5/19/2007
THE HOUSE OF MAN AND THE HOUSE OF GOD
NUMBER 182
The House of Man and the House of God
In 1978, the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu, had a dream. He would build a “House of the Republic” in Bucharest that would be the envy of the world. It would be built from the finest materials Romania had to offer, and filled with her treasures. He commissioned architects, conscripted one hundred thousand laborers, razed one quarter of Old Bucharest and began to build.
Ten years and over one billion dollars later, the building stands at the head of a broad boulevard atop a man-made hill in the center of the city. It is clad inside and out with grey-streaked white marble from Ruschita. It has elegant chandeliers from Medias. The floors are done in mosaic tile and covered with hand-woven carpets from every corner of the nation.
The building is four hundred sixty-six feet tall. Its twelve stories enclose almost four million square feet. Next to the Pentagon in Washington, it is the largest non-skyscraper structure in the world. While the building was being constructed, the people of Romania shivered in dark, unheated houses and did without most of the things the average person considers necessities.
One hundred kilometers southwest of Bucharest in a small town there is another building. Not long before Ceaucescu began to dream, in March 1977 an earthquake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale struck the area and damaged this other building. World Vision provided emergency medical equipment and relief supplies to the citizens, and also promised help to the local evangelical church. The church building had been damaged and condemned by the authorities. These same authorities steadfastly refused to issue the necessary permit for repair or rebuilding. Although freedom of religion was guaranteed by the Romanian constitution, evangelical churches were severely restricted in many unofficial ways--their life and dynamism often threatened the status quo.
The congregation was resourceful. They would not accept defeat--the House of God was more important to them than the obstructions of man. They removed the floor from the condemned building and built a kind of tent with the two by fours. They roofed it with floorboards and used burlap and cardboard for the walls. The salvaged pews and chairs were moved in for seating, along with several potbelly stoves to keep the temperature above freezing in the winter to come.
The congregation began to worship in their tent. They prayed and year by year applied to the authorities for the permit to rebuild. But their applications were turned down again and again. The officials in the Department of Cults were in no hurry. The condemned building was at the edge of the town and the land in that area would probably be needed for farming sometime soon.
During this time, Ralph Hamburger was making his rounds in Eastern Europe on behalf of World Vision. Ralph moved quietly from East Germany to Poland to Czechoslovakia to Hungary to Romania. He was a pastors' pastor who brought loving concern and modest assistance to the "un-free" and often hard-pressed believers of these countries. He kept in touch with the congregation in their tent and prayed with them for favor with the authorities.
Finally, after ten years of sweltering summers and freezing winters and innumerable prayer meetings, things changed. The Senior Authorities in the Department of Cults were replaced by new men more willing to grant the permit. The Denominational Authorities in Bucharest decided to risk governmental displeasure and gave their approval. The local authorities approved the purchase of an old, dilapidated farmhouse that could be restored and made into a church, "as long as the roof wasn't changed and the size was not increased."
The promise made ten years earlier was finally kept with a check for $15,000 from World Vision for the building supplies that could only be obtained with hard currency. The congregation joined in with one heart and mind to build. They completed the church in record time. Ralph Hamburger rejoiced with them as they began to use the wonderful answer to their long prayer. The new Church is almost twice the size of the old one and is already filling up.
A hundred kilometers northeast in Bucharest, the House of the Republic stands empty. The dictator who dreamed it is dead. It is now called the House of the People. It will require four more years and almost three hundred million dollars to complete.
When it is finished, if it is finished, no one knows what they will do with it.
+++++++
This tale from around the World Vision campfire was written in 1988. The House of the People is still not all finished but following the fall of Communism and the overthrow and execution of Ceaucescu in December 1989, it was renamed “The Palace of the Parliament.” Part of the building currently serves as the home of the Romania’s Chamber of Deputies and Senate.
The Church in Romania has continued to grow and thrive.
+++++++
Unless the Lord builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
the watchman stays awake in vain.
Psalm 127.1
The House of Man and the House of God
In 1978, the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu, had a dream. He would build a “House of the Republic” in Bucharest that would be the envy of the world. It would be built from the finest materials Romania had to offer, and filled with her treasures. He commissioned architects, conscripted one hundred thousand laborers, razed one quarter of Old Bucharest and began to build.
Ten years and over one billion dollars later, the building stands at the head of a broad boulevard atop a man-made hill in the center of the city. It is clad inside and out with grey-streaked white marble from Ruschita. It has elegant chandeliers from Medias. The floors are done in mosaic tile and covered with hand-woven carpets from every corner of the nation.
The building is four hundred sixty-six feet tall. Its twelve stories enclose almost four million square feet. Next to the Pentagon in Washington, it is the largest non-skyscraper structure in the world. While the building was being constructed, the people of Romania shivered in dark, unheated houses and did without most of the things the average person considers necessities.
One hundred kilometers southwest of Bucharest in a small town there is another building. Not long before Ceaucescu began to dream, in March 1977 an earthquake measuring 7.2 on the Richter scale struck the area and damaged this other building. World Vision provided emergency medical equipment and relief supplies to the citizens, and also promised help to the local evangelical church. The church building had been damaged and condemned by the authorities. These same authorities steadfastly refused to issue the necessary permit for repair or rebuilding. Although freedom of religion was guaranteed by the Romanian constitution, evangelical churches were severely restricted in many unofficial ways--their life and dynamism often threatened the status quo.
The congregation was resourceful. They would not accept defeat--the House of God was more important to them than the obstructions of man. They removed the floor from the condemned building and built a kind of tent with the two by fours. They roofed it with floorboards and used burlap and cardboard for the walls. The salvaged pews and chairs were moved in for seating, along with several potbelly stoves to keep the temperature above freezing in the winter to come.
The congregation began to worship in their tent. They prayed and year by year applied to the authorities for the permit to rebuild. But their applications were turned down again and again. The officials in the Department of Cults were in no hurry. The condemned building was at the edge of the town and the land in that area would probably be needed for farming sometime soon.
During this time, Ralph Hamburger was making his rounds in Eastern Europe on behalf of World Vision. Ralph moved quietly from East Germany to Poland to Czechoslovakia to Hungary to Romania. He was a pastors' pastor who brought loving concern and modest assistance to the "un-free" and often hard-pressed believers of these countries. He kept in touch with the congregation in their tent and prayed with them for favor with the authorities.
Finally, after ten years of sweltering summers and freezing winters and innumerable prayer meetings, things changed. The Senior Authorities in the Department of Cults were replaced by new men more willing to grant the permit. The Denominational Authorities in Bucharest decided to risk governmental displeasure and gave their approval. The local authorities approved the purchase of an old, dilapidated farmhouse that could be restored and made into a church, "as long as the roof wasn't changed and the size was not increased."
The promise made ten years earlier was finally kept with a check for $15,000 from World Vision for the building supplies that could only be obtained with hard currency. The congregation joined in with one heart and mind to build. They completed the church in record time. Ralph Hamburger rejoiced with them as they began to use the wonderful answer to their long prayer. The new Church is almost twice the size of the old one and is already filling up.
A hundred kilometers northeast in Bucharest, the House of the Republic stands empty. The dictator who dreamed it is dead. It is now called the House of the People. It will require four more years and almost three hundred million dollars to complete.
When it is finished, if it is finished, no one knows what they will do with it.
+++++++
This tale from around the World Vision campfire was written in 1988. The House of the People is still not all finished but following the fall of Communism and the overthrow and execution of Ceaucescu in December 1989, it was renamed “The Palace of the Parliament.” Part of the building currently serves as the home of the Romania’s Chamber of Deputies and Senate.
The Church in Romania has continued to grow and thrive.
+++++++
Unless the Lord builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
the watchman stays awake in vain.
Psalm 127.1
5/12/2007
RACHEL WEEPING FOR HER CHILDREN
NUMBER 181
Rachel Weeping For Her Children
The weekly Faith and Values section of the Lexington Herald-Leader is usually a bastion of politically correct diversity that runs from religion-lite of various stripes to cults and kooks and wing-nuts of every possible persuasion. Today’s pre-Mother’s Day edition is startling to say the least.
The first page has a large simple picture of an empty crib underneath Matthew 2.18 in large type:
A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.
Matthew quotes the prophet Jeremiah in describing the result of the slaughter of all the children under 2 years old in Bethlehem by Herod, in his desire to eliminate a potential candidate for his throne.
The lead article, “Mother’s mourning” is on the planned Kentucky Memorial for the Unborn, a garden of refuge for women who have lost an unborn child through abortion, miscarriage or stillbirth. The garden will be formed in the shape of a womb and will feature a life-size bronze statue of Rachel. There will also be a wall similar to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, on which families may place plaques inscribed with the names of their unborn children or messages and prayers.
There is a long article on “Remembering The Lost” describing services several local churches are holding especially for mothers and fathers who have killed or lost their unborn children.
There are touching letters to an aborted son and a miscarried daughter that give eloquent testimony to the lasting effects of these events upon the mothers.
There is a long article by the local Catholic Bishop that makes the Roman Catholic prohibition on abortion very clear, and deals with the victims and the survivors with equal compassion.
Finally, there is a column by Rev. Paul Prather, ex-Herald-Leader religion writer, dealing with the question of how seemingly ordinary human beings can commit barbarous acts. He cites various studies, but the bottom line seems to be that most of the evil in the world today is committed by normal people put into abnormal situations.
He describes how Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia could produce the people who ran the gas ovens and the Gulag. It is complex but the bottom line is that two things were all that were really required:
+The dirty job at hand had to be given a larger sense of purpose. The policemen and guards had to be convinced that what they were doing was in defense of a vital religious ideology or protecting national security.
+The victims had to be dehumanized through propaganda.
Two things came to mind as I read these four pages:
Never before has the Herald-Leader allowed anything like full disclosure of the physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual consequences of abortion on demand to appear on its pages. The paper has been in the front line of those resisting any kind of education or informed consent or any other effort to tell the pregnant woman that what she has in her womb is anything more than an inconvenience. Yet these four pages make all of the consequences of abortion on demand very clear.
Although Prather never once mentioned abortion in his column on evil, it was right there, just below the surface. The two things that have made it possible to murder over 40,000,000 babies in the womb since Roe v. Wade are same two things that enabled the guards to stoke the furnaces in Auschwitz and Belsen:
+The Woman’s Choice to control her own body was portrayed through powerful propaganda as a morally good blow for freedom of conscience and liberty of action. Look around today-The woman who hires a hit man to destroy the baby in her womb is praised as an upholder of liberal moral values. However, if she hires an illegal immigrant to clean her house and fails to pay the social security, she may be considered immoral and unjust.
+The baby in the womb has been thoroughly dehumanized. I recently heard a young woman trained in our public schools and enlightened by Planned Parenthood speak of coming in to a pregnancy center and telling the counselor that she wanted to get an abortion before three months were up because that is when IT turned into a BABY. All the words involved in abortion on demand are weasel words designed to obscure the facts and ease the conscience. Since our local crisis pregnancy center installed an ultrasound machine, the number of women planning on an abortion and changing their minds has doubled.
Mother’s Day will be a time of sadness for many women who were snookered into solving a short-term problem with an action that has long-term consequences. We need to treat them with kindness and compassion. But we also should recognize that the truth is never welcome in the public square of America and is always under attack by the promoters of the upside down morality of the liberal left.
We might also say a prayer Risa Richardson, Faith/Values Editor. Given the paper’s history, we would have expected four pages of praise for single parent families, two-daddy families, two-mommie families and urgent pleas not to celebrate Mother’s Day in a way that might hurt anyone’s feelings or cause anyone to suffer diminution of self-esteem. We can hope this venture outside the fetid swamp of liberal left relativism will not cost Lisa her job.
