Am avut privilegiul de a-l avea printre noi aici, în La Mirada. A avut o mare influență asupra tinerilor români din bisericile noastre. A plecat să sărbătorească Evenimentul împreună cu Cel născut în Bethleem.  Iată ce frumos scrie un evreu despre el. Dennis Prager este o altă mare excepție printre noi:

My dear friend, radio colleague, and Prager University faculty member, Frank Pastore, died today. He had been in a coma following a motorcycle accident on November 19. He was 55 years old.

Until I received the news late this afternoon, I believed that he would come out that coma and eventually resume his life just as he had left it before the accident. He was that strong, that indomitable, that much a force of nature; you thought that if anyone could pull it off, it would be Frank. But it was not to be.

His life was rich, full of victories and more than his share of defeats. He tells his own story in his excellent autobiography, Shattered: Struck Down, but Not Destroyed which I urge everyone to read. He endured a difficult childhood in Southern California, became a star major league baseball pitcher, and then a popular, highly respected radio talk show host. He succeeded at every task he took on. He did it the hard way: through force of will and a punishing personal work ethic.

“The jock” was a deep thinker with an agile mind. When challenged by his Christian teammates to investigate the claims of Christianity, he took them on. In his words, “he followed the evidence” and, to his initial surprise, the evidence led him right to Jesus Christ to whom he dedicated his life.

He became a student of Christian apologetics and eventually earned his Ph.D. He could discuss baseball managers and hermeneutics with equal facility. His talk show on KKLA in Los Angeles became the most popular show of its kind in the country. He described the show as “the intersection of faith and reason.” It was perfectly apt.

Frank was big, ebullient, and brilliant. You can see this in the two courses he did for Prager University — “The Four Big Bangs” and “Do You Have Free Will?” I’m grateful they exist. They are a witness to the man he was.

He was a great fighter for the Judeo-Christian values we hold dear. He was just coming into his prime as a spokesman for those values. One despairs to think of the things he had still had to accomplish.

The world is smaller without Frank Pastore in it. And I am personally broken hearted.

Good-bye, dear friend. May the God you so fervently and articulately defended guide you on your new journey.

From Teo Sfatcu, one of the Romanians blessed by Pastore:

This is sad to see…. I was a listener.

I remember when Steve Ceausu and I went to “interview” Frank over lunch for a Mission One event. Steve did most of the talking… I was there to learn. I did not know who Frank was at the time and its strange to think that we had to talk to Frank to go over who we were and what the Mission One events were about.

Frank was very alert and listened to who we were as a group and then proceeded to tell us who he was and what he would cover in the 15 minutes we gave him to speak a at the M1 event. That was a long time ago; a meeting with just another worker in the Kingdom it seemed at the time. But, the most impact Frank had on me was not the meeting, he was a regular guy. The greatness was in that a regular guy stood up to the evil forces in this world and armed himself with truth and dared to stand and fight for what is right.

This is how I will remember Frank!

-teo

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