Communist Repression Revives Christianity
Communist Repression Revives Christianity
Follow @KnightsTempOrgAs anti-Christian laws such as the Equality Act open up American Christians to persecution, leftist lawfare attacks and even violence, we need to remember one thing: Such trials and tribulations are NOTHING compared to the sufferings of the Christian martyrs whose courage, endurance and inspirational sacrifice spread our faith all over the world.
The most obvious and terrible wave of anti-Christian hatred and persecution in recent times was under the brutal Communist regime in the Soviet Union - whose direct ideological descendants are now shaping up to do the same all over again in the West.
Yet there is nothing to fear from whatever they do. Just look to Russia where the poverty of atheist Communism almost killed the respect for its historical culture, yet from this very repression of human diversity came the massive Russian revival that is currently sweeping the East.
In the Soviet Union, people were were forced to adhere to an atheist tyranny that denied them religious freedoms. The spoken goal was to eradicate religion and old traditions all together. They were also told that God is dead.
Yet Christian Orthodoxy experienced a massive revival in the Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union precisely under the tyranny of atheism under the Communist decades.
Today over 70 % of the Russian population adhere to the Orthodox Christian faith, maybe the most under-reported revival in our time.
This is quite puzzling. One would expect Christianity to diminish and disappear under such ruthless atheist repression, yet the very opposite happened. The more dissidents sent to the Gulag, the stricter Communist control over the media, the more persecution against Russian churches – the larger grew the faith in religion.
It may seem that the God factor rationalized human suffering in such a way that the repressed Russians found a higher meaning in life through the Conservative, religious and traditional world view. They concluded that reverence for history, not the abolition of it is important for a flourishing culture.
Today, millions flock to the Russian Orthodox churches, adhering to the Orthodox way of life. Considering that Russia until the fall of the Soviet Union was a starkly strict atheist state nation, this development is startling.
Atheism did not produce the Marxist utopian society it professed to, the meaninglessness of atheism drove Russians back to the traditional, Conservative faith.
Orthodox Christianity understands suffering and gains its strength from it. The early Christians suffered and were persecuted, almost all the apostles died as martyrs. It was in the catacombs that the divine liturgy and services was worked out in the constant expectation of death, writes Rose.
In the state of suffering, something goes on which helps the heart to receive God’s revelation as man is humbled. God becomes great and man merely his servant.
A lifespan to the genuine Christian is a question of an eternal story; life to an atheist is limited to a few years on earth which ends at death. The two remarkably different world views rise from these vastly differentiated approaches to life and death. For the Orthodox Christian, sending him to Gulag and killing him there is but the beginning of his long journey to eternity.
The role of Christian martyrdom in the resistance to the rebranded Communist tyranny of the Great Reset is one of the subjects explored in the new Deus Vult book - The Great Reset Resistance. Order your copy right now!