Chapter 5

Chapter 5 The Invincible, Widespread Underground Church The Underground Church works under very difficult conditions. Atheism is the state religion in all the Com­munist countries. They give relative freedom for the elderly to believe, but children and youth must not believe. Everything in these countries and other kinds of captive nations—radio, television, cinema, theater, press, and publishing houses—has the aim of stamping out belief in Jesus Christ. The Underground Church has very little means of opposing the huge forces of the totalitarian state. The underground ministers in Russia had no theological training. There are Chinese pastors today who have never read the entire Bible. I will tell you how numerous pastors have been ordained. We met a young Russian who was a secret minister. I asked him who ordained him. He answered, “We had no real bishop to ordain us. The official bishop would not ordain anyone who is not approved by the Communist Party. So ten of us young Christians went to the tomb of a bishop who died as a martyr. Two of us put our hands on his gravestone and the others formed a circle around us. We asked the Holy Spirit to ordain us. We are sure that we were ordained by the pierced hands of Jesus.” For me, this young man’s ordination is valid before God! Men with such ordination, who have never had any theological training and who very often know little of the Bible (such as evangelists in Bangladesh), carry on the work of Christ. It is like the Church in the first centuries. What seminaries did those who turned the world upside-down for Christ attend? Did they all know how to read? And from where did they receive Bibles? God spoke to them. We of the Underground Church have no cathedrals. But is any cathe­dral more beautiful than the sky of heaven to which we looked when we gathered secretly in forests? The chirping of birds took the place of the organ. The fragrance of flowers was our incense. And the shabby suit of a martyr recently freed from prison was much more impressive than priestly robes. We had the moon and stars as candles. The angels were our aco­lytes who lit them. I can never describe the beauty of this Church! Often, after a secret service, Christians were caught and sent to prison. There, Chris­tians wear chains with the gladness with which a bride wears a precious jewel received from her beloved. The waters in prison are still. They receive His kiss and His em­braces, and would not change places with kings. I have found truly joyful Christians only in the Bible, in the Underground Church, and in prison. The Underground Church is oppressed, but it also has many friends—even among the secret police; even among members of the government. Sometimes these secret believers protect the Underground Church. Under the former Soviet Empire, Russian newspapers complained of the growing numbers of “outward nonbelievers.” These, the Russian press explained, are countless men and women who work in the very echelons of Communist power—in government offices, in propaganda departments, and elsewhere—who outwardly are Communists, but inwardly are secret be­lievers and members of the Underground Church. The Communist press told the story of a young woman who worked in the Communist propaganda department. After work, they said, she and her husband would gather a group of young people from other apartments in their building for secret Bible studies and prayer meetings. This is still happening throughout the world. Tens of thousands of such “outward nonbelievers” exist. They feel it wiser not to attend the show-churches where they will be watched and hear only a watered-down gospel. Instead, they stay in their positions of authority and responsibility from which they can quietly and effectively witness for Christ. The faithful Underground Church has thousands of members in such places. They have secret meetings in basements, attics, apartments, and fields. In formerly Communist Russia, no one remembered anymore the arguments for or against child or adult baptism, for or against papal infallibility. They were not pre- or post-millennialists. They could not interpret prophecies and didn’t quarrel about them, but I wondered very often how well they could prove to atheists the existence of God. Their answers to atheists were simple, “If you were invited to a feast with all kinds of good meats, would you believe that there has been no one to cook them? But nature is a banquet pre­pared for us! You have tomatoes and peaches and apples and milk and honey. Who has prepared all these things for man­kind? Nature is blind. If you believe in no God, how can you explain that blind nature succeeded in preparing just the things that we need in such plenitude and variety?” They prove that eternal life exists. I heard one pleading with an atheist: “Suppose that we could speak with an embryo in his mother’s womb and that you would tell him that the embryonic life is only a short one after which follows a real, long life. What would the embryo answer? He would say just what you atheists answer to us, when we speak to you about paradise and hell. He would say that the life in the mother’s womb is the only one and that everything else is religious foolishness. But if the embryo could think, he would say to himself, ‘Here arms grow on me. I do not need them. I cannot even stretch them. Why do they grow? Perhaps they grow for a future stage of my existence, in which I will have to work with them. Legs grow, but I have to keep them bent toward my chest. Why do they grow? Probably life in a large world follows, where I will have to walk. Eyes grow, although I am surrounded by perfect darkness and don’t need them. Why do I have eyes? Probably a world with light and colors will follow.’ “So, if the embryo would reflect on his own development, he would know about a life outside of his mother’s womb, without having seen it. It is the same with us. As long as we are young, we have vigor, but no mind to use it properly. When, with the years, we have grown in knowledge and wisdom, the hearse waits to take us to the grave. Why was it necessary to grow in a knowledge and wisdom that we can use no more? Why do arms, legs, and eyes grow on an embryo? It is for what follows. So it is with us here. We grow here in experience, knowl­edge, and wisdom for what follows. We are prepared to serve on a higher level that follows death.” About Jesus, the Communists printed that He never existed. The workers of the Underground Church answered this easily: “What newspaper have you in your pocket? Is it the Pravda of today or yesterday? Let me have a look. Aha! January 4, 1964. The year 1964 counted from when? You say Jesus never existed, yet you count the years from His birth. Time existed before Him. But when He came, it seemed to mankind that everything which had been before had been vain and that the real time began only now. Your Communist newspaper itself is a proof that Jesus is not fiction.” Pastors in the West usually assume that those whom they have in church are really convinced about the main truths of Chris­­tianity, which they are not. You rarely hear a sermon prov­ing the truth of our faith. But behind the Iron Curtain, men who have never learned to do it gave their converts a very serious ­foundation. There is no clear dividing line by which you could say where the Underground Church, which is the main stronghold of Christianity, ends and the official Church begins. They are inter­woven. Some pastors of the show-churches in captive nations carry on a secret parallel ministry going far beyond the limitations im­posed on them by their governments. The official Church, the church of collaborators with the Communists, has a long history. It began immediately after the Russian Socialist Revolution with the “Living Church,” headed by a bishop named Sergius. One of his collaborators declared that “Marxism is the gospel written with atheist letters.” What nice theology. We have had many like Sergius in every country. In Hungary, among the Catholics, it was Father Balogh. He and some Protestant ministers helped the Communists take complete control of the state. In Romania, the Communists came to power with the help of an Orthodox priest named Burducea, a former Fascist, who had to make up to the Reds for his past sins by becoming even more “Red” than his bosses. This priest stood near Vishinski, the Soviet Secretary of State, and smiled in an approving manner when the latter declared at the installation of the new Com­­mu­nist government: “This government will build an earthly paradise and you will no longer need a heavenly one.” As for those like Nikolai of Russia, it is on record that they are informers for the government. Major Deriabin, a defector from the Russian secret police, testified that Nikolai was their agent. This was the situation in nearly all denominations. The leadership of the Romanian Baptists was imposed by force, denouncing the real Christians. In Russia the leadership of the Bap­tists did the same. The president of the Romanian Adven­tists, Tachici, told me that he had been an informer of the Com­munist secret police from the first day they came to power. Rather than close every church—though they have closed many thousands—the Communists shrewdly decided to permit a few “token” official churches to remain open and use them as windows through which to observe, control, and eventually destroy Christians and Christianity. They decided that it would be better to let the structure of the Church remain and turn it into a Communist tool to control Christians and to deceive visitors coming to their lands. This situation exists in the official Chinese TSPM church as we move into the next century. This “only legal” church in China represents less than twenty percent of China’s Christians. In Romania, I was offered such a church on the condition that I, as pastor, would report on my members to the secret police. It seems that Westerners, accustomed to things “black and white”—all one way or all another—cannot understand this. But the Underground Church will never accept token, controlled churches as a substitute for mean­ingful, effective evangelism “to every creature”—including youth. But in the official churches there is a real spiritual life, despite many treacherous leaders. (I have the impression that in many churches of the West the situation is similar. The congregations are faithful sometimes not because of, but in spite of, their top leaders.) In Russia, the Orthodox liturgy remained unchanged, and it fed the hearts of the members of this church, even if the sermons flattered the Communists. The Lutherans, Presbyterians, and other Protestants sang the same old hymns. And then, even the sermons of the informers had to contain something of Scripture. People in China today are converted under the influence of men whom they know to be traitors. They know that they will tell the secret police about their conversions. They must hide their faith from the very one who gave them this faith by his corrupted sermon. This is the great miracle of God cited in Leviticus 11:37 in symbolic language: “And if a part of any such carcass [which is, according to the Mosaic law, defiled] falls on any planting seed which is to be sown, it remains clean.” Fairness obliges us to say that not all the official Church ­leaders, not even all the official top leaders, are men of the Communists. Members of the Underground Church are also very prominent in the official churches, except for some who have to keep themselves hidden. And they see to it that Christianity is not wishy-washy, but a fighting faith. When the secret police came to close down the monastery of Vladimireshti in Romania and others in many places in Russia, they had a hard time. Some Com­munists have paid with their lives for the crime of trying to forbid religion. But the official churches are becoming fewer and fewer. I wonder if, in the whole of the Soviet Union, there were five or six thousand churches under communism. (The United States, with the same population, had some three hundred thousand decades ago.) And these “churches” were most often only tiny rooms—not a “church” as we picture it. Foreign visitors would see a crowded church in Moscow—which was the only Prot­estant church in the city—and remark what freedom there is. “Even the churches are overflowing!” they would joyously report. They did not see the tragedy of one Protestant church for seven million souls! And not even the one-room churches were within traveling distance of eighty percent of the people of the Soviet Union. These multitudes were either forgotten or reached with underground methods of evangelism. There was no other choice. The more communism dominates in a country, the more the Church will have to be underground. In place of closed official churches come the meetings of the anti-religious organizations. How the Underground Church “Feeds” on Atheistic Literature The Underground Church knows how to use atheistic literature, too, feeding upon it just as Elijah was fed by ravens. The atheists put much skill and zeal into ridiculing and criticizing Bible verses. They published books called The Comical Bible and The Bible for Believers and Unbelievers. They tried to show how stupid Scripture is and, to do so, quoted many Bible verses. How we rejoiced over it! The book was printed in millions of copies and was full of Bible verses, which were unspeakably beautiful even when the Communists ridiculed them. The criticism itself was so stupid that no one took it seriously. In the past, “heretics” burned by the Inquisition were taken to the stake in a procession, dressed in all kinds of ridiculous clothes with hell-flames and devils painted on them. And what saints were these heretics! In a similar way, Bible verses remain true, even if the Devil quotes them. The Communist publishing house was very glad to receive thousands of letters asking for reprints of atheist books that quoted Bible verses to mock them. They did not know that these letters came from the Underground Church, which had no other opportunity of receiving the Scriptures. We also knew well how to use the atheistic meetings. A professor of communism demonstrated at a meeting that Jesus was nothing but a magician. The professor had before him a pitcher of water. He put a powder in it and it became red. “This is the whole miracle,” he explained. “Jesus had hidden in his sleeves a powder like this, and then pretended to have changed water into wine in a wonderful manner. But I can do even better than Jesus; I can change the wine into water again.” And he put another powder in the liquid. It became clear. Then another powder and it was red again. A Christian stood up and said, “You have amazed us, comrade professor, by what you are able to do. We would ask only one thing more of you—drink a bottle of your wine!” The professor said, “This I cannot do. The powder was a poison.” The Chris­tian replied, “This is the whole difference between you and Jesus. He, with His wine, has given us joy for two thousand years, whereas you poison us with your wine.” The Chris­tian went to pri­son. But news of the incident spread very far and strengthened many of the faith. We are weak little Davids. But we are stronger than the Goliath of atheism, because God is on our side. The truth belongs to us. On one occasion a Commu­nist was giving a lecture on atheism. All factory workers were required to attend; among these workers were many Christians. They sat quietly hearing all the arguments against God and about the stupidity of believing in Christ. The lecturer attempted to prove that there is no spiritual world, no God, no Christ, no hereafter; man is only matter with no soul. He said over and over that only matter exists. A Christian stood up and asked to speak. Permission was given. The Christian picked up his folding chair and threw it down. He paused, looking at it. He then walked up and slapped the Communist lecturer in the face. The lecturer be­came very angry. His face flushed red with indignation. He shouted obscenities and called for fellow Communists to arrest the Christian. He demanded, “How dare you slap me? What is the reason?” The Christian replied, “You have just proved yourself a liar. You said everything is matter...nothing else. I picked up a chair and threw it down. It is truly matter. The chair did not become angry. It is only matter. When I slapped you, you did not react like the chair. You reacted differently. Matter does not get mad or angry, but you did. Therefore, comrade professor, you are wrong. Man is more than matter. We are spiritual beings!” In countless ways such as this, ordinary Christians of the Underground Church disproved elaborate atheistic arguments. In prison, the political officer asked me harshly, “How long will you continue to keep your stupid religion?” I said to him, “I have seen innumerable atheists regretting on their deathbeds that they have been godless; they called on Christ. Can you imagine that a Christian could regret, when death is near, that he has been a Chris­tian and call on Marx or Lenin to rescue him from his faith?” The officer laughed, “A clever answer.” I continued, “When an engineer has built a bridge, the fact that a cat can pass over the bridge is no proof that the bridge is good. A train must pass over it to prove its strength. The fact that you can be an atheist when everything goes well does not prove the truth of atheism. It does not hold up in moments of great crisis.” I used Lenin’s books to prove to him that, even after becoming prime minister of the Soviet Union, Lenin himself prayed when things went wrong. We were quiet and could quietly await the development of events. It was the Communists who were unquiet and launched new anti-religious campaigns. By this they proved what St. Augus­tine said, “Uneasy is the heart until it rests in Thee.” Why Even Communists Can Be Won The Underground Church, if helped by Christians in the free world, will win the hearts of the Communists and will change the face of the world. It will win them, because it is unnatural to be a Communist. Even a dog wishes to have his own bone. The hearts of Communists rebel against the role they must play and the absurdities they are forced to believe. Individual Communists asserted that “matter is everything”—that we are a handful of chemicals organized in a certain fashion and that after death we will again be salt and minerals. It was therefore enough to ask them, “How is it that Com­mu­nists in so many countries have given their lives for their belief? Does a ‘handful of chemicals’ have beliefs? Can ‘minerals’ sacrifice themselves for the good of others?” To this they have no answer. And then there is the issue of brutality. Men were not created as brutes and cannot bear to be brutes for long. We have seen it in the collapse of Nazi rulers, some of whom committed suicide, while some repented and confessed their crimes. The enormous amount of drunkenness in Communist countries exposes the longing for a more meaningful life, which communism cannot give. The average Russian is a deep, big-hearted, generous person. Communism is shallow and superficial. He seeks the deep life and, finding it nowhere else, he seeks it in alco­hol. He expresses in alcoholism his horror about the brutal and deceitful life he must live. For a few mo­ments alcohol sets him free, as truth would set him free forever if he could know it. In Bucharest, during the Russian occupation (1947–1989), I once felt an irresistible impulse to enter a tavern. I called my wife to go with me. Upon entering, we saw a Russian captain with a gun in his hand threatening everyone and asking for more to drink. He had been refused because he was already very drunk. People were in a panic. I went to the owner—who knew me—and asked him to give liquor to the captain, promising that I would sit with him and see that he kept quiet. One bottle of wine after another was given to us. On the table were three glasses. The captain always politely filled all three...and drank all three. My wife and I did not drink. Although he was very drunk, his mind was working. He was used to alcohol. I spoke to him about Christ and he listened with unexpected attention. When I finished, he said, “Now that you have told me who you are, I will tell you who I am. I am an Orthodox priest who was among the first to deny my faith when the great persecution under Stalin began. I went from village to village to give lectures saying that there is no God and that as a priest I had been a deceiver. ‘I am a deceiver and so are all the other ministers,’ I told them. I was very much appreciated for my zeal, so I became an officer of the secret police. My punishment from God was that with this hand I had to kill Christians, after having tortured them. And now I drink and drink to forget what I have done. But it does not work.” Many Communists commit suicide. So did their greatest poets, Essenin and Maiakovski. So did their great writer Fadeev. He had just finished his novel called Happiness in which he had explained that happiness consists in working tirelessly for communism. He was so happy about it that he shot himself after having finished the novel. It was too difficult for his soul to bear such a great lie. Joffe, Tomkin—great Communist lead­ers and fighters for communism in Czarist times—likewise could not bear to see how communism looks in reality. They also ended in suicide. Communists are unhappy. So are even their great dictators. How unhappy Stalin was! After having killed nearly all of his old comrades, he was constantly in fear of being poisoned or killed himself. He had eight bedrooms that could be locked up like safes in a bank. No one ever knew in which of these bedrooms he slept on any given night. He never ate unless the cook tasted the food in his presence. Communism makes no one happy, not even its dictators. They need Christ. By converting those who persecute Christians, we would free not only their victims, but the persecutors themselves. The Underground Church represents the deepest need of enslaved peoples in captive nations. Help her! ■■■ The distinctive feature of the Underground Church is its ear­nest­ness in faith. A minister who disguises himself under the name of “George” tells in his book about God’s Underground the following incident: A Russian Army captain came to a minister in Hungary and asked to see him alone. The young captain was very brash, and very conscious of his role as a conqueror. When he had been led to a small conference room and the door was closed, he nodded toward the cross that hung on the wall. “You know that thing is a lie,” he said to the minister. “It’s just a piece of trickery you ministers use to delude the poor people to make it easier for the rich to keep them ignorant. Come now, we are alone. Admit to me that you never really believed that Jesus Christ was the Son of God!” The minister smiled. “But, my poor young man, of course I believe it. It is true.” “I won’t have you play these tricks on me!” cried the captain. “This is serious. Don’t laugh at me!” He drew out his revolver and held it close to the body of the minister. “Unless you admit to me that it is a lie, I’ll fire!” “I cannot admit that, for it is not true. Our Lord is really and truly the Son of God,” said the minister. The captain flung his revolver on the floor and embraced the man of God. Tears sprang to his eyes. “It is true!” he cried. “It is true. I believe so, too, but I could not be sure men would die for this belief until I found it out for myself. Oh, thank you! You have strengthened my faith. Now I too can die for Christ. You have shown me how.” I have known other such cases. When the Russians occupied Romania, two armed Russian soldiers entered a church with their guns in their hands. They said, “We don’t believe in your faith. Those who do not abandon it immediately will be shot at once! Those who abandon your faith move to the right!” Some moved to the right, who were then ordered to leave the church and go home. They fled for their lives. When the Russians were alone with the remaining Christians, they embraced them and confessed, “We, too, are Christians, but we wished to have fellowship only with those who consider the truth worth dying for.” Such men fought for the gospel and still fight today in the Communist nations of Southeast Asia. And they fight not only for the gospel. They are also the fighters for liberty. In the homes of many Western Christians, hours are sometimes spent listening to worldly music. In our homes loud music can also be heard, but it is only to cover the talk about the gospel and the underground work so that neighbors may not overhear it and inform the secret police. How underground Christians rejoice on those rare occasions when they meet a serious Christian from the West! The one who writes these lines is only an insignificant man. But I am the voice of those who are voiceless; of those who are muzzled and never represented in the West. In their name I ask great seriousness in faith and in handling the problems of Christianity. In their name I ask your prayers and practical help for the faithful, suffering Underground Church in Communist lands and other captive nations today. ■■■ We shall win the Communists. First, because God is on our side. Second, because our message corresponds to the deepest needs of the heart. Communists who had been in prison under the Nazis confessed to me that they prayed in difficult hours. I have even seen Communist officers die with the words “Jesus, Jesus,” on their lips. We shall win because all the cultural inheritance of our people is on our side. The Russians can forbid all the writings of modern Christians. But there are the books of Tolstoy and Dos­toy­evski, and people find the light of Christ there. So it is with Goethe in Eastern Germany, Sienkiewicz in Poland, and others. The greatest Romanian writer was Sadoveanu. The Communists have published his book The Lives of Saints under the title The Legend of Saints. But even under this title the example of the lives of saints inspires. They cannot exclude reproductions of Raphael, Michel­angelo, and Leonardo da Vinci from the history of the arts. These pictures speak of Christ. When I talk with a Communist about Christ, the deepest spiritual need in his heart is my ally—my helper. The greatest dif­ficulty for him is not to answer my arguments. His great dif­ficulty is to quiet the voice of his own conscience, which is on my side. I have personally known professors of Marxism who, be­fore delivering an atheistic lecture, prayed to God that He might help them in this! I have known of Communists going to a secret meeting far away. When they were discovered, they denied that they had been in an underground meeting. Then they wept, regretting that they had not had the courage to stand for the faith that compelled them to attend. They are men, too. Once the individual has arrived at faith—even a very primitive faith—this faith develops and grows. We are sure that it will conquer because we of the Underground Church have seen it conquer again and again. Christ loves the Communists and other “enemies of the faith.” They can and must be won for Christ. Whoever wishes to satisfy the longing of the heart of Jesus for the salvation of the souls of all mankind should sustain the Underground Church in her work. Jesus said, “Teach all na­tions.” He never said that we need governmental permission to evangelize. Faith­fulness to God and the Great Commission compels us to reach beyond borders to people in restricted nations. We can reach them by working with the Underground Church already there! Components of the Underground Church Three groups compose the Underground Church. The first group is the thousands upon thousands of former pastors and ministers who have been removed from their churches and from their flocks be­cause they would not compromise the gospel. Many such pastors and ministers have been imprisoned for years and tortured for their faith. They have been re­leased—and have promptly resumed their min­istry—secretly and effectively ministering in the Under­ground Church. Though the Com­mu­­nists and other types of governments closed their churches or replaced them with more “reliable” min­isters, these pastors continue their ministry more effectively than ever by working secretly in underground meetings in barns, attics, basements, and hayfields at night—or anywhere believers gather secretly. These men are “living martyrs” who will not cease their ministry and who risk more torture and re-arrest. The second part of the Underground Church is the vast army of dedicated lay people. One out of every five people in the world live in Communist China, where thousands of lay Christians evangelize without “permission.” Persecution has always produced a better Christian—a witnessing Chris­tian, a soul-winning Chris­tian. Communist persecution has back­fired and produced serious, dedicated Christians such as are rarely seen in free lands. These people cannot understand how anyone can be a Chris­tian and not want to win every soul they meet. The Red Star (the Russian Army newspaper) attacked the Russian Christians, saying, “The worshippers of Christ like to get their greedy claws on everyone.” But their shining Chris­tian lives won the love and respect of their fellow villagers and neighbors. In any village or town, the Christians were the most liked, beloved residents. When a mother was too ill to care for her children, it was the Christian mother who came over and looked after them. When a man was too ill to cut his firewood, it was the Christian man who did it for him. They lived their Chris­tianity, and when they began to witness for Christ the people listened and believed—because they had seen Christ in their lives. Since no one but a licensed minister can speak in an official church, the millions of fervent, dedicated Chris­tians in every corner of the Communist world win souls, witness, and minister in marketplaces, at the village water pump—everywhere they go. Communist newspapers admitted that Chris­tian butchers slipped gospel tracts in the wrapping paper of the meat they sold. The Communist press admitted that Chris­tians working in places of authority in Communist printing houses slipped back in late at night, started up their presses, and ran off a few thousand pieces of Christian literature—and locked up again before the sun arose. The Communist press also admitted that Christian children in Moscow received Gospels from “some sources” and then copied portions by hand. The children then placed the portions in the pockets of their teachers’ overcoats that hung in school closets. The vast body of laymen and laywomen is a very powerful, effective, soul-winning missionary force already in every Communist land. These millions of dedicated, true, and fervent believers in the lay church have been purified by the very fires of persecution that the Communists hoped would destroy them. In Communist Cuba, thousands of house churches have sprung up despite government harassment. The ecumenical council of Cuba is mainly composed of Marxist church leaders. The third vital part of the Underground Church is the large body of faithful pastors in the official, but bridled and silenced “churches.” The Underground Church is not something completely separate from the official church. During the reign of communism in Poland, Hungary, and the former Yugoslavia, many of the pastors of the official churches secretly worked in the Underground Church. In some countries there is an interweaving between the two even today. These pastors are not allowed to speak about Christ outside their tiny, one-room churches. They are not allowed to have children’s meetings or youth meetings. Non-Christians are afraid to come. The pastors are not allowed to pray for ill church members in their homes. They are fenced in on every side by Communist regulations that make their “churches” all but meaningless. Very often these pastors, faced with controls that make a mockery of “freedom of religion,” courageously risk their liberty by carrying on a parallel secret ministry that goes far beyond the government’s limitations. These pastors secretly minister to chil­dren and youth. In the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia, they evangelize secretly in Christian homes and basements. They secretly receive and distribute Christian literature to hungry souls. They risk their freedom by secretly ignoring the official limitations and ministering to hungry souls all around them. Seemingly docile and obedient on the surface, they risk their lives to secretly spread the Word of God. Many such men were discovered and arrested in the former Soviet Union and received several years of imprisonment. More men and women are arrested today. They are the vital parts of the Underground Church in restricted nations. Former ministers who have been expelled from their churches and persecuted by government officials, the lay church, and official pastors who secretly carry on a much larger and extensive min­istry than they are permitted—all these are working in the Underground or “unofficial” Church. And the Under­ground Church will last until communism and other “isms” are defeated. In some lands, one part is more active than another—but all are there, working for Christ at a great risk. A man who travels frequently in Communist lands and who is very interested in religious questions came back and wrote that he never met any of the Under­ground Church. It is like traveling in Central Africa among uneducated tribes and coming back saying, “I in­quired thoroughly. I asked them all if they speak prose. They all told me that they don’t.” The truth is that they all speak prose not knowing that what they speak is prose. The Christians of the first dec­ades did not know they were Chris­­tians. If you had asked them about their religion, they would have answered you that they were Jews, Israelites, be­lievers in Jesus as Mes­siah, brethren, saints, children of God. The name “Christian” was given to them by others much later, for the first time in Antioch. None of the followers of Luther knew he was a Lutheran. Luther protested vigorously against this name. “Underground Church” is a name given by the Commu­nists, as well as by Western researchers of the religious situation in the East, to a secret organization that formed spontaneously in all Com­munist nations. The members of the Underground Church don’t call their organization by this name. They call themselves Christians, believers, children of God. But they lead an underground work, they meet secretly, they spread the gospel in clandestine meetings, attended sometimes by the very foreigners who claim that they did not see the Under­ground Church. It is an adequate name given by the adver­saries and by those who look lovingly from the outside to this wonderful secret organization. You can travel years throughout the West never meeting an international spy net, which does not mean that this spy net does not exist. It is not so stupid as to show itself to the curious ­travelers. In the next chapter, I will quote some articles printed dec­ades ago by the Soviet press, proving the existence and growing importance of this courageous Underground Church.