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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, SEPTEMBER 28, 1984
place where virtues like fidelity and commitment are promoted,"
she said.
"..!.
think what we're doing is Christian. I think what
we're doing is providing a place for people who have nowhere else
to go."
I
1
m reminded of an experience I had this past summer when I made a one-day
over-and-back journey to Budapest, Hungary from Vienna (the two cities are
only 3� hours apart by car). Hungary is a Communist country, although re
markably free of socialist slogans and banners extolling the virtues of the
party. Austria is a free Western society--with all of the ills of the West,
including a remarkably free attitude toward pornography.
Going through the border checkpoint, my eyes were drawn to a huge message
board straddling the traffic lanes. On the board were square pictographic
representations of items not permitted into Communist Hungary. One picto
graph displayed a hypodermic needle--meaning no drugs, please. In the next
square were the silhouettes of a hand gun and what looked to be a sawed-off
shotgun. The message was: no firearms permitted. In the last square were,
simply, five letters--"PORNO," with the inside of the last "O" shaped in
the outline of a nude woman, in case anyone missed the point.
Hungariar. authorities wanted none of these dangerous and corrupting in
fluences brought in from the decadent West. While Austria may not be Is
raelitish, it nevertheless has been influenced by the pornographic cultures
of the U.S., Britain and Denmark.
Our peoples really have no excuse, which is why God prophesies in Lamenta
tions 4:6, "The punishment of the iniquity of the daughter of my people is
greater than the punishment of the sin of Sodom." Our peoples, in "declar
ing their sin as Sodom," have ignored the very reason for Sodom's destruc
tion.
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau