June 2007

Dear partners in the mission

What is the impact that radio broadcasts can have on people?  Can they reach the masses, or do they just touch a few individuals?  Is radio an effective medium of communication, especially in Africa ?  Can it provoke any reaction?  Those are questions that some of you may be asking when considering supporting a radio-ministry like that of Reformed Faith and Life.  Now, think of the following: in 1994, repeated appeals to exterminate ethnic components of the Rwandan population were launched from the “Radio-des-mille-collines” (Radio-of-the-thousand-hills) in Kigali , the capital of this small East African country.  The result?  Between five hundred thousand and eight hundred thousand men, women and children were massacred during what is widely considered today to have been a genocide.  Radio broadcasts were largely instrumental to this crime against humanity, fuelling hatred and violence.  Now, if they can have such powerful and negative influence on a whole population, how much more should broadcasts which proclaim the Gospel of reconciliation with God be supported and be put on the air wherever the opportunity arises…  Why should such a powerful medium of communication be left into the hands of the ungodly?  To be true, many Christian broadcasters are on the air, in particular on Short Waves (for instance you can regularly hear programmes produced and broadcast from America   in the evening).  Some are faithful to the Revelation of the Triune God, others wilfully distort it.  Being on the air and preaching to so many people over countries and even continents is a tremendous responsibility:  when Christ returns to judge the living and the dead, He will ask an account to those who were entrusted with the message of which He and His Kingdom are the center, the focal point, not the preacher and his own ideas or feelings.  This Kingdom is the only universal political dominion destined by the will of the Father to rule for all eternity.

How can the Kingdom and national politics come together?  For a few weeks already, France has a new president, and a heavy programme of social and economical reforms is about to be launched.  Will it achieve the goals set by the new president and his team?  Far from me to comment  on this and give my preferences or opinions here.  As a radio broadcaster I know one thing: short term reforms can bring short term results.  However, to reform a country in depth and put it on a new course, you need something much more profound: the realization that our own life here below has eternal life as a goal, and eternal life is to be found in Christ and within His Kingdom only.  When this realization (which is no less than a conversion) takes place, then you start envisaging your short term actions in a much different way.  Then the cultural, social and economic life of a country starts being gradually transformed.  This is not a myth, the history of some nations which were transformed by the Reformation of the 16^th century proves it.  Today, the challenge remains the same.  That is why France , as well as Haiti or Rwanda , must remain the field of the proclamation of the liberating Gospel of Christ.  That is why radio broadcasts are needed to reach as many persons as God will allow.  Will you keep supporting this work, for the sake of God’s eternal Kingdom?

In His name

Rev. Eric Kayayan