To Russia With Love
“This is the room you never want to be in.”
The former CIA agent with short, graying hair paused to let his warning gather more weight. The seriousness in his eyes said enough, but he needed to be painfully clear.
“Once you’re in here, we can’t make guarantees about what they might do to you.”
We all sat still and quiet as he looked around the group and made eye contact with each of us. Each man and woman had made a critical mistake during our training session and was brought to the room.
He broke the severe silence and said “Let’s give this another try, but if you fail again… you’re out of the program.”
We were led from a cramped interrogation room back into the windowless warehouse. He took us back to the beginning of the course, passing a variety of checkpoints with barriers, spotlights, and the occasional guard dog. Stern-looking men in Soviet military uniforms watched us walk by, speaking Russian to each other in low tones. I tried not to stare at the guns slung around their shoulders. They were not props. They were very real AK-47s.
I wondered if they were loaded. That prospect made me uneasy, but that was the point. Our hosts were intentionally intimidating. The whole experience was meant to simulate border crossings into and within the Soviet Union. From the moment we’d entered the warehouse it was as if we’d been transported across the world, though we were in the middle of Colorado.
This was a rehearsal, a trial run to test how well we had been listening over the past week of training. Getting into the Soviet Union was one thing. Getting back out would be nearly impossible if we let slip what we were doing. We had made mistakes. We needed to be perfect.
It was 1987. The Soviet Union was still an atheistic superpower. For decades the communist party had pursued aggressive expansion abroad and pushed the political limits against the United States.
If you were born after this ‘Cold War’ it may be difficult to understand the deep distrust between the two nations. The tension pressed itself all the way down to the ground levels of the culture.
The average American felt a great deal of angst, and for good reason—behind the political saber-rattling were the sabers. The bombs. Each nation had enough nuclear warheads aimed at each other to obliterate their enemy multiple times over. Doomsday was always a mere 20 minutes away. The only promise both sides were certain to keep was a bleak one: If anyone shoots, everyone burns.
In this environment, information was critical. The world had not yet gone wholly digital, so gathering intelligence was still done the old fashioned way: spies. Both sides had them. The Soviets were especially suspicious and vigilant when it came to foreign visitors.
Their government also viciously rooted out opposition within their own borders. Anyone perceived as a threat was watched carefully, including those with religious beliefs. In a political system that claimed ultimate authority, there was no room for a Divine Sovereign among its people. Many western Christians believed the Soviet Union was a country closed to the gospel.
Yet, the Holy Spirit is free to move behind any border. He was at work, and His sheep were there. There were Russians who quietly, hungrily sought out God and the resources to know Him. Multiple ministries were carefully laboring to connect with hidden communities of believers inside the Soviet Union.
It was to this purpose that I’d been secretly contacted and called, along with a small group of others. The warehouse was the final test following a week of intensive (and unusual) training. We were missionaries receiving spy training.
Spies export state secrets, a once-and-done problem for the Soviets. Missionaries carry information in, which, if embraced by the people, creates a long-term problem. The gospel is, quite possibly, the biggest threat to regimes of control. We needed to be ready.
How I was contacted and recruited, is (alas) too much to dive into here. It deserves a chapter or two of its own and would sound as if it were ripped from the pages of an espionage paperback: “Tomorrow, go to the Philadelphia Airport, to such-and-such airline counter where a ticket will be waiting for you with your name on it. Take that flight and someone will contact you when you land. Tell no one.”
But that’s a story for another time.
This story is about God at work. Everywhere. There are people that want to know Him. Everywhere. Even in the darkest places, His Holy Spirit has prepared people for the light and they simply need someone to tell them.
Jesus didn’t bid us to pray for a more bountiful harvest. The scarce resource is the laborers. He calls workers to the fields and you and I, whether by extraordinary means or simple obedience, can be used by God if we will make ourselves available. It’s a plentiful harvest, but there’s a labor shortage.
We all made it through the checkpoints on the next try. Our handlers were satisfied. Now we would go home, practice Russian, and create a plausible reason to be away from work and home for four weeks, with little notice. With the exception of spouses, no one could know what we were doing–not even our ministry leadership. This was off the books.
Early in the process, I’d asked how we were supposed to raise the money for a trip too secret to talk about. “You’ll just have to pray the money in,” I was told.
God provided through an unrequested, single gift (multiple times larger than any other we’d ever received), so I continued the process. I’d been trained and vetted. Now I just had to wait.
In November 1987 it was the 70th anniversary of the Russian revolution of 1917. I received the call, enacted my alibi, and flew to London where the team assembled. Like a spy novel, someone told us to go to a specific locker (airports had them back then) where we picked up documents, our itinerary, and the contacts we would be meeting.
We would be dropping off follow-up materials and resources for underground churches and individuals in various places around the USSR. Evangelism was a possibility, but had to be done cautiously.
Carrying names, locations, and phone numbers of contacts into the country was too great a risk. We had one night to memorize that information before our flight to Moscow the next day.
The follow-up materials had to be physically carried in. While we memorized names and numbers, we lined our suitcases, jackets, and clothes with a variety of Christian literature that, if found, would immediately reveal the nature of our visit. That would be very bad.
The plan was to land in Moscow during the busiest time at the airport–shortly after dinner. Throngs of Russian travelers would make us less conspicuous. High traffic usually meant that border checks were less thorough. We would stagger our crossings and reassemble at our hotel.
It was a good plan. The pieces were in place. We were ready for everything.
Everything but the thick London fog that came rolling in.
By the time our plane rose above the dense mist, our arrival time in Moscow had been pushed far past the ideal. We would be landing well after midnight, long after the crowds had passed on to their next destination. This was a problem.
Our level of concern grew as we looked around the cabin. So many people had changed flights that the plane, originally scheduled to have 200 people, left London with only 18 passengers. We were most of them.
When we arrived in the middle of the night, the Moscow airport was nearly empty. The eerie quiet of the place amplified every noise we made. Our attire was American. The bleak and sterile Soviet architecture did nothing to warm our moods. We could not have been more conspicuous.
We were tired and nervous. All of our natural advantages had been stripped away one by one, but we couldn’t turn back now.
I was the first to try to cross over. So few people were there that I walked right up to the border guard who had just begun to check the only other person at the gate. I was already concerned, but what I observed there sent a chill down my spine and brought a new fervency to my silent prayers.
Whether out of a desire to make the night pass more quickly by having something to do, or out of sheer thoroughness, the border guard was giving the man before me the search of his life. He completely unpacked every suitcase, feeling along the insides for any hidden items. He unfolded every garment. The guard carefully inspected the man’s coat and hat, feeling all along the linings and seams for anything that might be sewn beneath them. He even methodically patted down the clothes the beleaguered man was wearing.
I thought the guard might strip the poor man right down to his underwear, which would have been almost comical, had I not been next. Instead, a bleak and terrible thought rose up in my mind.
“I’m going to wind up in the room.”
It was at this point that I remembered a prayer that Brother Andrew, God’s Smuggler, had often used when going behind the Iron Curtain … “Lord Jesus, when you walked among us, you often made blind eyes see. Right now, I need you to make seeing eyes blind!”
The guard was done, and the man began to put his items back together. My turn. One last silent plea to God, then I pressed down on my fear, lifted up my bags, and moved forward.
Just a few strides before I reached the guard, something completely unexpected happened. In stark contrast to the drab, gray surroundings of the airport, a woman in a slinky red dress and high heels walked right up to the guard. I didn’t understand what she was saying, but her tone and body language were obvious—she was flirting with him. Nothing subtle about it. The guard, now with an infinitely more appealing way to pass his time, gave her his full attention.
I had no idea what to do, so I just stood there clutching my bags. Eventually, the guard noticed me, scrunched up his face in a way that said, “Can’t you see I’ve got something more important to do?” and dismissively waved me through his checkpoint.
I had my visa and passport stamped at the next stop and just walked into the Soviet Union. I was never patted down. I never opened a suitcase. I was never even asked why I was there.
Perhaps the wardrobes of angels-in-disguise include the occasional short red dress? If that wasn’t a literal angel, God’s sovereignty includes provocative conversations at the right place and the right time. In any case, we all made it in, materials in place, with a strong reminder that this adventure was not just a matter of human planning and strategy. Jesus had sheep that needed to hear His voice. God was at work.
Time and time again, He would prove this to us.
Bishkek
We were being followed.
Ever since we’d left the student union at the local university, someone was tailing us.
Bishkek, a medium-sized city in south central Russia (now Kyrgyzstan), was one of our destinations inside the Soviet Union. It seemed just about as far from the rest of the world as it could be, but we had contacts there.
No one had been assigned to watch us when we walked from the hotel to the university that morning. The city was not strategically important to the Russians, so security wasn’t tight. We’d been able to move around with relative freedom. Yet today–there he was, a 20-something man, some distance away but clearly following us.
Part of our intense training included exercises in losing a tail. Tails usually work in teams of three. You might notice the first guy, maybe the second. But if they were any good, the 3rd man would never be spotted.
If there were other Russians following us, they were excellent. This guy? Lousy.
Rather than walking back to our hotel, we began a slow, meandering trip around the city. Our trainers called this a ‘cleansing walk.’ We pretended to be what we were supposed to be: American tourists. (Tourists who really enjoy a long, meaningless stroll.)
But these walks were anything but meaningless strolls for me and the members of my team. We felt like members of Joshua’s army walking around the fabled city of Jericho. For us, these were prayer walks, and with each step we believed God was giving us the people of this land: “I promise you what I promised Moses: Wherever you set foot, you will be on land I have given you.” (Joshua 1:3)
After a couple hours wandering the network of snowy, broken streets beneath the equally gray and white sky, he was still there. We couldn’t safely meet any more of our contacts with him watching us, so we made for the hotel.
As we began walking purposefully, his behavior changed. He was still far away, but for every one block we traveled, he covered two. No longer trying to appear aloof, he was looking directly at us. He was clearly on an intercept course and closing the distance quickly.
Now we were worried. This wasn’t normal.
Who was this guy? What should we do? He was going to be on us in a few moments.
We decided to engage with him, which seemed unavoidable. He walked right up to us and stopped.
In passable English he said, “I’m sorry, but I’ve been following you since you left the university.”
I suppressed the urge to say, “Yeah–we know.”
He continued, “I need to ask you a strange question.”
He told us that yesterday he’d met with a friend who began explaining the Bible to him. Today, they’d planned to meet again and talk about how to know God personally but they could not–the police came and took his friend away during the night.
This morning he went to the student union and sat alone. He didn’t know what to do, so he bowed his head and prayed as best he could. He asked God to protect his friend and he prayed that God would send someone to finish the story.
“When I finished praying, I looked up and all of you were standing there. So, this might sound strange, but my question is this: Did God send you here? Can you help me know Him?”
It felt like a setup, but the guy was so awful at tailing us. He didn’t seem like KGB. Plus, we felt that the Spirit was confirming that he was sincere.
We shared the gospel with him right there, on the cold, crumbling sidewalk. He went away prayerfully considering what had happened to his friend, and counting the cost of becoming a disciple. We took down his contact information and passed it on to a local ministry before we left.
The lists of contacts we’d carried in weren’t the only ones in play. God had good works planned in advance for us. Everywhere we went, there were people that were ready for the gospel. We needed to be Spirit-filled and keep our eyes open. People wanted to know Jesus.
Yerevan
I was weary of propaganda posters. Everywhere we went in the Soviet Union, they were present. I didn’t like them because they reminded me that millions lived under an atheistic government that wanted to keep the gospel far from them.
My dislike for the posters took an ironic twist in the backwater city of Yerevan. There, our main contact was a man who had recently become a Christian. We met him in his home, and went through discipleship materials over several days.
He gave me a new perspective on those banners: a quiet, wry joy and reminder that no government can stop the good news. God must enjoy irony: This young believer’s day job was painting propaganda posters.
We had a few other contacts in Yerevan. One afternoon, we waited at a rendezvous point in the city, but our contact never showed. We were being followed again.
When there weren’t enough KGB agents, the government used the Komsomol, a kind of Soviet youth club–the Boy Scouts of Communism. Kids between 13 and 17 would sometimes be asked to do a government service, and in this case their job was to “follow the Americans.”
The two young boys assigned to us did far more than that. During our long ‘cleansing walk’ they became so bored that “follow the Americans” became “get to know the Americans.” The power of boredom.
They walked right up to us, began a conversation, and we eventually wound up kicking around a soccer ball together.
When it was apparent that 13-year-old Alexander and his brother were not a threat, I pulled them aside and sat on a bench in the park, where I shared the gospel with them. Between their broken English and my broken Russian, they got through the Knowing God Personally booklet.
Alexander accepted Christ. I could see in his eyes that Alexander had understood something new–something life-changing. We finished the booklet and the boys headed home.
But as he walked away, Alexander stopped, caught in a thought. He turned and walked back to me, lifting the front corner of his coat and pulling something out of the pocket of his dusty, gray pants. He pressed it into my hand.
It was a one ruble note–not a Soviet one, but a relic from the time of the Czars before the Bolshevik revolution and the advent of Communism. It was nearly 80 years old, and difficult to find. (The communist government did not like reminders of a time when they were not in charge.)
I realized that this was no small token, so I protested the gift. “Alexander, I can’t take that from you. It’s too valuable.”
But Alexander insisted, saying, “No. You have given me the most valuable thing I have ever received. I must share with you one of my most valuable things.”
Eventually, I had to accept. I took the gift and watched Alexander and his brother exit the park until they rounded a corner, walking home through the cold afternoon light.
In each city, there were opportunities to share the gospel with spiritually hungry people. Deep behind the Iron Curtain we were sowing seeds of the gospel and discovering people who were very much ready to follow Jesus.
___
Throughout our travels, we found that every hotel we stayed in had a problem with bugs: The electronic kind.
Though the tiny microphones were less conspicuous than propaganda posters, they were a daily, annoying reality. In every city, we were given the best hotel rooms, not so much out of hospitality, but because the very good rooms were well-monitored. Someone was always listening.
Having no place to let your guard down was exhausting. We all wanted to talk with each other about all we were experiencing, but we usually couldn’t risk it.
After I shared with Alexander, we went back to our hotel. I needed some time to process and be alone. I never felt at ease in the hotel rooms because of the surveillance.
Our Yerevan hotel offered some solace. It was a tall, round tower atop a larger complex, perched on a rocky hill. We were on the top floor, more than 15 stories up, with a balcony that circled the whole building. It was one of the highest points in the city, offering a magnificent view. I went out to be alone and take it in.
Yerevan was in the southeastern part of the Soviet Union (present day Albania), nestled between the Black Sea to the west and the Caspian Sea to the east.
On that balcony, I was standing in the Soviet Union. Just to the east loomed Mt. Ararat, snow-covered and jutting high into the sky. On its opposite slope was the edge of Turkey. To the south, down the plain, lay most of the city and just beyond it, Iran–another nation hostile to the gospel. It was quite an intersection. Quite a view.
As I looked out, I felt such privilege that Jesus would call me to shine the light here, of all places, in what felt like the heart of darkness.
And right then, the heart of darkness emerged from the shadows, teeth bared.
The evening light around me suddenly dimmed, as if an enormous, invisible blanket had been thrown over the balcony, subduing the light. Within that shrouded space, I felt the presence of someone. Some…thing. I can only describe it as evil.
Then it spoke to me, with hair-raising malice.
“You see all this? This city? Iran? It’s MINE. You’re not going to take it. You think you’re something special? You’re nothing.”
“I’m going to kill you. Leave your body in a ditch. Your family and your wife will never know what happened to you. Then, I’ll kill them too. You’re no hero.”
I’d never experienced anything like this before. This wasn’t part of our training. But I did remember hearing a message on the authority of the believer when I was a student. Josh McDowell, a well-known speaker with Cru, had recounted some similar experiences, and his example came quickly to mind.
Josh had advised that if something like this happened, you should speak directly to the entity and command it to go away in the name of Jesus on the authority of Him and His blood–always mention the blood–shed on the cross for me. You should tell it that it has no authority over you (or your team) and command it to be gone.
That was all I knew to do, so I just said it aloud.
When I did so, the presence and the darkening shroud withdrew and the world seemed to brighten again.
A minute later, the adrenaline let-down came and I began to physically shake. It was a sobering, up-close encounter with spiritual warfare. This was so outside of my normal experience that it would be years before I mentioned the incident to anyone.
I wanted to mention it to you. When you follow Jesus He may take you to places where the enemy has strongholds or a long history of effectiveness. We have an enemy, and though defeated, he will fight on.
We sometimes forget that the spiritual realm is every bit as real as our world.
For the most part, we’re (mercifully) shielded from full awareness of those realities, but there’s a chance you might experience such an event. File this away in your mind.
I also mention it to help you keep perspective. Some Christians become overly fixated on the invisible spiritual world, gravitating toward either debilitating fear or obsession with spiritual power. Neither is good.
In Luke 10, Jesus sends out the 72 followers, who later come back excitedly, saying, “...even the demons are subject to us in Your name.” But Jesus reminds them that it’s not about us-them power in the here-and-now. Rather, they should “rejoice that [their] names are recorded in Heaven.”
Don’t be afraid, but don’t be arrogant, either. Delight in the redemption Jesus has given you, and offer the same to the lost. That’s our role. If the enemy tries to scare you off, Jesus and His blood have you covered. Jesus won. Say so.
He goes ahead of you, into enemy territory. He is, even now, preparing people and circumstances before you even show up.
Even if you encounter opposition, remember—you have access to a source of power infinitely greater than anything the enemy has at his disposal.
And whether you’re encountering spiritual opposition, or everything seems smooth and easy, it’s imperative that you are following Jesus. Not relying on your own wisdom and strength, but staying firmly connected to Him.