Beginning Tomorrow Today - By Timothy Sherman

I sensed they were speaking in Russian and wanting this leader and interpreter to talk with me. I was peaceful and compli ant. Nikolai, the one they had beckoned to, began to ask me ques tions in broken but understandable English. They knew that was my language by my declarations ofJesus, but only the interpreter could speak any English at all. He asked many questions and interpreted our conversation to all standing b y. Another man received com mands and ran off. He soon returned with clothes for me to wear: an oversized, baggy, dingy and worn prisoner gray uniform made of heavy material. I put it on over my clothes to keep me warm while they continued to ask questions and to prepare everything for me to stay among them. It was amazing to me that I was still wearing the clothes I had put on that morning. Their interrogation continued: "Where did I come from? Who was I? How did I just appear in their midst?" But Nikolai confirmed what they already knew in their hearts and spirits: "God brought you here to appear to us like an angel or one of the departed saints. God has caused this incredible sign and wonder for His pur poses, with our highest good in His heart--help for us for the glory ofJesus in this dark place!" I had just been supernaturally grafted into a gulag, a Russian prison ministry. I knew this miraculous translation must have been done the same way that Philip, in the New Testament and Enoch of the Old Testament, were supernaturally sent through time and space. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, my entire being- -spirit, soul, and body--was supernaturally transported into a hell hole as bad as the Nazi concentration camps in World War II. I found myself in the cold, Russian, sub-zero winter weather; standing in a place I had not been a second before. I would live in these inhumane surroundings and watch men die from extreme neglect, torture and punishment, and from beat ings and abuse under the iron heel of the tyranny of communism. I had been supernaturally sent as a missionary to the Evil Empire: Communist Russia, the USSR, the Soviet Union. I was somehow, by God's sovereign power, behind the Iron Curtain. 20