Vanya

"For me to live is Christ and to die is gain." Phil 1:21

Vanya, a young soldier and martyr, lived this scripture in his everyday life and in his death. He suffered severe persecution in the hands of the army and endured endless questionings from officers determined to break him and make him renounce his faith. But Vanya never wavered in his belief in God. He told his interrogators, "I cannot accept what I know to be untrue. Everything else I can gladly accept." They could not break his spirit but in trying to they broke his body. He died a martyr for the convictions of his faith in God.
Vanya's real name was Ivan Vasilievich Moiseyev. He was born in Moldavia in 1952 to Christian parents. They belonged to an "illegal" church whose members were continually harassed and persecuted for their beliefs. At the age of eighteen Vanya joined the Soviet Army and became a suffering witness for the Lord. He was loyal to the army, but as he said once to his interrogators he had "two sets of loyalties -- loyalty to the state and loyalty to God. "If I am commanded to do something that would cause me to disobey God, then I am obliged to put my loyalty in Him first." You may wonder why Vanya ever joined the army, he must have known that he would be persecuted. but his faith was strong, and so was his belief that the army was where God wanted him. "It is the Lord who puts me there. And will He now leave Me? I don't think so!"
Vanya lived his life for his God, he spoke to anyone who would listed to his testimony of God's great love and forgiveness. "The Lord has told me to speak for him wherever I am and not to be silent," he told his family. Vanya's fellow soldiers witnessed many remarkable miracles which caused many of them to believe in Vanya's God who seemed to be continually caring for him spiritually and physically. They witnessed him standing for hours in subzero weather as one of the army's many "persuasions" to make him relent and renounce his faith. He was not even frostbitten at the end of the ordeal though he was made to stand i summer uniform. Another time while involved in a driving accident, Vanya was run over by an army truck. His right arm and part of his chest to were crushed from the weight. He was taken to the hospital and the doctors agreed that the arm was so severely damaged that it would have to be amputated as well as part of his lung. But during the night, before the operation was to be Vanya's arm and body were miraculously healed!
"I saw that you could not heal me," Vanya said in the morning to the astonished and frightened doctor. "And I turned to my heavenly doctor, who healed me last night,"
As his time in the army increased, Vanya was called more and more to countless and tiring questionings. From study periods, from sleep; day and night, and without warning he was hustled away to have questions and abuse flung at him. Officials were determined to make an example of this fanatic and not be continually embarrassed by his "stubbornness: to relent.
They put him through many cruel tortures; cold cells, pressure cells, starvation. Five days he was in a cell without food and yet God fulled him and he did not feel hunger. Through all this suffering Vanya answered his interrogators:"I cannot agree to remain silent about God."
Finally, his earthly body could stand no more. Ivan Vasilievich Moiseyev died on July 16, 1972 "for the convictions of his faith in God from terrible martyr's torment..." Covered in fatal wounds -- each one a statement of his love and trust in God -- and almost dead, they drowned him. His last words were ones of forgiveness for his murderers: "Christ ...loves all sinners."
Vanya lived this scripture to the full, in life an in death:

"...So now also Christ shall be manifested in my body, whether it be by
life, or by death. For me to live is Christ and to die is gain".
Philippians 1:21

THE END


All quotes are from "Vanya" by Myrna Grant