Rick Renner, a Hockey Stadium, and Countless Miracles!

What has God called you to do that you never dreamed you would be doing?

I’ve learned that as we walk with God as our most important Partner in life, we often find ourselves doing what we would have never thought possible.

 In our own lives, just after relocating our family to live and minister in the former USSR in 1992, God miraculously opened that door for Denise and me to begin our television ministry that would transcend the eleven time zones of the former USSR. We didn’t realize at the time that our step of faith to start that one program in our living room was actually the inception of what would become the first Christian television network in the territory of the former USSR.

 Decades later, we are still broadcasting our own TV programs in addition to programs that we broadcast for other ministries. And as I mentioned, we now own our own Russian-speaking satellite network. Seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, we broadcast to a viewing audience of millions of Russian-speaking people.

Over all these years, we have broadcasted hundreds of thousands of hours of Bible-teaching programs across this vast territory. I am thoroughly convinced that it has made a permanent impact on the spiritual environment of the former USSR, by the grace of God. So much teaching of the Bible has gone into homes that the Church in this part of the world will never be the same.

Since we started broadcasting in 1992, we have received millions of letters and correspondence from people whose lives have been changed by the teaching of God’s Word via the airwaves and other forms of media. It is no exaggeration that several hundreds of thousands of people have come to Christ as a result of our television network. And books have been distributed free of charge by the millions.

 We give all the glory to God for what has happened and for what will ensue, and we are thankful for the gifts of our partners who have worked hand in hand with us so we could establish, build on, and continue to fulfill this mighty work.

To do all of this has taken faith, courage, finances, equipment, a skilled technical team, and a group of giving partners who have stood by us through the years so we could consistently and professionally reach the multitudes who were in spiritual darkness.

 In addition to the technical expertise needed, this assignment has also required a large team of dedicated employees who read and answer every single letter that is received from those who correspond in response to the programs. We still provide the same painstaking care that we did in those early days as precious Soviet souls took the time to sit down with pen and paper and write to us. And we love doing it!

Like so many other ministries, ours was no small undertaking, and it is a ministry today that requires a “thousand-percent” commitment from everyone involved — despite the obstacles and setbacks that invariably occur with such a monumental undertaking. Hell does not sit silent as you take Christ’s life-saving message to those in darkness, so you must stand ready to combat spiritual enemies that come to oppose you.

But I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that God’s mercy and grace remain the most important factors in this mix. And we have experienced it all — spiritual warfare, overwhelming victories, and lots and lots of mercy and grace!

 It’s true that we can buy the finest television equipment, produce the highest-quality programs, and purchase the most coveted time slots available — but if God doesn’t supply His part, it will all be to no avail. I am reminded of Psalm 127:1, which states: “Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.”

 What Denise and I have experienced as we’ve given God our yes and stepped out to obey Him has been nothing short of amazing — we are running to keep up with what He is building with our hands.

 But Wait…There’s More!

Our First Big Public Meeting

As we caught up on our mountain of mail that poured into our office from all over the former USSR, we sensed we should hold a large meeting to see how many of our TV viewers we could minister to personally in a public venue. So in the late summer of 1992, I filmed a commercial inviting people to attend a meeting that we would hold in the same national hockey stadium where I had been invited to minister by the man who helped us get on television. The filming and airing of that single service early on brought our faces before the people God had called us to — through their television screens in their living rooms. That’s how we were introduced to what was now becoming our growing family of TV viewers, precious Russian souls whom God Himself was reaching out to through us.

That hockey stadium — which today is demolished because it became so sadly dilapidated — was at the time the largest venue in the nation of Latvia. If all the bleachers and the main ice rink were used to maximum seating capacity, the venue could hold about eight thousand people.

God Was About To Show His Loving Care to a Hurting People

Previously, I shared with you about what receiving medical treatment was like in that part of the world during those tumultuous times, and I related our personal experiences at Soviet-run hospitals and clinics.

But those were not isolated incidents. Everywhere you went, without exception, medicines and medical equipment were in short supply. Welltrained doctors could diagnose a patient’s sickness, but that’s where it ended most of the time and people remained unhelped because no medications were available to treat the sickness. Even basic medications, such as aspirin, were a treasure because they were so hard to obtain.

It was in the midst of this dismal state of affairs that I made the announcement that we were going to hold a series of miracle services in Riga, and I urged people to come if they needed a miracle of healing in their bodies.

Well, when no medications are available, the idea of a miracle becomes good news for those desperate to receive healing in their bodies. So for two weeks prior to those big meetings, we broadcast our advertisements for the miracle services many times a day on television. We had no idea what kind of effect the commercials would have, but we prayed people would come to the meetings to hear the Gospel, receive a miraculous touch from God, and personally come to know Jesus Christ.

The long-anticipated day finally arrived and we drove to the city to begin our series of meetings. As we drove on bumpy cobblestone streets that led to the venue, Denise and I saw thousands of people walking down the streets in one direction. We made our way through the crowds in our little Russian made car, curiously commenting to each other, “Where are all these people going?”

When we finally arrived at the large auditorium — the hockey stadium we had rented — we were stunned to see masses of people in line, waiting for the doors to open. We had advertised this meeting and prayed that people would come — and didn’t have a clue all the countless people we’d just driven past were headed to our meeting!

As Denise and I stood on the platform and looked out over the audience in that large hockey arena, we were shocked to see the place filled to capacity with eight thousand people! Many of them were sick people who had no means of obtaining desperately needed medicine and had therefore turned to the power of God as their only hope for healing.

 And He did not disappoint them. Night after night, we witnessed mighty miracles occurring before our eyes. Blind eyes were opened, epileptics were healed, and deaf ears were unstopped. And the greatest miracle of all was the hundreds of people who came forward to give their lives to Jesus at the conclusion of the meetings each night! By the end of that week, the aggregate attendance was approximately forty thousand people — and of that number, more than seven thousand prayed to receive Jesus as Lord!

Yet there was one man who was obviously in need of a miracle, but had not received a healing touch for the duration of the meetings. He came each night after the service had started so he could get to his reserved seat without fighting the crowds that swarmed busily into the big auditorium as soon as the doors were opened. Because he came in late each evening, I couldn’t help but notice him. His sad, desperate physical condition and the intense look of agony on his face were hard to ignore as he slowly made his way to his seat each night.

 We learned later that nineteen years earlier, this man had become crippled from the waist down after falling from the roof of a house. On the first day of the meetings, he had hobbled toward the stage on his crutches to give his life to Jesus. On the second day of the meetings, he’d come forward to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit. So we had noticed this man early on. Then on the fourth day, he showed up at the local swimming pool nearby where we were baptizing people, and he was water-baptized. If nothing else happened to this man, his life had already been completely transformed for all eternity by the power of God.

 But for nineteen years, this man had used his crutches like legs. He would swing the dead weight of the lower part of his body on those crutches as he slowly moved forward one “crutch step” at a time. Once he finally reached his seat each evening, he would collapse into his chair, exhausted from his crutch walking. Because he had come in after the rest of the crowd was seated, many people had watched him come into the auditorium each evening and were aware of his extremely disabled condition.

That week, we had witnessed many instantaneous miracles. It was everything I had read about in the book of Acts, but it was happening here and now — in our meeting! Denise and I were speechless at the wonder-working power of God we saw in those services.

But now it was the last night. Oh, how I longed for that paralyzed man to receive a miraculous touch. As that last meeting concluded, I stood to dismiss the crowd and bid them farewell. Suddenly, I heard a great commotion to my left, and I turned to see what the disturbance was all about. I turned at the exact moment that man suddenly shot straight up from his chair and threw his crutches into the air!

 Before I could even catch my breath, the man jumped and began walking — free of the crutches! The bottom half of his paralyzed body had suddenly come alive. This was the first time this man had walked in nineteen years without the assistance of his crutches. Like the lame man in Acts chapter 3, this man literally went “walking and leaping and praising God” all the way to the front of the auditorium, where he threw his crutches on the stage and then stood there jumping for joy!

This paralyzed man had released his faith and thrown his arms into the air — and as his crutches hit the ground, the lower part of his body was quickened. Now he was standing before us all with his own legs to hold him up.

 ‘There Was Great Joy in That City’

 Because of where the man had been seated, the entire crowd turned to watch as he grasped the truth of God’s Word, seized it in his heart, and threw his hands upward in praise as a demonstration of faith. When his body became “quickened,” or made alive by the power of God, he began to take his first steps in nineteen years. He took one step, then another, then another — and with each step, he moved faster and faster. Soon he was running back and forth in front of the vast crowd that was gasping with shock at the miracle they were witnessing.

The entire crowd saw this miracle take place. And, certainly, it was one of the greatest miracles we had ever witnessed in our ministry.

After that remarkable event, I gave an invitation for the lost to be saved, and more people gave their lives to Jesus Christ that night than in any of the other four days of services! Years later, people still recall that amazing miracle. As a result of that miracle and the other miracles that took place during those meetings, multitudes believed in Jesus. Many of those people hadn’t previously believed in the existence of God at all — but because of these miraculous demonstrations, they gave their lives to Christ!

Our oldest son Paul said, “I remember arriving at those meetings and driving up to the back door of that huge venue. We sat on the bleacher chairs near the stage and I remember being there for all the events. When we left the building on the last evening, there were still people congregated outside. The meetings were over — everything was finished and done, yet there were still people outside looking for Dad and Mom so they could receive prayer.”

That meeting was our first large public meeting ever conducted in the former USSR. Of the more than 40,000 people who sat in those seats over the course of that event, 7,000 people came forward to receive Christ, and 926 people received water baptism, which I will tell you about in a moment. But that week, we witnessed scores of healings, miracles, and deliverances.

That public meeting reminded me of Acts 8:5-8, which says, “Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached Christ unto them. And the people with one accord gave heed unto those things which Philip spake, hearing and seeing the miracles which he did. For unclean spirits, crying with loud voice, came out of many that were possessed with them: and many taken with palsies, and that were lame, were healed. And there was great joy in that city.”

In those five days of meetings, the people literally “gave heed unto” the things that we preached, as we saw in Acts chapter 8. As a result, we saw miracles that week — including the expulsion of many unclean spirits that cried out as they were expelled from people by the delivering power of Christ. Many who had various types of sickness were healed, including the lame. And just as Acts 8:8 says, there was great joy as a result of all these happenings.

There was a crowd every night of approximately eight thousand people. But on that last night when they saw this miracle happen right before their eyes, hundreds rushed the stage for more prayer. Only God knows how many more people received miracles that night.

 926 People Baptized in a Swimming Pool

As the meetings went on that week, those precious people didn’t want to go away once they had been touched by God’s power. And during those meetings, I was deeply disturbed by one very important fact — these new believers needed to be water-baptized!

 In Matthew 28:19, Jesus proclaimed, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

 Jesus didn’t tell us to just preach to them; He commanded that we baptize them and get them moving on the road to discipleship. Jesus treated baptism like it was important, so I knew I needed to find a way to get these new believers into baptismal waters.

Before I continue with my story, may I speak to you for a moment about the word “baptism” to see what it originally meant in the Greek? The word “baptize” is from the Greek word baptidzo, a very old word that originally meant to dip and to dye.

For instance, in very early cases, the word baptidzo described the process of dipping a cloth or garment into a vat of color to dye it, leaving it there long enough for the material to soak up the new color and then pulling that garment out of the dye with a permanently changed outward appearance.

 In like manner, when a person comes to Jesus Christ, he can be likened to an old garment that needs to be dipped into a vat of dye so its color can be changed. The person isn’t dipped into a vat of colored dye, but into the precious blood of the Lamb. This person is so totally transformed by Jesus’ blood that he becomes a new creature. His countenance is so changed that he even looks different. You could say that this new believer has been “dipped and dyed.” For me, this sheds such powerful light on the subject of baptism.

In Romans 6:4, Paul said, “Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” Water baptism is a symbolic proclamation of the fact that believers have been buried with Christ and raised with Him. When a believer is placed in the baptismal waters, it symbolizes being immersed in one condition and coming out looking brand new. In other words, this pictures what happened to that person when he got saved. This outward symbol represents the fact that he has been dipped in the blood of Jesus and now his entire life has been newly colored and transformed to be like Jesus!

According to Paul’s instructions in Romans 6, this is the act of officially burying the past and starting a new life in Christ. So at the time of those public meetings, I’d understood that Christ commanded us to lead people into the waters of baptism as a public declaration of what God had done in their lives — in addition to preaching and leading people in a prayer of repentance. But because so many people had been saved that week, we had to come up with a solution to baptize them.

To solve this problem, we rented a nearby public swimming pool for three afternoons, and I announced that we would make water baptism available to each new believer and that we would instruct them about water baptism around the sides of the swimming pool before they entered it to be baptized.

We thought it would be extraordinary if one hundred converts showed up to be baptized in a mid-afternoon service. Our team was ready to baptize ten people at a time to speed up the process. We thought that with all the getting in and out of the pool, we could handle a hundred people in one hour per afternoon if we really managed the process. We thought that if three hundred of the new converts showed up over the course of the three afternoons, it would be a fabulous turnout — so you can imagine how stunned we were when more than three-hundred people showed up on the first afternoon.

There were so many people that we could not fit them around the edge of the pool in one teaching session, so we decided to divide the afternoon into three different baptismal sessions that each accommodated about one-hundred people. And we successfully baptized a little more than three hundred people that afternoon!

Then on the second day, another 300-plus people came to the pool for water baptism — meaning the turnout had already exceeded 600 people! Then on the third day, we were stunned when an additional 300-plus people showed up to be baptized. By the end of those three afternoons, we had water-baptized 926 people! Our team was both spiritually elated and physically exhausted at the same time. And we still had one more evening service to preach, in which we knew more people would repent and give their lives to Christ. That meant even more people would need to be water-baptized!

 When the auditorium authority said it was time to shut down the meetings on our last night of services, people didn’t want to leave and had to be almost forcibly directed out of the arena and onto the street. People clung to us, asking for more prayer, but it was time to leave, so we quickly left the platform through a private back hallway and a door that opened right to our transportation. However, when we exited that exterior door, several hundred people had already surrounded our vehicle, wanting one more opportunity to receive a touch from God.

This series of events provided the answer to the question I was asked about why we saw so many supernatural signs and wonders in that big meeting. The crowd was fixated on every word we preached from that stage. And where the message of Christ is really heard, faith comes. That explains why miracles started occurring all over that vast auditorium. The people heard, believed, and received.

This shows how important it is that you really listen when the Word of God is being preached. If you’re talking to your neighbor, writing notes, sending text messages, thinking of something else, or merely not listening, the Word can have great effect on the people all around you, yet have no effect on you.

 If you want to experience the supernatural power of God working and manifesting, you must be totally focused on the message that’s being preached, for faith comes by hearing — really hearing — the Word of God (see Romans 10:17). And when the message has been heard and embraced by a one-hundred percent hearing heart, the environment becomes right for the supernatural to take place.

On the last night of the meetings when so many people were getting saved and water-baptized, I felt the tug of the Holy Spirit on my heart and understood that He was asking me, Now, what are you going to do with all these new believers? They need a church, and they need a pastor. What are you going to do about that?

 Indeed, it seemed our commitment to come to this land for one year was opening up into something much bigger and broader than we could have anticipated. The Bible-school director’s suggestion to build a house if we suspected for a minute that our time here might surpass one year had been a good one, and it looked like we were going to be long-term residents in the former Soviet Union. As I shared in the last chapter, after Denise and I aligned our wills to make the commitment to move here for one year, God began to unveil His plan rapid-fire, but the fulfilling of that plan was going to be met with challenges.

 Deceived By ‘Mine Own Countrymen’ — The ‘Christian’ Mafia and the Bitter Lessons We Learned

In that last meeting in the hockey stadium, there was so much excitement in the air with the healing of the paralyzed man and the record number of people being born again as a result. But also during that last service, just about the time the service was finally being dismissed, a ministry team member walked up to me right on the stage and handed me a copy of the national newspaper’s latest edition.

 Turning my gaze from the crowd as the musicians played, I almost couldn’t believe what my eyes were seeing in bold print on the front page of that newspaper. I turned aside for a few seconds to scan the article as the crowd continued to worship.

 The feature story was about the unscrupulous Christian businessman and his mafia-looking son who was building our house in Jelgava! The son had strangely disappeared for the past couple of months, and construction on our house had been paused without explanation. But as I read that article, I began to understand what had happened — and why Denise and I had always felt there was something very dark about that family we’d become involved with and had trusted to help us.

 The reason for the front-page article was that this man’s son, our “house builder,” had disappeared into Europe after having kidnapped a European businessman and demanded a ransom for his release! Interpol had captured and arrested him on charges of international kidnapping. The story in this paper was the unraveling of the full story of the family’s criminal activities that they’d covered under the facade of doing “ministry.”

If all of this wasn’t strange enough, just steps away from me on the platform was this businessman! He was standing right on the stage with me! I looked at him and swallowed hard as my mind began to catch up with what my spirit had known all along — that there was something very dark and mysterious about this man who’d befriended me to “help” me.

 Although he was a Christian, when the Soviet Union had just collapsed, he realized there was quick money to be made from Westerners who were new to the former USSR and didn’t know the ropes. So he’d seized the opportunity to prey on their ignorance — including my ignorance. It was true that many people at that time were taking advantage of Westerners, and he likewise — though he was saved — had become seduced by the lure of money, and it had affected him.

 What I was experiencing reminded me somewhat of the apostle Paul’s plight in Second Corinthians 11:26, where he said he was “...in perils by mine own countrymen....”

 I stared at this businessman from a short distance on the platform, still in the throes of shock and disbelief. What a way to end a glorious week of meetings.