Many years ago Robert Murray M’Cheyne visited Iasi (then called Jassy), Romania. He writes of his time in this area of the world:

“Our journey led us through Moldavia, Wallachia [areas now united as Romania – Iasi is in former Moldavia], and Austria – lands of darkness and of the shadow of death. Profound strangers to the truth as it is in Jesus, the people of these lands, nethertheless, profess to be Christians. Superstition and its idolatries veil the glorious object of faith from every eye.”

Sadly, there is not much difference today from two hundred years ago. Many churches are barren. There may be many pews filled, but little spirituality is spread out amongst the congregations. Legalism has wrecked this city, removing whatever attempts evangelicals have made to be solid in the truth. Where people have separated from legalism they usually swing too far in the opposite direction and become liberals.

If we could put on special glasses that showed us the spiritual state of this city, I can imagine there would be a great darkness over our city. Thankfully, there are rays of hope in various places. One such place is a local church plant called Soli Deo Gloria. This church lives up to its name in seeking to glorify God through the preached Word and pastoral ministry. I have the pleasure and privilege of being part of this church. It is a joy to see what the Lord is doing amongst His people here.

Last month, Reformation Heritage Books graciously gave me access to their Revival documentary. Thinking about how I could maximize this blessing, a plan began to form in my head: “What if I shared this with our church?” That plan then began to blossom into further ideas. What if we advertised this and made it open to absolutely anybody who would like to join us? So, that is what we did. One of our church members made a poster (see header image above) and we got the word out.

In the end, we had about thirty young adults join us throughout the night. The documentary, to me, was encouraging. I left the church with the conviction that we need to pray more for souls to come to faith. I also had more passion than ever to take that Word onto the streets to evangelize.

At the end of the documentary I was able to lead a time of discussion on the documentary. Everybody was impressed with it and very pleased with its contents. The key points had all been consumed and are now left for the Lord to impress on peoples’ hearts.

In response to this documentary, I am establishing a plan to make prayer more prominent in our church. I also have plans to teach evangelism in our church. This is something I had planned for a while now and the Revival documentary provided a great prelude to it. Throughout August I will teach four lessons on evangelism. My hope is that this will stir up our members to get involved in evangelism. If this is successful, I will personally begin training people to do street evangelism, which has the potential to evolve into further evangelistic efforts. I have my sights set on schools, hospitals, prisons, and also retirement homes. Eventually, if the Lord pleases, He could even bring revival to our shadowy and lost city. That dead spirituality which M’Cheyne observed could be reversed for the first time in history.

Knowing how successful this documentary has been, I am now in search of other documentaries. Our people are keen and eager to watch and learn more about such things. They are getting fired up and ready to go forth with their God-given task of making disciples in this city and throughout the world. Knowing the effect that such documentaries may have on our members, I have dedicated one day a month to having an evening where we can watch such documentaries.

We are immensely thankful to Reformation Heritage Books for giving us access to this documentary. I hope that there will be more documentaries in the future as there is great potential here to help people learn. We sincerely hope it has sparked off the beginning of great things which the Lord will use to glorify His holy name.