God’s Word Does Not Return Void
Topic:In a letter from Mils and Sandy Becker, April, 1995
“In the 1920s Stalin ordered a purge of all Bibles and believers. In Stavropol, this order was carried out completely. Thousands of Bibles were taken and believers were sent to the gulags, where so many died for being enemies of the state.
“Last year a Commission team was sent to Stavropol. They didn’t know about the history of the city at that time. But when the team had difficulty getting Bibles shipped from Moscow, someone mentioned that they knew a warehouse existed outside the town, where these Bibles had been stored since Stalin’s time.
“The team prayed together and one member had the courage to go to the warehouse and ask the officials if the Bibles could be removed and distributed again to the people in Stavropol. The answer was, ‘Yes’.
“The next day the Commissioners returned with a truck and several Russians to help load the Bibles. One helper was a young man - a skeptical, hostile, agnostic university student, who came only for the day’s wages. As they loaded the Bibles one man noticed that the student had disappeared. Finally they found him in a corner of the warehouse weeping.
“He had slipped away, hoping to quietly take a Bible for himself. What he found pierced him deeply. The inside page of the Bible he picked up had the handwritten signature of his own grandmother. It was her personal Bible. Out of the thousands of Bibles still left in that warehouse, he stole the one that belonged to his grandmother - a woman persecuted for her faith all her life.
“No wonder he wept. God was real. His grandmother had prayed for him and her city. His discovery of the Bible was only a glimpse into the spiritual part of his person. And now this young student is in the process of transformation by the Bible that his grandmother found so vital. God is making Himself known to people around the world.”
