Conference in Sacramento 'The Future of Slavic Immigration'

May 12, 2012 · Analytics, Baptists, Boris Perchatkin, Video Blog, Persecution, Evangelical Christians, Exodus, KGB, Nakhodka, Unregistered Pentecostals, On Emigration, Vestibule, Orthodoxy, Pentecostals, Religious Mafia, Russian Empire, Sacramento, Testimonies, Contemporary Persecution, Comrades, USSR, Subbotniks, USA, Asylum in the USA

On May 5, 2012, a conference was held in the city of Sacramento, California, on the topic “The Future of Slavic Immigration.”

mp3 Boris Perchatkin

Approximately 100,000 religious refugees live in Sacramento. The number of attendees shows the interest in their future and their past.

Before our very eyes, an event occurred that happens once in a millennium—within the memory of a generation and visibly, an empire that had openly declared war on God arose and collapsed.
The question arises: How could communism have emerged in the Russian Empire? From a lack of spirituality. Orthodox priests discredited themselves in society, which is why people so easily turned away from God. After all, it was their former parishioners who, with their participation, destroyed churches and threw priests from bell towers. Because the Bolshevik Communist Party was small in number and could not have waged war on God by itself—only with the direct participation of a people who had sunk into spiritual void. The temptation toward spiritual void for the people was the hypocrisy—the double standard of the Orthodox priests.
This poses the question for us: Is a similar situation not being created now, with hypocrites—corrupt ministers—coming to power in the churches, as it was before the start of the communist upheaval? And what will fill this vacuum of spirituality now?

A people without historical memory is a people without a future. To have a future, we must remember.
We, the believing people in the former USSR, were a criminal people. Because by living out the Gospel, we became a criminal people before Soviet law. That is why this movement for exodus—immigration from the godless USSR—arose.

How did this movement arise? How did you end up here in America? Have you ever thought about this?
It arose through those who renounced everything for the sake of fulfilling God’s commandments: “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 15:13). They saw the sufferings of God’s people and laid down their lives for them.

What, in general, was the persecution? In the Soviet Union, to persecute believers who lived out the Gospel, legislation on religious cults, articles in the Criminal Code, and the 5th Directorate of the KGB were created. What did the 5th KGB Directorate do? Many prisoners of the USSR mistakenly testify that they were persecuted by the KGB, when many never even laid eyes on it. Persecutions at work, “comrades’ courts,” persecutions in the army and imprisonment for refusing to take the oath, preaching the Gospel—all this was carried out by the police, volunteer auxiliaries, and bosses at work, with the supervisory participation of the KGB and the commissioner for religious and cult affairs. The 5th KGB Directorate, however, directly dealt with those believers who stepped beyond the bounds of the ordinary permitted space of persecution.
You know about the promise made by the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR in 1960, that in 20 years, by 1980, the last believer would be shown on television. Back then, the CPSU sent down a quota for imprisoning evangelical believers by region. Whether you were active in the church or not—they didn’t look at that—they imprisoned according to plan. This did not help to exterminate the evangelical church. In place of the imprisoned ministers, others rose up. And when those were also imprisoned, still others arose to serve. In the evangelical church, every believer was an evangelist and a minister, which distinguished it from the Orthodox church—where, to suppress it, it was enough to imprison the top leadership. Such tactics failed against the Protestant church.
Then, in 1967, it was decided to create the 5th KGB Directorate in order to corrupt the church from within, to advance their own people into leadership, who would subsequently destroy the church through temptations and hypocrisy.

God brought us here for a specific purpose. After a report to the U.S. Congress in 1988, I was invited by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Schifter. He asked me:
“Do you know why we will receive you? Two reasons. The first is to breathe fresh spiritual life into American society (it has already lost its original spirituality). You, who have gone through all this persecution-genocide and endured, you are a highly moral society; you must become an example and, like a locomotive, pull up morality in America. The second reason is that you have healthy families, you have healthy offspring. We will, of course, invest money in you through refugee status, but all this should pay off in the future. When you resettle across the country, do not group together in large communities. In this way, you will interact more with Americans, but do not blend into American culture—preserve your distinctiveness, so that Americans may see that God is working and that something is there.”
Incidentally, Richard Schifter is a Jew. And that is how he spoke and exhorted us Christians.

And what happened, what do we see?
We Christians who endured persecution were able to bring an evangelical, highly moral, viable culture. And what you are doing is the beginning of an awakening. What we were supposed to do was bound to happen. With a delay of 24 years, this difficult, complex process, with a mass of opponents and those who do not understand, has begun.

You know that last year on June 1 (2011) the refugee status was revoked. What did you do to restore this status?
Nothing.
We were involved in this process and encountered such resistance in some churches from people who arrived under this status! Thirty years ago they told me: “Boris, this is politics!” You have a well-known pastor of a big church here. I won’t mention his name—you know him. Big, great, a mega-church with five thousand members. Six months before leaving, he told me: “Boris, drop this politics. God gave us freedom through the Soviet government. And you’re busy with politics, emigration.” I come here in the summer of 1988, and half a year later, here he is—a refugee from persecution by the Soviet authorities. He leads a huge church. And there are many like him. Do you think the 5th Directorate of the KGB forgot their charges? They have all the information on their charges. No, they didn’t forget them.

When the Communist Party and the KGB realized that they would have to let go, that holding on further was costing them more, that people were beginning to die in camps, that a noise went abroad—they decided to let go. But to let go in such a way as to neutralize.

Imagine, we managed to organize in the Soviet Union without computers, without cell phones, without telephones at all, without newspapers or magazines, with distances of tens of thousands, thousands, and hundreds of kilometers, through which we could break through and provide information to the West about what was really happening here. We managed to form a kind of community that supported us.

So the question arose: if we could organize there like that, what could we do in America if we came here by the thousands?! With such human and financial resources! They understood what would happen! They understood that with such support we could organize a real spiritual expansion into the territory of the USSR. They understood that we could prepare serious young people here in America—preachers, who would go back there, charged with enthusiasm, armed with knowledge and historical examples. Who have models to follow!

They understood this well. What needed to be done with this community, which they couldn’t destroy—to take it over! Neutralize it. Send it nowhere! Give it false values. You yourselves know well what is happening—I won’t dwell on that.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, we are still on the journey. That’s why I’ll read to you a passage from 2 Corinthians, chapter 4:
“Therefore, since through God’s mercy we have this ministry, we do not lose heart.
Rather, we have renounced secret and shameful ways;
we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly
we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.
But even if our gospel is veiled,
it is veiled to those who are perishing, to unbelievers,
whose minds the god of this age has blinded,
lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ,
who is the image of the invisible God, should shine on them.
For we do not preach ourselves,
but Christ Jesus the Lord;
and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake,”
So you were supposed to preach the gospel here… and you gospel-ed them… Thousands are sitting in prisons, facing deportation.

I served as a court expert for several years before my illness with cancer. In just one city, Tacoma, Washington, about a hundred people each month are under deportation. There are Baptists, Pentecostals, Adventists. Extreme Sabbatarians who walk around with beards are also under deportation. Theft, drugs, and the like. So he thinks that growing a beard makes him everything before God—it’s the same there. And this is the face of what was expected from us…

Now they’ve extended emigration until September 30, but then they’ll review again.

With God’s help we managed to do this. And then again on our own enthusiasm, on our own free time, and with our own money.
The book in English, Path of Fire, which God gave wisdom to print and distribute to congressmen and senators, so that they could imagine at what cost we obtained the opportunity to find refuge in the USA. We had to borrow money and print this book.

For now, the personal factor and personal authority still work. But they won’t work for long. We are still remembered as those who could withstand the might of the Evil Empire—the empire collapsed, and we are alive here. But it won’t go on for long. So, brothers and sisters, wake up! Unite. Especially the youth. We are done. Spent material. What more can you get out of us? But if some of the older ones still have energy, then praise God.
Youth, join in! Start moving! Start reviving our spiritual culture! After all, this culture worked. This culture worked without radio, without these stages, without microphones—by their lives they showed what should and should not be done.

How did that happen? I saw with my own eyes a person who had believed in the 1950s just a month, and having got a job, he wept because at work they didn’t recognize him as a believer. So he worked a day and no one came up to him and asked: “Are you, by any chance, a Baptist?” The man was so upset he cried: “They didn’t recognize me—it means I’m not worthy of Christ.”

Do you understand what a culture that was! A person had believed only a month! And upon believing, he lost everything: relatives—lost them, possibly family—lost, job—lost. His whole life, education, invested time—he lost it all!

For what?
To be humiliated, spat upon, to be not just a second-class person, but you couldn’t even figure out what class! We worked the dirtiest jobs. When you’re called names and reviled.

That was the culture! If we could revive it even by 10%! We could shake up this Slavic community here so much! You still have a chance. There is still time.

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Question: How should we act here in the United States, knowing that we are here by the will of God? What exactly must we do?

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