MenuMenu
StoreStore
YouTubeYouTube
BlogBlog
What's NewWhat's New
Jay's BioJay's Bio
About UsAbout Us
DonateDonate
FeedbackFeedback
SearchSearch
HomeHome

Jay Rogers
Director:
Jay Rogers

Recent Posts

The Forerunner


In Memory of Dr. Pat McEwen

By Jay Rogers
Published September 22, 2019

And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen (Matthew 28:18-20).

Pat McEwen, missionary to the nations, died on Thursday, September 12th, 2019. “Miss Pat” had been a friend of mine since the fall of 1993. From 1993 to 2000, I lived in and owned a house across the street from an infamous abortion center in Melbourne, Florida. Due to a restrictive “no-free-speech” buffer zone, the site became a “hot bed” for pro-life activism. During that time, sidewalk evangelists and counselors cut the abortion rate in our county in half. This is while the abortion rate in every other county in Florida rose. The abortion center finally closed in 2000. The building was demolished and there is no abortion center in Brevard County today.

This is the demolition of Aware Woman Center for Choice in 2000. No abortion clinic operates in Brevard County today!

See a playlist of videos with Pat McEwen about Central Florida’s abortion industry.

I first met Pat on the sidewalk in 1993, when she first moved to Melbourne. Her reputation as an effective sidewalk counselor preceded her. Dr. Patricia McEwen was a retired university professor and horse enthusiast from upper state New York. She had sold her horse farm and moved to Florida to become a full-time pro-life evangelist. When I first saw her on the sidewalk next to the abortion center, I immediately introduced myself to her. I wanted to know how she was so effective in getting so many women to choose life. “I just do something crazy!” she said. Pat had a way of getting abortion-minded women’s attention. Then when they were engaged in conversation with her, more often than not they chose life for their babies. She was the most effective sidewalk counselor I have ever known and I have known some good ones. Not only did she rescue babies and train other counselors, but she also made sure the entire Melbourne pro-life street ministry was organized so that there were at least two counselors standing at the “gates of hell” every minute it was opened for business. After she arrived, the pro-life ministry began to function in a much more unified and organized manner.

I got started in full-time Christian work as a publisher, writer, video producer shortly after I spent a weekend in jail with Operation Rescue in Brookline, Massachusetts, on New Year’s Eve weekend of 1988/1989 as part of a peaceful prayer rescue. After that experience, I resolved that I’d stay involved in pro-life work, but as a writer. I did not envision myself ever being arrested again.

However, after I moved to central Florida in the 1990s, I was involved with Miss Pat in other arrests, which were dismissed in court, for challenging unconstitutional buffer zone laws. One of these cases, Madsen, made it all the way to the Supreme Court. Although we lost that aspect of the case, I was pleased to see our court testimonies quoted by none other than Justice Antonin Scalia in a scathing dissent. Because we continued to challenge the buffer zone injunction, we eventually encountered fair judges who realized that an injunction that we were not individually named in could not apply to us. Shortly after that, the city of Melbourne made the decision to stop arresting Christians for peacefully gathering on a public sidewalk. This story exemplifies the tireless attitude of service of Pat McEwen. She would not give up until righteous judgment prevailed.

Another arrest came from challenging yet another unconstitutional “no-free-speech” buffer zone in Winter Park, Florida. This case took a lot of twists and turns, as I chronicle here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. But eventually that case was thrown out because the city’s key witness, Jenna Tosh, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Orlando, moved to California and would not return for the hearings. Whenever you did anything with Pat McEwen you knew you were in for an adventure fraught with adversity, but God would be victorious.

In 1993, the pro-life organization Operation Rescue National was based in Melbourne, Florida, a small community on Florida’s “space coast.” The director at that time was Keith Tucci who was also the pastor of Christian Life Family Church where Pat and I were members. Keith turned the national organization over to Flip Benham in Dallas, Texas in 1994. Pat continued for over 20 years to work as an administrator for Operation Rescue / Operation Save America at national and regional pro-life events. Her work was as a “ministry of helps” to several “type-A” personalities. I helped her organize several events in central Florida and I was amazed at her tirelessness and patience.

Keith Tucci had also founded Life Coalition International (LCI), which was meant to be the missionary outreach for Operation Rescue to assist pro-life ministries of all types overseas. In 1995, I was pleased to help LCI organize the first national pro-life conference in the history of Russia attended by hundreds of pastors from all over the former Soviet Union. Pat McEwen eventually took over as the director of LCI. She was sent out from our church to pioneer pro-life and other missionary works in New Zealand, Australia, China, India, Europe, Israel, Central America, South America, and Africa.

In the 1990s, she was involved in helping refugee Christians from China find residency and jobs in several countries in South America. These were people fleeing China’s one-child policy, where women and men are sterilized against their will by the communist government. Although Representative Chris Smith took up their cause, the Clinton administration refused to work with LCI and other groups in allowing them to immigrate to America. So Miss Pat worked tirelessly to find them refuge elsewhere.

When Personhood USA led by Cal Zastrow, Keith Mason and later Dan Becker began a Florida affiliate, they insisted that the organization must have Pat McEwen as a co-sponsor of the state constitutional amendment petition and executive board member. Pat later served as a delegate to Personhood Alliance, the national organization for all Personhood state affiliates, as well as on the boards of other national and international pro-life groups. In addition to all of this, she also served as a volunteer church administrator in Christian Life Family Church in Melbourne.

Of all the ministries Pat was involved in, her greatest love was for the mission field. Even during her cancer treatments, she made several mission trips a year and travelled to pro-life conferences all over the world. Her message was for the Personhood of all human beings with no exceptions and no compromise.

At a conference in 2001, she said in an address to fellow Christian missionaries, “Jesus chose the ordinary working people. Peter was fishing. Matthew was collecting taxes, not a popular profession in any time. What made them special? They were special because they were ordinary.”

Pat may have seemed ordinary at first glance, but she influenced many pro-life leaders and organizations around the world in the paradigm shift toward the no compromise, no exceptions stance of Personhood. She even had the opportunity to meet and speak with government leaders in various countries.

As the coordinator for LCI in Africa, she also travelled with Doctors for Life, a missionary group that worked in the African bush with tribesmen that were in dire need of medical care. she travelled through war torn areas where the roads were being actively shelled by artillery. She even contracted a number of diseases that can lead to blindness or even death. We in the west have eradicated these maladies through modern medicine, but these are rampant in the remote areas of Africa. She helped treat lepers and AIDs victims, but her group specialized in performing eye surgeries in areas that were difficult to reach.

Dr. Pat McEwen worked with Doctors for Life and Life Coalition International. All you have to know about the video is that when these African tribesman are happy they dance! Watch all the way to the end and you will be blessed.

After going to Africa several times a year since 2009, she was thankful she could still go on some “Aid 2 Africa” outreaches even though she was suffering with cancer. She would time her chemotherapy to be able to make these trips. Pat compiled numerous stories of tribal people who would dance or burst into laughter when they discovered that their vision had been restored after surgery. She even witnessed miraculous healings on the mission field due to prayer.

These areas are pretty remote and people cannot just go to an optometrist in a city to get testing and glasses. I spotted a lady who was an albino, in the queue. I asked Benerio to bring her in for a pair of sunglasses because the African sun often blinds the albino. After giving her the glasses, I examined her and found that she already had severe vision loss. She could only count fingers at about four feet, even with a -10 lens, the strongest we can test for. I could not help her and was feeling so sorry that we had nothing to help her severe problem. She was almost blind. Prayerfully, I looked through our glasses just in case. By God’s grace, I found a -15 pair that also were very dark sunglass. When I took away the original sunglasses, her face fell, but when I placed the new pair on her face, she burst into laughter because she could see. Our motto is “so the blind might see” and it means both physical and spiritual sight. She, like most of our patients, listened intently to the Gospel message and left with a tract in her native language clutched tightly to her chest. There is no joy like seeing someone’s eyes open to the Gospel.

There are many more stories from the mission field that Pat compiled over the years. But one story that stands out is her work in training Christians in the Zulu territory along South Africa’s east coast to do sidewalk counseling. After several days of training, they decided to name the ministry, “11th Hour Counselors” since there are no sidewalks in front to the abortion clinics in Africa. On the day that the group was to put their training into action, they loaded up a school bus to go off to an abortion center in Zululand. People were crowded onto the bus three to a seat for the long, hot journey through the Zulu territory so there was no more room. Some cried when they had to be left behind.

When Pat called several months later from America to find out how the “11th Hour” ministry was going, she was told. “Oh, we don’t go to the abortion centers anymore!” After a moment of shocked disappointment, she was told that the abortion center in the Zulu territory had shut down due to their ministry.

Jesus told His disciples not just to preach the Gospel to make converts, but to “make disciples of all nations” teaching them to obey all of the counsel of the Word of God. The nations scripturally are the ethne, or “peoples groups” of the world. The nations are not geopolitical countries, but rather every ethnic group with its own language, culture, beliefs, customs and mores. Although the Zulus are part of South Africa today, they are a “nation” or “peoples group.”

How many people can say that they were responsible for closing every abortion center in an entire nation? How many can say they even know someone who accomplished that? Although I am grieved and will miss my friend, I am happy when I think of the crown she is wearing as a glorified member of the Church Triumphant in heaven.

Publications

Books

DVDs & Online Videos

Pro-Life Ministry

Civil Government

The Hall of Church History

Frank Schaeffer Will You Please Shut Up! (Book)

High Quality Paperback — 200 pages

A Reasonable Response to Christian Postmodernism

Includes a response to the book Christian Jihad by Colonel V. Doner

The title of this book is a misnomer. In reality, I am not trying to get anyone to shut up, but rather to provoke a discussion. This book is a warning about the philosophy of “Christian postmodernism” and the threat that it poses not only to Christian orthodoxy, but to the peace and prosperity our culture as well. The purpose is to equip the reader with some basic principles that can be used to refute their arguments.

Part 1 is a response to some of the recent writings by Frank Schaeffer, the son of the late Francis Schaeffer. This was originally written as a defense against Frank’s attacks on pro-life street activism – a movement that his father helped bring into being through his books, A Christian Manifesto, How Should We Then Live? and Whatever Happened to the Human Race? These works have impacted literally hundreds of thousands of Christian activists.

Part 2 is a response to Colonel Doner and his book, Christian Jihad: Neo-Fundamentalists and the Polarization of America. Doner was one of the key architects of the Christian Right that emerged in the 1980s, who now represents the disillusionment and defection many Christian activists experienced in the 1990s and 2000s. There is still great hope for America to be reformed according to biblical principles. As a new generation is emerging, it is important to recognize the mistakes that Christian activists have made in the past even while holding to a vision for the future.

Special discount price:
(We accept PayPal and all major credit cards.)

Click here for more information

The Silent Scream (DVD) Eight Languages

“When the lives of the unborn are snuffed out, they often feel pain, pain that is long and agonizing.” – President Ronald Reagan to National Religious Broadcasters Convention, January 1981

Ronald Reagan became convinced of this as a result of watching The Silent Scream – a movie he considered so powerful and convicting that he screened it at the White House.

The modern technology of real-time ultrasound now reveals the actual responses of a 12-week old fetus to being aborted. As the unborn child attempts to escape the abortionist’s suction curette, her motions can be seen to become desperately agitated and her heart rate doubles. Her mouth opens – as if to scream – but no sound can come out. Her scream doesn’t have to remain silent, however … not if you will become her voice. This newly re-mastered version features eight language tracks and two bonus videos.

“… a high technology “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” arousing public opinion just as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 antislavery novel ignited the abolitionist movement.” – Sen. Gordon Humphrey, Time Magazine

Languages: English, Spanish, French, South Korean, Chinese, Russian, Portuguese, Japanese

Running Time: 28 minutes

Special discount price:
(We accept PayPal and all major credit cards.)

Click here for more information

Amazing GraceAmazing Grace: The History and Theology of Calvinism (DVD)

Download the Free Study Guide!

Just what is Calvinism?

Does this teaching make man a deterministic robot and God the author of sin? What about free will? If the church accepts Calvinism, won’t evangelism be stifled, perhaps even extinguished? How can we balance God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility? What are the differences between historic Calvinism and hyper-Calvinism? Why did men like Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Spurgeon, Whitefield, Edwards and a host of renowned Protestant evangelists embrace the teaching of predestination and election and deny free will theology?

This is the first video documentary that answers these and other related questions. Hosted by Eric Holmberg, this fascinating three-part, four-hour presentation is detailed enough so as to not gloss over the controversy. At the same time, it is broken up into ten “Sunday-school-sized” sections to make the rich content manageable and accessible for the average viewer.

Running Time: 257 minutes

Special discount price:
(We accept PayPal and all major credit cards.)

Click here for more information

The Four Keys to the Millennium (Book)

Foundations in Biblical Eschatology

By Jay Rogers, Larry Waugh, Rodney Stortz, Joseph Meiring. High quality paperback, 167 pages.

All Christians believe that their great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, will one day return. Although we cannot know the exact time of His return, what exactly did Jesus mean when he spoke of the signs of His coming (Mat. 24)? How are we to interpret the prophecies in Isaiah regarding the time when “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Isa. 11:19)? Should we expect a time of great tribulation and apostasy or revival and reformation before the Lord returns? Is the devil bound now, and are the saints reigning with Christ? Did you know that there are four hermeneutical approaches to the book of Daniel and Revelation?

These and many more questions are dealt with by four authors as they present the four views on the millennium. Each view is then critiqued by the other three authors.

Special discount prices:
(We accept PayPal and all major credit cards.)

Click here for more information

Share |


RSS
Subscribe to
The Forerunner

Have The Forerunner blog sent straight to your inbox!

Enter your email address:

YouTube
The Forerunner Channel on YouTube

Featured Product
If you like the articles on this website, you may also be interested in:

Featured Articles

Live Seminar!

Real Jesus
The Abortion Matrix DVD: Update

The Abortion Matrix:
Defeating Child Sacrifice and the Culture of Death
is a 195-minute presentation that traces the biblical roots of child sacrifice and then delves into the social, political and cultural fall-out that this sin against God has produced. You can order this series on DVD, read the complete script and view clips on-line...
continued ...


View My Stats