The story of CMI-Australia speaker Dr David Catchpoole’s two-month intensive
ministry tour of Indonesia
(July/August 2010, just commenced at the time of first posting this article) really
started about five years ago, when I first asked him if he would consider going
on a ministry tour to Indonesia, given that he spoke the language and had lived
there for some years. David was interested, but a tour would have to wait at least
a couple of years to ‘brush up and improve’ his Indonesian.
Dr Catchpoole with the Brisbane pastor of his Indonesian-language church, Jerry
Sanger
I didn’t know that in the Lord’s timing his own pastor (David and his
Indonesian-born wife Esther attend an Indonesian-language church in Brisbane), after
hearing David present on creation, said, “This is a message for Indonesia!”
and was urging David to go.
For David, the story really begins with his conversion in 1985, which itself relates
to his going to Indonesia in 1983 for three-and-a-half years, as part of an Australian
Government agricultural science assistance program. David sums it up: “I went
to the world’s most populous Muslim country as an atheist,
and came back a Christian. What does that tell you?”
In fact, it was Indonesia’s Christian community that unknowingly played a
huge part in challenging his evolutionary presuppositions—e.g., about religion.
(Although Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim nation, nearly one-tenth
of the population is officially Christian, which means there are more Christians
in Indonesia than Australia’s entire population!) Confronted during 1983 and
1984 with the stark contrasts provided by the meek and gentle way that Christians
lived their lives in an overwhelmingly Islamic nation, David was forced to rethink
the atheist mantra he previously held, that “all religions are equally valid—and
equally wrong”. (And there was also plenty of evidence contradicting the previously-promoted
evolutionary notion that brown-skinned peoples are less evolved than ‘whites’—and
more.1) There were amazing
acts of kindness and generosity shown to him by people who had little material goods.
At a time of personal struggle over there, recalling such factors contributed to
David’s conversion and commitment to follow Jesus.
David and Esther were married on his (their) last day in Indonesia in 1986 before
moving to Australia. They were living in Townsville in 1997, raising their four
children, when my CMI speaker colleague Dr Don Batten and I presented a weekend
seminar to the churches there. One of the attendees was David, who at the time,
though very much a Christian, was trying to work out how God might have used some
watered-down version of ‘evolution’ over millions of years. It was only
when I went to Townsville the following year to do CMI ministry that David ‘came
out of the woodwork’, and excitedly told me of the hugely positive impact
that our 1997 presentations had had on his life. We stayed in contact, and David
joined the ministry full-time in 1999.
“We’ll need resources—in Indonesian!”
About three years ago, I again approached David, whose fluency was increasing, about
going to Indonesia. He replied, “For sure. But to be more effective, we’ll
need
The Creation Answers Book translated into Indonesian—so people
are equipped with the info well above and beyond what they might remember from a
necessarily limited speaker presentation in a funny foreign accent.”
CMI’s Jason Jamieson gives Mrs Esther Catchpoole some tips on using a home
video camera.
Here’s where it got difficult. Normally, people approach us with the passion
and skill for translating resources into their mother tongue, but here, we were
the initiators, with the problem of having to find someone with the creation-savvy,
enthusiasm, English comprehension—and the time to undertake such a large project
in bahasa Indonesia. The translation languished, and at the same time CMI
received sober advice from pastors in Indonesia counseling against any ministry
tour in 2009—an election year.
But about ten months ago, starting with a ‘chance’ call from an expatriate
Indonesian from Western Australia about the possibility of CMI sending a speaker
to Indonesia, the Lord assembled a capable team of volunteer translators, enabling
the timeframe of the tour to be locked in at last!
An early edition of CMI’s booklet Stones and Bones had been translated into Indonesian
in 1994 by a volunteer whose mother tongue was English, but who could speak Indonesian.
David intended it to simply be reprinted, but at the last minute, it became clear
that the standard was not commensurate with modern Indonesian. So, using the 2010
completely revised English edition of Stones (at the printers at the time
of writing), it was translated by this same team, too—just in time to have
both books ready for David’s tour, which will involve two months
of intensive speaking across many widespread locations in that country.
An unexpected provision
Russell Grigg had no idea that the skills he learnt as a proof-reader of Indonesian
texts would remain with him, and that they would prove incredibly valuable to CMI
nearly 40 years later.
With the ‘final’ Indonesian version of both books at hand, and little
time left, we thought we would have to skip the normal ‘final final’
stage of proofreading and editing, especially with David heavily tied up with his
pretrip preparations on top of normal duties. But I for one had forgotten that CMI’s
Russell Grigg, well known to readers of Creation magazine and renowned
for his proofreading/editing skills,2
had spent 12 years in Indonesia where he had amassed thousands of hours of experience
proofreading manuscripts in Indonesian! Russell often briefed and consulted with
David as to significant changes he felt were needed to the manuscripts (i.e. not
just typographical errors). For example, these non-native-English speakers, despite
their competence in English, had here and there understandably missed an obscure
meaning of English phraseology. Also, even for a native English speaker, some parts
and concepts, e.g. in cosmology, can be subtle for someone not an expert in that
area. So, one could hardly wish for God to have raised up a better-qualified final-layout
editor than someone with Russell’s long experience editing and writing about
creationist topics for CMI, together with his considerable theological knowledge
and his (rediscovered by us) talent for editing texts in Indonesian!
David addresses Teachers College students at Universitas Pelita Harapan (lit: University of Light and Hope).
This was only one of the many indicators, beyond anything that we might have imagined
and too many to relate them all here, which convinced us that God’s hand was
on this venture in a special way.
Note added 7 July: After only a few days in the country, David
has addressed over 3,000 people already, with many excitedly approaching him and
the book table volunteers to tell of their joy. On Sunday night, a well-educated
young man newly embarking on a diplomatic career summed it up with one English word,
exclaiming, “Inspiring!!” The wife of a pastor who attended David’s
presentation to over a hundred pastors on Monday morning and purchased the Indonesian-language
Creation
Answers Book, came back for the evening public meeting and told the
book table volunteers that she’d already read the first 169 pages—she
“couldn’t put it down”! One young lady said (translated from the
Indonesian):
“I remember asking my teachers, and even my pastor, questions like ‘Which
came first … Adam, or the age of dinosaurs?’
“They didn’t know, and, even worse, one teacher said: ‘Science
is science. The Bible is the Bible. Don’t try to join them—they’re
separate.’
“But today, because of your presentation and these two books, now I have the
answers!”
We conclude with an extract from the written testimony of Mario D., an Indonesian
who moved to Australia as a young adult and who now attends church with David here
in Brisbane. He has heard David present creation talks many times to that congregation,
and writes:
Since I started primary school until high school, I was taught by my science and
biology teacher, that we as human originally came from an ape/monkey. They taught
us that human has evolved for million of years to be the human we know today. This
was one of the teaching that I remember so clearly and my friends were also taught
the same thing. At that time I did not realise that evolutionism is wrong, because
maybe I was quite young and naive. However I kept thinking about it.
Just to give you a bit of my background. I came from a Christian family, but I was
not a true Christian until I was born again in 1997 when I was a university student.
I began to understand how to be a true Christian, but I was still confused and always
asking myself about the origins of men. I know according to the book of Genesis
that, we were created by God but not according to evolutionism by which I was taught
at school. Evolutionism never claimed that men is a creation but simply a result
of chance that occurred over millions of years. Because of this I was at lost and
having a conflict in my mind because I realise the Bible and evolution are never
compatible to each other. I even asked some of the pastors at my local church about
this matter but none of them were able to give me the correct answers.
I even started to think that there must be an answer to this issue and throughout
my life, I always feel in my heart that, men cannot be descendant of ape. And eventually
I found the answers when I joined [the Brisbane church] in 2006. One of the elders
in that church, Dr David Catchpoole explained to me in his sermon about a topic
that related to evolutionism and creationism. From his detail explanation using
the Bible and other scientific means, I began to understand the missing link between
the Bible and evolution, and I then realised that men are indeed a unique creation
made by God and not came from evolution that occurred millions of years from a lesser
species to a more advance species like us in today. His explanation was so clear
and accurate because he was able to cross reference the verse with the scientific
evidence and research by the creationist.
I am so grateful to Dr David Catchpoole who also works in Creation Ministries, because
he was able to help me to understand that the creation by God in the book of Genesis
is indeed the truth and fact, therefore, it is not a fairy tale, and it cannot be
denied by anyone even by evolutionist.
All the sermons and seminars run by Creation Ministries have helped me immensely
and I am certain it will also help our friends in Indonesia to have a better understanding
that evolutionism is truly misleading. I honestly worry because evolutionism is
still taught at every school in Indonesia, started at primary level all the way
to high school level even to university level. I can see the huge impact, the evolutionism
has caused to our educational system in Indonesia especially in the field of natural
science and biology. Many students there do not realise that the teaching of evolution
can be so damaging to them that in the long run it will poison their mindset.
In conclusion, evolutionism must be stopped for good, but I feel it will be a very
difficult task to do because the teachings of evolutionism in Indonesian schools
have been running for so long that the teaching itself has had his root on the mind
of many students. It will be a challenge for us as Christians to put an effort to
help our brother and sisters in Christ so that they will not be drifted away by
evolutionism. To me personally, Creation Ministries will have a very important role
in terms of the reformation in the natural science and biology teaching system in
Indonesia.
Mario D.,
15 June 2010.
A short film clip of Mario D. talking further on this issue can be seen
A short film clip extract from a DVD of Dr Catchpoole presenting in Bahasa Indonesia
to an Indonesian-language congregation on the Gold Coast on 27 June 2010 can be
seen here.
This amazing missionary opportunity is only made possible by the faithful support
of many CMI supporters around the world. Please pray for it and for David, that
the Lord will continue to do wonderful things through his dedication.
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