CONVERSION

I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.

John 12:46

For some people there is a point of conversion but Stanislav Levchenko’s was spread out years. It began when he was assigned by the Russian KGB, to take visitors to the cultural centers of Russia. Stanislav was the son of a military man, and communism had been his god.

As Levechenko took people to the cathedrals, he began to have second thought about what he had been taught. He said, “In the beginning I saw only the physical beauty of these places. But gradually, I started to experience something deeper. I’d watch the faces of those who had come in to pray. Sometimes their faces would be anguished and scared but once they had prayed, they looked serene, even happy. It was a phenomenon I never tired of watching.

Slowly Levchenko began to ponder about life and reached out to God. He became a secret believer.

“I had no idea at all how to pray,” he wrote in his book, On the Wrong Side. So he composed letters to God beginning, “Dear Sir!” but I could feel that someone was reading my mail, and I was comforted.

“My faith,” he later wrote, “was sometimes all that kept me sane..” Levchenko finally became so disenchanted with his life’s work that he defected to the United States and declared his faith.

Levchenko was tried in Absentia, condemned to death by the Soviet government and was hunted by the ruthless KGB agents who were once his comrades.

Today Levchenko is a freeman who lives in the shadows of death. Yet he would tell you that he had never been more free. Jesus put it right: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32).

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