Soviets to Air Sermon Today, Schuller Says

The Rev. Robert H. Schuller said Saturday that the high point of his life came when he heard that a 15-minute sermon he taped earlier this month in Moscow would be aired on Soviet television tonight--Christmas Eve.

The broadcast by the Garden Grove televangelist will be the first to be shown to the 200 million viewers of state-owned Soviet television on a Christian holiday.

Schuller said he received a telephone call early Saturday morning from Valentin Lazutkin, deputy chief of Gostelradio, the state television agency, informing him that the sermon he videotaped during a three-day visit to Moscow in early December at the request of the Soviets would be aired tonight at 10 in Moscow.

“I don’t think anything will happen in my life that will top this; this will be the high point,” Schuller, founder of the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, said of speaking on Christmas Eve to the people of a country whose government professes atheism. “This makes me feel so good I could cry with joy.”

Because of the time difference, the Soviet broadcast will begin just as today’s first service at the Crystal Cathedral is ending, and a moment of prayer will be offered for the Soviet viewers, he said.

Schuller visited the Soviet Union with industrialist Armand Hammer earlier this month and agreed to the broadcast offer; however, he wasn’t told then when the program would be aired.

The televangelist said he was given three hours to prepare the sermon and decided to use Jeremiah 29:11: “I have a plan for your life, says the Lord. It is a plan for good and not evil. It is a plan to give you a future with hope.”

He was told by Lazutkin that a large number of viewers is expected for his address because the broadcast follows a popular weekend Soviet TV news program.

“I’m very pleased,” Schuller said. “I believe it will give those people a hope they will never forget.”