NRB Chronicles 2022 - Finding Courage - Documentary

Jesus said, Blessed are the persecuted and they are suffering big time right now. This is Bible League International and 19-year-old Aria was beaten by her own father and violated by local authorities.

You know what her crime was? Simply that she gave her life to Jesus Christ after leaving radical Islam. They need Bibles in order to endure and persevere. And that's why Truth Network and Bible League are teamed up to send God's Word to 3500 persecuted believers around the world at $5 a Bible, $100 Synth 20, call 800-YES-WORD, 800-YES-WORD, 800-YES-WORD, or give at truthnetwork.com.

So I love these NRB chronicles, I call them, as we're sitting on the convention floor of the National Religious Broadcasters Convention 2022. And as always, God is just man. He's gifted so many different people with so many amazing different things and connections, and He loves to rescue people.

Have you noticed that? So I am very, very blessed to be sort of with a rescuer, in my opinion. Thank you very much. So Kay Rubicek is actually in our booth here at the NRB and she has a movie. I'll let her describe a little bit about what this, because this movie is all about a rescue, isn't it, Kay? Oh, it is. Yes, thank you, Robbie. And it is a pleasure and honor to be here at the booth with you all. And the movie is called Finding Courage. Isn't that something we all need? Right?

More than ever. And it is a rescue. But when you think about it, it's actually a very large-scale rescue happening in China. But this is a story that is taking place across China and America.

It's a family story. And how they use faith to overcome fear. And I think that's just a common thread that we face as human beings all the time. And, you know, facing our fears.

And how do we do that? Well, the story, Finding Courage, shows how one family did that. They were torn apart by the Chinese Communist Party because they were, part of their family were believers. And some of them were, you know, China's an atheist system. It's very hard to have faith and keep it under that type of system.

Sometimes I think we just don't know how lucky we are. Another reason for this story needing to be told. But anyway, we have undercover footage from inside a Chinese labor camp in this movie. The family put themselves in extreme danger to get this footage out to us. And they are still putting it out there because they want us in America, around the world, to know what they've been through and to learn from their challenges and how they've been able to use their faith to overcome tremendous hardship. And basically being torn apart. And so what's happened, and we want you, the listeners, to be aware of it, is like, this movie ought to be, like, on YouTube.

It should be a lot of places where people could easily have access to it. But based on the culture we're in currently, nobody will touch this movie with a 10-foot pole because so many things are funded by the Chinese, whatever. And this thing is scary.

However, it's received reward, award after award after award after award. And it is available to you listening right now. So we're going to make you aware of all that.

But I think as you hear what she just described is, what? There's footage of what actually goes on in these labor camps. And it will make you cry. There's parts in the movie that will make you laugh. But yes, there's tragedy, but there's triumph at the end. We like to say this is triumph over evil, triumph over the CCP.

It can be done, this family's done it. And yes, there's scary parts. And that's why the movie's been so powerful.

It's won award after award at film festivals throughout the US and internationally. And it has that emotional journey, but it's all real. This is a documentary, but it makes you feel like you're in a fiction film because you're thinking, how can this be real? People say to me, is this real?

I'm like, it is. It's all a documentary. This is real life. But real life can be stranger than fiction, but it can be just as fascinating, if not more, because this is what real people live through. So yes, yes, this is a movie that's going to make you feel, but it's going to make you think, and it's going to make you feel that your faith needs to be as strong and give you the courage you need to get through. And also to show you how you can pray for your brothers and sisters in China, right? Like how we all have an awesome opportunity to take part of their lives, but we can't do it by putting on blinders and not experience that this stuff is going on.

I mean, let's take a look and see what's actually going on so that we can be involved in it. And so just to get a little more of the story, but before I say that, let me say that I was one of those ignorant people. I still am. She had mentioned yesterday the CCP, and then she said, well, most people know that's the Chinese Communist Party. And I was like, well, I guess I don't fit into the most people category because I didn't know that.

But now I know it. So when she said CCP, that's when triumph over the Chinese Communist Party, which I find it's a beautiful way to say that, because all those people are people, too. And all those people, God loves them, I mean, just as much. And one of the things that we saw through Corrie Ten Boom was the perpetrators were hurt almost worse than the people that did all the crimes, right? Because they had all the guilt and the shame and all that stuff. And we saw Corrie Ten Boom help and actually minister to all the people that ran the camps. And that's exactly one part of this movie.

So I said this is a family story, but I'm missing a piece, a very important piece. It's small, but we needed to know how can it be possible that people can hurt each other so badly. Now, remember, China is a communist state. They don't allow God to be there. The Communist Party has to be above God. But when you think about it, who is carrying out those actions? They're the ones that are just victimized just as much as the people who are victimized just as much as the people, if not more. So we went and interviewed former Chinese Communist Party officials, and we put them in the movie. And what they experienced under that Godless system has just warped them to such an extent that if we know how far, how bad it can get, then it really helps to value what we have right now over here and then be able to pray for people that don't have the freedoms that we still have. So yes, we have those people in this movie. We've interviewed former Chinese Communist Party officials. Many weren't willing to go on camera, but we found some, and they're very brave people. And what that highlights for me, you know, yesterday, just because God blessed me to just like, man, I sometimes have to poke myself.

I'm so lucky I get to hear and see so many cool things. But yesterday, I had an in-depth interview with a man that used to be a Green Beret in our special forces, right? In our so-called Christian system, whatever you want to call it. But oh my goodness, the guilt and whatever of the things he was called on to do for our country's sake, and whatever I could see as I was hearing from him some of that stuff. So, you know, let's not think that communists have an angle on all the corruption around.

But how cool. So to get into that story a little bit, because I'm curious. I'm very curious, actually.

I'm anxious to see the movie. So this family, how did they get sent to the labor camp? What actually was the process of what happened to them? The main character in the movie, she saw what happened on Tiananmen Square in 1989.

She was a journalist. She saw how the students were killed in this big massacre by the Communist Party, because they were asking for freedom and democracy. The Communist Party crushed them, killed 10,000 people. But the propaganda on the Chinese media said the students killed the soldiers.

They never said that they killed 10,000 people. So they always have been covering up their persecutions. The Cultural Revolution destroyed all of the traditional faiths in China that had held that society together for so long.

They destroyed it. They replaced that with a worship of money, a worship of material things, and that really ruined the culture. So then every 10 years or so they have another persecution. So then after 1989, in 1999, there's another huge persecution that started, the persecution of the Falun Gong group.

It's a meditation practice, very ancient Chinese traditional practice, looks like Tai Chi, sort of stretching movements. One of the sisters in the family started practicing it. Then they were being persecuted, and their family decided to stand up and say, No, we haven't done anything wrong. For that, they held a banner on Tiananmen Square, brother and two sisters at different times. They were all arrested. The brother was put into prison for 13 years in prison. The sister was killed in a labour camp. Her body is still there. Now that's a whole other story, and you're going to hear about that in the movie. I won't give too much away.

We have all the evidence to prove this. One sister survived, and she managed to come out to America. She didn't know what to do, but she found the courage to tell her story and to help get her brother out of prison. We watched him heal, and we document that in the movie.

People experience PTSD, and seeing someone overcome that, it was absolutely phenomenal to interview these people. That's what they went through, a persecution in China. This is one persecution of faith that hasn't been crushed.

There's more. Other political persecutions, they've been crushed. People have been crushed.

When you try to crush faith, that's breaking someone's spirit. I think there's a lot of encouragement for people there. Wow. They came out, and they wanted to make this, but at first, this wasn't such an easy movie to make, was it?

Oh, my goodness me. This has got to be one of the hardest movies you can make. It's a Chinese story, but we're in America, and we speak English. There's a big problem there.

We overcame that, but that took time. How do you get footage inside China? The Chinese Communist Party controls all media. We had to get undercover footage, and that's difficult. We had to get access to the family. They're very protective. They're worried about their safety. They've still got family in China.

What could happen? We had to get access to all of that. We had to get their trust.

They didn't know us. How did they know they could give us this footage? But they chose us, and they let us make this movie.

Even with distribution. We've had film festivals. We know that they've taken money from the Chinese Communist Party for advertising and things, but the requirement has been no movies about, say, Taiwan or Falun Gong, but some film festivals fired the CCP and gave our movie a top award. We've won Best Picture, not only Best Documentary, but we've also won Best Picture above even scripted films at certain film festivals. That's saying something.

People think, oh, it's just learning, but there's entertainment value in there too. So you make this movie. That's amazing.

You get done, and you're thinking, man, the world's ready for this. This is going to be all right. Oh, no. That isn't what happened, was it? No, it's not.

It's not. I have made other movies before knowing that it's a hard sell because getting the truth out can be very difficult. There are people who want to block it, but it doesn't mean that we stop. I know I have faith that I'm doing the right thing, and that we have to have compassion. We have to care about other people. We have to inspire others to get through these challenges.

If I can't do that myself, then how can my work have that impact? So I have to find ways to push through, and the people in this story have helped me push through. I keep asking. I ask God, am I doing the right thing?

Am I doing the right thing all the time? I get an answer, and I keep taking another step forward. Then we get to be here at the Truth Network with these wonderful people.

What an honour and a privilege here. Here I am talking to you, and we've got people coming to watch the movie. We just know that when you're in that movie, watching it with your friends and family, you're going to laugh, you're going to cry, you're going to gasp at the same time, and at the end you're going to feel like there is hope, and there is always hope in this world. We need to always keep reminding each other.

We've got to look up and look inside. In the 119th Psalm, I don't know if you've ever studied it, but anyway, I love Hebrew, so I love to study stuff. The Hebrew letter shin is often, in fact, some people will say it's sheker, which means falsehood. It's the second to the last letter in the Hebrew alphabet. You can see one of the lines in that section of the psalm, because you've got eight verses on every Hebrew letter in the 119th Psalm.

They all start with a shin, those last eight. It says, I hate and abhor lying, but the leilah do I love. And so, then, a very fascinating thing, just the way God speaks through this expression of these letters and the whole Bible is made up of these letters, which are all the word of God, which by the way means they're all Jesus.

Every single letter is Jesus. In its own way, the shin is the beginning of the word peace. When you hear shalom, that's the shin.

So, like all good things, it can be completely made false, and that's lying and falsehood. But then, fascinatingly, so when you hear the shin, don't think it's necessarily always something that can be absolutely marvelous, because it is the beginning of the word shalom, and it's several other beautiful words in Hebrew. But the thing I wanted to highlight is the letter tav, which is the last letter in the Hebrew alphabet, means truth. Wow, I'm getting an amazing lesson here.

This is fantastic, really. And so, what they teach on this is that these last three letters in the Hebrew alphabet all stand on one leg, but the tav stands on two, because the truth stands permanently, and that there is a lot more falsehood in this world, lots more falsehood than there is truth. But the falsehood is always going to fall apart and crush, because it only stands on one leg. You see, but the truth stands on a firm foundation, and when all the other stuff is gone, then we stand on the truth. And so, as I'm listening, and I think all the journalists that are out there that are selling their stuff from having to find a compromise in order to sell their stuff, while others are standing on the truth, which is a little uncommon, so there is not as much truth coming out of media right now, as it really needs to be when you think about it.

But the good news is, your stuff is going to be there forever, right? I mean, it's truth. And so, truth doesn't go out of fashion.

It's always the truth, and it's beautiful. So, I know if you're listening, you're going, Robbie, how do I get this? How can I watch it?

What's my next step? So, hey, how do they do that? Go to findingcouragemovie.com, findingcouragemovie.com. You can stream the movie there. You do have to purchase it there, but if you purchase it there, you can also. You'll get the book, which has all the interviews with the former CCP officials. It is streaming on some other platforms. You can see the links there. If you're at PNRB, you can see it with our screening here.

Yeah, we've got a screening after here, but this won't be broadcast by then. But, finding courage. So, the thing about this poor family, like, I can't even imagine the courage it would take to put an undercover.

Like, you're going into a Chinese work camp with an undercover camera on you. Like, oh my gosh. And how God will honor that. Like, God is in this. Like, that didn't happen by act, like, right?

Impossible. Absolutely, absolutely. And I should tell one more story just because I like to tell stories. So, years ago, the Billy Graham Association called me and they wanted me to interview a North Vietnamese pastor. And the guy did not speak English, so I understand your struggle.

And he had three interpreters with him, and I don't think one of them spoke English. So, I'm trying to do this interview, right? And, you know, I'm like, so, the Billy Graham administration or organization wanted me to interview, what did you want my audience to hear about? And they're, you know, like, all this, you know, and I'm like, what?

And then, you know, and that. They said, prison. And I said, prison in North Vietnam? So, you were in prison in North Vietnamese?

So, me being the typical American that I am, I just go, let me think, North Vietnam prison, you know, I'm thinking Rambo 3. I mean, it was like a swamp where the guy's got leeches on him, and he goes, yeah, swamp. I said, swamp?

I said, so, you were in a prison? He said, swamp? He goes, yeah, how long were you in the swamp?

Seven years. I said, you were in a swamp for seven years? I said, how did you sleep?

Standing up? What did you eat? What was in the swamp? What did you drink? Well, how many people were in the swamp?

Oh, about a thousand, right? So, I'm sitting there with this guy, like, what? You were in a swamp for seven years, right? And so, I'm processing all this, and I was like, so, what did God give you? You know, God's always given somebody, when he puts you in something, like, wow, he always gives you something.

I said, what did he give you? And he said, I got the 91st Psalm. And if you want to read something really cool sometimes, think about standing up in a swamp at night with people dying all around you because they were carrying out more people dead than they were putting in alive almost every day, you can imagine, from this swamp. And as I was sitting there processing it while I was on the air with him, I was reading the 91st Psalm because I could bring it up on my computer, I didn't know that much about the 91st Psalm at the time. And all of a sudden it struck me that I'm not terribly surprised that God could sustain a man in the swamp for seven years. I'm not surprised.

I mean, I don't know how he did it. This guy should have died, like, but what blew me away, and I just started gushing tears, was what I asked the guy, how did you get out of the swamp? And they were like, no, no, no. Good behavior. I was like, good behavior?

Like what? Well, he was leading other people in the swamp to Christ. He's a pastor. And I went, oh my gosh, God, all the other people in the swamp probably should have been in the swamp. In other words, they were rapists, murderers, thieves, whatever had caused them to get thrown into the swamp. You know, government's there for a reason. And I thought, you know, I'm not surprised that God could, but what blows me away is God sent those other people a pastor.

He was sending them a rescue. And so when I think about this movie and I listen and I hear it, it gives me that, that common theme that I know that these people are just thinking there's no hope in it. Oh yes, there is. Oh yes, there is. And he's got his people on the inside, always.

Always. It's that hope, that rescue. And you know, it gives me perspective because when I look at my life and I think, oh, I'm really struggling with this or with that, then I think about these other people and what they've got through, you know, seven years in the swamp, 13 years in a Chinese prison. And I'm thinking, I'm okay. You know, I'm okay. Yeah, I think I'll be alright.

Yeah. And I can see, okay, this is the blessings I have. This is what I've been able to survive. Value what I've got and what I've been given, you know, because that's where it all comes from.

So I think these stories really help give me perspective. And Finding Courage, what a marvelous title. That's the name of the movie. You can go to findingcourage.com? Findingcouragemovie.com. Findingcouragemovie. Yes, it is a movie.

You've got to put the movie in there. Yes. Dot com.

Yes. Wow, thank you, Kelly. What a, I mean, Kay, I'm sorry. Thank you, Kay. This has been spectacular. Thank you. Thank you, Robbie. Thank you so much.