by Billy Graham
“I was only teaching the Bible and praying,” he explained to us with a wry smile.
In most Czechoslovakian churches, the crowds were so large and the buildings so small that we could not give an Invitation for people to come forward for counseling, nor were we permitted to print special literature to help new believers. In one church, however, the pastor was determined to extend an Invitation anyway and have counselors meet with people at the close of the meeting. I will never forget one young man—probably still in his teens, and wearing a Czech military uniform—who came forward.
“That took real courage,” one of the pastors traveling with us commented with tears in his eyes. “He will pay a price for making a public commitment to Christ. Yes, it will be hard for him, and he will need our prayers.”
The trip, although brief, was memorable; and it was an encouragement to the churches, which felt it might help them in their relations with the government.
THE SOVIET UNION
In 1984 the substantial invitation I had been waiting for arrived, to conduct a twelve-day preaching mission in September in four Soviet cities, endorsed by both the Russian Orthodox Church and the All-Union Council of Evangelical Christians-Baptists. In Washington the Soviet Union’s veteran ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, supported the invitation; he even invited me to lunch at the Soviet Embassy.
However, when the invitation came, I was not at all certain I should accept it. Would attempts again be made, as in 1982, to manipulate the visit for propaganda purposes? I found myself in almost as much turmoil and indecision as I had faced then.
I weighed my response as Ruth and I sought a short rest in the south of France in June 1984, after the close of a Crusade in Norwich during the multicity outreach known as Mission England. On the cliffs above the Mediterranean shore, I took long walks alone after lunch each day, praying out loud and meditating. Then I sat on a rock or a bench and pondered some more. I talked with friends of mine at Trans World Radio in Monte Carlo (which beamed religious programs into the Soviet Union) and with a few other Christians I had come to know along the Mediterranean. Almost unanimously, they thought it was a trip I should take. From his extended discussions in Moscow, Dr. Haraszti was convinced that the 1984 trip would not be a repeat of the 1982 visit; he felt, on the contrary, that we would be given unprecedented opportunities to preach. Still, I was not certain.
One afternoon, staring out at the sea, I thought of the Apostle Paul, who had traveled those same waters centuries before to bring the Gospel to the very seat of world power—Rome, where the infamous Nero held sway as emperor. With all his heart, Paul longed to preach the Gospel in the very shadow of the imperial eagle.
That night before I went to bed, I read a familiar Scripture, 1 Corinthians 9:20, 21, in The Living Bible: “When I am with the Jews I seem as one of them so that they will listen to the Gospel and I can win them to Christ. When I am with Gentiles who follow Jewish customs and ceremonies I don’t argue, even though I don’t agree, because I want to help them. When with the heathen I agree with them as much as I can, except of course that I must always do what is right as a Christian. And so, by agreeing, I can win their confidence and help them too.”
Those words kept spinning over and over in my mind before I fell asleep. During the night, I woke up with those words clearly in my mind. They seemed to be God’s direct answer to my quandary. When morning came, I told Ruth that I had a settled peace about going.
Symbolic of the ecumenical spirit I found on this trip was the warm welcome I received on September 9 at Moscow’s Sheremet-yevo Airport from Baptist and Orthodox leaders. An international contingent of journalists also met us. Some of them asked sharply worded questions about our previous trip, but on the whole I sensed a friendlier spirit.
During the next twelve days, I spoke fifty times (only twenty-three engagements were on the original schedule!) at churches and in other settings in all four cities on the itinerary: Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Tallinn (in Estonia), Moscow, and Novosibirsk (in Siberia). Accompanying me was my son Franklin, who had recently been ordained to the Gospel ministry. I wished that Grady Wilson could have been with us—we had been tourists together when we visited Moscow twenty-five years before—but this time his health did not permit him to travel.
In the following days, both domestic and foreign media cov-erage was unparalleled for a religious spokesman visiting the Soviet Union. Ed Plowman from Washington, our press coordinator, noted, however, that none of the Western journalists reported my call for opening more churches and distributing more Bibles. TASS, the official Soviet news agency, as well as other Soviet media, covered the visit, omitting my religious comments but selectively including statements about peace.
In private talks with authorities, I urged a more enlightened attitude toward the religious community and specifically a greater tolerance for dissidents, such as the Sakharovs, whose case was world-renowned. In some of these behind-the-scenes conversations, discussion tended to be quite frank and thorough. In addition, what no one outside of my staff knew was that I had conceived on my own initiative a letter that I hoped and prayed I would get a chance to present to Boris Ponomarev, my acquaintance at the Politburo from our previous trip.
As for the preaching, the audiences that overflowed the churches and cathedrals I preached in welcomed the Gospel with great joy. Their smiles and tears were mixed as they waved to me or stretched their arms through the crowds to shake my hand or give me a flower.
The grandmothers, with their babushka-covered heads, seemed to predominate. But the congregations were not made up solely of old women, as a casual observer might have supposed. Photographer Carl Mydens, who was covering our trip for Time magazine, let me in on a secret. Under many a matronly kerchief were young women and girls—he was right, I saw when I looked closely—with their ruddy cheeks and radiant smiles and sparkling eyes. We also saw many men and even a number of children in the services.
Within the Soviet Union, I had the invaluable assistance of Father Vladimir Sorokin, rector of the Orthodox Theological Academy and dean of the Orthodox cathedral in Leningrad. He had been with me on the 1982 visit, and our initial rapport had blossomed into real friendship. At the end of our extensive mission in the Soviet Union, Father Sorokin gave me a lesson in evangelistic preaching.
“You’ve listened to me preach a lot of sermons now,” I said to him. “Please give me any critique you might have.”
“This is what we need in the Soviet Union,” he replied. “We need your emphasis in our churches.” His response was gracious, but he added one thing: “Put more emphasis on the resurrection. The Roman Catholic Church puts its emphasis on the Cross, and that’s fine. So do we. But we put the main emphasis on the resurrection because without that event the Cross has no meaning.”
Leningrad
Although we landed in Moscow, our first preaching stop was Leningrad, second-largest city in the USSR. Its long waterways reminded me of Venice.
Around 600 students and faculty members at the Russian Or-thodox Theological Academy filled all the seats and lined the walls of the auditorium. I shared with them the conditions I found common to people’s hearts everywhere: emptiness, loneliness, guilt, and fear of death. Then I reminded them of the Gospel answer to all those, and our responsibility to make the Gospel clear in our preaching. I was humbled when Father Sorokin told me that the message had been taped and would be used for classes in homiletics (preaching).
Ten times as many people heard the first evangelistic message of the trip in Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral, where I preached a sermon titled “The Glory of the Cross.” About half that many poured into the much smaller Baptist church to hear my sermon on Psalm 23.
The Lord gave us opportunities to meet with civic leaders in the Leningrad Peace Committee as well as with Jewish leaders at the synagogue. I was deeply stirred when I visited the Leningrad War Memorial; and when I laid a wreath at Piskaryovskoye Cem-etery, where the 400,000 who had died during t
he nine-hundred-day Nazi siege of the city had been buried in common graves, I was almost overcome.
Tallinn
Our next stop, picturesquely situated on the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland, was Tallinn, the capital of Estonia—a city with a population of half a million.
Shortly before our arrival, we were informed that an additional stop would be added to the schedule: a wreath-laying at a war memorial. Upon investigation, Alex discovered that it was a monument commemorating the Soviet “liberators” who occupied Estonia. A visit there would have made it look as if I—unlike the American government—supported the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states. We refused to add the stop, and the matter was dropped.
The vice president of Estonia’s Supreme Soviet, Madame Meta Vannas, invited me to meet with her and other members of the Presidium, along with officials of the Council for Religious Affairs and certain church leaders, including Metropolitan Alexei, who later succeeded Patriarch Pimen as head of the Russian Orthodox Church. “There’s nothing more important,” Madame Vannas said, “than to know each other and understand each other.” At the same time, she was sharply critical of President Reagan’s recent comment that the Soviet Union was an “evil empire.”
I gave them my own Christian testimony; and when I spoke of God’s love, one of them asked me a question: “Do you love Communists?”
“Yes,” I answered, “every one of them. And Jesus Christ also loves them.”
That was the message I preached later that day in the historic Oleviste Baptist Church, the largest of its denomination in the Soviet Union. The meeting was personally moving for me because my son Franklin read the Scripture and gave the opening prayer, marking the first time we had participated together in a service. The sermon was interpreted into Estonian in the main sanctuary, and translation into Russian was provided for an overflow crowd in an adjoining chapel.
When I preached on Moses at the Orthodox Cathedral of Alexandr Nevsky, with Metropolitan Alexei standing by in his gold crown and gold robe, I pointed to Jesus Christ as our leader and the only door to true peace.
Moscow Again
In Moscow’s Resurrection Cathedral, the Orthodox faithful overflowed the building to stand through the three-hour Divine Liturgy and then listen to me preach. Metropolitan Filaret even added the ordination of a deacon to the lengthy proceedings! In the 5,200-member Moscow Baptist Church, we had another lengthy service—two hours, at least. I tried to shorten my sermons in the Soviet Union, especially since translation doubled the time of delivery.
Parenthetically, the selection of an interpreter is always critical on a foreign trip. This was especially true in the Soviet Union since we did not want to risk any misunderstandings. Across the years, we had developed a set of criteria for interpreters, including not only a thorough understanding of both English and the local language but also a comprehensive knowledge of the Bible.
Occasionally, however, we were unable to find someone who met all the criteria. On one occasion in the Soviet Union, a person traveling with us who understood both English and Russian wryly told one of our staff afterward that he had been doubly blessed by the service because he had heard two different sermons—the one I preached and the one the interpreter preached! To my knowledge, however, this was the only time it happened there.
Novosibirsk, Siberia
After the Moscow weekend, we took off for Siberia, a name often synonymous with exile and suffering. What joys awaited us!
We flew across four time zones from Moscow to Novosibirsk, the largest city in Siberia. The warm reception given by the Ortho-dox archbishop and Baptist regional superintendent did not fit any stereotype we might have had of frigid Siberia. I preached to 2,000 in the very plain Baptist church on the wooded outskirts of the city (with many standing on benches and crates and peering in through the windows) and in the iconic splendor of the Orthodox cathedral, whose wooden herringbone exterior resembled the stave churches of Norway.
Novosibirsk still had something of a frontier feel about it. Already the cold September nights and the golden leaves falling from the trees gave hints of the hard winters Siberians endure. We also got the impression that Novosibirsk was a long way from Moscow—not just in distance, but in the independent spirit of its people. Regulations coming down from Moscow clearly were subject to local interpretation. Having Christians representing an unregistered church (that is, one not officially approved by the government) at an official luncheon that included government leaders would have been unheard of in Moscow.
Several miles to the south, at the famed Academic City—one of the Soviet Union’s premier research institutes—I enjoyed a vig-orous dialogue with Dr. Anatoly P. Derevyanko, head of the an-thropology department. We discussed the probability that the first human to set foot in America came from Siberia. He acknowledged that he was an atheist.
“Have you ever found a tribe or a group of people anywhere in the world who doesn’t believe in God, or some type of higher being?” I asked.
He thought for a moment. “No, I don’t believe we have.”
“Then if man is a worshiping creature,” I asked him, “why is it you believe in atheism? Doesn’t this universal belief in a higher being suggest that there must be a God?”
He smiled. “Well, I think I’ll have to get some of my colleagues to help me out on that!”
After several days in Siberia, we flew into the four-hour sunset back to Moscow. By the generosity of the archbishop, I carried with me two symbols—a traditional fur hat and a beautiful gilded Or-thodox icon—to remind me of our shared humanity and faith.
Moscow Yet Again
In 1884, the year after Karl Marx died, a movement was born in Russia that would outlast Soviet Communism. Now, a century later, the Baptists were celebrating the centennial jubilee of their denomination, and they invited me to speak to their gathering.
I tried to encourage them by pointing out spiritual truths that never changed, regardless of the conditions under which we ministered: God and His Word, the moral law, human nature, social responsibilities, God’s promise to be with us in all circumstances, and God’s way of salvation.
In Moscow, as in Leningrad at the start of the trip, I met with Jewish leaders, including Adolph Shayevich, chief rabbi of Moscow. Our meeting in the synagogue was scheduled early in the morning. Several American reporters and photographers went with us.
“Do you want to use my cap?” asked one of the photographers diplomatically, reminding me of the Jewish custom to cover one’s head in a place of worship. I accepted his offer.
Then came an invitation to the Kremlin.
On the next to the last day of our trip, I was once again whisked through one of the Kremlin gates and welcomed by Boris Ponomarev. He still held the important position of chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and was still a member of the Politburo. Although Ponomarev was not as well known in the West as Andrey Gromyko or other foreign ministry officials, his position meant that he oversaw all foreign policy matters.
We met in the same office where we had met in 1982. A cut-glass bowl filled with a variety of fresh fruit remained undisturbed at the center of the round table throughout the meeting, even though a knife and linen napkin were laid on a saucer beside each of us.
We sat across from each other, both of us wearing dark blue suits and dark ties. In his mid-seventies, he was small in stature, with thinning hair that grayed at the temples. But his eyes were like little cobalt jets that fixed on me with a penetration that might have made me squirm if he had not been so congenial.
After a few minutes of picture-taking, the media people were dismissed, leaving us to begin our serious conversation. Mr. Ponomarev spoke to me through his interpreter for about forty minutes, cordially but uncompromisingly expounding the Soviet position on foreign policy. His mind seemed rapier sharp, and he exuded a quiet self-confidence, as would be expected of a Politburo member with life tenure.
When he fi
nished, I requested permission to speak from my prepared letter, not reading it word for word, since it was so long, but citing the high spots. I expressed appreciation for the opportunity I had been given to come to the Soviet Union, stating that my primary purpose was to have fellowship with my fellow Christians and to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I then took note of the strained relationship between our two countries and the danger it presented to the whole world. My desire, I said, was to build bridges between our nations, and I expressed the hope that our peoples could get to know each other through cultural, educational, commercial, and religious exchanges; this could, I stated, defuse much of the tension between us.
Then I tackled a series of issues that had direct bearing on human rights and religious freedom. I noted that America had many millions of religious believers and that as long as they felt their fellow believers were being oppressed by the Soviet government, the chance of better relations between our countries was very slim.
Furthermore, I pointed out that religious believers were some of the USSR’s best citizens—honest, hard-working, not prone to the common Soviet problems of absenteeism, alcohol, and theft. Amer-icans, therefore, found it hard to understand why Christians in the USSR could not practice and propagate their beliefs as freely as nonbelievers. I urged that the process of opening new churches and the printing of Bibles be speeded up, and that Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union, the training of rabbis, and the teaching of Hebrew to Jews who desired it be permitted.
In closing, I underscored something I had said repeatedly in other conversations: “We must not only talk about how much we need peace; we must also establish suitable conditions for peace. Improving the situation of believers in the Soviet Union would be one of the most important steps you could take in that direction.”
There was one more thing that I wanted to tell him before I was through. I sketched briefly my boyhood and youth on the farm in North Carolina, where I had been bored by the religion of my parents. “However,” I said, “through a series of circumstances, I came to know Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior.”