Soviet Evangelicals Since World War II, Walter Sawatsky, 1981

supported Walter Jack, a Reformed theologian, in start- ing a seminary in Astrakhan. The school was closed in 1911 but Jack remained in Russia, working closely in tent evangelization with a Russian Mennonite, Jacob Kroeker, and others. After World War I, these two men found themselves in Germany working among Russian prisoners of war who begged for help in studying the Bible. A Bible school established in Wernigerode in 1920 became the founding date for the mission Licht im Osten. 6 : During the 1920s I. S. Prokhanov also attempted to launch an interna- tional Evangelical Christian Union whose major task would be the evan- gelization of Slavic-speaking peoples.!7 An immigrant from Belorussia, Peter Deyneka, traveled throughout America with Prokhanov in 1926 to raise funds for the Bibles that were printed in Leningrad that year. Deyneka made several visits to the Soviet Union and in 1934 formally established the faith mission, Slavic Gospel Association. "8 After World War II, these three missions, Slaviska Missionen, Licht im Osten, and Slavic Gospel Association, attempted to establish contact with believers in the Soviet Union but with great difficulty. Much of their work therefore focused on other East European countries, on Slavic-speaking refugees in Western Europe, while Slavic Gospel Association expanded its ministry with Russian immigrants, even beginning a Russian Bible Institute in Argentina. Gradually these missions were able to establish letter contacts with believers in the Soviet Union and by the mid-fifties were able to dis- patch Bibles to the Soviet Union by a variety of means. Some, for example, were mailed to China and then on to the Soviet Union. In the late fifties international tourism to the Soviet Union began, and this became a new op- portunity to respond to the tremendous Bible hunger that was apparent. By that time, these missions had also entered into cooperative arrangements with believers in other East European countries, who were able to travel more freely into the Soviet Union than they were, During the late fifties and early sixties Bible work in Eastern Europe was primarily the domain of individual enterprise. A young Dutchman, who identified himself quite simply as Brother Andrew, made numerous trips to Eastern Europe, attending socialist youth conferences, for example, in order to present a Christian witness there.!9 His ministry, as he described > oo 396 Soviet Evangelicals Since World War Il it later, was accompanied by fantastic adventures and miraculous divine leading. Without Brother Andrew making any publicity, concerned anony- mous donors regularly supplied him with precisely the amount of money he needed for the next undertaking. Many concerned Christians were engaged in such private mission enterprises, devoting their vacation time and money to such a trip while combining this with oth