Where is Your Bible? Is the Church Ignoring ‘the Oracles of God’?
by Eric Metaxas, Stan Guthrie, Breakpoint:
Two majors with the KGB stood over Gavin Ashenden, who was caught smuggling Bibles into the old Soviet Union during the eighties. Who were his contacts, and where were the Bibles going? If Ashenden didn’t cooperate, the KGB officers warned, he’d be convicted of smuggling gold bullion into the country—because of his gold wedding ring! Alas, this trumped up charge was no joke. The sentence was 20 years in a Siberian labor camp.
But Ashenden stood firm, and they finally let him go.
If only Christians in the West would do likewise when it comes to the Bible. Ashenden, who’s an Anglican priest and a contributor to the BBC, was back in Russia this month and got an earful from some of the Russian people, who accused Western Christians of capitulating to secular culture, especially when it comes to the redefinition of marriage. They told him “we have lived under the dead weight of atheist secularism, and we know how empty and dangerous it is to human flourishing.”
In “Anglican Ink” Ashenden notes that when the Marxists took control of Russia a century ago, they first set their sights on Christians and the churches—and they’re doing it again. As before, he adds, “The cultural and political screws are slowly tightening against those who do read the Bible and keep faith with it in the public space.”
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