One evening during the late 1970s, I had the privilege of listening to a man who had suffered for his faith in God for 13 years in a Bulgarian prison camp. What he said changed my life forever. I immediately offered to help Underground Evangelism, (later known as Mission Without Borders). At the time they were smuggling Bibles and Christian literature into the Soviet Union. They provided me with films – some taken secretly behind the Iron Curtain – and I began raising awareness of Christians being persecuted under communism.
In 1982 I was invited to visit two churches in East Berlin. We were told virtually nothing about times and venues, and no names were mentioned. I asked how meetings were ever planned, and the pastor told me, 'Oh, there is no difficulty with that, my brother, I just inform the congregation that there will be a special meeting on a designated day, but I don’t tell them at what time nor where it will be held, and the Holy Spirit leads all the people to the same venue at the precise time, all except the security police, that is!'
Here I experienced something that I’d often read about in the Bible but never really seen before – the church in dynamic action, as God always intended it to be! That has inspired me ever since, and I thank God for that man and his story.
Ron, who was the manager of Mission Without Borders in South Africa from 1997 until early 2020
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