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Magazine, Past Issue

July/Aug 2025 issue

WHAT'S INSIDE: Screen-fast, sports betting, & environmental stewardship

Our 10-day screen-fast challenge that we presented in the last issue is getting traction. Marty VanDriel has a story that shares how the fast went for him and others who gave it a try.

But that was just the start. Some generous supporters have recognized how important this issue is, so they are offering up a little extra motivation for us all. They have pledged to donate $100 to two fantastic kingdom causes – Word & Deed and Reformed Perspective – for every person who commits to and completes a 10-day fast from their screens from July 21 to 30 (to a maximum of $20,000 split between both causes).

Screens aren’t evil, but as the cover illustrates so well, screens can keep us from seeing reality – from seeing God’s loving hand upholding creation, this world, and our lives. Here now is your opportunity to join with some family and friends and maybe your whole church community to put screens aside and see the rest of the world unfiltered. Check out page 19 for more details or click on the QR code above to sign up.

Since sports betting was legalized in 2021, it has taken Canada by storm. If you watch any hockey you’ve noticed a lot of betting ads, and they bring with them a growing temptation for Christians to make some money while enjoying their favurite teams. But as Jeff Dykstra explains, we have good reason to steer clear of sports gambling.

In this issue we also do a deep dive into the topic of environmental stewardship by sitting down with two Christian women who work for an environmental group in the middle of a logging community in northern BC.

If you are an adult who tends to skip over the Come & Explore kids’ section, we encourage you to give this one a read. It will be sure to make you smile.

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or click here to download the PDF (8 mb)

INDEX: Are you still able: A nation-wide challenge to experience life without screens / Creation stewards in a logging town / Who do you want to be? RP's 10-day screen-fast challenge / We took the no screens challenge... and now we're changing our habits / What can I do anyways? 35 screen-alternative ideas / Is TikTok the ultimate contraception? / How to stay sane in an overstimulated age / Defeated by distraction / How to use AI like a Christian boss / Who speeches were they? On AI, and others, writing for us / The Way / Who is Mark Carney? / What if we said what we mean? - the political party edition / Am I lazy or just relaxing? What does Proverbs say? / Get out of the game: Christians need to steer clear of sports gambling / Man up: ARPA leaderboards and the call to courageous action / Christians don't pray / Our forever home / Calvin as a comic / The best comics for kids / Fun is something you make: 11 times for family road trips / Come and Explore: Mr. Morose goes to the doctor / Rachel VanEgmond is exploring God's General Revelation / 642 Canadian babies were born alive and left to die / 90 pro-life MPs elected to parliament / Ontario shows why euthanasia "safeguards" can't work / RP's coming to a church near you



News

Canada’s population almost shrinking

The latest population estimation from Statistics Canada is revealing a startling change: Ontario, Quebec, and BC all saw population declines in the first quarter of 2025.

The country as a whole grew by only 20,107 people, which, as a percentage, amounted to a 0.0% increase, the second-slowest growth rate in Canada since records began in 1946. The record prior was the third quarter of 2020, when border restrictions from the Covid-19 pandemic prevented immigration. The decrease has been attributed to announcements by the federal government in 2024 to decrease temporary and permanent immigration levels, with targets of 436,000 for this year, which is still well above the 250,000 level prior to the Liberal government taking office in 2015.

So, in the first quarter of 2025 we lost 17,410 people via emigration to other countries, and there was also a drop of 61,111 in non-permanent residents – people on temporary work or student visas, along with their families. The data also shows that there were 5,628 more deaths than births in the first quarter, largely due to Canada’s quickly declining fertility rate. That’s a collective loss of population of 84,140 people.

Then, going in the other direction, we had 104,256 people immigrate to Canada, for that small net increase of 20,107.

While it is a blessing that people from other countries are still willing and able to move to Canada, it is sobering to note that two-thirds of the world’s populations are now below replacement rate and the world’s population is projected to start declining later this century.

God’s first command to humanity was to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). Imagine what the world could look like in a few generations if Christians fulfilled this cultural mandate with enthusiasm while the rest of the world continued on its course.


Today's Devotional

July 6 - Lifting our eyes to heaven

“Unto You I lift up my eyes, O You who dwell in the heavens.” - Psalm 123:1

Scripture reading: Psalm 123:1-4

Psalm 123 is one of a group of Psalms known as the Psalms of Ascent.  They were used by the Old Testament Church to prepare themselves for the corporate worship of God.  This particular Psalm takes us to the very heart of that >

Today's Manna Podcast

Manna Podcast banner: Manna Daily Scripture Meditations and open Bible with jar logo

Unfaithfulness

Serving #895 of Manna, prepared by B. Tiggelaar, is called "Unfaithfulness" and is based on Matthew 5:27-32.











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Documentary, Movie Reviews, Pro-life - Abortion, Watch for free

Harder Truth

Documentary 9 min / 2003 This film changed me. It is a video, taken in the womb, of an abortion. It is evil uncovered and brought into the light. Just as it took pictures of dead Jews, stacked like cordwood, to drive home the horror of the Holocaust, and it took the newspapers carrying pictures of the lynched teen Emmett Till to reveal the wickedness of what was happening in the American South, so too, visuals are important in the abortion debate. Ours is a visual culture and graphic pictures of bloody, broken, tiny bodies communicate what abortion really is (Eph 5:11). These images cut through words like “choice,” “rights” and “freedom” and make plain the fact that abortion is murder. While this short video, Harder Truth, is one I believe should be widely shared and seen, it contains pictures that are deeply disturbing so it should be shown with care. When you share this, the audience should be warned about what they are about to see. And what are they going to see? While there is no verbal narration, the film begins with two minutes of text detailing what is going to be shown and why it is being shown. Then there is two minutes of a baby in the womb, developing from zygote to fetus. Then, just after the 4-minute mark, we see what an abortion actually is and what it does to the baby. The final four minutes of the film show remains of aborted babies: bloody broken bodies, tiny detached arms and legs, and crushed skulls. I've shown this at dozens of presentations and, as the video itself suggests, when I show it I tell the audience that anyone who wants to look away should feel very free to do so. I also find that, while the film is very short, its nine minutes of content can be overwhelming and I often show only a middle selection of two or three minutes. The toughest consideration in showing this film is, how young is too young? As pro-life apologist Scott Klusendorf notes, girls as young as 12 can, in many jurisdictions, get an abortion without their parents’ knowledge or permission. Twelve is very young. But if they are old enough to get an abortion isn’t it important they know the real truth of it? I've been asked why I bother showing this to pro-life audiences. After all, we don't need to be convinced abortion is wicked, do we? Well, yes, we do. Abortion happens in even 100% pro-life churches too, and the reason it does is because sometimes those pro-life convictions are only an inch deep. That shouldn't surprise us. Abortions are all done behind closed doors. The victims are invisible. We might hear that 100,000 babies are murdered each year in Canada, and ten times that amount in the US, but those are just numbers, and too big for us to really fathom. So when a young teen finds herself pregnant and, mistakenly or correctly, thinks her parents will disown her if they ever find out, will inch-deep convictions stop her from taking the "solution" the world is readily offering? So there is a need then, to show even our Christian, pro-life, young people, the grim reality of what abortion is. Every bit as important, we need to tell our daughters that we will love them and will help them if they ever have an unplanned pregnancy. WARNING: THIS VIDEO CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES OF AN ABORTION. ...

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History

The untimely death of Emmett Louis Till: The power of graphic pictures

Pictures have a power that words simply cannot match. That became evident in the tragic death of Emmett Louis Till, a 14-year-old Chicago teen who was brutally murdered in Mississippi in 1955. Till was in the Mississippi town of Money visiting his uncle. Out with friends one afternoon, he did the same dumb thing many teenage boys will do; he whistled at a pretty girl. The problem was Till was black, and the woman he whistled at, Carolyn Bryant, was white. Foolish for the fifties While in any time period it’s crude to wolf whistle when an attractive woman goes by, in 1955 it was just plain crazy for a young black teen to whistle at a pretty white woman. No one seems quite sure why Till did it. Mississippi was a difficult place to be black, and Carolyn Bryant’s husband and brother-in-law were livid when they heard what Till had done. According to a cousin, "They said they were just going to whip him." Sadly, Till soon encountered the vicious realities of racism in 1955. He was kidnapped from his bed at his uncle’s house on August 28, beaten, and shot in the head. His body was then tied to a heavy metal fan with barbed wire and thrown into the nearby Tallahatchie River. Some fishermen found his battered corpse in the river three days later. The husband and brother-in-law were tried for the murder but acquitted. In a 1956 interview with Look magazine, the two admitted to the murders. Though they had confessed, no further legal action was taken against the men since under American law you cannot be tried twice for the same crime. To anyone who knows about the American South in the ‘40s and ‘50s, this story is hardly surprising. It seems that there are many stories of blacks who were lynched, driven out of town, or otherwise put out of the way. The whites accused of the crime, generally speaking, received little or no punishment. The story of Emmett Louis Till is neither unusual nor surprising. Open casket One thing about the story is different. Till’s mother held the teen’s funeral in Chicago, and it was an open casket funeral. No mortician, no funeral director, no matter how skilled, can fully hide the effects of being beaten, shot in the head, and left in the river for days. Reporters were present at the funeral and took pictures. The stomach-churning photos were duly published in Chicago, and picked up by papers around the world. Though anyone living in 1955 who was familiar with the American South would have heard of stories of the brutal murder of blacks, few would have seen the pictures. It is easy to ignore it when someone writes about the suffering of people in a distant county or state. It is much harder to ignore it – to let it just go away – when you see pictures of one of the victims. When you can see the bruises from the beating, the wounds where the bullet would have entered and exited the head, and marks that the barbed wire would have left around Till’s neck, then violence against blacks becomes very, very hard to forget. The start of something big The murder of Emmett Louis Till is credited by many with waking up Americans to the extent of the problem of racism. According to U.S. Assistant Attorney General Alexander Acosta, Till’s death “stands at the crossroads of the American civil rights movement.” On December 1, 1955, only three months after Till’s body was found, Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man and was thrown off the bus. This triggered the Montgomery bus boycott, and because they couldn’t ignore the problem any longer there were whites willing to support the fight for equal treatment of blacks. When Martin Luther King went from playing a support role in the bus boycott, to leading a nation wide movement for racial equality, there were whites working with blacks to change their nation. The problem could no longer be ignored. The murder of young Emmett Louis Till was not at all unusual for the time. Newspapers had run countless stories with thousands of words detailing the treatment of blacks. The murder of one more teenage black was not at all surprising. What was surprising were the pictures of his battered body. They were gut-wrenching photos that could not be forgotten or ignored. They had an impact that mere words simply could not. Sometime a picture really is worth a thousand words. We haven't shared the graphic pictures of Emmett Till because we understand it is quite possible younger children may be viewing this over their parents' shoulders. Instead we've included a link to one of the photos, as it was placed in the Chicago Defender, here. This article first appeared in the June 2004 edition of Reformed Perspective....

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Pro-life - Abortion

Does God require, or forbid, graphic pictures in the abortion debate?

Among pro-lifers the topic of graphic pictures can cause some heated debates. Should we make use of pictures of aborted children to expose the public to what happens in an abortion? It’s an important question, but a key to answering it comes in realizing this is about practicalities, rather than principles. DOES THE BIBLE FORBID, OR REQUIRE THEM? If it were about principles then we should be able to make a clear biblically-based case either for or against the use of these gory, brutal, bloody pictures. But it doesn’t seem a case can be made either for forbidding or for requiring their use. If God forbids the use of gore in visual presentations, then what of Jesus, who was beaten and bloodied and raised up on a cross in front of the crowds? God didn’t hide the horror that was being done to his Son. And think also of the countless public sacrifices done for hundreds of years before, all pointing to this moment. No, God doesn’t forbid bloody messages. But does God require them? Again we can say no – the Jews were, for a time, required to make sacrifices, but we aren’t. There is no command now to pass on Truth with gore. Now, if graphic message are allowed but not required then whether we use these pictures should comes down to evaluating their effectiveness. This isn’t a matter of wrong or right, but rather, do they work? Do graphic pictures shock people into realizing that the unborn are precious human beings? Or do they so disgust people that they turn away and refuse to even to consider the humanity of the unborn? GRAPHIC AND EFFECTIVE I think the answer is both. Jonathon Van Maren recently wrote about how, more than 100 years ago, graphic pictures shocked Europe into ending the brutal treatment of the Congolese people at the hands of Belgium's slave-trading King Leopold II.  The US civil rights movement was spurred on, in part, by the use of graphic pictures that showed the savagery being committed against blacks in the South. I've seen graphic pictures have an impact today too, when I made use of graphic pictures with student groups and then saw students who were apathetic about the unborn get stirred up. And I’ve seen graphic pictures spark campus-wide discussions at universities and colleges. But some people do walk away. Just a glance, and off they go headed in the opposite direction, and there’s no chance to talk. Graphic pictures have their place, but there also seem to be limits to their usefulness. So if graphic pictures have mixed results, what of other approaches? NON-GRAPHIC AND EFFECTIVE Two years ago ARPA Canada created an impressive display on Parliament Hill using of 100,000 small pink or blue flags. Each representing one child killed via abortion in Canada each year. There was no gore, but it was effective. And what of the two pictures accompanying this article, painted by Lisa Van Dam? They clearly illustrate the humanity of the unborn, and the inhumanity of abortion. Doesn’t it almost hurt to look at them? Imagine them, paired together on a billboard – that’s a clear message, an unforgettable message, and no blood to be seen. Dr. William Lile has another approach. In 1999 he bought an abortion clinic to put it out of business, and ended up with all of its instruments and machines too. He decided that he would give people tours of the facility to show them what had been happening there. As LifeSiteNews.com's Pete Baklinski reports: "He used the tools, including the suction machine, to show how first and second trimester abortions were performed. He also showed how a partial-birth abortion was performed in the last trimester using a doll as a model. "The doctor holds that demonstrating the reality of abortion while using the actual tools of the trade on models allows people to see the horror without being traumatized by seeing blood or body parts. "'What I’ve found is that the more graphic the demonstration the more the audience will have their hands over their ears and their eyes closed. And, you can't educate anybody when their ears are covered up and their eyes are closed,' he said." Dr. Lile doesn’t want to make use of graphic pictures, and yet his own method seems impactful. But like graphic pictures, it has limitations the biggest of which is reach: he can only sway those willing to come visit his clinic. CONCLUSION So what is the best approach? That’s going to continue to be a matter of debate. But as we have this discussion it’s important to remember that whatever our thoughts as to the use of graphic pictures – yeah or nay – we shouldn’t condemn the other side. They aren’t doing something wrong; they simply disagree as to which approach is more effective. When we understand this as a debate about effectiveness – rather than wrong vs. right – then we can be more objective as we evaluate all the various approaches. Then we can more easily work together to find out how in this situation or that, this approach or that will work best to highlight the humanity of the unborn. Both paintings are by Lisa Van Dam. Related resource Why Graphic Pictures of Abortion are Necessary...









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Religion - Pentecostal

What do Pentecostals believe about the miraculous spiritual gifts?

What do Pentecostals believe? That's quite the question – how does one fairly and accurately describe the beliefs of a group that numbers in the hundreds of millions? Turn that tables and imagine for a moment that a Charismatic magazine – let's say, Pentecostal Perspective – tried describing what it meant to be a Reformed Christian. That would be tough too. If their focus was too narrow they might investigate the Christian Reformed Church and conclude being Reformed means having women ministers. Or maybe they would drop by some Free Church of Scotland congregations and decide that being Reformed meant doing without instrumental accompaniment, or conversely, after attending a Canadian Reformed service, conclude organs seem to be a Reformed requirement. Definition So we don't want to get lost in the differences that exist between different Pentecostal denominations. We'll keep our focus quite broad here (although that has its own problems) and stick to the one universally-held Pentecostal belief – that the miraculous spiritual gifts of speaking in tongues, healing, and prophecy, that were a part of the Apostolic Church, continue to be a part of the Church today. These "continuationists" or "charismatic" believers also exist in other denominations, so this belief isn't unique to Pentecostals. But it is uniquely foundational to it. You can be Baptist, Roman Catholic, or Anglican and be charismatic or not, but there is no such thing as a non-charismatic Pentecostal. Now, Christians of all sorts know and agree that God continues to do miracles today – that's why we pray and ask God to heal the sick – but it is a Pentecostal belief that Christians can expect to be agents for these miracles – that some will be given the gift of healing, others the gift of prophecy, and yet others the gift of tongues. This universal stand prompts a universal question, one you can ask any and all Pentecostals and charismatics too: if these miraculous gifts, described in the New Testament, are still with us today then why aren’t the manifestations more…well…miraculous? Questions for Pentecostals As Rev. Holtvlüwer showed in his article "Tongue Twisters" in the March 2004 issue, when the Apostles spoke in tongues they were speaking in a variety of foreign languages they had never learned. That’s miraculous indeed, and is it any wonder that listeners were “amazed and perplexed” (Acts 2:12)? But today few tongues speakers claim to be talking in identifiable earthly languages. Instead many say they are speaking in the “tongues of angels” and cite 1 Corinthians 13:1 as a proof text. It’s here that the Apostle Paul says, “If I could speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.” But this approach to tongues-speaking has problems: This is the only time the “tongue of angels” is ever mentioned in the Bible, and it is clear in this passage that Paul is using hyperbole to make a point. He isn’t claiming to actually speak in the tongue of angels; he’s only emphasizing the importance of love. This is made clear in the very next verse where Paul writes, “If I…can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge…but have not love, I am nothing.” Is Paul claiming that he is actually able to fathom all knowledge? Clearly not – that would make him God. It should also be clear that Paul wasn't claiming to speak in the tongue of angels. No one knows what language angels speak, so it is impossible to verify whether a person is indeed speaking this language. Someone suddenly able to speak Spanish or Chinese could have their claim easily tested, but not if they say they're speaking "angel." This isn't a question of sincerity – this isn't to say that Pentecostals are pulling something over on the rest of us. We shouldn't think they are lying. But there is good reason to think they are mistaken. Even in an emotionally-charged state, one cannot start speaking Chinese unless a miracle is involved. But Pentecostals – or at least the vast majority of them – don't suddenly start speaking a new foreign language. Instead, they start doing what, in any other context, would be called babbling. And if someone were in a distraught or otherwise emotional state, it isn't hard to believe they could start blurting out nonsensical "words," but that wouldn't involve a miracle. The issue here isn't one of sincerity, but labeling: Pentecostals have been taught that this is speaking in tongues, but it is something very different from what happened in the biblical accounts. It is also puzzling when you consider that speaking in tongues also occurs in the Oneness Pentecostal movement, a cult that denies the Trinity. Can Christians and cultists share the same gifts? Similarly the gift of healing today seems far less miraculous than the gift described in the New Testament. While Peter, John, and Paul healed people who had been crippled from birth (Acts 3:1-10 14:8-10) Pentecostal churches have started ministries aimed at aiding the disabled, rather than healing them. And consider how today’s gift of prophecy is a letdown as well. Rather than the infallible prophecy described in the Bible (Deut 18:22) many Pentecostals admit that their prophecy can be mistaken1. To sum up, instead of the awe-inspiring miraculous gifts described in the New Testament, the gifts manifested in Pentecostal churches seem to be something else entirely. And entirely less impressive. Cessationism Even as our focus here is on Pentecostals, we'd be remiss if we didn't get at least a general understanding of what the other side believes. "Cessationists" (the root here is “cease”) believe that some of the gifts of the Spirit mentioned in 1 Cor 12:8-10, 28-31 & Romans 12:6-8 stopped or ceased soon after the Apostles died. This list of gifts includes prophecy, speaking in tongues, teaching, wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, discernment, interpretation, encouraging, and apostleship. For almost all Christians, the question is not whether some of these gifts have ceased, but rather which ones, as even Pentecostal churches believe that the role of the apostles has ceased. Thus there is a very real sense in which even Pentecostals are "cessationists" (though on a trip to New York I did come across a number of churches that claimed to have Apostles). More commonly, "cessationist" refers to a person who believes the miraculous gifts of the Spirit – specifically healing, speaking in tongues, and prophecy – have ceased. But even as cessationists deny that prophecy occurs today (because the Bible is complete) that isn't a denial that God can give people inner guidance. We’ve probably all experienced a time when we were in the right place at the right time and led to say just the right thing to one of our brothers or sisters. But while we would call this God’s guidance, a Pentecostal might well call this prophecy. This is not just a matter of semantics – it is one thing to say you think God is leading you to speak something and quite another thing to declare: “Thus says the Lord…” Prophecy as it is described in the Bible is without error (see Deut. 18:22) so any Pentecostal who claims to be prophesying is making quite a claim indeed, and is making a claim that no cessationist would dare make. God is still doing miracles As we conclude, it's important to clarify that rejecting Pentecostalism and holding to cessationism doesn't mean denying God can and does still deliver miracles. The gift of miracles might be over, but miracles certainly do keep on occurring. In the video below one remarkable example is shared: pro-life activist John Barros tells about how God translated his English preaching into Spanish so a couple about to get an abortion could be confronted with the Gospel message to repent and believe. There are also accounts of Muslims being confronted with the Gospel in their dreams, and God blinding the eyes of government officials who are searching for illegal bibles. While God does seem to ordinarily use "ordinary means" to spread His Gospel, there is a reason we still pray for miracles – our God can do anything! Endnote 1 C. Samuel Storms (pages 207-210) in Are Miraculous Gifts for Today? and Eric Davis' "Addressing Continualist Arguments from 1 Corinthians 14"...

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Adult biographies, Book Reviews

God's Smuggler

by Brother Andrew Autobiography 1967 / 288 pages This is an amazing true story about God’s miraculous interventions to get Bibles to his persecuted Church in both Communist countries and Muslim ones. There are miracles all around us, but the rising sun, our pumping hearts, and babies’ wriggling toes do their thing with such regularity as to seem ordinary to us – we take them for granted. Not so the miracles in God’s Smuggler. Here “Brother Andrew” (1928- ) relates one extraordinary answer to prayer after another: a needed cake delivered by an off-duty postman, money of the right sum arriving at just the right time, the instant healing of Andrew’s crippled ankle. Then, in his work smuggling Bibles behind the Iron Curtain, this Dutchman came to rely on the extraordinary becoming regular. Border crossings into Communist countries were always tense, but each time Brother Andrew would ask God to “make seeing eyes blind” and again and again God would do so. The same border guards who had just taken apart the car in front of them would simply wave them through or, if they did inspect their cargo, the guards would completely miss the Bibles crammed in everywhere. It was through these regular miracles that God used Andrew and his coworkers to deliver His Word to millions in the persecuted Church. I'll share one of his miraculous accounts, which I also shared with my children, about Andrew on an early smuggling trip, this time to Yugoslavia. "The roads in Yugoslavia were extraordinarily hard on cars. When we weren't climbing fierce mountain trails, we were fording streams at the bottom of steep valleys. But the worst threat to the little VW was the dust. Dust lay over the unpaved roads like a shroud; it sifted in on us even through the closed windows, and I hated to think what it was doing to the engine. Every morning in our Quiet Time, Nikola and I would include a prayer for the car. 'Lord, we don't have either time or the money for repairs on this car, so will you please keep it running?' "One of the peculiarities of travel in Yugoslavia in 1957 was the friendly road-stoppings that took place. Cars. especially foreign cars, were still such a rarity that when two drivers passed each other, they almost always stopped to exchange a few words about road conditions, weather, gasoline supplies, bridges. One day we were dusting along a mountain road when up ahead we spotted a small truck coming toward us. As it pulled alongside, we also stopped. "'Hello,' said the driver. 'I believe I know who you are. You're the Dutch missionary who is going to preach in Terna tonight.' "'That's right.' "'And this is the Miracle Car?' "'The Miracle Car?' "'I mean the car that you pray for each morning.' I had to laugh. I had mentioned the prayer in a previous meeting; the word had obviously gone on ahead. 'Yes,' I admitted, 'this is the car.' 'Mind if I take a look at her? I'm a mechanic.' "'I'd appreciate it.' I had put gasoline in that engine, and that was literally all since I had crossed the border. The mechanic went around to the rear and lifted the hood over the motor. For a long time he stood there, just staring. "'Brother Andrew,' he said at last, 'I have just become a believer. It is mechanically impossible for this engine to run. Look. The air filter. The carburetor. The sparks. No, I'm sorry. This car cannot run.' "'And yet it's taken us thousands of miles.' The mechanic only shook his head. 'Brother,' he said, 'would you permit me to clean your engine for you and give you a change of oil. It hurts me to see you abuse a miracle.' Gratefully we followed the man to his village a few miles from Terna. We pulled behind him into a little courtyard filled with pigs and geese. That night while we preached he took the engine apart, cleaned it piece by piece, changed the oil, and by the time we were ready to leave the next morning, presented us with a grinning new automobile. God had answered our prayer." Cautions While reading this to my girls, I told my children we shouldn’t understand the many miracles Andrew experienced as evidence that he was always acting wisely and praying as he should – he himself acknowledged that God honored one of of his prayer requests despite how he prayed. There's an instance or two early on that reminded me of the old joke about a man caught up in a flood who had to take refuge on his roof and prayed for God to save him. As he was praying a boy rowed by in a boat and asked if the man wanted to join him but the man replied that he didn't need the boy's help because God would save him. Then a helicopter came, the pilot offering a lift, only to get the same response. Eventually, the waters rose and the man drowned. When he got to heaven the man wanted to know why God didn't save him, and God told him He had, sending a boy in a boat and a pilot in a helicopter. Similarly, Brother Andrew turns down offered help (for a needed cake), only to later receive help of an even more miraculous sort (a cake, unsolicited, arriving in the mail, just in time). I don't think that we have to take all of this prescriptively, as what we also should do – we can get in the boat or helicopter, or take someone up on their offer to bake a cake, and not wait for even more miraculous intervention. But we should most certainly take it descriptively as evidence of God’s great love for his persecuted Church. And, when we understand God's great love for His children, and His great power, then we too may be willing and eager to risk much to show His love to others. Conclusion We can also appreciate how aware Andrew was of his complete reliance on God. We all are, all the time, but when times are good we so often forget. Living his life in danger so much of the time, Brother Andrew wasn’t nearly so forgetful. This would also be a valuable tool to impress on a younger generation that while in their lifetimes it has primarily been the culture that has been the biggest enemy of God’s Church, in many places, and at many times, it has been the government. I would recommend this primarily for adults, because it does take some discernment to think through where Brother Andrew is relying on God in ways that we too should imitate, and where he might be getting close, or even crossing the line, into testing God. For a younger audience, just read it to them and discuss afterward. Then it could be good for as young as 8. This is one of the books I read for RP's 52 in 2022 challenge....