David: A question I like to ask people is, what’s a movie that inspired you or really made you think?

Karen: Well, I like your question, but if I were asking that I’d probably substitute a book for a movie, so you listeners, what’s a book that inspired you or really made you think?

David: Either way, it’s the kind of question that can make a surface conversation become a lot deeper real quickly.

Karen: This is really true. I had great conversations on these topics.

Intro: Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author, Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

Karen: So, I’ll ask it your way, David. Going with the movie, huh? Here we go. What’s a movie that inspired you or really made you think? How about you, Dave? You answered that.

David: Well, the one that immediately comes to mind, and I don’t know when anyone asked me the question and I wouldn’t respond the very same way, would be the movie, The Mission.

Karen: Okay, that came out in 1986, something like that.

David: It’s about 30, 35 years ago.

Karen: So that book made it, that movie really made an impression on you, then, if it lasts this long.

David: I remember going to the theater and then seeing it and not being able to talk as the two of us walked out. It was profound. Very, very strong. I’ve seen it I would guess four, maybe five times since then, not in a theater, but video.

Karen: We have a DVD downstairs right on the kitchen counter to remind me to take it out and look at it again. So it was very powerful.

David: Yeah, and the funny thing is, every time I watch it, I had the very same response.

Karen: Let’s give a little of what The Mission is about for those who’ve not seen it.

David: It’s not easy to do, but I’ll do my best, okay? Father Gabriel, he’s played by Jeremy Irons, lands in South America, the year is in the middle 1700s.

Karen: Okay, so this is a historical film, but I think it’s based on fact.

David: Giving a little leniency to the filmmaker, its accurate history. He is there as a Jesuit priest, and his purpose is to convert the natives, the Indians there, to Christianity. He builds a mission, remarkable mission, where he’s joined by a reform slave trader seeking redemption. That’s Robert De Niro. The character’s name is Rodrigo Mendoza. And then to just finish off the background to everything, there’s a treaty back in Europe between Spain and Portugal that transfers the land where the mission is, and it’s now going to be under Portuguese territory, where they allow for slave trading. And what has to be done with the missions? Well, that’s the question of the film and eventually the mission is destroyed.

Karen: Now the producer in the film is David Puttnam, and he’s done remarkable films in the past.

David: Well, I think let’s just name of the things. He did The Killing Fields. He did Chariots of Fire.

Karen: Chariots of Fire was one of his, oh, they both were remarkable films, then others of that category. So this is a man who has meaning in the films he chooses to produce.

David: Yeah, he doesn’t do frivolous.

Karen: Yeah, they have meaning and message to them. So let’s paint the picture of this Indian village. It’s idyllic. The Jesuit priest who has come has transported a kind of Christianity that elevates those followers so that they’re being taught to read. He’s introduced music.

David: And even the making of the musical instruments. It’s absolutely, you’re just impressed.

Karen: And they’re indigenous. They’re not European instruments. They’re indigenous to that culture. And the whole background music of the film introduces this kind of music in that kind of culture at that kind of time. It’s a really beautiful film, but it has a dilemma in it that proposes that I think you and I wrestle with a lot in our lives. And that’s why this film is stuck with you, I think.

David: The slave trader Mendoza eventually becomes a Jesuit, which is very interesting.

Karen: It’s a conversion story here. It’s a beautiful story.

David: They may cry. When you come to the end of the film, there is a difference between the two men, between Father Gabriel and Mendoza, who is a Jesuit now again, as I said. He wants to take up arms.

Karen: The Portuguese traders are coming in to take over that city. And of course, all of those beautiful Indian people with them is sold into slavery. So these two men have an extraordinarily different approach to the crisis. That’s what you’re talking about.

David: Yeah, Father Gabriel, he doesn’t want to fight back.

Karen: He’s trusting God. And if he has to die for that cause, he will die for that cause.

David: He’s willing to, yes. And the film ends in this horrendous way. You see Father Gabriel marching with mostly women and children.

Karen: Holding across. It’s an extraordinary picture.

David: And he’s killed. Many of the natives and some of them run off into the jungle. And then the Deniro figure you watch him as he has organized the Indians to fight back. But they have no chance.

Karen: Yeah. But his approach is to defend and to fight. Or the other one has more of a passive resistance approach. It’s an extraordinary film, really. And as far as setting up these two differences, and the end result is the same for them all. They’re slaughtered. Doesn’t matter which approach you took.

David: Yeah. It’s which choices you will make when you’re confronted by evil. And it’s an age old conundrum.

Karen: Yes, it is.

David: Whether you take up arms or not. I have thought about it so many times. What would I do? I think I probably would not fight back. But I don’t know. I read about Bonhoeffer, a wonderful German theologian. During the Second World War, he chose to be involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler.

Karen: And you can see where that would come from, though, knowing what was going on in those labor camps, the millions of people that were being destroyed. And Hitler and Germany set off this conflagration across Europe. That was a righteous resolve on his part.

David: Yeah, there are always these people caught in the middle. He actually paid with his life. He was hung by the Nazis just a few days before the end of the war, actually. This is played out in so many different lands, so many different situations. You did a whole study, I know, in terms of I’m thinking of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and the Gulag, all those books that I’ve read.

Karen: This was my Russian period. Well, Francis Schaefer, the great evangelical thinker, philosopher, challenged us to not just learn a piece of history, but learn about the politics of that time in that country, the economics of that time in that country. So he landed around 1919, which was when the Bolshevik revolution toppled the Romanovs, the Tsar and the Serena, and their family were murdered. And then the Bolsheviks were not able to maintain their position of power, and the Communists then took over. And so from that period of time, I studied in that early type of history, and I did what Schaefer recommended, but it led me into the writing of Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn was an avowed Christian.

He was a fabulous star, and he did a lot of time in a Communist prison, not so much for his faith as far as his resistance to that political system. And you consider people who know that they have to take a stand, and they will put their lives and their future on the line for that kind of stand. And many of these people were that way, and they were inspired by their faith to make a moral resistance. Dostoevsky was another one, an extraordinary writer, but essentially Christian. And I’ve read many literary critiques of his work where they never mentioned his Christianity.

And he’s the one that proclaimed that if he had to choose between truth and Christ, he would choose Christ. So Russian Orthodox, and many of those literary critiques don’t understand religion or faith positions at all. So they really inspired me as far as their writings that became classics. Classics not only in their own native culture, but in popular culture and world culture, and yet essentially they come from a Christian worldview. So I read a lot of their stuff, and then taking Francis Schaefer’s admonition, I did a lot of studying early 20th century European history and thought and the rise of psychology. It was really fascinating.

David: But always you find in those situations the Christians who are kind of caught between.

Karen: Caught between their worldview, their Christian worldview, and an immoral or evil system.

David: Jesus predicted, Karen, that the end times would be marked by fearful events. A lot of that is the rise of anti-Christ thinking and the actual anti-Christ, and that we would be wise to prepare ourselves accordingly. I’m not sure in America that we have had the terrible pain, at least as white people, that would cause us to take that seriously. Other people in all parts of the world that have struggled and suffered.

Karen: Well, the Russian church certainly has suffered under communist.

David: I think part of that is in terms of the church here, most of the evangelical church anyway, is what I would say is pre-trib rapture. The rapture is the return of Jesus.

Karen: Well, explain those theological positions.

David: We’re a theologian. The Christian church believes that Jesus will return. he talked about that all the time, and that’s the great hope of the church. I pray about it every day. I say, Lord, maybe this is the day you will return. It’s going to be the best day in the whole world.

I’m all for it. Nothing in me says, wait a minute, I’m not quite ready. I say that at night. Lord, maybe during the night your return will take place. That would be wonderful. It’s a huge part of one’s faith. If you think that is coming before the tribulation, you are a pre-tribulation rapture.

Karen: So the scriptures do teach that a great time of tribulation will come, and Christ referred to this himself in his teaching as being one of the signs of the last days.

David: But will that time of Christ’s return be before the church goes through the tribulation? Will it be in the middle of the tribulation he’s to return? Will it be after the tribulation he’s coming back? Those are the pre, mid, and post positions.

Karen: And are separate forms of theological thinking often argued about, unfortunately.

David: The truth is, I don’t know when he’s going to come back. Jesus said only the Father in heaven knows when that great day will be. But if you are a pre-trib rapture person, you kind of see yourself as escaping those hard times. And that can let you be somewhat superficial if you’re not careful.

Karen: If you’re not careful, the great thing that position does is give us this existential feeling reality that Christ could come at any moment. Yeah, it’s wonderful. And so that I think those three positions are ones we have to hold in tension with each other, because we don’t really know for sure, and all the argents and time from theologians and well-meaning Christians as to which one is right. I don’t think have much meaning to us because we hold them in tension. It could be any of those things. And they all have benefits.

David: But people who say the church will not go through the tribulation, they tend to kind of dismiss the idea of the hard times, and especially when you’re in a country like America, which is still the shining city on the hill for all the world. What’s the word they all want? They want freedom.

So maybe we don’t think as carefully about these things as we should or could. Jesus predicted that the end times would be marked by fearful events. I could read that directly from Scripture. It comes in his Olivet discourse at the end of Luke. Jesus predicted that the end times would be marked by fearful events. So we would be wise to kind of prepare ourselves accordingly. How does one do that?

Karen: Well, I think one looks at COVID-19, a worldwide pandemic, which we’ve never experienced before and we ask ourselves or hold loosely. And we don’t make a firm declaration on it because we don’t know, but we say this could be one of those great events that Christ has foretold and the fact that it’s a national, international, and even becoming a global in many ways. Pandemic.

David: The first of numerous.

Karen: Well, that’s what the scientists epidemiologists are predicting. Just the first of many that would go global that we’ve never had this before in our time. So it’s something to pay attention to in a serious matter, I think, as far as is, is this part of the end time scenario unfolding in some way?

David: I’m going to go back and just read just two sentences, I think, in a short paragraph from the Olivet discourse. Then Jesus said to them, nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. I don’t know if that’s the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness. There will be great earthquakes, famines, and pestilences or pandemics, pretty much the same word in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven. So these things are going to come about. And basically what we’re saying is we need to prepare ourselves accordingly.

The question again is how does one do that? And I believe one of the best ways to do that is just reading about people who have gone through their own tribulations because of national events. I would say that Bonhoeffer was one of the persons. I would say, you need to read Bonhoeffer. Just see his struggle as the Second World War is unfolding.

Karen: Well, and one of the things we don’t remember is that the state of being martyred for your faith, whether it’s for following Christ or following Christ by taking a moral position, that goes against an evil culture, has always been honored and it’s highly valued by Scripture. But we don’t think of martyrdom in America in its present day terminology, but I think we’re going to be thinking about it more.

David: There have been hundreds of thousands of martyrs. You know, just in the 20th century and the 21st century and all that pattern continues. And you can quote Jesus again. The Book of Revelation is basically a message of Jesus, which John writes down. He says, this is not my message. This is a message I received from him. There are whole chapters on martyrdom in those last days.

Karen: Okay, so we’ve set up the premise here. We’re facing an unprecedented time. We have an economic collapse that is going along with the COVID-19. And I go to sleep at night praying that, , I can’t remember the high percentage of Americans who have weaponry, that we don’t get to a point where we’re having armed militia and neighbors taking sides against neighbors with weapons. But it could come to that. So then how do we live? How do we live in this time? What do we do to prepare ourselves to be people of faith and valor?

David: That’s a big question. I’m just going to make one suggestion. I’m going to suggest that people read about individuals who were followers of Christ, who put their lives on the line during very difficult days. And I just have finished a book, Karen, finished it just about a week ago. I was excited about it. I told you, I said, this is incredible writing. It just stirred my heart. Call my sister said you need to get a copy.

Karen: She probably already had it. She’s a reader.

David: No, but she got a copy and call back said, this makes you cry. It’s a wonderful, wonderful book. This is about an American, about an American who put his life on the line. The book is by John Meacham, who’s a fabulous writer and a Christian, an outspoken Christian.

Karen: A very popular historical writer and someone who’s used very much in an interview process. But he’s the kind of Christian who’s devout without being propagandist in any way. And so his comments come from a place where you think, Oh, I can’t believe I’m hearing this on national television. It’s just he’s so well accepted. So the book he wrote that you’re referring to is the one about John Lewis. His Truth Is Marching On, the subtitle is John Lewis And The Power Of Hope.

David: I don’t think we need to explain who John Lewis is, but just in case somebody has been overseas for a long time.

Karen: The great civil rights leader.

David: He died just recently and his death was a huge, huge, at least five days.

Karen: I couldn’t believe that the national press was giving him that much attention and they did so because they proclaimed him to be a saint, which is how John Meacham begins his book and what it is to be a saint. It’s amazing.

David: I’m going to get you to read almost a page out of Meacham’s book on John Lewis. Okay.

Karen: Saturday, February 27, 1960 was a beautiful day in Nashville. In the morning, the Reverend Will Campbell, a white minister and supporter of the movement, and would be the civil rights movement. Lewis had first met and met Highlander and Highlander was a school that trained in…

David: Mostly young people.

Karen: …in passive resistance activism. He told the students they were about to head downtown and he heard disconcerting news. If we go down on this particular day, the police would stand to the side and let a group of white hoodlums and thugs come in and beat people up and then we would be arrested. This is Lewis recalling.

David: Lewis is probably still a teenager.

Karen: No, 19 or 20 or really. And we should make a decision about whether we wanted to go or not and we made a decision to go. Woolworths was Lewis as a sign store that day. Woolworths was a 10 cent store, I guess is what they would call it for small purchases. Go Home was the cry that greeted Lewis from a group of young white men. Get back to Africa. Lewis was hitting the ribs and knocked to the floor. The Negroes never moved. First it was the usual name calling them spitting and cuffing, out bolder punching, banging their heads against the counter, hitting them stuffing cigarette butts down their backs. And just as the Will Campbell had anticipated, the city police arrived. As the young men who had beaten us looked on and cheered, we were told that we were under rest for disorderly conduct. The students met their fate not stoically but joyfully singing, We Shall Overcome, as they were marched into the paddy wagon for their trip to the city jail.

And he says that was the first time I was arrested. That paddy wagon, crowded, cramped, dirty with wire cage windows and doors, seemed like a chariot to me. A freedom vehicle carrying me across the threshold. This is a description of a moment of grace. I had wondered all long as anyone would how I would handle the reality of what I had studied and trained and prepared for so long. Now I knew. Now I had crossed over. I had stepped through the door into total unquestioning commitment. This wasn’t just about that moment or that day. This was about forever. And what he was experiencing was that he could live out his commitment and that was he would die. He would choose to die if it came to that. But he would throw his life always into this moral resistance movement.

What an extraordinary expression for a young man and a reality and that framed his entire life. He was ready to die for the civil rights movement.

David: That’s just the very beginning of the story. And Meachum does a fabulous job of showing again, again and again how he had to face death, eventually walking across the bridge at Selma as a young man again.

Karen: But that commitment to really what was the Lord’s calling on his life made him a holy person. And so what we’re saying is we need to find these people in our day. You know, we can look to the past and those people are memorialized, but there are heroes like this, saints like this, that we need to observe and identify with and say what has made them so remarkable.

David: It would be a shame to go through your life as a believer and not know about John Lewis. And you have the opportunity through a book like this. Back here and after I read the book, I said to you, I don’t know where you ordered this, but order 10 more immediately. And I may need more than that. I’ve never said that about a book recently. But I want to get those to my children, to my grandchildren. I don’t want them to be unaware because this is a life that is sterling. It’s a life that you read it and you just say, Lord, help me to be strong.

Karen: I think what we’re saying is that hardtimes are probably ahead for us all.

David: If you don’t think that you may be kind of naive, I am not a prophecy person who is always giving warnings, but there are tough times ahead.

Karen: And so we want to be the kind of people who can live through those times, keeping our faith intact. And what we’re saying is find the examples of those people in our contemporary world who have done this or are doing this now and learn from them. And one of the things we suggest is that people pick up this book. His truth is marching on. Isn’t that a great title? John Lewis and the Power of Hope by John Meacham.

David: I think I want to read just a little bit more from the book. I’m not sure that I’ve done this ever before, but I’m going to try it anyway. This is after they have gone through some difficult times as younger people where they’ve had to have doctors look after them and such, and they’re deciding whether they want to continue to do this. What you read about Karen was when they were served them.

Karen: To desegregate the Lunge County.

David: They went from that to trying to desegregate the theaters. And this is right before they went forward with that. There was kind of a reckoning saying this could cost us really. Are we sure we’re going to go ahead with this? Lewis writes, I listened to the debate that night and I considered everything that was said and I heard nothing fundamental enough to shift the sureness I had felt inside about what we were doing. I did not have a shredded doubt about what our next step should be. We’re going to march, I said, when Wallenberg asked my opinion. He turned away and went on with a discussion.

Someone else asked what I thought about something that was said and my answer was the same. We’re going to march, I said, as simple and softly as before. At that point Campbell lost his temper with me. There’s apt to be some serious violence if there’s another demonstration he continued. You agree with that to say we’re going to march? When it comes down to he went on. This is just a matter of pride with you. This is about your own stubbornness, your own sin. The room was absolutely silent. Everyone turned to me. I looked straight at Will. Okay, I said, I’m a sinner. The room remains still, but I added we’re going to march.

And that was that. That determination in spite of all that he had gone through already, this is something that’s deep inside of me. Somewhere through our reading, through our connection, through our discussion, what’s inside of us has to begin to be very strong. So, we’re ready for it. I don’t see that as a warning. I just see it as something that deep inside of me says, got to start to get ready.

Outgo: You’ve been listening to the Before We Go Podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all lowercase letters, hosts@beforewego.show. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2020 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 601-87.