Russia and the
Worldwide Church of God

By John McKenna

MOSCOW, Russia—Next year Russia will celebrate the city of St. Petersburg’s 300th birthday. Even in Moscow, the capital, the nation is laboring to beautify Red Square for the celebrations.

I stood in front of Lenin’s Tomb Aug. 27 in the middle of that square, in front of the Kremlin, surrounded by the golden domes of the restored Russian Orthodox churches, to pray with my colleagues from the Moscow Theological Seminary.

We have seen the scene often on our televisions. The leaders of the Soviet Union standing seriously upon the symbol housing Lenin’s body, reviewing the pageantry of the Soviet military might in full determination of its communist doctrine.

There we were, Russian Baptists and Pentecostals, Korean Christians and myself from the WCG, holding hands in the open air of a clear August afternoon with our heads bowed. We prayed: "Thank you, O God, for the freedom to worship here in the heart of Russia. We are grateful that we may proclaim the name of Jesus Christ as Lord over Mother Russia among the nations and seek your blessing upon her eternal flame, for we pray in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."

That afternoon of prayer culminated my two weeks of teaching, Aug. 14 to 27, at the Moscow Seminary. My ministry in Moscow was filled with the blessed surprises of our Lord.

We had met together as a class of about 40 pastors and their assistants. We studied the Great I-AM, the Lord God, in his covenant with his people. We studied the I-AM of the burning bush with Moses as the Creator of the heavens and the earth, humankind made in his image. We saw that the Holy One who gave his people his Torah at Sinai was the same One who spoke in the beginning and who spoke his covenanted promise of grace with the House of David in the development of the history of Israel.

We understood how that, based on his grace, he had made himself as a father to a son in his relationship with the people of God. Israel’s great messianic hope, its gift to the future of the world, was developed clearly in the light of this covenanted promise and this great grace of God with Israel.

Then we saw how this same Lord had come to reveal himself in the incarnation when the Word of God became flesh and gave humans access to his Father. God was free to become the Creator in the beginning and he was free to become a man for our sakes, while remaining the Great I-AM in his own eternity.

Kathy Cho, one of the team from the Oriental Mission Church and the World Mission University of Los Angeles, had brought with her the gift of a computer system to the seminary.

The team also had with it a dentist. He had us call him T.J. He spent all his time among us pulling bad teeth. Evidently, such medical care is hard to get these days. My translator, whose name is Nicolai Alexandrevitch, joked that Dr. McKenna was pulling bad theological teeth just as T.J. was physically pulling their teeth.

It seemed to me that, indeed, the pastors had seen clearly that the Great I-AM that God was in the burning bush and the Great I-AM that he is in the Incarnation and the Great I-AM of the Trinity was the same, the Creator and Redeemer of all the world. He was the same in his divine freedom down through the centuries and even into our time together in Moscow.

We celebrated this freedom and gave thanks for the grace of his divine forgiveness and the healing that comes with being reconciled with who he truly is for us in our world.

The Moscow Theological Seminary, founded 10 years ago by Kapsoo Joseph Cho and his wife, Hwa Jane, is superintended by Pastor Daniel Lee. Their love for God and the Russians has laid down a solid foundation that allows this ministry to flourish.

Now we are to seek to integrate things that in the past were beyond the attention of any one denomination in Russia. With the new-found freedom in the land, Russian Christians are free to seek to articulate afresh their Christian faith.

One feels in this new air a hope rising again for God’s blessing upon Mother Russia. The generation of the Great War is now free to speak openly to a new generation of young people of their love of God and the reality of their hope in Jesus Christ in ways that were silenced in the past.

Among the Russians one still senses the oppressiveness of the past, the suffocation of human personality, an old belief in humanity’s alienation from its God. These fearsome conditions seem to force upon the human psyche questions such as: How could this have happened to us? How could we have been so stupid for so long? Why did we lose the great nobility of our great nation’s cause in the world? Will the Lord bless us at last?

Surely their questions are in some sense also our questions. What shall become of us, now that we have learned to seek of God afresh the truth of his grace for us in Jesus Christ? It is a privilege to be able to teach the Great I-AM of God across the centuries to people who seek to understand the Bible’s witness to him. I can see clearly that we will not repeat the tragedies of our pasts because of the great Light his word is for us.

It is wonderful to pray for the healing of his word in our wounded lives. I hope you will pray for the Russians as you pray for our church, that we will not fear because the Lord is indeed with us. The Russians made me promise to return next year, to help them celebrate the 300th birthday of St. Petersburg in Moscow. Will you also pray for our guidance and direction?

RUSSIAN CONGREGATION—John McKenna
(front, right) with Pastor Emmanuel Mukendi
(front, center) and his church in Moscow.

TRANSLATOR—John McKenna (left)
with Nicolai Alexandrevitch.
Mr. Alexandrevitch translated for
Dr. McKenna when he was in Moscow.

RED SQUARE—John McKenna (left)
with Professor Peter Nam from
World Mission University.

Copyright © Worldwide Church of God, 2002