The end of 2008 marked the end of five years of volunteer ministry for Apologetic Response Ministries (A.R.M.). This past year we focused much of our time on new publishing projects which are still in the works as well as more one-on-one time spent with individuals looking for information and forming relationships through email and in person. We also spent our time with members of the LDS church, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Muslims. Although we cannot share our personal conversations here on the web, we can share with you some of the seminars and events that we participated in the past year as well as those of other ministries which we partnered with and promoted through our mailing list.

January
Throughout this whole year our friends Basil Christi at The Church of St. Mark - Lutheran in Mississauga and Rev. Tony Costa were both very busy in various events that we at A.R.M. were pleased to promote and participate in. This month we promoted the Atheism vs. Theism debate between Christopher Hitchens and Jay W. Richards broadcast by CCN and shown at St. Mark’s Lutheran. This seminar DVD can be purchased at CCN.TV. We also promoted Tony Costa’s Lecture at Queen’s University called Life After Death’ in Christianity, Islam and Buddhism.

February
This month I was both pleased and proud to post the first of what I hope will be many of apologetic responses written by my son Caleb. He wrote a review of The Jesus Dynasty written by Dr. James Tabor called ‘Where’s The Crown?’ We promoted Christ in The Passover event presented by Richard Muller of Jews For Jesus Canada at St. Mark’s Lutheran.
Other events we promoted were the Believing is Seeing event presented by RZIM Canada at Cedarview Community Church in Newmarket Ontario and the War of Worldviews debates presented by The Berean Call in Whitby Ontario and moderated by Michael Coren and Peter Koropatwa. Debaters included Shabir Ally, Christopher DiCarlo, Budhendranauth Doobay, Dave Hunt and Frank Sherwin.

March
This month we promoted Tony Costa’s seminar Apologetics: Tools Defending the Christian Faith held at the Annual Toronto Missions Fest as well as the Toronto Passion Play held at Queensway Cathedral in Etobicoke Ontario. We also promoted the Investigating Faith day long live broadcast on CCN featuring Lee Strobel and Mark Mittleburg held at St. Mark’s Lutheran in Mississauga Ontario.

April
Tony Costa was busy this month starting with Hermeneutics and Exegesis: How to Interpret the Bible Seminar at Calvary Church in downtown Toronto and The Bible: Fact or Fable? seminar at Zion United Reformed Church in Sheffield Ontario. Tony also taught sessions at Richmond Hill Chinese Community Church in Richmond Hill Ontario called Responding to The New Atheism and Evangelising Muslims at Trinity Baptist Church in Burlington Ontario. We also promoted The Copernicus Lecture Series on Science & Faith held in Agincourt Mall in Scarborough Ontario.

May
May was a month for movies. We promoted the CCN broadcast of Ravi Zacharias called What Does It Mean To Be Human held at St. Mark’s Lutheran as well as the Prince Caspian Movie Event also hosted by St. Mark’s Lutheran at Queensway Cineplex in Etobicoke Ontario.

June
Promoted Dealing With Doubt: The Truth About the Resurrection with Dr. Gary Habermas CCN broadcast at St. Mark’s Lutheran. Promoted Tony Costa’s Apologetics Ministry three Sundays in June for his 3 part lecture series on Christian Apologetics at Grace Bible Church in Scarborough Ontario. We also gave a three hour seminar on cults for a group of 8 local Filipino Pastoral Candidates providing them with the tools they need to help the new Canadians in their churches.

July
Promoted Pastor Werner Peter’s seminar on Five Point Calvinism at Westmount Park Church in Etobicoke, Ontario.

August
A.R.M. partnered with Tony Costa’s Apologetics Ministry three Sundays in August for his 3 part lecture series on Christian Apologetics at Grace Bible Church in Scarborough Ontario by providing a resource table for attendees.

September
This month we promoted The Faith Once Delivered: A Response to the New Atheism conference featuring Michael Haykin, Tony Costa and Joe Boot presented by Sola Scriptura Ministries International at Covenant Reformed Church in Etobicoke, Ontario. We also promoted The Truth Project Simulcast Live event broadcast by CCN in various locations in Ontario. Also promoted Tony Costa’s all day seminar The Trinity: God’s Nature and Attributes hosted at Calvary Church in downtown Toronto. Another event this month was the Ignite Our Culture Conference - Islam: The Threat At The Door held at The Crossroads Centre in Burlington Ontario. We also alerted our mailing list to an event called Break The Walls Down: Breaking Down The Walls of Misconception of Islam and Judaism held at Fellowship Baptist Church Markham in Markham Ontario. Also Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum gave a series of lectures at Markham Bible Chapel on The Church and The Jew. We were once again invited to set up a resource table at Grace Bible Church in Scarborough to enhance a three part teaching series on World Religions delivered by Tony Costa. St. Mark’s once again hosted another great broadcast on CCN called What’s So Great About Christianity? featuring Mark Mittleburg and Dinesh D’Souza. Finally, we also notified our mailing list of an evening hosted by the Orangeville congregation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints called Are Mormons Christian? giving our readership the opportunity to attend to challenge the claims of the Mormon church and share the real gospel with those in attendance.

October
St. Mark’s hosted a public showing of Lee Strobel’s new film The Case For Christ - The Film. A.R.M. partnered again with Tony Costa’s Apologetics Ministry for his lecture called Answering Major Objections Against Christianity providing a resource table at Grace Bible Church in Scarborough. St. Marks Lutheran hosted A.R.M. for an all day conference featuring Vincent Poldrugovac speaking on Who Are the Latter-day Saints?, Rev. Dr. Ernest Hahn speaking on Sharing The Gospel With Muslims, Joe Boot Responding to The New Atheism and myself on the subject of Jehovah’s Witnesses: Should I Not Be Concerned? The audio files of these sessions were recorded by Ryan Kidd who also posted them on sermonaudio.ca and can now be heard by clicking here.

November
Tony Costa spoke on the theme Defending the Word in Faith and Deed at the Brainard College and Career Retreat in Cambridge Ontario hosted by Grace Bible Church Cambridge. Ravi Zacharias International Ministries presented Believing Is Seeing with a number of speakers at Bethal Bible Chapel in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. Sola Scriptura Ministries International held a two day conference called “In My Place Condemned HE Stood” - Justification, The Cross and God hosted by Free Reformed Church in St. Thomas Ontario. A.R.M. presented Is Mormonism Christian? at Markham Christian Community Church in Markham Ontario.

December
Ravi Zacharias spoke at Cedarview Community Church in Newmarket Ontario for an evening called Capture The Wonder of Christmas.

Other Activities That Kept Us Busy

We promoted Ben Stein’s film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed to our mailing list when it came out in theatres as well as on DVD and Youtube. This year was also another busy year for Seventh-day Adventists distributing tracts in our area which resulted an apologetic response from us through email conversations. We were also contacted by James Kieferdorf in Dallas Texas who has been very active in alerting Christian media outlets of television and radio programs that are run by splinter groups of The Worldwide Church of God who still hold to and teach Herbert W. Armstrong’s heresies. He alerted us to the fact that a Canadian broadcaster called The Christian Channel was broadcasting a number of heretical groups on their station who denied the doctrine of the trinity even though the station claims that all programs adhere to that essential truth of our faith. We wrote to The Christian Channel with the same concerns that James Kieferdorf did but to date have still not received any reply.

We also alerted readers to a new cult group in Toronto called Toronto International Christian Church which is under the leadership of Kip McKean who started The Boston Movement. His new movement is different in name only. We continue to keep our readers up to date with the latest news from Lawrence Hughes and his ongoing battle against the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society and this year we were also introduced to another legal battle brewing between Walter Kambulow of Burlington Ontario and the leaders of the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship. Mr. Kambulow had set up several websites and mailing lists accusing the TACF of fraud and misappropriation of funds among other allegations. In turn, the leaders of the TACF filed a 50 million dollar lawsuit against Mr. Kambulow claiming he had caused irreparable damage to the ministries of TACF accusing him of slander. A court date was set in October of 2008 when evidence would be presented from both sides. The TACF withdrew their lawsuit prior to the date and now, according to Mr. Kambulow, he intends to file a lawsuit against them.

On a more positive note, we accepted an invitation this past summer to a Mormon church to meet with some missionaries there. They gave us a tour of the building and we spent about an hour in conversation with them with the end result of them accepting copies of Vincent Poldrugovac’s book ENSIGN: Raising The Banner of Truth and agreeing to read it and respond. Vincent also kept busy this year writing and publishing booklets on Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormonism to share with local churches as well as arranging several meetings with Mormon missionaries and engaging in email conversations and online debates with a number of Mormons. Neil Bulloch continued to offer tours of local mosques for Christians and introducing Christians to Muslims to form ongoing relationships with them. We also partnered with Fellowship of Faith for the Muslims - Canada in a sharing of resources by providing reproduction of Muslim testimony DVDs for distribution.

Comments

For those readers who have supported this ministry with your prayers and generous gifts of support and also for the benefit of those who may only have just heard of this ministry, I’d like to share some encouraging words from some folks who have been served and encouraged by The Apologetic Response:

“I’m happy to recommend the Apologetics Response Ministry to all churches. I have found it to be an excellent source of apologetic materials that benefited many of our church members. I thank David for providing us with high quality materials DVD, Books, CD’s and handouts for our church library.”
In Christ Service,
Pastor Greg Tupas
Grace Bible Church - Scarborough

“David, I wish to state my appreciation for your Christian apologetics ministry. I hope that many other congregations will take advantage of it in the interest of our Lord’s Gospel. Thanks also for your help in arranging for the seminar at The Church of St. Mark - Lutheran.
In Jesus,
Rev. Dr. Ernest Hahn - Toronto
Fellowship of Faith for the Muslims - Canada
P.S. And many thanks for delivering the Arabic Bibles to Maryam Kakoose.

“David’s presentation on mormonism was very insightful and of great benefit to our congregation. We would love to have him back to speak to us again! May the Lord continue to use him and his ministry to equip the church. Thanks again David!”
Pastor Daniel Lee
Markham Christian Community Church - Markham

“The Apologetic Response is a ministry faithfully seeking to equip the saints to give an answer for the hope that is in them. I was delighted to speak at one of their seminar programs in 2008. We need more people and programs such as this to equip the church in an time when the West is facing crisis and collapse due to the abandonment of Christianity”.
Rev. Joe Boot
Westminster Chapel - Toronto

“As a worker with international students I appreciate Dave’s periodic emails that help with evangelism and warn of new cults and pseudo-Christian groups.”
Max Rideout
Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship of Canada - Toronto

“It’s a pleasure being a recipient of The Apologetic Response. I particularly appreciate the regular updates informing me of various events taking place in Toronto and surrounding areas. Keep it coming.”
Paul Edward Ralph
Executive Director
RZIM Canada - Toronto

Bro David, thanks for the good work. Could you please put me on your mail-outs that you are sending to others, as it would be most helpful for me in my teaching here in the Philippines. We have very limited access to such good information, and over here, it is like “The hurrier I go, the behinder I get”.  Thank you so much and may God bless you richly in your Work!
Yours because of Calvary
Bro. Verle Streifling - Philippines

“Thank you for these recent helpful comments. On our ministry website www.takeheed.net we have several articles on the linkage between Todd Bentley and Toronto. I would covet prayer for the following - I have been invited by the local Radio Ulster to take part in a panel discussion on their Sunday Sequence programme this coming Sunday morning 22nd June. I would very much appreciate your prayers for wisdom and for the ready recollection of scriptures.
Your servant for Christ”
Cecil Andrews
‘Take Heed’ Ministries - Ireland

And this one came especially for Caleb all the way from Bulgaria!!

“Thumbs up, Caleb! A very good essay for a high-school student. By all means, go on and develop your mind. I especially like the conclusion, where you actually praise Tabor and at the same time ephasise that his approach is terribly flawed. There is a great need for Christians, who think maturely, read opposing views and respond with deep understanding, honesty and grace. You are on the right path!
Greetings from Bulgaria,”
Andrew Nedelchev
Board Member of the HARTA Association
www.harta-bg.info
(In Bulgarian the name HARTA is an acronym for “Christian Apologetics for Intelligent, Inquiring and Active Bulgarians”, while the word “harta” actually means “charter” as in “Charter of the United Nations”.)

Although we cannot share everything that we do due to confidentiality and privacy concerns, we can share a few examples of some of the correspondence we receive. The following request came from a reader who has been studying with Jehovah’s Witnesses:

“I have been studying with Jehovah’s witnesses for some time. Their version of the Bible disturbs me a lot. I was originally of the Hindu faith. But, I wanted to know about Chritianity proper. But after associating with Jehovah’s Witnesses I seem to be losing the respect I once had for Christianity itself. Please help.”
Posted by Chelvan
Who’s Watching The Watchtower?

The following came from a new Canadian in Scarborough from the Philippines who was a high-ranking Mormon for 23 years:

“Dear David,
I want to say thank you for your time in sharing to us your experience and some gospel principles. The DVDs that you provided are all worthy to see for me to discover more hidden truths about Mormonism. Thank you for giving your honest observations about the Mormon Church. On behalf of my family, I would like to express my appreciation for the warm reception you have accorded to us yesterday when we attended both the prayer meeting and the worship services. I feel the holy spirit for every prayer uttered during the prayer meeting and I feel joy in spirit when the congregation sang the worship songs. You’re one of the persons David that I considered as instrumental in bringing to us the gospel truth, although we have known each other in a very brief fashion.”
Ramon Rodriguez

As you can probably tell by now, our ministry has gone beyond the GTA to the world as a result of this wonder we call the world wide web! According to our latest ClusterMap we have readers in over 30 countries! Of those we have received personal correspondence and requests for information from Tobago, Honduras, Florida, Texas, Japan, Bulgaria, Ireland and the Philippines!

We are primarily however a local ministry so please remember the ‘Mission at Your Door.’ Toronto has over 5 million souls with over 100 languages and dialects spoken daily. 50% of GTA residents speak a language other than English in their home, 43% are part of visible minorities, and 49% were born outside of Canada!! Toronto is what Paul Carden referred to as 5 continents in a can!! If we are going to make an impact globally, we’ve got to make an impact locally! Please pray.

About Us

The beginning of 2009 marks the beginning of our sixth year as non-profit volunteer ministry consisting of myself, David Upton, Vincent Poldrugovac and Neil Bulloch offering seminars on Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormonism and Islam. At every seminar we offer free materials as well as materials from our resource table for purchase. We also promote other ministries and events in and around our city when we are notified of them through our friends in ministry. Our mailing list alerts readers to notable web articles, events related to our ministry or others who are doing similar work in the city as well as functioning as our primary tool of communication with readers who need further information, materials or prayer requests.

We are uniquely called to equip the body of Christ to meet the challenges of competing world views that are misinformed about the Christian faith and who Christ is. With our city of Toronto growing rapidly with almost 50% of our population being new Canadians, we are equipping individuals and churches with the tools they need to not only learn about other world views but to also learn how to share the Christian faith with them. This is accomplished through our web ministry, monthly seminars, resource table and outreach materials.

Having served and equipped individuals and churches from over 20 different denominations from as far west as Brampton to as far east as Scarborough, we are equipped to come to your church or small group with videos, handouts, powerpoint presentations and live speakers to answer questions and share with your group ways to share your faith with friends, family and neighbors in ways you may not have thought of before.

Financial Report

Support for this ministry comes solely from the gifts of A.R.M. friends. We are not funded or endowed by any group, church, or denomination. Because we are a volunteer based ministry donations are not tax refundable. Donations to this ministry that make are jobs easier are especially appreciated. This year we were blessed with a new Epson colour printer and an eMac computer. A new MacBook laptop computer for presentations is on our prayer list for this year! Hint hint

How You can Help

Please write to us at apologeticresponse@rogers.com if you are interested in hosting ARM seminars in your church or small group or even if you just need further information or clarification on anything in this report. You can also write by snail-mail to:

The Apologetic Response
P.O. Box 282, Stn. D
Etobicoke, ON.
M9A 4X2
CANADA

Please Pray:

- For wisdom, guidance and direction as we offer apologetic responses to the world around us.
- For those who are angry and/or confused, that the Holy Spirit would use this ministry to speak to their hearts and minds to receive the free gift of salvation that He has to offer.
- For protection from those who would seek to discourage and/or undermine this ministry. (I have chosen not to post any of the negative emails and postings we receive)

Thanks

First and foremost to our Lord Jesus Christ for sustaining this ministry this year. Thanks also go to my friends and brothers in Christ who have helped so much this past year, Vincent Poldrugovac, Basil Christi, Neil Bulloch, and Tony Costa. I’d also like to thank Peter Cavanaugh and Tom Konstantindis for their technical support. I’d also like to thank the churches who hosted our seminars in 2008: Pastor Werner Peters and the congregation of Westmount park Church, Daniel Lee and the congregation of Markham Christian Community Church, Basil Christi and the congregation of The Church of St. Mark - Lutheran, and Pastor Greg Tupas and the congregation of Grace Bible Church. Special thanks to all the individuals and ministries who contributed resources to share with churches in Toronto; Fellowship of Faith for the Muslims - Canada, Good News For LDS, IRR.org, Ezra Books, Free CD Tracts, and The Centers For Apologetics Research. I also would like to thank all those who have contributed to this ministry with your financial contributions, donations of equipment and your prayers. Thank you also to those who have written kind and encouraging comments both on the web site and privately. Encouraging words are as valuable and needed as money and prayers. Last but not least, I thank my wonderful wife Heather whom I affectionately refer to as ‘Holy Heather full of Grace’ simply because she is and my faith filled son Caleb who never ceases to amaze me in so many ways.

May God Richly Bless You All in 2009,

David Upton

The Apologetic Response
February 2009

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