A Russian's True Story
Chuks, Samuel
IGOR "NIKKI" NIKITIN WALKED DOWN THE STREET IN ST. PETERSBURG, Russia,
beside his friend, Paul. Some said St. Petersburg, known as the "Venice
of the North" was the most beautiful city in Europe, but Nikki knew it
must be the most beautiful city in the world.
Spiral-domed cathedrals and palaces with magnificent designs are awesome
reminders that Russia was once among the richest nations on earth.
Nikki's favorite site, the Hermitage, housed 15,000 priceless pictures
by artists such as Rembrandt, Leonardo da Vinci and Picasso. It was only
one of many museums whose art never ceased to inspire.
By the age of five, Nikki began studying art. By age 14, he was learning
to restore the priceless treasures. While working on ageless old
religious icons, Nikki always tried to imagine what they represented.
One picture in particular aroused Nikki's curiosity. The artist, Nikki
was told, spent 24 years on the project. What is so important about this
scene that a man would spend a quarter of a century to capture it? Nikki
wondered.
The scene portrayed John the Baptist with Jesus at the Jordan River.
If he'd ever read the Bible or heard a Bible story, those scenes might
have meant something to him. But Bibles were forbidden in Communist
Russia. Nikki had glimpsed one once. It was handwritten, hidden by his
grandmother under the pillow where she slept in a communal flat. She'd
been too afraid to ever tell him about those dangerous words.
Now, at age 20, Nikki wasn't satisfied just to know who painted the
great works of art. He wasn't even satisfied to know how to restore
them. He yearned to know what the stories about them were. Somehow, he
knew they were connected to God. He and his friend, Paul, meant to find
out how.
Nikki and Paul stepped through the door of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Inside, candles burned, flickering their light on old women who wept at
the altar. The priest, with his long ceremonial beard, robes and large
gold cross, preached sing-song style in an old Russian language Nikki
couldn't understand.
After the service, Nikki approached the priest. "How can we know more
about God?" he asked.
"Guys," the priest smiled, "This is not your business. Just light
candles, and we'll take care of everything."
Nikki stepped out of the dark church and looked around his beloved city.
He saw references to God everywhere, but the mystery of how to reach Him
remained hidden. Depressed, Nikki trudged home through the twilight.
"It was 1986 when I left that church so disheartened," Nikki says. "A
few days later, on November 5, Paul and I were walking down the street
when a tour bus pulled up and stopped. Before we could escape, tourists
poured off the bus and surrounded us. They talked to us.
"Talking to tourists was a serious crime. Being caught with $50 of
foreign currency carried a sentence of eight years. We'd been taught
that all tourists came to steal our technology, and that all Americans
were with the CIA.
"It seemed like a miracle to me when Paul and I were able to slip away
from the group before the police arrived. But even after we got away, I
couldn't stop thinking about the strangest thing those people did. They
smiled. It was so odd to me, because in Russia there was nothing to
smile about."
Two hours later, Nikki and Paul stepped into Isaac's Cathedral where
their friend worked restoring the art. Inside the cathedral, Nikki's
heart almost stopped when a smiling man approached him. One of the men
from the bus! Nikki thought. He must be with the CIA and he's tracked
us here.
Nikki was about to dash away when the man pointed to the Bible mosaics
on the walls. Nikki's heart pounded fast as the man motioned out his
question.
I know what these pictures mean, he was saying. Do you want to know?
There was nothing on earth that Nikki wanted more. But it was too
dangerous to talk here. Nikki and Paul agreed to meet the stranger on a
bridge across town.
Is this a trap? Nikki wondered when he arrived at the bridge that
afternoon. He and Paul waited nervously as the minutes ticked past.
Finally, after an hour, it was clear the man wasn't coming. Dejected,
they walked away.
"Later that day, a friend invited Paul and me to his apartment," Nikki
recalls. "On the way there we passed that same bridge. There, on the
bridge, stood the man. It was our third chance meeting in one day. My
curiosity overcame my fear."
The man was different from anyone Nikki had ever known. Joy seemed to
radiate from his shining eyes. That night, he shared the source of that
joy. He told Nikki and Paul the forbidden secret. The secret that had
been painted, etched and carved into the great cathedrals and museums of
Russia.
"God loves you."
Three words. Words that Satan had spent centuries trying to eradicate
from a nation.
God loves you.
"The truth of those words seemed to pour over me like liquid love,"
Nikki says. "I'd never known for sure that anyone loved me. I'd been
born in a Siberian prison camp where my mother was in charge of training
people to be communists.
"While I was still a baby, we moved to St. Petersburg where my mother
studied at the university and became a nuclear scientist. As a
high-ranking communist, she barked orders all day. That didn't change
when she came home at night.
"Nothing in my life prepared me for the sweet sense of God's love that
poured into my heart when that man led me in the sinner's prayer."
The man's name was David Esala. At home in Appelton, Wis., the Lord had
put a burden on his heart for Russia. Just one soul, the Holy Spirit
urged. Believe Me for just one soul.
Armed with faith for a soul, David had traveled with a tour to Eastern
Europe in 1986. He had no way of knowing that God had sent him halfway
around the world to answer the heart cry of a young Russian.
Both Nikki and Paul gave their lives to Jesus, and before David left St.
Petersburg, he gave them a small, red New Testament. Finally, they had
access to the great mystery of God.
In English.
Nikki and Paul knew only a few words of English, but they had a
Russian/English dictionary. In secret, they began the laborious job of
translating each word.
"It took us two years to translate the New Testament," Nikki says.
"Every verse, every truth that we finally understood was a milestone
along the way. I'll never forget the day we translated 1 John 4:16.
There it was in black and white. God is love."
Nikki and Paul were so excited over each new revelation. They whispered
their startling discoveries to their friends. The news was too good to
stay a secret. Their friends shared it with others. Soon there was a
group of people waiting to hear the next scripture.
One of their first converts was Paul's friend from Siberia, Matthew. An
alcoholic and vodka runner, Matthew gave his heart to Jesus and decided
to spread the gospel instead.
"We met in my mother's apartment while she worked," Nikki explains. "It
was dangerous because she was required to report Christians to the
government. But it was even more dangerous to meet at Paul's apartment
because his mother was a member of the KGB.
"All of Russia lived in a stronghold of fear, but the strongest fear was
of the police. Often they would pick someone out of a crowd to follow,
frisk and arrest. The sound of footsteps from behind made people
tremble. The sound of an elevator stopping on your floor at night could
be terrifying.
"There was distrust even among the closest neighbors. Twenty families in
a communal flat shared one kitchen and one bathroom. On a good day, you
reached the bathroom first at four in the morning. Then there was the
added stress when one family bought a chicken and tried to eat it with
19 hungry families hovering nearby.
" In a society where fear and distrust were rampant, God knit together a
group of new believers who discovered that fear was a spirit from hell,
and trusting God meant being vulnerable to other people.
God put those values to a test two years after Nikki became a Christian
when the Holy Spirit urged him to tell his mother about Jesus. Nikki
tried to imagine his mother's response. Would she hit him? Report him?
Scream at him?
Nikki's hands were damp when he sat beside his mother and announced,
"God loves you. Jesus loves you. And He's changed my life."
She did the one thing he'd never imagined.
She wept.
That afternoon, Nikki led his mother in the sinner's prayer. The love of
God split through the doctrines of atheism and communism, and Jesus took
residence.
"My mother changed dramatically when she received Jesus," Nikki says.
"Our relationship improved, and as God expressed His love for her, she
began to express her love for me."
After Nikki's mother converted, he and Paul became even more bold in
sharing their faith. So what if we're thrown in prison or sent to a
mental institution? they reasoned. Jesus paid the ultimate price for us.
Are we willing to pay any price for Him?
Nikki and Paul decided to go public. They chose the one place in St.
Petersburg where crowds gathered daily to seek culture and
enlightenment. The building had once been a Russian Orthodox Church. Now
it was a demonic stronghold.
The Museum of Atheism.
When Paul and Nikki played a guitar and sang, a crowd gathered quickly.
Then they preached, telling them that God does exist, that He loved them
and sent His Son, Jesus, to pay the penalty for sin. Police sirens
screamed toward the Museum of Atheism while Nikki led the group in the
prayer of salvation.
Soon yellow police cars with blue stripes squealed to a stop, and many
from the crowd were arrested. That first time, Nikki and Paul escaped
without going to jail.
In the days and weeks ahead they weren't so fortunate.
"Once when I went to the Museum of Atheism to preach, I met a young man
named Mitya," Nikki remembers. "Half his head was shaved and the other
half had long hair. He wore a jacket with the communist symbol upside
down in the fascist fashion. I asked him why he looked that way."
"I look like my generation," he replied. "We are lost. We don't know
where to go or what to do."
Nikki showed Mitya The Way.
Jesus.
In 1989, Nikki and Paul started praying for God to supply them with
training. They asked the Lord to send them teachers, literature, tapes -
anything that would help them mature in Him and enable them to better
lead the underground church that had formed. They could not have
imagined how God would miraculously answer their prayer. In 1990, in an
unprecedented move, Russia granted visas to people wanting to pursue
religious studies. With help from David Esala, Nikki and Paul traveled
to Tulsa, Okla., and enrolled at Rhema Bible Training Center. While they
were at Rhema, the Russian communist government dissolved itself.
Nikki's mother led the church out from underground.
"When we returned to Russia in 1991," Nikki recalls, "we found our
country finacially and morally bankrupt. Five years earlier a thousand
rubles had been worth $1500. Now those same rubles equaled a quarter.
Along with freedom came pornography and organized crime. I felt like all
the color had left my world.
"Until I went to church. It was the first time in my life that I'd
worshiped legally in Russia. A thousand people gathered at that service.
Signs and wonders followed the Word, and many people were saved,
miraculously healed and delivered."
In 1993, another significant event occured in Russia when Gloria
Copeland arrived to preach. Many people traveled to hear her, and the
faith message began to take root. In addition, Gloria brought books
printed in the Russian language.
One man in the crowd was Nikki and Paul's friend, Matthew. Following the
service, Matthew loaded himself with the Copeland's materials and
boarded a train to Kazakhstan. The train traveled for days without
stopping. During that time, Matthew shared Jesus with his captive
audience, winning many souls to the Lord and passing out the Copelands'
material. After Kazakhstan, he boarded a train for the Far East.
"We believe in the unity of the brethren," Nikki explains. "So we named
our church, 'Union of Christians.' Paul and I co-pastor the St.
Petersburg church, and Matthew pastors the church in Siberia. We're
gradually adding new churches in Russia. Because Chrisianity is new in
our nation, we don't have the structure in place to help people grow in
the Lord. Since we don't have trained counselors, we use Brother and
Sister Copeland's material as our counselors."
In the Spring of 1995, Nikki traveled back to the United States for a
series of speaking engagements. While there, he heard the devastating
news of the Oklahoma City bombing. "Lord, if there's anything I can do
to help," he prayed, "I'm available."
When he reached Kenneth Copeland Ministries, Pastor Nikki was asked to
travel to Oklahoma City and talk with members of "Russian Ballet On
Ice," a group of young figure skaters who'd been living in the YMCA
across the street from the bomb site.
The frightened skaters gathered around Pastor Nikki as he opened his
Bible. "God is love," he told them. They listened intently as he shared
the good news, then the 15 spiritually hungry skaters accepted Jesus as
their Savior.
"We have thousands just like them in Russia," Pastor Nikki says fondly
of the Russian skaters. "They're good kids who are starving for God."
How can 275 million hungry Russians eat the Bread of Life?
God gave David Esala the answer to that question back in 1986.
One soul at a time.