As a member of our Seventh-day Adventist Media Center board for the past five years, I am thrilled to see our facilities in Thou sand Oaks, California, being used for the production of top quality radio and television programs for the spreading of the gospel. The television section of our outreach is gearing up for major new advances in 1986. Adventist Television Ministries--comprising our three telecasts: Breath of Life, Faith for Today, and It is Written--is becoming one of the church's most powerful gospel seedsowing tools.
Breath of Life, presently on twenty-one stations, will greatly expand its audience in 1986 by procuring time on the Black Entertainment Network, a satellite system with outlets throughout the United Sates. The telecast also recently secured releases on local stations in Jefferson City, Missouri, and on the island of Jamaica.
Christian Lifestyle Magazine is the title of the new series developed by Faith for Today last year. This interview-type program is now appearing on forty-one stations and on the Lifetime Cable Network in the United States and Canada. Viewers are responding enthusiastically to the new Bible course follow-up materials designed to complement CLM programs. Demand for Christian Lifestyle Magazine is ever increasing.
An advertising blitz is planned for 1986, built on the successful publicity program carried out last November in Portland, Oregon. Bus posters, a two-page TV Guide ad, and radio spots promoted the Christian Lifestyle Magazine telecast throughout that metropolitan area and dramatically increased the number of viewers.
The It Is Written telecast, broadcast on eighty-three stations in North America, is viewed by more than one million individuals each week. It Is Written has completed new programming for 1986 aimed at appealing to viewers' felt needs. A new miniseries will deal with three of the great killers we face today: cancer, heart disease, and alcoholism. Speaker/director George Vandeman will interview medical experts who give practical advice on how we can "dodge the cancer bullet," improve the "state of the heart," and help those "battling the bottle." Other new programs will aim at helping people adjust to the loss of a loved one, find their "irreplaceable role" in marriage, and face persistent, hidden sins.
A miniseries on the book of Revelation will be telecast by It Is Written nationwide starting this month. The series, entitled The Rise and Fall of Antichrist, begins January 12 and will run for eight weeks, ending March 2. It Is Written telecasts on the subject of prophecy have been drawing a large response. There is a growing interest in eschatology among Christian and non- Christian audiences.
The present miniseries covers several topics of vital interest today: the problem of human suffering, the nature of eternal life and eternal death, the origin of the Antichrist, the current attempt to build a "Christian nation," and the nature of earth's final conflict.
Pastors should find the new programming developed by the Adventist television ministries to be a useful teaching tool in their evangelistic efforts.
Outreach of this type is what each of the telecasts at our Media Center strives to make possible. Aiding the local pastor in his work is their bottom line. Your enthusiastic support of the Television Ministries Offering on February 8 will greatly help them in achieving this end. --J.R.S.