The suffering endured by Christians during the Soviet period gives an indication of the kind of suffering that Christians can be expected to suffer during the "half-week" period when the Beast has sway over the Christians of the whole world. Christians in the West who have not had to suffer such tribulations can learn from those who endured persecution under the Beast "that was", the former Soviet Union.
Nicolas Berdyaev argues that the passionate tone of anti-religious propaganda and persecution in Soviet Russia can be understood if one realises that Communism is a religion that is striving to take the place of Christianity. Communism persecutes all religions because it sees itself as the one true religion and can therefore cannot suffer others. Berdyaev writes: Communism is in actual fact the foe of every form of religion and especially Christianity, not as a social system, but as itself a religion. It wants to be a religion itself, to take the place of Christianity. According to Berdyaev, communism is a dictatorship which is not only political but also a dictatorship over spirit, conscience and thought.
The communist government, states Berdyaev, is unlimited government, which finds its motive power in hatred of Christianity, in which it sees the cause of slavery, exploitation and darkness of mind. Berdyaev sees that there is a domain in which communism is changeless, pitiless, fanatical and in which it will grant no concessions whatever, namely its world outlook, of philosophy and consequently of religion. The communists hate Christianity and religion in general.
In The Russian Revolution he writes that communism is the kingdom of this world, the last and final denial of the other world, of every kind of spiritualy. The Communist state is a sacred, theocratic State, which takes over the functions that belong to the Church. Communism is a system of extreme social monism where there is no distinction between State, society and the Church.The only thing to pit against integral Communism, is integral Christianity. If there is not a Christian revival in the world, atheistic Communism will conquer over the whole earth in the name of Antichrist.
Nicolas Berdyaev sees in the Communist Party something in the nature of a religious atheist sect. In The Russian Revolution he devotes his second chapter to “The Religion of Communism”. On its spiritual nature, he writes that the spirituality of communism is a dark, Godless spirituality.
The Jesuit Vincent Miceli describes communism as anti-Church Church, as anti-catholic catholicity; as anti-Messiah Messianism. Its humanism is a deliberate transposition of Christian revelation into secularised, pseudo-scientific doctrines. Private property is seen as the original sin of mankind. Communism sees the Church as the ultimate enemy that must be destroyed. Miceli thinks that communism is so intensely anti-Christian, that the best weapon to defeat it is the sword of the truth of Christ and love as incarnated in His Church. He writes:
The Catholic Church sees in Communism that latest, most organized, most pernicious incarnation of antihuman, anti-God diabolism.
Richard Wurmbrand also sees Marxism akin to a religion, with its own Bible, namely Capital by Karl Marx, with Satan as its god.
In his book, Soviet Saints, he presents reports from the Soviet Press which reveal the persecution of Christians. The articles range from 1961-1968 and reveal the penalties handed out by the courts to those found simply practising their religion. Clergy were accused of various crimes that they had not committed. Children were removed from parents who encouraged their children to be religious.
To the Bolsheviks, Marxism is not just another political and economic theory but the supreme gospel, an infallible truth that prophesies universal social justice.
The desire of communists to imitate the religious rites and practices of the Church is illustrated by Louis Richard Patmont in The Mystery of Iniquity:
Late rules of the communist party prescribe specific ceremonies for star baptisms and red funeral services. That this is a mere absurd imitation of the requirements of religion is obvious. These red baptismal rituals are now called Star Festivals. Each new-born child of a communist must be brought to the executive committee of the local party unit. This is to take place on a red holiday if possible. The secretary names the child and places upon it the emblem of bolshevism, together with that of the children Pioneers, after which the child is wrapped in a red flag. The service usually ends by ridiculing religion. There are godfathers and god mothers (kumy) who are called star fathers and star mothers, and these have to sign an obligation pledging themselves to the raising of the children in the fear and admonition of communism.
Louis Richard Patmont sees in the vetting of applicants for Party membership an imitation of the discipline within the Church:
Acquisition of membership in the red party is more difficult than was ever the act of becoming affiliated with even the most conservative of religious bodies. Those still eligible must be of proletarian or peasant stock and even then their family records are diligently searched. The least trace of bourgeois heredity, the most insignificant action arousing suspicion of opposition to the existing order, faith in God and the divine origin of the Bible, and a multitude of other reasons are sufficient cause for debarring the applicant from membership. The whole is an aping of the most puritanical church discipline.
Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus. (Rev. 12:17)
Its persecution of Christianity betrays the motivation communism shares with the devil, symbolised by the red Dragon in Revelation. Enmity towards Christianity is a sure sign of satanic work. In fact failure to care for Christians in distress, let alone their persecution, is seen as warranting eternal damnation according to Jesus (Matt. 25:41-46). Those who fail to care for the Christians in need, or visit them in prison, share the same fate as the devil and his angels. Conversely, those who receive Christians are blessed and will receive the reward of the righteous (Matt. 10:40-42).
In the Preface to his book The Mystery of Iniquity: An Expose of the Spirit and Nature of International Communism (1933) about Christian persecution in the USSR, L.R. Patmont states that his book exposes the unmistakable earmarks of the Mystery of Iniquity and that his book may serve to warn the Christian World against the great apostasy. Many of his chapters begin with quotes from the book of Revelation. He states that Leninism opposes all idealism of Christianity:
It is the mystery of iniquity in that it opposes all claims of religion and has determined to exterminate it at all costs. International communism fits into the apocalyptic picture. It restricts the commercial activity of those who do not bear its mark.
Since 1721, the Russian Orthodox Church had been the established church of the Russian Empire. In 1914 there were 55,173 Russian Orthodox churches and 29,593 chapels, 112,629 priests and deacons, 550 monasteries and 475 convents with a total of 95,259 monks and nuns in Russia. By 1987 the number of churches in the Soviet Union had fallen to 6,893 and the number of functioning monasteries to just 18.
One of the first major decrees of the new regime was Decree of the Soviet of Peoples Commissars, 12 January 1918, the Separation of the Church from the State and the Schools from the Church. This decree deprived the church of its status of legal person, the right to own property or to teach religion in both state and private schools or to any group of minors. The Declaration of the Peoples Commissar of Education, 17 February 1918, dismissed all teachers of religious education.There were numerous incidents of torture and murder of the clergy, such as the crucifixion of a priest in the Kherson province. A letter written by a priest of a Church in Ekaterinodar in 1919 reads:
Fourteen bishops and hundreds of priests, especially preachers of the word of God, were shot by firing squads, hanged, drowned or burned alive. Executions of clergy are often accompanied by the cruelest of tortures. For instance, they gouged out the eyes of Andronik, Bishop of Perm, cut out his cheeks, and then he was led around the town, bleeding while they mocked him.
The Laws on Religious Associations of 8 April 1929 curtailed the church’s public presence and mostly limited religious activities to services conducted within religious buildings only. The 1929 Legislation on Religious Associations is found in the Appendix to The Russian Church under the Soviet Regime 1917-1982 by Dimitry Pospielovsky together with the corresponding 1975 Amendments to this legislation. Much persecution was based upon the alleged failure of the churches to comply with these rules.
Those under 18 years of age could not be part of a religion. Churches were banned from being used for activities beyond worship, thereby outlawing parish libraries, organized religious education, prayer meetings for women and young people, religious study groups and sewing circles. The Legislation passed in 1929 also forbade clergy or monastics from wearing religious garb in public. Islamic courts in Central Asia that interpreted Shariah were fully eliminated after this legislation in 1929.
The Bolsheviks barbarically murdered massive numbers of priests. Some were picked off by snipers as they carried crosses during religious processions.
In the 1920s, the Varsonofyev Monastery stood near Lubyanka. It served as one of the first Soviet Concentration camps. It was subsequently demolished.
The disenfranchised cannot send their children to school. Red ration cards, granting to the holder the privilege of buying bread and other necessities, are not issued to them. They are doomed to starvation unless they possess illegal means of support:
Priests and ministers have been placed in the eighth class affected by the food ordinance, and therefore can anticipate only starvation. Offerings of bread, eggs, and fowl are not allowed them, yet many people share all they have with their religious leaders. The Godless Society of Moscow, in its desperate effort to break up the passive resistance of the Russian people, has organised anti-religious schools to turn out educated helpers who can professionally and officially conduct anti-religious propaganda among the masses. Many anti-God seminaries have been Established, and there are already more than six thousand students in these institutions. All Sunday schools were closed. The reading aloud of the Holy Scriptures to children has at times been punished by death. No new churches could be acquired since the state claimed ownership of them and diverting them to purposes other than worship. The second Five-Year Plan includes the closing of all churches. In 1929 alone, 1,370 church properties were either confiscated or destroyed. Only atheists could obtain work and procure food cards. The meagre food supplies sold by small private venders of food can only be purchased at exorbitant prices.
L.R. Patmont records the acts of war on Christianity:
All literature is carefully censored in order to root out any reference to religious and spiritual terms. The name of God can be used only in connection with anti-religious propaganda and blasphemous designs. The Bible is a forbidden book; it may be neither printed or sold in the USSR. Christians, who are not given the right to work in government factories, usually are not permitted to buy food in the regular stores; they must secure it elsewhere. One can buy secretly bootlegged food articles, but at an excessive price. A leading Christian worker was sent to the lumber camp for eight years. He was sentenced for three years because he carried a Bible, and for five additional years because he dared to preach the Gospel. It is difficult to describe the degree of misery in which true Christian believers find themselves in Russia at present. Truly, the Beast is making war with the saints, but the Church will not be crushed.
On June 13, 1921, the Soviet Government decreed the prohibition of teaching of religion to any person under 18. In a decree of April 8, 1929, the Constitution was changed so that religion could no longer be propagated.
Patmont’s testimony is supported by F.A. Mackenzie in The Russian Crucifixion:
in these [government] schools religion is systematically ridiculed and attacked. There is no “conscience clause” allowing children, whose parents do not agree, to abstain from attending. The child of religious parents finds it difficult, and in many cases impossible, to obtain facilities for higher education. He or she is largely excluded from the Universities and higher technical schools. Religious people are denied the right of class teaching for their children in religion under the age of eighteen. This prohibition goes so far that many priests fear to visit the families of their flock, lest they should be charges with propaganda among the children. The Russian Government is guilty of persecution of the rank and file of religious worshippers. No member of the Communist party, the governing party of the State, is allowed to take part in any religious ceremony and the Communist who is married in Church is expelled from the party. People who are prominent in religious work run a very great danger of expulsion from their employment, even in its humblest forms. The Government is guilty of persecution in depriving priests, rabbis, ministers of religion and, in many cases, lay preachers, of citizenship. It has robbed churches of their legitimate rights. Organized religion is as far as possible fettered and bound. A church or religious group is not allowed to have any central fund for collecting voluntary donations or for making a levy. Its members must not form mutual aid societies or co-operative institutions or workshops. It must not give any material aid to its members and it is equally forbidden to exercise charity to those outside its ranks. Bible study circles and even sewing circles are forbidden. Prayer meetings for young women, adolescents and children are a crime. A religious society must not open lending libraries or reading rooms, maintain sanatoria, or give medical advice or aid. It cannot invite preachers from the outside to come to it, for preachers are restricted to the local congregations. The Government runs a department of state, whose sole purpose is to control with a view to destroy religion, and this department has caused and is causing the arrest and imprisonment of many thousands of religious leaders and active workers, sending them into exile under conditions inhuman in their severity. Many have died and many and still more have had their lives completely ruined. It has deliberately evicted from their homes and driven to beggary multitudes whose only offence was their belief in God. It has shot many because of their faith. It is today holding multitudes of religious men and women in captivity or exile, for no other reason than that they refuse to renounce God.
The League of the Militant Godless weekly Bezhbozhnik ("The Godless") magazine produced blasphemies of God, Christ and the Saints.
A five-day working week was enacted which made it impossible to have regular Sunday church attendance. The celebration of holidays such as Christmas or Easter was also hampered by mandatory work on those days.
Most of the bishops arrested after 1928 were arrested for reasons surrounding opposition to Metropolitan Sergey and his notorious declaration of loyalty; opposition to Sergey was used as a pretext to close many churches and sending clergy to exile.
The pursuit of pastoral duties by clergymen became punishable by law; laws forbade Christian charity efforts, the participation of children in religious activities; priests were not to be invited to private homes; donations to churches were to discontinue; clergy were deprived of any social security rights; a lack of housing forced many priests to leave their vocation and take civilian jobs; priests’ wives could nominally divorce their husbands in order to get jobs to support their families; priests could be seen in rags in front of churches begging for alms and reportedly it could occur where priests had to mount the pulpit wearing their underclothes.
Paul Voronaeff witnessed the suffering of members of the Church in the USSR and writes about the diabolical character of the principles behind the Soviet system. His parents were persecuted because they steadfastly refused to renounce God. In his book Under the Hammer and Sickle, Voronaeff explains how the inability to get bread cards meant that priests could literally starve:
Voronaeff saw saints of God chewing dirt, and eating such things as grass and weed roots. He goes on to say that priests are not allowed to live in houses. These facts chimes with what life will be like under the Beast, where man will not be able to buy or sell without the number of the Beast. Parental care, home discipline, motherly love and fatherly responsibility are things of the past in Russia, writes Voronaeff. Such things are considered counter-revolutionary. He tells how young people were taught to hate God according to Lenin’s dictum:Preachers and others who profess belief in God and the Bible are denied bread cards. This means starvation.
Religion must be abolished. The best country is a godless country.
Stalin called for an atheist five year plam, starting 1932, to completely eliminate all religious expression in the USSR; it was declared that the concept of God would disappear from the Soviet Union.
During Stalin’s Great Terror from 1937 to 1938, mass executions took place at Butovo Polygon, a firing range near Moscow, of Orthodox priests who were later canonized as the New Martyrs. Between 1917 and 1935, 130,000 Orthodox priests were arrested and most of these were put to death.
The 22nd CPSU congress in 1961 re-affirmed the need to eliminate religion in order to build true communism and the need for true anti-religious education; it was declared that freedom of conscience did not apply to children and that parents should not cripple children spiritually; parents of children who openly demonstrated their faith at school or of children who did not join the Pioneers or wear their kerchiefs for religious reasons were prosecuted by the courts which resulted in the deprival of parental rights and their children being sent to boarding schools; parents who tried to raise their children in their faith could be also prosecuted and have their children removed from them.
Around 50,000 clergy had been executed by the end of the Nikita Khrushchev era since 1917.
Educated people who became religious believers were diagnosed as suffering from a psychotic disorder. Popular monks and nuns, and other believers, were sent to psychiatric facilities. They were given immediate release if they renounced their faith in God; those convicted of religious crimes in the Soviet Union were classed as especially dangerous state criminals, which disqualified them from amnesty or leniency. Religious crimes such as circulating a petition or organizing religious classes for children could be punished with strict terms in concentration camps; openly religious people could not join the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which meant that they could not hold any political office.
Arrests and persecution of clergy continued under Gorbachev.
North Korea is officially the worst place in the world to be a Christian, according to the annual Watch List compiled by Open Doors. The previous year Open Doors held the fundamental requirement for leader reverence responsible for fuelling a rise in persecution in both North Korea and Turkmenistan. The latter was listed the nineteenth most dangerous place to be a Christian. Christian Solidarity Worldwide have called for the implementation of a UN Commission of Inquiry recommendation that the North Korean regime be referred to the International Criminal Court. So far China and Russia on the Security Council have blocked this. The UN Commission found evidence of: extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowing causing prolonged starvation. Kim Il-Sung made no secret of his extermination of Christians. These are his own words:
Through court trials, we have executed all Protestant and Catholic Church cadre members and sentenced all other vicious religious elements to heavy punishment. The repentants have been given work, but non-repentants have been sent to concentration camps……
We cannot carry such religiously active people along our march toward a Communist society. Therefore, we tried and executed all religious leaders higher than deacon in the Protestant and Catholic churches. Among other religious active people, those deemed malignant were all put to trial. Among ordinary religious believers, those who recanted were given jobs while those who did not were held at concentration camps….There in 1958 we completely and thoroughly apprehended that group of people and had them executed. That is how we found out that the only way to fix the bad habit of religious believers is for them to be killed….The guidelines for dealing with religious believers are clearly set out in our Party’s public security policy. You need only to follow it. Silly old religionists need to die in order for their bad habits to be corrected. In which case, we must mercilessly eradicate them…
A leading academic authority on religion in North Korea reckons that around 400,000 religiously active people and their families have been either executed or banished to political prison camps. There are now no longer any religiously active people in North Korea. Visitors to North Korea are sometimes invited to attend Sunday services at a Christian church, which leads them to believe there is a degree of freedom of religion in the country, while their guides dutifully explain that it is promised in the North Korean constitution. But the reality is that there are three government-controlled churches (two Protestant, one Catholic) in the country for foreigners. The government bans any other form of organized worship as counter-revolutionary and grounds for charges of treason against the state. Buddhism, widespread, in Asia, is accepted in the North, within limits, as a philosophy, but not as a religion. The existence of deep underground Christian movements in the North is a telling sign of the absence whatsoever of any freedom to worship anything but Kim Il-sung.
Religious institutions are controlled by the United Front Department (UFD). All of North Korea and its religious institutions are staffed by UFD operatives, including the Chosun Buddhist Association, the Chosun Christian Association, the Chosun Catholic Association and the Chosun Catholic Central Committee: In practice North Korean is a one-religion state, where only the worship of the Leader is allowed. Although a cadre might be a monk or a priest as far as the outside world was concerned, in the UFD they were all faithful followers of the Kim cult.
Jang Jin-Sung warns that although you might see crosses on churches, and hear authentic Christian hymns sung, they are composed exclusively of UFD operatives and members of their families.
The North Korean regime practises inter-generational punishment. The offender and his parents and children are incarcerated too, often for their entire lives, in the camps which house 200,000 people. Kim Il Sung said:
The seed of factionalists or enemies of class, whoever they are, must be eliminated through three generations.
The most notorious camp is the one at Haengyong. Chemical experiments have been carried out on families, and there have been reports of entire families being gassed.
China forced its Catholic church to cut ties with the Vatican in 1951.
Christians were brutally persecuted in the early years. Some were burnt to death. In his testimony to the US House of Representatives in 1967, Richard Wurmbrand said:
In Red China thousands of Christians are killed now. The Red Guards, who frog-marched diplomats on the street, where everybody sees, have cut, in Chinese jails, the ears and tongues and the legs of Christian prisoners, if they did not deny Christ.
More recently, in the past two years the provincial government of Zhejiang, on the east coast, has removed over 1,500 crosses from churches. At least 400 churches in the eastern province of Zhejiang have been demolished since 2014.
In China there is a widespread underground church loyal to Rome. Across China, about six million Catholics have refused to join churches sanctioned by the Communist Party and chosen instead to worship in house churches. In 2007 Pope Benedict XVI told Chinese Catholics not to shun the state-controlled church. Another six million people are members of the Catholic Patriotic Association, a Communist-Party-controlled body which does not display images of Pope Francis. In November 2010, for the first time since 2006, the government-backed church ordained a bishop, Guo Jincai, without agreement from the Vatican. The Vatican called the event a grave violation of church law and of religious freedom. Catholics are concerned about the possibility of a deal where bishops will be formally agreed by both sides, but where the Vatican will be able to veto candidates proposed by Beijing. They fear any agreement along these lines would compromise the independence of the Church. Mr Fu, director of ChinaAid says: the move will legitimise the Communist Party’s persecution, past, present and perhaps future. (Daily Telegraph, 4/6/2016)
Cosmas Shi Enxiang, a bishop who had spent half of his life in prison or labour camps died in 2015 after 14 years in jail. Bishop James Su Zhimin is still in secret detention, having been held since October 1997.
Church authorities recently demolished the Golden Lampstand Church in Linfen northern Shanxi province, a church built with £2 million raised by local worshippers. A Catholic church in the neighbouring province of Shaanxi was demolished the previous month, twenty years after it opened. (Daily Telegraph, 12/1/2018)
European Parliament resolution 2013/2981 expressed disapproval of harvesting of organs by China of non-consenting prisoners of conscience, including from large numbers of Falun Gong practitioners imprisoned for their religious beliefs, as well as from members of other religious and ethnic minority groups. 90% of the 10,000 organs used in transplants performed per year in China come from prisoners executed in China. Prisoners of conscience are killed on demand and their organs sold for a large profit. (UN reports state that 66% of torture cases in China were of Falun Gong practitioners.) The Independent Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China concluded that China is a criminal state which has committed crimes against humanity, acts of torture, and that enemies of the state continue to be killed for their organs. (Daily Telegraph, 18.6.19)
There are around two million Chinese citizens encarcerated in more than 300 Re-education Through Labor camps. Many of these have been punished for being an unregistered Christian or a member of Falun Gong. Falun Gong comprises around 20% of the Laogai system.
One million Muslims, mostly from the Uighur community, are being held in secret prison camps for indoctrination aimed at breaking their roots and origins. Former detainees have described being tortured, forced to drop their Islamic beliefs and having their children placed in orphanages.
The Epoch Times has put together a superb book entitled Nine Commentaries On The Communist Party which is essential reading for an understanding of the evil nature of communism. It traces the history of the Chinese Communist Party and explains how the Party relies upon brutality and cruelty to cower the Chinese population into submission. It details the wicked deeds perpetrated by the Communist Party of China and is comprehensive in its scope.