V. Franchuk. HDA (Oneness) and AUCECB

August 22, 2011 · Adam Bondaruk, Baptists, Victor Belykh, AUCECB, Persecution, Interview, KGB, Books, Unregistered Pentecostals, Nikolay Kotyakov, On Emigration, United Church of Evangelical Christians, Vestibule, Petr Saenko, Pentecostals, Religious Mafia, Slavik Radchuk, Contemporary Persecution, Security Services

Christians in the Spirit of the Apostles
The August Agreement recognized on both sides that baptism with the Holy Spirit can occur either with the sign of speaking in other tongues or without it, and thus the most fundamental contradiction in the doctrinal systems of Pentecostals and Baptists was resolved by compromise. However, this agreement did not directly affect the congregations of Christians in the spirit of the apostles, with their distinctive unitarian teaching “on one God,” and they continued to exist independently.

In the archives of the Council for Religious Affairs two intercepted letters of Nikolai Petrovich Smorodin are kept, forwarded there by the Council’s representative for the Volyn region. It is not known exactly how they came into his hands, nor can it now be established who Brother Alexander, their addressee, was. Yet these letters are of great interest to researchers of the history of the evangelical movement, for they testify to little-known pages of Smorodin’s own biography and to the situation surrounding this movement in those difficult years. On April 13, 1946, N. P. Smorodin wrote to Alexander that he had received a letter from Nadezhda Ivanovna and, regarding the substance of the letter, asked him to await precise instructions concerning registration, as he intended to be in Moscow shortly and to find a way to resolve this matter. Concerning unity with the AUCECB Smorodin writes that “we will unite with them only when they give us complete freedom for our teaching. Now be patient a little longer. There is great hope for the mighty works of God in our country as well; therefore, watch and be ready to be ‘sacrifices for sacrifice.’” The letter also gives his address: town of Shorya, Kostroma region, Oktyabrskaya St., 19-a.204

Two weeks later, on April 30, 1946, to the same Alexander he reported in a new letter that “in Moscow, at the center, there are no brothers of ours. If the Evangelical Christians-Baptists do not restrict our teaching in any way, you can register with them while preserving the teaching on the Name of Jesus Christ, on the unity of God, on water baptism in the name of Jesus Christ, and on the baptism with the Holy Spirit, that is, without compromising any part of the teaching we profess. This summer I will try to be with you, if the Lord assists me in this. Passing through Moscow, I will stop and clarify everything. And if God helps us to meet, we will resolve, with God’s help, everything that is necessary for us. God grant that you receive this letter.”205 In the same letter he reports that the church of Christians in the spirit of the apostles was registered in Petrograd since 1916.206

Smorodin was unable to achieve anything special in Moscow, and this is not surprising. The doctrinal divergences were too great. However, the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults at all costs sought to unite the Christians in the spirit of the apostles also within the AUCECB and exerted pressure on the leaders of this movement in every way. On April 2, 1947, leading ministers of that brotherhood — Nikolai Petrovich Smorodin, Nikolai Ivanovich Shishkov, and Yefrem Moiseevich Prudnikov — were invited to the AUCECB office in Moscow at 3 Maly Vuzovsky Lane for a conversation with the AUCECB leadership. A record of this conversation about unification, signed by both sides, has been preserved.

1 . The representatives of Christians in the spirit of the apostles, N. P. Smorodin, N. I. Shishkov, and E. M. Prudnikov, fully adhere to the agreement between the AUCECB and the responsible representatives of Christians of the Evangelical Faith (D. I. Ponomarchuk, A. I. Bidash, U. K. Panko, and S. I. Vashkevich), signed in August 1945, and call upon their followers to observe all points of that agreement.

2 . Water baptism by faith, whether performed by uttering the command indicated by the Lord Jesus Christ: “Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 28:19), as well as “baptism in the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 8:16; 10:48; 19:5) — both of these water baptisms, although differing in a merely apparent way, are one and the same baptism; therefore, baptism “in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit” or “in the name of Jesus Christ” is not subject to rebaptism, and their baptism is recognized as having equal validity.

Notwithstanding the above, all future water baptisms in AUCECB congregations will be performed only by pronouncing the words: “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

3 . Any indoctrination in meetings or private conversations with believers that tends toward belittling the teaching and order accepted by Evangelical Christians-Baptists is prohibited. Those who do this are subject to admonition and, in case of non-repentance, to exclusion from the church as disorderly.

4 . Christians in the spirit of the apostles who accept all the above enter the congregations of Evangelical Christians-Baptists as equal members and thereby submit to the general order adopted in these congregations.207

The sharpest doctrinal issue — concerning the Trinity and the unity of God — was diplomatically omitted altogether from this document, because it was utterly impossible to resolve it by compromise given the complete divergence in the understanding of this doctrine.

It should also be noted that N. P. Smorodin, N. I. Shishkov, and E. M. Prudnikov had no actual authorization from their brotherhood of Christians in the spirit of the apostles to sign any agreement on unification with the AUCECB; moreover, the signed document was called not an agreement or a joint resolution, but a “record of conversation.”

Not surprisingly, with rare exceptions (outside Moscow and Leningrad), the majority of Christians in the spirit of the apostles refused to recognize both the August Agreement, in which they saw a departure from their doctrine on the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and entry into the AUCECB, since the text of the conversation contained, in essence, a discriminatory and unacceptable provision for them concerning the renunciation of water baptism “in the name of the Lord Jesus.”

The “Bratsky Vestnik” immediately published Smorodin’s letter of April 15, 1947, to the Evangelical Christians in the Apostolic Spirit, in which he wrote:

Our Redeemer, who before His crucifixion prayed for the unity of His children, is performing this great work of unity before our eyes: in our country, Evangelical Christians, Baptists, and Christians of the Evangelical Faith (Pentecostals) have already united into one brotherly family, and now they all strive together with one accord for the evangelical faith.

Dear brothers and sisters! The time has come for us as well to join this great family of the Lord’s children. And the Lord Jesus prayed about our unity with all the redeemed, who now make up the Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists.

On Wednesday, April 2, this year, in Moscow, I, your brother Nikolai Petrovich Smorodin, and two other brothers in the faith — Shishkov Nikolai Ivanovich and Prudnikov Efrem Moiseevich — after much prayer and after thorough and repeated discussion with members of the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists on the matter of our joining the Evangelical Christians-Baptists, came to a unanimous decision and signed an agreement, a copy of which I am enclosing with this letter to you.

We, your brothers who have signed this Agreement, call upon you to join the Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, and having joined, to register with the local authorities and carefully observe all points of the Agreement we have signed.

May this unity of ours with all God’s children of our great Motherland serve to the glory of our dear Redeemer and to the welfare of His glorious work! Let us fervently pray that from now on all who believe in Christ as their personal Savior may have one heart and one soul (Acts 4:32).208

After the liberation of Western Ukraine and Western Byelorussia from German troops, Smorodin had the opportunity for the first time to visit the churches of Christians in the Apostolic Spirit in that region, which had been established by his coworker Ignaty Kozachy and his like-minded associates before the start of World War II. Nikolai Petrovich Smorodin, whose heart was torn by contradictions, deeply grieved that the forced entry of the HDA Pentecostal churches into the AUCECB had proved an extremely difficult matter, traveled to the western regions of Byelorussia.

It was 1948 — the western churches of Christians in the Apostolic Spirit had already heard about Smorodin’s interview with the AUCECB and by no means approved of him for it. N. P. Smorodin’s attempt to unite the Christians in the Apostolic Spirit with the AUCECB generally failed. This cost him dearly. Nikolai Petrovich never returned home from his trip to the western regions. He was arrested, and his life came to an unknown end in 1953 somewhere in the Urals at the age of 78.

Even the few churches of Christians in the Apostolic Spirit that had joined the AUCECB in the postwar period could not remain there — the issue of the “oneness of God” proved too irreconcilable. Church life practice showed that this contradiction is insoluble. Sooner or later the question arose of the impossibility of full-fledged common existence, the question of the necessity of organizational separation.

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