CELESTIAL FIRE:
A modern awakening in Eastern Europe
By Maureen Wise
Bryntirion Press. 185 pages. £8.99
ISBN 978 1 783 972 432
This book would be an excellent choice to take away on holiday. No, don’t wait until then, read it now as it will encourage and inspire you as you read the testimonies it contains.
When I became a Christian in my teens, our church often prayed for persecuted Christians in the Soviet Union. Sometimes I imagined a Communist ‘takeover’ in Britain and wondered ‘Would my faith hold up under the pressure’! But our information stopped there.
Well, these testimonies are some first-hand accounts of the difficulties faced during that period. This book brings us to the present day in the aftermath of the trials and hardship Christians suffered under Communism and the independence that followed from the Gorbachev period and Perestroika (a reconstruction of the political and economic system of the Communist Party), when poverty became even more severe as work dried up.
Freedom for the gospel
But freedom for the gospel began to arrive in the late 1980s as Bibles trickled into people’s possession. The passionate prayers of the persecuted Christians (and maybe my prayers as a teenage girl!) were answered when thousands of men, women and children were converted and lives changed. People who for many years had denied the existence of God were desperate to hear about Him! The Revival continued through to the early 2000s, by which time many churches were established.
The book is divided into three parts. First, details of men and women who suffered in the Soviet system. Part Two describes stories of the awakening in Moldova after freedom arrived. Part Three consists of a variety of things. There are many stories of fruit in individual lives, the development of Christian radio, helping to feed hungry children in orphanages, and bringing meaning and love to communities in Moldova. Basically, the effects of Christian ministry on communities. Inspirational! And for me, a ‘what happened next’ for the persecuted Christians we prayed for.
