Merry Christmas

Website for Church Leaders Released

At the end of 2007, our team in Bulgaria released a new website dedicated to the subject of church leadership. The website incorporates materials, study guides and Bible studies from leading authors like George Barna and John Maxwell. It is a long awaited tool for training of both ministers and laity.

Gospel of John Released for Christmas

Cup & Cross Ministries has scheduled the release of a new Bulgarian translation of the Gospel of John on Christmas day. The translation was prepared during the past three years from Nestle-Aland (27th ed.) of the Greek New Testament and follows a literal word-for-word methodology. It purposes to provide:

1. A literal translation in the Bulgarian vernacular, which common interlinears are unable to provide.

2. Preservation of the word order from the original text, except where grammatically impossible.

3. Preservation of the Greek grammatical forms, as well as the Hebrew and Aramaic linguistic uniqueness of the text.

4. Preservation of the original parts of speech and verb tenses.

Bulgarian Audio Bible

The Bulgarian Audio Bible is one of our web ministry projects in progress. We first introduced the Bulgarian Audio Bible in 2003 and since then it has been one of the most popular downloads in the Bulgarian internet space. In the very first month that it was introduced some 3,000 complete copies of the Bulgarian audio New Testament were freely distributed. The whole Bible was recorded in the Bulgarian vernacular in 2003 and became the first Bulgarian Audio Bible ever.

During our National Bible Tour in 2005, we released a new version of the Bulgarian Audio Bible making the product more user-friendly in an online parallel along with four audio versions of the Bible (KJV, Hebrew, Greek and Bulgarian). Since then, over 10,000 copies of the full Bulgarian Audio Bible are being distributed over the internet every month.

In 2006, we released the Bulgarian Audio Bible in a new DVD format. Some 36,000 complete copies were downloaded in the first month of its release making it the most popular Bulgarian software. With this in mind, our internet traffic surpassed ½ petabyte, which equals 500 TB. For comparison, San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) has a 1-petabyte hard disk store attached to the National Science Foundation\’s TeraGrid network.

You can listen to Psalm 23 in Bulgarian here: http://bible.netbg.com/bible/bg/psalms23.mp3.

Ministering at Hamer, SC

It is always a joy to minister across South Carolina and we are thankful that we have had so many opportunities to hold revival and missions services since our return. But it has been years since we have preached in the lower part of the state and it was a real trill to be reacquainted with old friends of ours this week as we ministered in the Dillon/Hamer area.

The Story of Jesus for Children

The Story of Jesus for Children is one of our web ministry projects in progress. We first introduced the film as soon as it was made available in the Bulgarian vernacular in the summer of 2006. Since then, it has generated approximately 3,000 downloads per month in its DivX version. In September, 2007 we introduced its original DVD version which contained translation in Bulgarian, Turkish, Armenian, Russian and Romani (Gipsy) languages. Some 42,000 downloads of its DVD version were completed that month as our internet traffic surpassed ½ petabyte, which equals 500 TB. We are now working toward the release of the DivX version in Turkish and Romani (Gipsy) languages.

The Jesus Film Project Online

The Jesus Film Project in the Bulgarian vernacular is one of our web ministry projects in progress. We first introduced the Bulgarian version of the Jesus Film on the internet in 2006. It was offered in its original DVD form and in another compressed DivX format. To much of our surprise, over 10,000 copies of the film were downloaded in the first three days after it was posted. This number doubled every month that followed, but in September, 2007 it reached its peak of 46,000 downloads. That month our internet traffic surpassed ½ petabyte, which equals 500 TB. For comparison, San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) has a 1-petabyte hard disk store attached to the National Science Foundation\’s TeraGrid network. We give God the glory.

Research Trip to Urbana, IL

Our third trip to the University of Illinois’s library to discover books and materials on the subject of Bulgarian Protestantism was successful again. Among the findings was a very important book about the famous Pastor’s Trial in Bulgaria. Its story is indeed worth sharing.

In 1949, five years after communism took over in Bulgaria, fifteen evangelical pastors were tried and sentenced to years of imprisonment for allegedly serving as spies for the United States, England and France. This was the first of several waves arranged by the communist government to behead the evangelical movement from its true leaders while implanting secret agents as pastors and ministers within the church. In fact, the Pastors’ Trial was just a small part of a larger political scheme through which the Regime attempted to remove ideological leaders of various Bulgarian professional groups like political leaders, chief of military departments, lawyers, doctors, scholars and such. Unfortunately, following Stalin’s directives, the Communist party of Bulgaria was very successful in executing or imprisoning most prominent leaders in Bulgaria, thus dooming the country to an era of political, economical and social ignorism, which ensured the implementation of their proletarian agenda. As preachers of freedom and puritan values, evangelical pastors naturally opposed the drastic move of the Regime toward dictatorial totalitarianism.

While researching the subject at the University of Illinois, it became apparent that immediately after the trial of 1949, the Bulgarian Communist government ordered the publication of a book which was intended to inform the Western world of the “crimes” of the evangelical pastors. The book was written in satisfactory English, perhaps with the help of a native English speaker, printed in the capital of Bulgaria, Sofia and then distributed around the world. To much of our surprise, the publication contained an English translation of the “confessions” which were extracted from the pastors during the trial and presented as evidence against them.

Later publications contain the memoirs of several of the pastors, as they describe the horrible ways of torture, starvation and depravity of sleep, used to obtain the confessions. Unfortunately, since many of them spent over a decade in various prisons without any means of communicating with the outside world and recording facts and events, the contents of the confessions were impossible to reproduce in their memoirs.

This publication, however, gives a full account of the texts as recorded by agents of the Communist militia. This is the first time that we have become aware of the existence of such publication, as it has been virtually unspoken of by both Bulgarian and foreign studies on the topic. In the future, we will be comparing the English translations with the partial publications of other “confessions” in various Bulgarian periodicals of that time in order to discover variants and modifications between the text intended for the Bulgarian public and the text translated and published for the Western reader.

10 Things we are Thankful for

1. Another year of opportunities to minister in the United States and Bulgaria.
2. Provision for needs for the work in Bulgaria.
3. The prayers and support of family and friends.
4. Health and healings.
5. The registration of the Bulgarian Chaplaincy Association in February, 2007.
6. Conference of Bulgarian Church in North America in May, 2007.
7. Four weeks of Revelation Revival on the book of Revelation in June, 2007.
8. Holding the “X” Youth Event at the Black Sea in July, 2007.
9. Completing the new Bulgarian translation of the Gospel of John in September, 2007.
10. Missions’ revival services in South Carolina in October, 2007.

Holiness Website Released

For several years now our team has envisioned a new website as part of our website ministry, a website that deals exclusively with the subject of holiness. For over a month now, this vision has been a reality bringing thousands to the teaching of Biblical sanctification and holiness lifestyle through www.Osveten.com (meaning “sanctified” in Bulgarian).

I know that many would object to the idea of preaching holiness in the beginning of the 21st century. Who needs holiness in the world today, anyway? After all people today have more important issues with which to deal. In my opinion, perhaps many of the issues humanity deals with today, can be resolved though acquiring a lifestyle of Biblical holiness.

Historically, the Bulgarian evangelism lacks the evolvement of sanctification as a second work of grace, as it was present in North America at the end of the 19th century. Missionaries to Bulgaria did not concentrate on the teaching of holiness, as other important issues were being addressed. It was not until the dawn of Bulgarian Pentecostalism, that definite holiness movements within among Bulgarian evangelicals began appearing. And of course, since the Assemblies of God was the major organized Pentecostal denomination, sanctification was viewed as part of the experience of salvation and Holy Spirit baptism, and never as a separate second work of grace as described by Wesley.

Yet, the strife toward Biblical holiness was ever present in the Bulgarian context ever since Christianity entered the Balkans in the 10th-11th centuries. Since then, Eastern Orthodox Christianity has taught, although practiced very little, the doctrine of holiness. During the Communist Regime, various Pentecostal groups declared their holiness stand, thus bringing the attention of the government along with extra persecution upon themselves. The national Pentecostal revival after the Fall of the Berlin Wall increased the interest in sanctification, and the issue of how to live a holiness life often became a point of separation between older and younger believers.

And although holiness is not often preached today, it still remains the standard of God. For this very reason, we released www.Osveten.com with the vision to bring Bulgarian evangelism back to the basics of Biblical sanctification and to lift up the standard of holiness as a lifestyle among the Bulgarian people.

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