The Russians' Secret: What Christians Today Would ... - GOD'S WORD

with Christ I cannot help but share what I have found!”Cries of disgust and impatience rose from around the room. “We don’t need yourpreaching! Hush him up comrades, judges! Give him a week in solitaryconfinement and we’ll see whether Christ gives him hope and joy!”It was time to close the court anyway. The prosecutors had said what they plannedto say. The judges had listened to the de­fendants long enough. After a brief recessand the defendants’ last address their verdict came: Vasily, Nikolai and LyubovKhmara, three years in a labour camp after processing in a local jail.Three years. Without Nikolai, the chief encouragement in their new way of life,the time looked long to Mariya and their four children. But it turned out short.After two weeks the police asked Mariya to pick up her husband’s body. He haddied, they said, and would come home in a sealed coffin.Neither Mariya nor the other believers of the Kulunda Steppe could believe thatNikolai had died a normal death. He was not old. Since he had stopped drinkinghe had enjoyed excellent health, so they pried the lid off his metal coffin to seehim.Their imagination could not have prepared them for what they saw. Bruisescovered his body. People in the prison had burned the palms of his hands and thesoles of his feet. They had torn out his finger and toe nails. They had taken asharp, heated object to puncture his abdomen and his legs were swollen and blue.Already horrified, Mariya noticed his mouth stuffed with cotton. When sheremoved it she saw they had pulled out his tongue.Piece by piece, the believers at Barnaul learned the story of Nikolai’s death in jail.Other prisoners told how he had spoken fearlessly to everyone about Christ. Theytold how he had com­forted the downhearted and warned the godless to repentuntil they fell on him in senseless rage.Nikolai’s funeral was sad, but not hopeless. Many other believers were in prison atthe time. Some of their wives and children could attend. But the fu­neral, as youngpeople sang and those who had known Nikolai spoke to the crowd, turnedstrangely from grief and horror into an atmosphere of other-worldly joy. “Do notweep for Nikolai,” Mariya admonished her friends through tears. “He is with the