Former KGB?

The following program is recorded content created by Truth Network. Back to 2004, 2005, 2006, when I became a bit of a political activist. I'm relatively sure that I ended up on a few lists here and there. But one list I hope that I didn't end up on was the Russian list for the KGB. I hope I'm not on that list.

I don't think I would have earned my way on that list. I don't think my guest today will be able to tell me that. But there was a time in Sasha Suitsarov's life when he would have been able to tell me that. Sasha was on the show back in the spring.

I think it was March or April. Sasha, who runs the Moscow Seminary, got an amazing story, amazing testimony and everything he's doing there today and growing up as an atheist. And it's a wild story. And Sasha had a chance to share it on the air by phone before, but now he's actually in the studio and was at Friday Morning Fellowship just last week. And Bo Batchelder, Sasha, welcome to the show or welcome back, I should say, emailed me or texted me earlier that last week and said, hey, this guy from Russia is going to be in town. His name's Sasha.

Maybe you'd have time. And I'm like, Sasha, Russia, Moscow Seminary. Yeah, I think I know who this is. And we had a chance to speak earlier this year, but it's great to see you. It's great to meet you in person. Sasha, how are you? Welcome to the show. Welcome back to America. Merry Christmas. How are you?

Thank you. It's great to be in the States to come and visit. Only I live in Moscow, Russia.

So for me, this is just a great possibility to meet people and share. Other than that, I stay in Russia the whole year long. When was the first time you came to America?

In the year of 1993, I was invited to speak at a missionary conference. Yeah, so it's been a while. And have you been coming back?

Do you think it's been every year ever since? I maybe not during COVID, but I would come just about every year, once or twice a year for about two weeks at a time. And then I would go back to Russia to run the Moscow Seminary and to plant the church at the Moscow Country Club. OK, we're going to we're going to talk about all of that. But let me go back to that first time you came here. There was the America that you had been told existed. There was the America that you knew well as a former member of the KGB. But how did that all compare to the America you experienced the first time you came over? Well, the first thing they did, they brought me to Wal-Mart because I ran out of toothpaste. And I still remember me staring at the choice of 40 kinds of toothpastes. And I was having almost a religious experience there. And then, of course, I realized that the Wal-Mart I was in was actually bigger than the Red Square, which made me rather concerned.

Yes. Yeah, this is indeed a very interesting country, as I'm sure you would say about Russia. But let's go back because I want you to take your time and sharing your testimony because it's really amazing how the Lord did this and not a small amount of humor involved in the way that God tends to work, even in the life of an agent at the KGB. But let's go all the way back to how you were raised and what your mom did, because that's all fascinating and all part of the story. I was raised at an orphanage in Moscow, Russia.

Now, my mom ran it. She was the chief doctor and the director of the orphanage. And according to the legend, that was her way of ensuring quality of treatment of all the orphans. She would place all of her children into the very orphanage she ran. Now, whether that was the case or not, we do not know.

We had a meeting with the siblings at which we decided we would never go for a DNA test. Because she was telling you guys you were all siblings. Right, right, right. But because you were raised in an orphanage, there was a little asterisk.

Right, right, right. But my mom was tough on education, particularly at the age of five. She sent me to the Moscow Magnet Music School, where I was professionally trained.

Now, let me stop you there. Violin. Is your mother being tough on you and all the other kids with respect to education? Would you say that's the norm in Russia? Because like when we look at countries like China or Japan, places like that, Asian countries, that there is a premium on education.

But I don't know that much at all about Russia. Yes, it is very much the thing, because the communists, when they took over in 1917, they decided that if only they could educate people, they would quit believing in God. So they made education a very desirable point.

And so ever since 1917, the communist revolution, education was highly regarded, and just about everybody would go to college and up. Yeah, so she sends you off, and how old were you, five? I was five, and so I started playing violin at five.

And 10 years of that, that just did it for me. I got so fed up with all this classical training that I decided I would swap my violin in for a gun. And so at the age of 15, I placed a phone call into the KGB's headquarters and asked if they could make an agent out of me. Well, they loved the idea, because the KGB, the CIA, the Mossad, the Stasi, they all love orphans. Yeah, sure. Like James Bond was an orphan.

Jason Bourne. Yeah, they have no ties to anybody. Exactly.

That's the very thing. So they said, oh, but of course, just give us your social security number. We get you a pass on to the KGB.

You guys have those over there? Yeah, social security numbers? We have what we call the inner passport. And the passport has a number, would be your equivalent of the social security number.

Well, the passport back in Russia, you get at the age of 16. So I didn't yet have one. And I told them so. And they laughed so hard. It actually hurt my feelings, Rata. But they said, now, you kiddo, you grow up, you get some education, you call us back.

Well, that's exactly what I did. Only by that time, at the age of 17, I was married to Natasha, my wife. Wow.

Got married early. Yes. Still married to the same woman, by the way.

Praise the Lord. 40 years now. Wow.

She's patient. Yes. That's mutual, too.

Yes, indeed. So at the age of 17. And now, her father just happened, quote unquote, to be a KGB colonel.

So he pulled some strings, and I got on active duty. Yeah, because that seems a little young. Like, from an American perspective, you're not even, quote unquote, an adult until you're 18. Well, back in Russia, we don't particularly care. Yeah. You don't have to see. Exactly.

But an enthusiastic young Russian out of an orphanage seems like a perfect pick for the KGB. So we'll pick it up there, talking to Sasha Suitsarov. If you look at his name on the website, I put the link up. You said this last Friday, Suits are Off. We'll be right back.

Welcome back. It's Steve Noble. Merry Christmas today, talking to Sasha Suitsarov, who's here from Moscow.

You'll know that as soon as he starts talking again, but I met Sasha via email all the way back in the spring, and then we did some radio together back then. Fascinating, incredible personal testimony, ending up in the KGB, which he's telling that story. And then on assignment, one might say, is how the Lord got to him. So we're going to get to that, and then talk about the Moscow Seminary, which is something that here at the end of the year, especially in America, we start thinking a little bit more about giving at the end of the year, and what a great opportunity to support something that the Lord is doing elsewhere, and as is true in a lot of other countries around the world besides our own, and this is an interesting theological conversation to have for another day.

And stewardship-wise, if you want to put $500 into something, or $1,000 or $5,000 into something, are you better off spending that money in another part of the world, where it goes 10, 20, 30 times more than it does here in America? I'll leave that between you and the Lord. But you do have an opportunity today as you learn, especially kind of what's the driver, the motivation for Sasha in starting the Moscow Seminary with some numbers that he's going to get to, but Sasha, again, thanks for being here today. So you were too young when you first reached out to the KGB, and then you're 17, and then you're, was it your wife's uncle that was in?

My wife's father. Father, okay, oh yeah, so you got a good in, the KGB colonel. So now you're 17, and now, did you go in at that point?

It took them a couple of years to screen me yet, but I did finally get in, and I was a happy camper, because first of all, they paid you some five times better than the national leverage. And of course, for that much money, I do anything. So here in America, just so you know this, the median household income in America is just shy of $60,000 a year. Not bad. So if you go to the KGB, then it's going to be $300,000 a year instead of $60,000.

$300,000 a year in America for a family, especially somebody in their early 20s or mid-20s or even 30 or 40 in America, that's a number that's going to get people's attention. Exactly. But you're somewhat used to living a lavish life, and of course, my nickname with the KGB was the Tin Man. Remember that character from The Wizard of Oz story? Oh, The Wizard of Oz, who didn't have a heart.

Exactly. And so, and heartless I was. And so, the fact that the KGB executed 200,000 ministers and demolished 40,000 churches in Russia over the span of the 70 years of the communist captivity did not bother me a bit. And here I am, a young... Is that just because the church was competition?

It just would not bow...it had a different king. Exactly. Well, with the church, you were supposed to worship the Lord, and with the Communist Party, you were supposed to worship the general secretary of the party. So there was a competition, and you know, Stalin, the dictator, once coined this phrase. He said, a man constitutes a problem.

No man, no problem. And so, his way of dealing with this God was to kill them all. And so, 200,000 ministers, and I mean pastors, priests, not just leaders, were executed and 40,000 churches were destroyed in Russia. And here I am, living my dream out, and my daughter, who is nine, comes from school and says that she's made a new friend at school. And my daughter claims that the father of the new friend is a Christian missionary from the United States of America. Yeah, right.

And I'm like, girl, you've got to be kidding, because think of it my way. Jesus, he's a Christian, and I'm, of course, a member of the Communist Party, so I am a nathiest. So was this USSR at the time? Yeah, oh, definitely. Okay. Oh, 100,000.

So how did a Christian missionary even get into the country? Well, in those days, you have this perestroika and glasnost, you know, tear down this world. Okay, yeah, so there's a movement to fight. Right, right, right. We're gonna westernize a little bit. In those days, Russia opened up to the world.

Got it. You get people like that coming in. And the Soviet Union started coming to a collapse state, and so everybody rushed right in looking for some kind of opportunity to do free enterprise. So she says he's a Christian, and I am a member of the Communist Party, a nathiest, therefore I claim there is no God. She says he's a Christian missionary, and I'm, of course, a KGB agent, so in my eyes all these missionaries, quote, unquote, are spies, and I have to take care of those by profession. And she says on the top of it that he comes from the United States of America, which makes it even worse because, in my eyes, I'm a product of the Soviet Union, a proud product of it, and I need no help from the United States of America, thank you very much. And so I got so disappointed with my own daughter that I did not believe her.

Instead I went to her school to run it by her teacher. Well, the teacher, though, confirmed that there was, in fact, a couple from the United States of America, and the teacher also said that the couple was looking for a Russian tutor, which almost devastated me rather, because, as we say back in Russia, up in heaven, he's going to speak the Russian language, because it takes eternity to learn it. Well, I mean, we laugh at it now, but believe me, I was not at the moment, because that very moment I realized they were not tourists as I had hoped they were, but came to stay. And that, of course, made me even more concerned with the situation. Now I was a KGB agent, so I came up with a plan to investigate the case, to then report it to my authorities. Yeah, I was going to ask you, is this something you just decided to do on your own, or did you have to report this to your superiors and say, okay, here's this family, they're quote-unquote Christian missionaries from America, and I need to check them out? Which I'm sure they would be like, yeah, you do, Sasha. Well, you always take the initiative, and you don't ever report anything you're not sure about.

Yeah. You have to do the homework first, and then you report it as the outcome. And so here I am, I recall to the fact that Natasha, my wife, just happened to be a professional Russian as a second language instructor. She thought that the military academia in Moscow were officers from third world countries like Guatemala and Cuba would come to get trained in military operations in Russia only to do so, they would have to go through a very rigorous course on Russian language by immersion, a year-long course too.

So that then they could take classes at the military academia in Russian. So did you guys just decide to befriend this couple, or how did that introduction happen? My wife had no idea. You know, with the KGB, you never share anything with anybody, and so I just talked her into taking this couple as their pupils, students. And so being a good wife of a Russian KGB officer, you know, she said, but of course. Yes, dear.

Yes, dear. And so there she is teaching them at their apartment, and of course I'm an agent undercover, so I make it look completely innocent. I don't want to blow my cover, so I go there, and I just sit there pretending I'm there to wait until my wife gets through with her lesson to walk her back home, that is, whereas of course I'm there to observe and to listen what they are talking about. And frankly, all they talked about was God.

Yeah, as you would like to think that they would, and of course when you start hanging around these Christian people and you start hearing them talk about God, and then you eventually end up in the Bible, well, that's where you usually have an encounter. We're going to keep talking about that. Sasha Suitsurov with Moscow Seminary.

We're going to learn more about the seminary as well. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. This is Steve Noble on The Steve Noble Show.

Welcome back. It's Steve Noble, The Steve Noble Show here today with Sasha Suitsurov, who's in the studio. She's heading back to Moscow in a couple of days. OneMissionSociety.org is a website that you can visit. That's kind of the hub of everything that the Lord has called Sasha to do. OneMissionSociety.org, I've got those links up, and that also, if you get to the search box there, just put in the word seminary or Moscow Seminary, and you're going to find what's going on at the seminary, which we're going to talk about here pretty soon. But just back to finish up your testimony, Sasha, and again, thanks for coming in today.

So now you're in the KGB, you're doing well, making good money. And then your daughter, who's nine, meets a girl at school. Her parents are Christian missionaries from America, so of course, you've got to check that out.

So now you're going to their apartment. Your wife is teaching them Russian, and they're talking about God all the time. And then were they opening up the scriptures too? I mean, how did they kind of get you introduced to that? Because she's supposed to just be teaching them Russian, but obviously, they have a different agenda. Well, they started with requesting my wife to use the Bible as their text. Oh, perfect. Yes, subtle.

Oh, they played it smart. I admit that. And all they wanted to learn was how to say the Lord in Russian, and how to say, here comes Jesus Christ, the love of God, who takes away the sin of the world in Russian. And how to say, and whosoever believeth in him will not perish, but have everlasting life, in Russian too. And so in about a half a year of just listening to that stuff, I got converted. Well, at least in my head, I gave God a chance to even exist, which for me, a KGB agent was in fact a huge step away from my atheistic realm. But the missionaries, they were not just talkative about God. They were also very pushy about God. So some half a year down the road, they pushed me into that praying business and reading the Bible business. They gave me a copy of the New Testament in Russian, and they made me read it.

Well, I didn't want to blow my cover, so I yield it. And since I had bought the New Testament, I started with the Gospel of Matthew. And of course, at the time, you didn't know that God's word never comes back void. Well, I didn't know. I had no earthly idea.

You had no idea what your plain word was. I was just reading the Gospel of Matthew, and it felt fine. And then I did the Gospel of Mark.

Well, okay. But then I progressed to the Gospel of Luke. And there I stopped because I ran into a portion of the Gospel of Luke, the portion depicting Jesus talking with his disciples.

And among other things, Jesus tells them this. He says, if you, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, then how much more so will the Holy Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask of him? And I was just dumbfounded right there, because that very moment I realized that Jesus knew me better than I thought, because the first part of what Jesus was saying applied to me perfectly well. I mean, I knew I was an evil man.

I was a KGB agent. But I also knew how to give good gifts to my child. And that, of course, made me think. I was thinking, right, if the first part of what Jesus is saying applies to me this well, then what if the rest of what Jesus is saying applies to me as well? And without thinking, I followed the guidelines of the Scripture, and I simply asked the Father of the Spirit. And bang, I looked up, and I saw the Lord. And I mean, I saw the Lord just as clearly as I'm seeing you now. Mind you, I was not a psycho.

I was a KGB agent, tough as a nail, hard-headed, stiff-necked, right, right. So this was not a mental image of a kind. I mean, this was the Lord. Now the Lord was standing, and the Lord was putting down the Holy Spirit right inside of me. I felt like I was a jar of clay or something. And the Spirit of God felt like pure gold, only liquid. And I was filled up with the Holy Spirit of God all the way to the brim. And of course, that was my conversion by heart, because in my heart, I knew Jesus was God. Yeah. But then you had to see your wife.

Well, right. I go back home, and my wife meets me in the door. And she says, what's wrong with you?

I said, what's wrong with me, honey? She said, you're smiling. You see, I had never smiled before. My bride married me because her father, a KGB colonel himself, never smiled either. And so my bride honestly thought it wasn't even appropriate for a man to ever smile. Well, apparently, Jesus made me smile that day without me being aware of that. And of course, my smile gave me away. Were you nervous about her finding out? No, I was on fire.

I didn't even think of it. I just showed up in the doorway and just met her face to face. You were a new creation at that point.

Exactly. So this is the new Sasha. And of course, my smile gave me away. And since I was a baby in Christ, again, I didn't find anything more suitable to tell my wife that I became a Christian now. Now, she in turn confessed to me that she had to become a Christian even earlier than I did, only she was scared to death to talk about it with her husband, a KGB agent.

And then how long did you stay with the KGB after that? Well, first of all, we had no idea what to do with it, none whatsoever. So we were baby Christians. Because it was flat-out dangerous then. Exactly. Oh, yeah, exactly. And so we decided we would read a little bit more of the Bible because after all, we thought it was the Bible which got us all started on that track, which we did only to find out that those who accepted Jesus Christ for the Lord in the Bible would then plant a church.

Well, so did we said. And we planted a church in Moscow, Russia in 1991, and that was still a KGB agent undercover. I mean, imagine that church plant. But then I had my third conversion. You see, I had three, one by head, one by heart, and one by guts. Because one day, I learned by my guts what the call of the Lord in my life was. And the call was to replenish the lost. To replenish the lost which, with all of its simplicity, to me, a KGB agent translated into the needs to replenish 200,000 ministers that the KGB executed and plant 40,000 churches that the KGB demolished. And again, I had no idea how to follow the call.

Too big, you know, the grandiose scale of it. All I knew, though, with my third conversion was that there was no way I could keep both my faith and my job because they were in such a sheer contradiction with each other. Does one just quit the KGB?

Is that just a matter of sending an email? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. In fact, in my days, there were two and two only reasons on the basis of which you could quit the KGB. You could either go cuckoo or drop dead. And frankly, none of the options I quite liked.

So I decided I'd wait, and I waited, and I waited, and I waited until an opportunity represented itself. You might actually remember those days, you know, Reagan talking to Gorbachev, tear down this wall. Tear down this wall.

That's right. Glasnost and Perestroika. Well, in those days, Russia opened up to the world and a lot of Americans rushed right in looking for an opportunity to do free enterprise. And Russians just loved the idea. Well, they had been deprived from that for a good 70 years, and so it felt so new, so fresh that everybody back in Russia decided he or she would do free enterprise from now on. So the push from within the Russian society was so huge that even the KGB had to respond to it. And they did by introducing yet the third reason, allowing KGB agents to swap their jobs. The reason being doing free enterprise. Only if you opted for that reason, you had to prove that the free enterprise that you claimed you'd be doing would pay you better than the KGB. Yikes. Which, of course, was a joke. Yeah, of course.

Nobody's gonna make that kind of money right off the bat. On the money, this was a rhetoric designed to prevent KGB agents from fleeing, frankly. But the Lord worked it out. There was a man who accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior at the very church which we planted in Moscow, Russia, and he just happened to be the president of a company. Well, I shared my concern with him, and he, in return, wrote me a nice little letter. On the letterhead of his company, I mean, he signed it and everything. It looked official. Basically, the letter was saying that the company was offering me a job much better paid than the KGB.

And of course, I knew just the number to quote. So with that letter, I went to the KGB, showed them the letter, and asked if they could beat the deal. Well, they couldn't. And so they let me go, and I never told them what I was actually doing, and I never worked for that company either. But for some good four years, they were covering me with that letter as if I worked for them on the roster.

And meanwhile, I went to the States and studied at the seminary in Kentucky with a view to plant a seminary in Russia. Yeah. Was that Southern? No, it was Asbury. Asbury. Asbury, okay. World of Kentucky.

Yeah. And then I basically went back to Russia and replicated an American seminary in Russia, and it became the Moscow Seminary. The Moscow Seminary, which we're gonna talk about when we come back, and the students that are there, and the call on Sasha's life to replenish what the KGB and what the USSR had taken away. It's an incredible story. We'll be right back.

Welcome back. This is The Steve Noble Show today, talking to Sasha's back on the show. Sasha Sutsarov, the Moscow Seminary, and he's been sharing his testimony over the course of the whole show. And then, of course, you came here to Kentucky to Asbury Seminary in order to learn how to run one. So to go to seminary and learn how to run one, then you went back and started the seminary. And then how did you find students? Because now you've got an enrollment of 1,600 of those are full-time, you also have Ukrainians there as well, 22 professors teaching. But how did you find students? Like how did it start when you're like, okay, the doors are open, we wanna find students. But how do you find students in Russia?

That's actually all the way around. It's the students who find us, the Moscow Seminary, because we have become hugely popular with the church. Well, first of all, we were distinctly evangelical conservative school of learning. And of course, churches want that.

They don't want no liberal thoughts. And second, we're... Praise the Lord.

Amen. And second, we're not establishing a denomination for ourselves. We use the evangelical Christian as an overarching term. And of course, that's what the church is fearful of the most, because you send your perspective leader to a seminary, and then the seminary snatches the sheep, and you've lost your perspective leader. But since we're not establishing a denomination, then they feel very safe about sending their perspective leaders to study. And so we have for students from just about every denomination under the sun. And I mean, the Lutherans, the Salvation Army, the Baptists, the Nazarenes, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the World of Life, the Embassy of Jesus, I mean, they're all there. What are some of the most active and prosperous, in terms of reaching people, denominations in Russia?

I would say the World of Life would be the most proactive. I'm not familiar with that. So what would you compare that to over here? They would be like Saddleback or maybe Willow Creek.

Yeah, yeah. So kind of seeker sensitive, modern, casual. But then these denominations, they're too small to have a seminary to just themselves. So instead of maintaining a seminary to themselves, they decide they find a good evangelical conservative school of learning, and they would make it their designated institution of studies towards ministry.

And look no further, we're pretty much the only one. And so the Moscow Seminary is bigger than life. And you have all the students, they come and go. They plant churches, some 30 churches at any given moment. And then, of course, all these churches start multiplying themselves, because somehow in Russia, churches do not like to grow into megachurches. When they reach the 300 mark, they assign a nucleus, like 60 maybe, and then they send the nucleus to a neighboring town for the nucleus to plant yet another church.

So I have a very good chance of fulfilling the call of the Lord on my life within my life. That's crazy, isn't it? So would you say that is the Lord doing a consistent thing in Russia and in Moscow? Is there a new thing in the last few years?

Is it different now than it was in 2000? Kind of help me understand kind of how the Holy Spirit's moving and what's happening over there. Well, the Holy Spirit moved in the early 90s when we planted the Moscow Seminary, and ever since that time, it's been, must I say, same old, same old.

Well, I mean, to me, this is actually very exciting, because think of it, we started the seminary with about 17 students to the very first enrollment, and nowadays we're almost a thousand. I mean, if we keep on doing it, we will saturate the life of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, the former Soviet Union, with the Word of God and His presence. How does the average Russian respond to, like you've dealt with these Christian missionaries years ago, but how does the average Russian respond when they encounter a Christian that tries to share the gospel with them? Well, first of all, there are no missionaries in Russia anymore, because they were all expelled. And, of course, Christianity is spreading like fire in the former Soviet Union, particularly because people in that neck of the woods were deprived from the gospel, so there is these voids that must be filled. To give you an example, when we just started, there was but one, literally one Protestant church for the whole city of Moscow. Well, nowadays, there are over 450 churches in Moscow only. And how big is Moscow?

You mentioned this before. Moscow is 40 by 60 kilometers, probably about 20 million people, 179 subway stops, train comes every 50 seconds. So welcome to my world. Huge city. Very busy.

Very cosmopolitan, never sleeps, very busy, yes. Wow. It must be very interesting, as it was for you, for a Russian to become a believer.

It was fascinating, and it still is. I mean, with my background, I don't ever ignite the idea of taking the credit for what's happening. No.

You better not. The Lord gets the credit, and I just cannot get used to miracles. My life is miracle after miracle after miracle, and I'm really excited about it. Yeah. Yeah. So what's next? What do you see? Is it just gonna maintain what you guys are doing, and the Lord just continues to bless it?

Or is there anything on the horizon that you're trying to do? And then let us know how we can be a part of it and how we can help. Next we will boost the enrollment of the Lord's wealth to 2,000, and then to 30,000, and then to 4,000, and then to 6,000, then to 12,000, yes.

As long as we keep on doing it, yes. What's the total population in Russia? 150 million, give or take. 100 million. But I count in ministers and churches. Remember, I owe 200,000 ministers and 40,000 churches, so that's my benchmark. And I'm just gonna keep on doing it because it pays.

You know it because you start getting pictures like, this is my first baptism. Well, it's somewhere in Siberia, in Bashkortostan, on Sakhalin Island, Kamchatka Peninsula, but you know your graduates are doing it. Yeah, isn't that crazy? Yeah. To see that kind of fruit. That's amazing.

It's great. So how can American brothers and sisters over here help you? It's actually very easy. These days you cannot go to Russia because Russia has completely closed its borders to any kind of foreign presence, whether business or mission. Not even a tourist visa is issued these days, but I cannot do without you. So it takes both of us to get the gospel rolling. Now it costs me $1,200 a year full rights to train a minister in Russia. Exactly. Well, think of it this way. How much do you pay these days to send your kid to college?

If it's a cheap state school, it's gonna cost you $15,000, $18,000. Well, right. Well, compared to that, $1,200 that I need in Russia is what, 20 times less or something. But of course, the problem I have with the idea of sending my prospective leaders to the states is, guess what? They don't come back. They don't come back. Right. In fact, out of 10 cents to the US to study, only one comes back.

Now if lucky too. And so they get in and they get comfortable and will lose them to the states. So my students, they ain't gonna go nowhere from Russia. They will study in Russia, in Russian, and for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova.

Because back there in the former Soviet Union, everybody speaks of the Russian language. Now we channel our funding through One Mission Society. You go to OneMissionSociety, in one word,.org. You type Moscow Seminary into the search line and there is a way to donate.

You will get your 501c3 receipt for tax deductible purposes. Because One Mission Society is 120 years old, US-based mission group. They are the charter member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability too.

So they're beyond the doubt. But then One Mission Society sends us money in a bulk, like a monthly budget. So the name of the actual donor never surfaces in Russia. So that's a precaution.

It's important. We don't want to expose you in Russia. So please feel safe about supporting the Moscow Seminary. Yeah, that's a good point.

Because especially given what's going on in that part of the world, a lot of Americans might be concerned about that. By the way, I just did what Sasha was talking about. So I've got a link on Facebook Live for the Moscow Evangelical Christian Seminary in case you can go directly there.

But again, I mean, really, prayers and financial support. Right, exactly. Because Russians can do if trained. Jesus did it that way. I mean, he went over to the other side, that's in Mark 435. And he cast out a legion of demons from some demon, you know, an academic on the beach. But then when this guy, when the guy came to census, he wanted to go with Jesus. But Jesus said, oh, no, no, no, you're not coming with me back to my side.

You go further to your side. You tell your people what happened. Well, guess what? Jesus does go back to the other side once again. And a huge crowd of 5000 men plus women plus children is there waiting for Jesus for three days. Well, who told them that Jesus was coming again?

Well, the local guy did. And so that's a good example of Jesus doing a mission overseas. Because when he crosses the Sea of Galilee, he is the first missionary overseas. Think of it.

Yeah. So it took a missionary for me to get going and of course, it took a whole mission society, one mission society for the seminary to get going. But at some point, you really are a whole lot better off if you entrust ministry into the hands of locals who can do if trained. And that's what the seminary does. Yeah, you have to enable the locals to reach their own people.

That's the key there. OneMissionSociety.org is the website, OneMissionSociety.org on the Facebook Live feed. I also put a direct link right to the section that says Moscow Evangelical Christian Seminary, a great way to invest in the kingdom here at the end of the year.

And remember, $1200 that takes care of one student for an entire year. Okay. And that's something that when you sew into things like that, one day I have these pretty cool dreams of being in heaven, and anything I've done for the kingdom and all the ripples that come out of that someday in the kingdom someday in heaven when heaven comes to earth, somebody will walk up to you that maybe has a Russian accent, and they're going to thank you. And that's because you sewed into what God was doing in Russia. Sasha, thanks for being here. God bless you. Merry Christmas. And this is Steve Noble on The Steve Noble Show. God willing, I'll talk to you again real soon. And like my dad always used to say, ever forward.