April 22, 2022 Show with Matthew Heise on “Faith & Perseverance in the Soviet Union”

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April 25, 2022

April 22, 2022 Dr. MATTHEW HEISE, Executive Director @ Lutheran Heritage Foundation: “The GATES of HELL: An UNTOLD STORY of FAITH & PERSEVERANCE in the EARLY SOVIET UNION”

00:04: Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown
00:10: Carlyle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,
00:23: Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.
00:31: Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
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00:50: It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions, and now here's your host,
01:00: Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon
01:09: Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet
01:15: Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.
01:20: This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 22nd day of April 2022.
01:30: And I am thoroughly enthusiastic about today's first -time guest, and the topic,
01:38: I am sure, is going to be utterly fascinating, perhaps even more fascinating because of what is currently going on in Ukraine at the hands of Vladimir Putin and the
01:52: Russian army. Today we have Dr. Matthew Heisey on the program.
01:57: He is Executive Director at Lutheran Heritage Foundation, and today we are going to be discussing his book,
02:04: The Gates of Hell, an untold story of faith and perseverance in the early
02:10: Soviet Union. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.
02:16: Matthew Heisey. Thank you very much, Chris. It's a real joy to be with you today. Well, tell our listeners about the
02:22: Lutheran Heritage Foundation. Well, the Lutheran Heritage Foundation was founded by Reverend Robert Rahn about 30 years ago with the express purpose to kind of restore a
02:35: Christian witness to Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
02:41: So Pastor Rahn went in there and began making connections with old
02:47: Lutheran groups of people who had begun forming in the late 80s because of the
02:53: Glasnost program of Gorbachev. And he was able to begin to start working on translations of Martin Luther's small catechism, children's
03:03: Bible story books, even up to a book of Concord, into Russian. Because even though many of these people who had been part of these congregations had maybe
03:13: German, Estonian, Latvian, Finnish ethnic heritage, they pretty much lost their languages and they've been thoroughly
03:21: Russianized, so that they spoke Russian. And so it was to kind of restore that witness and, well, that's kind of what he thought that would be the work.
03:30: And then by God's grace, in 30 years now, we work in 96 countries and over 140 languages.
03:37: So the Holy Spirit is working. His word is being restored in places and going to countries like even
03:45: Bhutan, where we could never imagine it would go. Wow.
03:51: And just for our listeners' sake, so that they can look this information up for Lutheran Heritage Foundation, go to lhf, for Lutheran Heritage Foundation, missions .org,
04:08: L -H -F, missions .org, and God willing, we'll be repeating that later on in the program.
04:16: We have a tradition here on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, Dr. Heise, whenever we have a first -time guest, we have that guest give an account, a summary of their salvation story.
04:30: And I know, having done radio for many years, those in different branches of the
04:38: Christian faith may have a different explanation of that.
04:44: It's the same gospel, of course, if we are truly members of Christ's true church.
04:51: Same gospel, same Christ, but sometimes, in fact, many times, the stories of how we become aware of this
05:00: Christ and this gospel, and when we come to enthusiastically embrace it and repent of our wickedness and so on, those kinds of details may differ radically, and sometimes you even have folks, possibly you,
05:16: I don't know, who are raised in the faith since infancy, and they don't even remember a time when they didn't know and love
05:23: Jesus. Why don't we hear from you a summary of your story? Sure.
05:29: Actually, I was raised in the faith and kind of connected even to the story that I write here.
05:36: My paternal grandparents were Germans from Russia who left
05:41: Russia shortly before the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, for which the family is infinitely grateful, because, of course, we know what happened in those years after.
05:52: And they were faithful members of Lutheran churches in Detroit, and so my parents raised me in the faith, and I was confirmed, catechized, confirmed, and, of course, then, you know, you get into your early 20s, and there is the tendency to maybe begin to look at other philosophies, religion,
06:14: Buddhism, other things like that. But I always keep coming back to the Word of God and the person of Jesus Christ, because he is more than a great teacher, and I love reading, of course,
06:27: C .S. Lewis, which aided me greatly in that, that he is not just a great teacher, because if that's all he is, there are plenty of great teachers, but this great teacher is
06:38: God as well. Amen. In fact, in fact, in fact, that,
06:45: I'm sorry to interrupt you, it reminded me, I don't know if you remember this, but during the
06:50: Republican primaries, when George W. Bush was first running for President of the
06:58: United States, one of the Republicans running against him was
07:03: Alan Keyes, and although I disagree theologically with Alan, he is a
07:11: Roman Catholic, I thought that he had the best statement in the entire Republican primaries.
07:19: When they were asked, all of the candidates were asked who their favorite philosopher was,
07:26: George W. Bush said that his favorite philosopher was Jesus Christ, and he got a round of applause, because people thought that was very bold and noble of him to say that during a highly contested political campaign viewed by millions, and Alan Keyes rebuked him, correctly,
07:48: I believe, by saying, Mr. Bush, Jesus Christ is not a philosopher, he is
07:54: God. That does trump philosopher, doesn't it?
07:59: Yes. I'm sorry, I interrupted you, you can continue where you left off. No, no, that was pretty much, so of course, you know,
08:08: I began doing some teaching in actually Catholic schools in Detroit, which is kind of fascinating, because the principal,
08:16: I reminded him, okay, I'm teaching history, what happens when I come to the Reformation? He said to me, oh,
08:22: I forgot about that. I said, okay, we were right and you were wrong, now
08:27: I will present it honestly from both sides. And he said something that really struck me, because it was, you know, trying to reach out to inner -city kids, it was a
08:37: Detroit Catholic school, and he said, I would rather have a strong Christian than a weak Catholic.
08:43: Wow. And I always appreciated that, and so that was certainly part of my spiritual journey, and then eventually
08:53: I decided in my 30s to go to a seminary, and I should say in the mid -90s
09:00: I had done a volunteer mission stint that extended into two years in Russia, so I lived in Moscow from 1994 to 1996, and then went back to teaching, but it wasn't quite the same, and then entered the seminary and thinking, okay, now
09:18: I'm going to go on for the PhD, I'm thinking I'm the academic, and one of my professors said, no, you're going to Russia.
09:24: I said, okay. Wow. And so I did, from 2001 then to 2014, and in the former
09:31: Soviet Republic, like Georgia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan, and learned the language so that I could actually teach in Russian, so that's always an intimidating thing, and you're always reminded of your limitations, and pride comes before the fall, because as I was learning the language,
09:51: I wanted to kind of impress the students that I had a degree in higher education, so I told them,
09:57: I wanted to tell them I had Vyshabrazavania, but I left out a syllable, and the lesson is don't leave out a syllable in Russian, because I told them
10:05: I had Vyshabrazavania. Now Abrazavania and Abrazania are really close, but I told them I had a higher circumcision.
10:14: So the Lord has a way of humbling us, doesn't he? Oh yeah. He has had a habit of doing that all my life.
10:23: Yeah, me too. And then in 2014 I came back, my mother was not as well, and I became the director at Lutheran Heritage Foundation, where I have remained for now eight years.
10:34: So this organization predates your existence as the executive director? Yes, although ironically, when
10:41: I was in Russia, in the 90s, Pastor Ron, since I was a native Detroit area boy,
10:47: I ended up helping found a soup kitchen mission to street people in Moscow with my
10:56: Russian Orthodox friends. And I would be there in summers when I wasn't teaching, and I would end up bringing a lot of his books back and forth.
11:04: So to help him, and eventually they made me the director then. Praise God. And you are in, if I'm not mistaken, the
11:13: Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod? I am. Yes, that is one of the certainly more conservative and biblically -based
11:23: Christian Lutheran denominations, some of which have completely fallen away not only from their
11:32: Christian heritage, but even from their Lutheran heritage. And some of them are denominations that Martin Luther himself, if he could see what is happening here, would be rolling over in his grave and be furious that his name was attached to such a denomination.
11:49: But we thank God for denominations such as the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church for upholding the biblical roots of the
11:59: Reformation and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And that's actually part of Lutheran Heritage Foundation's mission phrase, is that we translate books that are
12:11: Bible -based, Christ -centered, and Reformation -driven. Amen. Well, one of those books is the book that we are addressing today,
12:19: The Gates of Hell, An Untold Story of Faith and Perseverance in the
12:24: Early Soviet Union. What is the background of the Lutheran Church in Ukraine and Russia?
12:30: Because when I keep hearing about everything that's going on right now in Ukraine, predominantly you hear about the
12:41: Eastern Orthodox Church, you also hear sometimes about the
12:48: Ukrainian Catholic Church, and you hear about evangelicals. I have interviewed a seminary professor,
12:55: Grace Bible Seminary in Kiev, and Mykola Leliovsky.
13:03: I've had him on the program at least twice, and a very strong proponent of the true
13:11: Gospel over there in Ukraine. But tell us about the background of the
13:16: Lutheran Church in Ukraine and Russia. Okay, yeah. Let me actually start with Russia because 20 years after Martin Luther's death in 1546 you had
13:28: Lutheran congregations forming in the mid -16th century in Moscow primarily.
13:35: Ivan the Terrible, noted through history for a name like that, actually invited in merchants, tradesmen from Europe because he wanted to modernize his country to some extent, just like Peter the
13:50: Great would a few centuries later. But Ivan the Terrible, as we call him, was inviting these folks in, and several of them said, we're
13:59: Lutherans. And he said, what does that mean? And they said, well, this is what we believe. And they had a copy of the Augsburg Confession.
14:05: And he had that translated. Ivan was actually deeply interested in Christianity and theology.
14:13: And so after he read it, he said, okay, that sounds like Christianity. Build your churches. Unfortunately, he did not get that title for no reason.
14:24: Ivan the Terrible soon changed his mind and said, burn the Lutheran church in Moscow. And so it was, of course, under his reign.
14:33: But the churches remained afterwards and began to grow, but they were all ethnic churches.
14:40: German, Estonian, Latvian, Swedish, Finnish background. A Russian could not legally belong to the
14:48: Lutheran church until the political reforms in 1905 under Nicholas II.
14:54: So for most of its history, and it was a long history, whether that be in Ukraine or other areas, they could actually, anybody who belonged to the church had to be one of these ethnic groups that were known as historically
15:10: Lutheran. And that means in Ukraine as well. So you had a lot of Germans who lived in what is now modern -day
15:18: Ukraine. I'm fascinated, and I'm probably going on here to other things, but as I watch the battles take place today,
15:27: I'm reminded that there are many old churches that were destroyed by the
15:32: Communists. Because I used to teach in Ukraine as well at a seminary near Odessa.
15:40: And one time one of the Lutheran pastors took me into the countryside and I was able to see old -ruined churches,
15:46: Catholic, Lutheran, other Protestant denominations. Some had been turned into community centers.
15:53: Others had been turned into well, they were just ruins. And others were turned back into Orthodox churches.
16:01: One of the more fascinating ones was, and this individual shows up in my book,
16:07: Pastor Albert Cook, who was a marcher for the church. He was in Gross -Liebenthal, which was this
16:13: German village about an hour west of Odessa. Today it's known as Velika Dalyanka.
16:19: But I went there with a pastor and when we talked to the priest of the
16:25: Orthodox church, because the Lutheran church you could see the outline, that it wasn't traditional Orthodox architecture.
16:32: He came up to us and told us that he was very aware of the German Lutheran background there and wanted to preserve some of that history.
16:42: But of course he was Orthodox now. But I was impressed because I have not always had those kinds of conversations with Orthodox priests or believers.
16:51: So that was really good to see that someone saw this continuity of the Christian faith beyond denomination.
17:00: Now what was it like specifically for Lutheran Christians to live in the
17:06: Soviet Union between 1917 and 1939? Yeah, that is really the basis of the book.
17:15: I always try to tell people that the 20s were kind of an era of some type of hope for Lutherans and other
17:23: Protestants because the Soviets initially went after the Orthodox church.
17:28: That was the dominant church in Russia and that was the one that they wanted to decapitate.
17:34: So they went after of course arrested their Patriarch Tihon and the other churches had a little bit of freedom for a while but with the coming of the power of Stalin in 1928, that's when things begin to change.
17:53: And then the 30s begin this very harsh crackdown on all churches and ultimately lead to the closing at least for Lutheran churches of 1939.
18:05: And the story that you focus on amongst the general information about Lutheran Christians and their persecution, you specifically hone in and highlight the story of Pastor Kurt Muss and so tell the story of how this book came to be written to begin with.
18:31: Well, I had some parishioners actually, I was serving as a missionary and so was asked to address one of the congregations that I attended when
18:43: I was teaching at the seminary on the outskirts of St. Petersburg St. Michael's in St.
18:48: Petersburg by the way Vladimir Putin grew up literally around the block from this church and he would never have known it as a church it would look like a church but it was actually a volleyball making factory, it was called a sport and eventually of course the church was restored in the early 1990s with the fall of communism but that church was the church where Kurt Muss had done some of his preaching and some of the parishioners had been in contact with some of his lost relatives and they said most everybody has died off do you want these documents we have and they said sure send them and they sent them so these parishioners of St.
19:34: Michael's were very faithful and after I kind of talked about briefly about Kurt Muss they said do you really want to know who he is?
19:42: I said sure and they said we have documents from the family and so in the book you actually will have a lot of personal photographs of Kurt Muss his wife his family and then literally a hand drawn picture of someone in the
20:00: Gulag who drew this image of him shortly before he was executed in 1937 and you can kind of see the change in his face and perhaps the signs of some beating so this story is unique because I call
20:16: Kurt Muss the Russian Bonhoeffer he worked exclusively with youth and he saw the winds of change that were coming to his country he realized that in the near future churches would be closed people would be arrested bibles would be confiscated and he wanted to prepare the youth for that and so he said you have to know what's coming you have to be grounded in this faith because the day will come when you will not be able to go to a church you will not be able to read the bible you need to know
20:52: God's word you need to plant it in your heart because God is creating this temple the temple of Christ within your heart through his word and so he had this foresight he could see what was going on one of his seminary classmates was named
21:08: Helmut Hansen also ethnic German of Russian background Hansen spoke mostly
21:14: German but Muss was fluent in Russian and German which is why many of the youth congregated around him because they didn't really speak the
21:23: German language so much anymore they spoke Russian exclusively and I understand he was just a fantastic preacher he often didn't go up in the pulpit he would go down among the people and speak to them and one of his students
21:38: Mikhail Mudyugin is also prominently featured in the book because he was just coming out from an errand from his mother sending him on an errand one day to buy some things
21:52: I'm trying to think of a Russian word we would call it a pharmacist so he saw this church it looked kind of interesting he walked in and he heard him preach and he was spellbound he came up to him after and he said
22:07: I'm Russian could I join your church? he said sure, no problem we preach the word of God to all people so he had this cadre of youth around him who many of them retained the faith even after he had been arrested and eventually executed and some of these folks came back into the church in the 90s and spoke of the spiritual father who had nurtured them understanding what was going to happen and Musa is kind of one of the more prominent figures in the book but there are many others too who understand the signs of the times they see that the vanguard of the future was atheism and this is what the state was pushing and they wouldn't close everything immediately but they were beginning to burden the church with heavy taxation they changed the work week it was no longer 70s, it was 5 and so you had this shifting of the work week even though you've got
23:06: Sunday through Saturday and so Sunday was never the same day so people they couldn't go to church on a
23:15: Sunday because the workers all had different shifts and you'd have to have services then at 7 o 'clock at night this all happened in late 1929 so actually
23:25: I put the quote from Revelation on this chapter where it says he will think to change the times and the seasons
23:33: I can imagine that many of the people in those days were also thinking this sounds an awful lot like Revelation Yeah we have a listener already with a question we have
23:48: RJ in White Plains, New York who asks what were the specific reasons the
23:57: Soviet Union publicly declared for persecuting the church and if they were different what do you think their real reasons were well there was in fact one of the things
24:15: I can kind of say because I did a lot of research in the Russian state library there was a journal called
24:23: Besbozhnik which literally means godless and the Soviet state formed this organization the
24:30: League of the Militant Godless and their publication, their journal was Besbozhnik, godless journal and often you can see these pictures and these stories that indicate that believers are mistaken they're really not understanding their condition their class condition that there is class warfare and this needs to take place and they put their hopes in this pie in the sky this god who doesn't exist and this was part of the philosophy certainly of the
25:03: Soviets of Lenin and others who wanted to who saw people who were calming the population people who would give comfort to individuals with promises of heaven and they said these people are too heavenly minded and they're not earthly good we need to focus on what the real problem here is and the problem is the oppressive aristocratic class in the bourgeois so there is this battle of class and one of the interesting statements that when the
25:40: KGB well they were called NKVD at that time interviewed one of the Sunday school teachers that I talk about that was arrested in 1929 one of Kurt Loos' Sunday school teachers and he basically he said we teach love of God we teach children that God loves all people because we cannot teach hatred through class consciousness and so this directly opposed what the state is talking about so the church was an enemy to the state because whether it be orthodox catholic, reformed
26:18: Lutheran Baptist it didn't matter these people were taking the focus away from this philosophical battle between the proletariat and those who own the means of production and as the oh yeah it does but the listener also asked do you think that there were unstated reasons why the
26:49: Soviet Union persecuted Christians hmm I'm not sure what he means by unstated reasons like for instance in China there is language used there historically has been language used that appears to equate the
27:14: Chinese government with deity whereas you have some communists really obliterating the entire concept of deity they're really claiming to be deity whether they say that specifically and clearly or not and so perhaps the
27:39: Soviet Union just viewed just like the Romans of the first century viewed the
27:46: Christians as worshipping a competing god a god that was not them right a different theist yeah not so much the intriguing thing is that they adopted so much of Christian practice in the sense when you see of course if you remember the old parade through Red Square where they would hold up the pictures of Lenin of Marx of Stalin or the current
28:14: Soviet leader this is almost like an icon parade that the Russian Orthodox Church would be carrying pictures of course of Mother Mary or Jesus or Saints these types of parades around the church they kind of adopted that and the notion of having this pantheon for Lenin which to this day still stands there right in the middle of Red Square they adopted a lot of the practice there but as far as I'm from what
28:46: I know of a lot of the founders of the Soviet state there was no attempt to really say we ourselves are
28:54: God but the state becomes God in many ways and the state has the last say in all things so if there is a deity it's not
29:04: Lenin it's not Stalin but it is the state and we have to go to our first station break by the way
29:11: RJ in White Plains please give us your full mailing address because you have just won a free copy of The Gates of Hell An Untold Story of Faith and Perseverance in the
29:23: Early Soviet Union by our guest Matthew Heisey compliments of our friends at Lexham Press and it will be mailed out to you compliments of our sponsors
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29:42: they will actually be shipping the book out to you if you provide for us your mailing address we're going to our first break and if anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question for Matthew Heisey about his book
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39:14: ignitedbytheword .org. We are now back with our guest today, Matthew Heisey, and Matthew is the author of the book we are addressing,
39:23: The Gates of Hell, An Untold Story of Faith and Perseverance in the Early Soviet Union. We do have a question from Ted in Moundville, Alabama.
39:33: He said, I was wondering whether Stalin may have been more motivated to persecute
39:38: Christianity in the Soviet Union because he himself had been a seminarian in the
39:43: Russian Orthodox Church and that perhaps he was trying to overcorrect his former religious beliefs which he eventually regarded as a sort of secular apostasy.
39:55: Any comments on that, Matthew? Actually, that's a very interesting point by Ted there.
40:01: I did actually live in Tbilisi, Georgia for a little while.
40:07: There were difficulties, especially as Putin began to, we're not sure if it was exactly he was trying to find ways to expel missionaries, but he made it more difficult for foreigners, especially with religious visas living in Russia.
40:23: And so I ended up moving in 2008, my timing's always impeccable, just as the time
40:30: Russia started a war with Georgia. Once that cleared up, I did get down to Tbilisi and lived there for several years, traveling around and teaching.
40:38: But I did often pass by the old seminary where Joseph Stalin was a student.
40:46: In fact, he was, of course, also a criminal and helped through these robberies fund the
40:53: Communist Party. And he used to hang out in the Lutheran cemetery, which still exists there.
40:58: There's a Lutheran church in Tbilisi to carry out his crimes. So he certainly had understood the faith.
41:08: I think that may have been probably why there were these, you know, there was a story that, of course,
41:15: Krupskaya, Lenin's widow, wanted him buried. And he kept him there, kind of as a symbol for the
41:23: Soviet state there, but it's something that you would worship in a way. And Stalin understood
41:30: Christianity. So I don't know if anyone's ever written maybe in depth on that, but it would be a fascinating topic because he did understand the faith and certainly he had turned completely against it.
41:45: Well, thanks, Ted. Give us your full mailing address in Moundville, Alabama, and we will make sure that cvbbs .com
41:55: ships out to you a free copy of The Gates of Hell, An Untold Story of Faith and Perseverance in the
42:03: Early Soviet Union. This is a beautiful, hardback, nearly 500 pages.
42:10: So we thank Lexham Press once again for providing these giveaway copies, a limited number.
42:18: We also thank cvbbs .com, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, for shipping these books out to our winners when the weight of that package is going to be quite extraordinary.
42:30: Well, I'll tell you, Lexham did, Elliot Ritzema and Todd Haynes and the staff there did an incredible job editing down my book, because it probably would have been 700 -some pages.
42:43: So they really focused on what was most important, and I'm really, really honored to have worked with them and very grateful to them.
42:52: Yes, and we're very grateful to them for providing us these giveaway copies. How did an
42:57: American, Dr. John Moorhead, figure so prominently in this story, and what role did he play in keeping the church alive?
43:06: Yeah, he is a fascinating character. He was a professor of,
43:15: I'm sorry, not professor, he was a president of Roanoke College in southern
43:20: Virginia, still exists, technically a Lutheran college. I don't know how
43:26: Lutheran it is anymore, but it was a Lutheran college, certainly, when he was president in the early years of the previous century.
43:36: And World War I was what I think got John Moorhead overseas.
43:42: He had actually done some studies over in Leipzig. He had learned German, and after he saw the devastation of World War I, he tried to find ways for Americans to support those nations that had suffered so greatly from the war.
43:59: But nothing quite like the trip that he took to Moscow when he met Theophil Meyer, who would eventually become the bishop several years after his first trip.
44:11: And he went on a journey with Meyer to the Volga and other regions. And forever after then, until his death in 1936, he was committed to keeping the
44:24: Lutheran church in Russia alive. And he never left a stone unturned in the
44:30: States. He certainly connected to many of the, there were a large number of Volga Germans who lived in, who still, of course, their ancestors live out in the
44:43: American Midwest, in the Dakotas, in Nebraska, and Colorado.
44:50: And so he certainly went to those folks, and many of them still had relatives in what was now the
44:57: Soviet Union. And so he was able to get aid to them. He got aid to reformed communities.
45:03: He was not that particular when it came to helping Christians. He did not draw a distinction.
45:09: I only give it to Lutherans. I don't give it to Reformed. Because when you get to the Volga area, you have Reformed and Lutheran there.
45:16: And he supported all. And he said, the aid goes to everyone. And really, this was a famine that took place during the
45:26: Russian Civil War, early 1920s, and literally saved a lot of lives physically.
45:34: But also, he became so closely tied to the church, he wanted to make sure that they would receive the resources that they needed.
45:43: And so he would always find, I mean, he would never quit, even though he was working in a situation where the
45:52: Soviet state was becoming increasingly belligerent towards Christian communities.
45:58: And he would still, he would, he just had this American optimism that I think a lot of the
46:04: Russians were kind of impressed with, but also said, this is realistic. But he had that can -do spirit and probably shortened his life by several years because he took ill there.
46:18: In fact, this is when Kurt Muss, who took over some of the work that John Moorhead was doing and was arrested by the
46:26: Soviet state, because he was distributing aid and he was connected to an American group.
46:31: You know, what's past is prologue here. You have some of these situations today where Americans in Russia and other places there who are deemed suspect because they're in Russia, they're in Putin's Russia, and they're aiding others with either humanitarian aid or Christian books, things along that line.
46:54: By the way, several times you have mentioned bishops in the Lutheran Church.
47:00: And for as long as I've been an evangelical Protestant and have had many discussions with Missouri Synod Lutherans and Lutherans of other conservative
47:10: Bible -believing backgrounds, I don't recall ever those two words being put together,
47:16: Lutheran bishop. Is that a common thing in Lutheran denominations today? It is for Europe.
47:22: You know, we have a president of Missouri Synod, Matthew Harrison. Reverend Dr. Matthew Harrison is our president.
47:28: So we've always had a president, and part of that too was because there was a distinction to distinguish us from Roman Catholics in America.
47:38: He used the term president rather than bishop, but the Europeans did not. So they kept that title.
47:45: And since the Russians actually, their theological education was in a place called
47:52: Dorpat, which today is now in Estonia. And so when the
47:57: Soviet Union became the Soviet Union, in a way Estonia was kind of a separate republic.
48:06: And so I'm trying to lose my place here. So what happened is you had these
48:13: German theological professors who came into the Baltic states, into Estonia, and they had the tradition of bishop.
48:21: And so they were just referred to as bishops for a long period of time.
48:30: And to this current day, I should say, as well. And tell the story about the cover image on this book.
48:39: As you were saying, Lexham Press really did an exquisite job in the publishing of this book, even cosmetically.
48:49: I mean, it's a very eye -catching book, and the cover is quite compelling. It's the ordination party in the
49:02: Crimea. Yeah, this is the Herschelman family. In fact, if you look, if you get the chance to look at the cover, you will see on one corner there is a gentleman with a kind of large white mane there, and a big white beard, and that is
49:19: Ferdinand Herschelman Sr., who was one of the more respected pastors in the church.
49:26: And the picture is the occasion of his son, Fredo, which is kind of the Ferdinand Jr.,
49:32: basically. It's his ordination there. In the Crimea, there were a large number of Lutheran congregations in the
49:40: Crimea. Interestingly enough, when I was teaching in Ukraine, one of my students was doing his vicarage in Crimea right around 2014, when
49:49: Crimea became Russian. His vicarage ended because he was expelled from Crimea, because it was now
49:55: Russia, it was no longer Ukraine. But at that time, the time of the
50:00: Herschelmans, Crimea had a large Lutheran population. You had a lot of these Germans who had immigrated there, who had been invited in by Catherine the
50:10: Great way back in the 1760s into what's now the
50:15: Ukraine Black Sea colonies and so forth. And so the picture shows this ordination of the families there, but what's tragic about the picture is you will note that five of the pastors in the photo will be executed, will either be physically executed or die in the gulag.
50:39: Fredo Herschelman, the younger son who was ordained that day, died in a
50:46: Soviet gulag camp with a tree falling on him, literally. That was some of the most difficult labors, working in the forests and cutting down the trees.
50:57: And his father, ironically, came out of retirement. John Moorhead had said, you know, these guys can't retire, we're losing pastors.
51:08: We have all these congregations with no pastors, they need a shepherd. And Herschelman was already in his 70s and he felt compelled to go back and do mission work.
51:19: And so he ended up going into a Siberian village with his daughter and was arrested.
51:25: And he died in a Soviet labor camp at the age of 76. So, I mean, these are just incredible people of faith.
51:33: And I guess what's so extraordinary to me is they don't pretend to be anything but ordinary
51:38: Christians who say, this is what we do. This is faith we proclaim.
51:44: And, you know, like Paul would say, whether I'm in good health or bad, it doesn't matter the circumstances,
51:51: I will still proclaim Christ. Amen. I mean that. So, this photo is,
51:57: I got the photo from the granddaughter, great -granddaughter, for Dan Sr.
52:03: And she shared the story, and several stories. It was a great exchange, actually, because I did go into the
52:10: Evangelical Lutheran Church of America archives in Chicago, and I had letters from her great -grandfather that I could share with her.
52:19: And she shared pictures with me. So, it was, I had some real great opportunities to connect with people who were connected to many of the figures in the book.
52:31: Well, we have to go to our midway break right now. If you have questions for Matthew Heisey on the gates of hell, and I hope that all of you who have already submitted your questions will be patient as we will eventually get around to you,
52:47: God willing, to have your questions read and answered on air. But if you want to get in line, folks, if you haven't submitted your question yet, send it to ChrisArnson at gmail .com.
52:58: ChrisArnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. This is the longer, the normal break in the middle of the show.
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53:41: God? How do we know we picked the right Bible? Why do we go to church on Sunday?
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54:49: As host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, I frequently get requests from listeners for church recommendations.
54:55: A church I've been strongly recommending as far back as the 1980s is Grace Covenant Baptist Church in Flemington, New Jersey, pastored by Alan Dunn.
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57:40: London Baptist Confession of Faith, please join us at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Quorum, New York.
57:46: Again, I'm Pastor Anthony Avino, and thanks for listening. We are excited to announce another new member of the
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01:08:39: Before I return to our guest Matthew Heisey and our discussion on his book
01:08:45: The Gates of Hell, An Untold Story of Faith and Perseverance in the Early Soviet Union, I just have a couple of more announcements to make.
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01:11:58: That's also the email address where you can send in a question to our guest today, Matthew Heisey, as we continue our discussion on the gates of hell, an untold story of faith and perseverance in the early
01:12:12: Soviet Union. We do have a listener, and I had that question right in front of me, and it's disappeared, and I'm looking for it.
01:12:22: While I'm looking for it, let me just repeat our email address, chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com,
01:12:29: give us a first name at least, city and state and country of residence, and I have found that question. It's from our old friend
01:12:35: Grady in Asheboro, North Carolina, one of our most faithful listeners, and Grady says, greetings brothers, did the
01:12:43: Russian Orthodox Church interfere with the Lutheran and other evangelical churches and the work they were doing in Russia?
01:12:52: I know the government did, but was that because the Orthodox Church ordered it? And he's talking about in the past or the current day?
01:13:02: He doesn't specify, but let's go with that. Let's start with the past. Sure, let's start with the past.
01:13:09: Well, once, of course, the Soviet state was proclaimed, they really went after the
01:13:15: Orthodox Church, primarily, since this was the church of the
01:13:20: Russian people, and there's always the famous phrase in Russian that to be, if you are
01:13:26: Russian, then you must be Orthodox, and many of our Lutheran believers, and I'm sure also other
01:13:32: Protestant denominations often have to contend with this, with family, that somehow they're joining a cult instead of, because they're no longer members of the
01:13:40: Orthodox Church, and they've they've focused more on reading and understanding the
01:13:46: Bible, as Protestants generally do, and so, but to go back to that time, at least, the state really persecuted the
01:13:56: Orthodox Church severely in the early years of Soviet power, and there's an interesting correspondence between Patriarch Tikhon and the
01:14:05: Bishop Conrad Freifeld of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Russia, where Freifeld has to admit that, you know, you guys haven't really spoken up for us in the past, even when the tsars were not particularly helpful to us, but, you know, we are brothers in Christ, and we will stand with you, and Tikhon was actually very moved and thankful for Bishop Freifeld's support there.
01:14:31: So, in a sense, I would say that the Orthodox Church was fighting for its own existence.
01:14:37: So, at least in those early years that I focus on of Soviet power in the 20s and 30s, there wasn't as much animosity.
01:14:46: In fact, Ferdinand Herschelman Sr., who I mentioned, as he was dying in a concentration camp, his great -granddaughter told me that they had heard the story that an
01:14:56: Orthodox priest gave him communion on his deathbed, and there's this breaking down of walls between denominations when, you know, the state is standing against you as a faithful believer in Jesus Christ.
01:15:09: And so, in a sense, there was a certain understanding, at least then. In the current day, it depends,
01:15:17: I guess, who you talk to. There are certainly many Orthodox who kind of laugh at Lutherans and other
01:15:23: Protestants and don't see that as a real church or see it as an invading church in Russia, and certainly
01:15:30: I think they have the year of Vladimir Putin. But there are many others, and I know some
01:15:37: Russian Orthodox priests who are just wonderful Christian believers. One, I think, of Fr.
01:15:43: Stefan, and I can't remember the metro stop where his church is, but he was a gulag survivor and just a very humble, faithful Christian.
01:15:54: So, there are a little bit of both, but at least as regards to the Orthodox Church so much, they're more in league with the state today.
01:16:03: So, it's not, they're looking at what we would consider cults like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons.
01:16:09: There is the focus on, in fact, I think now Jehovah's Witnesses are pretty much banned and outlawed by the
01:16:16: Russian state. Yes, it's quite a dilemma when you have, on one hand, every
01:16:31: Christian breathes a sigh of relief and rejoices when other religions, in the name of Christ even, are no longer, who once persecuted them, are no longer doing so.
01:16:46: But at the same time, there is the negative side of modern ecumenism, where people reduce very vital doctrines to a dangerously low ladder of wrong on the ladder of importance, and sometimes take it off the ladder completely, even things that are salvific.
01:17:08: So, people in the body of Christ are always, it seems throughout history, battling one side or the other.
01:17:18: Sure, no, you're right, and actually I'm thankful that we've had discussions with Russian Orthodox.
01:17:25: Several of my students now who are Lutheran pastors in St. Petersburg and throughout Russia have some spirited debates with Russian Orthodox and who agree to disagree, but at least they kind of state this is our theological position, this is what we stand on, and there's an agreement to disagree.
01:17:45: And by the way, folks, if you are interested in hearing what I believe is a truly fascinating interview
01:17:53: I conducted some time ago with Dr. Jack Kinnear on Eastern Orthodoxy.
01:18:01: He is a Presbyterian in the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America, and he really conducted,
01:18:12: I think, a fascinating interview on Eastern Orthodoxy, what separates it from Rome and the
01:18:17: Reformation, and that took place on April 16, 2018, four years ago, and that is on the archive of ironsharpensignradio .com.
01:18:29: If you want to hear that interview, I highly commend it to you. Well, you highlight the life of somebody in the book named
01:18:42: Pastor Johan Voll, and forgive me if I'm mispronouncing his last name, and he risked his freedom to educate children in Rozhivka, Ukraine.
01:18:52: Tell us about that, or him, I should say. Yeah, yeah, well, we talked about, certainly, this is a village that I kind of have my eyes upon to Google Maps today, because Pastor Voll was the pastor in what was called
01:19:10: Noy Grunow at that time, when he was pastor in the 1920s, in what we call
01:19:16: Ukraine today. His village is 40 kilometers northwest of Mariupol, and, of course,
01:19:23: I think most of us are familiar with the, unfortunately, the bombing of the maternity hospital, and now all the people trapped in Mariupol by Russian troops.
01:19:33: So, 40 miles northwest from what I've been able to gather, it's probably the battle lines right now, and 90 years previous to this date,
01:19:45: Pastor Voll was persecuted by a state that told him he couldn't educate children in the faith, and like Pastor Mus and so many others, he said, how can
01:19:55: I not educate children in the faith, because I see what's happening to our country, I see where we're going, and they have to have the
01:20:03: Word of God planted in their hearts. And so, they were limiting how many, what age group he could work with, 18 was the number that, the
01:20:13: Soviet state said you had to reach age 18, and some Lutherans would say, okay, well, we'll follow the state, we'll wait until they're 18, until we educate them in the faith, and he said, we can't do that.
01:20:24: And he followed many different things. He did children's sermons, but he also began to, when the pressure grew more intense, especially as Stalin comes to authority as General Secretary of the
01:20:39: Communist Party in 1928, he literally was reduced to two or three students per session, and so what he did for a couple of months is from 7 a .m.
01:20:52: in the morning till 8 at night, he would gather those small groups, two or three, and then two or three more, two or three more, he ended up confirming close to 200 in 1928, but, you know, clearly exhausted.
01:21:06: But he had certainly the backing of a lot of the parents. They would tell him who were informers, because informers,
01:21:14: Soviet informers, secret agents would come into churches, and he didn't know who they were. And his congregation was very thankful in telling him this is what's going on, some of these people are here, and, you know, of course, he's eventually imprisoned.
01:21:30: Eventually, he survives the Gulag camps and emigrates to West Germany and lives out his whole life, but he heard from many of his students who had never left the
01:21:40: Soviet Union who were able to convey to him that those lessons stayed with them, and I'm sure that was a great comfort to him, even though he no longer lived in the
01:21:50: Soviet Union. But this was, once again, one of these faithful ministers who didn't proclaim himself to be a hero, as we call everybody a hero today.
01:22:02: I'm amazed at how these people just saw themselves that this is what we do. I mean, how can I not educate children in the faith?
01:22:08: How can I not tell them about Jesus? I wouldn't be a faithful pastor if I didn't do that. And yet the state says you can't do these things, and so you find ways around it.
01:22:19: This is what Kurt Muss and Helmut Hansen did in Leningrad in 1929, when they were told they could no longer educate children in Sunday school classes in the church, and they said, so what we will do is we'll gather them in apartments, in small groups, and we'll train our teachers, give them the lesson of the week, and then on Sundays they'll scatter out to all these apartments around Leningrad, and they'll teach kids the
01:22:43: Bible stories. And we know this because one of those Bible teachers,
01:22:48: Dagmar Schreiber, one of the Sunday school teachers, she was 18 years old. And I feel, in a sense, odd looking over the shoulder of an
01:22:59: NKVD agent, a secret agent from the Soviet state, interrogating this girl at the age of 18, and I've got the files, and I'm looking at that, and I'm reading his interrogation of her, and I'm amazed by her boldness, where she just says, you know, she says,
01:23:14: I support the socialist state, so she's making a political statement there, in a sense, saying that I do not, you know,
01:23:20: I'm not opposed to the government, but we have freedom of religion.
01:23:26: Of course, on paper, in the Soviet Union, they would say you have the freedom to, of course, perform religious rights.
01:23:35: They didn't really say so much, you have the right to believe, but perform religious rights. But she, and of course,
01:23:41: Kurt Muster, her supervisor would say, you know, we have the right, of course, we have religious freedom in the
01:23:48: Soviet Union, and they played that as much as they could against the state. And so she told them, you know,
01:23:53: I'm teaching kids from the Bible. He said, so what are you teaching them? She said, well, for example, I teach them about Amos.
01:23:59: Amos was a man of God. He lived in a time when Assyria was threatening Judah, and the leaders of Judah were afraid, and they thought that they should, of course, bow down to the
01:24:10: Assyrian state. And Amos said, no, you have to be faithful to God. And then, of course, there is the lesson that comes from that.
01:24:20: We live in times like these now. And she said, I was a little bit careful, because I didn't know if all the kids would understand that this is what
01:24:26: Kurt Muster wanted his Sunday school teachers to do. He wanted them to use that critical thinking to take it the next step and say, you know, this is what happens in the
01:24:36: Bible. Hey, we're living in similar times. We have
01:24:42: Bebe in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, would a study of your book with younger people shatter some of the ridiculous notions they have that romanticize
01:24:59: Marxism and communism? And why do you think this ideology is so appealing to young people, not only today, but it has been throughout history, it seems, since the conception of the
01:25:13: Soviet Union? Well, I think that, before my guest answers, there's two words that can explain why kids seem to be drawn to this ideology of Marxism as free stuff.
01:25:25: But they fail to recognize that nothing is really free. You're going to lose something if you think you're getting something for free.
01:25:31: But anyway, I'll let my guest give a more articulate answer to that.
01:25:37: Well, actually, there is a lot to that. I have to admit, I was one who really wanted to read what different people thought when
01:25:45: I was younger. And so I looked into that, because I think a lot younger people are truly looking for some type of justice.
01:25:54: And this is what Marxism promises. It promises justice against the oppressing classes. And they see, of course, those who are wealthy sometimes oppress others.
01:26:03: And they haven't had, as I didn't have when I was younger, the experience of reading more deeply in history and certain scriptures, and recognizing that we are all fallen.
01:26:18: We can't sit there and just point our fingers at wealthy people. We can point our fingers at us, because we are all poor, miserable sinners, which is something we confess every
01:26:29: Sunday when we repent. We are all poor, miserable sinners. And when we learn that, we realize that man cannot create a perfect state, certainly not outside of what the
01:26:40: Lord is doing or God's control. And so I think there is that appeal to justice.
01:26:47: This is true justice. But the more you look at it, the more you read it. Boy, where has Marxism brought justice?
01:26:53: It just hasn't. So do you think that a study, perhaps a group study, of this book with younger folks might do the job that our listener is hoping it will, that may dispel myths and legends about the glory days of communism?
01:27:12: Well, this is one of the things I want to... What I really wanted to do was just tell the story of faithful believers who were the nobodies in the
01:27:23: Soviet Union. You know, you have all the great leaders, and then you have these nobodies.
01:27:29: But in God's eyes, these nobodies are far more important than Trotsky, Lenin, and Stalin, because these people were faithful.
01:27:40: They were faithful even though they didn't have this power. But they had the power of the Holy Spirit in their hearts.
01:27:46: And one of the intriguing things I hope also comes out too is they recognize, because there is always this question, how many people really believed?
01:27:54: Well, I quote this 1937 survey, which the Soviet state, they wanted to say now, okay, communism has been in power 20 years.
01:28:03: Have we eradicated religion? Joseph Stalin had these five -year plans. So, the first five -year, 1928 to 1933, the second five -year plan, they were supposed to completely eradicate religion.
01:28:15: And while they had pretty much done away with all the churches, the interesting thing was when they did the survey, they found that more than half of the
01:28:23: Soviet people still proclaimed to believe in God. And that, of course, is speaking to a
01:28:31: Soviet official who's doing the survey. You can imagine it's probably an understatement.
01:28:38: And it was just quite ironic because after that, they stopped doing these surveys because they recognized, well, we've got more work to do than we thought.
01:28:49: There was still strong, strong faith. They really attacked a lot of the people in the cities. But what
01:28:54: I found really fascinating was the villages in the countryside. A lot of times where the
01:29:01: Soviet state did not control the people as completely and where the churches had strongholds.
01:29:09: And I highlight this village of Kolkata because this is where I taught at a
01:29:15: Russian Lutheran seminary for 10 years. It's probably about 10 kilometers northeast of St.
01:29:24: Petersburg today. And a lot of people's Finnish background, they're called Ingrians. Ingrians, I say, are like Russianized Finns.
01:29:31: People with Finnish last names, but they speak Russian because they've been there for so long. And of course, their church was
01:29:37: Lutheran. And it was the center of the village there. And when the
01:29:44: Soviets came out and said, basically, if you are going to proclaim belief in God, you lose your opportunity to go to university, college.
01:29:53: The doors are shut. And nobody in the village denied
01:29:58: God. And to this day, that village is a very, very strong center of a seminary.
01:30:05: They have an old folks home where a lot of my former students would do some practical work. The church is extremely strong there.
01:30:13: And I think that's probably directly a result of the fact that they continue to proclaim the faith even against the gates of hell.
01:30:24: Amen. Well, the book title references,
01:30:30: The Gates of Hell Shall Not Prevail. But this is largely the story of Christian persecution.
01:30:37: Where can we find hope in this story? Well, I think for me, the interesting thing is what the
01:30:46: Bishop Malmgren, Arthur Malmgren, who is one of the other figures prominently in this book, he had come to the conclusion, he said, the
01:30:55: Lord tells us that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. But that doesn't mean every denomination will survive.
01:31:02: And he said, our denomination is heading to a death. It is going under and it's going under fast.
01:31:10: So there are going to be these defeats, as I kind of used from Revelation, you know,
01:31:17: Satan's going to have his little season. But ultimately, he's not going to destroy the faith entirely.
01:31:24: And where the church does its work, as so many of these faithful pastors who went to their who went to their death as martyrs, planted seeds of the gospel in the hearts of the children, that was restored many, many years later.
01:31:43: And many people, several in the book and others whose names don't show up, kept a secret faith.
01:31:51: I talk about Olga Streaks, who is a member of St. Peter and Paul in Moscow, Latvian heritage.
01:31:58: She died, I think it was about four years ago, just about a month or two shy of her 100th birthday.
01:32:04: And Olga always carried her confirmation certificate with her. She was confirmed shortly before the church was closed in 1937.
01:32:12: And she carried it with her her whole life. And that was this badge of this is who I am.
01:32:18: I am a faithful follower, believer in Jesus Christ, son of God.
01:32:24: And when, of course, the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, she could actually then return to the church.
01:32:34: And there were many who did this. But the seeds of faith have been planted all those years. So, you know, even despite, and my dad's reading it now, and he's telling me, he says, that's really sad.
01:32:45: I said, it is bad. But there's, we just celebrated Easter Sunday. There was a greater day coming.
01:32:52: And what I see and what I saw when I was teaching there, and I saw the revival of the church in the 1990s and the early years of the century, was such an encouragement.
01:33:04: Because I saw people coming into the church. Like I said, I have a student of mine who has a congregation downtown
01:33:11: St. Petersburg. He literally has about 25 to 30 young adults come to his church on Thursday nights to read the
01:33:19: Book of Concord. Now, this is a pretty in -depth understanding of the
01:33:24: Christian faith. And yet they're deeply interested in this. And he's a very faithful teacher, an outstanding student.
01:33:31: And he's really been a marvelous pastor. And this congregation has just grown exponentially under his shepherding.
01:33:39: Praise God. We have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who has a question.
01:33:47: Obviously, during the heyday of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Putin and all of his henchmen must have publicly declared to be atheists.
01:34:00: And today, after the fall of the Soviet Union, we have seen Putin and others lighting candles in Russian Orthodox churches.
01:34:13: Was Putin lying then, or is he lying now, or both? Or are you aware of any kind of conversion that he underwent, even if it was not a genuine regenerational experience, where he is a bonafide born -again believer, but more religious than he ever was?
01:34:35: Or was this just some kind of a media prop that he was involved in?
01:34:42: Well, that's an excellent question. And I will begin by saying the way
01:34:48: I think we probably should. We can't look into his heart, and we don't know what Vladimir Putin truly believes.
01:34:54: But Jesus does say, you will know them by their fruit. Yes. And we certainly don't see much fruit there.
01:35:02: And we know, certainly, that he was very active in the KGB. You can read some very interesting biographies of a lot of money that disappeared,
01:35:14: Western aid in the early 1990s, when he was in control of it. And, of course, he is not the only one.
01:35:21: Dmitry Medvedev, his former president, when they decided to play musical chairs with the presidency, back about 10 -12 years ago, all of a sudden you see them up there.
01:35:31: I would watch some of this when I lived in Russia, because I was always amazed how they would all do the sign of the cross.
01:35:39: Actually, one of the more interesting things was Gennady Zuganov, the Communist Party presidential candidate, actually felt that he had to go in the churches, and he was so accustomed, he had no clue what he was doing.
01:35:52: So they have learned the rituals very well. And this is, you know, I have very strong Orthodox -believing friends who
01:36:00: I respect greatly, but this is a question for them that, you know, has that faith become so cultural that it loses its true connection to Christianity?
01:36:11: Because you have a patriarch of the Orthodox Church, Kirill, in Russia, who basically says our political center is
01:36:18: Moscow, and Kyiv is our spiritual center, this being a major reason why
01:36:24: Ukraine is so important. This is our spiritual center. But I do have a very good friend of mine who actually knows him personally, and his interpretation of me was he said he's a pure politician.
01:36:39: That's kind of what I can add to it, at least from people I know. Well, we have to go to our final break.
01:36:47: It's going to be a lot more brief than the other breaks in the show. If you have a question, please send it in soon, because we're rapidly running out of time.
01:36:55: Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence.
01:37:03: Don't go away, we'll be right back. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the
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01:42:47: Wow, that's some compliment. How much do I owe you for that? You don't have to owe me anything.
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01:45:09: Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio on the air. Welcome back and this is our final segment of our interview today with our guest
01:45:27: Matthew Heisey and the discussion of his book, The Gates of Hell, An Untold Story of Faith and Perseverance in the
01:45:34: Early Soviet Union. If you have a question, please submit it to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.
01:45:41: chrisarnsen at gmail .com and give us your first name, city and state and country of residence. And by the way,
01:45:47: I forgot to mention to Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, our last questioner in Dauphin County in Pennsylvania, that she has won as well a free copy of The Gates of Hell, so make sure that you submit to us your full mailing address in Dauphin County so that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,
01:46:10: can ship that out to you. And we thank once again Lexham Press for providing us with a limited number of copies to give away today, and also we thank cvbbs .com
01:46:22: for mailing out this very heavy and massive book. And I'm sure that your lives will be blessed by this book as you learn more about the history of saints who endured through much persecution for their commitment to Christ and his praise, honor, and glory.
01:46:45: What can today's church, whether in Russia or around the world, learn from this story that you have presented in The Gates of Hell?
01:46:54: Well, I hope they learn that we are not promised a rosy path in the church, and in fact
01:47:01: Jesus said, if they persecuted me, they will persecute you. And sometimes I think we have this kind of theology of glory that we can always be wealthy, healthy, and wise, and have everything work in our favor, and the real history of the church hasn't always been that.
01:47:19: And those who are faithful are going to run into persecution. Actually, my own organization,
01:47:25: Lutheran Heritage Foundation, has been doing a series of books of the persecution of the Lutheran Church in Czechoslovakia as well.
01:47:33: And just fascinating stories from people there who underwent persecution.
01:47:40: I recall in particular one pastor who just died of COVID a couple of years ago.
01:47:45: But Pastor Miroslav is telling me how when the Communists came to power in 1948, he was a 14 -year -old youth going into high school, and his guidance counselor began asking him questions.
01:47:57: What type of course of study do you want to take? What type of books and what classes are you going to take? What do you want to be when you grow up?
01:48:04: And he told her, a Lutheran pastor. She slapped him across the face and said, what do you want to become?
01:48:10: He told me, he said, I still wanted to become a Lutheran pastor, but I realized I couldn't say it out loud.
01:48:17: And he became a faithful believer all those years, and a faithful pastor.
01:48:22: And actually, we discovered that he served a village in eastern
01:48:28: Slovakia, where my grandfather grew up, and his cousins still live there. So it was a wonderful story of how
01:48:35: God brought us together, and we talked about that persecution of the church. So it is a story that I think hasn't been told as much, especially now that the archives of the
01:48:47: Soviet Union, you have the opportunity to get a little bit more information from them. And I'm thankful for those who helped me.
01:48:55: I also went into Russian archives myself, state archives, to gather some of this information.
01:49:01: And I really believe it's important, because we do have to understand that maybe right now in the states all is well, but who can say what would come?
01:49:13: And certainly we see signs of this, you know, growing atheism just as there was this growing vanguard of atheism in the
01:49:21: Soviet Union in the 1920s. We have Ronald in eastern
01:49:26: Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says, in your experience working for the
01:49:33: Lutheran Church in eastern Europe, does the church at large more reflect the leftist groups of Lutherans here in the
01:49:44: United States, or are they more reflective of the groups that are more faithful to the scriptures, like the
01:49:50: Lutheran Church Missouri Synod? That's really a great question, because I can tell you that they are generally more faithful.
01:49:59: One thing I noted about the German state church, the Evangelical Church of Germany, which is quite liberal theologically, they provided monetary support to many of these
01:50:10: German heritage congregations in Russia. But I remember the pastors coming up to me and saying, you know, we really don't believe what these guys believe, but we need support, we need some help.
01:50:22: And I said, be faithful pastors to your own congregations, you know. And so I have noted that, especially in eastern
01:50:30: Europe. I think, you know, Rob Dreher has that great book, too, called Do Not Buy Lies, where he also explores how many people who lived under communism in places like Hungary and Czechoslovakia also, you know, had to encounter the
01:50:45: Soviet state or the communist state, and that now that they have freedom, they are far more faithful to the scriptures, because they've seen the other side.
01:50:56: And I think that's true of many Lutheran denominations in eastern Europe. Latvia, in particular,
01:51:02: I'm thinking of. Latvia, in particular, is more faithful, you're saying? More faithful, yeah.
01:51:08: My good friend, Archbishop Ioannis Von Axis is truly a faithful bishop there. He has taken strong stands against women's ordination, against gay marriage, and been pilloried in the press for it.
01:51:21: And he just shrugged his shoulders and said, I'm faithful to scriptures. Praise God. Well, that gives me an opportunity to give a shout out to one of my longtime childhood friends,
01:51:34: Marty Peckholz, who has Latvian ancestry. He's also Lutheran.
01:51:40: I hope you're listening, Marty. And there's some good news from the homeland of your parents,
01:51:47: Latvia, about the Lutheran church there. Can you highlight any other particular figures that we should not leave this program without mentioning before we go off the air that are contained in the book?
01:52:07: Oh, boy. Yeah, I think one that really struck me, because I did my vicarage in Moscow, and I always looked up in the wall and saw a picture of Alexander Streck.
01:52:17: And he was a martyr for the Lutheran congregation of St.
01:52:23: Peter and Paul in Moscow. His church is literally about a 10 -minute walk from Lubyanka, the
01:52:28: KGB headquarters. So you could not be in a more conspicuous position to be a faithful believer and preacher of the gospel.
01:52:37: And he was. And he actually ministered to the
01:52:43: American embassy. So apparently, I think he knew some English. Because I read, actually,
01:52:50: I found this information in the National Archives in Washington, D .C., where the
01:52:55: U .S. ambassador, William Bullitt, who was ambassador to Russia, or Soviet Union, in the 1930s, actually is just outraged that he's arrested.
01:53:07: He said, you know, this guy is just ministering to our people. You know, we have Protestants in the
01:53:12: American embassy. And he would do baptisms, he would conduct marriage ceremonies.
01:53:19: In fact, he was arrested the night before he was supposed to do a marriage ceremony. And so he was faithful to the gospel.
01:53:27: He was arrested, tortured from the recent documents that we were able to uncover in the
01:53:33: KGB archives in Moscow. His wife took over the congregation, kept services going when he was arrested.
01:53:43: And, you know, eventually the family was sent out to Kazakhstan and he was executed.
01:53:48: Now we know in the summer of 1937. And once again, another one of these faithful ministers, he didn't have to even minister to the
01:53:58: Americans in their embassy, but this is just who he was. And I think he was probably grateful because in the 20s, he was in the
01:54:06: Volga area. And the Americans, John Moorhead and others, had come in with that humanitarian aid and he was forever grateful to America.
01:54:15: So his life was ministering, ministering the cause of the gospel to so many other people.
01:54:23: And he paid for it with his life. And now he is among the saints in heaven and one of the great marchers of the church.
01:54:33: And we have, oh, by the way, Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, give us your full mailing address because you've also won the gates of hell.
01:54:43: That's a very strange statement, isn't it? You've won the gates of hell? You've won the gates of hell. Well, Jesus has overcome them.
01:54:52: We have Joseph in South Central Pennsylvania, who said, I remember hearing about a very courageous
01:54:59: Christian of Jewish descent named Richard Wurmbrand.
01:55:05: Was he not a Lutheran? And I believe he was persecuted in Romania for his faith.
01:55:12: Yeah, tortured for Christ. It became quite a very famous book and testimony of his witness.
01:55:21: Wurmbrand is still very much respected by many, not just Lutherans, but Protestants in Eastern Europe, because, of course, he told his story and God blessed him with a long life.
01:55:34: And I believe his wife just died maybe only about four or five years ago herself. So, yes.
01:55:40: Well, thank you, Joseph, in South Central Pennsylvania. Give us your full mailing address because you have also won a free copy of The Gates of Hell, an untold story of faith and perseverance in the early
01:55:53: Soviet Union. Before we run out of time, Matthew Heisey, I would like you to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today before we go off the air.
01:56:07: I would want them to know that we are just called to be faithful, to teach the faith, and to proclaim the gospel to those who don't know, because there are so many people who are looking for that hope and that comfort.
01:56:21: And as we do that, we know that we may not be respected by those in the world.
01:56:27: We may not be considered conquerors, but because of Christ overcoming death, we are all conquerors through faith in him.
01:56:35: And I hope that this book tells a story of others who understood that too, how important it is to continue to proclaim the faith no matter the circumstances.
01:56:53: Well, I'm assuming that you make yourself available for conferences where you can visit local churches across the
01:57:04: United States, in and out of Lutheranism, and even schools and other institutions where you would put on a presentation about this book?
01:57:15: Well, I do, actually, mostly for the Lutheran Heritage Foundation, but since it's our 30th anniversary and our origins are related to Russia, I've been kind of combining the two, talking about what led to our founding, why did we have to go to the
01:57:34: Soviet Union and bring the gospel to those who at least had not had the opportunity to hear the teaching of the
01:57:43: Bible. And so I've kind of combined a lot of those there with congregations and conferences.
01:57:51: So I do my best to make myself available when I can, and I bring my wife with me, who is a
01:57:57: Ukrainian citizen herself. Oh, wow. That's wonderful.
01:58:03: Well, I want to remind our listeners about your website so that they can find out more information about your ministry.
01:58:13: The Lutheran Heritage Foundation can be found at lhfmissions .org.
01:58:20: That's L -H -F for Lutheran Heritage Foundation, missions .org.
01:58:26: If you would like to purchase this book, if you have not won one today, or even if you have won one and you'd like to purchase more to give away as gifts, you can go to cvbbs .com,
01:58:39: Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, and if they don't have any left in stock when you are trying to order it, they will order it for you.
01:58:48: Just make sure you mention to them that The Gates of Hell is published by Lexham Press, L -E -X -H -A -M
01:58:55: Press, and they will order it for you and provide it for you at a very competitive price as cvbbs .com.
01:59:06: Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service is very renowned for their excellent prices. I really want to thank you,
01:59:14: Matthew Heisey, for being such a wonderful guest today. I'm looking forward to your future visits, your future return visits to Iron Trump and Zion Radio.
01:59:24: And I want to thank everybody who listened today, in particular those who took the time to write in questions for our guest,
01:59:31: Matthew Heisey. I hope that you all have a very safe and joyful and refreshing and Christ -honoring weekend and Lord's Day, and I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far, far greater