In the 1920s, on the heels of the Bolshevik Revolution when Joseph Stalin was extending his chokehold over all of what became the Soviet Union, he sent political speakers out to Russian towns and villages to brainwash the people about Marxism and the Russian form of Communism. Peasants were forced to hear the harangues telling them what they must believe. It was made clear that the teaching of Christian faith was to come to an immediate end. The church was no longer to be active.

What none of them realized was that hundreds of years of Russian Orthodox teaching about the resurrection couldn't be rubbed out of people's souls just like that.

One large crowd of people sitting in a public auditorium listened for three hours to the speech of a Russian commissar as he tried to convert them to Marxism and the glories of the Communist party. When he finished, he was exhausted, but he had taken his best shot. He was sure he had convinced the crowd, so he invited questions. Here and there people rose to ask questions, but he was satisfied he had done his best.

Just as things were about to end, and he was to sign his success seal over what he had done, a Russian Orthodox priest stood up at the back of the hall: "I just have one thing to say to you. Christ is risen!"

Instantly the entire crowd responded, "Christ is risen, indeed!"

This is the third time I've told that story this morning. At the end of the second worship hour, a couple came up and introduced themselves. The women said to me in a heavy accent, "I am from Russia. Thank you for telling your story; it moved me greatly. But I must tell you one more thing about that story, which you did not tell. You need to tell people that when the crowd said 'Christ is risen indeed!' they knew for certain they would all go to jail."