"Then Ananias answered, 'Lord I have heard from many about this man, how much harm he has done to Your saints in Jerusalem.' But the Lord said to him, 'Go, for he is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear My name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name's sake'" (Acts 9;13,15,16).
To my knowledge, there exists not one single theological seminary, Bible school, or university in the whole world that has a course on the Underground Church. You may learn in seminaries about Sebalianism and Apollinarianism. Five minutes after you have finished the seminary, you forget about them. You probably will never meet a Sabelian or an Apollinarian. We learn about the Coptic Church and about all kinds of small sects that we might never meet in our life. The Church underground is the Church of one-third of the world, men who had never thought before that they would have to belong to an underground church. While America was preoccupied with Watergate, Communists took over fifteen countries. Islam and Humanism are gaining influence and power. Christian pastors must know what an underground church looks like and what it does. I spoke with a bishop in Britain for an hour or so about underground church work. Finally, he said, "Excuse me, but you speak of my hobby; I am very interested in church architecture. Would you please tell me if the underground church use Gothic styles in the building of churches?"
If I would tell you who this bishop is, you could not bear even to imagine how a man with so great a name could ask such a question.
The Underground Church is comparatively unknown. We have it right next-door, but we are not ready to join it and we are not trained for it. Every Christian pastor now has the whole world as his parish and we must know this because we might pass though tragic circumstances. Even if we do not pass though these tragic circumstances we have a duty to help and to instruct those who do pass through them.
In Muslim nations, in Red China, and so on, many believers have become victims. Many have gone into prisons and many have died in prison. We cannot be proud of this. The better thing would have been to be so well instructed on how to do underground work and not be captured.
In a war, those who die for their fatherland are not admired as much as the heroes who make the enemy die for their fatherland. It is not I who should die for my fatherland; he should die for his. I admire those who know how to work so well that they are not caught. We have to know the underground work.
Preparing for Suffering Suffering cannot be avoided in the Underground Church, whatever measures are taken, but suffering should be reduced to the minimum.
It is not possible to give a course on the Church underground in a short time. I would urge you to ask your synod or denomination to introduce courses on the Underground Church.
What happens in a country when oppressive powers take over? In some countries the terror started at once, as in Mozambique and Cambodia. In other places religious liberty follows as never before. And so it begins. Some regimes come to power without having real power. They do not have the people on their side. They have not necessarily organized their police and their staff of the army yet. In Russia, the Communists immediately gave great liberty to the Protestants in order to destroy the Orthodox. When they have destroyed the Orthodox, the turn came for the Protestants. The initial situation does not last long. During that time they infiltrate the churches, putting their men in leadership. They find out the weakness of pastors. Some might be ambitious men; some might be entrapped with the love of money. Another might have a hidden sin somewhere, with which he may be blackmailed. They explain that they would make it known and thus put their men in leadership. Then, at certain moment the great persecution begins. In Romania, such a clamp-down happened in one day. All the Catholic bishops went to prison, along with innumerable priests, monks and nuns. Then many Protestant pastors of all denominations were arrested. Many died in prison.
Jesus, our Lord, told Ananias: "Meet Saul of Tarsus. He will be My underground pastor, My underground worker." That is what Paul was - a pastor of an underground church. Jesus started a crash course for this underground pastor. He started it with the words, "I will show him how many things he must suffer..." (Acts 9:16)
Preparation for underground work begins by studying sufferology, martyrology. Solzhenitsyn, in his book Gulag Archipelago, says that police officers in the former Soviet Union had a course on arrestology - the science of how to arrest people so no that nobody around shall observe. If they have created a new name, arrestology, lest us create the name of sufferology. Later, we will look at the...