Dear Friend,

With the advent of this new year, things have really been stepping along at Zola Levitt Ministries, Inc. I’ve been getting back to work (on really I’ve been doing some work at home) but my recovery from surgery seems just about complete and just in the nick of time, as the Lord would have it. There are books to be written and shows to be made and we’ll just be running out of good reruns at the point when I’m able to get these other things under way. The Lord not only looks after us in these complex medical procedures, but He schedules them into own wonk time so that the important things get done in heaven and earth.

You’ll want to know about upcoming programs; we decided to go ahead with some spring shows, mainly because of a most encouraging and rejuvenating idea of one of our viewers. This lovely and dedicated man lost his father recently and instead of just buying him some sort of memorial in stone or upkeep of the grave site, he memorialized his father with ZOLA LEVITT LIVE programs. That is to say, he simply paid the production costs of two new shows because that’s what his father wanted. Several million people will be taught the Scriptures by the time these programs make the circuit of our expanding broadcast coverage and the reruns, and that will have a much greater effect on the Kingdom to come than a stone or whatever. It makes me glad that people think of our teachings as something valuable to pass along and also that a time of sadness brings forth a cheerful giver.

I don’t bring up all this to start some kind of landslide of paid up productions since really we have been successful in making enough programs with your general and faithfully continuing gifts. On the other hand, if there is a special occasion or if you wish to honor someone by having a program dedicated to them or to their memory we gladly will accept your thoughtfulness. The production cost of a local studio program is not its biggest expense considering the vast rises in airtime costs. The productions run us about $1,500 for our local studio shows. If you feel as though you’d like to make a gift of that size to commemorate a person, an occasion, or simply for the satisfaction of knowing that you have reached out to more people in one evening than the apostles could possibly have seen in their lifetimes combined, then do so. We will be most grateful and you will have put the things of the Kingdom of God first.

I should say for those of you who wish to give in an anonymous way that we certainty don’t have to publish your name on the air or even the fact that you sponsored the program, if that’s your wish. In a way many of you have already sponsored whole programs and more than that with your gifts of several thousand dollars at once. We just hadn’t had the idea of offering you a credit line to remember someone in this unique way until our present believer’s new idea.

There have been some newsworthy events this month, including a lead article in Newsweek about the press in the Middle East, giving its front op-Ed page to an Israeli writer (at last!). Newsweek allowed the point to be made that Israel is the only Middle Eastern nation that has freedom of the press. Ironically, however, you never see it written that way. Typically an article on Middle Eastern goings-on is designated as “approved by Israeli military censors,” which gives the picture of characters with sunglasses and scars on their faces changing the news to ft their purposes. In reality all nations at war, including the United States, have military censors (and if the truth be known we have military censors in peace time also). And Israel has been at war for 35 years. But more to the point, all of the Arab nations have press censorship all of the time. In other words, there simply is no free press in Saudia Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, etc. Those militant nations are not democracies of course, and laugh off the idea of Western correspondents simply observing what they will and writing it the way they see it. An anti-Syrian report written in Damascus would simply never leave the country, and when you think about it, you never really read one. The reporter might leave the country but in a box. One is reminded of the recent expulsion of the UPI writer, Ruth Gruber, from Poland for the crime of too much freedom of expression.

The point is, all of the reportage that we have managed on Lebanon and the recent difficulties there, we could only have done because of the presence of Israel nurturing and protecting its own free press and ours as well. And even all of that anti-Israel propaganda that came flying at us on TV and on the newspapers, was approved by Israel’s military press people. I’m sure they didn’t like the tone of the reports but their allegiance to freedom of the press is as strong as our constitutional guarantee of it and they freely allowed themselves to be injured throughout the world by writers with little concern for what Israel really is and represents politically and spiritually. And so the world recoils in horror as an internal gang fight turns up 500 casualties in Beirut while the Arabs allow no coverage of the thousands of casualties of the Iran/Iraq war, the inter-Arab shootings in Tripoli, and the countless other embarrassments which if reported would certainly help balance the Middle Eastern picture. A clearer example of managing the news by suppressing the freedom of the press might be Afghanistan. We have certainly lost more than 300 or 3,000 or perhaps 30,000 human beings over there to an inordinately unfair and irresistable Soviet occupation. And yet Afghanistan has become back-page news if we hear of it at all. The reason for that is not a lack of interest but simply that we cannot get our reporters in and out safely and therefore we have nothing much to say. And so we cluck our tongues at the targets we can see. Israel dutifully reports that there was a massacre in refugee camps involving two Arab factions. The Russians report nothing from Afghanistan. And so, curiously, the Israelis become compared to Nazis, certainly one of the unkindest cuts of the recent situation, and the Russians become invisible because they won’t let us report on them.

So It’s not a question of “Don’t believe everything you read” but “Learn to believe there’s more happening than just what you read.” You can believe what the Israelis’ military press has issued forth from its battle fields. You can rely on their veracity. What you can only suspect is, things are far worse in places where the reporters are suppressed, deported or worse. I’m afraid it’s what we don’t read in the newspapers and see on the TV news that’s really going to count for something as the end draws near.

On a light subject, Sixty Minutes ran an interesting program dealing with how the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches dispense money taken from their congregations in what is supposed to be church-support giving. Evidently these huge organizations of unbelievers favor financing leftist revolutions in several areas of the world, according to the Jan. 23 broadcast of the program. CBS correspondent, Morley Safer, reported that those central church bodies “lean toward Karl Marx when it comes to giving certain financial support.” Safer said a certain percentage of each week’s offering ends up with revolutionary groups that may use the money to buy weapons.

Safer knows more than he says. Those liberal councils made up of United Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopals and so forth, publically have the intention of helping down-trodden peoples, but going about their works with no Bible knowledge whatever and no commitment to Christ, they are without guidance and simply don’t know which side of the boat on which to fish. And they actually do end up giving church money even to the PLO and the other Arab states where it will be used for the attempted annihilation of Israel, God’s Promised Land. What could be more ironic? People innocently come to church, pray and give their dollars only to have their gift used to thwart God’s will in whatever measure the enemies of Israel can manage.

I know the truth of what I’m saying because I once was a small part of stopping an operation of smuggling to the PLO from liberal church sources. Non-Biblical people are never neutral. They do not let the Bible alone but rather they compulsively fight it. Whatever they choose to do will invariably be upside down and backwards where God’s clearly expressed will is concerned. If the Bible teaches Jesus’ return, they say He’s not coming. If it teaches miracles, they say they’re myths. If it teaches “Call no man father,” then they name their priesthood “Father,” and on and on. The non-Biblical individual will always be marked out, not by his indifference to the Bible but by his hostility to it. And where Israel is concerned, the non-Biblical person will oppose it to his dying breath because that will best serve the purposes of God’s enemy. The best that can be said of these pitiful non-believing “churchmen” is “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.”

And now it’s voting time again and a very important issue to our programming needs to be brought to your attention. I have spoken of possible upcoming production schedules recently, and the sudden memorial gift allowing for two new spring programs has made the problem much easier, but we are still puzzled as to whether we should undertake a whole series of spring programs or not. The issue is because of our tour leaving for Egypt, Israel and the Greek Islands in June. That tour will give us the chance to make location programs along Paul’s journeys rather than just in the Holy Land but it will require a considerable budget. So the choice is whether to go ahead now with new offerings through the spring (and have fewer reruns) and possibly be cut a little short for the summer location programming. We need to make a careful judgment if we go ahead with spring programming as to how many shows and how fancy in order to hold back proper funding for the more expensive overseas project.

I think by now you are virtually all going to say yes to the Middle East location programs since our two last series were so well received by you and by the organizations who presented us with awards. I would think that the addition of a series on Paul’s journeys featuring Ephesus, Athens, Patmos, Corinth, etc., would only enhance ZLL and probably bring back its budget in time. What I want you to vote on is the spring shows and how many? We have 7 shows actually ready to make with two of them paid for because of the memorial gift. Please pray on this and write to us.

That about wraps up our January business. We still covet your prayers, look forward to your financial support and constantly await your suggestions of how we may better serve you and the King. Stay tuned to ZOLA LEVITT LIVE and tell a friend. And of course, any and all of you are invited to join me on my summer tour to Israel. Let us know immediately if you can come in June. And pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

Your messenger,