One thing about GS. He convinces me that the art of storytelling is not dead.
OK, story time, this one is true.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union a certain Soviet general known as the "general of death" (because he had the annoying habit of putting a gun to people's heads and pulling the trigger, he especially enjoyed dispatching in such manner anyone who confessed to be a Christian), was involved in a helicopter crash in Siberia in which all on board were killed except for him and he was completely unharmed.
He said he exclaimed; "Bozha moi!!" ("my God," or literally "God my") and began to believe in God in that moment.
Eventually he networked with believers and using his high position, made it possible for every man in the Russian military to receive a Bible.
Those Bibles were printed in Russia by Tennesseans and passed out by them to all in the military who would receive and also to many other state run organizations such a orphanages etc. They were inexpensive paper backs done in camo with the flags of Russia and the USA crossed on the cover.
I first met the man most responsible for getting all that together and he told his life story and when he was first converted and called himself, he was illiterate and held the lowest of positions but had eventually, after elementary school as a grown man, high school, college and seminary, (he said he was elated when he went back to school that he started in the third grade, thinking since he had dropped out of the second grade he would have to start there), had met with several presidents in the White House, leaders in the Kremlin and other heads of state in various countries.
He spoke before about forty people at a meeting of a group of businessmen of an organization that was founded by an Armenian Christian. The Armenians had a prophet of the twentieth century who foretold for many years the great genocide visited on those people by the Turks and when he finally said the time is near, many many Armenian Christians fled to other parts of the world just before the carnage began. My own sect of Christians are not protestants, having never been a part of the Catholic church and trace their brand of faith back to the days Jesus ministered here on Earth and attribute the Armenian Church as playing a big part of that history.
He began by saying; "I probably make more money than all of you put together but also I probably live on less than any of you in this room, I give most of it away."
He began by telling of the preceding day when he bought the contents of a wrecked semi which was 30 gallon drums of koolaide. He had bid a dime per drum and got the merchandise but didn't make any money, he donated it to an orphanage. Ironically his most lucrative and steady income came from a business that was a partnership between a Buddhist and a Mormon.
Their business produced a good deal of waste that cost them to dispose of but the guy speaking had a market for that waste and so they gave it to him for free, just to get rid of it and he in turn sold it at a good price and his only cost was transportation.
When the people printing the Bibles were hard at work at their presses one day, in a building also occupied by the KGB (or the org that had previously been the KGB) the double doors separating the two sections of the building were thrown open and several men with thirty round clips stepped into the room, chambered rounds and leveled their weapons at the Bible printers.
They stopped the presses and looked at those men and said that after a moment a look of confusion came over the angry faces of the Russian men and a moment later they lowered their weapons and sheepishly turned and left the room, closing the doors behind them. Not a word was said and the printers continued their work and the presses continued to turn out more Russian language Bibles.
Divine intervention or no??
Even back before that a member of my own group told of passing out Russian Bibles when it was illegal and indeed could result in the death penalty if caught, and he and a fellow worker offered Bibles to some Russian soldiers who were seated on the back of one of those large (deuce and a half) military trucks. One soldier replied he would take one and when one of the men sat his box of Bibles down at the back of the truck and reached in for a book, another soldier raised his rifle and was about to come down with the butt of the stock into the back of the mans head which would have caused a severe injury if not death.
The other man said at that moment his eyes were opened and he saw an angel reach out an put his hand on the head of the soldier and that soldier lowered his rifle and sat back down as he had been before.
For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.
