Okay, wow, tons of us here. I'm sure they'll all trickle in. All right, so let's just go ahead and pray and we'll start. Dear God and Heavenly Father, we do just thank you again, Lord, for the chance to gather here and to learn again about the faithfulness of your people over time in circumstances that are very hard. And Lord, we pray that this hour would be a blessing to us, that you would use it for the building and edification of your church, God, and that we would be encouraged by the faith of those who have gone before. Amen. Okay, so, just, hey, Henry, I still feel like I'm just really loud. Is that the case? So we are continuing, culminating, getting close to the end of our study on Christian persecution, looking at it biblically and now historically. And we have come to a week that I have struggled to prepare for for some time. This is, we are going to be talking today about the Soviet era and the persecution of Christians that happened then. It's not a happy campy topic. This is sort of where we fall in the schedule of topics here for the Sunday school. Last time we met, Pastor John talked about the Reformation era and some of the persecution that happened then. Next week, Pastor John plans to talk about some more modern examples, but I thought it would be good to talk about something recent and also horrible. So we're going to talk a little bit about what persecution looked like in the Soviet Union. There's some good news, and I'm going to give you that good news up front because there's a lot of difficult stuff here, but the good news is that there have been many examples of faithful allegiance to Christ in the teeth of really acute persecution, like some circumstances that we can't even imagine as believers in the context we live in. And I think that we can look at these examples and just be encouraged by the faith of those who have gone before us. So this thing I said here, we're surrounded, what that's a reference to is to Hebrews 12, right? So the author of Hebrews says that Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses. He's talking about Old Testament saints in this verse. He's just listed the whole Hall of Faith. It's all these really iconic Old Testament names. Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race set before us. So this is a marathon, not a sprint. Looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the same, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or faint-hearted." So I would encourage you as we look at some of those who have endured terrible persecution, to also look sort of past them and see Christ himself, who has endured similar hostility, and for whose cause those saints that have gone before you were hated as well. And so it's not just that the world hates Christians. Ultimately, the world hates Christ himself. And that is the source of persecution. So, a brief history lesson. I'm sure those of you who can remember the Soviet Union, which I'm just young enough that I can't, will maybe correct some of my history here, but there's sort of six rough eras that I kind of break this talk into, and we're doing this just because these political eras tend to overlap with a certain degree of these campaigns that are anti-Christian or anti-religious, right? So there's sort of a first intense campaign against believers that happens right at the breakout of the Russian Revolution and the Civil War that happened right after the First World War. There's another campaign that's particularly intense under Lenin's control of the Soviet Union. After he dies, right, you have the Stalinist era, and there's a sort of a most intense period of Christian persecution happens during that time. And then this little thing called World War II happens, and so there's sort of a change in priorities for a while, and after the end of World War II and Stalin is off the scene, there is sort of a renewal of that persecution under Khrushchev, and then there's sort of an ebb and flow there as new leaders come to the fore, and eventually the whole thing falls apart. That political reality influences the reality for Christians in the Soviet Union. And I just wanted to draw attention to that with this little timeline here. So let's talk about the Russian Civil War. Probably not something you imagine someone saying in Sunday school. The Sunday school is on the Russian Civil War. I review this only because this is not something that I just sort of know off the top of my head and it provides some context for what happens to believers in Russia and the surrounding states. Prior to 1917, you have Tsar Nicholas II. He's incompetent because he became Tsar when he was like 12 or something like that. The incompetent leadership leads to economic disaster. World War I doesn't help that. And moreover, I think there's also two wars going on. There's the Russo-Japanese war that's happening at the same time, and the Tsar is completely incompetent to do that. Russians are dying en masse when they shouldn't. And so there's a lot of political churn, a lot of anti-Tsarist sentiment. And in the midst of that, the Bolsheviks are developing as a communist faction that's sort of anti-Tsarist, and it's explicitly Marxist and materialist in ideology. So just to make sure that I foot-stomp this, Marxist-Leninism is explicitly materialistic. They hate all religious ideologies, and that is why, to them, the state is basically God. And so they see themselves in overthrowing the state as sort of triumphing and becoming gods, in a sense. I don't think it would say it that way, but I think that psychology is at work. Things come to a head in 1917, the Tsar abdicates, there's a provisional government, also incompetent, and so by that October, the Bolsheviks oust that government, and turns out that when you turn over a government, not everybody likes that, and so that kicks off about four or five years of civil war, and during that time, there's sort of this opportunity for the Russian Orthodox Church to come back into its own. It had been kind of state-controlled ever since Peter the Great. And so it has now reasserted its own autonomy, but that's being crushed by the Leninists. And so there's sort of this philosophical tension, right? Because the Russian Orthodox Church certainly doesn't have any sympathies towards Marxist thinking, right? And so in order to sort of build up his own support, Lenin is painting them as backing his enemies, and they don't appreciate that, so there's sort of this antipathy between the church and between the prevailing Bolshevik government. And of course, they would go on to win that civil war, and so this is setting up quite a bit of conflict. In the midst of governing and fighting the civil war, Lenin issues a decree that was called the Decree on the Separation of Church and State, but that's really not what it is in the sense of how we think of it as Americans, right? It's not just about, okay, church over here, state over here, the state's gonna be independent of the church and vice versa. This is actually a decree to decorporalize the church, right? To remove its legal personhood by which it operates in the society, and so it can't own property anymore. A lot of that property and real estate is confiscated. The buildings that belong to the church, and there are a ton of them, are turned into state property. And it's also forbidden to teach religion or to advocate for it in both private and public education settings. So they're already, you know, they're not quite done winning the Civil War and they're starting their campaign against Christians. In the midst of this, because of that, the head, what you could think of as like the Pope of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Patriarch, excommunicates all the Soviets. They don't really like that. And so the Soviets respond by killing clerics. And so even during this time, where it's not firmly established yet that the Bolsheviks are going to win this war. They are fighting a war on two fronts. There's the Reds versus the Whites, but there's also the Reds versus the Church. And so during this time, you start to see large-scale killings of Church leadership and all the monasteries where you have nuns and monks are being turned into museums to or monuments to atheism and the monks and nuns who live there are forced to flee or in many cases executed and so That starts that's not that's not a small thing. It's not something that happens once and it's a tragedy We talked about this particular monastery. It's like all of them like they're Systematically going through and eliminating these monasteries In this time, there's a lot of chaos. Not a lot of things are clear, but one thing that's extremely clear is that the Orthodox Church and the Soviets are becoming their enemies. So, after there's an attempted assassination attempt on Lenin, the Bolsheviks, the Soviets, unleash the Red Terror, and this sort of coincides with the beginning of the second major program for eliminating religion in the Soviet Union. And so during that time, I mean, it's not called the Red Terror for nothing. It's an incredibly brutal time, including the murders of many clergy. And there's a book about it called A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia. If you look at the notes online, that's a hyperlink, so you can see it if you want. Monks and nuns are being crucified, boiled alive, scalped, drowned, not just murdered, but murdered in sort of an excruciating and incredibly cruel way. So it's not just a purge, it's also an ideological statement. And in 1918 alone, there are more than 3,000 murders of believers. It's not just the Russian Orthodox. It's not just that the Russian Orthodox Church is a political enemy. It's more comprehensive than that. Religious faith as a whole is under attack. These men are dressed in a way that kind of looks funny to us. And these men were all murdered during the Red Terror. And you've got a priest and a priest, and this guy is like a patriarch or something, like a bishop. And those categories, those are sort of, as evangelical Protestants, kind of don't even know What exactly those are or why you're wearing that right? And so I'm looking at these pictures and I'm kind of like part of me is looking at a different world Right that I don't quite understand but in reading about these men it the thing that kind of comes up to me is that even even though there's definitely like a cultural and church cultural difference, and certainly there are theological differences between where we would place ourselves as Reformed and Evangelical and Protestant. There are definite and significant theological differences between those beliefs and those of the Eastern Orthodox Church, but these men seem to be sincere believers. who are trying to lead their congregations in holiness and piety and love for God and worship of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so I think, you know, I can't read hearts, but as close as I can tell, these men have positive testimonies, right? These are not These are not like the stereotypical priest who's only in it for the money kind of people. These men, I just wanted to put a face on it. These are martyrs basically a century ago. This is recent, recent enough for photography to be a thing. Unlike maybe some of the saints of the early church where we just kind of have pictures that are drawn by some artists. No offense, Scott. I love artists. But these are sort of flesh and blood people that we can see. As I said, that's sort of when The Red Terror sort of marks the beginning of the second major campaign, and so there's this resolution to engage in large-scale propaganda and suppression of agitation of the church. And so you could imagine being the church and reading, like, okay, we're forming a new constitution and a new government. Looks like maybe church isn't going to fare so well on that. How about we make our desire known for religious freedom? So the church speaks out and says, hey, thanks for oppressing all those people. We still would like some religious freedom. And the response to that, of course, is more violence. And so during this time, in response to that request, large numbers of clerics are being murdered and tortured in the process. Again, this comes in the context of civil war. And so, you know, some people will say war is good for business, but it's not particularly good for agriculture. So there's a famine that goes on as a result of this war, the protracted period of war. Like I said, there were sort of three wars in a row. World War I, Russo-Japanese War, and now Civil War. And so the workers' union is calling for the church to surrender its valuable precious metal kind of stuff that it uses to do church. In the Russian Orthodox Church, the way they interact with some of the objects they use in liturgical rites is very, very different than the way we do it, and so we don't tend to have a lot of precious metals and golden crosses and iconography. But for them, it's theologically important to do that, and so there's a decent amount of gold and silver on hand. So the patriarch, he sees that actually there's probably some good to be done there if we get rid of sort of the extra stuff and turn that into the ability to feed the poor and the starving in the midst of a famine. Okay, let's do that. So he says, yes, priests, turn over a lot of that stuff to be sold, but don't turn over the stuff that's actually being used for liturgy. But after he says that, Lenin turns around and says, see, all those priests are only interested in money. They're holding that stuff back. They could be feeding you, but they're not. They're only interested in gold, not in seeing you fed. Come to the government, and the government will feed you. And so he accuses them of hoarding the valuables, and not only does that result in violence, but Lenin orders all that stuff to be seized. And this becomes a really big deal. As I said, these items are liturgically important to the Orthodox, and so it's not just an issue of letting go of them. It's actually a sacrilegious thing to do that. And so it was very heavily resisted that these liturgical implements be let go. And so there are clergy who are refusing to let Red Army soldiers into their churches to confiscate them, and they're just sort of shot on sight. And so, according to one book, which I've hyperlinked here, something like 8,000 clergy are murdered in the process of defending these liturgical implements. This man, in particular, was actually not found to be resisting that arrest or resisting that seizure, but was accused of that and just denounced and arrested under that accusation. And there was no real judicial process in place. So extrajudicially, these men are just shot and killed and robbed. And so it happened to be that this happened at night and some monks and nuns found him the next day. And so again, here's the face of a man, flesh and blood, died less than a hundred years ago at the hand of anti-religious Soviets. At this time, it's also becoming standard that not only are you forbidden to teach children your religion, but anti-religious education is becoming an educational standard in primary school by this time. OK, so I can't remember the exact year. Maybe someone could correct me. I think something like 1924, Lenin dies. I can't remember what from, but he dies prematurely, like a brain aneurysm or something like that. And so he's gone. and Stalin comes to power. And I would like to, I mean, kind of just like Lenin himself, Stalin is an absolute monster, but actually a whole new breed of monster. He's worse, if you can imagine it. And so there's a push by the Soviet leadership at this time to push more policy. And so there's this thing that happens where all the Christian intellectuals at the university level are purged, and so they're either, they're certainly removed from the job, but they're also deported. There's propaganda happening. Churches can't really publicly be seen to be proselytizing, so no tracts, no No catechism is allowed, and there's sort of this state-sponsored entity called the League of the Militant Guardless. My muscle memory has taken over, because they're not irradiating religion, sorry, they're eradicating religion. I type the word irradiating a lot, and so this is what happens. There's about a dozen words where they become photonics and lasers related by accident. So there we go. The militant guidelines are charged with eradicating religion. During this campaign, I mean, the number of functioning Orthodox churches in Russia falls precipitously, right, from like nearly 30,000 churches. Like, I don't know how many churches are in America, but you could imagine it's like tens of thousands, maybe 100,000 churches in America. And imagine going from that number to like 50. Right, these churches are being forcibly closed, and the believers are not able to meet publicly for fear of their lives. There's sort of an eastern version of Catholicism that sort of exists beside the Russian Orthodox Church, and it had had something like 1,700 churches in 1917, and by 1941, there are only two of them left. There are mass purges of clergy during what would maybe be considered the peak of Christian persecution in the USSR, and in one particular push from 38 to 39, you see something like 170,000 priests arrested, and something like two-thirds of them are shot. So, I mean, this is not small-scale persecution, and this is not minor persecution. It's widespread, and it's about as intense as it can be. And during that time, some churches are turned into museums to atheism, but you don't need 30,000 of those. So a lot of them are just destroyed as a symbol of state power over the church. So here's a large church in Moscow that was blown up. In other cases, the Soviets would just encourage people to come and loot. the churches. So the windows would be smashed just because, and anything of value on the inside would be taken. Even if it's like, you know, wood furniture has some value. Just take it. Keep yourself warm. And then, things get really complicated. World War II happens, and this surprised me, but the Nazis invade Russia, and under Nazi occupation, churches begin to reopen. There's actually a certain degree of religious toleration under the Nazis. Stalin takes some stock of the situation and realizes that he has to change his policy of anti-religious persecution because otherwise his people are going to support the Nazis. So yes, because of the Nazis' pro-religious freedom stance, churches are reopening in Russia. I was surprised by that. I'll just say that. In fact, Stalin goes so far as to disband this League of the Militant Godless, and even orders that certain atheist magazines cease to publish. Of course, you can't say why, so there's a paper shortage, and we can't be publishing magazines. So, publications are shuttered for a while. because there is an era here of about 10, 15 years of pseudo-toleration. Now, the state certainly controls the church, but by the time Nikita Khrushchev comes to power, after Stalin dies, there's something like 25,000 churches in the USSR. In fact, historians are saying something like, yeah, you know, two-thirds of people in Russia at this time are probably religious anyway, they just don't go to church. They have these beliefs, but they're sort of doing them in private because of the environment in the USSR. During this time, forced labor camps are in wide use. Alexander Solzhenitsyn is in prison at this time. So it's not like things are swimming or things are peachy, but there is a certain degree of toleration that's happening here. But, after the war, if you can believe it, Khrushchev feels that he needs to, you know, there's this process of de-Stalinization of the USSR. In an attempt to distance himself from Stalin, he actually says, well, Stalin was kind of intolerant of religion. So we're going to ramp things back up, right? That's bizarre to someone criticizing Stalin for his sympathies towards religion, but it happens. And so from the late 50s to the mid-60s, there is certainly this forced closure of churches again, and the number of churches falls to about a quarter of what it was. Convents and monasteries are universally all closed, and Russians are forbidden to make religious pilgrimages to the Middle East, for example. Seminary instruction and pastoral training become illegal, and no church activity can happen anywhere except for a church building. But that's kind of a loophole because they're blowing those all up. The clergy who are allowed to operate are also required to be part of the state intelligence apparatus, and so they're informing on their congregations, and parents are forbidden from teaching their religion to their children. In fact, the children are not even allowed to go to the church with them, and are encouraged to inform on their parents for being religious, and in many cases, if you were to catechize your child, your child would be removed from your home. So it's not just life and limb. Those of us who are parents or have parents, you can imagine how difficult this would have been. Well, Khrushchev, he was kind of a monster, like I've said. So he was actually so bad that he was removed in a coup. And his critics kind of question the effectiveness of this crackdown on religion at actually eradicating religion. So the good news about the Soviets is for as cruel as they were, they're not particularly competent. So the thing that they're trying to do here doesn't succeed all that well. And so persecution is less intense for about 10 years as there is this questioning whether persecution does any good. But they kind of regret that because now curiosity about religion, which has been gone from the scene for the better part of 50 years, it becomes this thing that people are kind of interested in, right? And so when it's discovered that some party members are dabbling in religion, there's this thought that, well, those people who are educated and still want to dabble in religion must be sick, and so we're going to send them all to psychiatric hospitals and inject them with drugs. So there's a time there in the 60s and 70s as psychology and pharmacology is developing that we're just going to interfere with the religious rights of people by intervening for their own good and injecting them with drugs to cure their psychosis. During this time, tortures and murders continue. This is not a more tolerant time where things are just medical. I mean, it's still extremely severe. And maybe this name will mean something to you, Nikolai Kamara. If you've ever read the book, Jesus Freaks, that was popular in the 90s when I was young. This is a a man who had been a thief. He goes to prison in Russia, which is no fun experience, but he meets some Baptists there, and he becomes converted and changes his life. And as he's released, his pastor is required to inform on him. So he's arrested, and he's tortured in front of his pastor. And ultimately, both his eyes and his tongue are cut out, and he's murdered there and found dumped somewhere later by his fellow church members. So, all in all, from the revolutions of 1917 until the fall of the Soviet Union, which at this point, after Khrushchev and after Brezhnev, it's kind of falling action, the collapse is starting to look like it's going to happen. All in all, estimates are that several million Christians are martyred. Now, how do you count that exactly? And we don't know the state of these people. hearts, right? Like, you can't say with any certainty, like, these are all, like, dear and precious saints, but, you know, just to have some religious identification as Christian, estimates are as low as 5 million and as high as 12 million people are murdered by the state for the reason of being religious. That's about 20% of the number of people murdered by the state overall. So the state is absolutely diabolical and monstrous in its programs here, but about 20% of that number ends up being Christians who are martyred for their faithfulness to Jesus Christ in many cases. Here's where I think things are going, but we're, you know, we're finishing a little early. Pastor John will be able to talk next week about some things that are ongoing. They're not recent history. They're like happening. But I thought, you know, if I got done early, that we could do some bonus slides, right? So, interestingly enough, you know, we've talked specifically about the USSR, but that Soviet-style persecution is happening in satellite states. You know, politically, those states are more or less independent as time goes on, depending on how much control Moscow has over them, and so you have places like Romania, where it's very sympathetic to the USSR, and there's sort of a communist dictatorship in place, but it's not exactly underneath the Soviet government. And so, I believe that's where Richard Wurmbrand, if you've read the book Tortured for Christ, he's resisting communism in Romania and tortured for the purpose of being a Christian, right? And that's what we called the definition of persecution, right? Like you're being maltreated because of your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, again, it's funny. If you're younger than I am, you won't really remember these names as well. But I can remember when I was a kid, there were these countries called Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. And over the years, it was like, where are these countries? I've never seen them on a map. And it's like, yeah, they aren't around anymore. There are new countries in their place. But in Czechoslovakia, nowadays the Czech Republic and I think just Slovakia are the two countries there. There was a concerted underground effort to resist communism that like all of the Christians who are in the country, which isn't much, are involved in resisting communism. And there's a name there that comes to mind. Václav Benda is a a Catholic man, and he's very devout, and he's like a mathematician or an engineer, and so I kind of like this guy, right? And, you know, he's doing sort of pastoral ministry to other Christians who are, you know, he just so happens to be that he lives sort of down the street from where people are being taken to be interrogated. And so we like, you go, you get your interrogation, and then you go over to the Bendah's house for soup or something, and they take care of you. And so he, you know, he said something like, you know, there's this thing that's happening where there's a disaster in that, yes, there's the prohibition of religion, but the real disaster is that we've privatized religion. It's not just that, yeah, the churches are gone, but we're actually internalizing Christianity and having sort of a private thing and never meeting with other believers. And he said, that's really never going to work. As long as we're still doing that, we cannot overcome persecution. And he is an advocate of Christians establishing means to not only meet, but also to set up parallel structures, is what he called them, in order to get the things they can't get from the state because they're Christians, right? So, one of the ones that he advocated for a lot. is homeschooling, essentially, right? I mean, like, we're doing some of the things that he recommends, right? Like, he said, like, you can't trust the state to educate your kids while educating yourself, right? And if you can't do that, then find other Christian parents who also have children who need to be educated and educate each other. I think that's interesting advice. We've certainly seen, I think the public schools, and if you're sending your kids to a public school, this is no judgment, but I think we certainly see that there's an increasing hostility there in our own country, and we're doing some of these things that were pioneered by other believers at other times facing much more severe persecution. interesting quote from Benda actually is that you know, there's this this moment in the late 80s where They don't know it yet. But like communism everywhere is about to collapse like the the Soviet Union is Barely on its last legs and all the satellite states are gonna have their own Revolutions here and so there's this call that goes out like Hey, bring a candle to the town square and just like stand here and resist communism with a candle." And he said, like, yeah, we're going to go to that. And the sure result is that they're just going to be arrested. I mean, no good can come from this. But he just felt, look, hey, a lot of my fellow Christians are going, we're going to go. And he said that when he stepped out of his door with his candle, it seemed to him that communism would last for a thousand years. And it was gone within a year. So, if you're feeling discouraged by any state of affairs, that can act in mysterious ways and very quickly. Let me recommend this book worth reading, just talking a little bit about those who have gone through the persecution of the Soviet era. I think this is worth reading. I won't get into it, but if you want to talk about it, find me afterwards. It's a good book. And I thought I would finish just with some vacation photos. It's actually not meant to be a joke. So, a few years ago, I ended up traveling in Germany. It's, of course, we all know it as unified Germany. But when I was there, I thought this picture was particularly poignant. There is a display. I mean, I've kind of given it away, but I mean, you can clearly see where this is, right? What's this? That's the Berlin Wall. And now, it's kind of funny, because I didn't grow up in Germany, so I didn't appreciate this. But the Berlin Wall is actually not that thing. It's two things. So this is East Berlin, and this is West Berlin. And there's this wall, and there's this no man's land. And don't go there. You're going to be arrested or shot if you go there. Turns out lots of people over here want to be over here, but there's this church that sort of winds up in no man's land, and in the 60s, they're like, well, you can't go to church in no man's land, so they just kind of close it. I thought it was really bizarre because there's a plaque, you know, if you stand here, there's a plaque today that says, yeah, like, one day in the 80s, you know, like, some guys came by from the state and announced with bullhorns, like, hey, we're blowing up this church, so, like, don't be here at three o'clock or whatever, because you're gonna get blown up. So naturally, people show up, and it sort of becomes a spectator thing. And so there are many, many, many, many, many pictures of this church being blown up, which is interesting because five, six years later, the wall's going to go down too, you know. But, you know, if you look at this church, you know, here at the top, you can see this iron cross, and here it is sort of falling off a steeple, and they left it there. Like, you can go see that today, and they sort of built a small chapel there by it, and I don't know if there's a faithful congregation meeting there or not, but at any rate, This is not ancient history. This happened the year I was born. This is recent, and it can happen again. So I think there is some duty there for Christians to resist that. Now what does that look like? I think that's going to look different for each person, but I think Nick has an opinion on what it's going to look like. Yeah, he has his hand raised. does not buy lies, which covers kind of the same, like, recent Soviet satellite era persecution, is that because so many clergy and pastors and priests were being arrested and shot 50 years prior to that, that the faithfulness you could have as a believer largely was to get within your own home, your own family, was a big deal to be able to try to network or be, have fellowship with other believers, because, number one, men held the direction, so likely it was, on the kids doing that. But you were never sure who to trust, because people were informing. And the state was big on that. You see anybody doing these kinds of things, you inform on them. But I guess the point I want to make in that is that it was very important for lay Christians to be able to lead at least their own families, because you didn't have that, or if you did, you had that. It wasn't arrested a long time ago. So to be able to carry on and feed your own faith and the faith of your own family from the word itself, what was half of it, was a really key thing because there is not a lot of support from other people or church leadership. Yeah, that's, I think you've said it better than I can say it, right? I mean, right there it is. I mean, you have to be equipped to whatever degree you can to train and minister to those around you. And if you're not, I mean, like, these things can happen, right? I mean, another thing that, I guess, you know, I'm kind of out of time here, but I thought I would foot stomp one last thing, right? And it's that you know, this is, it's not something that like, oh hey, you know, once upon a time people were extremely barbarous and we're not like that anymore, right? Like this is bound up in the heart of man to be this way. And so, yeah, I think one of the things that might kind of rub us the wrong way is that Believers need each other in a way that is not very American. Right? We love our independence. I don't really need anyone. I don't depend on my brothers and sisters as much as I just depend on myself. I'll take care of myself. And I think one of the points here is that, well, Yeah, I mean, you might want to be good at ministering to others and being ministered to because you might need it, regardless of whether or not there is Soviet-style persecution in your lifetime. Another thought as we close. It's not exactly my point here to just sort of sit here and denounce communism, right? I'll take any opportunity to take some pot shots if I can, but there were very real people caught up in this with no ability to flee, right? And with a very high price for staying and enduring and being faithful. And they paid it. Surely, I mean, I'm sure there are recantations, people who left the faith, but like six million people, like that is a cloud of witnesses, right? I mean like that is not like, hey, it's impossible to suffer for Christ and endure, right? And the people who endured through it and lived developed different ways of living in the midst of it. So let me encourage you that in the midst of whatever you might see in your lifetime—God, will that it be very little, I pray that it is— you can endure, and you can either endure to the end or find ways to live through it faithfully. I think that's the end of everything I have to say on this, and next week Pastor John will wrap it up. I think we're out of time, so I think we're just going to be dismissed.