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I FOUND GOD IN SOVIET RUSSIA
By
JOHN NOBLE
And
GLENN D. EVERETT
With an Introduction by
REV. BILLY GRAHAM
I Found God in Soviet Russia was originally published in 1959 by St. Martins Press, New York.
* * *
This book is dedicated
to all those still in labor camps and
dungeons suffering persecution for
their stand and for their trust in God.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER
Introduction
By Reverend Billy Graham
NOT long ago, John Noble crossed the border of East Berlin into the American sector. Haggard and gaunt due to nearly ten years of Soviet imprisonment, this American citizen reappeared after being swallowed up in the Russian zone of Germany shortly after V-E Day, in 1945.
John Noble has brought back a remarkable story. It is not just a bleak account of the terrible things that happened to him during that decade in the concentration camps of Mhlberg and Buchenwald, in prisons all the way from Dresden to the Arctic, but an amazing account of the survived of Christian faith in the communist prisons and camps he has known.
Here is a still-young American Protestant layman telling the world for the first time of the valiant heroism of Christian laymen and clergy whom he found among his fellow prisoners in the dove labor camps and especially in the dread camp of Vorkuta. It is a story of Lutheran pastors from Latvia and Estonia, Catholic priests from Lithuania and Poland, Russian Orthodox priests from the Ukraine and Russia itself, and Baptist leaders from all over the Soviet Union. It is a story of thousands upon thousands of laymen and women who remain loyal to Christ and by their example gain converts in the very place where Christianity has been most bitterly persecuted.
John Noble tells us, too, of the Russian people whom he met, the so-called free workers, and the supervisors of the mines. He describes the deep inner hunger he found among them for a faith that offers more than the dead end of Marxist materialism. He tells us that even members of the elite Soviet police, hardened Communists all, are disillusioned with the system they serve and are searching for a better way of life.
The thing that the Russian people are missing is faith.
Noble shows us, in keen unforgettable citations of specific fact, how the Russian people feel this lack of contact with the eternal values of Christ in their everyday lives. He has returned not with bitterness but with love and understanding in his heart for those at whose hands he has suffered so much.
Throughout the world, in America, in England, in India, in Australia, there is a new spirit moving, a new search in the hearts and minds of men seeking God. We are indebted to John Noble for bringing us word from the Church behind Barbed Wire that the religious revival in our time is, by Gods grace, reaching even into the most distant and isolated areas of the world, the concentration camps of the Soviet Union.
Here is a story that will inspire every Christian! It is one of the great testimonies of our time, given by a man who himself experienced personal conversion while in solitary confinement in a Communist prison cell and who has seen in his own life the power of God to answer prayer.
He brings us word of fellow Christians holding aloft the torch of faith in an area where its gleam has been darkened. He tells us of the unconquerable faith that can win Russia, even as it rose from the lion pits of the Coliseum to sweep Rome.
Let us pray for Gods blessing upon those from whom John Noble has brought word to the free world; let us pray that their steadfast faith will convince Marxists of the error of worshiping men and material things alone. Let all who read this story be inspired to place their faith in Jesus Christ, as John Noble has placed his, to the end that mankind will triumph over the forces of godless tyranny.
I A Mission to Fulfill
DURING the decade I spent in communist prisons and labor camps I saw many terrible things. I also saw some glorious ones, things more heartening than any other news I bring out of the Soviet Union. My message is this: I found God in Soviet Russia.
I found God for myself through personal conversion and, even more significantly for the world at large, I met many others who had had a similar experience. I discovered that the Christian religion is surviving communist persecution in East Germany and in Soviet Russia itself. I found that secret worship services were held and converts won for Christ even in Vorkuta itself, one of the slave-labor camps in the Soviet Arctic.
Having learned to speak and understand Russian, I found myself in close contact with Russian engineers and workers, and realized that there is deep interest in the Christian religion among both groups. In spite of their forty-year exposure to official atheism, or perhaps because of it, they hunger for the spiritual values they have been denied.
This evidence I am able to bring back to the free world, and through it the glorious tidings of a faith that cannot be killed. I have seen Christianity under the most terrible persecution it has suffered since the days of Nero, and I have seen abundant proof that faith in Christ, the Savior, is still alive in Russia today in the very places where the Communists have tried hardest to stamp it out, the Concentration camps. It is triumphant testimony I have to give concerning the Church behind Barbed Wire, and I am convinced it was Gods will that I be a member of that persecuted Church for several years in order to testify that God is with it and is sustaining it.
The fact that I survived all I had been exposed to, and was enabled to return to America in good health, before the drastic sentence imposed by a Moscow court had run its full course, is proof to me that God was with me, that there was a purpose in my survival which, as I look back upon the successive phases of my prison experiences, seems nothing less than miraculous. I thank God from the bottom of my heart for His mercy.
I wish that this mission to testify had been given to someone more eloquent than Ior rather that I, to whom it has been given, were more eloquent. But I was there in Russia and am now here in America; the story is mine. As I try to convey it to the free world, I think of the words of Job. Many times during my long imprisonment, when I was tempted to lose faith and to cry out against the injustice and hardships inflicted upon me, I thought of Job. He, too, endured much for reasons that he could not understand but nothing could shake him from his faith. In his famous pledge, he declared, All the while my breath is in me, and the spirit of God is in my nostrils, my lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit (Job 27-34).
