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THE
REFORMED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE Weekly Meetings in our Congregations Services in HUNGARY
The
above chart gives the services of the RPCCEE in 26 locations in Hungary,
Romania, and Ukraine. Prior to World War I there was a thriving Hungarian
Reformed Church in the region known as the Hungarian part of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. Even then,
however, there were serious problems on the horizon.
Liberalism with its denial of biblical truth was penetrating the
seminaries of the HRC. The church
was losing its evangelistic fervor. And
Reformed homes, once places where children learned biblical truth from their
fathers, started drifting from this solemn duty.
Then, as a judgment from God, WWI swept over Hungary, and when it ended,
Hungary was cut down to one-third of its size, leaving vast numbers of
Hungarians outside its borders. This
resulted in great misery for years to come, but the worst was the Soviet
occupation of the entire area from 1945 to 1990.
By 1990, the Hungarian Reformed Church was but a shell of its former
self. In
1990, Dr. Robert Rapp, already a veteran foreign missionary since 1960 with
service in Brazil, Pakistan, and South Korea, received a call from the Lord to
come over and help in the Hungarian lands. From
1990 to 1992, Dr. Rapp met with church leaders and shared his vision for a
school to train young Hungarian men for the gospel ministry.
In 1992, that vision began to take shape in the form of a new school.
In 1996, the school, Karolyi Gaspar Institute of Theology & Missions,
had its first graduates. These
graduates, however, were not welcomed by the bishops of the HRC and, instead,
were excommunicated for being unwilling to be retrained in the liberal theology
of the HRC. That sad event event,
however, was the Lord's way of showing Dr. Rapp and his students that the time
had come for a new church, the RPCCEE. Today, the RPCCEE has 22 small but growing congregations and four preaching points in Hungary, Romania, and Ukraine pastored by 15 of the men trained by Dr. Rapp. Pray for the continued spiritual development of the RPCCEE, that it would eventually become self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating. It already has a great evangelical witness in the entire region and now carries 25% of the financial load of the work (the rest coming from friends and churches who know of the work through Dr. Rapp). Please use this chart to remember these beloved congregations as they meet to hear God's Word. Hungary and Ukraine time is Eastern USA time + 6 hours, Romania is Eastern USA + 7 hours. You can pray as the Word is being preached and taught there. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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