April 2022 Supporter Update

April 2022 Supporter Update and New Studio

Hi, I'm John Snyder, and this is the Supporters Update for Media Gratiae. We do this every quarter to kind of just keep you abreast of how things are going and what things are coming up and maybe some of our further off plans.

First of all, I want to say that you probably noticed if you follow us or if you listen to the whole Council podcast that we are in a new studio. It's taken some time, but we have finally gotten moved in, and this part is pretty much.

Finished.

If you could just turn the camera and see Teddy, you would see that the rest is still in boxes. And so, while it's functional, it's not all the way finished. Well, we want to give you an update on some of the things we've mentioned in previous episodes, which now are available, and one of those is Judges.

Judges is a mini-study, so it's a slightly shorter study, kind of a more handy size. It doesn't require as much commitment from the folks as the larger studies, the Behold Your God studies. Our mini-studies are designed to be between six and eight weeks long.

They have a video component. They also have a workbook. The workbook is about half the size of the Behold Your God workbooks. We don't travel and we don't have interviews at the end, so it is a study that's able to be done in a shorter slot of time.

If you're doing it at a church, you know, with small group studies in your home, whatever. Judges, the theme is the believer living with the living God, not with the God that we've imagined. And we look at Israel and how she failed to live with the living God, and in the midst of all that decline, the shocking pictures in Judges give us some enduring lessons.

How do we see the root problems as we're looking at a national decline or a decline in the.

Church?

And how do we return to the God of the Bible? The Judges mini-study is now available in a digital form. The physical form will not come out until we expect mid-June, so two months from when I'm filming this.

That in part is due to the fact that there are shortages, paper shortages with printers, and so everything has been slowed down. We're also finishing up work on Behold Your God, Seeking Him Early, the children's curriculum that has been created by taking the two first Behold Your God studies, combining them into a 26-week study for young people, and we have three different age groups for this material.

The oldest age group is now with the typesetter or the layout designer, and the other two will soon be there. These three children's studies will be manufactured as the Lord provides money. We continue to do a number of our podcasts, and the whole council podcast will be a little different this year.

Not just different in where we're filming it, but we're going to work in our guest speakers more frequently. We tend to kind of overwhelm the ones that come and sit for a long spell of time. So we're going to be seeing Jeremy Walker and Andy Christofides from Britain, also Albert Bisson, a Brit, but who is pastoring in mid-Mississippi.

We'll also have Steve Crampton back, Chuck Baggett, and Jordan Thomas, so we look forward to doing that. I think that Steve is the next one who's slated to come on our show, and we're going to be looking at a topic that we think is important, the Christian, the gospel, or grace, and the law, and we're going to be using a wonderful book written a few decades ago by a man named Ernest Kevin, a British evangelical leader, and I think his book is really just very balanced and helpful.

So what's coming up? Well right now I'm working on another mini-study. It's on Psalm 119, and obviously that 176 verses, we can only kind of pick some of our favorites, and over about eight weeks we're going to be looking at the dynamic between the believer and the speaking God.

It is such a thrilling thing to realize that of all religions, Christianity is the only religion that has a God whose mouth works. The idols had mouths that were carved into wood and stone, precious metals, and never spoke, never said anything beneficial, and never said anything terrifying, but our God is a God that speaks to us, and through His Word we have this wonderful declaration, particularly a path is laid, the most enviably happy life lived on a path of obedience, and so we're going to be looking at that in our next mini-study.

We wanted to introduce you to a friend of the ministry, and you're going to be able to hear from him. We filmed an interview with him about a week ago at my house, so you'll see that I'm in a different location.

The audio won't be as good. It's a Zoom call, because the friend of the ministry, his name is Callum MacLeod. Now he's Scottish, but he doesn't live in Scotland. For most of his life, he's worked and lived in the Netherlands with his family.

Callum came into contact with Behold Your God through listening to Paul Washer on the internet and then finding that Paul had been one of the contributors to the first study, and the study made such a difference to Callum that he then kind of spearheaded the translation of Behold Your God into the Dutch, and not just Dutch, but now also into German, and he's also translated other teaching materials we have, other videos into the Dutch language, and Callum is really just a joy to listen to, and so we hope that you enjoy the interview as much as we did.

Well, Callum, thank you for joining us, and we would like for our listeners to be acquainted with you and some of the things that the Lord has done through you, and especially the connection with Mediagratia, and so we wonder if you would mind just giving us a quick introduction of who you are, where you are, and what you're doing.

So it's great to talk with you, John. This is 2016, this all started with Mediagratia for me, so yeah, this has been a really, really great six years, to be honest. So who am I? Callum MacLeod. I'm originally from Scotland, which is somewhere north of Wales, and I found myself in a country called the Netherlands, which I suppose many of you have heard about, but the Netherlands in 1986 with my family, and we've been here ever since, and yeah, it's been an interesting time because my background is, I was brought up in a church called the Free Church of Scotland, a very godly, God-centered Presbyterian church in Scotland, very based on the Westminster Confession, and ended up with the Dutch, and yeah, that's a whole story in itself, church life and Christianity in the Netherlands today, so probably not very different to the United States, but certainly it's not a big highlight at the moment anyway, but yeah, so here we are.

How did you get introduced to the Mediagratia teaching materials?

To be honest, I was trying to remember that. So it's late 2015, early 2016, somehow I've come across Paul Washer, probably sermonaudio .com, or somebody shared a link with me, I think the first sermon from Paul Washer heard is the one where he's talking to the students at Virginia Tech, I think it is, and the thing that always, or no, it's the one where he's talking about the sermon that everyone in America hates or something, but he's got the classic line where he says something in the sermon, and then you all start applauding, and he says, I don't know why you're applauding, I'm I don't like sharing this with people and saying, you've got to listen to this guy, this is the best thing I've heard in years, and I started googling Paul Washer, and then Mediagratia comes up, because he's obviously, Paul was obviously in, Behold Your God, in the first study, and then I tried to get access to the study, and it was very, very difficult, because at that time, beginning of 2016, Mediagratia was not shipping outside the US, so I was back and forth with a general called Matthew Robinson, who I harassed that guy to death.

Late 2016, I got the study that was delivered, so I ordered it online, I got the DVD pack and the study book, went up to my office, plugged in the, I already watched the intro DVD online, and plugged in DVD one, and I think, as I said to you, I had a session of 12 DVDs without a break, and at certain points, I think, especially a DVD four, where it's going on about Christ is central in the DVD four, and then the DVD 11, where, you know, the yes but, and I'm literally, I'm thinking, my chest is going to burst, I'm going to have a heart attack, well, something's going to happen here, and it was just, I can't remember, you know, I remember telling my wife, she's like, oh, this is just, this is the best thing I've heard in years, and it was immediately then a conviction that people in my own church, people that I know in the area that I live, and I maybe need to explain that, they need to hear this, so the Netherlands is a very, it's a, although it's a small country, it's a country that is divided by the rivers, it's the rivers define not just the geography, but also spiritually how the country stands, the north of the country is the reform part, it's Dutch reform part of the country, the southern part of the country is traditionally Catholic, and people from the north wouldn't come to the south, it was very much, the Dutch reform people stay in the north, and the Catholics will stay in the south, that changed a little bit in the last century, because one of the major employers in the country's company called Philips, it's also well known in America, so Philips was and still is originally a Dutch company, and they were encouraged in, I think after the first world war, they were encouraged by the government to come down to the south, because the south had been ravaged during the war, it was ravaged in both world wars, but there was a lot of poverty, and so they were encouraged to come down south of the country, government gave them a lot of money to start manufacturing things in the southern part of the country, they brought people with them, so they brought factory workers, they brought management, and it was interesting, the factory workers were predominantly Baptists, the management were predominantly Dutch reformed, and so you have a smattering of Dutch reformed churches and Baptist churches in the southern part of the country, but the vast majority is still Catholic, or nominally Catholic, and what's Protestant is pretty much nominally Protestant, so I was very much, you know, the people, the church that we're part of, they need to listen to this, they need to hear this study, we need as a church to become a God-centered church, we're not a God-centered church, we're a me-centered church, and I think that's just very much, you know, it's, it's not, it's not, the Netherlands is not any different to any other place, I think, but everything, you know, the services are very much choruses where, you know, you sit there, I sit, I would sit there, my wife and I would sit there, and you go, do we actually really understand what we're saying?

God, God, I'm prepared to give you everything, even my whole life, and we repeat that like a mantra 10 times, or whatever the chorus might be, and it's like, we actually even think about what it is we're singing, you know, we don't, we don't even know, we never even talk about who this God is, yeah, apart from the fact that he's there to fix our problems, he's there to, you know, we'll, we'll have a time of prayer in the service, and we'll, you know, do we have prayer requests?

Yes, my, my dog is not feeling well, my next door neighbor's, you know, best friend, you know, who doesn't believe in God, but maybe we can pray for her as well, because she's got to go to the dentist next week, you know, this is, this was kind of like, so, and then you go home, and you carry over your life for the next week, you can come back again next week, and don't talk about, you know, in the churches, don't talk about sin, you know, one, you're going to upset people, and number two, there are no sinners in the church, because everyone in the church has been baptized, they've done their profession of faith, you know, they've ticked all the boxes, because in many ways, the Dutch Reformed churches in the Netherlands, and I'm talking in a very broad spectrum, there are very good, there are extremely good churches as well, but in, in a large, in a large proportion of the churches, they're very traditional, they, they're really, it's all about tradition, and if you've done everything by the book, it's, you're okay, and because we're living in a part of the country that is Catholic, you can see the influence of the Catholic Church and Catholic traditions in the Protestant churches, so this is why Behold Your God became, for me, just like, this grabbed me, this had to be, we had to do something with this, and so, but then, of course, you run into the immediate problem of the language, so the challenges with the language is that, although, and especially within, within church circles, although people may be, in most cases in the Netherlands, most people are fluent in Dutch, or no, yeah, they should be fluent in Dutch, they're Dutch, but they're, they're fairly fluent in English, or you think they are, although sometimes they, they speak English really well, but they don't understand it quite as well as they speak it, which can all sometimes lead to very interesting situations, but you make assumptions that we actually understand what you're saying to them, but that's not always the case, but certainly in church circles, there's a whole, Christianity has its own vocabulary, so what are words like sanctification, or justification, or adoption, or, so, for example, in, in the Dutch language, you don't have as many words as you have in English to describe, for example, the various, you know, if you take something like sanctification, or justification, it's, it's just like one word, so I think that's a bad example, but there's certainly a lot of cases where theologically, what is, what, we would have different words in English, they'll have the same word in Dutch, so you can't just use, you can't expect that people are going to understand it, even if they're fluent in English, so then became the challenge was to, how do we, how do we get from behold your God in English, to behold your God in Dutch, and in, with the first study, so I'll pause there, because once I start, John, I go, you know, that's,.

Oh, no, no, we're glad to hear it, so you, you have been really at leading in translating some of these works, the behold your God studies, the first and the second, into a couple of languages,.

Into Dutch, and into German now, right? German is the, German is the latest project, German is a real challenge, because at least with Dutch, I can, I'm reasonably okay with Dutch, and I can read it, and you know, today, you know, for the last several years, my Dutch has been my, my church language, so to speak, I still, I still can't sit down and read a Dutch book, just I can't get it, but German is that, yeah, German is the latest project, and so Germany came about, Germany's come about just at the end of last year, where, again, it's a request that came from somebody in the Netherlands, who said, do you have, you know, if behold your God is available in German, and I said, I'll check, and I discovered, I think I had exchanged emails with Teddy, and no, it wasn't available in German, but then, of course, that plants the seed, and it's like, okay, so it's not available in German, how are we going to fix this problem?

So, yeah, so the first Behold Your God study has now been translated into German from, that I've done it, working with two Dutch people that are, one, a lady who's, who's works in Germany, and another gentleman in our, in the church we attend, who does translation work from German to Dutch, or German to English, or something, so we finished the draft of Behold Your God one, and now we're waiting, we're hoping that some people in Germany that, in fact, that you've helped me, and it helped introduce me to, John, that are working in Weight of Majesty, that they can do, go through the draft of the DVDs, and also the book, and then, you know, come back to me with it, with the changes, and then once that's done, you know, and they're working in Weight of Majesty, so hopefully, you know, within a matter of months, both studies will be available in German, which, of course, has a tremendous, much, a very big reach, because once you get the German version, you're not just looking at Germany, but you're looking at Austria, Switzerland, you're looking at large parts of Eastern Europe, where, you know, places like Poland, or Hungary, or the, the old, the Balkan area, all those areas will speak German as a second language, as opposed to, as opposed to English, so, you know, the potential is a much bigger reach for, you know, able to reach a lot more people, you know, than, you know, Dutch, as my mother-in-law, who's no longer with us, said, she said, I don't understand, you're going to move to a foreign country, why didn't you move to all the useful, useful language, you know, like French, or German, or Italian, or something, so, but yes, so, but, and then, the other side is, Behold, Your God is translated, the first study, Weight of Majesty was translated, the church has now been translated into Dutch, plus a whole series of videos, the Logic on Fire, the Matthew Henry documentary, the, the Spurgeon documentary, Spirit and Truth, the American Gospel, Luther, so, I obviously, through Medjugorje, I got, got also got, got contact with Stephen, he's now at Legionnaire's Ministry, so, we did a whole series of videos, the videos were great for me, because I had this very helpful, I had this person help me with the translation, so, a young lady, who I've never actually met, only communicated, communicated by email, but she was introduced to me, a young Christian girl living in the north of the Netherlands, called Marika de Water, and Marika is a Christian, and she is a professional translator from English to Dutch, and I was introduced to her, and she actually did all the translation work, so, what I did was, I made sure that I, I paid her for doing the translation work, because that way, I could have access to her, so when, when I was having pauses between Behold Your God and Wait of Majesty, I would send her the subtitles of the various movies, right, right,.

Translation Work and the Spread of Behold Your God

Keep her busy, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's interesting, you know, certainly, when, when we worked on the Behold Your God studies, in particular, I'm sure that none of us had an idea that it would ever be, you know, reaching people outside of North America, but it was written, you mentioned the, the spiritual context that you're in, you know, it is, in many ways, similar to ours, probably further, further along in some of the, you know, the impact of drifting, our culture, where, where I live, is still extremely religious, but we're seeing that fade quickly, as nominal religion, you know, is moving toward post-Christianity, so a nominal Christianity is of no use to anyone, and so, you know, it only takes a few generations before, you know, the grandchildren say, well, we're not even going to show up at church on Christmas and Easter with grandma, you know, because what's the use, and so it's fading, you know, apart from an intervention of the Lord, we expect to see that continue, but, you know, so the, the studies were written with that kind of a context in mind, you know, people who have a head full of religious phrases, and they're fairly, they're, they're favorable to those phrases, but they don't have the substance of the phrases, and they don't know it, so it's very encouraging to hear that the Lord has used it here in the States, but elsewhere, and we have others who have contacted us to translate, similar to your situation, one in particular was in Russia, and so it's been translated, the first study into Russian, and we often use the heart cry missionaries in that region to help, you know, guard the theological translation, so we're very grateful, but particularly grateful for how the Lord has put it upon your heart to do that, and, and to all the work, and the expense you've gone to.

You've, in our emails back and forth, there have been times where you've shared a few things, and with Stephen before, how you've seen the Lord using that in some of the churches, so can,.

Can you tell us, you know, what you've seen? So yeah, so it's the, the, so in our own church, the church we're part of, we, so we did the study, one of the things we did was a small group of people, about 12 people in the church that we attend, we started a Sunday evening Bible study using people to God as a basis, and the idea was, we're not as focused as Americans, so it takes us two weeks to do a one-week section, so, and we would do two weeks, and then we'd get together on Sunday evening, we'd discuss the chapter, and then watch the DVD, discuss the DVD.

I remember one lady, she was, she was so touched by the first DVD, that she actually left the room in tears, thinking that she was, that she wasn't a believer. She's thinking, okay, this is, this is the impact, this is, this is what you want to happen, you want to have people examine their faith, examine why they believe, why do they believe the things that they believe, and the interesting thing was, what we saw with that group of people, was that they became very, I wouldn't say, they wouldn't become critical of what they were being fed Sunday after Sunday, but they became a lot more discerning, and a lot more questioning about what was going on, so that was an immediate impact that we saw ourselves.

What we saw generally in the Netherlands, we saw everything from complete congregations doing the study, to families. We'd actually reached, I'd reached the point, we'd done the, the first study, we'd finished, done the translation work, September 2017, on the first study, it was finished, and, you know, there was no, I tried to speak to our own pastor, and the, the church elders, and they weren't interested, so it was going, it was, you know, in a sense, going nowhere, and, but then, it's funny how God, how God works in things, so I was, I was trying to find out, trying to reach out in the Netherlands to some people, and I found this organization that is called HeartCry, and I thought, oh, this must be, like, the same as HeartCry Missionary Society, well, it's not, it's a, it's a Christian, it's a Christian publisher called Arjen Ban, and Arjen has published several works from, from Paul Washer, and others translated into Dutch, but he introduced me to a missionary called Marius Storm, and Marius is a South African who's a missionary in the Netherlands, working with Dutch Reformed churches, and I shared the introduction DVD with Marius, and Marius, like, this is amazing, so what, what I didn't realize was, I put the, the DVDs, I put them up on Vimeo, so they were all the password protected, nobody can download them, but then I started getting emails from different people I'd never met, and what started happening was, because the videos were on Vimeo, and people had the password, and they couldn't download them, they were sharing them, so they were sharing the links with other people, right, I had no idea about it, you know, Matthew, you know, well, unfortunately, they couldn't be downloaded, otherwise, I'd have had real problems with media gratitude, like, wait a minute, this wasn't, this wasn't a deal, but we had, there's all over, just from all over the country, Dutch Reformed churches, where they're running multiple, running multiple groups at the same time, where they've got youth groups doing, doing the study, which is really encouraging, because for the youth, youth groups to be doing the study is really giving them a grounding, from all denominations, you know, there's not, it's Reformed Baptist denominations, Pentecostal churches, Reformed churches, I mean, there's no, you, you know, you discover, you know, you suddenly discover that wherever you go, there are, those who love the Lord are all over the place, and they're under every denomination you can imagine, yeah, I remember, you know, I remember the first time I was introduced to somebody who, my wife met her in the supermarket, she almost, she came home and said, I met this lovely lady, she's a, she's Christian, but she's Catholic, and I said, that's impossible, you can't be Christian and Catholic, that's like, you know, that's a contradiction in terms, but then you, we spent many years with people from, in an international Baptist community here in, in Eindhoven, and people come from all over the world, all kinds of denominations, Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox people, people from India, from Orthodox background, people from South America with, with Catholic backgrounds, you know, good old Southern Baptists from Texas, you know, who couldn't understand why we didn't all know the hymns they sang in Texas, because everybody in Texas knows the hymns, you know, from just from all over the place, and that was the same thing with Behold the God, people from all walks of life, all different churches in the Netherlands were, were watching studies, seminary started using the studies, so the, there was this seminary is training young pastors, using the studies, studies called Veritas, a group called Veritas, and they train young pastors, they've added Behold your God and Weight of Majesty to their curriculum, you know, and, and then these students go back to their churches and say, you know, they bring it back with them, so it's suddenly, it's taken on a whole life of its own, and then in mid last year, the organization Hark, right, in the Netherlands, with your permission, were able to publish, so now suddenly, the study became available to a whole, a whole new world of people that, you know, because suddenly there's thousands upon thousands of people in the Netherlands that are subscribed to Hark Cry's website, because they buy fresh material from them, now the study is available to them.

Hark Cry works with a, a radio missionary society that supply materials to people all over the world, that usually people that have, in places like Ethiopia, and you, you know, name it in the world, places that have no access to material, they're now broadcasting Behold your God studies to these people that, you know, would never, ever have an access to it, so the reach, you know, you know, especially this, this ministry, and I can't remember the name off the top of my head, but it's, it's particularly focused on getting the gospel out to places that are, you know, that don't have access to materials.

I know of, of countries in Africa where there are, where I've had to set up a very secure Vimeo link for certain government officials who want to watch Behold your God and do the study, so, you know, it's, it's kind of, it's, I've lost, I've lost control, I have, I have to confess, I no longer have control over this study, it's gone, it's gone.

I did my best to keep the toothpaste in the tube, but it's all over the place.

The Gospel Taking Root in the Netherlands and Beyond

Yeah, we're, we're, oh, it's thrilling to hear those things, some of the, some of those that you just said, that's the first time I've heard them, and, and so, you know, really it is encouraging. We, we have had emails a number of years ago from the first study from South Africa, the, I don't know the official title of their chief legal officer, you know, so in the United States would be the attorney general, but whatever the title is for South Africa, I get a letter from Pretoria, and their, their chief legal officer in the nation attended a church that was going through that study, and he wrote me a letter to tell me how much it had helped, and of course, that was shocking to me, I think I was in a small town in maybe Missouri that weekend preaching, you know, and I was in the preacher's basement praying and preparing, and then here comes this email, and it just, you know, you could have knocked me over, and then maybe a week later we got an email from a group that was doing it in a church, a different group, and so they took a picture, and it was a group of men sitting around, you know, a church table, so a long table, so down one side of the table was a number of gray-haired, gray-haired gentlemen all wearing military uniforms, so I don't know how high, you know, I don't recognize them, you know, colonels, majors, whatever, but high-ranking men in their army, and on the other side of the table was all black pastors, and they were meeting together and working through the studies, quite shocking, you know, really very encouraging to see the gospel do what we know it does, as J .C. Ryle says, you know, it creates churches that are a gallery of humanity, you know, every tongue and tribe gathered together around the king.

Well, Callum, how can we pray for you, and the, you know, the work you still do in the kingdom, and, you know, for the churches there, is there anything specifically that we can recommend to our listeners?

I think,.

Currently for the Netherlands, I think it's a, I think comparing it to the United States, the Netherlands has the best, the highest standard of living of any country in the world. This is an extremely rich country, and this is a country where you talk to your neighbors about God, you go, I don't have God, I've got everything, right?

I've got, I've got three cars, you know, it's a country where, you know, drive down the road and try and to see that a car that's not a BMW or a Mercedes or an Audi. It's a country where people can, most people can afford to go two or three times abroad on vacation every year.

It's, you know, and this is not, it's like, if you look at the Netherlands, as compared to the US, this is not, this is not a country where you have a small group of people that are very rich, and a large majority that are, you know, just trying to get by.

This is a country that is rich beyond most people's imagination. So, it's a country that doesn't feel the need for the gospel. It's a country where the church, as a result, has become very cold, because people within the church are very comfortable.

Mission work is extremely difficult. It's extremely difficult to try and bring the gospel to people in this country. It's, and within the churches where people think that, you know, we've ticked all the boxes, we're good.

You know, it's, you know, when Christians get together, they'll talk about which pastor baptized their child, or which pastor married them, or which pastor, you know, it's like, that's how you judge how Christian somebody is by, you know, which reverend did what, you know.

So, the church here is in dire need, and it's a country where, like, the biggest TV program here, so here's the irony of this country. On Easter weekend, every year, the main television channel in this country, so, you know, you live, you lived in Wales, you're familiar with the way BBC One and BBC Two, so you have the national broadcaster.

The national broadcaster, they broadcast The Passion. The Passion is a live, you know, it goes out live, it's held in different cities every year, it attracts hundreds of thousands of people go to see it live, it's broadcast live on television, and it's primarily a platform for non-believing performers to get a great stage to perform their act.

So, you know, you could say it's almost like Jesus Christ superstar on steroids, you know, and the church goes happily along with this thing, and that's it, you know. So, you know, The Passion is a big thing over here, but this, it is, but you see it, and it's like, you kind of go, whoa, if you were an American coming to the Netherlands at Easter weekend, you go, whoa, this is a really Christian country.

Yeah. Like, and you're gonna go, no, I mean, they decided, they decided this year that one of the key performers for the last couple of years will not, will not have his songs performed in the event, because he's been charged with inappropriate behavior with young ladies, you know, and his songs are being used as part of the performance of, you know, reenacting the crucifixion.

Yeah. So, it's, but for the outsider, it's a really Christian country. So, yeah, the country definitely needs prayer. It's, and the church needs prayer, because the church is, is very, there are some very good churches, but the church, for the large part, is either dead or liberal.

So, that definitely needs prayer. I think prayer for the study, I think prayer for the, for HeartCry, that are now publishing the study, and we're hoping that they'll also publish The Weight of Majesty, and maybe even the church further on.

I've got, I've got a very nice Dutch reform church that's currently started the church study, and I walked them ahead of time. I said, look, you're going to, you're going to have some challenges with this study, because it is, I said, it is a little bit Baptist.

Yes, yes. So, I said, you know, Kobe, you know, just expect there are going to be some things you're going to come across here that may not be quite the way you understand them, but but they love it. They're loving the study.

Well, you know, it's good, it's good for them to,.

It'll teach them to be merciful toward us Reformed Baptists, who, you know, all my bookshelves are full of Presbyterians, and, you know, I mean, there are very few, you know, the older Reformed Baptists.

I do have some, but so, you know, all my favorites, you know, they're, you know, it's Rutherford, and McShane, and those guys, and, you know, so I have to accept that I will differ from.

My heroes occasionally. So, it is, it is interesting. I think that's, I think there's also, you know, the challenges we face now with the, with the situation in Ukraine. So, we've got a lot of refugees coming from the Ukraine.

The Dutch Bible Society are now distributing copies of the gospel in the Bible in Ukraine. So, they're free for all Ukrainians, and free for anybody who wants to have them to give them to Ukrainian refugees.

So, you know, that's very much in the forefront of our minds. So, that whole situation is playing out because, you know, it's actually, if you think about it, it's, I'm trying to think, American geography, I'm trying to think how far it is, but it's, we're like, by car, 24 hours drive from Kiev.

You know, we're, we're, we're kind of, we're about, I think, about 1500 miles, you guys still working miles.

Yeah, if you say kilometers, you're going to lose us.

Yeah, well, I think, I think we're probably about 1000 miles from Kiev. So, you know, and then you go the other side, Lisbon is 1000 miles away as well. So, it's actually, it's, it's, you know, it's relatively close to us.

And, you know, the impact in terms of, you know, how it's, how we're seeing people coming in every day, it's very challenging. So, that's, that situation is, is always a difficulty. But yeah, for the publishers, my heart cry that are that are published in the Dutch study, and for the people that are working in the German study as well, they need prayer, especially by the time they work through my translation, they definitely need prayer.

Yeah, yeah, it's going to be a challenge. So, but, but, you know, as you said earlier, you know, verifying that the quality of the work, um, there's a number of pastors that in Germany that are associated with heart crime missionary society.

And they're both and members of their churches are involved in the in checking the translations and looking for the mistakes and making sure that they're accurate. So, you know, the checks and balances are there.

It's very, very important.

Yeah. Yes. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. And we're very grateful again, for how the Lord has used you in the kingdom. And, you know, and just out of the blue, how, how you've been a friend to media gratia and help us to get those materials into churches that we.

Probably never imagined that they would go to. Oh, there's been, you know, it's one of these things, john, where, you know, I don't, I don't see it as God using me, I think it's just I God use God use behold, God use behold your God as a kick in the backside for me, or a punch in the stomach, or whatever you might call it, it was a wake up call.

Because I think like many other Christians, you become complacent, you become, you just go with the flow. You take in the boxes, you're doing all that you're doing all the right things in a sense. But you can be as dead as anything on the inside.

And he woke up a lot. And he's woken up a lot of other people that study as well. So yeah, it's been it's been a real blessing for people. I don't think I don't think I don't think people I don't think you realize or media gratia realize, or, you know, most people who support you realize just what a blessing this study has been to, to so many people.

You know, and, and also the, you know, the videos, Logic on Fire. I actually, you know, so not long after I became a Christian, I was in a service that was led by Martin Lloyd Jones. Cannot remember anything about the fact I was just told he was this really famous guy from London.

And he stood up in the pulpit. And then I think back and I watched the DVD. And I think what an opportunity was presented to me and what an opportunity I just threw away. Now that I'm saying that I was one server, Martin Lloyd Jones is going to fix changed my life.

But you know, I recently started a series that's trying to work through his was it 300 old sermons and Romans up to chapter five, it's my usual method was good. I had to go on the bicycle, go on the treadmill and plug in Martin Lloyd Jones.

And it's, but yeah, that was a great it was. And that was also one of the things I think also why these little bios that you do in the videos were really so good. Like McShane was such an amazing, an amazing bio and the Rutherford one, you know, we don't, we have no perception.

I think most, most people as Christians have no understanding of the heritage that we have. Of what the likes of Bunyan and Martin Jones and Rutherford and Spurgeon, and, you know, all these men and women that have gone before, we have no understanding of just, you know, what they went through, what they suffered, the price that they paid, the sacrifices they made, but the awesome way in which God used them and how, how much, what they, how much of what they've done is actually, we are the recipients, we're the beneficiaries of what they've, what they did.