Russia’s huge territory embraced Christianity more than 1,000 years ago. Russian Orthodoxy is known for a beautiful sung liturgy and a theology that identifies the will of God with the will of the Czar, the anointed ruler. Consequently the Orthodox Church supported the Czarist government so that when, in 1917, a political revolution occurred the Church was persecuted by the atheistic Bolsheviks who seized power. However, at first smaller churches, like the Baptists, were spared since it was thought their growth would undermine Orthodoxy.

Ivan Voronaev, born in central Russia in…