T. A. McMahon & Perry Trotter (Part 1)

Program Description:

Tom and guest Perry Trotter discuss Perry’s ministry, Shadows of Shoah, which was established to help refute the anti-Semitism that is rapidly gaining ground even within the church.

Transcript:

Gary: Welcome to Search the Scriptures 24/7, a radio ministry of The Berean Call featuring T.A. McMahon. I’m Gary Carmichael. Thanks for tuning in. In today’s program, Tom welcomes special guest Perry Trotter, founder of the ministry Shadows of Shoah. Now, along with his guest, here’s TBC executive director Tom McMahon.

Tom: Thanks, Gary. On our program today and next week, I have the pleasure of talking with a friend of mine named Perry Trotter. Perry resides in New Zealand, although he’s spent some of his time in Israel. And I met Perry in 2012 when I was on a speaking tour throughout New Zealand, and we were brought together by a mutual friend who told me that Perry had a unique ministry. Well, as Perry and I sat at lunch and he shared what he was doing, my first thought was the term “unique” to describe his ministry was just a huge understatement. Perry, welcome to Search the Scriptures 24/7.

Perry: Thank you, Tom. I’m very pleased to be here talking to you.

Tom: We’re talking to Perry in New Zealand, as I mentioned, or maybe I didn’t mention it, but that’s the case, and it’s about—well, it’s a long way, which puts about 7,000 miles between our phones. And some Kiwis would say that I’m speaking to someone “down under,” and I know you’ve heard this before, Perry, [laughing] but I’m going to throw it out for our listeners. You see, I was puzzled, because if that were the case, that Perry’s speaking to me, now, somebody comes from—or I’m going to go to New Zealand, they don’t have any problem with me saying that I’m coming down under, going down under. But, Perry, has anybody ever said that you, when you came here to visit us in Bend, that you came up over?

Perry: No, I can’t say anybody said that to me. We do, however, have the dubious distinction here of being 21 hours ahead and yet 10 years behind.

Tom: Yeah, and you know what? That’s the way, when I was there, that’s the way I loved it. You know, and everybody, seriously, Perry, all the people that I know who have been to New Zealand, they say, “That’s—we Americans, we think that’s the greatest.” And it was. It was wonderful being with you guys there.

Perry: Thank you.

Tom: Well, I mentioned earlier that you have a unique ministry, and—well, I’m just going to let you lay it out for our listeners. Tell us about the activity, the ministry, that the Lord has really put on your heart.

Perry: Thank you. Well, I’m involved in several activities. First of all, I’m a student of the Scriptures, and I also teach the Scriptures with a particular emphasis on discernment issues. I’m particularly interested in refuting Replacement Theology Christian anti-Zionism. I like to respond to Christian anti-Zionism. I’m deeply concerned by the impact on the evangelical community of the Christian anti-Zionism, which is really gaining ground throughout the world. You’ll be well aware of that. Your friend Dr. Paul Wilkinson has done great work in documenting what’s going on there…

Tom: Exactly.

Perry: …and I just wish that we were still 10 years behind in regard to that issue here in New Zealand. That issue of Christian anti-Zionism has really taken firm hold here, particularly within the supposedly evangelical training institution.

Tom: Well, it’s worldwide, but interestingly—you’re concerned about it—you know, the thing that I find stunning is that it’s new to people. They haven’t heard of it. You know, and it’s not that is—this is definitely subversive stuff, but it’s not now today, things are billboard in terms of their error. They’re like neon signs, but people are just missing it or not being concerned about it, which is one of the reasons I want to talk to you about all of this.

Perry: Sure.

Tom: Well, tell us about your ministry Shadows of Shoah.

Perry: Sure. Well, because I have had a very strong interest in the Jewish people for twenty years now, I’ve got connection with various Jewish people in the community here, but also in Israel. For some time, we opened our home to traveling young Israelis, and as a result of that, we met quite a few. I think we had something like 400 young Israelis stay with us over a period of about five years, and in 2008, I took a trip with most of my family through Israel and stayed mostly with people we had met, people who had stayed in our home. And on one occasion we were staying at Gan Shmuel, which is a kibbutz. It’s a long-established kibbutz, and we learned that there were twenty or thirty Holocaust survivors there.

Tom: Wow.

Perry: Now, I’ve worked as a professional photographer for about ten years and prior to that, I worked as a professional musician. And so I had long wanted to photograph survivors, and when the opportunity was before us, we asked our host to arrange for us to meet and interview seven of the survivors who were residing at the kibbutz.

Tom: Mm-hmm.

Perry: So we interviewed them for about an hour each, and we came back to New Zealand with that material, and I had no idea what I would do with the material, but as I worked through the material and listened to the stories again, certain parts of the stories are just so deeply moving. And the images that I captured, the black and white portraits, I took those—we distilled the stories down to about fifteen-twenty lines each—and created these three-minute vignettes, if you like, of what we had heard. And so Shadows of Shoah has basically grown from that.

Tom: Perry, you know, you mentioned that you have a background as a professional photographer and musician. As we talked, as we lunched together, I mentioned that I had a design background, my undergraduate degree is in design, and I’m telling you, your photographs, your presentation of Shadows of Shoah, is just exquisite. Unbelievable. Now, I’m not going to wait till the end till we’re going to have Gary give the information of your website, but I’m going to jump right ahead. If you…folks, if you will go to www.shadowsofshoah.com/exhibition/, you will see something that will just move your heart, move your soul. I mean, it’s that incredible. So you took the photographs. What about the music?

Perry: Yes, I wrote the music, as well.

Tom: Yeah, yeah. It is absolutely stunning. Now, there’s been really much work to document the Holocaust. How would you say your work is different?

Perry: Okay, well, most of the work that’s been done on the Holocaust is of a documentary nature. It focuses on the historical background, it involves historical photographs, and so on. And that work is so important, particularly as we see Holocaust denial or Holocaust depreciation taking hold. Now, we’re not trying to replace or compete with that work, but rather we’re trying to complement it. Now, the average young person of today has little if any knowledge of the Holocaust, which is truly remarkable for an event that took place in living memory. Truly remarkable. Now, the culture today is truly media-saturated, and so young people are not particularly likely to take the time to watch a lengthy documentary or read a long book, so unashamedly, we have gone for the heart, and we have used media. We take these short accounts of powerful images and in three minutes we’ll present something that has moved us deeply in terms of the Holocaust survivor’s story, and it seems to work. Young people who have no knowledge of the event are deeply moved by the work that we’ve done, and for that we’re very grateful.

Tom: Right. And, again, this isn’t just a promo or an idea, this is the truth, and for the people who have been there, been through it, as young children, right? All of these would have to have been very small children at the time.

Perry: Yeah, mostly. Some of the survivors we’ve interviewed are in their early nineties, and so sometimes they’ll be telling us about things that happened to them when they were in their twenties. But it’s just a remarkable thing to hear these stories, and you’ll appreciate that I’ve worked with these stories over many hours, and so I’m very familiar with them.

Tom: Mm-hmm.

Perry: Sometimes when I come back to them weeks later, I’m still—I’m moved afresh. I’m shocked afresh. I’m challenged on all sorts of levels. And if the work does that in the hearts and minds of others, well, I’m very grateful.

Tom: Right. Now, neither you nor your wife Sheree are Jewish. Did that ever become a problem in setting up interviews with these Holocaust survivors? Obviously they’re going to be skeptical at least.

Perry: Yes. It doesn’t really create a problem. I mean, the Jewish people have come to accept what we’re doing, and I think the degree of suspicion that we encountered at the beginning we’re not encountering anymore.

Tom: Right.

Perry: We’ve set up Shadows of Shoah as a non-sectarian charitable in educational trust, and so there’s no hidden agenda, we are simply trying to communicate the reality of this issue to today’s generation. And I’m very grateful for the way the work has been embraced. On our board, we have three people who identify as evangelical Christians, as I do, and we have three leaders from the Jewish community and our chairman is a survivor of Theresienstadt concentration camp. So the work has been embraced, and we’re working hard to take it further.

Tom: Mm-hmm. Now, I know you mentioned something—well, you alluded to this earlier, but I want to get into the details of it. When the subject of the Holocaust comes up, the reaction ranges from those who, you know, deny it [and] that it ever took place—especially in terms of numbers of deaths—to those who are concerned that it could really take place again. Now, what’s your experience when you’re confronted by either view?

Perry: Well, let’s think about your question, too, in terms of what are the (….), because the deep polarization over the issue of the Jewish people, over the issue of the Holocaust, and for those of us who know the Scriptures, this should not surprise us, should it?

Tom: Right, right.

Perry: I think of Genesis 12, that passage that is so foundational to the biblical story, and the text that is in verse 3: “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse.” And this might seem like a roundabout answer to your question, but I think we can see that the issue of Israel and the blessing that would come through Israel is ultimately a very divisive issue, and so we see that playing out in regard to attitudes towards the land of Israel today, don’t we?

And so in regard to the Holocaust, I encounter some horrendous attitudes. In fact, in recent weeks, I was standing here in my rural community on the side of a sport’s field watching my son play a sport, and I engaged in a conversation with a youngish German gentleman, and this gentleman is well-educated. And I told him about my work; naturally it came up. He grew up in Munich, and he began to describe how, as he was growing up, they heard a lot about the Holocaust, but he began to complain about the fact that it was generally told from the point of view of the Americans or the British. And he went on to express his views, and at some point I stopped him, and I said, “Would you repeat what you’re saying to me, because I want to be quite clear that I’m not misconstruing, mishearing, what you’re saying.”

And he said to me that his view was that the Holocaust was basically a small, powerful group of Zionists effectively sacrificing millions of their own people in order to create a pretext for the establishment of a Jewish state on Palestinian land.

Tom: Brother. Unbelievable.

Perry: It is. It’s deeply disturbing. But do you know what I find even more disturbing is when I find what I think are anti-Semitic views amongst believers. Horrendous. I mean, as I understand the Scriptures, 1 Thessalonians 5 tells us the whole world is under the control of the evil one. Now Ephesians 2 talks about the spirit of the enemy being at work in unbelievers. So in a sense, when you encounter anti-Semitism amongst unbelievers, we’re not that surprised. I don’t like it, but I’m not that surprised by it. But when I encounter similar attitudes amongst believers or professing believers, I’m deeply disturbed.

Tom: Yeah. Well, it’s certainly the power of the adversary. But the media today…as you know, Perry, my background is in film and I worked in Hollywood. I know my degree is—well, it was in education, but with a major in television and film. I’m telling you, the power of the media to present just straight—well, I was going to say erroneous, but that would be almost a euphemism—just dead-out lies, and for people to buy into it, it’s just incredible. But, as you say, the god of this world; I’m not talking about the God of the Bible, we’re talking about the adversary and what he will do. And, of course if he can destroy the Jews, that makes God out to be a liar, right?

Perry: I think so. I think as somebody who takes the Scriptures seriously, I think the veracity of God, the faithfulness of God, is at stake in regard to the Jewish people and the land of Israel and all those issues that are connected with that. And so, I mean, these are my views as an evangelical Christian, and as I work in this field, I’m quite careful to identify myself as such. And yet the work that I’m doing is a non-sectarian work.

Tom: Mm-hmm.

Perry: And it’s an interesting territory. It’s very interesting. I mean, I have to be very sensitive to the boundaries that exist, and I have to be very careful that I don’t hijack this work for a sectarian agenda, and so our goal is to present these accounts faithfully, with historical accuracy, and people are moved by them. It’s very interesting to read our visitor’s book at the exhibition. Most people are very moved, but every now and then, there’ll be this very anti-Semitic comment right in the middle of the visitor’s book. It’s a deeply polarizing issue simply telling the stories of what happened. Remarkable.

Tom: Yeah. Well, anybody who goes on the Internet whenever there’s an article or story or something like that, and then you drop down to the comment levels, you walk away from that thinking, “What are these people…” I’m talking about the comments now, “What are these people thinking? Where are they getting this idea?” I mean, it’s…well, it’s just the heart of man, “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?”

Well, again, getting back to your goals, your objectives for Shadows of Shoah, tell us about some of the opportunities. I know you mentioned briefly earlier, but what are the opportunities that the Lord has opened for you for this?

Perry: Well, let me tell you about events just under a year ago. We were collecting these stories, and then late last year, about this time last year, we were successful in attaining a grant in order to build the exhibition that I had designed to house this work. And shortly after that, through unusual circumstances, I was given the opportunity to write the program for and to direct a national event for United Nations International Holocaust Remembrance Day. And in addition, it became known that the prime minister of New Zealand was willing to come to the event and to open our exhibition. So it was a remarkable privilege to have the work launched nationally like that, and so subsequent to that launch, we’ve had stagings in an art gallery and in various other places. We’ve set up the exhibition in a prominent university, and that’s really good in the sense that you will be aware that the universities are, in many cases, they can be breeding grounds for the BDS movement, the Anti-Zionists, and so on.

Tom: Right.

Perry: So we’re excited about those opportunities, and we’ve got bookings in two museums next year, and we’ve also got opportunities—we’ve had expressions of intention regarding taking the work to Europe, and there are other opportunities that are opening up, so we’re working hard and we’re pursuing these as they come up.

Tom: Perry, it escapes me, but I’m thinking about the documentary that has been touring our colleges, supposedly evangelical colleges, which was…

Perry: With God on Our Side?

Tom: Yeah, With God on Our Side. Describe that for our audience.

Perry: Well, let me give you a description as written by Simon Wiesenthal Center. They may be more objective than me. It’s the film that’s called, With God on Our Side, and the film is highly critical of Christian support for Israel, and in my view, it’s deeply flawed. In fact, the Simon Wiesenthal Center joined with the Los Angeles Board of Rabbis and the L.A. Jewish Federation to produce a repudiation of With God on Our Side, and they described the film as containing “monstrous distortions” and as making “strong emotional arguments built on lies.” So here in New Zealand it was World Vision that sponsored at least one presentation of that film in a local church.

Tom: And here in the United States, I can go through a number of supposedly evangelical universities that have brought—I think it was Stephen Sizer, I think he was involved, and I can’t remember who else, maybe the producer of the documentary, but, again, this is propaganda. This is our young people buying into it, because they’re—can’t say who reads anymore, but certainly, as I mentioned earlier in this program, the media is powerful in its influence, and lies sell as well as—well, they sell better than truth. So…

Perry: They do, yeah.

Tom: …that’s where we are. Now, Perry, we’ve got about four minutes left in our conversation together, but then we’ve got next week, so I’m excited to keep this going. But I do want to do this again. Everything that we’ve been talking about, sometimes it may get a little abstract, because we’re describing things, but you can’t describe what you have done. I don’t know—no matter how hard we try. So, folks, here’s the website: www.shadowsofshoah.com/exhibition/. And you’ll be stunned. As a matter of fact, when we start next week, I’m going to ask our listeners, you know, because we’re prerecorded, and they can stop the program and then go to your website so they know what we’re talking about. It’ll just bring out—more than the nuances—the issues, in such a way, such a powerful way, by having that in their mind. Anyway, the traveling exhibition, which we’ll get into a little next week: but just as a warm-up, tell us about that. How did that come about?

Perry: Well, the exhibition—let me describe it for you. It’s approximately eight meters diameter. Now, I know you’re in America, so I suppose that’s about 25 feet?

Tom: Yeah, close, I think. [laughs]

Perry: And so it’s an enclosure, dark enclosure. You walk into it, and there are seven LED monitors around it. Three-minute stories are played at each of those. There are six HD projectors in the center. There is original music playing, and so fifty people can be in the exhibition at a time. They spend 21 minutes in there, and they take in seven deeply moving stories. And it moves hearts, and we’re very grateful for the opportunity to produce it.

Tom: Right. And our hope here at The Berean Call, our prayer, is that doors will open. You know, Paul prayed for doors to open for him for his evangelizing, and we certainly know that’s a prayer that God will honor, but this to me is in that same ballpark. So, I would ask our listeners, go to the website that I just described, and if the Lord puts it on your heart, well, certainly we can—whatever you can bring before Him in prayer for the—I’d say success, and you know what I mean by success, Perry, that God will use this; that it will touch hearts and minds out there, and maybe somehow offset the growing apostasy—we’re going to talk about that next week—and the issues that surround anti-Semitism in the church.

 So, again, Perry, so thankful that you were able to join us on Search the Scriptures 24/7, and we look forward to next week to pick up right where we left off.

Perry: Thank you, Tom. Appreciate talking to you.

Gary: You’ve been listening to Search the Scriptures 24/7 with T.A. McMahon, a radio ministry of The Berean Call. We offer a wide variety of resources to help you in your study of God’s Word. For a complete list of materials and a free subscription to our monthly newsletter, contact us at PO Box 7019, Bend, OR, 97708. Call us at 800-937-6638, or visit our website at the bereancall.org. I’m Gary Carmichael. We’re glad you could join us, and we hope you can tune in again next week. Until then, we encourage you to Search the Scriptures 24/7.