Bruce Brummitt. Surviving in the Storm. Creation House, 2015.
Surviving in the Storm is mostly about experiences the author had in the eighties and nineties, but they speak to readers today. Readers familiar with either Brother Andrew’s God’s Smuggler (1967) or Chris Panos’ Gods’ Spy (1976), may get a sense of familiarity and encouragement. For most readers, I suspect that Surviving in the Storm may bring something new.
The author worked as a missionary out of Vienna not just to Austria but primarily to Communist countries in the 1980s. Christianity was largely prohibited or co-opted during this time. Most believers living under the atheistic states operated underground. Owning a Bible was either banned or severely restricted. Brummitt’s main ministry, then, was twofold: (1) To encourage persecuted believers and (2) to smuggle Bibles and Christian literature into countries where they were prohibited.
Naturally, the biggest challenge was getting the materials past the border guards of the various countries. While Brummitt tells of visits to at least three different Communist countries, it seems he spent more time in Romania, probably the poorest and most oppressive of all the Eastern European regimes. (Some might argue Albania was worse. I won’t quibble over that.)
The stories of how prayer was answered are both miraculous and encouraging. Brummitt clearly displayed great courage in doing what he did, but he also displayed great faith. It is clear that his “clients” in Eastern Europe appreciated both. His faith and courage let them know that they were not forgotten and that people in other countries cared about them and were praying for them and working on their behalf.
He often tells about how the Holy Spirit guided him to strangers who turned out to be helpful. In many cases they turned out to be Christians. He did what he could to blend in, but he also often prayed that he would not be noticed by the authorities.
He also tells of how they took advantage of situations they found themselves in. Once he was at an underground meeting that was actually in an old military bunker under the ground. The place was jammed. They asked him to share something but a late arrival had them alter the plans. The later arrival and his daughter were suspected of being informers. Bruce was only given five minutes. He felt that the Lord wanted him to share from two fairly obscure episodes in the Old Testament.
The late arrival ended up speaking for a long time and eventually departed. People then went forward for prayer and many people were healed. Bruce was also himself quite encouraged because people told him the two stories from the Bible that he summarized described accurately what the believers in that town were experiencing. One of the stories concerned the prophets during the time of Ahab and Jezebel who were persecuting followers of God in Israel at the time.
While public reading of biblical literature and singing hymns was prohibited, there was a loophole in the law. The People’s Republic of Romania allowed public demonstrations for funerals. When someone would die, people would have a long procession with a horse-drawn hearse through the whole town, singing songs and preaching from the Bible the whole way. People often joined the procession to find out more. It was a safe moment.
There are numerous other stories. While nearly half the book describes experiences the author had in Romania, he also illustrates the Lord’s working in Ukraine (back then part of the Soviet Union), Hungary, and Austria. Austria has religious freedom but also has refugee camps. It still does, though in recent years the camps have been mostly made up of people from the Near East instead of Eastern Europe (though events in the past year have seen Ukrainian refugees coming there).
Two things are different from the books by Panos and Brother Andrew I mentioned earlier. First, Brummitt tries to apply what he learned while ministering behind the Iron Curtain to the lives of Christians living in the free world. Second, the book originally came out in 2015. Those earlier books were written while the Iron Curtain was still in existence. They assumed the reader would have an idea of what the Communist governments were like and what life was like in those countries.
One recurring theme in Surviving in the Storm is economic rather than spiritual. Life under Communism for most of the people in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was one of poverty. Construction, communication, and transportation were all marginal. People often lived close to starvation because of the lack of food. Governments are established to provide justice. They are marginal at best when it comes to production and distribution of things people want or need.
As most people know, the emphasis on industrial control by the government resulted in ecological disasters, even apart from Chernobyl. There was little to look forward to and little hope in the lives of most of the people. Not only did the Gospel message bring hope, but readers are reminded that life under Communism is no workers’ paradise.
The second edition, which we are reviewing, includes some concerns that certain things happening in the United States reflect a growing socialism and even absolutism on the part of the American government. The problem is that government control of the economy and of the culture removes incentives. It takes away hope and the idea that the future could be better. The only way Communism survives is from a combination of propaganda and stealing from the creative people in the free world.
Marx wrote that religion was an opiate, giving people a false hope. Not only do Brummitt’s supernatural experiences show that the Christian God is real—in other words, it is not a false hope—but his more mundane experiences show that Communism takes away any hope at all. Even ancient pagan philosophers realized the necessity of hope. The Gospel of Jesus can bring hope where others are trying to take all hope away. Praise God.