Russia Must Be Evangelized

by James Ray

It was back in 1929 that the plea went out in the 1929 Keswick Convention book. Although Russia proper was under the grip of communism, the surrounding countries of the geographical Russian Empire were open.

The opportunity was astounding! If the church of Jesus Christ would send missionaries to those surrounding nations, history could be altered in favor of Heaven. Although there was some interest, the plea fell largely on deaf ears.

After World War II, those countries fell under the iron rod of Stalin. Churches were banned and Christianity was outlawed with the possible exception of the controlled state Russian Orthodox Church.

A few months after the end of the Second World War, Winston Churchill spoke at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. During this speech, he used the term iron curtain to describe the line in Europe between free nations and those falling under Soviet domination.

“From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe: Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, and Sofia; all . . . to control from Moscow.”

Stalin sent hundreds of thousands of people to Siberia. This included thousands of Christians who were arrested for illegal worship. It has been estimated that 50 million people from Russia and surrounding countries died under his reign of terror. In Latvia, Stalin’s troops raided homes in the middle of the night, taking men, women, and children. Over 100,000 people were herded into cattle cars and shipped by rail to Siberia. Most of them never returned.

One of Stalin’s methods for dealing with dissenters was “hunger.” Ukrainians called this campaign the “Holocaust of Hunger.” Soviet troops raided villages and homes, taking away every trace of food and whatever harvest was available. With no food anywhere, people died in public, collapsing on the street. If people survived hunger, they were deported to Siberia or shot by the thousands.

In 1969 when I pastored in North Alabama, I invited a Russian minister to share his experiences with my congregation. He described the horror of his life in Russia during the man-made famine of Stalin. No one present could ever forget his words: “I saw my little sister starve to death, gnawing on a piece of shoe leather trying to get food value out of it.” Our Bible distribution teams met a 96-year-old woman in the Ukraine who told them of seeing her six children starve to death. These were real, ordinary common people like you and like me living and dying through a night of horror beyond description. What a challenge for American Christians to be missionaries to our own country lest we produce a “Stalin”!

In 1929, the plea from the Russian Missionary Society went out for missionaries. Would things have been different for the geographical Russian countries if thousands of Christians had responded? That scenario might not have stopped the tragedy of Stalin, but the millions who perished might have perished with HOPE. The “Bread of Heaven” might have been the light at the end of the tunnel for those dying in hopeless darkness.

Now 96 years out, Baptist International Missions again makes the plea “Russia must be evangelized.” Although there are workers in Russia with BIMI, the open door of opportunity is slowly closing. We must pray diligently that the Lord of the Harvest will send forth laborers into the Russian Harvest. We must pray even more diligently that the prospective laborers will “listen.”

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