V. Franchuk. Man of God Panteley Dubinin

August 31, 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

At the end of May 1988, when the final preparations were being made for the celebrations of the 1000th anniversary of the baptism of Rus’ (which essentially marked the beginning of freedom of evangelism in our country), I received a thick packet with many wax seals, which at that time were the invariable attributes of registered mail. It was another long-awaited, multi-page letter from Lilia Dubinina—the daughter of the remarkable and blessed long-time laborer in God’s field, Pantelei Fedorovich Dubinin. Over four years of our intense correspondence, with deep respect and ardent love for her late father, she answered my questions and wrote to me in her letters about the extraordinary life of this extraordinary man. Today the time has come to tell everyone about Dubinin.

Peace to you, dear brother in the Lord Vladimir Ivanovich, and peace to your house! I greet you with the love of the Lord Jesus Christ who has made us kin!

… Much mercy of God was shown in my father’s life. Perhaps God saw his natural character—patient, prudent, and kind—and therefore looked upon him with mercy already from the age of 14, when he gained faith in the living God, at a time when he still knew none of the evangelical believers. God stretched out His hand over him and led him along an earthly path that was not smooth, but hard and thorny. Yet my father firmly believed in the Lord and never grumbled about this path or what he encountered in his life, but always rejoiced and gave thanks to the Lord. Many devilish arrows flew at him from all sides. And when he was hurt by them, he only came to God for help—and his patience and his meekness, by God’s help and together with his prudence, overcame everything. He always rejoiced. In my presence, people of different opinions, characters, and social backgrounds often spoke of my father with amazement, wondering why God for no apparent reason kept throwing such a believer, a truly rare person, into prison… And I know that even passing through these sorrows—in prisons, in harsh punishment cells, and under persecution—he thanked God and quietly smiled with joy, content that even there he saw the Lord’s hand, that God wondrously led him over the abyss—and there, beyond the camp walls, he administered water baptism to people, for many prisoners, both good and evil lost souls, were repenting, and Christian communities arose and grew in chains. Some brothers who were in prison with him are still alive today, and they give much testimony about this. Thus, not long ago a brother visited us who had spent five months under investigation together with him—and during those five months about 18 people came to faith, among them one investigator, as well as a doctor and an artist who were also under investigation.

I witnessed his Christian life and his Christian death. My father left us a good example in life and in death… He died before my eyes, and very many people came to bury him. And his coffin was carried by both believers and unbelievers… 314

Pantelei Fedorovich Dubinin was born on July 25, 1903, in the Bryansk region (at that time it was part of the Oryol region), in the village of Lapaznya, Mglin district.

His parents: Dubinin Fedor Fedotovich and Dubinina Alexandra Titovna. Their family was not small: Pantelei had 4 brothers and 3 sisters. The parents were Orthodox Christians, and very zealous and devout. His father Fedor Fedotovich, having a good voice, sang in the church choir on the kliros. His mother was also an exceptionally kind and God-fearing woman from a very devout family, and her two brothers—Pantelei’s uncles—were priests. Later, Fedor Fedotovich went to work in the mines in the city of Yuzovka (today—Donetsk), took part in strikes there, brought back leaflets and revolutionary literature, and actively distributed them. Not surprisingly, the police periodically searched the house.

The brothers’ education was modest—they finished primary school, up to 5 grades. Only his brother Georgy Fedorovich had a higher pedagogical education; he was a historian by specialty, but also taught geography, law, Constitution, and drawing—and later, after moving to the city of Klintsy, he taught mathematics and physics, served as secretary of the district party committee, and later also of the regional party committee in Grodno. When Pantelei was put on trial, they also hauled him in and interrogated him quite a lot, the “competent organs.” During the war, he graduated from the Higher Military Tank School and was sent to the front, from where he wrote frontline letters to his brother Pantelei, asking him to pray for him; he came to faith in God and often said to Pantelei afterwards: “Only by your prayers did I stay alive at the front.” In the last years before his death, he attended church meetings in Kherson, called himself a believer, and intended to repent in church on Easter. He did not dare to do it at the morning service, decided to postpone, and said he would repent in the evening. But during the day his weak heart gave out—and he died. He left people a tragic lesson—not to put off such important matters even until evening…

Pantelei’s older sister later became a believer, as did her children. One of her sons was a church deacon. The others did not oppose the faith and even called themselves believers, but they did not repent of their sins and did not attend church. Yet the entire Dubinin family was known for being gentle, kind people; no one ever saw them smoke, drink, or use foul language. A good memory of this family remained among the people.

The unforgettable year 1917 reared up the Russian Empire everywhere with the destructive and devastating drama of the revolution. But unlike the big cities where the tragic passions of revolution raged, the little village of Lapaznya, where Pantelei lived with his parents and relatives, was a peaceful and quiet place.

Panteley studied excellently at school, getting straight A’s. But among all the other lessons, the dearest and most interesting to him was the lesson of God’s Law. He considered this lesson special and holy; he studied God’s Law diligently and with love, for which he was repeatedly rewarded — the priests who taught the lessons of God’s Law would take him to church for Pascha and other feasts, and he, a fifth-grader, would light candles in church, open the royal doors when the epitaphios was carried, and read passages from Holy Scripture in Slavonic. From earliest childhood people remembered him as God-fearing and devout. However, Panteley came to true faith in God at the age of fourteen. There were no evangelical Christians in those parts at that time, and no one had heard of them in Lapaznya. And Panteley’s conversion to the Lord happened in a very unusual way. This is how it happened.

Old-timers well remember that the winters then were very frosty, full of blizzards, snowy. Around Lapaznya stood an ancient dense forest, where huge trees grew like fairy-tale giants, and ditches and deep ravines cut through this forest. The small house where the Dubinins lived stood close to the edge of the forest. On one such very stormy, blizzardy, and frosty night, Panteley woke up. Everyone in the house was sound asleep, but outside the window a voice was calling him plaintively and drawn out, syllable by syllable: “Pan-te-ley… Pan-te-ley…” He threw on a short fur coat, his father’s felt boots, and went out into the yard. The voice sounded farther on, somewhere around the corner. Panteley went further; it was very cold, and he began to feel eerie. He wanted to return home, but the voice grew louder and more plaintive, leading him deep into the garden. “Pan-te-ley… Pan-te-ley…” Panteley prayed, took heart, and went. It was frightening. The blizzard howled. But Panteley could not turn back; he went forward, sinking up to his knees in the snow. Beyond the garden, bushes could be seen, and there, in the bushes, it seemed to Panteley that something living was lying in the snow. Panteley made his way there through the deep snow and biting blizzard and saw a horse covered in snow in a snowdrift, and on a sleigh, already falling asleep, a grey-haired old man, whom Panteley had never seen before, was freezing to death.

The boy tried to pull the horse out, but could not; the horse had also lost its strength. Panteley ran home, woke everyone, roused them to their feet. With combined efforts and great difficulty, they pulled the horse out of the snowdrift. The freezing old man was carried into the house, brought to his senses, and warmed up, and his horse was also warmed and covered in the shed with warm homespun blankets and pads taken from the house. It turned out that this old man was a deeply believing person from a remote village, and while he was traveling, a strong blizzard had arisen, in which he lost his way, got lost, and was freezing. After a while, the Dubinins listened with curiosity to the Gospel story from this old man they had saved, who later told them that he belonged to an evangelical church.

A deep impression was made on Panteley by the testimony of the rescued elder. From then on, he began to visit this elderly brother, who lived in a remote village ten kilometers away from them. Together they traveled to a meeting in a Baptist church, which was another ten kilometers away. The congregation was very small — just a few old men and women; there were no young people in that church. But the living Word of God graciously touched the heart of the village youth — and Panteley sincerely and deeply repented before God, entrusted his life to Him at the age of fourteen, and began to serve the Lord God zealously.

At home, trials and sorrows awaited him. His parents, ordinarily meek and kindly people, resolutely rose up against his new faith, which they regarded as “dangerous, heretical, and fanatical”; they could not come to terms with the fact that their son, to his own misfortune and their parental disgrace, had fallen into a sect of “fanatics,” as the Orthodox clergy then portrayed the evangelical movement. But Panteley’s uncles — priests — were especially militant; they offered prayers to deliver Panteley from an evil spirit, censed the house with church incense, sprinkled and poured holy water around the house to save him from this obsession. Members of the household hid Panteley’s clothes so that he would have nothing to wear to the meetings. Panteley patiently endured the misunderstanding of his family and parents, the sharp and caustic mockery of those around him. As a good and obedient son, he tried to manage all the farm work, to help his parents with all the household chores, before he would go to a meeting.

One day in March, when there was still snow and meltwater all around, he found his clothes, which his relatives had “caringly” hidden in the shed in the hay, and rushed off to a meeting at the church twenty kilometers from home. Leaving the village, he crossed a narrow little river on a knobby log that served as a tiny bridge, which the people (even in my childhood) called a kladochka. And behind Panteley came his neighbor — he was going to his threshing floor for hay. He was an old man, but strong and sturdy, a great zealot of Orthodoxy and a great hater of evangelical Christians. He twisted the round, ice-covered kladochka — and Panteley fell from it into the water. Without saying a word, Panteley poured the water out of his felt boots, and in a wet fur coat ran to the worship service. On the way, after ten kilometers, at his elderly friend’s place he changed his clothes and still made it to the meeting.

His clothes were later dried in the oven, and after some time Panteley returned to his village. And in the village there was weeping and wailing; in the neighbor’s yard a crowd of people was standing. It turned out there was a funeral in the village. Panteley’s neighbor had died — the very one who had thrown Panteley from the kladochka into the cold water to prevent him from going to the meeting. And it had happened very quickly. Having gathered a sheaf of hay, he was going home, and on the way back his bast shoe caught on a knot of the slippery crossbeam (the homemade bast shoes were made of ropes), he slipped and fell, the heavy bundle of hay pressed down on his head — and the unfortunate old man drowned in the cold, snowy water.

The shaken villagers left Panteley alone, increasingly seeing the hand of God protecting and sustaining him, while Panteley kept growing ever stronger in the faith. Soon he became a well-known preacher and proclaimed the gospel widely, going on foot through many villages across many kilometers in the Bryansk region and into Belarus. Listening to Dubinin’s inspired sermons, people everywhere turned to the Lord, repented, and churches began to spring up and grow. Panteley’s old friends told how they would write slogans like “Repent and believe in the Gospel” and go through the villages singing evangelical hymns. In some places they were allowed to enter Orthodox churches; there they preached, answered questions, and held debates about the evangelical faith. Often the Orthodox clergy who engaged in such debates were put to shame, and many people embraced the evangelical faith. Not surprisingly, in other places they were persecuted—in some places they were beaten with sticks, and in others the sticks raised such clouds of dust from the beatings.

The favorable time for evangelism was soon coming to an end—and uprisings against the preachers of the Gospel broke out everywhere. Panteley was persecuted, forbidden to preach, and then put on trial. Repeatedly he landed in prison for several months at a time (he served terms of three months, six months, nine months, one year), only to be released and then preach again. As Dubinin’s daughter, Lilia Panteleevna, wrote to me at the end of the 1980s in her letters, there was still an elderly sister living in the Bryansk region, a member of the Baptist church, who remembered those years when Panteley was 17 to 20 years old. She was younger than he was, had come to faith through his preaching, and used to bring him parcels in prison in her time. That elder sister said that the prisoners, together with Panteley, then worked at the brick factory, and that her mother would send her to take Panteley a pot of boiled potatoes.

In 1924 he married (he and his wife were both 21 years old at the time). His wife, Pelageya Filippovna, was the daughter of a Baptist church presbyter. Panteley set about building a house for his family. He managed to finish the house but had no time to move in. He received a new sentence—condemned to two years’ imprisonment—and the new house was confiscated and converted into a village office.

They had no children yet. After Panteley’s arrest his wife returned to her father’s house to await her husband’s return from yet another imprisonment.

However, Panteley was released from prison earlier—after a year and a half he was sent into exile in Donetsk, where there was an acute shortage of labor. His wife went to join him there. In Donetsk four children were born to them. They lived in private rented rooms and belonged to a Baptist church.

There he worked—first as a switchman, then as a wagon weigher and station attendant on duty in the city of Stalino, as Donetsk was then called. In the evenings Panteley studied, completed railway courses—a certificate survives with excellent marks in all subjects. Later he trained as an electrician; again, his certificate shows nothing but top marks. At the same time he was wholeheartedly involved in the service of the Baptist church and served as choir director. In photographs that have miraculously survived, he is pictured with the choir and with a string orchestra in Donetsk. Afterwards, he was elected to serve as presbyter of that same congregation.

For a long time he stubbornly opposed Pentecostal teaching, which was beginning to spread into Donetsk at that time, but then one day, unexpectedly even to himself, he was filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues right at his workplace in the switchman’s booth. After some time the Dubinin family joined a Pentecostal church that had been founded by V. S. Pavlov, the union evangelist of the Union of Churches of Christians of the Evangelical Faith, and in that same year, 1926, Brother Pavlov ordained Panteley Dubinin for presbyterial service in the church in Donetsk. But even there he was arrested many times. It is known that over the course of his life Dubinin was arrested around 25 times—for terms ranging from several weeks to 25 years. And everywhere in prison, through his blessed preaching, many prisoners repented, turned to the Lord, and began a new life. There, in places of deprivation of liberty, believers’ baptism by immersion was performed, and the breaking of bread took place—the holy remembrance of the sufferings and death of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Lilia Panteleevna wrote in her letters:

And what miracles happened in his life, miracles in the prisons! As soon as they would throw a new man into the cell—and there criminals alone ran everything—they would fall on him and beat him nearly to death… That is how they received everyone, but if the criminals rushed at Dad, one of the ringleaders would immediately stop them, would raise his hand, and afterwards they would all come to hold him in great respect… He saw visions in the prisons. Once they threw him into a punishment cell in Donetsk. It was a round cell, the walls sticky with mildew, a window the size of a notebook sheet in the ceiling, and not even a place to sit down. Only woodlice crawled about, and sometimes they would open the door and pour a bucket of dirty water onto the floor. His legs grew unbearably tired; there was nowhere to sit; water covered the floor. He folded his jacket in four layers on the floor, knelt down, and began to pray. Suddenly, it was as if a switch clicked before his eyes; he opened them. Father looked—and all around were bushes, grass, and a narrow path. Without even thinking what he was doing, he jumped up and wanted to run…

He crashed into the wall of the cell—and the vision vanished; nothing remained. “What is this, Lord?” Then the Lord said to him: “Freedom.” And soon afterward they opened the door and said, “Dubinin, go out.” He went out, breathed in fresh air, and fell unconscious to the ground…315

The last time Panteley Dubinin held a meeting in Donetsk was at his private apartment (they rented a little mud hut in the yard from a believing sister—the kind commonly called summer kitchens in the Donbas region). It was late at night. Lilia Dubinina recalls:

During the service, Father was sitting at the table when suddenly he saw on the door, which was covered with a black blanket, as if on a movie screen, a picture: two policemen walking with a German shepherd. He said, “Brothers, they are coming for me now. I see it; leave.” A few brothers managed to slip away in pairs. And then what he had seen in the vision took place. Two policemen with a dog came, and they arrested him. They took us, the children (all three of us, each a year apart), away. Interrogations … They took him. The interrogations began at night. The investigator started speaking vulgarly. He refused to speak with him. The man struck him with his fists, grew furious. But he remained silent, only saying, “In your position you should be a beacon in the darkness, but you are a vulgar man, and I will not speak with you.” In short, investigators came one after another. A second one came, and that one insulted believers. He would not speak with him either. Then a Jewish investigator came and spoke tenderly, apologized politely for his ill-mannered colleagues, said, “Our lapse,” and so on.

But the Lord suddenly filled Father with the Holy Spirit, and he began to speak in Hebrew. The investigator started to answer him. Until his last days on earth, Father never knew what he spoke about in those minutes or what the investigator answered. After this, however, the investigator left, and my father remained alone. He sat for a long time. No one else came. Then Father began to pray and said, “Lord, what should I do?” And the answer from the Lord was this: “Get up and go!” He walked out of the room; guards stood at the doors outside the office, there were guards at the bottom of the stairs and at the exit, but no one said a word to him, stopped him, or asked any question. When Father was already leaving the NKVD courtyard, he saw that at the checkpoint the door of the duty room was open. A young woman was sitting at a desk. It was already eight o’clock in the morning. Dad addressed her: “Young woman, I need my passport.” She asked his last name and at once handed Father his passport. He walked out past the checkpoint. And again he began to pray to the Lord about what he should do next. The Lord told him to go to the railway station. And he obediently went.

He arrived at the station; he had not a single kopek on him, no belongings … He stood on the platform near a pillar, took off his hat, and began to pray. Someone gently took him by the arms; he opened his eyes and saw two women. They said to him, “We can see that you are a believer, brother, but we are in a hurry—our train is coming. Who are you and where are you from?” He said he had just come from an investigation. One of the sisters brushed something off the lapel of his overcoat, and they ran to board their train. Father was left alone and again continued his prayer: “Lord, where should I direct my path?” And the Lord said, “To Gomel.” But there was no money.

Then Dad pondered: how can that be—no money, he hadn’t been issued any documents, his labor book remained at work, and his family was left behind in Donetsk. … Yet he went into the station building, where a train schedule hung. He looked at the schedule with curiosity, to see how much a ticket to Gomel cost. It was around 12 rubles and some kopecks. But there was no money. Then he glanced into the upper pocket of his overcoat and discovered that the sister had not brushed something from his coat, but had slipped some money into his pocket—and that sister’s mite was exactly the amount needed for a ticket on the “Stalino—Gomel” train.

That is how he found himself in Gomel, where he discovered fellow believers, obtained a temporary residence registration, and was issued a new labor book. For some time Mama did not know where Father was; the children fell ill with measles, Mama was also terribly sick, one of our little sisters died, and there was a terrible famine. Then, a few months later, Father moved to the town of Surazh, and later Mama and I moved there as well.

The brothers and sisters in Donetsk prayed a great deal for Father and wept much over him; they earnestly wanted him to return to Donetsk. But for him, who had walked away from an investigation, it was impossible to go back …

I remember how Mama made very beautiful flowers from wood shavings, often until midnight, and poured mirror coatings—and sold all this at the market, earning money for food and for life; she prayed and wept often. And I remember how together with Mama we often sang this psalm:

“Deep night is over the earth.
Over the town dusk has fallen.
Behind a dirty high wall
The prison blackens in the mist. All sleep.

Only one prisoner
Does not sleep nor slumber. But, lo,
He has cast aside his coarse woolen coat,
In the darkness he rises on his knees.»316

In Surazh, from 1935 onward, Panteley Fedorovich was the pastor of the local church. And he earned his bread by working at the “Proletary” celluloid factory. Here, too, he was arrested several times; he sat in jail for three weeks at a time, then was set free again. This went on until the war began. When the war started, Panteley Dubinin was kept at the factory under a reservation, as a valued and skillful specialist. In that time of common trial, everyone understood that such a man could be trusted. He was appointed senior electrician, then shift engineer, senior engineer; later, when the Germans approached, he was entrusted with evacuating the factory. Under his direction, the remaining workers removed motors and machine tools until the final minutes, preparing the enterprise for evacuation to Siberia. But not all the equipment could be sent to the deep rear. As often happened in the first year of the war, German troops burst into the town completely unexpectedly.

When Panteley Fedorovich came home from the factory, the street around was already full of Germans, who were methodically searching every house. They also broke into the house where the Dubinins lived. Noticing that there were no icons in the corner, as was customary in every Orthodox home, the German soldiers shouted that this was a family of communists and almost shot Dubinin on the spot. With difficulty he managed to explain that they were Evangelical Christians. Dubinin was taken to the commandant’s office, where the commandant questioned him and let him go in peace.

Some time later, the German occupation authorities, having become familiar with the church’s doctrine, allowed the believers to gather together and hold their services. For this purpose they issued a written permit, necessary documents in Russian and German for Panteley Fedorovich’s pastoral ministry, and even a church seal, which Dubinin used to certify the identity cards of believing church members. During the war years the church grew considerably, many people came to God, and water baptisms were performed many times.

In those Belarusian forests where partisan units operated, the German command was extremely enraged by partisan actions; almost no one was allowed to come from the villages into the towns, the movement of people was strictly restricted, yet believing people with identity cards signed by Dubinin came every Sunday to services even from remote villages 10 or even 25 kilometers away. It must also be said that such cards saved the lives of certain partisans from inevitable death on the gallows; however, Panteley Fedorovich did not like to talk about his services to his Homeland and never complained that the Homeland “rewarded” him with persecution and prisons instead of medals.

It is no surprise that after the victory Dubinin was arrested again. But people stood up for him together, proving that he had never betrayed anyone and had not worked for the Germans, but earned his bread during the war by the work of his own hands — glazing windows, making soap, crafting spoons from aluminum… Panteley Fedorovich was released; after some time he was sent to restore the power supply in Oryol and then assigned to rebuild damaged facilities in Surazh. Lilya Dubinina recalls that when she brought her father lunch she saw that almost only women were working on the reconstruction under Panteley Fedorovich’s direction. Then followed yet another arrest, but after several months Dubinin was again released and appointed to work as the head of a mirror workshop.

Relating the life of Dubinin in the difficult postwar years, P. D. Kobylynsky, who knew this man of God well, mentions an incident when Dubinin was walking along the road by the Iput River. A cart drawn by horses came rushing toward him. Two men were speeding along in the cart. At a turn the horses abruptly veered and galloped off in another direction so quickly that he could not even make out who was in the cart. However, Dubinin noticed that something fell from the cart. Going closer, he saw a cash bag lying on the road. There was a lot of money — a full sack. It was a month’s payroll being brought from the bank for the factory workers.

Dubinin tied up the bag, hid it in the bushes, and waited. Soon the team came racing back and stopped sharply near Dubinin. Two men asked him if he had seen a bag on the road. “What was in that bag?” Panteley Fedorovich asked calmly. They honestly replied that they had lost a bag with money for the factory workers’ wages. “Do not worry,” he answered, “I found that bag, hid it in the bushes, and am waiting for someone to come looking for it.” Right away he took out the bag and they went together to the factory, where they counted the money in the cashier’s office. Every kopeck was in place. The astonished cashier and the armed guard — it was they who had lost the money — having counted out their own wages, vied with each other to offer it to Dubinin as a reward for his honesty. And however meagerly Pastor Dubinin lived, he flatly refused to take that money, saying he would not allow their families to suffer want by being left without means.3’7 P. D. Kobylynsky concludes:

The cashier and the guard turned out to be Jews; they introduced him to the rabbi of the synagogue. All the Jews learned about Panteley Fedorovich, considered him very honest, and treated him with great respect, and when they met him they raised their headgear, bowed their heads, and greeted him as a pastor of evangelical Christian faith.318

This continued until 1950, when Dubinin was arrested for the last time. Together with him the regional court of the Bryansk region tried another 12 brothers. And they gave Dubinin a “characteristic” maximum sentence for many — 25 years. They sent Dubinin to the far North — to Vorkuta.

At school they mocked us: “Baptists, Stundists, your dad is an enemy of the people.” And I withdrew from all the children. And I kept thinking that we were temporary guests here, that this earth was not our homeland… At that time Papa was sentenced to 25 years. They rehabilitated him after Stalin’s death. But I remember the times when we wrote a letter to Voroshilov. I was 16. I went to see him. They wouldn’t give Mama any visits, nor anyone else. But I would arrive, go to the civil prosecutor, then be sent to the military prosecutor, make the rounds of everyone, and plead: “I want to see my father, he is not a criminal, he simply believes in God, he did only good.” And they gave me visits in Bryansk. Then they moved him to Mogilyov, then transferred him to Orsha, and there I went through all the officials with my request as well. \ I turned to the prison warden, and he made a call from behind his desk, and they brought Papa into the office through the inner doors — in the office \ there were doors in two walls and a third, double one, into the corridor, behind which a sentry also stood on guard. They brought Papa into the office from the underground. His face was swollen, unshaven. They did not allow me to approach. In the office he sat on a chair by one wall, I sat by the other wall, and the warden sat at the desk. And in those minutes Papa spoke about the power of the Lord…

Then he was placed in a terrible prison in Leningrad. And from there — to Vorkuta.

And when he was dying, he did not even recall those frightful dungeons, but joyfully remembered how people in the prisons repented and accepted Christ as their Savior. This was his labor for the Lord… During his transport stage from Bryansk to Vorkuta he led 50 people to the Lord…319

We do not know the names of the authors of most of the wonderful Christian songs and hymns that were written during the years of persecution and oppression in our country. For many years it remained unknown who wrote that stunning song about Vorkuta—a prophetic song, every word of which later came true with astonishing precision. I have known this song since early childhood. There, in Vorkuta, my grandfather and father spent many years imprisoned for their testimony of Jesus Christ. Now we also know that the author of this song was yet another prisoner who followed Christ through the terrible camps of Vorkuta. His name is Viktor Ivanovich Belykh.

VORKUTA

Barren land, deserted, boundless spaces,
A gloomy region, uninhabited—Vorkuta,
You received in iron shackles
The banished witnesses of Christ for righteousness.

A harsh land you are, O North, but curses
From God’s servants you will never hear;
The cold embraces of your winter
We shall overcome with a kind word.

You are powerless, with your icy blizzard,
To quench the fire of the Lord in hearts,
And with all your barbed steel wire
You cannot enslave the spirit of the saints.

Your severe polar elements,
The dead tundra, the wild taiga,
And the whole vast country of Russia
Shall hear the tidings of Christ’s witnesses.

O distant North! You see—on barren ground
The holy seeds are already growing!
And on your forsaken plot of land
A harvest will be reaped in coming years.

But the day will come, and God Almighty will say:
“Enough, O North—release the prisoners!
Spring has come, the planting has ripened abundantly;
Escort My sons on their way to labor.”

Shackles will fall, chains will be torn apart,
Christ’s warriors will obtain their freedom,
And they will be clothed with power of the Spirit from on high
And carry the Word of Truth to the nations. 320

I first heard that word, “Vorkuta,” in early childhood in our home, in conversations between my father and my grandfather, who had served out long sentences there during the ill-famed Stalinist times—those very cruel years when Panteley Dubinin was also sent there, though personally they never met him in that dreadful and enormous archipelago of the Vorkuta camps and knew him only by hearsay. That word always breathed on me some awesome, chilling cold of the polar night, the howl of the blizzard, and the frostily ringing snows packed densely in the endless tundra, occasionally overgrown with stunted, wretched scrub. From childhood I knew that Vorkuta meant places of backbreaking penal labor and a site of countless anonymous graves of innocent people ruthlessly condemned to a tormenting death. Everything that was built in Vorkuta was built on human suffering and bones. And only the Lord alone knows how many of our brothers lie there forever, in the permafrost. I also knew that prisoners in Vorkuta practically needed no guards—in that boundless, deadly tundra there was simply nowhere to flee.

My grandfather returned from Vorkuta—a special escort brought him home to Ukraine to die. The Lord granted him a few more years of life, but his health was permanently shattered, and for the rest of his days he could never recover. I often recall how, shortly before his death, he sang his favorite song: “I will tell all living, how my Christ suffered, how He promised peace and joy to all who come to Him.” But he did not like to talk about his own sufferings…

My father returned from Vorkuta. Yet all his life, his undermined health would remind him of those terrible years. And for decades afterward, agents of the competent organs would threaten him that one could return to Vorkuta a second time… But never from his lips, nor from the lips of other Christians who walked those fiery paths, did a word of cursing escape.

When I myself was put in prison—in 1984—once in my cell I heard a mournful “prison camp” song about Kolyma. That song tears the soul to the point of pain, yet how astonishingly it differs from the song of hope about Vorkuta written by the Christian Viktor Belykh! That well-known camp song is called “Be Cursed, O Kolyma.” It contains these lines:

I remember that Baku port,
And the gloomy look of the ship,
As we walked up the gangplank aboard,
Into the harsh, dismal holds.

From the rocking the prisoners groaned,
Embracing like brothers by blood.
Only now and then, from the tongue
A muffled curse would break forth.

Be cursed, O Kolyma,
That they call a wondrous planet.
You’ll lose your mind willy-nilly,
There’s no way back, you can forget it.

Five hundred kilometers of taiga,
In that taiga are savage wild beasts.
No vehicles travel there,
Only deer stumble through on their feet.

There death has befriended scurvy,
The sick wards are crammed beyond measure.
In vain, again this spring,
I wait for an answer from my dear.

I know: the bitter cup to the dregs
I must drink in this world without end… 321

Panteley Dubinin returned from Vorkuta. And the good memory of his blessed ministry to God and men in the Vorkuta camps long outlived the man himself. Though he, too, did not like to talk about himself. His daughter and many people who knew him closely do the telling.

Please forgive me, Vladimir Ivanovich, for not answering your questions to me for a long time. I sent letters to the brother who was in the camp with him, and to another brother, an eyewitness. They all confirm what is known to us about my father’s life and ministry in Vorkuta. Brother Nikolai Alekseevich Gushchin, too, says that he first learned from eyewitness letters about God’s miracles in my father’s life, and later, when he met my father in person, he asked him about everything, and my father told him exactly how it happened.

At the time when my father was the senior presbyter for the Bryansk region, someone collected evaluations of him for some purpose, and some of these have survived. One such evaluation was written by a brother from Georgia, a former prisoner of one of the Vorkuta camps. By profession he is a doctor, a surgeon; he turned to the Lord in the camp through the preaching of Panteley Fedorovich. After imprisonment, my father and mother visited him in Georgia. In his evaluation he writes that Brother P. F. Dubinin, while in chains in the camp, held great authority among believers of various confessions: Baptists, Pentecostals, Sabbatarians, and that all the other prisoners and even the camp authorities treated him with great respect. This brother further writes that even before Father’s arrival there were believers there, but they were all separate from one another, in small groups, but when he arrived, the Baptists, Pentecostals, and Sabbatarians all joined together and formed a large congregation in the camp. And very many people repented there; of those, as the Georgian brother wrote, “I was the first.” Despite the very strict camp regime, they performed baptisms and bread-breaking. The camp held mostly political prisoners, persons who all had sentences of 25 years.

But Father once made a mirror for the camp commander, and another brother, who had also been taken from Surazh, Grigory Antonovich Zhuravel (he now lives in the city of Zaporozhye), an artist, was painting some picture in the commander’s house. Seizing the moment, they asked the camp commander to give them permission to hold a baptism—and they were allowed to perform the baptism there on a small river. And it was as if the whole congregation was joined in one day. I also remember how a sickly old man, who very much desired to receive water baptism, was baptized right in the camp yard, near the bathhouse, in a barrel of water… The old man soon after that quietly passed into eternity.

So when Father arrived in Vorkuta, he united all the believers, urging them not to divide the Lord’s garments. And all were united in the love of God. However, there was one brother there who kept the Sabbath, and he constantly had conversations about this with Panteley Fedorovich. And one day they were going to work; they were building something there, it seems, a dam on the river Pechora. They went together, talking, and they ended up last in the column of prisoners. And when they came to the bank, all the prisoners had already boarded some sort of ferry or raft used to transport people; they had pushed off from the bank and were already close to the other side. But they stayed behind—so engrossed in conversation that they were late and didn’t even notice the ferry leaving the bank. Then both of them heard a voice saying to them: “Go.” And Father walked on the water, while that brother remained on the bank in indecision. Afterwards Father recounted that he did not see the water, but walked as if on land, saw bushes around, and a road ahead. And there were many people who witnessed Dubinin walking on the water (prisoner-workers)—about 1,000 people. And all shouted: “Truly God is with him!” So Father walked across the whole river and did not see the water, and when, a few steps from the very bank, he saw that he was walking on water, he sank into the water, the water near the bank was below his knees. Some people shouted: “Truly God is with him!” And others said: “He is a sleepwalker.”

The Lord manifested His power through him many times, very many. Many people there in the zone were healed. And demon-possessed people, when they met him, would shout: “Panteley, do not torment us.”

Beyond the camp fence there was a women’s camp. There was a sister there who had breast cancer. She asked all the believers to pray for her. Panteley Fedorovich prayed over bread, they passed this piece of bread to her, she applied it to her breast on the painful spot—and not a trace of the illness remained. There are many living witnesses even now whom the Lord healed in those times from various diseases.

Father was an astonishingly gentle and calm person, not hasty in speech, self-controlled, and somehow remarkably his conversations and disputes flowed smoothly, and victory in discussions was always on his side. I saw him conversing with atheists who taught at the school of atheism. He was calm, gentle, kind. And they would get nervous, tremble, lose themselves, sensing their defeat. And he would say to them kindly: “Well, why are you like that?” “Well, we,” they would answer, “were not prepared.” “Well,” Panteley Fedorovich would say, “we should always be ready. You and I are laborers each in his own field. And here is one more question I want to ask you… What about you? I wasn’t prepared either…” And so with a smile, kindly, courteously.

And everyone loved him, always and everywhere—right to the grave..

After Stalin’s death, things began to change gradually, very slowly, with a great deal of creaking within the vast state machine. About life in that machine, people would say with bitter irony that we were living in our country as if riding a large tram — half the people were sitting, and the other half were waiting for a seat to become free… What arrived was not yet a true spring of freedom, but a brief thaw. Our brothers began to be released from prisons little by little — some earlier, some later. Panteley Dubinin also returned home, 20 years before the expiration of the term they had given him. And the Lord granted him those 20 years to spend in freedom, preaching the Gospel and building up churches in the Bryansk region. By the time of his return, many churches had already united and joined the AUCECB on the basis of the August Agreement. Panteley Fedorovich also joined this union of churches. Gradually, within the united union, he gained recognition and respect as a wise and experienced servant of Christ. In 1958, he was elected deputy to the senior presbyter of the AUCECB for the Bryansk Oblast, Yakov Timofeevich Spiridonov; afterward, for a short time he served the churches of the Bryansk region as senior presbyter himself. This ministry in the united union was difficult, for there was much misunderstanding on both sides, and the authorities sought to control everything and demanded that ministers — especially senior presbyters — obediently carry out their directives. The time of the “thaw” was quickly coming to an end everywhere. A senior presbyter like Dubinin clearly did not suit the authorities, because he would not cooperate and did not seek sinful compromises. The situation became increasingly tense. In 1961, “due to poor health,” he was forced to step back from his great and difficult ministry and labored only within local churches as his strength allowed (his health truly was failing: long years of suffering, arrests, prisons, and camps do not pass without a trace — tubercular foci were discovered on his lungs; he spent two months in the hospital and received treatment, but his health was already poor).

A great many unclean spirits had now appeared, traveling around clubs and cinemas, demonstrating their skills, all kinds of demonic charms displayed by sorcerers and soothsayers. I remember witnessing encounters between such people and my father — in many cases these were seemingly chance meetings on the road, in a train carriage, and so on. In those situations, the power of God would strike them down; some would begin to moan and rage, others would babble all sorts of things — that they knew what Panteley Fedorovich’s grandfather was called or what color our cow was… And my father, I remember, would forbid them in the name of God. Other people, possessed by unclean spirits, would come to our house; my father would pray for them, and the unclean spirits would come out — the people received deliverance from demons. Sometimes during such prayers our house would literally shake.

Not long ago, we were visited by Brother Nikolai Gushchin (you know him!) and Pyotr Kartavchenko, who was present with me at my father’s bedside when he was dying. The brothers remembered how once they were praying in our garden, in the bathhouse, over a demon-possessed man. And the demon begged, “Well, let me go out into the swamp.” Normally they never permitted that — only into the abyss. But the man was incredibly exhausted, so tormented was he by the demon. The brothers allowed it. The demon went out, and the man was completely set free. The next day, people went to the peat bog where they cut and shaped peat, and there — as if a whirlwind had passed through, everything was wrecked, scattered, thrown down: both the peat stacks and the tools, all covered in mud, flooded with water and churned up. And our little town began to talk about how a whirlwind had passed over the peat bog, and a bit farther beyond the bog, at the forester’s place, a dog had gone mad…

I remember that in Surazh there lived a fool-for-Christ, the son of kind, simple unbelieving folk. I saw him more than once. He never went beyond his gate. His head was huge, his shoulders and arms long, but his legs short. At that time, my father was looking to buy hay for the cow — the fool’s father, who had known my father for many years, suggested, “Come and take some hay to try; if your cow will eat it, then come and take as much as you need.” My father took a little hay and left. When he came to load up with more hay, the unhappy parents of the fool met him in the yard: “Oh, Panteley Fedorovich, what a grief for us! As soon as you left, our son screamed loudly and made us scrape with a knife the very spot where you stood, sat, and held the door handle. And now, sensing your approach, he’s already screaming that his enemy is coming, that he’s just about to open the gate…” Just then the fool burst into the yard and shouted loudly, “Don’t torment me! Don’t torment me!” Then my father, in the name of Jesus Christ, commanded the demons to be silent and asked the demons what their name was. In reply he heard, “Our name is seventeen!”

I also remember a sister who suffered from the attacks of the devil. At night a demon would come and choke her with a black paw, leaving a bruise on her neck. Father went to her with two brothers who were physically very strong: one of them was a former wrestler, Ivan Vasilievich Chapaev, and the second was Ivan Kholod. There is a photograph of the three of them, with father in the middle, looking very thin and frail. The sister made up beds for them on the floor; father lay down to sleep in the middle. In the deep of night, the locked door flew open — and the brothers, with great fear, saw the demon (later Ivan Kholod drew on paper what he had seen). The two strong men were terribly frightened and pressed themselves against father from both sides. The sister did not see it, only sensed its presence. And there the demon was struck down by the power of the Holy Spirit once and for all. When, in the name of Jesus Christ, it was commanded to come out and never return, the glass panes fell out of the windows. And in the morning, as the three brothers were walking home, it swooped down like a storm, spinning a whirlwind around them. The three brothers clung to whatever they could; the snow was carried up by the whirlwind, everything around them turned white. Father sensed that this was that very devil and began to pray and call upon the name of God. Their hats were torn off, a devilish laugh rang out from the whirlwind, and then everything vanished.

When I was 16, I saw a demon cry out through a strange woman on a tram: “Panteley, do not torment me, you are a child of God, I know! Oh, do not torment me!” He never boasted of all these stories, but many know that the Lord manifested power and healings through his faith; he had wonderful visions, revelations, and prophecy. I remember much, but is it possible to describe everything?! It is impossible to recount all the miracles and mercies the Lord manifested.

Many people received healing from incurable diseases and are still alive today. In Surazh, Sister Domna was healed of cancer. She was scheduled for an operation. She was staying in the regional oncology hospital in Bryansk. Before the operation, she asked to go home and came straight to Father. The Lord healed her that very hour during prayer. Returning to the hospital, she asked the doctors to postpone the operation and take another X-ray. Naturally, the doctors did not want to; they already had the X-ray in hand, and surgery was necessary. Sister Domna insisted. The astonished doctors witnessed a miracle — the tumor had disappeared without a trace. They discharged Sister Domna, and she lived another 12 years after Father’s death, and she did not die of cancer — that disease never returned to her… In Belaya Beryozka not far from Bryansk lives Sister Gudilo Valentina Andreyevna. She was doomed to die; the doctors sent her home to die, yet she lives even now. Many other brothers and sisters could not be cured by doctors, but the Lord healed them through Father’s hands.

Many Christians like our father walked the thorny path to the end, leaving bloody footprints on the way, yet never complained; they were content, just as my father recalled the Lord’s mercies with a smile before his death. He did not fear death but rejoiced. Seeing his life and seeing his death, I believed in the Lord once and for all — not like in childhood, but with a mature, steadfast faith. The Lord was with my father everywhere, because he firmly believed in Him, desired to live as the Lord commands, was content with everything, never quick to anger, nor hasty to argue. He would wait with patience and meekness, and then speak his understanding. And it was victorious. His enemies were put to shame. Satan did not love him. He truly did not love him and rose up fiercely. But the devil’s arrows bounced back from him as from armor.

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Hallelujah. Glory to Him, our wonderful Creator and Artist. And what is man? How much effort and intelligence does he apply to derive something from something already complete? In the laboratory, man has everything — proteins and the entire chemical composition — to make a seed exactly as it is… Yet they cannot give it life; it does not sprout, there is no life in it. Therefore, those whose eyes are opened see the Lord, the Life-giver and Miracle-worker, everywhere and in everything — in the flower, in the blade of grass, in the wonders around us, and they hear the voice of God in the murmur of the brook.

One thing I regret — people find it hard to believe in God’s miracles. You know, when we listened to Christian radio broadcasts, we were deeply impressed by the reminiscences of the mother of Brother Peysti, how she, together with her husband and a small child, walked through starving Siberia. Desolate and hungry all around, no one near, not a single house for many versts, rain, cold. The child was threatened with death from starvation; she was exhausted, sat down on a stone, bent over the child, shielding it from the blows of cold rain drops, taking the rain upon herself. She had no more strength to walk, and her husband, Brother Peysti’s older brother, went forward — and there appeared before him a man in white garments, who gave him a bundle of warm manna porridge for the child. And — vanished. He returned, they fed the child… People believe this — after all, it was told on the radio. But to many other brothers the Lord has shown incredible mercies among us, worked great miracles — and not everyone believes… And such unbelief only dishonors the name of the Lord.

Now there are three of us sisters alive, and we have two brothers. We remember. The Lord was with Father. As long as people are alive, there are living witnesses of such wonderful works of the Lord, but their number grows fewer with each year..323

Panteley Dubinin died on April 18, 1974.

I often hear that it’s hard to die in spring, when nature awakens to life violently and joyfully, the trees burst into leaf, the first flowers appear… But to me, for a believing person it is the best reminder that our life does not end with physical death, that a bright spring of new life awaits us. Dying, believers pass into eternal spring.

Panteley Fedorovich departed from this world just as he lived — calmly and unhurriedly His body grew weaker and weaker. The brothers hired a horse and came for him to take him to the worship service in the church. And there, in his last sermon, he said: “Dear brothers and sisters, for the last time with you in this assembly — I had a dream, the Lord is calling me to the eternal dwellings.” After that he was ill for a long time, unable to eat. He weakened completely and took to his bed. Panteley Fedorovich said with surprise: “Nothing hurts me, but my head spins. I can’t get up — and that’s all.” His own daughter did everything in her power, bringing doctors to the sick Dubinin. The doctors examined him and found nothing except that his heart was bad. The doctors asked him what hurt him And he answered the doctors with a smile that nothing hurt him, that he was perfectly healthy, but his strength was simply leaving him and the time was coming to leave the earth and pass to another world Until the very end of Dubinin’s life, there were always people in his house — people for whom he was dear, brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, would walk and travel, sometimes for many kilometers. With full soundness of mind Panteley Fedorovich conversed with them, taught, gave instructions, encouraged and inspired them to serve the Lord. With clear memory he recited many passages of the Scriptures by heart, advised many to read this or that passage from the Bible — and precisely indicated where to find those passages in the Bible. Once, not long before his death, the whole church in its entirety came to him — both adults and children, they began to say their farewells one after another, everyone wept. Panteley’s fellow-laborers, witnesses of his blessed life and deeds, his brothers and sisters in Christ, asked the Lord to prolong his life, yet Panteley Fedorovich already knew with certainty that the end of his earthly journey was approaching and the Lord was calling him to the eternal dwellings.

At that time, far beyond Latvia, where he lived, the ministry with the gifts of the Holy Spirit of the Baptist preacher Jan Bukhalts from Jelgava was known. Knowing that the Lord had given him gifts of healing, the brothers from Bryansk wrote him a letter asking him to come and pray for Dubinin. Brother Bukhalts was already a very elderly man at that time — he was about 90, he himself was also rather weak in health, and there was little hope that he would be able to come. Nevertheless, to their joyful surprise, the Bryansk brothers very soon received a telegram with three words’ «We are coming. Meet us Bukhalts».

Sixteen people came to the station to meet such an important guest — and none of them had ever seen Bukhalts. But at the station the elder Bukhalts with his wife came up to them without any mistake and, after greeting them, said right there at the station that he could not help coming to see Panteley Fedorovich. “Brothers,” said Jan Bukhalts, “I prayed to the Lord for Brother Dubinin and the Lord told me that he would soon die. But I know Panteley, and I greatly respect him. I no longer go anywhere now, except my local congregation, but I have come to bid farewell to my brother before we meet in the Lord.”

The meeting of the veterans — laborers in God’s field — was touching. Their prayer was powerful and fervent, after which Panteley Dubinin immediately grew stronger, rose to his feet, and went to have dinner with his guests. Strength and vigor returned to him. That was the last strengthening of his strength. After that the Lord ordained him to live the last two weeks, bidding farewell to the brothers and sisters, giving them his final instructions to keep the faith and live a worthy Christian life, answering letters, and praying for the needs of God’s people.

On the last day of his life three brothers were with him: Brother Rublyov, Brother Melnik, and Brother Pyotr Kartavchenko from Klincy. And I with Mom. They were talking; I brought two letters in to Dad. He asked me to read them. One was from Vilnius, where the brothers asked: “We have heard that you are very ill. Write us; perhaps you need something sent — we know that there is nothing in your city. But here in Vilnius we have everything.” Dad asked me to reply at once with gratitude that nothing was needed. The second letter was from Brother Bukhalts, who had come to us with his wife. I wrote him a reply; at the end of the letter Dad added greetings to the choir and to many brothers and sisters, and added a note: “The last days of my earthly journey.”

After that he talked again with the brothers. And suddenly he began to gaze upward and forward, as if there was something great and beautiful that he saw. Then he said: “I’m coming soon, soon! How good, wonderful Zion.” And he stretched forward toward that wonderful and beautiful thing he saw in his vision. He sighed, and his life ended. The brothers checked his pulse, held it for 15 minutes; there was no pulse. The brothers closed his eyes; I fell to my knees and began to weep. So several minutes passed. And suddenly Dad stretched, roused, drew a deep breath, opened his eyes. There was a smile on his face; he prayed quietly…

I asked my father: “What did you see, Dad?” And he says: “I rose high, high, and there it is so good, they are waiting for me there and calling me, but from there I saw all my children and I felt very sorry for them, especially Lilya — she is all alone, alone, as in a wilderness; it was because of her that I stayed.” And he fell asleep.

Two brothers stayed overnight in our house — Rublyov and Melnik. Exactly at 12 o’clock at night, when the Kremlin chimes struck on the radio, Dad woke up and opened his eyes. I was beside him. He asked for a drink, and Mom gave it to him. After that he extended his hand, raised it, and waved farewell to us and to the brothers. He gave up his spirit, his eyes stopped. And I closed them — and that was all…324

Dubinin was buried in the town cemetery in the city of Surazh. The prayers of Panteley, son of Fyodor, came to an end…

Only a trace remained on the earth — deep and distinct. And the memory of him remained — good and holy.

Lilia Dubinina also told me about her in-law, the celebrated military pilot, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, Kamozin. Several books mention him, the best known being Attention, Kamozin in the Sky. He was from Bryansk, from a large working-class family with nine children. During the bloody war with the Germans, he became renowned at the front for shooting down a great many German planes, displaying incredible bravery, courage, and mastery of aerial combat. During the hero’s lifetime, a monument to him was erected in the city park. Streets, schools, and colleges have been named in his honor.

People’s fates are different. And their fame is different.

And fourteen years later, Pantelei Dubinin’s faithful and long-suffering wife, Pelageya Filippovna, departed to be with the Lord.

Now I no longer have my mother; she went to the Lord, to God’s wondrous mansions, on the 16th of May, at exactly seven in the morning. Her ashes were buried with God’s blessing next to her husband’s grave. When I sent a telegram to Surazh saying I was bringing my mother’s body, the people of Surazh informed the believers in Belorussia and Klintsy—and the faithful, devoted friends of my father and mother left all their affairs and concerns and came to the funeral.

When the coffin was set up in the courtyard, it became crowded with people. The fence was taken down; people stood on the street. Even the man who had arrested our father the last time came to the funeral—the one who was present at the regional court when father was sentenced to twenty-five years. That investigator is now an old man, but he came into the courtyard and said at the funeral, “Yes, this holy woman will be with God. She has always stood before my eyes, all my life, ever since I saw her in court when her husband was being tried. Next to her were four small children and one still very young in her arms, yet she was giving her husband encouragement not to fear and not to betray his God. That picture has remained in my eyes forever…”

Now I am left alone; my mother is no longer with me. When my father died, life became so empty and sad that even the forest mourned and rustled sadly—for in Surazh we lived near the cemetery, and a pine forest surrounded our home. It seemed to me that the forest was whispering sadly, and the birds were singing… I would very much like to write a letter to my father, but there is nowhere to send it. My mother was dying in agony; I myself prayed and begged: “Lord, Father felt no pain, but Mother’s bones hurt so much—take her.” And when mother died, my tears flow…

I knelt by her bed, and her hand was in mine. She was fully conscious, understanding everything. And suddenly something pierced me, like lightning from head to toe. And a prophetic word was spoken loudly and clearly: “Rejoice, happy soul, behold your dwelling places!” She turned her head toward me, listened rationally, calmly, and attentively, smiled joyfully, raised her head and eyes upward, and at once gave up her spirit…325

Holy Scripture clearly and unceasingly tells us, through the words of the Apostle Paul in the 13th chapter of Hebrews: “Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you; consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.” May the Lord help us to continue our holy service without murmuring and in a worthy manner, to continue walking the path of our fathers and grandfathers, to continue their noble and great work in the name of Jesus Christ. For the glory of Christ.

So I have sent you photographs of my father. This one is from the time when he served as senior presbyter for the Bryansk region. And this one shows him on the road, visiting believers in the churches. The number of kilometers he covered is beyond counting…

The Lord bestowed great mercies upon him. He counted them all with a smile on his face, recalling God’s mighty hand in his life as I sat by his bed; even when he was close to death, he smiled and counted. But my father always said, holding up many holy people from the Bible as examples, that many of them performed no miracles, yet they are nevertheless recorded in the Bible among the saints. He named them. What miracle did Job perform? Or Noah? Or Abraham? Or Lot? Or Josiah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and many other servants of God?…

Live on earth, do good, and keep the truth in your heart; sow the good seed.

Your sister in Christ, Lilia Dubinina.326

I wrote this story about Pantelei Dubinin in the city of Atlanta, in the warm and green American state of Georgia, very far from Russia, from the wooded Bryansk region where the grave of Brother Pantelei lies. I placed the final period in this story on April 12, 2000. A few days later I was destined to return home, to my church in the Donbass region, to that land where Pantelei Dubinin once lived and preached. In order to continue the service of our fathers and grandfathers.

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