Communism
‘For most of my life, I had no idea what the call is. I was born into an atheistic family in the Soviet Union. Literacy was compulsory in the country for the sake of making people receptive to communist propaganda (even by now Ukraine, according to the UNESCO rating, is the most literate country in the world alongside North Korea). We loved to read and we were reading a lot.
I was reading everything interesting I get, including some “spiritual” stuff like Bhagavad Gita or Tao Te Ching. That was prohibited, and we considered it so cool to read what is prohibited. For the same reason, I even read the Gospel once (I can not recall now which one, but believe it was Luke). A grandmother of my friend kept a copy in Proto-Slavonic (Old Bulgarian), and I had to learn the language to read it! I enjoyed the story very much, though it sounded pretty sad. The good guy was killed by the authorities without any guilt or particular reason. Well, this is life! In our country, 20 million were slaughtered by the regime in the same manner.
The weird issues of the Gospel story, – like sin, redemption, resurrection, etc., – did not make any sense to me and I just skipped them. This is just a novel; it should not be absolutely consistent. Soviet propaganda was making all of us logically and morally challenged, accustomed to contradictions and inconsistencies. After all, taking the courses of Marxism-Leninism Philosophy, History of the Communist Party and Scientific Atheism was compulsory at the university, and we were quite comfortable with all that inconsistent mythology. We were trained not to ask uncomfortable questions.
I graduated as a research physicist, specializing in laser optics, and completed advanced studies in geophysics. By the age of 30 I was a Senior Researcher, had been published in scientific journals, had patented inventions in geophysics and laser optics, and was ready to defend Ph.D. theses. I knew everything a Soviet scientist should know about the Bible: most of it is just a collection of fairytales for the babushkas (illiterate elderly ladies). There are so many good and useful books around – why should I waste my time reading that one?
But God has a sense of humor, hasn’t He? He made me read the Bible by sending me almost to the North Pole alone with nothing to read but the Bible (a Norwegian pastor gave me a copy on the way). Having not much to do after the research equipment was installed and worked automatically, I decided it will not hurt to read some fairytales, and started from the very beginning. However, the account I found in its first pages sounded much more reliable than the atheistic cosmology I faced before – about nothing that exploded to well-organized something operated by sophisticated laws we try to intelligently learn now).
The biblical story of the origins sounded much more reasonable than any other explanation. Eventually, I found that everything I know from my personal experience and my science fits with this book. This was the only “spiritual” book that told the truth about “earthly things” which I experienced and could put to the test. So, if looking for a reliable source of information on matters I cannot test, on “heavenly things” — this was it. And if I accept a part of it on the basis of the facts, I have to accept the rest of it by faith.
But it went even farther. In the context of the Genesis first chapters, everything I learned before from the Gospel about Jesus started gradually making sense to me. From Genesis and the rest of the Old Testament I found out why the Gospel is so important, and why Christ had to come and sacrifice His life. So through science, I came to the Bible, and through the Bible, I came to Christ, and have committed my life to Him eventually.
The question disturbed me nevertheless: how did I manage to live till the age of 30 knowing a lot about the world and even knowing some about Jesus, but still not knowing Jesus personally? Why my friends and colleagues, having access to the same information, did not see this amazing truth either? The answer became obvious: there was no room for the Good News in our worldview. The story of Jesus was good enough for us but was not the Good News per se. As Paul puts it, the proclamation of Christ crucified is foolishness to Gentiles (1 Corinthians 1:23). We were gentiles. The system of atheistic propaganda and education shaped our worldview with the immunity to the message of salvation. Nobody is interested in salvation without understanding the danger to the parish. The bad news is what turns the message into the good news. As gentiles, we did not know the bad news of the fall, and that is why we were deaf to the Good News of the redemption.
I still did not know what the call is, and neither I was aware of the concepts like ‘ministry’, ‘evangelism’, ‘apologetics’, or something. I just found wonderful truths that bring real sense to my life, and I wanted other people to see this truth as well. I started to share it and was surprised how little people care about the truth actually. The university administration was not happy with what I was doing at all, and I had to hold underground meetings with students, professors, and colleagues at first, and either give up on doing this or give up on my Ph.D. pursuit eventually. I can not say I was a strong bold believer who made that decision easily. It was a great challenge for me. But the treasure I found was greater than academic success anyway, and I have decided to continue sharing the truth.
I did not know any devoted Christians who could guide and instruct me back then. And love for reading helped me again. I was reading and studying everything I can find about the Bible to know more about it. Somehow I got some books by College Press published in Russian through Literature and Teaching Ministry, and they were extremely helpful in shaping my vision and understanding of the ministry.
I came to the conclusion that in a post-soviet society where people had been indoctrinated in atheism and worshipped science for several generations, the way I came to Christ could be a very effective way to win others for Him. They should hear the bad news by learning the truth about the Bible, about creation and the Creator, about the fall, and about moral absolutes. With this in mind, I have left the research activity and started the apologetics ministry that got the name Christian Center for Science and Apologetics later on (https://scienceandapologetics.com/en/). It exists for introducing the Truth to skeptics; strengthening the saints in their confidence in the Truth, and equipping God’s people to proclaim God’s Word effectively.
We started it with my wife Olga in 100 square feet room that was our bedroom, office, print shop, and warehouse at the same time. Printed materials were the key tool from the very beginning of the ministry. Because people in post-soviet culture preferred to avoid direct discussions, giving them something to read was the most effective way of outreach. The first materials were the tracts and brochures manufactured by the noisy dot matrix printer under our bed. Like with a baby in the room we were half-sleeping, half listening. But with the baby, you wake up when hearing a noise. With the printer, we had to wake up when it got silent. This meant the paper is jammed and should be fixed. Very soon however the Lord arranged our partnership with LATM and we start publishing in a much more efficient way.
Books led me to the Book, the Bible. Books helped me to grow in faith. Books became the key tool to spread the message to others. Internet and media have expanded our outreach enormously as well afterward. Most of the recourses we published were translations. But whenever we could not find a foreign book on a specific issue the ministry and national church needed, we had to write it ourselves.
Life with Christ is full of joy, blessings, and surprises. God’s vision is always greater than our one and His plans are more amazing than anything we ever can imagine. Following His guidance, our small family ministry accomplished a lot in many various areas of outreach we would never even dare to start ourselves. It grew up into an informal movement across 8 time zones in 12 post-communist countries. Our online resources are requested from about 100 countries of the world. We published more than 200 books, and some of them were reprinted more than once. Looking back it is hard to believe that all this happened to us.
God is always faithful in His calling when you obey it, even not having no idea what the call is. «Now unto him, that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen» (KJV Ephesians 3:20,21).’https://scienceandapologetics.com/en/testimony/
‘In 1611 Good King James was sure one verse in the Bible did not apply to him. Oh he loved Romans 13:1-3 about the God given authority of rulers, but his life showed his feeling that verse 4 held little application to him when it said “For he (King, Authority and Government etc) is the minster of God to thee for good.” The King was sure that he too was Authorised to be God’s divine appointee, so he could rule accordingly and the old battle over the divine right of kings was never far from the surface in his realm. Similar attitudes still plague us even though government by democracies have largely replaced the Monarchy.
So don’t make the mistake of reading Foxes Book of Martyrs (1563), or the lives of William Tyndale (killed 1536), Bonhoffer (killed 1945) or Richard Wurmbrandt (imprisoned by communists 14 yrs), then holding those persecuted saints as heroes of the faith, unless you also admit they were in trouble and many put to death for disobeying the ungodly government and all church institutions that supported the government.
What the governments of the day had demanded that those martyrs do was ‘not good’, and as such the persecuted had every authority to disobey such demands, given by the highest authority – the Creator Lord God! I say this because Romans 13 is bandied about by way too many people as giving government ‘all’ authority – something the Lord Jesus never gives to any human institution, secular or church!
Just as Thomas Jefferson said in 1786 ‘… the Freedom of the Press cannot be limited without being lost.’
Then as Australian Judge Sir John Grieg Latham (1877- 1964) stated so bluntly: “A pretended law made in excess of power is not and never has been a law at all. Anybody is entitled to disobey it.”
Now I must update this to read; ‘If human authority is NOT limited, then mankind’s freedom is already lost and history shows it is rarely regained without bloodshed and death.’
The good news from Romans chapter 13 is that the government – any government – King, presidency, democracy or whatever, is only authorised to do good. That ‘good’ is defined by God alone through His Word alone and not by Clergy of Government. When any authority ceases to do good it can be opposed. When it does evil, it must be opposed no matter what the price.
For the same reason the apostle Paul writes in Romans 15:4 that “all these things were written for our learning”, so if you want to understand how to react to any ungodly government that is exceeding its authority, then read the records from Genesis to Malachi and ask why so many of the saints were in trouble – a large majority were punished for disobeying the governments of the day. Whether it was Daniel in the lion’s den or even Moses, their doing what was good in the Lord God’s eyes is your example for refusing to do what may be currently mandated as compulsory in man’s view but is repulsive to God in all matters of faith and conduct.
Now can you see why we are instructed to pray for “kings and all in authority” (I Tim 2:1-2). We all benefit when His will is done and His kingdom come. Again a reminder that the real problem here is sin and the only solution is the Gospel from Genesis to Revelation as you share the whole counsel of God.’https://mailchi.mp/creationresearch.net/creation-research-news-email-update-15th-december-2021?e=ce21bf0337
Atheistic Communism has not been defeated and our Western governments are allowing it to do its work via The Great Reset, Climate Change and the China Virus Plandemic.
‘The WSWS is the online publication of the world Trotskyist movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International, and its affiliated sections in the Socialist Equality Parties around the world. It launched publication in February 1998, and has been publishing continuously for the past 23 years.
The WSWS aims to meet the need, felt widely today, for an intelligent appraisal of the problems of contemporary society. It addresses itself to the masses of people who are dissatisfied with the present state of social life, as well as its cynical and reactionary treatment by the establishment media.
Our website provides a source of political perspective to those troubled by the monstrous level of social inequality, which has produced an ever-widening chasm between the wealthy few and the mass of the world’s people. As great events, from financial crises to eruptions of militarism and war, break up the present state of class relations, the WSWS will provide a political orientation for the growing ranks of working people thrown into struggle.
We anticipate enormous battles in every country against unemployment, low wages, austerity policies and violations of democratic rights. The World Socialist Web Site insists, however, that the success of these struggles is inseparable from the growth in the influence of a socialist political movement guided by a Marxist world outlook.’https://www.wsws.org/en/special/pages/icfi/wsws.html
Keep up to date with this anti-God group and watch how they are manipulating our lives via our supposedly elected politicians.
‘My critics will declare my title wrong since America is a democracy (more accurately, a republic) and not an Empire. An Empire is “a major political unit having a territory of great extent or a number of territories or peoples under a single sovereign authority.” I suggest America qualifies as an Empire with Biden acting like our “single sovereign authority.”
America can’t be a democracy since I did not vote (nor did my representatives) vote to pull out of Afghanistan or to open our southern border to decent, hard-working people looking for a better life and for sure, not for terrorists, deadbeats, child molesters, thieves, muggers, and other lowlifes. I did not vote to pretend two men or two women living together can make up a family; nor that children have a right to decide their gender; nor that a man can pretend to be a woman by changing his plumbing; nor to permit males to compete with females in athletic events; nor to permit boys to declare themselves female and gain rightful entrance into female restrooms and locker rooms.
Nor did I vote to permit our Empire to be run by egotistical health officials who have never treated anyone for anything at any time. Nor did I vote to force toddlers to wear a face mask; nor for businesses to be closed and church services to be shut down.
No, the American Empire, like Rome, is crumbling as I write.
I’ve even heard that some big-city mayors, all Democrats, will give a guaranteed weekly wage, but that can’t be true. Even Democrats can’t be that stupid.
The world has been fighting the Communist Chinese coronavirus for many months, and with “new variants” appearing, we may be losing the battle. Businesses are closing, hospitals are full, people are angry, experts are vacillating, politicians are lying as they take control, the innocent are dying, and vaccine makers are crying all the way to the bank carrying buckets full of money.
However, it has happened before with more tragic results.
Bubonic Plague lashed the face of Europe in the Middle Ages, killing half the population in some cities, more in others. Now the World Health Organization (WHO) has reported that bubonic plague (Black Death) is spreading in many parts of Madagascar (island nation just east of southern Africa), and a “weak health care system means it may spread farther.” WHO reported that there have been 40 deaths from the plague, with 119 people infected. Plague is spread by fleas carried by rats.
WHO also ominously reported, “There is now a risk of a rapid spread of the disease due to the city’s high population density and the weakness of the healthcare system.”
Well, add one more threat to life from all the exotic diseases (pestilences) from Africa and China—earthquakes, famines, wars, and rumors of war to warn world citizens of the end of the world as we know it. No, I’m not a pessimist; that thought was Matthew, chapter 24. We have experienced all this before, but not with such frequency and intensity. Nations could be destroyed as in the past.
American physician, bacteriologist, and prolific author Hans Zinsser, among others, believe that the Plague of Justinian was partly responsible for the demise of the Roman Empire. He declared the plague was “perhaps the most potent single influence” which gave the coup de grâce to the ancient Empire. Bugs, not bullets, knocked off an empire! This pandemic lasted about seventy years and caused havoc in the Roman Empire, already bruised, broken, and bleeding. Justinian was desperately trying to restore the ancient Empire to its former glory–like trying to breathe life into a corpse.
Seventy years of pandemic!
During Emperor Justinian’s reign, the worldwide plague began in A.D. 541 at Pelusium, Egypt (at the mouth of the Nile). He was known as “the emperor that never sleeps.” In sixty years, the plague spread to all parts of the known world. The dead lay unburied in the streets, and ten thousand persons died each day at Constantinople. The people of Constantinople became desperate with all the deaths as they placed bodies anywhere they could. Some bodies were left in houses to rot. It got worse as the black horse of famine galloped through the city because mills stopped grinding corn due to workers’ deaths.
They experienced a major food shortage because of many business failures. And those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
V. Seibel tells us that the plague was preceded by many earthquakes, volcanic eruptions—Vesuvius, in 513, was one—and famines that dropped a blanket of terror and death over Europe, the Near East, and Asia. The worst natural occurrence was the earthquake and fire that destroyed Antioch in A.D. 526, killing almost 300,000 people.
The Roman Empire was in a state of confusion because of the added pressure, problems, and panic produced by the plague. Gibbon wrote, “No facts have been preserved to sustain an account or even a conjecture of the numbers that perished in this extraordinary mortality. I only find that, during three months, five and at length ten thousand persons died each day at Constantinople; and many cities of the East were left vacant, and that in several districts of Italy the harvest and the vintage withered on the ground.”
When the plague snuck into Constantinople in A.D. 542, it stayed for four months, killing so many people that it was impossible for the living to bury the dead. By A.D. 565, half of the citizens of the Byzantine Empire had died! Gibbon suggested that perhaps 100 million people in Europe alone died of this plague!
Well, we aren’t there yet.
Justinian’s armies were fighting with Persia, Africa, and the Goths in Italy, but those crude, unsophisticated barbarians had learned the art of making war from former warlords. Barbarians had learned how to organize, analyze, and cooperate. It was ever more difficult for the emperor to sustain armies on far-flung battlefields, especially when there were threats at home and treachery and thievery in his palace. Justinian needed, least of all, a major epidemic to compound his problems.
This Plague of Justinian emptied the cities, turned the country into a desert, and made the habitations of men the haunts of wild beasts. The snakes slithered and hissed, the hyenas crouched and laughed, and wild beasts pawed and growled where proud, pompous, and productive men once walked.
However, when men face the inscrutable, they tend to lose their arrogance, sinking into a hapless and helpless, and hopeless life.
Gibbon recorded: “The triple scourges of war, pestilence, and famine afflicted the subjects of Justinian, and his reign is disgraced by a visible decrease of the human species which has never been regained in some of the fairest countries of the globe.” Can anyone read that statement and doubt that disease has changed our world far more than wars? Furthermore, will irresponsible Muslim terrorists or the Communist Chinese coronavirus change our present world forever? Or maybe it will be the bubonic plague.
The plague of Justinian ended about 590, but most of Italy was controlled by the Lombards by that time. The barbarians were no longer at the gates of Rome but inside the gates. The mighty Empire had crumbled, and when the Muslim zealots swarmed out of Arabia in 634, the Roman and Persian forces gave only token resistance.
As uncultured, uncivilized, uneducated, and uncontrolled Muslim zealots swarm into America carrying hostile plans and harmful pestilences, will the once-great American Empire fall like Rome?
Even Emperor Justinian contracted the plague but survived; however, his Empire did not. The question: how will ancient plagues and other pestilences impact and change America?
Some of us will live long enough to see that answer.’https://donboys.cstnews.com/will-the-american-empire-fall-like-rome-because-of-a-virus
Worth a listen.
‘Since mid-July 2020, the Corona Committee has been conducting live, multi-hour sessions to investigate why federal and state governments imposed unprecedented restrictions as part of the Coronavirus response and what the consequences have been and still are for people.’https://corona-ausschuss.de/en/
whatyareckon 