The unpleasant smell of dictatorship penetrates into all spheres of life, — bishop of the Church of Christians of Evangelical Faith

· Analytics, Lviv, Vestibule, Pentecostals, Slavik Radchuk, Security Services, Ukraine

If Vasily Boechko is already sounding the alarm about the situation in Ukraine, then it’s worth paying attention.

Pentecostal Bishop of Lviv Vasyl Boechko

«The true Church must not be political—because it will lose its spiritual influence—yet it has no right to be apolitical, for that would be another crime, since then it fails to pray, to analyze, and to help people interpret rightly what is happening.» This is how Bishop Vasyl Boechko of the Church of Christians of Evangelical Faith expressed the role of the Church, in response to a question from a correspondent of RISU about the thoughts and emotions stirred in him by the political situation in Ukraine.

In the bishop’s view, many of our troubles stem from the fact that Ukrainians have not learned to value freedom and, at critical moments, cannot unite. This inability to consolidate, he says, opens the door «to any aggressor and dishonest ruler.»

«Our people did not appreciate God’s gift—independence. We erected monuments to anyone, yet nowhere is there even a memorial sign honoring the freedom we were given. I well remember from childhood how, at the edges of fields, there were inconspicuous, roughly hewn stones on which was carved the gratitude of the Ukrainian people to God for the 1848 reform that abolished serfdom,» Vasyl Boechko noted.

«We are praying because we have rich experience from the collapse of the Soviet empire. Prayer worked then, too. I was in Moscow at that time. Young Christians with flowers climbed onto the tanks’ armor and said, ‘You have no right to shoot at your own people.’ I saw young people speak out in Riga. In essence, Gorbachev was merely a pawn on the great chessboard of God’s justice. So we call the faithful to active prayer. For the unpleasant smell of dictatorship is already seeping into every sphere of life. We might wake up one day—and the state is in bondage. Neither the people nor those who call themselves the nation’s leaders understand this,» he stressed.

At the same time, the bishop expressed confidence that dictatorship has no chance of being established in Ukraine, despite general indifference.

«We took an active part in the Orange Revolution. Our buses shuttled between Lviv and Kyiv, we bought two thousand pairs of warm footwear so that the people on the Maidan would not get wet. Our faithful went to the tents with banners of both colors, and people from Donetsk were greatly surprised. But we were left deeply disappointed when we saw how our pseudo‑patriots and pseudo‑leaders can repay the people. You can deceive the people, but not God. I am an optimist and do not believe in dictators. I know that as quickly as they appear, they just as quickly vanish, and as Jeremiah writes, their names will be written only in the sand,» Vasyl Boechko emphasized.

www.risu.org.ua

Let me remind you that Vasily Boechko was a bishop in Western Ukraine of the Pentecostal autonomy of the AUCECB. He had a conflict with Slavik Radchuk, for whom Vasily Boechko’s authority may have been an obstacle to advancing the plans of those whom Slavik Radchuk serves.
Toward the end of the Soviet era, Bishop Vasily Boechko’s oversight also included the Baltic states. He had to deal with the case of Alexei Ledyaev, the presbyter of the Pentecostal church in Riga, who had departed from evangelical teaching following his handlers from Sweden. Alexei Ledyaev was removed from ministry by Vasily Boechko.

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