news” of our sin, the power of evil and its tragic consequences? No, it assumes it while never giving it center stage, never lending it the upper hand. Why not? Because Jesus himself is the first and the last Word. Through his life of obedience, his crucifixion, his resurrection, his ascension, once and for all, evil ultimately has been conquered, sin is forgiven, death itself has been overcome. New life is at hand.

Yes, hearing and receiving the Gospel calls for repentance—of our unbelief in the truth and reality of who Jesus is and what he has done. This repentance leads to faith, hope and love. So the prophetic testimony of Jesus should not leave us curled up in the fetal position. He says to us now in the midst of our need, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10) and “Behold, I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5).

May our focus always be Jesus and his gospel!

In his service,

Joseph Tkach