Report: Siberia and India

Now shall we seek God's face in prayer? Our Father, we are before Thee. We remember who Thou art, the august majesty of Thy person, yet we approach before Thee in the good and worth and value of the fragrant name of our Lord Jesus Christ. And we bless Thee for that which unites us around the throne, in the knowledge of the Saviour, that one mediator between God and me in the man, Christ Jesus.

We thank Thee for he who died and rose again, he who ascended to Thine own right hand and there his feet left the soles of earth. We remember with majestic dignity he stood upon the slopes of Oliven and he said, Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel. We bless Thee for he who announced that all power is given unto me in heaven and on earth.

And we thank Thee, Donator of Father, for the kingdom and for that which stretches from shore to shore and for the power of the Saviour, the power of the risen Christ, the power of the descended Spirit. We thank Thee for all gathered in down through the long ages of time and here we are on the very verge of the Lord's coming. And we bless Thee to know that even now that here and there in this world, in the midst of poverty, in the midst of persecution, in the midst of the darkness that abounds, we thank Thee that still Thou art saving souls, still Thou art thinning the ranks of Satan and extending Thy kingdom and showing out Thy power.

And we bless Thee that soon Thou wilt show in all its fullness who is the one and only potentate King of kings and Lord of lords, for he shall reign whose right it is and we bless Thee for the particular age in which we're found, the day of grace, the day of Thy sovereign dealings through the Gospel. And we bless Thee for the Gospel that reached our own ears and we thank Thee for the salvation of souls and we thank Thee for the assembly here and we thank Thee for those that have gathered tonight and we pray that that which should be a ponder of Thy workings in other lands might be honoring to Thee and blessing to the people of God, uplifting of the person of Thy Son and grant us, Father, that even there might be begotten within our souls a desire to pray more fervently for those that are persecuted and those that are in distress and those, our Father, that know little of the comforts that we enjoy. And so we are before Thee and pray the help of God as we turn to Thy Word and desire that the time spent together of the few ministry meetings at this time might be to profit unto Thy glory in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen. Now we will not sing further. We will turn to the Scriptures.

Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 11. Now we make all welcome to the meeting this evening.

I trust you will be able to come back tomorrow night of a Wednesday night in the will of God, two nights of ministry. And it is upon our heart to ponder those men in the Old Testament described as the friend of God and another man described as the man after God's own heart. We long to be closer drawn to God and the purposes of God in these dark and closing days.

And for those who did so in a former time and we desire to ponder these men and these believers. And so we trust you will be able to come back. Tonight our reading is in Hebrews chapter 11.

Hebrews 11 and verse 36. Hebrews 11 verse 36. And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment.

They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with a sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and bootskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and in mountains and in dens and caves of the earth.

Now that is our reading and with the Lord's blessing. Tonight is upon our heart with the desire of the brethren to give a little report of the Lord's work as we have seen over the last 16 years in the land of Siberia and have a brief visit to the land of India. We wrote a little article recently in Truth and Tidings and it seems to have stirred up a little interest amongst God's people to pray for those that are having persecution in that land.

Now the land of Siberia, there is a difficulty getting it focused in people's minds where Siberia is. Well, if you go north in this great country of the United States, you'll come to Canada. And if you go through Canada and up to the north, you will know of a place, one of the states of America called Alaska, a large state in the north.

And if you come across, across to the north of Asia and of Europe, there is a country called Russia, once the Soviet Satellite Republic, now the Federation of Russia. And from the Ural Mountains, extending away to the Far East and to the coast almost to Japan is the land which is called Siberia. Now, Siberia in the past was famous and known as the realm of salt mines.

Political prisoners and dissidents were routinely dispatched to Siberia to work in the salt mines. Today, if you fly into the major cities of Siberia, you'll find businessmen representing multinational companies. And they still have interest beneath the permafrost of Siberia for it is wealthy in oil and minerals and so on.

But over years, these years that we've been going into Siberia, we're interested in greater treasures, interested in the treasures of souls, salt-buried souls that have been kept under the bondage of communism. And for 70 years, the Bibles were forbidden to be read in Siberia and in Russia. But as we know, under Perestroika openness in the early 90s, and Glazunov's freedom under Mr. Gorbachev in the early 90s, there was an opening up of the country.

An opening up of the country. And so the gospel reached those that were kept in darkness. I can take you to one example now.

I have a little mine in the assembly in Kaskara, for we'll be able to tell you tonight. To the glory of God, that there does exist five little assemblies in northern Siberia, in the area where we have worked over these 16 years. Dear Sasha was a little German man from eastern Germany.

His family was driven out in the time of Stalin. He said they were deposited in northern Siberia. They were given a bag of grain and a spade and they were told to live if they could and we really hope you will die.

And so they lived in that part. Working in the mines. Living in a hut four meters by three meters.

He says when the sun came up they worked. When the sun went down they stopped work. Seven days a week.

His job was to labor out in the forests and cut down the timber and bring them in in the austerity of that land. Anyhow, dear Sasha had a mother who was Lutheran. At least she had a fear of God and a desire to read the Bible.

And he told us that they would be circulated in the village where they lived and in every household under Stalin there would be a form given. And each household had to complete a form. The head of the house and the wife and the many of the family.

There was different columns for their income and so on and the many beasts they had or whatever their labor was. And then there was a column Are you a believer or are you not a believer? If they were a non-believer and a communist that was alright. Most people took that whether they went to the Lutheran church or not his father may have been a sea of mind.

And he stated that he was a believer and disappeared. Put into the concentration camp never found again. But his dear mother had an interest in her Bible and she hid it beneath the ground and dug it up on a Lord's Day.

And they would have a little metal shed, a tin shed at the bottom of the garden. And her and another lady they would come with their little families on Sunday to read the Bible. Just come one at a time not to draw attention to themselves.

Some would come very early before dawn and others one by one would gather and there he said he heard about God. And down through the passages of his life and different experiences he always had a desire to hear about God. Anyhow he moved to another village and got married.

Then he heard of a Muslim man in the village that had got a Bible. Somehow or other Bibles came through from Finland and a Muslim man got a Bible. Well of course the Muslim man didn't want the Bible and dear Sasha went and purchased the Bible from the Muslim man.

So at last Sasha had got a Bible. He's now at that stage well into his 60s. And so Sasha got down to read the Bible.

Search after God. Search to be right with God, to know the God of Heaven. And that which had been planted in his mind by his mother in an early day.

He went on for a number of years in the dark but constantly and routinely read his Bible. And then he heard of two men that had come to the village of Kaskara. Each little town or village will have maybe what you would call a community center.

They call it a palace of culture and it is freely available in those days. And when we went we were able to get those places. There would be in Kaskara a huge auditorium maybe four or five times the size of this room and we'd have no problem whatever in seeing the people coming.

We were the first Westerners to be there. They would come to see someone from the West. They would come to hear people speaking in English because the younger people especially were learning their second language at school would be English and so they came with interest.

Anyhow, he heard about these meetings and he heard there were men that were preaching a message about God. And so, stirred again in his interest he came, heard the Gospel. The last time I visited him I parted with him last November.

He is now 83 years of age. He has been for the last 16 years in a little assembly. He still rejoices in the blessing of God's salvation and he says he will never to his dying day forget the meetings when two men came and preached the Gospel to him and he heard of a Savior that died for him and saved by the grace of God.

That's just an example of those that were in the darkness of those days. You know, the Russian Federation that extent of that great country is 11 time zones. In Siberia, when the sun is setting in the West, it's daybreak in the East.

The area that we're talking about if you look at a map you'll find the cities of Yekaterinburg and Tobolsk and Perm and over toward the Ural Mountains we're talking about the Asiatic side of the Ural Mountains between Europe and Asia. One of the coldest places on Earth there is a town in that area called Novosibirsk. It's supposed to be the coldest inhabited city on Earth.

In this country, snow disrupts traffic and you know, the time's too cold to let the children go to school. Well, up in those areas we've seen old ladies in the wintertime going to about their business on skis. They will be able to get around.

The children go out to play until it's minus 40. They keep them in when it's below minus 50 degrees centigrade. And so you will see that largely it is impossible for us to go in the real depth of winter.

Although I've been there around Easter time in the city of Surgut. I've seen snowdrifts two meters deep. And in the summer, well, the believers that are there now, they will come to meetings but it's a sacrifice to them because they have what's called a dacha.

And each of them will be out in their dacha, a little plot of land in the country and they will be growing their vegetables and their fruit to make their soup and to can their produce for the winter. It's a matter of survival and so they have to work all the daylight that they can. Now, I trust I've given you a little picture of a land with a conflict.

The conflict with a claimant and the conflict with the cruelty of the awful communist system. And even now still, there are many great problems in that land. Stalin, in the 1930s through 1933, it says he put to his death over 30 million of his own people for 70 years.

The country was in complete darkness under Marxist-Leninism. On one occasion, I was there first in 1994. In 1995, I visited a city in the north called Sovitskaya.

Now, in Sovitskaya, we came across a little group of believers that had existed through the Stalinist period. The eldest of them was a little man. He may have been in his late 50s or 60s.

Although his little form was well spent, he looked like a person of 70 or 80. He had a large family. He preached the gospel, fervently preached the gospel, and was put in a labor camp.

Another man was put in a labor camp. They found a torn page of Luke's gospel in his shoe. He was put in a labor camp.

He told me that they lived in a little wooden hut, 70 or 80 men, maximum capacity would have been about 20, fed out in the open on a metal plate and metal spoons in sub-zero temperatures. His charge was the spread of the gospel, preaching the gospel to others, preaching the gospel to his own family, and causing a disturbance, where the disturbance really was caused by the secret police. Anyhow, with the fabrication of those allegations against him, he was put in a labor camp, but because he had a large family, they released him so that he could maintain his family, but still under surveillance by the authorities, the KGB in those days.

They would come into the meetings and disrupt them and arrest the people. Then he and his family were supervised by the KGB. He was a rather fervent man.

In spite of all the trials and difficulties that he had, a real spirit, and a man who, well, he would face whatever consequences it was to face the people with the truth of the gospel and to announce the name of Christ. Continually, they would bring him in for interrogation, and they interrogated him before army officers, completely naked. He would say, well, you're trying to shame me, but you will stand before God and you will be shamed.

Anyhow, he spread the gospel to all and sundry, but the KGB supervised him at home and he wasn't supposed to speak to his family. I asked him what he felt like not being able to speak to his boys and girls and even preach the gospel to them. He said that was no problem.

He said he preached the gospel to the KGB man, and the KGB man got saved, and then he preached the gospel. The KGB man became his best friend. Anyhow, when I was visiting that little group there, they showed me some things that had been preserved from those days, those days of persecution.

They had a little metal box which they concealed beneath the dirt or put in a pile of coal, and it had been preserved and inside the little metal box there were some black and white photographs. There was one dear lady, she was sitting on a pile of rubble. Largely, the men of that period had either been put to death in labor camps or put into the army and disappeared.

And so there was a lot of women, elderly women, and they met in what was called a house of prayer. This had been a house of prayer invaded by the KGB and demolished, and she was sitting on the rubble of her little house. Another photograph showed a picture of a secret baptism.

Really, maybe about a meter depth, with no exaggeration, they broke up the ice, a meter depth of ice. And had a baptism. I don't know about the doctrines of it, but I'll tell you what they did practice.

The remembrance of the Lord and some of those dear saints. Remember the Lord as they walked through the forest. Walked through the forest.

They didn't feel safe to have a place even to meet in the forest. Let someone report them. And so walking through the forest they partook of the amulets in the remembrance of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

They also showed me from my little box a little diary of a dear man, child of God, who existed in odd circumstances and a few years before the thing was opened up again, had died in the prison camp. And he had a little diary and they showed me some of the entries he had put into his diary. And toward the end of his sojourn was body well spent and diseased because of lack of nutrition.

But one of the last entries in his little diary was The lines have fallen onto us in pleasant blizzards. We howl goodly harmonies. One of my favorite stories in that time was Deborah Faronish.

Deborah Faronish, her husband was imprisoned for preaching and spreading the gospel. He was beaten up in prison and eventually died. She had the custom of visiting her husband.

And when he died, she continued to visit. Every day she would bake some cakes and bring along a little box of sewing equipment. And to the men that murdered her dear husband, and even those guards that were so cruel to him, she brought the little cakes, sewed buttons on her shirt, and continued, continued the same story and the same truth of the gospel in her own way as her husband did in prison.

How dear did he. Was preserved to do that every day for almost 30 years. Faithful in her testimony.

Now, in 1994, when first we went, the country had opened up. There was complete freedom. And we were, I can't take the time tonight where I want to mention India as well.

Really, known to our brother Kent here and so on, will be our dear brother Mark Mulvaney. He and I were great friends in those days. And he likewise went to this area, away in northern Siberia.

Now, one of the great privileges was the fact that when we were there, we were there, the first Westerners. And no false cults had reached. And so we had complete liberty.

As we went in, we're talking about an area 38 hours by train from Moscow. As you go along on the train, stopping at the major railway stations, we'd get out and give out Bibles. And along the way, people would stop for produce.

And when we got to that area, we went out to the markets and the streets by foot, by car, by truck, by boat. On one occasion in the city of Tumen, we had a little store and I took an inventory of the number of Bibles in New Testaments we had. And there were at that stage 100,000 New Testaments.

And those were given out in less than a month. It is estimated that probably three quarters of a million Bibles in New Testaments were distributed in that area. We went to the village of Berdavoya.

In the morning, you would stand six o'clock in the morning when they were changing shift, giving out Bibles at the front gate of the chicken factory. You would go down the village and one of my favorite places to stand to give out the Bible was under the statue of Stalin. A wretched scoundrel that was so diligent in stamping out of the truth of God and the Bible.

It was a great challenge to give out the Bibles. And then, as I say, in the palace of culture, we were given it freely, seven nights a week, starting every night at six o'clock. I never remember a meeting that ever got over before ten o'clock.

People would come and go and come and go. And if you tried to wrap it up formally, well, somebody else would want to ask a few questions and they would come. We labored through interpreters.

I was encouraged to do so. There was a man called Dr. Biediger in the time of the czars way before communism. A man called Dr. Biediger went right across Siberia and he had a team of seven interpreters.

And he went on horseback. And sometimes he was received amongst the czars, how being that some of the czars were saved. Anyhow, those meetings, there was a dear woman called Eva, a polio victim, a teacher, a good friend.

And there was another dear woman who was likewise a teacher that did interpreters for us. And one night she told me that her husband, who didn't come to the meetings, he wanted to speak to us. And we would come round to the little apartment.

We went round to the apartment after the meeting and had a little meal. And when the meal was finished, it was said that her husband had questions for us to answer. Cleared away the things and sat back.

We're talking about a man in his fifties. He was a captain of the Red Army. Saw service at the Brandenburg Gate.

A mature man. His first question was, Who is Jesus? Didn't know who is Jesus. We went to a factory and we had complete freedom.

The management of the factory and many other places were quite willing to let us come in and address the workers. We went to one factory and a group of workers gathered round us. But there was a man who had gone round to the bottom of the floor and he didn't come near us.

But then afterwards, after we had been speaking and preaching the gospel for a while, suddenly he put down his tools and came back. Afterwards he told us that before she died, he had an old babushka, an old grandmother. His grandmother made him promise that if ever anybody came to Russia or came to the area preaching about the Lord Jesus Christ, that he should go listen to those men.

And of course in the message we had spoken about the Lord Jesus Christ. And suddenly he realized what he was hearing. In fact, in that factory there was one woman who got up and she said after the meeting, she says, the name of God has never been mentioned in this place in 40 years except in blasphemy.

Anyhow, that was the privilege that was ours. In those villages, giving out the tracts, giving out the Bibles, giving out calendars. No matter how much we gave out, went out to the day, cut right in an old lot of car, loaded it up on the roof and in the trunk and everywhere.

Maybe sometimes got a jeep, maybe sometimes a little truck. And off we would go and in the afternoon we always ran out. Never seemed to be able to bring enough.

That always broke my heart too. Maybe you gave them all out and the last one went and then there was another hand empty. One man arrived down one day in a jeep to one of the villages and we had just run out and we explained to him that we had no more Bibles.

He says, where do you come from? And we told him about a town away, quite a distance, about 20 kilometers away. And we told him we had Bibles there. He says, get into that jeep.

And we were glad because we didn't know how we were going to get back that evening. And we got a ride back to the village, a free ride to the village and he got his free Bibles, all that he wanted. In the city of Tumen, there is an orphanage, 3,500 orphans.

Many of them, their parents are still alive, given to vodka and drink and thrown out. There was more than five in a family. They can't afford to feed them.

Many of them just thrown out. You know, Russia is an awful place, a lonely place. Many lonely soldiers in Russia.

But of this one poor creature that I really, my heart goes out to you. It is an orphaned in Russia. There's very few that care for them.

Some of the teenagers got saved. Some of those girls would be abused in those orphanages. Some of them that we would believe in would hold on to us.

We couldn't take them with us. Some of them professed to be saved. They were mocked.

When they give thanks for their food. And they were taunted even by their tutors. But we trust to know indeed the privilege it was in all those orphans we would go in the summertime or in the springtime, gather them outside and gather them under a tree maybe a hundred or two hundred at a time in all their destitute condition.

And we would sing, Jesus loves me. Yes, I know. But the Bible tells me so.

Prisons. My first experience in prison was a large auditorium of about 120. And we're really talking about bad boys now.

And the guards gathered them all in and announced that these men had come to speak from the Bible. And I was just there with an interpreter. And to my dismay, the guards went outside now.

They didn't abandon us. They were just outside the door. Anyhow, I started in to preach the gospel from Romans, you know.

And told them that I was once in the bondage of sin. And I was once captive by the devil. And how I got deliverance.

I must have gotten the message over because there was one dear man and he asked the interpreter afterwards what crime I had committed to be in prison. Anyhow, I have a little text at home or a frame at home. I don't put it up on the wall.

I don't think it would please my wife. It's all off the square and all the rest. You wouldn't think much about it.

But it was given to me by a prisoner in one of those prisons. They were allowed to do a little wooden work down in the workshop. And the dear man, well, I think for life he would be in prison because he had committed double murder.

But he heard the gospel. He told us of the blessing of salvation. And there was something of the joy of the Lord in his heart.

And his appreciation for bringing the gospel to him was the presentation of this little frame. There are many narcotics in the land of Russia. And one occasionally visited a place where there were a number of young men and 25 of them young men and young women in their late teens.

A place where they were trying to get dried out and sobered up. I was a little hesitant about going. But the lady that brought us, I could see it was a dangerous area.

And she wanted us to go and bring the gospel to these dear creatures. I was a little encouraged because I did see a police car touring the area. Anyhow, we went.

Mr. Jesse Fitchin was with me at that time. We sang some hymns. They listened respectively.

And some, we trust, got saved. Now, briefly, five assemblies. I visited Kaskara on the 17th of July, 1994.

Mr. Fitch and Mr. Larry Perkins, who's presently in Marion, and I, we sat down. There was about 17 Russians and three Westerners to remember the Lord and the formation of a little assembly. Now, most of the Foundation members are still there and continue faithfully.

If there's one person that you can remember to pray for, it is a man called Pasha. Pasha was saved at those meetings with his wife Irina. I haven't time to tell of their background.

Dear Pasha was a communist and a drunkard. And again, the meetings came to the area. And Pasha says, I don't know why I said it, but one night I came home from work and my wife was talking about these men preaching in this palace of culture.

And he said to her, Paidum! That means let's go. He says, I don't know why I said paidum, but we went. And Pasha got saved.

And Pasha, I shared with him in the preaching of the Gospel, there's a warmth with him. He's a burden for sinners. After he got saved a few years, his wife got saved, his sister-in-law, his mother-in-law, quite a few in the family circle.

And then they had some relatives way back in the Ural Mountains. And so they decided to move back there. We were somewhat reserved about that because, well, he was essential for the little assembly at Cascara.

Anyhow, they all moved back and some of the brethren moved as well and followed them through the preaching of the Gospel. There's two assemblies back there in Volchansk and Tobolsk. And dear Pasha, do you remember Pasha? If you can't remember his name, remember the dear man that preaches the Gospel in the Ural Mountains.

And now he is able, for we purchased a vehicle over there and try to maintain it as we go in yearly so that he can collect the local saints. It's essential for the elder saints in the wintertime to get them to the meetings and families to the meetings. And now in the summer he uses that vehicle.

He's still in employment, but he saves up his vacations and he takes about a month or so and he goes around to all our assemblies. He has a real touch in the Gospel and he has the ability now. A few years ago with Runkard and a communist to teach God's people the truth of God.

And it's well accepted amongst them. Up in the north there is the city of Sergut. The assembly was formed there in 1995.

And again I could tell you some of the cases that we met up there when we went in 1995. One of the strangest men I ever met in my life was a man who was a Jew by birth, a mafia man by practice, a drug dealer by business, not only taking drugs but selling drugs, and a gang leader. He told me that it's a large city in Sergut because it's up in the area where they now have the petroleum and gas fields.

He told me that they arranged, the drug dealers, they arranged to have a meeting for those two gangs in the city. The idea was to divide up the territory, one gang in one area and another gang in another area. Anyhow the meeting began and progressed to a stage where there was two dead bodies in each side of him and a revolver pointing at him.

He took the table and got out the door but he knew they were after him. He says he fled to where he was living and grabbed up a few possessions and headed off. Then he didn't know where to go.

And then he said, the words escaped my lips and I don't know where they came from but the words were, God help me. Didn't believe in God of course he said but God helped me in his extremity. Anyhow, he got onto a train and we encountered him 3,000 miles away in the north.

Somehow or other when he got up there he got a Bible and God answered his prayer. A bit like the man in the Bible, God be merciful to me. God answered his prayer.

He told me the night he got to see him he had a revolver in one pocket and a Bible in the other. And you know, one of the greatest privileges that I ever had was to bow bow with that man. There I was saved a child of Christian parents as a school boy.

There he was saved a mafia man and a drunkard and a dealer and maybe a murderer. And we both rejoiced in God's salvation. Do you remember the saints in that part? Pray for them.

In 1998 laws were passed which forbid foreigners to preach the gospel publicly apart from what is understood as the church. And so in the five assemblies Kaskara, Surgut, Severodsk, Volchansk and Tobolsk we meet either in a little apartment or a little wooden building. Those are five little autonomous assemblies as we know it scripturally.

They're not recognized or registered by the government but now this is Russia. And the secret police know everything. And the secret police know that these little companies meet but they're no political threat whatever and they just are regarded as strange sort of people and they don't bother very much with it.

But the Russian believers themselves are able to spread the gospel. The last time I was there was November of last year and up in the assembly in Volchansk I noticed a dear lady I'd never seen before so inquired of the believers and they told me that this dear woman without any more details a woman of ill repute a very sinful woman like the woman of John IV. She was out working in her dacha in her loneliness because nobody else would be associated with such a woman.

But she heard singing in the distance. The sisters out there would work in their dacha and toil hard all day. At the end of the day they would wash and sit down and have a meal and sing some hymns and read the Bible.

This dear woman in the distance she heard singing and she listened and in the still of the evening she heard them singing about God and the love of God. She went a little closer and heard them continuing to sing and the following evening she went over to them and they asked her would she want to come and listen to the singing. She gladly did.

And then she asked them about that song you were singing last evening about God and God's love would you sing that again? And of course they did. And through, and we're happy about this the testimony of the sisters a dear woman was saved was in the assembly bringing others to the meetings. Through dear Pasha and not only his relatives but others of God saved.

Now I don't know what the future is we're having it increasingly difficult getting a visa I do pray for Shona and I we intend in the will of God to go next April and we trust to get a visa to go in but we must register every week old maximum now is limited to two months and there is restrictions upon us and what we can do. And so we labor in view of the day when perhaps in the will of God God opened the door and God can keep the door open. It may close but we're happy that there are those five assemblies and it's not big and I don't want to convey the thought of great enterprise and vast numbers but in their faithfulness and in the limited circumstances that are theirs God is still working and there's still those that are being saved.

Russia well, Zoranovsky, the leader of the Communist Party Russia still thinks themselves an imperialist and strong superpower they've got great military might the last time I was in Surgut I got up on the Lord's Day to try and take part in the morning meeting and I had to stop. They were having an air display over the city maybe a million people and the air display was over the center of the city I ain't went wrong, I don't know what happened but what was happening was five military jets were sweeping in over the city and in the center of the city they would flip and open the afterburners and roar into the sky and really the ground beneath us with the noise was trembling. They have that desire and that imperialistic and nationalistic spirit that spirit of suspicion the mindset of a Russian is that of suspicion and Zoranovsky the leader of the Communist Party wrote a book entitled The Last Drive South and in that book he says that the Red Army will yet wash their boots in the Indian Ocean now we know prophetically that those powers of the North now the word in the book of Ezekiel is the Far North the way up in the Far North there will be that army that will come south and sweep down through the land of Israel in the latter times when the Lords will come but we are thankful that away in the uttermost North the North of Siberia there are five little assemblies do pray for them pray for Pasha now India what's the connection between Siberia and India again I answer persecuted sins Russia in the past India in the present that little account I wrote in the magazine it was recorded in the media horrendous persecution of Christians nominal Christians what happened was in the Indian state of Orissa in 2008-2009 there was an outbreak of persecution religious and political persecution some may have read the book Burned Alive Mr. Graham Staines and his two sons were burned alive Mr. Staines he was not an assembly missionary but he labored with another group amongst the labors and told a modest, sincere man who labored for God for quite some years, maybe about 14 years in that part at the outbreak of this persecution he found himself up in a village and there was a frenzied mob of Hindus gathered against him he made his way back to his jeep and they surrounded the jeep and started to pound it they had beaten him up first and they fled to the jeep anyhow the leader of the mob he got some straw ignited it and put it into the fuel tank and then they had the doors and we let Mr. Staines and his two sons out and they were burned alive in the inferno now what happened, there was an old Hindu guru he was murdered the bullet that killed him was malice Chinese it may be that some of the Hindus murdered him themselves but to get off with the authorities they blamed it on the Christians they had a funeral for this old rascal and then they broke up into different parties just frenzied mobs now the man that invited me out to those parts dear brother in the Lord who has an orphanage he has 32 boys presently his desire is to double the numbers and extend that little orphanage the neighbours warned him that the mob was calling he is a full time worker for the Lord they broke his windows they broke the frames of the windows they pounded boulders off the roof and smashed in the roof and there was another dear brother now I met this dear brother in fact I sat in the Lord's day and remember the Lord up in another state where I located him afterwards and he and I with his wife we remembered the Lord together assembly fellowship he lived in that area he had a little motorbike that he would go out into the forest in the spreading of the gospel he heard about the riots and he took his motorbike round to a Hindu friend a more moderate type of person and he gave him the motorbike and told him I hate it because he knew that if they found it outside they would burn it well sure enough they came round and found the motorbike and did burn it the Hindu man went out to ask them what they were doing they murdered him as well and so my friend dear Ajay he too was threatened by them and this other dear brother they told him at least the neighbours advised him that he better leave so he got his wife a little boy walking beside them and he carrying their infant girl and they fled this is in the wet season the tropical rainstorms to the mountain in the mountain news reached him that they had burned down his house they burned down the house of the lady beside them whether the dear woman was unable to leave physically or refused to leave two weeks later the police removed her ashes from the house he was on the mountain and he heard of the murder of his brother in the flesh and whoever came to the mountain told him not to stay there he was still in danger and so for three days and three nights with his wife and little family they wandered in the forest eventually in that area for such was the outbreak of things that the federal government stepped in you see there's different states and some of them are Hindu and some of them are in fact even communist but the federal government stepped in and sent soldiers in to maintain camp and establish refugee camps and the condition in those refugee camps was just atrocious and so this dear brother eventually conditions prevailed that it was said it was safe to go back the Indian constitution handed down by the British states that there is religious freedom for all but there are many states and many languages some Hindu and some communist and Risa was the first state to pass anti-conversion laws that is you are forbidden to speak to a Hindu in any shape or form in any way to influence him to turn from his Hindu religion to as they would call Christianity now nominal Christians when peace was declared they just went back and they took upon them the Hindu signs and so on, that sign incidentally that a Hindu wears especially a woman is supposed to be a third eye the eye of the spirit satanic system and you know really a believer can't be involved in those things and this dear brother told me he says even I do go back my house and all my possessions are gone and what really can I do for I cannot make peace with my Hindu neighbours and they are not going to listen to me anyway and so my invitation to India was to firstly to visit the assemblies in Orissa little autonomous assemblies and secondly to have a little conference over a period of four days when we gathered together 29 full time workers some came on their motorbikes and most of them came down by train and with another brother we paid the fare on the train for them and they met together we are talking about men who labour in the forests of India now maybe the highlight of my visit really was to work into those forests with some of those men you would go down a dirt track and you would think there is nothing down here but animals anyhow after walking for a while you would come to a little village, grasshops usually went at night when the people came home or out of the fields, put up a gas lamp and under the gas lamp you would preach the gospel at least a hundred or a hundred and twenty people I never knew the many were there but there was many way back in the darkness through liberty to preach the gospel and it was in this conference that those dear men, many of them would just ask one man how far he went and he told me by times he went fifty kilometres into the forests, preaching the gospel and cycling home again men of a humble disposition but diligent in the things of God in the will of God, God's sovereign will the dear brethren there thought at last that conditions were sufficiently peaceful for me to visit and to meet with them in that conference I was the first foreigner since the riots of 2009 the dear man Ajay that invited me really I had peace and I'm honoured and I left it all with the Lord I could see that when I arrived he was a little nervous and he told me that the day following we would have to report to the police he had already told them I was coming given them my details given them the details of my passport told plainly the purpose of the visit but he says now we have to report to the police now there's a new deputy here or a new head of police in the whole area in fact I think the previous police administration was far too liberal and lenient upon the Hindu but they sent a new man and the reputation was he was fairly severe he says I have never met him I don't know how his deal was Ajay was a bit nervous when we went to the police station and worse still when he found that the officer in charge he didn't know him he'd never met him either.

Anyhow he says we could be in here for 5 hours the way the treat is well really I think we were out not 5 minutes but 7 minutes the man in charge he got my passport checked out the details contacted the head of police and the head of police said you're here you're welcome you're here with our permission and you're here with our protection now the permission was acceptable what worth the protection was I don't know we seek the protection of the lord himself but anyhow it was a real favor and a privilege to meet with those dear men of the saints for a 4 day conference they would start early in the morning and long into the evening as many sessions as they could take and we got on very well if you ever go to India don't say you like rice they'll feed it to you in mountains high but we always got through and did our best with the rice and helped the saints in the best as we could but really they were a help to me for it was so interesting to hear of their experiences and they conversed one with another and in a public way told their experiences to one another so as they could pray for each other and share in that account that I put in the magazine tells of one man who got saved the first in his family connection now when a Hindu gets saved and names the name of Christ it is incumbent upon the family really to beat him to death his elder brother said he must be kicked in the face they sat about beating him his brothers and before he went unconscious he heard about his father calling for an iron bar to finish him off he was very badly beaten, savagely beaten, he managed to crawl out of the place and was hidden by some of the believers from home to home in various areas and eventually contacted the family and eventually managed to go back and speak to them eventually managed to contact his loved ones to visit them and then eventually they brought him in and then eventually he found himself back in his home partaking of a meal and as he was partaking of the meal he felt something on his leg and he reached down it was a poisonous snake they were all watching him and they said you know we've tried to poison you three times you're still alive we put the snake on your leg and it won't bite you well said he, I told you about the saviour that has saved me and the saviour that has saved me is the saviour that can preserve me and that's the saviour that I've come to speak to you about for you need that saviour and so indeed he told us about some of his family, he wept aloud as he spoke about his loved ones and some of them got saved, another young man was from an illiterate tribe way back in the back regions of Orissa, it's against government rules and laws but they're still back there practice child sacrifice the dreadful idol of his condition that dear man likewise when he got saved he was the first in the area to get saved, through the testimony of some of these basic old preachers and when he got saved suffered great persecution was driven from the house somebody else took over the house and for a long time he couldn't go back but eventually he did go back and was accepted and all of them got saved and he was rather outspoken and full of joy and gladness, him and I still correspond since coming home and he tells me in that same house there are now 40 believers meeting to remember the Lord we visited a dear widow, there's about 20, the believers gather in an assembly across the road the assembly was largely formed by the testimony of her dear husband in earlier days he had a motor bike and would go around preaching the gospel, he was hated by the Hindus and maltreated and stoned chased and beaten and then eventually one night coming home making his way home from a meeting he was knocked down by a truck and they ran over him deliberately and so he lost his life in the service of God but that little assembly is there it seems to have abounded and now over 120 believers I'm prolonging the meeting but I better mention another matter my primary invitation was to encourage saints in trial and persecution just as we've seen them perhaps they heard about my work up in Siberia, dear Ajay was the man that organized my itinerary and organized my invitation to try and encourage the saints in persecution down there and then in a secondary aspect of the invitation well in India in the past there has been a great assembly work like those here have read about Antony Norris Groves and the early missionaries out there and many were saved still there are thousands on the west coast, I wasn't on the west coast saved by the grace of God but that assembly work has been spoiled by organization, by bible colleges, by funding, by graded pastor system and all the organizations of men and there is a great move to try and bring those assemblies into confederacy of man's organization now I state quite publicly where I spent most of my time preaching against all that what we do believe is autonomous new testament local assemblies that's what we practice in Russia you know this confederate idea of bringing them together and having a central oversight, it's just a recipe for disaster for if the authorities ever rise up against them, all they do is close down the central thing and all is closed down but you know no matter whatever it is wherever persecution has ever risen against assemblies the enemy always finds it very difficult to deal with little autonomous assemblies scattered across the country and so I visited and taught autonomous new testament assembly truth I began in Chennai that is the old city of Madras I took up the seven churches of Lampstand testimony and we visited 12 assemblies over 50 meetings an hour and a half each session usually four times a day they could take all the ministry that I could give them to tell you the truth I didn't get tired preaching but I got tired standing if you stand all day and preach all day well you get a kind of physically tired now it was a privilege to be with those dear friends we also had the opportunity to go across the border into Nepal now Nepal is a bit like Russia as well until 1990 it was controlled by a religious system which was Buddhist and it forbade anything of the Bible it has opened up in recent years and the dear brethren invited me to two assemblies in the Himalayan mountains composed of believers that are really just in their poverty engage in subsistence farming and I'll tell you the poverty of the conditions that they live in first generation believers that gather gather just in simple New Testament assembly way and each of those assemblies those two assemblies that I visited in Nepal would be over a hundred believers first generation believers still persecution from not Hindu but Buddhist system difficult to carry on therefore the Buddhists observe Saturday the schools and all businesses operate on the Lord's Day you can readily have meetings on Saturday but most of the believers on the Lord's Day would meet about 6.30 in the morning and at most of the meetings so that while the children have to go to school about 9 o'clock and so it is difficult and then gather in the evening again of course now what to pray for do pray for Shona and I that we be able to get a visa in the will of God to go to Russia next April after the winter do pray if you can't remember his name for Sasa remember the old man that preaches the gospel in the Ural mountains and do pray about the persecuted in India and pray specifically for eight brethren since I came home in an area through which I passed that were being savagely beaten four of them were put in prison and that court case is still pending they charge against them as the preaching of the gospel and they may be imprisoned and do pray for the widow and family of another man in one of the other states in India who when preaching the gospel was put upon by a howling mob had his throat cut do pray for his widow and little family you know as we ponder it Hebrews 11 their trials scourging bones and imprisoned and deserts and mountains they wandered says Hebrews 11 in that early day it's almost unbelievable my dear brother and my dear sister that there are those that experience those type of persecution in the year 2010 and they have one thing in common just as the faithful of the past says Hebrews 11 of whom the world was not worthy shall pray our father we seek thy face in the precious name of the lord Jesus we do thank thee that the lines have fallen unto us in a pleasant place and we have a goodly heritage and we meet with the laws of this land and with the freedom of the great country of America yet with all its materialism and all that marks the ungodly of our day yet we thank thee that the privileges that are ours while denied to those that are in persecution our minds turn to those cold bleak those cold bleak mountains of northern Siberia and we thank thee for what grace has wrought and we pray for those little assemblies that they might be preserved that they might be increased