Displaying items by tag: Communism

Historic and spontaneous protests rocked Cuba on 11 July, taking the communist government and the international community by surprise by their intensity and numbers. Analysts say there will not be immediate changes to one-party communist rule, but it’s a watershed moment and they have put an enormous amount of pressure on the government to speed up reforms. Cubans experiencing food and medicine shortages, increasing Covid-19 cases, inflation, rising prices and long power cuts chanted ‘Freedom’ and ‘We want change’, while holding signs that read ‘Down with dictatorship’. Journalist Yoani Sánchez tweeted, ‘We were so hungry, we ate our fear.’ Dr. Teo Babun said dissent has been brewing in the church for months. Evangelicals and Catholics have been generating a tremendous amount of social media, demanding the government pay attention to the hurt taking place.  Political changes depend on whether demonstrators continue the momentum that stunned so many on 11 July.

Communism was Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ answer to corruption and greed. They vowed it would eliminate ‘the exploitation of one part of society by the other’ to create a utopian paradise on earth. In reality however, it was what Richard Wurmbrand (who spent fourteen years in prisons for his faith) called the ‘principal enemy.’ After being ransomed out of Romania and arriving in the West, Richard spoke about Communism’s effects on Christians and Christianity: ‘I cannot agree with evangelists and mission directors when they say today’s principal enemy is the materialism of the West. Today the principal enemy is Communism. Capitalism might have its evils, but it gives to the church the liberty to work for the salvation of souls. Communism uproots religion. The missionary energies must be concentrated upon the Communist lands.’ He wrote this in 1969, but Communism still continues to threaten and oppress God’s people globally.

Until now, Hong Kong has enjoyed freedoms not allowed on mainland China. On 28 May, Beijing announced it will press on with a national security legislation on Hong Kong’s autonomy that overrides the ‘one-country-two-systems’ principle granted to Hong Kong in 1984. The bill will now pass to China's senior leadership. It could end Hong Kong's unique status and see China installing its own security agencies in the region for the first time. Thousands of protesters have been demonstrating against the bill and China’s new national anthem wording. Chris Patten, the last governor of the former British colony,says that China has betrayed the people of Hong Kong and the UK has a moral, economic and legal duty to stand up for them. Hundreds are in custody for unauthorised assembly. Chinese media reported police using tear gas, pepper spray, and water cannon. Washington has called the laws a ‘death knell’ for the city’s autonomy. See

This week marked a century since one of the darkest chapters in human history began, and a truly evil worldview was put into practice.

One hundred years ago, Bolshevik revolutionaries stormed the Winter Palace in Petrograd, the seat of the Provisional Government of Russia. They also seized post offices, train stations, and telegraphs in the dead of night. When the people of Russia’s capital city awoke, they were in what Rhodes Scholar David Satter described as “a different universe.”

That universe was a communist one. Vladimir Lenin’s so-called “October Revolution,” which took place in November on the Gregorian calendar, sought to establish the first-ever Marxist state. After a lengthy civil war, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics emerged, marking one of the greatest setbacks Western Civilization has suffered since the fall of Rome. Communism would eventually rule one-third of the planet, condemning one-and-a-half billion people to lives under brutal, totalitarian governments, and leaving behind a trail of over 100 million corpses.

So many people died because, as Satter explains in The Wall Street Journal, the communist worldview sees the state as supreme, replacing God, Himself. It’s infallible, it transcends morality, and it demands absolute loyalty from its citizens.

Karl Marx taught that only such a state, acting for its people, could break the chains of economic oppression and private property, creating a “new man.” This type of person, depicted in Soviet propaganda posters with bulging muscles and steely eyes, would work willingly for the common good, seek only to advance the interests of his comrades, and usher in a worker’s paradise.

The communist ideal was nothing short of a godless eschatology—a Heaven on earth.

What we got instead was hell on earth. Through political purges, forced population transfers, manmade famines, gulags, and a so-called “Great Leap Forward,” dictators like Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot presided over some of the worst mass murders in human history, all directly motivated by the desire to bring about that communist paradise.

It wasn’t until Christmas 1991 that the darkness which had fallen on Russia in 1917 began to lift. The Soviet sickle and hammer descended over the Kremlin for the last time, quietly announcing the end of what President Reagan had dubbed the “evil empire.”

But for millions of people the world over, this godless worldview remained and remains a political reality. China’s forced abortions, Cuba’s political repression, and North Korea’s persecution of Christians are just some of the atrocities that have continued in communist countries since the fall of the Soviet Union.

And here in the United States, communist ideology enjoys a kind of immortality in our universities, where many professors openly identify as Marxists, and students sport those ever-popular Che Guevara t-shirts.

One recent survey by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation found that half of millennials would rather live in a socialist or communist country than in a capitalist democracy. More than 20 percent have a favorable view of Marx, and thirteen percent think of Joseph Stalin as a “hero.”

The only good news is that 71 percent of those surveyed couldn’t identify the correct definition of communism. They don’t understand what they’re praising.

As we look back on the aftermath of that October revolution, we should commit ourselves to teaching our kids, our friends, and whoever else will listen where communism belongs: squarely in the dustbin of history.

Perhaps the best way to commemorate communism’s 100th birthday is to pray that we can fully and finally bury this evil worldview in our lifetimes.

Pray: for effective education on the failed utopian promises of communism, as well as the results of its worldview on humankind.

Pray: that the scourge of communism will end on the earth.
Pray: for communist countries in the world including China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, Vietnam.
Pray: for countries with strong communist influence including Nepal, Guyana and Moldova.

For video overviews of the above countries, visit http://prayercast.com/index.html

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ERIC METAXAS WITH SHANE MORRIS

Chinese pastors are on their way to North Korea in the New Year to spread Christianity. While remaining anonymous for security reasons, the pastors claim that they have been through the worst of times in life and have only received salvation through God. One pastor was a second-in-command of a mafia gang before coming to Christ. Since then, he has been preaching the gospel to whomever he meets in house churches; some are North Koreans who fled their country to find refuge in China. He and other Chinese pastors are going to preach the gospel in North Korea itself. He said, ‘Before, the North Koreans came to China, but now, we send Chinese people to North Korea through a Christian brother who has a registered travel agency. So, as Christians, we can travel to North Korea.’