Horns of Light Chronicles 2

Welcome to the Horns of Light Chronicles. Peter Berbalis chronicles his family story, prophecy, and testimony. God's story unfolds, from his grandfather in Lithuania, Nazi Germany, the Russian Revolution, to Ronald Reagan in the fall of the Berlin Wall, the gospel spreading across Eastern Europe, how God called Peter to Petra, Jordan, and so much more as prophecy and testimonies unfold. And now, the Horns of Light Chronicles.

Horns of Light, I'm so excited to hear the continuation of this story, and so without much further ado, here's Peter Berbalis. When we left our hero, your grandfather had gone into Germany, and there was a mess, right? Yeah, basically what we kind of left off last time was he had been conscripted to dig ditches at the front lines of the German front with Russia, and my grandfather, he had to leave behind at the train yard, kind of taken suddenly to do this work. And he had one morning woken up, and everybody, all the Nazi soldiers were gone, and didn't really know what to do, so a lot of the workers that were doing the ditch digging left, and then the Nazis came back after they realized that the Russians hadn't broken through the lines, the very front lines, and a guy held a gun to my grandfather's head, a young man, accusing him of letting everybody go, and fortunately, by the grace of God, some older people stepped in, some older soldiers and said, you know, there's no way he could have done this, and the Lord spared his life. So to kind of continue on from that point, that same situation developed one more time as kind of God speaks oftentimes through patterns in our lives, and again, he woke up one morning and all the soldiers were gone, and it was just the workers, and this time he realized that he had to leave.

So knowing that his family was out at the railroad yard, he found some railroad tracks and just started walking. Unfortunately, little did he know that at the time that he was walking right into the front lines and into the Russian front. So as he was walking, a Russian soldier shouts out to him and starts speaking in Russian, and my grandfather spoke many languages, and he was able to answer him back in Russian. And then the Russian soldier, as they continue the conversation, he said, you're very fortunate. We were given orders to shoot first and ask questions later.

If I was obeying orders, I would have killed you. And so basically then he pointed my grandfather, a Russian soldier, which is kind of a miracle in itself, points my grandfather back in the opposite direction and tells him that's the direction he should be going towards if he's trying to get back to his family in Germany. So basically he makes it back. He had told my grandmother to go to the manager of that train yard, which was a friend that he had known from, I guess, school when he was in Germany, an acquaintance, and so he reunited with my grandmother, with his wife and three children. And then from my memory, he talked to that individual and just kind of encouraged him to leave with them because to everybody at that point in time, the promised land was the American quadrant. The war had kind of come, was coming to a close.

Maybe it had come fully to a close at this point. And the big rush was the Russians were coming and you did not want to be stuck in Russian occupied territory of Germany. You wanted to be on the American side. So the American area was the promised land that they were going to leave from this house and try and get to and they try and convince this man to come with. And he didn't because he had a farm and everything there.

His whole life was there. So he decided to stay and little did he know that kind of that grasping on to things and holding on to things would cost him dearly as that became part of East Germany. So he had to go from that point and in the end basically live under Russian occupation until the fall of the Berlin Wall.

So my grandfather, he did set my grandfather up with a cart because my father had TB at this time and he couldn't walk. So they had to kind of cart my dad, my dad and his brothers and my grandmother and grandfather to try and make it to the American occupied part of Germany. And as they're going I mean bridges are blown up. They have to barter with silverware that they have to get a guy who's manning a raft to get them over one river and other bridges, you know, they're told the bridge is going to blow at any moment.

So they're rushing to get across and there's just kind of this, I don't know, Lord of the Rings type of picture of them trying to make it into into American territory and they do God graciously grants them that passage and they're able to make it into American occupied Germany. And in that area, they're putting a displaced persons camp. My dad has tuberculosis really bad at this point. And he is sent off to a German hospital where he's putting a body cast and as to just kind of live in that body cast away from the family in this hospital for a year. And back then they believed very much in getting healthy meant living outdoors so he basically be in a cot in the cold winter Germany with blankets. And that was kind of his life as my grandfather's kind of sent a picture there of one of the basically what at these displaced persons camps in one of these small buildings that was kind of military bear kind of thing, three families would be in there separated by a cloth. And that was kind of the wall so my grandfather at this point just kind of trying to figure out what to do.

So, with my dad having tuberculosis, he cannot get entry into America. He runs into one of the bureaucratic people granting that occupation and he wants a bride for my grandfather, and my grandfather being a minister refuses to give that bride. So basically as to rethink plans and my dad kind of describes this time is going from kind of hell to heaven.

My grandfather through his connections in the church in the Methodist Church. One of the higher ups, just says, you know, there's this unit reunification act that's going on in America. If you go and you're there for a year on your give your son a chance to heal up and and let your wife stay with him. Then you guys will likely be able to reunify back in the United States. My grandfather sees that as a, as a, as a solid plan so he leaves to the United States with his two sons, and he sends my grandmother to the Alps of Switzerland and my dad describes it as just a go to their basically given place to stay at this beautiful resort.

So from kind of leaving the depths of war and all the ruin of that they're, they're in this beautiful place up in the Swiss Alps, and that's where he spends his year recovering. And through that reunification act. My grandfather then sends for both of them to come to the United States, and that's kind of a story in and of itself, they arrive in the United States, and they're put immediately into Ellis Island, as a paperwork is processed. Because of my dad's formerly having tuberculosis they put him into a cell, and they were going to separate him from my grandmother because they wanted the, you know, men in one and women in the other. So, my grandmother just, you know, just please with them and they allow my dad to stay with my grandmother and it's kind of in the cell and Ellis Island and my dad remembers kind of crawling up to look out the window through the bars, and he sees the statue of liberty. And so that was just a powerful moment for him to see to see that.

So in the midst of this. My grandmother notices that they're just in there way too long I forget if it was a few weeks, and she just kind of feels like something's wrong. So she just tells my dad to pretend that he's sick. And so, and to just start crying so he just pretend that he's really sick and he's just crying and crying and the guards, and basically get them to the doctor, and then at the doctor they realized that the paperwork was misplaced and they weren't really even accounted for in the system.

So then they're able to reunify with my grandfather in Boston. And my grandfather, new to the country, he valued education very much and he decided to go on a search through the, through the United States and just kind of try and find out where a good place to stay would be as far as jobs and education, higher education systems and stuff like that and so we chooses, Chicago, which at that time and at several universities in the city. And that's where he decides to go and and raise his family at that point. He's working at a, at a, as a union Baker and a bread factory kind of thing.

And, and basically he's kind of struggling. He's also pastor of the church kind of a. Another parallel here to our meeting is, he is able to rent a rent some space at Raymond Chapel Baptist Church in Chicago, and that's where he's able to minister to Lithuanian congregation he was offered a another, an American congregation by the bishop, but he his heart was really still for Lithuanian Lithuanians. So, he pastored a small congregation while he was working full time, and just do a lot of help as far as trying to get them.

What, what happened during this time is a reparations started beginning to take place so Germany was having to pay people whose property was stolen or confiscated. And so he would help people process the paperwork to get their checks from the German government as a result of the atrocities that were committed to their families. So that was kind of his time he's pastoring this church. And he kind of goes through a bit of a kind of a what's the purpose of life situation as a result of the call that the Lord had on his life was not really allowed, I guess, to to stray too far. So, he was just one day, kind of saying to God God what's the purpose of my life I'm working as a baker in a bread factory and just kind of having that conversation with the Lord. And that same day, my grandmother. My dad is driving my grandmother and they get in an accident, and she flies through the windshield headfirst.

And then my grandfather goes to see her in the hospital, and he's hit by a bus. And he's hospitalized and as he's sitting there in the hospital kind of Lord speaks to him and says, if, if I didn't have clients and purposes for for your life still to be fulfilled, then your life would be over. And he just kind of told him that he still had plans and purposes that he had for him to fulfill. So from that point, we go into kind of that 1960s to 1980s period of his life, the Lord just starts putting a burden and kind of what's going on in Lithuania, Russian occupied, you know, Cold War, that whole situation is going on in the world, and just very little communication with Western world. So in the 1960s and 80s, the Lord really puts on his heart that he used to work on getting the Bible translated because in Lithuania, they didn't really have one Bible translation that translated many books, many books, but not all into into one complete Bible. So he starts working on that he decides to raise funds and try and get kind of a Christian guy that he had known who was going to an Ivy League school, and just very, very brilliant when it came to the original biblical languages. So he starts raising support for him to live five years completely without having to do anything but work on on translating the Bible. Five years goes by, he raised, you know, he raises money for this guy to just kind of live five years goes by no Bible. So he, you know, raises for another five years, 10 years goes by no Bible, and he kind of comes to the conclusion that the guy is just kind of taking the money and run kind of a deal so he starts to feel incredibly betrayed by the situation. And, and during this time, he's also kind of working on my grandfather's looking on Bible commentaries, and he had a letter that he sent to Lithuania, kind of evangelism letter that he sent to the church, to the Christian church there, the underground church. And as he was sending these letters, and these kind of monthly, I don't know if it was monthly, but these periodicals that he would write up, the US postmaster came to his house and said you can't, you can't be sending this type of information into Lithuania. It's creating problems with the Russian government, so you need to stop sending this type of stuff. you