From Amazing Facts - Media Ministry
Deathwatch in Siberia
by W.S. Jesske
You must prove what you say!" The fierce Kirghiz tribal leader
glared around the room at each of us." "One of our priests of the
skin offerings tells us that you are liars and deceivers, and that
you cannot prove that the day to worship your God is Sunday. If you
cannot prove this, then we will certainly kill you, for we want no
white man's deception in this place! "that, he whirled and left our
little church.
A chill of terror swept through the little room. These Siberian
tribesmen were indeed much to be feared. The Kirghiz had the grisly
habit of tanning the flesh of human beings. Whenever they were
angered or did not receive justice, they would skin their victims,
tan the skins, and make what they called "worthwhile items" out of
them. The minister ran out of the church after the chief. "It will
take a few days, but we will find you the text," he shouted. We
would be give three days.
Exiles, we had no way of escape in the frozen wastes of Siberia. The
only method of transportation that we had were a few ponies that
were still in a semi-wild state, having just recently been captured.
However, we were not yet totally discouraged, for we thought that we
knew what we believed. The minister summoned us all to our little
adobe church. The Bibles that we had were given to each person who
could read and understand what we were looking for- a scripture that
said to keep Sunday, the first day of the week, holy. It must be
there. We believed it as Christians, and we knew that there must be
a text to prove our belief. It was now up to us to find it.
Those who could, began searching the Scriptures; those who could not
knelt in prayer that we would be successful. Sections of the Bible
were assigned to each one of us. If we were to finish before we
found the passage that we needed to find, we were to exchange
sections and check and double check our work.
Long hours of scripture study and prayer failed to give us the text
we so desperately needed. Much to our amazement, however, we did
find many scriptures that pointed to the seventh day as God's holy
Sabbath. Nowhere in Scripture could we find that the Sabbath had
been changed to another day!
There were 21 families in our exile colony- more than l00 people.
The first two years of our exile were extremely difficult and many
times existence was a real fight. Many people starved to death, and
the horribly cold winters took their toll of life, with no respect
for age or sex. Only the most hardy were able to survive. But our
living God heard the cries of His exiles, just as He had in ages
past. He was a comforting Presence in the vast wastes of Siberia,
and we never felt abandoned or without hope.
During the l9th century, more than one million of Russia's
intelligentsia were exiled to Siberia to die. They were not
criminals. All that they wanted was the freedom to live a free life
according to the dictates of their own consciences, but they were
not allowed to do so. This longing for freedom had cost untold
thousands their lives, and many more would never see civilization
again.
Now this same fate had come to us, a group of Christians with the
simple desire to worship the God of our choice in the manner that we
felt was correct. For this we found ourselves deep in the heart of
Siberia, with only the wild animals and a few Kergiesen tribesmen
surrounding us. The natives with whom we had become acquainted were
kind to us, but for a long time, the language barrier between us was
almost insurmountable. They could not speak a European language, and
we could make absolutely no sense from their Kergiesen tongue. Time
and practice were all that we needed, however, and one day, we began
to be able to communicate readily.
It was about two years before we really became proficient with their
language, and it was then that our pastor called the elders of our
church together, and proposed a plan for a missionary endeavor among
these people. The pastor felt sure that God must have had a reason
for allowing us to be banished to this barren wasteland, and we were
reminded that God's Word never returned to Him void. We were urged
to exercise our Christian concern among these Siberian natives and
teach them of the living God, and His dear Son who had given His
life a ransom for all men. We were encouraged by their interest in
our way of life, as many times the Kirghiz had expressed their
dissatisfaction with their terrible pattern of existence.
They could not read or write, but the Spirit of God works on all
hearts. For weeks the elders, sometimes accompanied by their wives,
went to the Kergiesen Arkulic (village) to teach them of God and the
Christian way of life. After several months, the Kerghiz began to
come to the little adobe church which we had erected for our worship
services. It was at this point that we really began to introduce
them to the three main points of doctrine that we, as a mixed group
of different denominations, held in common.
Of course, the first point was that there was indeed a living God
who cared personally for each one of the Kerghiz. This was not too
hard to make clear to them, as all around us we had unspoiled
natural wonders to convince them of God's existence. The second
point was that there was a Word of God, rather like a group of love
letters left for all men, to assure them of God's care for them and
to remind them of their duties and responsibilities to Him as His
subjects. We told them that although this book had been written by
men, it was God's Spirit that had moved upon the authors to write
the messages. The Bible was our guide to the heavenly land for which
we are all looking, where there would be no more cold winters, no
more freezing to death, no more starvation or exile. The third point
we showed them was that they should not keep Friday as the day of
rest as was their custom from their Mohammedan background. We
instructed them that they should henceforth keep the Lord's day
holy, which was called Sunday. This was not an easy subject for them
to grasp, and we sensed their uneasiness with this doctrine from the
very first. We also presented many other subjects surrounding these
three major doctrines, such as baptism and the second coming of
Christ.
It was then, after these natives had worshiped with us for several
weeks, that we were visited on that fateful day by three of the
Kerghiz tribal leaders, and their spokesman had made the demand that
we prove from God's holy Word that a man must worship Him on Sunday.
If we couldn't prove our doctrine, we would certainly be put to
death!
Now here we were, huddled together in our little church, unable to
justify our beliefs according to the Bible, and with all the
evidence pointing to the fact that we were indeed wrong and had been
following the dictates of men and not of God. We had no place to
escape, and nothing to escape with. Many wept and prayed, for we
were certain that the morning dawn would bring our doom. How we
longed for the wings of a bird, to be able to flee from our
persecutors!
Solemnly our pastor stood and motioned for silence. "My dear
Christian brethren, take courage! God will not fail us in this time
of trouble! In honesty we have prayed and searched the Scriptures,
and He has rewarded us with a gem of new truth, hidden for
centuries! Do not you think that if we are honest with our brothers,
the Kerghiz, that our God will not soften their hearts to believe?
This is what He has sent us here for, and live or die we must
accomplish His will! Let His truth be known! And trust yourselves to
Him! Tomorrow we admit the truth and God will indeed be with us, I
am sure!"
We spent the remaining time of our probation in prayer, promising
God that if He would Hear our cries and let us live, we would do His
will as revealed in His Word.
Thursday arrived, perhaps our last day of life. Clouds appropriately
veiled the sun as the members of our settlement gathered in the
church for a final session of prayer. At noon the cloud of dust grew
thicker as across the steppes came a herd of galloping horses, more
than a hundred in all! Brandishing their sharp knives, our native
neighbors headed for the church. They knew exactly how many people
were in our little colony, and there was one Kerghiz rider for each
of us. It was indeed a terrible reminder of what they had in mind!
They surrounded the church, jumped off their horses and stood beside
them while the three leaders came inside for our answer to their
question.
We had cried our last tears and spoken our last words of comfort to
each other, assuring each other that if our appeal failed, we would
certainly meet on the resurrection morning. Now we sat silent, at
the mercy of these native men and of God.
Our minister arose and met the three men halfway up the narrow
aisle. He told them that we had been misled in Europe. We had been
taught falsely. We had now read the Word of God through for
ourselves several times, and the only Scriptures that we could find
identified the seventh day, and not the first, as the Christian
Sabbath. True, there were eight mentions of the first day of the
week in the New Testament, but not in a single case did we find any
suggestion of holiness attached to it.
"We will not resist," our pastor said. "You may kill us if you wish,
but we hope and pray that instead you will join us in worship of the
true God on His holy Sabbath."
Then he stepped back and sat down. The three natives stood
conferring among themselves, then turned and walked out without
saying a word in reply. The little door closed. It did not seem like
a good omen. We sat in silence for another few moments with God. The
quietness was broken only by an occasional sob. We felt as if time
pressed down around us and stopped as we waited there.
Suddenly the door opened and the three men entered once again.
"Don't be afraid," they said. "We will not kill you. We have come
back to join you and we will all worship on the seventh day, as your
Holy book prescribes." Then Hammemba, the chief and spokesman, began
to tell us why they had made this request in the beginning.
When the caravan of native priests had arrived at the Arkulic for
their skin offerings that the natives regularly supplied, the
Kerghiz had nothing to give. When they explained that it was because
of their friendship with the Christian exiles that they had not
taken any skins, the priest asked, "Oh, then you have become
Christians?"
"Yes," the native replied.
"Then you have undoubtedly also given up your keeping of Friday, as
you were taught, and begun to keep their Sunday?"
"Yes, we have," was their reply.
The chief priest drew up to his full height, and a slow smile began
to spread over his face. "Fools! God back and ask your white friends
to show you the proof that they are instructed by their God to keep
the first day holy! If they cannot do that, then bring me their
skins, for they lie!"
The native priests had heard about the Bible before, and some had
even studied it. They told the Kerghiz that the Christians would be
unable to find such a text and that they would get our skins. The
priests told the natives while they were waiting for our reply that
if we were really honest (they felt that most white men were liars)
about Christianity and wanted to live in the way our God prescribed,
we would be keeping the seventh day holy and not the first.
Now these natives had heard our minister make an honest confession
that we had all been misled, and that our Book had indeed pointed to
the seventh day as the Sabbath of the Lord. They had to decide that
we were honest, even though we were white! They really did want to
be Christians; they were tired of such things as skin offerings.
Their lives did not improve under the supervision of the heathen
priests, while we had helped them to advance in many ways and had
asked for nothing in return.
After they had finished telling us this story, they said that they
wanted to be real Christians, and to follow the Bible and its sacred
teachings. They returned to their village and told the priests to be
on their way, that henceforth they would have no more skin
offerings. The following Saturday, on God's holy Sabbath, our little
colony, together with the Kerghiz, worshiped together in our humble
mud brick church.
Chapter 2
After those years of indescribably horrible experiences in Siberian
exile,* we returned to our former home in the Ukraine, a beautiful
area of western Russia. Some of the other exiles had returned
already. Others were coming. Many of course, never returned. Many
whole families were lost. Those who returned were happy to see each
other, and many long evenings were spent discussing the
breath-taking experiences we had had.
Our former homes, of course, were in ruins. But we were home and we
could rebuild, and we did. So also did we restore our former
beautiful Baptist Church. With great enthusiasm we went about these
things, for we thought that now things would be better and we could
again live our lives as before. But we were wrong. Political unrest
worsened. The old Tsarist regime had been overthrown and the
Kerensky reforms had died.
There were now many political parties, and they fought each other.
This resulted in a real revolution. For years we lived in a firing
line atmosphere. Many times for weeks on end the revolutionists were
roaming back and forth shooting, looting, and fighting, destroying
not only the opposite parties, but the very country, homes, and
families. After Lenin came to power these things began to subside.
But under these circumstances we had forgotten all about our promise
to God. We had forgotten about keeping the Sabbath.
Our own family was alone in their belief, and of course we weren't
going to be different. There were no people around us that kept the
Sabbath. As far as we knew, the only class of people that kept the
Sabbath were the Jews, and we were not Jews.
There was still much unrest among the citizenry. My father happened
to be one of the underground leaders. He had called a Gramada
meeting of all the underground movements in that particular area.
They had a secret meeting place, very well-protected from any
intruders. It was guarded by many secretly armed men, so that no one
could approach it.
One night, as my father was dismissing a rally, he noticed a
stranger enter the room-a fine looking young man with a great big
mustache. Looking right at my father, it appeared that he wanted to
say something, but he did not. The meeting had already been
dismissed and men started to mill about. Father wanted to run back
and grab this man and find out who he was. But by the time he
reached the door he had disappeared. No one else had noticed him,
not even the guards.
My father was greatly alarmed over this incident and summoned the
guards, but no one could find the stranger. It seemed like a spirit
had come and gone. Father came home and told us about this
experience. We were all very worried, especially mother. She was
usually extremely anxious over things like this and she kept
questioning him. "Why didn't you call to the guards to grab him,
hold him, and find out who he was? Why didn't you do this, why
didn't you do that?" Her questioning continued until father became
very irritated, but mother didn't let up. Day after day she worried
herself and everybody else. Every night we were fearful that some
strangers would come to arrest us. If any men working in the
underground were apprehended, they would be shot immediately.
There was no one more beautiful and dear than my mother, but even
mothers have a way of doing things sometimes that are not so good.
But when she saw that she couldn't do anything with my father, and
she knew it was too late to do anything about the stranger, she and
father agreed that they would pray over this matter. Every morning
and evening we prayed that the Lord would send this man back to us.
It was five weeks before Easter.
One week before Easter on a Thursday night my father had a dream. He
saw the stranger sitting in our church while my father conducted the
choir. He told us the dream and on Sunday morning he said to Mother,
"You stay home. Prepare an Easter dinner while I take the children
to Easter morning services." She agreed. Sunday morning my father,
my sister and I climbed onto our wagon and he drove our team to
church. It was a beautiful Sunday morning. We had prayed and we
believed that the Lord would answer our prayers. Father was sitting
on the platform after directing the music of the choir.
He searched the faces of the 1,200 people in the congregation, but
he just couldn't find the stranger. He searched row after row. He
knew many of the people and he knew that he could easily detect a
stranger. But he couldn't find this young man who had that
particular big, beautiful mustache.
Just before the pastor finished the sermon and father was preparing
to conduct the closing anthem, there-there he saw that handsome
young man with the beautiful blue eyes and the large mustache
sitting on one side of a certain post, not far from the side exit.
His heart began to pound. He was thankful and spoke a little prayer
to God thanking Him for answering his prayer, for he had seen this
very man in the dream.
When the meeting closed, he quickly went to the side entrance and
met the young man, took him by the arm, and said, "Come on, young
man, you are going home with me today."
The stranger answered, "I am glad, that's what I came here for."
We all climbed onto the wagon and started for home. Very little was
said on the road except that the young stranger told father that he
had had a dream the Thursday night before that he should come to
this particular church. Since he lived a long distance away, he had
never visited there before. Mother had our meager meal ready.
We were hungry most of the time. Many people were starving to death.
During those days of revolution, people had lost everything. The
government that had been set up was not very favorable to Christian
people, and this caused great hardship among the people. But my dear
mother had fixed what she had, and we called it Easter Sunday
dinner. After we had eaten, this young man started to talk to us. We
discovered who he was. He was an Adventist lay worker. His name was
Kelm, and he was keeping the seventh-day Sabbath.
This was, of course, very new to us-to see someone in that section
of Europe keeping the seventh-day Sabbath that was not a Jew. We
told him of our experiences in Siberia with the natives and how we
had learned about the Sabbath. But we told him we had not kept it
since we had returned to our own home in Europe, because it really
didn't fit into our lives at all. This was the beginning of a series
of cottage meetings.
The next week young Kelm returned to our home. At that time we had
called together five other neighbors to study this wonderful
message. We told them of our experience in Siberia. We said the
Scripture was really true and that we were not living up to it in
every minute detail. We should perhaps turn to it and then trust God
to bless us after obeying Him more closely. After several studies
with Mr. Kelm, one each week, one of the families withdrew, but five
of us did continue to study for some time longer.
We were fully convinced that this was the truth. We studied not only
the Sabbath, but many other scriptural doctrines, such as the state
of the dead, the millennium, healthful living, and so forth. This
all seemed so real and so good to us, and above all, an answer to
our prayers. We had prayed that God would send the light, and now it
had come.
What should we do? With our families we made our decision and
promised each other and God that we would stand united to follow in
the footsteps of our Saviour. Mr. Kelm, and some of the others that
had come with him to give us studies, were to return the following
week for final studies to prepare us for baptism into the Adventist
Church. Now there was another surprise. My father and the other four
men met and decided not to be baptized.
On the appointed day toward evening, Mr. Kelm and two of his friends
came back to give us the Bible studies. Father was on the roof
fixing something there. I was helping him. We saw these three people
coming down the hill and as they approached our yard, my father
called down from the top of the barn. He told them not to enter the
yard, but to turn around and leave as quickly as possible. He said
that we did not want to have anything to do with the Adventist
people, that they were from the devil, that all these teachings that
they had brought to us were false, and we wanted nothing to do with
them-just leave.
They couldn't believe what they heard. But as they were trying to
come through the gate Father called once more and said not to enter
or he would loose the dog. Then they understood that he meant what
he said. They tried to talk to him from a distance but it was
useless. They turned around. they walked away from the yard, the
distance of a short block. There were some bushes there, and they
knelt under these bushes in seclusion and prayed for quite a while.
Then they arose and left, never to return again.
Mother had watched this whole procedure and was very, very unhappy.
She was weeping like a little child, not only for these people who
were heartbroken, but for our own souls. She feared that we were
lost, forever lost. When Father came down from the roof, Mother was
there, and an argument ensued over this experience. But nothing was
changed, for Father had spoken.
Chapter 3
Weeks and months passed by. The five men who had turned their hearts
against God seemed to be at peace-at least superficially. but not so
with the mothers and the children that had attended the meetings and
had learned something so wonderful, that seemed so real. We gathered
from time to time and talked over this horrible experience. Two
neighbors met with our family one evening. My mother never kept
quiet, always reminding my father of this terrible thing that he had
done to these kind people and against God. She had prayed in secret
almost continually that God would do something to my father to
change his stubborn heart. We children and MOther and the two
neighbors' children and their mothers had met, talked about these
truths, had Bible studies, and prayed that God would help us to
accept this new light.
Finally the time came when our father and the other two neighbor men
met with us to talk about this strange experience. During all this
Mother saw that it was useless to talk to my father very much about
it, for he became irritated. All she did was keep praying with her
children. The three of us would kneel down many times and ask the
Lord to help us accept the call of the Holy Spirit, for we wanted to
be saved in God's kingdom.
On this particular evening when the three families met, we made our
decision that we would take up this teaching. We wanted to call the
remaining neighbors of the original five to join us. We took our
stand right then and there that evening that from then on we would
not let anything else influence us. God only should be our guide and
the Bible our textbook.
When we called the other two neighbors, they refused to join us. One
of them, Mr. Grenke, became violently angry over our decision. He
promised my father and us that no Sabbathkeepers would live next to
him, that he would kill them. Both Mr. Grenke and my father had been
elders in our Baptist Church and had been friends for many years.
They had been officers in the army long before the revolution. They
had been very close and now this man swore that he would kill all of
us if we became Seventh-day Adventist.
It was now Christmas time. The night before Christmas Eve about two
inches of beautiful white, fresh fluffy snow had fallen. I was in a
trade school at this time so my Father was coming after me this
early afternoon to take me home for Christmas Eve. He had our two
horses hitched to a double sleigh. We were sitting on a plank across
the siding, talking to each other about the difficult times and what
the future might hold for us. Our horses reached a certain spot
under a great big oak tree that seemed to extend its branches
forever. Of course we were not thinking of any danger coming to us.
We were occupied with our own thoughts and conversation. As the
horses were beginning to pass the trunk of this big oak tree, Mr.
Grenke, our neighbor, jumped from the other side, grabbed the reins,
and, stopping the horses, immediately started talking to my father.
Mr. Grenke said, "Look, Sam, I have told you many times that no
Sabbath-keeper will be my neighbor, and for that reason, I am going
to carry out my promise. I am going to kill you both." By that time,
he had moved closer to the sleigh, never letting loose of the reins
that he had caught. He had a giant stick on his shoulder and was
aiming it right at my father. He asked Father for his final answer.
From where he stood he could have struck both of us with one blow.
He was a powerful man. He told us that he would count to three and
then he would strike. We spoke to him but felt that our words fell
on deaf ears. He meant to carry out his threat. Father, who had on a
heavy fur coat, shook it off his shoulders so that he could be more
free to fight. When the time came and Mr. Grenke counted one, two,
three, and struck his deadly blow, he only struck the board we had
been sitting on, and nothing else. The force of the blow only
injured his hand. His club fell to the ground.
Father, who was a small man, but very quick, jumped up and grabbed
Grenke by the collar. I threw myself off the sleigh, and ran to my
father's aid. The two men were facing each other, my father with a
grip on Grenke's collar. Grenke swung his strong arm around to break
Father's neck. Father increased his hold on the collar and cut off
Grenke's wind. He had to release his arm. As soon as he released his
arm, Father released some of the pressure on his windpipe so that he
could take a breath. Again Grenke swung his big arm around to break
Father's neck. Again Father choked him till he turned white and
began to faint, then released him again to take some more fresh air.
These two Prussian officers stood face to face in a death struggle.
Every time our neighbor tried to break Father's neck, Father again
cut off his breathing. Finally Father asked him if he would give up
his intention. When Mr. Grenke agreed, Father raised him up and
threw him on the sleigh. We took him home, and never saw him again.
This was not the end of our struggle, but it was the beginning of a
new life for Christ. Now we were determined more than ever to take
our stand for the truth. We had learned that nothing else really
matters in this world. Life is so short and can only be made happy
by serving our Creator. We observed the following Sabbath with our
two neighbors.
Now we wanted to find our Adventist friends. But we did not know
where they were living. They had visited us from time to time for
quite a while, but we never asked them where they were living. We
knew the general direction. We knew the colony that they might be
living in but that was all. We prayed that God would reveal their
whereabouts to us. That week Father had a dream to go to a certain
marketplace that we had often gone to about 20 kilometers away. The
bazaar was held on Tuesday. He went there and asked some Jews about
certain people that were calling themselves Adventists and were
keeping the Sabbath holy. The Jews were well acquainted with them
and gave my father the precise directions where to find them.
The following Sabbath our family and the two neighbors got up early
to walk the distance, for we were not permitted to take our horses
more than five kilometers away from our dwelling. We came to a
farmhouse at about 9:30 that morning. Everything seemed so quiet
that we thought no one was home, but Father knocked on the door.
When the door opened, who do you suppose greeted us? Mr. Kelm! No
words can describe the emotions that existed during this meeting.
Many tears were shed. We assembled for Sabbath School. There was a
group of about 15 people already there, and there were about 10 of
us. After the embracing and kissing was over we settled down for the
Sabbath school study and for the worship services.
They invited us to join their group, and we were quite willing to do
so. But Father said, "We are Baptists, or have been Baptists. We
have been baptized before and therefore we do not desire to be
baptized again." But my sister and I agreed that after all this
struggle that we had gone through to find this wonderful truth, we
wanted nothing more to do with our former connections, and we
requested to be re-baptized.
On a beautiful Sabbath morning my sister and I and some of the
others of our neighbors were baptized, but my father and mother
still held back for two more months, and then they requested to be
baptized too. This, of course, automatically separated us from our
beautiful Baptist church. We had no church building and for a while
we were worshiping in our home.
Then even that was forbidden, as a law was passed that no more than
two neighbors could visit together at one time. We had to find other
places to assemble ourselves. This became very difficult. We often
gathered in secret places in the woods and forests and sometimes
among the rocky cliffs. We couldn't sing very much because that
would be heard. But we could have Bible studies together, and we
could pray. We talked to our God who had been so kind to us in the
past and in whom we had put all our trust that He would see us
through to the end.
I thank God each day of my life for a living faith in Him who has
power to save His erring children, and has promised us a home with
Him throughout eternity if we are faithful to the end of life's
journey here on planet Earth.
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