By Pamela Rae Schuffert presenting investigative journalism from a Biblical Christian persepctive-
First of all I want to thank ALL of you Slavic Christians, for the wonderful witness and examples to me throughout the decades of what true Christianity under persecution should truly be. Numerous accounts of Russian/Ukrainian and other Slavic Christians who have both suffered and died for their Christian faith have inspired me for many decades now. <
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I have stood in Russian Churches in America,( including Baptist, Pentecostal and Orthodox,)singing the deeply moving songs of true faith that kept their hearts burning with courage in the midst of great suffering and loss and temptations to deny Christ from the Communists. In fact, right now as I write this, I am listening to Russian Christian music and finding so much inspiration, as America soon faces her hour of judgment and persecution of her Christians along with it.
"Stormy and black, the seas of life are raging..." "Living for Jesus, dying is gain..." Songs about prayer sustaining Christian faith in icy Siberia. Songs about being faithful unto death. Songs about embracing the Cross and following Jesus to the end. How often, when I am discouraged, I play on the piano these well known Russian Christian hymns, and sing them in Russian to remind me of what God did throughout decades of Communist persecution to keep them faithful to the end. They are so often in the minor key, because of the sadness they depict due to persecution.
The names of the infamous Communist gulag and labor camps I can never forget: Vorkhuta, Sahkalinsk, Ussyrisk and so many others that Christian prisoners of faith were exiled to. Many died of hunger and starvation and deprivation, often being worked to death under malnourishment. Their bleak barracks were cold and underheated, their food of terrible quality, and their medical care often non-existent. I wrote letter in Russian to many prisoners in such camps throughout the years, encouraging them and loving them.
Long before the Nazis sent political and religious prisoners to the camps and gulags by trains, the Communists were using this tactic for decades to send millions of Christians to the gulag system via prisoner train transport. This is the same type of prisoner transport system set up across America now, with thousands of prisoner boxcars secretly prepositioned across our once-free nation to some day take millions to their suffering and death in the FEMA/Homeland Security detention camps. Yes, a Communist ("New World Order")agenda is about to be imposed by force upon America. Russian spies have even bragged to my Russian Christian friends in Spokane, Washington State:
"Ha! Stupid Americans! As life WAS in Russia, so shall it SOON BE IN AMERICA!" Sadly, these Russian FSB are correct. But are American Christians prepared for this?
Galina Vilchinskaya was one such prisoner. For the crimes of secretly printing Christian Bibles and teaching children in Sunday School about Jesus, she was sentenced to three difficult years in a gulag labor camp. Her health greatly deteriorated in that camp, but her faith remained intact. When she was finally released to go home and marry her beloved, the cruel communists had planted illegal drugs in her luggage and she was arrested upon arrival at the airport, put on trial once again on false charges, and sent yet again to serve another 3 year sentence in another gulag. Yet she never grew bitter against God, nor did she turn back from her Christian faith. Thank you Galina, for inspiring those of us who have read your testimony throughout the years.
Any manifestation of their Christian faith in these gulags was met with cruel guards and beatings, isolation in bitterly cold solitary confinement cells without even a chair or mattress for comfort. Any pieces of Bible literature, even scribbled on pieces of paper, were ruthlessly confiscated and the owner beaten.
Visitations from family members were severely limited, and letters of love and comfort often destroyed rather then delivered to the Christian prisoners. Food parcels filled with desperately needed vitamins and healthy nourishment were also withheld from these prisoner, to be consumed instead by the heartless guards.
And torture...how many Christians succumbed to brutal Communist tortures, yet died praying and forgiving their persecutors, in the imitation of Jesus Christ. The personal accounts of Richard Wurmbrand and Haralan Popov are worthy of reading, to better understand what Christians have suffered under Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe. Both mention torture and deprivations and suffering for their Christian faith under fire. Multiply their testimonies by countless other Christians who died in the same manner, under torture from the communists.
I cannot forget the testimony of "VANYA" or Ivan Moiseyev, a young Russian soldier, whose Christian witness in the Russian Army brought so many to Jesus Christ. Vanya died a true martyr's death for his Christian witness. He refused to be silent about Jesus, even when threatened with death.
I met one of his pastors, Stanislav Nasteka, many years ago, who told me that yes, it was all indeed true.
My heart has always been closer to Christians who have suffered for their faith. Only those who have truly experienced the deep sufferings of Christ, can understand the depths of fellowship with Him that it creates. American Christians, with 400 years now of religious freedom and little real persecution as a whole, cannot always understand. My whole Christian life has been filled with persecution, hatred, dangers and sorrows, personal losses and rejection for His sake. Persecution for being a Christian even began in my own home as a young believer.
My father tragically was recruited into the military program of the New World Order (actually the communist agenda for America.) It filled him with hatred for Christians and Christianity. He would come home from the Pentagon filled with rage against Christians, persecuting my precious Christian mother and I intensely. When I told him about the Russian Christians I was writing letters to in the gulags, he would make cruel remarks such as, "Christians sent to the camps? Good! Everyone who believes in God and miracles should be sent to the camps!" He forbade us to have prayer meetings in our home, or at least tried. We held them anyhow. Oh, the sorrow he inflicted on our family until he finally became a Christian many years later.
It seems that every ministry God has ever called me to has involved
THE CROSS and suffering for His sake. This has included going to jail numerous times, and also prison, for peacefully saving the unborn in America from abortion. But as I sat in those terrible jail cells and prison, I would remember the suffering Christians in Russia and other communist countries worldwide and what they suffered in prison too, and be comforted and strengthened in my faith by remembering their testimonies.
Years of ministering among the Russian Jews in New York City brought much persecution and dangers, including from the Orthodox Jewish community who hated our Christian witness among the Jews. Our outreach workers would often be beaten on the streets by Jewish hate groups, their Christian literature seized and torn into pieces. Police would often have to come and intervene. Firebombing threats, being watched and followed all the time, phone threats, discrimination in the workplace, and more was often suffered in this field of outreach. Yet the Christians I worked with continued to love, to forgive and to share Jesus Christ continually. There can be no place in the true Christian heart for hatred, resentment or revenge. We are called to
FORGIVE and
LOVE.
15 years now of this Christian journalism to warn my fellow American Christians of the coming persecution and NWO takeover of our nation, has been frequently filled with sufferings, losses, sacrifice, persecution, several death attempts on my life, slander and vicious false accusations. Yet it is no different from that which Russian and Christians under communism have had to contend with for many years now. Those who have suffered for Christ Jesus are united together across the globe in that mystical bond of fellowship of the true Body of Jesus Christ. Those who are not willing to suffer for Him, are not worthy of Him. Those who do not embrace the Cross to follow, cannot know true fellowship with Him or other Christians in the true Body of Christ.
So many in America who call themselves "Christians" are not, by truest Biblical definition. They may "go to church", sing in a choir, put money in a plate, but this does not make one a true Disciple of Jesus Christ.
A true Christian is one who is truly born again by repentance and faith in Jesus Christ, and baptised for the remission of sins. A true disciple of Jesus Christ studies to understand the true conditions for Discipleship and following Him. True discipleship involves denying one's self continually, embracing the cross of hardships and sufferings to follow Christ at all costs, even to the end. "...But he that endures to the end, the same shall be saved." True discipleship puts the
WILL OF GOD first in one's life., above financial profit and jobs or career. True discipleship will lay down one's life for the Word of God and His will.
And true Discipleship will not deny Jesus Christ when persecution comes, or threats of death for His sake. True Christians will obey God and His will, even when it means facing persecution and great sufferings. Those who are not willing to suffer for Jesus Christ and His word, cannot remain His when persecution comes. It has already been prophesied through the Holy Spirit, that many American Christians will fall away from the faith when the hour of persecution comes upon this nation.
God has prepared me to face the coming sufferings for my faith, by giving me the examples of Russian Christians who endured to the end, among many other experiences in my life that have built up my faith.
And now, here on the west coast of Alaska above the Arctic circle, I am less than one hundred miles from Siberia. As I gaze across the ocean, I am ever reminded of the great sufferings that my fellow Christians have endured in Russia and throughout the former Soviet Union. And I am painfully reminded that the same kind of persecution and Communist (NWO) dictatorship government is planned for once-free America as well.
But I remember my visit one day to a Russian Baptist Church in Arvada , Colorado. A huge banner was over the church altar and pulpit. It said in large letters in Russian, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." The Russian Christian response of forgiveness and prayer for their persecutors, remains a great inspiration to Christians like myself, who not only
HAVE suffered for their faith, but who also know we shall soon suffer even more at the hands of unbelievers in America.
PRAY for the Christians of North America, as they face their hour of persecution and suffering and martyrdom for their faith. Pray for them to be strengthened in every way. Pray for the lukewarmness and compromise and sin to be purged out of the American churches. Pray that nominal Christianity will be replaced with fervent DISCIPLESHIP instead. We need your prayers and we need your examples to inspire us all.
Thank you Russian Christians for your testimony to the world, and to me!
-Pamela Rae Schuffert reporting from Alaska
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