The Christian Sentinel

February 1995 issue

It's Nice to be Back!

By Bill  Alnor 

ã 1999 Christian Sentinel

Our last issue of the Christian Sentinel was published more than two years ago, and when we last went to press we had no idea it would take this long to come back. Of course, to some "cyber tekkies" we haven’t been away long at all. We quickly embraced the Internet and have been on line with the Christian Sentinel at http://www.cultlink.com, even placing some new material on the website.

What an incredible two years it has been! The first thing I’d like to tell you is that we appreciate all of our regular supporters, and that we will be honoring all previous subscriptions. Since we are also in a restart mode, we would like to also ask for your help in rebuilding our mailing list. Please see the form on page 31 — inside the back cover — to correct mistakes in your mailing address label. Also, if you would like family and friends (or even foes of the Christian faith) to receive a free one year subscription to the Christian Sentinel, please also send us their names and addresses, or E-mail us.

Here is an update on the past two years. First, we have moved out of the City of Brotherly Love (Philadelphia, Pa.) to the Lehigh Valley, which is roughly one hour and fifteen minutes to the north and about two hours west of New York City. This region, which is the third largest metropolitan area in Pennsylvania (more than 650,000 people) contains the cities of Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton (and a lot of small towns). The move was not done in a vacuum; the main reason was our beginning a Bible study associated with the Calvary Chapel movement that quickly spun into a church. The bottom line is that I am now pastor of Calvary Chapel of the Lehigh Valley – which has greatly stretched me. As I write, we are now getting ready to move into a new full time facility in Bethlehem, Pa., and I am gearing up to be a full time pastor. Personally speaking, our move out of the congested inner city, with our new home literally being at the base of Blue Mountain at the scenic Lehigh Gap, has been almost like a move to paradise for our family of five. I am also greatly privileged teaching God’s word week by week, and shepherding a flock.

This hasn’t slowed my work with universities. This fall I begin my tenth year of teaching part time at Temple University in Philadelphia (in addition to occasional teaching assignments at three other universities). This continued commitment to teaching has led to my pursuing personal educational goals required of full time university professors –which means my pursuing a terminal degree. So to achieve this I have completed a master’s degree in Journalism last year, and now I am well into Temple University’s Ph.D. program in Mass Media and Communications. This has been a hard, but rewarding road as I am into serious work leading to my Ph.D. dissertation.

We have closed our Philadelphia storefront office and now we operate The Christian Sentinel out of our home. We are now looking into a basic restructuring, which could lead us into incorporating it directly into the ministry of Calvary Chapel of the Lehigh Valley. There are many advantages to such a move.

We are also beginning to push the ministry into new directions. First, we are beginning to produce our own professional videos exploring trends. We have just released our first one, titled, The Great Apostasy: The Lost Sign.

In publishing, besides my new book, UFO Cults and the New Millennium, we are now producing (on line) the Alien Gazette, which attempts to keep up with new trends in ufology. Although we are including some compelling articles on UFOs in this issue, the Alien Gazette is only available on line at our website. With the Christian Sentinel we hope to push this publication into cutting edge journalism – and especially into areas of media criticism and investigative reporting. I have also begun serious work on my next book, which may be my most important one yet, with a tentative working title of Disaster on the Main Line. Pray for me in this regard.

Finally, I also want to thank many of you who have been praying for us and continuing to support us financially during the past several years. Also, part of the reason there has been relative quiet from our front has been due to health problems, but the Lord has been merciful and things appear to be fine in this area. We are happy to be back publishing what we think will be a much better Christian Sentinel!