CULTURE
The issue before us is, can Christianity survive in a Marxist culture. It is a very basic issue. It touches the very nature of Christianity, the very nature of the Church of Jesus Christ. Nothing can long deny itself, and everything inevitably acts according to its own nature. A fish cannot by nature live without water. The question is, can Christianity live outside of a Christian culture. The question becomes, can a Christian exist in the Soviet Union. Rushdoony has defined culture as "religion externalized". That is, whatever a society believes, whatever its theology is, determines its politics, economics, sociology, etc. Thus Christianity naturally and necessarily produces a culture. A culture that its adherents require for the expression of their faith and without which they cannot live as Christians. Denied that culture the choice for Christians becomes either liberty, liberty to live as a Christian, or death, death as a martyr of Jesus Christ. Historically, Christians have answered this dilemma by one of two alternatives, REVOLUTION or EMIGRATION. Thus, to take the English Puritans as an example, who were denied the expression of their faith, the Pilgrims resorted to emigration and came to these shores to establish a Christian culture. Twenty-two years later their Puritan brethren remaining in England resorted to revolution and overthrew Charles I and established the Puritan Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell. The same was true of the Huguenots, and demonstrates that Christians require the liberty to express their faith in a Christian culture and when denied that liberty have always fought to the death to obtain it.

CULTURE AS WARFARE
Satan is a liar and his program one of deception. Caring little for names or lip service but rather intent on corrupting the essence of one's faith, he attacks the Christian not openly in his creed but hedges him in where he lives and moves and has his being as a Christian. That is, he subverts the Christian's culture till his faith is no longer capable of expression and only hollow lip service remains. Such patient gradualism often provokes little resistance, while its thoroughness is as efficient as pumping all the water out of the fish tank. Neither are such tactics new, and Daniel in his captivity was the subject of just such cultural warfare.

DANIEL
Daniel was a Prince of Judah and was situated in Jerusalem, the cultural, political and religious center of the Hebrew Republic. To understand the cultural impact of a city like Jerusalem we have to remember the story of Jereboam. Jereboam appreciated the cultural impact of a city like Jerusalem and felt the threat it posed by cultural subversion to his dynasty over the ten Northern Tribes. Thus he felt it a political and cultural necessity to set up the golden calves in Dan and Beersheba to counteract this threat. And it was out of such a cultural environment that Daniel was plucked and suddenly placed in Babylon, the cultural center of a great heathen empire.

That Nebuchadnezzar was intent on cultural warfare is quite evident from the Scriptures. In Daniel 1:4 we read that he is to be taught the learning and the tongue of the Chaldeans. That is, he was to be reeducated. He was to be prepared for assimilation into a new culture. But Daniel as a Prince of Judah had already been educated, educated in the fear of the Lord and in the laws of Moses. And those laws encompassed all of Hebrew society, establishing a complete culture. A culture specifically and divinely designed to maintain its adherents in the worship of the true God and as a separate and holy people. It was formulated in every detail to prevent their assimilation with heathendom and to prevent their subversion into idolatry. From his youth up, by education and tradition, Daniel had been raised to regard the heathen as unclean, an abomination to the Lord, who demanded total cultural separation from them. Now Daniel is brought to Babylon and subjected to cultural warfare and subversion.

The next step in Daniel's cultural subversion is that he was "appointed a daily provision of the king's meat". Now the dinner table is a place of social intercourse, fellowship and communion. This is especially exemplified for Christians in the Lord's Table, where the redeemed of the Lamb have the closest fellowship. For Daniel to have sat at the king's table would have put him in the closest fellowship with the unclean. It would have been tantamount to today's Christians breaking Paul's exhortation concerning a fornicator, "with such an one no not to eat". Also, to have eaten at the king's table would have had the effect of buying Daniel's loyalty. It would be placing his trust for his daily bread in a pagan emperor rather than in the Lord God of Israel, who had declared, "the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof" and "the cattle on a thousand hills are mine". From their days in the wilderness when they received their manna on a daily basis, the children of Israel had been taught to walk by faith and trust in their God for their daily bread. Trust in the God who had given them a land flowing with milk and honey and still protected their crops when in faith three times a year all the males went up to Jerusalem to the feasts. Daniel now has to choose between the living God and divine providence versus a pagan king described in Daniel 4 as that great tree in which was "meat for all". Daniel has to choose between eating and drinking to the glory of the true God or eating and drinking that which has been sacrificed to idols.

Finally, Daniel is given a new name. Names are important, and Daniel's Hebrew name would be a constant reminder of his race and his heritage. The alien sounding name would forever brand him as an exile and set him apart as a member of that separated people consecrated to the worship of the true God. Moreover, Daniel's name meant "Judge of the Almighty" or "Judge of God", and thus served to perpetually identify Daniel as a servant of the true God. Now to counteract this, Daniel is given the name Belteshazzar. Daniel is named after Bel, the great pagan deity of Babylon whose temple had been so splendidly rebuilt by Nebuchadnezzar. Again the cultural warfare and the thrust to spiritually subvert Daniel's heritage are implicit in all of Nebuchadnezzar's actions.

THE REACTION
Daniel's reaction is clear and forthright: he resists, "purposing in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat". Daniel kept his name, too, and throughout the book that bears his Hebrew name he continues to refer to himself as I, Daniel. His confrontation with the princes of Darius also confirms that Daniel was faithful to his heritage and to the God of his fathers. Daniel saw the situation and its implications clearly. Nebuchadnezzar would allow him lip service to Jehovah but no more. He was to have Nebuchadnezzar's culture, sit at his table and bear the name of his god. No direct denial of Jehovah was wrung from him as long as he was willing to indirectly deny his God and affirm another in every facet of his existence. Such a faith is a hollow mockery, an empty and deceptive fraud. Daniel saw it more clearly than those contemporary Christians who send their children to Sunday School on the Lord's Day after having committed them all week to the counsel of the ungodly in the public schools.

Faced with cultural warfare, Daniel and his three friends resisted. They prepared to resist even unto death in the fiery furnace or in the lion's den. They survived only by miraculous, divine intervention. Yet the Daniel who survived all this was made physically ill by his visions of the end of the age. Obviously, what Daniel saw was far worse than that which he endured. Clearly, future Christians shall face far worse warfare. And clearly by the grace of God all of his elect will persevere and resist even unto blood. But the question becomes, if Daniel, faced with such limited cultural warfare as compared to that which is waged today behind the Iron Curtain, required a miraculous deliverance, can the reports of a flourishing underground church in the Soviet Union really represent reality?

THE CULTURE OF THE BEAST
The least we can say about the culture of the beast is that it includes all that Daniel had to face. The Soviet State, too, has a monopoly on education and it, too, is that great tree in which is "meat for all," and all receive their daily rations from the communist state. Neither would it be tolerated to name one's daughters Faith, Hope and Charity as the Puritans did.

But the culture of the beast also includes much more. It includes a control over the mind and body of the individual as complete and as absolute as modern techniques of terror, drugs, propaganda, brainwashing, etc., can make it. Soviet elections are a good example of this, as with predictable accuracy and clockwork they regularly pile up overwhelming victories for the designated candidates. The purpose is, obviously, not to determine the results which are a foregone conclusion, but rather to make all men discharge their conscience and affirm their loyalty and allegiance to the beast. To fail to vote would be a serious error, and to fail to vote one's endorsement of communism would be tantamount to suicide. The question is then reduced to, can a Christian endorse the masters of antiChrist? Can a Christian when called upon to discharge his conscience deny his Lord? Can a Christian year after year do what Peter did and never repent?

I WAS AN NKVD AGENT
There is abundant testimony to conditions in Marxist societies, including the testimony of those who acknowledge no underground church and whose description of the society that they fled denies the very possibility. In his book, "I Was An NKVD Agent", Anatoli Granovsky gives an account of the society that he fled after coming to the conclusion that Soviet society and culture are so depraved that decency, honesty and indeed any virtue is an impossibility. It is an account of an unsaved man, operating by very humanistic standards, coming to the conclusion that it is better to die than to continue to live under a Marxist society. We might well wonder what conclusions they come to who are called to live up to the high standards of the Church of Jesus Christ. Let us examine Anatoli's arguments that decree decent and moral existence an utter impossibility in the Soviet State.

First, it is a matter of loyalty. Anatoli discovered that the price of survival is nothing less than total, unqualified, unwavering allegiance to the beast, an allegiance that must reign supreme over any personal wishes, scruples or moral code. To survive, Anatoli is compelled to sell his soul to the state and to sign the following promise;

Neither was this a promise exacted by force from someone who desired to become an agent. It was the voluntary desire and act of a desperate man who knew it to be the only price of survival. Later Anatoli has time to reflect on the price:

And as Anatoli thinks, he reasons to the following conclusion, a conclusion all must come to if they desire to survive in the kingdom of the beast:

In the kingdom of the beast only the state can exact loyalty, and it does. But a Christian owes all his loyalty to Jesus Christ. By his shed blood, the price of our redemption, he has bought our loyalty. A Christian cannot pay the price of survival under the beast. The Christian has already paid it to another. The Christian cannot sell himself, he is not his own, for he has been bought with a price.

The second issue that steeled Anatoli's resolve to liberty or death was the matter of simple honesty. To become a paid liar and a professional deceiver during working hours was one thing, but to live a life completely and utterly devoid of one redeeming shred of honesty and decency was another. Anatoli broke under the pressure of living a constant lie, day and night, from the cradle to the grave, the price of survival under communism.

Anatoli had fallen in love and into the realization that there was no room for such an emotion in the Soviet State. The girl, Shura, was also an NKVD agent. It was then that Anatoli realized the impossibility of having an honest relationship with anyone in a communist system. Under this system everyone is horribly alone and cut off from all others by mutual deception and mistrust. If Anatoli ever told her of his hatred for the Soviet regime, and if she reported the conversation and he did not, he was dead. If she failed to report it, and he did because he had been assigned to test her loyalty, then she was dead. Mutual self-preservation in this culture meant constant mutual deception. In this culture eternal vigilance was the price not of liberty but of survival, eternal vigilance in maintaining eternal deception.

When "the knowledge that I was deceiving her, and that as often as occasion demanded" struck Anatoli "it seemed to (him) that the stanchions of (his) conscience had turned from steel to water." (p. 166)

Again we must ask the question, can a Christian, who is in him who is the Truth, live a total lie? Can one who is filled with the Spirit of Truth practice unceasing deception? That today's evangelicals with their distorted emphasis on love continue to preach that Christianity can flourish, even underground, in a culture that has no room for love is a strange contradiction.

Shura dies while on duty and Anatoli reflects:

Again we might well ask, if unsaved people cannot live a decent life in the U.S.S.R., what of Christians who are called to be holy? Anatoli had never darkened the door of a church, had never read a Bible, had never been confronted with the law of God or the convicting power of the Holy Spirit, yet he could not stomach the depravity of existence that is a must under communism. If he cannot live such a life, if he cannot conform to such a culture, how can we expect a Christian to? And there are no exceptions. The thought of Christians hiding out in such a culture and secretly flourishing is more than naive, it is impossible. Anatoli knew better. He resolved to escape, to flee the system whatever the price because decent life is impossible anywhere under communism even to such a master of deception as Anatoli had become.

Finally, Anatoli has escaped and is seeking asylum in the West. While awaiting the outcome in prison he is visited by Soviet officials seeking to prevent his defection. When arguments fail they attempt to blackmail him with threats against his family, but Anatoli replies, "Tell them that I cannot take part in mass murders and mass enslavement of millions of people in order to secure a few years of existence for my beloved mother and brother in the Soviet paradise. If you kill my brother you will kill him, but it is better for him to die as a child than to suffer the torture of life under communism." (p.278)

If the culture of the beast is so horribly and intolerably wicked and depraved that death, including the death of one's loved ones, is to be preferred over continued existence, then how are we to believe the reports that an underground church continues to flourish? IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. It is a society where to survive constitutes a day by day rejection of Jesus Christ and all scriptural standards of holiness and righteousness. Thus it resembles the very Society of the Anti-Christ that it heralds. In such a society, for Christians to die is gain but to live is impossible.

ESCAPE FROM RED CHINA
Robert Loh is another witness to the total depravity of all life under communism. In the introduction to this book the writer says, "When I agreed to write this book with Robert Loh, he insisted that I should depict him in such a way that the readers would despise him. He said that in Communist China, no one with honor, integrity and honesty could retain these virtues and survive; because he did survive, he must lack these virtues and therefore be despicable. If the readers simply learn that only an utter scoundrel can live in the New China—Loh believes strongly—they will have gone far toward understanding Chinese Communism." (p. 5)

It is Robert Loh who gives us the real key to the impossibility of Christians surviving under communism. He says, "It is important to understand that from the beginning of the regime the entire population had been divided into groups which were subdivided into mass organizations. Every person was forced to belong to a mass organization of his group…Normally, everyone was made to attend meetings of his organizations once a week, but during special campaigns the number and length of the meetings increased greatly. At the meetings, the pretense was scrupulously maintained that the regime's current policy was discussed by the people…Actually however the communists introduced their own conclusions in advance. Thereupon the people went through the motions of discussing policy; they finally praised it, and finally gave it their UNANIMOUS SUPPORT. NO ONE WAS ALLOWED TO AVOID GIVING HIS COMMENT, which might have to be rephrased many times before the organization officials were satisfied. The individual's response, behavior and attitude were under constant scrutiny. If he earned the disapproval of the officials, the other members of his group were made to turn on him; the others feared the same treatment if they did not…The result was that he knew the terror of being utterly alone and vulnerable in a hostile society. In the neighborhood where he lived, the census police kept a constant check on his movements. In his place of employment, the Communist officials ensured that he made an adequate contribution to the regime. But the CONTROL OVER HIS BEHAVIOR exercised by the officials of his mass organization WAS ABSOLUTE." (Emphasis mine, p. 121-122)

Now I ask you realistically, can a Christian survive in such a society? On a weekly basis everyone has to approve and applaud the policies of communism in the midst of a sensitivity training, brainwashing session. No one is allowed to remain silent. All must discharge their conscience. To confess Christ at that point is suicide. The entire room is filled with people, like Anatoli, who under force of sheer terror have sold their souls, and their very survival now depends on the viciousness with which they denounce you. To survive you must deny Christ perpetually while constantly endorsing and praising the beast of antichrist. At your place of employment, and there is only one employer, the communist state, you are required to tithe to the beast. And what of the census police! Robert Loh's description of Communist Chinese society simply doesn't fit the picture of secret Christians going about their regular business unmolested and then sneaking off to church. The control of the mass organization is complete. There is no room for control of the Holy Spirit without an immediate and suicidal confrontation with the anti-Christ state. There is no room for loyalty to Christ. There is no escape from being constantly required to deny Christ as the price of survival. Even as in the Society of Anti-Christ that it augers, one is compelled to worship the beast. As Robert Loh said, no Christian, but "only an utter scoundrel can survive in the New China".

THE SCRIPTURES
We have examined the kingdom and culture of the beast. We have heard the testimony of men to the impossibility of leading a godly, virtuous life in such a society. But our final appeal must be to the scriptures. It is there that we find Christianity defined and it is there that we find the inescapable requirements that Christ lays down for his own. And the requirements decreed by Christ are inescapable as declared in Matthew 10:32. "Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will 1 also deny before my Father which is in heaven." All citizens of a communist state are required to continually deny Christ as the necessary price of existence. But all those who do, Christ will deny as his own. They are not worthy of him and to them he declares, "I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity" (Matt. 7:23). But the half hath not been told! Not only is denial prohibited and condemned, but positive confession of Jesus Christ is demanded if Christ is to confess us as his own on that great and glorious day of the Lord. The Bible acknowledges no secret Christians, those who say and do not, those who live a lie. The Bible requires a public witness; the Bible requires a holy life and the fruits of repentance, for without holiness no man shall see the Lord. That this is tantamount to a death sentence in such a culture is abundantly clear, but Christ allows for no exemptions or loopholes. Christ declares, "And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it" (Matt. 10:38-39). Clearly to save one's life and conform and compromise is to suffer eternal death. To lose one's life as a faithful martyr is the only path to eternal life.

CONCLUSION
There are no Christians in the Soviet Empire. There are no organizations of secret Christians behind the iron and the bamboo curtains. The true Christians, the faithful Christians, those who could not and would not deny their Lord, those who could not and would not endorse the beast, have long been martyred. They could not live as Christians but they could and did die as Christians. We are not limiting the Holy Spirit, but the Spirit of Truth cannot deny himself. The testimony of the inspired scriptures is irrefutable. They declare that, "grace reigneth through righteousness", not that Christians can be utter, Christ denying, depraved scoundrels.

I am not omniscient. I cannot say that there are absolutely no Christians inside the U.S.S.R. But I can say this. Any Christians in any communist state must be in the jails or in the concentration or slave labor camps. Rather than immediate martyrdom the Soviet State has consigned them to the living dead. It was there alone that John Noble could testify of finding faith behind the Iron Curtain. But any citizen in a normal relationship with the communist state is under the condemnation of God. Rather than lavish sympathy on the hypocrites or worse that remain in the Soviet churches, secret or otherwise, let us rejoice that the real Christians who faced the beast were faithful, faithful even unto death. They, like Daniel, discerned that spiritual warfare and purposed in their hearts to resist. Let us be prepared to do likewise. AMEN!