From the KGB to the KJV

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This is the closest I've ever been to the KGB, and I am with a former KGB agent, and he has got quite a story. His name is Sasha, and there's a lot of the news there has been swirling about Russia and that part of the world, and today we're going to share with you what God is doing there through this man of God. Sasha, thank you for being brave enough to come on the show. Thank you for having me on the show. I appreciate it.

I got this email from my buddy, Mike, and I was like, does this guy really exist? But you have quite a story, and you know, we see you now with this amazing Christian Seminary in Moscow, equipping men of God to preach the Word, to plant churches, to share the Gospel, and God's using a mighty way, but the Sasha from before, from decades ago, was a different person. In fact, I heard someone say that they even called you the Tin Man.

That's right. They called me the Tin Man, this character from the Wizard of Oz story, because I had no heart. I was heartless, so that was my nickname. You grew up in the Russia area. Yes, I was born in Moscow, Russia, and lived my whole life in Moscow, lives there now. I'm a Muscovite by birth. Okay, and so early on, did you know you would be in the military or that you'd be working in the KGB?

No, I did not. My mom raised me in a very classical way. I read all the classics, and I mean the works, Tolstoy, 26 volumes, Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Chekhov, and I read the William Faulkner, six volumes by him, at the age of 12. And I played violin 10 years professionally. But then I guess I got so fed up with this classical training that I decided I would swap my violin in for a gun. And I placed a call to the KGB's headquarters at the age of 15, and asked if they could make an agent out of me. And they said, but sure, just give us your social security number, we'll get you a pass into the KGB's headquarters, and we'll talk.

Now, back in Russia, you get your social security with your passport, which you get at the age of 16. So I didn't yet have one, and I taught them so. And they laughed so hard, it actually hurt my feelings rather. But they said, you kiddo, you grow up, you get some education, you call us back. And that's exactly what I did, only by that time I was married to Natasha, my wife, and her father just happened to be a KGB colonel.

So he pulled some strings, I got on. Active duty, an agent undercover, and rather enjoyed it. Now it was the KGB which executed 200,000 ministers and demolished 40,000 churches in Russia. But why would I care?

I mean, I was heartless. Besides, they paid me some five times better than national average, so for that much money, I'd do anything. So you're a father-in-law, you have these connections, you're in the KGB, and I guess growing up here, I guess the KGB is kind of like the FBI of Russia sort of. How would you explain to an American what the KGB is to Russia? As we used to say back in the KGB, the lesser you know, the better you sleep. Wow, that's probably where we got this. I could tell you, I'd have to kill you.

And this is the real deal here, guys. This guy loves Jesus now, but you were heartless, and you were, you know, 200,000 ministers executed for the crime of what? For just being a Christian minister. And they would aim at ministers, and I mean, they would move into a town and hang every minister they would find on the city gate, just to make a point there is no God. And you were a part of that execution process, or you were a part of the organization that was doing that?

Well, the lesser you know, the better you sleep. Now, if you want me to teach you an object on torturing somebody, I need a volunteer for that. Would you volunteer? Well, let's see, torture volunteers. You know what, we'll have to, we're not live on here right now, we're recording this. Too bad we didn't have a phone caller to call in, but we are in a restaurant called Dario. We just had Wednesday in the Word. Is it good to be among believers here in America?

Yes, it is very good to be here in the States, only I'd much rather be in Russia, because that's where I live. That's where the Lord called me to minister, to replenish the lost, which is 200,000 ministers to be trained and 40,000 churches to be planted. So you were a part of an organization that killed ruthlessly 200,000 plus ministers. Now you want to equip 200,000 ministers to share the gospel.

That's why there's the noise, by the way. All these men of God tickled to death to meet you. We've got a picture with you.

We'll post that here in a little bit, you know, on our social channels. So how do you go from the KGB to carrying the KJV Bible? How do you go from being a murderer to a missionary? What happened in your life? Tell us a little bit about that. You're in this organization that's, again, quite subversive and doing all these, you know, things. And then, you know, now you're loving Jesus.

What happened? I was a happy camper because they paid me. And if I had some moral remorse about what I did for the KGB, I could always come up with a good excuse for doing the wrongs.

My best excuse, of course, being I have to provide from my family. And it was my family which set me up one day. My daughter, she was nine years of age. She came back home from school and she said that she had made a new friend at school. And my daughter claimed that the father of the new friend was a Christian missionary from the United States of America.

And I was just dumbfounded right there because I liked none of these three statements she made. She said that the father of her new friend was a Christian. And I was, of course, a member of the Communist Party. So I was an atheist.

Therefore, I claimed there was no God. She said that he was a Christian missionary. And I was, of course, a member of the KGB, a KGB agent.

So in my view, all these missionaries were spies and I had to take care of those by profession. And she said that he was a Christian missionary from the United States of America. And that, of course, made it even worse because I was such a proud product of the Soviet Union.

So I thought we needed no help from the United States of America, thank you very much. So I got so disappointed with my own daughter that I didn't believe her. Instead, I went to her school and I talked with her teacher. Only the teacher 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 heavens, everybody is going to speak the Russian language because it takes eternity to learn it.

Well, 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. Now, I was a KGB agent, so I felt myself obligated to investigate the case, to then report it to my authorities.

And I did. I came up with a plan to spy them out. I recall the fact that Natasha, my wife, just happened to be a professional Russian as a second language instructor. She taught at a military academia in Moscow, where officers from third-world countries like Guatemala, Cuba, Venezuela were coming in big numbers 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 my wife did that for a living, and I, of course, utilized that to my advantage. I made my wife teach the missionaries, and that gave me a chance to spy over the family.

Now, I was an agent undercover, so nobody knew, and I made it look completely innocent. I would just go to their place, and I would just sit there, pretending I was there to wait until my wife would get through her lesson to walk her back home, that is, whereas, of course, I was there to listen to what they were talking about. And frankly, all they talked about was God.

They played it smart. They wanted my wife to use the Bible as their textbook, 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. So in about a half a year of just listening to that stuff, I got converted. Oh, my. Okay. Now, hold that thought. I want to hear the rest of the story. We got to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk more to Sasha.

Here he is spying on these Americans, who his wife is tutoring to teach Russian, which takes an eternity to learn. That's so cool. And next thing you know, something happens to him that changed his life and his soul and his destiny forever. And now there's a seminary. We're going to hear about that and how you people listening can get involved.

So don't touch that dial. More truth talk right after this. The noise you hear from people still clamoring around here. We had Wednesday in the Word and a bunch of great time in the Word with a bunch of guys, a bunch of messed up guys like me going through the Bible, and our special guest, the first time we've ever had a former KGB agent pop in with us to visit.

And it was a blessing. More with Sasha after this quick break. And be sure you download and share the podcast of this interview with everyone you can. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. The conversation continues with a man of God who grew up in Moscow, a member of the KGB, doing all kinds of things that we don't want him to tell us about because we will sleep better per his own words.

Yet now he loves Jesus. And when we left our hero there, you were suspicious of your wife and your daughter, this couple that they had in, they were teaching them English. And you probably became more suspicious as you started hearing about God and Jesus as you shared. And so you're spying because you're a member of the KGB and you got to watch this stuff and who knows, they could end up bad for them, but you had to watch it there in the Soviet Union.

Sasha, take us back to that. So you're listening to the Bible being interpreted. They're teaching the Bible. You're hearing things you had never heard before.

I had never had the Bible in my hands ever. And so I only heard the gospel. All these phrases like here comes Jesus Christ, the love of God who takes away the sin of the world or whosoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.

And it just worked on me. I mean, the word of God just penetrated, well, at least in my head. I gave God a chance to even exist, which for me, a KGB agent was a huge step away from my atheistic realm.

That was my conversion by head. Now then, the missionaries, they were not just talkative about God, but 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. Now, they gave me a copy of the New Testament in Russian language, and they made me read the Bible.

Well, I didn't want to blow my cover, so I healed it. And of course, since I had but the New Testament, I started with the Gospel of Matthew from scratch. So I read the Gospel of Matthew through and then the Gospel of Mark. And then I progressed to the Gospel of Luke. Only 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 he did. 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 cagey pigeon.

But I also knew how to give good gifts to my child. And that 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 I put God to a test.

I followed the guidelines of the scripture I just read. 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. Now, mind you, I was not a psycho.

I was a cagey pigeon, tough as a nail, hard-headed, stiff neck. So this was not a mental image. This was the Lord. So the Lord was changing and the Lord was putting down the Holy Spirit right inside of me. The Spirit felt like pure gold, only liquid. And I was filled up with the Holy Spirit of God all the way to the brim. Now that was my conversion by heart, because in my heart, I knew Jesus was God.

I saw Him. Isn't that something? That's something. Of course, that conversion experience, Sasha, a remarkable testimony of the Holy Spirit working in just the power of God, saving a soul, being new in Christ. But that brought you to an interesting impasse with now you have your job and your faith. And there's a little bit of conflict there. What happened next there? And now there's an amazing seminary.

Now I don't want to go too fast, but give us the quick, what did the Lord do after that? Well, then I go back home. 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. Well, you see, I had never smiled before she married me because her father, KGB Colonel himself, never smiled either. So my wife honestly thought it was not even proper for a man to ever smile. Now, apparently Jesus made me smile that day without me realizing that.

And of course my smile gave me away. And so since I was a baby in Christ, I didn't find anything more shootable than to tell my wife that I became a Christian now. Now, she in turn confessed to me that she had 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 so there we were two complete babies in Christ.

Frankly, we had no idea what to do with it, none whatsoever. 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 in the Bible would then plant a church. Well, so be it was said, and we planted the church in Moscow, Russia in 1991, and I was still a KGB agent undercover. Well, Pastor, KGB agent, and I love this the title of your testimony here was that you were gracious enough to hand out to our all of our Bible city guys from a KGB agent to the Lord's ambassador. So you started that church. Now out of that work came the seminary and I mean all kinds of stuff, but at some point you had to turn in your notice or were you fired. Now I know they didn't kill you because you're like here right now.

Oh, unless I, so we don't know here, brother. Well, you see, then I had my third conversion. 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 on my life was. And the call was to replenish the lost, to replenish the lost, which to me a KGB agent translated into the need to replenish 200,000 ministers that the KGB executed and the planned 40,000 churches that the KGB bulldozed.

And of course I had no idea how to pursue the call. All I knew though with my third conversion was that there was no way I could keep both my job and my faith because they were not such a sheer contradiction with each other. Now I decided I would quit one or the other. Well, I could not quit my faith because I saw Jesus Christ with my own eyes and I could not quit the KGB because you don't go to the KGB just like that. 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 and I waited until an opportunity represented itself. You might remember those days, you know, Reagan talking to Gorbachev, tear down this wall, glasnost, perestroika. In those days, Russia opened up for businesses. And a lot of Americans rushed right in with this idea of doing free enterprise. And Russians just loved it because it felt so fresh, so new that that everybody in Russia decided he or she would do free enterprise. 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, which of course was a joke.

I mean, that was rather a trick designed to prevent KGB agents from fleeing. But the Lord worked it out. There was a man who accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and savior at the very church that we planted. And he just happened to be the president of a company. So I shared my concern with him. He, in return, wrote me a nice little letter on the letterhead of his company and everything. I mean, he signed it. 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 they let me go. And I never told them what I was doing. And I never worked for that company either. But for some quite a while, they were covering me with that letter.

I guess I went undercover once again until it became more or less safe. And then they rather ruthlessly fired me and the church hired me on the spot. But the call of the Lord remained the same. And so I planted the Moscow seminary with a view to multiply the effort because I could have probably planted another church and maybe yet another church in my lifespan. But through a seminary, I could train 30, 60, 100 church planters to send them forth throughout the Soviet Union. And so in 1993, the Moscow seminary was planted with about 17 student ministers to it of which I was one of and now it's grown to over 500 full-time and 600 part-time church ministers. So I do have a very good chance of fulfilling the call of the Lord on my life within my lifespan. Wow, and redeeming with by equipping 200,000 pastors with life, in a sense, redeeming what the locust ate, like the prophet Hosea talks about.

With the 200,000, you know, the KGB was part of killing in your time there. What a blessing, what a powerful story. Now, what God's doing right now in Russia, what the Holy Spirit's doing, what the Lord's doing through the seminary, we have a couple more quick questions for you when we come back. Our Truth Warrior intern, Colby, and John Priest, one of our awesome Wednesday in the Word guys, has a quick question for you as well. When we come back with Sasha, continuing this conversation from a KGB agent to the Lord's ambassador.

Hang on. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. From a KGB agent to the Lord's ambassador, last segment here with Sasha, who is a man of God, and he's listened to the last couple segments where we make this a podcast for everyone to hear the whole thing. Please share it with everyone. God saved the Apostle Paul, a murderer of Christians.

Amazing. Acts chapter 9. You have more of the Apostle Paul's testimony, by the way, in the New Testament, than any other content or narrative in the New Testament, except for the Passion of Christ.

So it's everywhere. You have it in Galatians, you have it in Acts, you have it in Corinthians, you have it all over the place, his testimony. So your testimony, very similar. Interesting how God has saved you from the KGB now to preaching the KJV, the Word of God.

I love that little play on words. First of all, we want to know what God's doing in Russia today. Give us an overview of what's happening there. I mean, the predominant religion, or really it is kind of religion, communism, I guess, but give us a landscape. It's one of the largest landmass countries in the whole world, Russia is. Yes, Russia is 11 time zones.

It is the largest country on the planet, 6,000 miles by 3,000 miles. And of course, the Moscow seminary serves the former Soviet Union, which is Ukraine, Belarus, Moldavia, Armenia, Estonia, all these countries, because everybody there speaks the Russian language. That's the common language. And that's the language used at the seminary for teaching, preaching, discipling. Now we train ministers, we send them forth to saturate the land of the former Soviet Union with the knowledge, the word, and the presence of God in our attempt to replenish the lost, lost under the communists. And we do it full time. We are up and standing. Christians are rather welcome these days in Russia because they preach the peace of Christ.

And that's good for the country. Hopefully, I can fulfill the call of the Lord within my lifespan if I just continue on. So God calls you to plant the church in Moscow.

Now you're planting other churches, but to equip servants of God, pastors, to go and plant more churches all over. And so really ascending ministry, and that's why this Moscow seminary, and I guess is there a website for the Moscow seminary? Okay, there it is right there, Moscow seminary.ru. People learn more.

People can meet you there. They can learn more about the seminary. Let's go to our Truthmore intern, Colby.

What kind of question do you have real quick, young man, for this Russian man of God? Yeah, what an incredible story. I've been very blessed to be able to hear it. One of the most important and awesome parts that I heard was when, basically, your transformation, when you saw Jesus. So describe to us kind of what that moment was like and what he looked like to the best of your knowledge. Well, certain parts of my testimony I keep exclusively for myself, because if you say it's too often, it becomes public knowledge, and I don't really want that to happen. Amen.

Very good. But the fact is you had an encounter with the Lord. He saved your life. He saved your soul.

You know, you didn't draw a sketch and print, you know, a million copies and then sell them like, you know, the indulgences and all that other other denomination, you know, do other people do. You encountered in the Word of God, God inside of you, and what a great question. What a powerful testimony. John Priest, your thoughts or your questions real quick for this man of God.

So, Sasha, we just heard in Wednesday in the Word this morning from Paul's testimony of 1 Corinthians 16, 1 through 12, and he challenges us not only to tithe, but also to give. So very practically speaking, how are you eating? How are you putting gas in your car? How are you paying for clothing? How are you able to come to breakfast this morning? How are you supported while we're here? Well, the Lord supplies.

I mean, think of it. I came here for this Bible study, and it's free breakfast, which is the Lord's provision. Somebody would gas up my car, which is not mine either. Somebody gave me a car on loan to drive. Now that's free of charge. Somebody would put me to a house, which is like empty.

The family has two houses, and they can't be at both simultaneously. And so, you know, they move to one, and they let me stay in the other. But if you want to talk about the Lord's provision, I want to talk about the Moscow Seminary again. It costs me $1,200 a year to train a minister in Russia, and I mean full right.

Full right. So that's where you're training him in systematic theology. You're training him in interpreting the Bible. You're training him in the languages of the Bible, the Greek, the Hebrew. You're training him to preach the Word, to be a pastor, that sort of thing, to be a shepherd of a flock, to plan a church. Right, exactly.

And so think of it. I mean, how much would it cost me if I decided to send my Christian leaders to the States to assembly to study? You'd probably be looking at some $60,000 a year. So compared to that $1,200 that I need in Russia to train a minister, it would be 50 times better deal. But the problem that I have with the idea of changing somebody to the States to a Bible college to study is, guess what? They don't come back to Russia. In fact, out of 10 sent to the U.S., only one comes back.

So the investment gets lost. So I invite you to support the Moscow Seminary monetarily. You cannot go there yourself because Russia has completely closed its borders to any kind of mission work. You can't even get a tourist visit to Russia, but I cannot do without you. So we work through One Mission Society, which is a 501c3 in the States.

You just go to onemissionsociety.org, onemissionsociety.org. You type Moscow Seminary in the search line. You said Moscow Seminary. Moscow Seminary.

Thank you. The website's moscowseminary.ru for your ministry, but this onemissionsociety.org has a way to give directly from America. And by the way, we should be thankful, grateful, abundantly blessed to have you here because really the West has sent more missionaries in history than any other. Even hailing back to Jerusalem in Acts, the upper room, where it sent out missionaries, we're here today because they obeyed the call of the master and they went. Jesus said, go.

And they said, yes. So America, we've been blessed financially, spiritually with abundant resources. So now how do we use that blessing? We need to be generous giving, right, priest? Amen. Well, and also with what you're saying, so you just mentioned a figure 1200. That is the price for one man for a year, correct? Right.

Okay. So that being the case, how are you able to come freely, come here to the United States? How did you actually get here and what is your plan? I have a business visa to the States.

It's a three year multiple entries visa. Now I only come to the States twice a year for about two weeks at the time to raise scholarships for the needy students at the Moscow Seminary. And we send all the donations through One Machine Society, onemissionsociety.org. Just type Moscow Seminary in the search line. And then One Mission Society sends donations to us in a bulk.

So the name of the actual donor never surfaces and that keeps everybody safe. Yeah, we're glad you came. We're glad to interview you on Truth Talk. What a blessing. Of course, my dad Big Stu, you know, he always asked the question, what about the threat of liberal seminaries in Moscow?

And he loved your answer. He said, you said something to the effect of, they really don't do well because it's the real deal over there. Yes, we don't have a single liberal thought on campus at the Moscow Seminary. It's all evangelical conservatives.

You're in it, you know, they don't have time to pick apart, you know, is the Bible fake? You know, all this nonsense, this racism, evil stuff that's crept in and corrupted a lot of seminaries in America. It's about the Bible, it's about preaching the Word of God, studying the Word of God, sharing the Word of God, being a godly man in the home, of course, and then of course being a pastor of the Moscow Seminary, moscalseminary.ru. Now, Pastor, how can we pray for you?

All of our listeners listening have heard your story, remarkable story from KGB agent to the Lord's ambassador. How can we pray for you? Well, please pray for the Lord to allow me to fulfill the call of the Lord on my life within my lifespan.

And of course, the media, the better, the more ministers we train in Russia, Ukraine, Moldavia, Belarus, the better. And so that's my request for prayer. And even with this war going on, pray for that, right? Pray that God would open doors to the gospel there and for God to bring peace.

It's the gospel, because the gospel produces changes in the heart, and those with the heart changed will not go for war with anybody. How can we pray for your family? My family, I have a wife, we've been married for 40 years, and eight daughters, a biological child, and seven ungrafted daughters.

So yes, I have an extended family, brother. Please pray for them too. Amen, absolutely. We would love to hear that one of the verses that really captured your heart and brought you to Christ after being in the KGB and all that, we'd love to hear it in Russian. Will you quote John 3.16 for us in Russian as we wrap up? Thank you so much, wow. Pray for this man, pray for Russia, pray about how God would use you to reach these folks, to come alongside this man of God. And thank you so much for being on, God bless you. Thank you. One thing I do want to mention, it took a missionary for me to get going, and it took one Mission Society for the Moscow Seminary to get going, but trust me, locals will reach out to their own in a far more effective way than any missionary will, because they don't need the passport, they don't need visa, they speak the most difficult language on the planet, and they know the local culture.

So please do invest in training local ministers in Russia, in Russian, and for Russia. This is the Truth Network. Ever felt like you were born in the wrong decade?

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