This is the
WHAT MATTERS
MARTYRS PAGE
The facts of the stories of the martyrs are known, in part. Our knowledge of the meaning of martyrdom is superficial, at best. May it always be so.
They died for believing in what matters - for believing and speaking boldly. Only believing and only speaking ... basic rights we accept as 'given' but which relatively few even in our time are able to indulge.
We believe, in part, because they were willing to die for what they knew to be true. We know their testimony to be true, in part, because they accepted death rather than deny the witness of their senses. To speak the truth in the face of death is the essence of martyrdom. Their deaths were a gift to all generations and there is no greater gift.
Lest we forget - Ivan Vasiliyovich Moiseyev:
U.S.S.R.: 1972
So young. So naive. So full of life's promise. So obviously chosen for purposes divine. So suddenly and brutally removed from this world, deprived of all but those marvelously completed purposes. His story (as told in the book: Vanya, by Myrna Grant, Creation House, Wheaton IL, 1974, 223pp.) reads like an extension of the biblical book of ACTS: miracles, deliverances, testimonies before authorities - and martyrdom.
Vanya, as he was known by friends and family, was only 16 when he accepted Jesus Christ as his Saviour and Lord in a secret (illegal) Baptist church in Moldavia, a small republic of the former Soviet Union, situated just above the Black Sea. Being 'Christian' had its disadvantages in Bolshevik society but it was entirely possible to survive; in fact, the authorities considered all religious belief within the doctrinally Atheist U.S.S.R. as a 'survival', a holdover from pre-revolutionary, pre-enlightened times ... and they had devised various means to educate their less-enlightened citizenry out of such beliefs.
Vanya was only 18 when he was drafted into the Red Army - and he was only 20 when he was martyred for his refusal to deny his tender faith. They could not, would not, let him successfully complete his two-year enlistment and be honourably discharged from that proud bastion of revolutionary strength and purpose with his illegal, irrational, and irrepressibly infectious faith intact. Something had to be done ... and something was.
They said he drowned. They lied.
When his welded-shut coffin was forced open by his suspicious parents prior to burial, as was their right, his almost unrecognizable body bore the marks of beatings and burnings, front and back, head to foot. (This was documented, purposefully and painfully, with pictures and affidavits from those present.) He had been murdered, tortured to death, by the country he faithfully served, on yet another great battlefield in that long war against God, in a last, failed attempt to 'educate' him out of this mysterious faith in the unseen Creator that he would not and could not deny.
Sketchy details of his persecution had been tentatively told in his many letters home, then graphically told, in person, during his furloughs, his last one inexplicably approved through bureaucratic confusion, in spite of the unfolding plan of his commanding officer for a relentless and increasingly violent campaign to break him - or to make him an example for his fellow soldiers and to rid the military and Soviet society of the anachronistic taint of faith. Vanya got one last trip home to see family and friends just before his death. Some, hearing the inspiring stories of God's grace working through his ever-more-difficult position - and recognizing the inevitable outcome (as did Vanya himself) - taped these last testimonies and preserved for the record this saga of unbelievable perseverance and courage in the face of imminent death.
And Vanya's faith was, indeed, a much-evidenced faith, a trial and a trail of sufferings that began with his simple admission before an officer that he prayed to God, eventually leading to documented miracles, stunning miracles, before individuals and before hundreds, that convinced many in that militantly atheistic, marxist society that there is truly a God in Heaven. In spite of concerted efforts to purge the official record of all traces of this story, the documentation has survived, being passed from house to house and church to church, some of it reproduced in this book. The tale of this unshakable testimony is known in many countries now and told in reverent tones in many tongues. It continues to challenge, to inspire and to bring hope to many living in circumstances still risky, even deadly, for the faith that proclaims everlasting life.
Ivan Vasiliyovich Moiseyev was not the first Red Army martyr for Christ. Apparently, however, because of this young man's steadfastness unto death, he may have been the last ... yet another victory and blessing won for us by the blood of the martyrs.
Today, there is much talk of martyrdom in the world. Many are dying. Mostly, it is murder. There are martyrs like Vanya, to be sure, murdered for espousing their faith - but mostly it is the murderers talking of martyrdom. The distinction is vast and important. The distinction matters.