Appeal to support the Victory Over Communism (1)

Nikolaus Beutl
June 26, 2009

Dear brothers and sisters,

Thirty years ago the first missionary to Europe, Peter Koch, received a special revelation in prayer that the millions of people whom our True Parents need for the restoration of this world live behind the iron curtain. At the end of the nineteen seventies Peter Koch was leader of the Austrian church with more than 100 members being mobilized at that time to Great Britain to support the International One World Crusade, especially the expansion of Home Church activities.

In response to Heaven’s revelation Peter Koch took the initiative to find those brothers and sisters among the Austrian members, who were ready to work as underground missionary in one of the Eastern European countries under communism. Some of you are surely familiar with the book “Mission Butterfly” with moving testimonies of such brave pioneers. Through this precious publication you can get some insight of what this task meant.

Peter Koch entrusted also me with this mission and therefore I returned at the beginning of 1980 from England to Austria to prepare for this new challenge, but then my mission was changed to sell the magazine INTEGRAL at German universities, which our members published at that time as a forum for the spiritual confrontation between East and West. I gladly invested myself for the victory over communism on the level of ideology. This task was continued when I was sent to Korea to support the VOC activities there and later my mission was to work with CAUSA in East Berlin.

After the Berlin Wall fell I joined the mobilization to Eastern Europe to support our church in Hungary. When True Father asked towards the end of 1992 for the missionaries who have been sent out to 120 countries to come to Russia in order to help with the expansion of our movement on the North East Continent, I went there as representative of Austria. At the height of this mobilization about 400 brothers and sisters had been active in countries of the Former Soviet Union.

Today’s World magazines published in those first years of the nineteen nineties contain many hopeful reports about the mission in former communist countries, with the highlight of True Mother speaking in the Moscow Kremlin. Thousands of teachers and students came to our seminars and our movement was developing well for a few years but then came the stagnation with one missionary after the other leaving the country, in many cases disappointed.

I cannot write here in detail about what happened on an internal level but it is clear that our movement did not really continue to grow because of the problems in the hearts and relationships of our members. In essence the same course was repeated of what has been the reality of our movement in Western Europe where there were years of blooming in the seventies and then a stagnation followed that continues until today.

While we are basically free in the West European countries to do our activities there have been set more and more restrictions on our movement in most countries of the former Soviet Union due to the Orthodox Church cooperating with the government to eliminate not only our efforts but also other religions. Through the imprisonment of our sister Elizabeta Drenicheva the issue of religious persecution in former communist countries like Kazakhstan has been brought to the attention of our members worldwide. How reality looks like today in this respect can be learnt by having a look at the recent report by FOREF which you can find at the link: foref.info

Please do take the time to become familiar also with the letter of appeal by the president of the Association of Christian Churches “Union of Christians” which you find there under the theme "New Inquisition" in Russia: Christian communities appeal for help!!! Bishop Igor Y. Nikitin writes: “…Now our freedom of consciousness and belief is put under this Committee’s decisions. The same measures were only delegated to the Committee on Religion during the Soviet regime.”

This means that reality in respect to religious freedom returned to a situation similar to the Soviet times where religious activity was controlled by the state, only that now it is the state together with the Russian Orthodox Church. The example of our sister Liza having to go - completely innocent - to prison showed us how far the situation has come already even in a country that officially prides itself to be liberal in the field of religion.

What lies behind these external developments? One answer is power struggles. Whereas the Orthodox Church worked together for example with Baptists in the times of the threat through the communist regime they started to persecute them later out of jealousy because of their success while being supported from the West. This is a simple example which is definitely a fact in Georgia (Caucasus) where I got to know the situation firsthand as missionary to this country.

On the basis of the Divine Principle we know the important inner answers as to why certain confrontations come about. The Cain Abel problem started in the Garden of Eden and expanded to the world level. Through the arrival of the True Parents the final solution to this essential problem has come to the earth. They have shown us the victorious course how to subjugate Satan on the worldwide and cosmic level, with highlights like meeting Gorbachev and embracing Kim Il Sung. One might say that True Father did the Moscow Rally “single-handedly”, more or less alone after talking for two times 7 years again and again about the task that we have to go to Moscow.

The incredible victories of our True Parents have been possible on the foundation of their complete investment to love the Cain children of the world more than their own children. In the first Peace Message True Father defines loving one’s enemy as the only way to subjugate Satan. Our True Parents practiced this principle of restoration absolutely on the worldwide level and this was the inner basis for the Iron Curtain to fall and the cold war to end.

Based on their victory of opening the doors to the formerly closed communist world True Father called the missionaries, whom he had sent out in 1975 to come to the Northeast Continent to invest themselves for the establishment of our movement there, but only a part of them came. In those first years of the nineties there has been also a strong drive in Western Europe to support our work in Eastern Europe. Even though great sacrifices have been made on many levels for this purpose, the dedication of the rich West to help the poor East was not enough, especially on the internal level.

Based on the incredible foundation of indemnity paid by the people in the communist countries, God had prepared millions of young people to join our movement. True Father has repeatedly spoken about the children of the communist leaders standing on God’s side. In the book “Mission Butterfly” one prominent example in this respect can be found in the testimony by Christian Zwerger who invested so much with his wife Gerti into overcoming communism in Bulgaria.

The basic reality after 30 years of mission to Eastern Europe including the former Soviet Republics is clear: After our True Parents, along with our underground missionaries and all the other central people who worked for God’s side especially during the 1980s for the fall of the Iron Curtain, had opened up most of the (formerly) communist countries, brothers and sisters especially from Japan, America and Western Europe have been asked to go to those countries to dedicate themselves to raise up God’s children.

To the extent that this has happened, our Heavenly Father could bless our efforts and thousands of members joined but at the same time as much as we neglected this most important task we lost our young brothers and sisters and after the initial blooming of our movement it went downhill, ending in today’s sad reality. The tragic fact is that the harvest was prepared by heaven on the foundation of incredible indemnity paid by millions of innocent people who suffered and died under the brutal rule of communist leaders.

Up to 150 million people died through the God-less rule of communism. And when the representatives of God’s side came to bring the blessing of God’s love and truth to their descendants they did not succeed in truly practicing the Heavenly Tradition which meant that the spiritual children prepared by our Heavenly Father died again after a certain spiritual rebirth.

In the December 1983 edition of Today’s World Father’s address to at the leader’s conference on November 6, 1983 to the topic CAIN and ABEL is printed with one of the subtitles reading “Never command Cain” There the worldwide membership was made familiar with Father’s serious concern:

“I am already teaching Japanese people that just because they are Abel it does not mean they are to command Cain. Rather, they must love Cain and subjugate him in a natural manner. If you think of yourself as an Abel, fine, do the mission of Abel. Abel’s role is not one of commanding or directing people to do this or that. Abel is the one who should sacrifice the most.

I don’t know where this kind of strange thought that Abel is the central figure and in the position to command came from. I don’t know how that idea crept into our movement here in America. Many young members have left the church because of their leaders. Abel does not kick someone out of the church. Abel is the one who will bring people in and embrace them. Abel is the one who cries together with his Cains.”

I could offer more quotations about this important theme of the proper relationship between Cain and Abel but the essence is clear: Abel’s task is to sacrifice himself for Cain, to win his natural subjugation. Sadly, this way was not the prevailing one in our movement but the spirit of emphasizing the chain of command which has to be followed absolutely. Instead of putting parental love in the center commands given by central figures ruled at so many places, killing the spirit of true love and along with it the new members.

Having worked myself on this frontline during the first half of the last decade of the 20th century I know well how much potential has been there and how we lost one spiritual and heartistic battle after the other due to false attitudes which we carried (carry) in our hearts. At the beginning of the nineties most people of the former communist countries were fed up with the falsehood of communism as it was practiced in their respective nations and longed for changes. In such a spiritual atmosphere we could reach out to thousands of interested people who listened to our lectures.

But when it came to showing them an example of a Heavenly Way of Life we lacked a lot -- with our mission blooming only in those places where true parental love was practiced. The inner struggle for the right tradition to be established was intensive with Orientals from Korea and Japan working together with Western missionaries to raise up hundreds of new members. Most sadly, in this heartistic struggle concerning how to bring up spiritual children in the right way the Cain type mindset prevailed finally over the Abel attitude, with an army style of leadership rather than a loving family atmosphere.

With such a mindset it was of course not possible to be successful in the long run and in this way we lost God’s blessing for our work and the growth of membership had come to a standstill by the turn of the millennium in most Eastern European nations. After decades of communist leadership in those countries certain aspects of this spirit naturally continued to be present and sadly was even picked up unconsciously by some of our members and leaders so that membership decreased in many places while on the other hand the Orthodox Church received more and more power up to the present situation of concrete religious persecution in the name of fighting against extremism or whatever.

The spiritual battle or confrontation for the right way of life has been lost in many places. What is the consequence if Abel fails to fulfill his responsibility? We know it from studying the parallels of history. A period of purification through persecution becomes necessary. This pattern has been repeated throughout history up until this day, and has sadly become now once again a reality for our movement in Russia and those countries influenced by it.

When we look more closely at positive or negative developments, we can recognize that nothing happens by chance. I shared several pages about the meaning of the imprisonment of Elizabeta Drenicheva with you before, but I did not point out yet that it was in the very same city where the end of communism was proclaimed through the Alma-Ata-Declaration that our sister Liza had to go to prison.

The Soviet Union was officially founded on the 21st of December 1922 and dissolved on the 30th of December 1992, just after entering the 70th year of its existence. This has been prophesied by True Father by telling us repeatedly in the 1980s that Soviet communism will not go beyond 70 years.

And again in December -- on the 25th of the year 2008 -- the case of a Unification Movement member was dealt with in the court and two weeks later the decision pronounced: Elizabeta Drenicheva is guilty. This means that in the capital of Kazakhstan where Satan’s fortress was dissolved, our sister had to enter prison 17 years later to pay indemnity representing our movement who has failed to share God’s love and truth in the right way with the people of the (formerly) communist world. Liza was freed 7 weeks later but the guilty verdict remains even though she is innocent and our movement in this country is under further investigation just as well as in other countries on the Northeast Continent.

Not only in the biggest country of the world our efforts are severely persecuted but also in the land with the largest population, China, where so many doors which had been open already for our movement to be active we have to work in the underground now. The tragedy of the present situation lies in the fact that our True Parents sacrificed so incredibly much in order to free the world from the tyranny of the God-denying ideology of communism while we sabotaged their victories by failing to represent their heart towards those people whom they have liberated.

I know that I am making strong statements here but they are proven by reality. The Principle teaches us that external restoration can only come on the foundation of internal conditions. As members of the Unification Movement we have been entrusted with the task of representing God and the True Parents to this world. We are central people who have been called and in this position we are the ones who “set the switch plate”, deciding the direction into which history moves in reality.