Some time ago a parishioner of mine who is presently working in Moscow wrote a moving testimony addressed to the Russian people. I translated it and have been sending it to Russian believers far and wide. A number of Orthodox brotherhoods in Russia have had it reprinted. If anyone would like a Russian-language copy of this testimony for missionary purposes, please let me know your address and I will be glad to mail you one. May I suggest that others in cyberspace tell their stories about becoming Orthodox. Fr. Victor Potapov
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Russia!
The American media have been carrying many stories about American missionaries working in Russia and the successes they are having in bringing thousands of people to a knowledge and awareness of God. Naturally, most Americans are happy to hear of this work and the positive response of people throughout the former Soviet Union to the Word of God.
Yet these news reports sadden me because I view these developments not as a Protestant or a Catholic, but as an American adult convert to Russian Orthodoxy who fears for the spiritual health of the very peoples who helped him come to a knowledge of the True Faith.
I was born in the American South, the son of devout Baptist parents, attended church regularly, and learning to read with my mother using the Bible and Bible stories. As a child and then as a teenager, I was always active in Sunday School and church youth programs. As a college student, I taught Sunday School classes and worked for two summers as a Baptist missionary. Daily prayer and Bible study were a part of my life since grade school and I went to great effort to learn all I could of the Bible, theology, and religious history. I am and always will be grateful to my parents for raising me in this way and for instilling in me love of God and a desire for Truth.
When I was in graduate school, continuing to attend Baptist church services and engaging in Bible study, I came to the sad realization that Protestantism did not have an understanding of the Bible that was consistent, unchanging, and internally logical. They could not understand the Scriptures fully because they did not have that rich library of Holy Tradition to guide them in their thinking and to help them in their understanding. In reading about many of the great leaders and figures of Protestant history, I was disturbed by the lives many of these men and women led and the personal qualities they sometimes exhibited toward others. I especially could not understand how there could be so many Protestant groups--sects--if there was indeed only one God, one Truth.
Thanks to God, I was able to attend graduate school near the Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Monastery in upstate New York which I encountered quite by accident. Of course, I know it was not an accident, but God s answer to my searching questions. After getting to know several Orthodox monks, studying Orthodoxy, and thinking and praying for many months, God granted me to become a catechumen on the feast of St. Justin Martyr, 1980, and to be baptized on Holy Saturday, 1981. Let me add that I did not know any Russian and I did not attend any church services in English before baptism. English was not needed; the grace and beauty of the Divine Liturgy is apparent in any language, with or without understanding. I have now been Orthodox for ten years and the Church has been the greatest source of satisfaction and happiness in my life.
There are many converts to Orthodoxy in the West, but of course our numbers are not nearly as great as those of Protestants and Catholics. Our monasteries and convents have numerous converts in them and we even have priests and bishops who are converts. The spiritual debt we owe to the Orthodox lands of Eastern Europe and the Middle East is a great one we will never be able to repay; we can only say thank you for preserving this treasure so we could share in it in modern times.
A great number of Orthodox books and magazines are now available in English and I buy and read every one I can find. I am also studying Russian now because I know there is so much more available in Russian that I want to read. Someday I want to visit the Orthodox holy places in Russia and the other republics, venerate the relics of the holy saints, and talk to Orthodox monastics and faithful so this seed of faith will continue to grow in my heart.
But, brothers and sisters, it frightens me to read of Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, and others who have lived in the light of Orthodoxy, who are converting to Western faiths instead of turning to their own Church for Truth. Would a beggar shun a chest full of gold coins sitting on the sidewalk in order to chase a kopek rolling down the street? Of course not! Yet, if he does not see that chest of gold coins, he will chase the rolling kopek and nobody would ridicule him for doing so.
As a former Baptist, I chased many kopeks. I accumulated these kopeks over the first 25 years of my life, I believed I was getting rich. I was "baptized and saved", learned many beautiful songs and sung them with great enthusiasm, worked in the mission fields converting a number of people to the Baptist faith, studied the Bible regularly, went to countless prayer meetings, memorized many Bible verses, and distributed many tracts. Then, I discovered the treasure chest of Orthodoxy and I realized how poor I really was. My few hundred copper kopeks were nothing next to the golden treasures of the Church.
I realize now that the Orthodox Church is the True Church, the one established by Christ Himself, His Apostles, and their successors. It is here, and only here, that the complete, unaltered Truth of Christianity can be found. No other Church, including the Roman Catholic Church, and all Protestant churches, has existed since the time of Christ AND maintained the doctrines and practices of the Seven Ecumenical Councils. I reached this decision after years of Bible study in which I finally realized that there is nothing in the Bible that contradicts any of the Orthodox Church s teachings or beliefs and there is nothing in the New Testament that is not believed and practiced by the Church. As the "True Church", Orthodoxy has the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth, a claim no other church can honestly make.
When I read about Russians and others in Orthodox lands becoming Evangelicals, Protestants, or Catholics, I ask myself, "What do they see in these Western churches? Why are they attracted to them?"
Brothers and Sisters, does any Western church or any Western country have a St. Seraphim of Sarov? A St. John of Kronstadt? Do any Elders of Optina exist outside the Orthodox Church? Is there a St. Sergius of Radonezh? Could Saint Dmitry of Rostov have reached such high states of prayer outside the Church? The world s largest cave is near my home in Kentucky, yet it could not begin to contain the holiness of the caves of Kiev. Does the West have such ascetics, hermits, and saintly men and women who have nourished their lands with their tears, their labors, and their toils as Russia does? There have been some in the distant past, but they were from the wonderful time when the West was Orthodox. And, in this century, which land, what Church, has been washed with the blood and sufferings of martyrs and confessors of the Faith as has the Russian Church? Christ promised us persecution if we followed Him; who else but the Orthodox can claim this promise in these modern times? Only other Orthodox churches, as in Romania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, and others.
I came to Orthodoxy because a small group in the West has preserved the True Faith without corruption and without compromise. Eschewing ecumenism, fostering monasticism, cultivating spiritual growth in parishes, following Orthodox rituals and practices as they were handed down from past centuries, avoiding involvement in empty political issues, and preserving the memory of all of Russia s martyrs and confessors--especially those of this century--the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad brought me to a knowledge of the True Faith and has made it possible for me, an American, English-speaking convert, to reach into that enormous treasure chest of Orthodoxy and acquire golden coins of Truth for the purchase of my heavenly salvation.
In your own country, True Orthodoxy still exists and you should turn to these bishops, priests, and churches who have kept the flame of faith burning during the terrible years of communist darkness. You will only find individual and national salvation through your own institution, your own Russian Church.
The West has much to offer Russia and the other republics right now, especially in economic, technical, and scientific matters. In material terms, the West is rich and prosperous. However, in matters of faith the West is poor while the Russian lands are rich. We have nothing to offer you in this area except to urge you to return to your own Orthodoxy which has been preserved in your homeland and in the West by Orthodox faithful for most of this century. Look to your own sources, your own past, your own traditions for spiritual guidance--not to the West.