Fox News made this announcement about the Russian military invasion of Georgia on August 8, 2008.

And here we are few days later, and the war is escalating. Read this story.

In the American Thinker on August 5th, Putin has described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical catastraphe in the 20th century.”

Will the former Soviet Union lose it democratic government and return to a totalitarian-style of leadership?

Time will tell.

Of course, I see everything in terms of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I am thinking about the national and ex-patriot believers and missionaries that live there and have enjoyed a tremendous and fruitful season of peace and harmony–allowing the Gospel to penetrate the culture and many regions, bringing healing and hope to the peoples of the fSU.

The first time I went to Russia, the country was just waking up from the rule and fall of Communism. It was just taking baby steps into democracy and free enterprise. Times were rough but the potential was bigger than the sky. Even then I felt the time was short. I wrote this poem in St. Petersburg on a cold winter night in 1995. I could have written it on August 8, 2008.

New Revolution

A few who slept
under the bear’s spell
awoke to find
a serpent’s sting had poisoned them.
Freshly healing,
Russians are yawning,
rubbing sleepy eyes.
Shining morning
faces radiate
hope streams
for a fail-safe future.

Contemporary
militants revolt
less than eternal change.
Emboldened by earth’s Supreme Sacrifice, their
allegiance towers above
crumbling regimes.

Revolutions’ archaic concept
burst a flawless order
as mercy militants reclaim
the ravaged clawed.
Human spoils
recaptured to
surpass the Czar’s
exceeding treasures
Blood-punged trophies emerge,
unfit for his winter palace.
Rescued from
social uncertainty,
hellish commonisms,
they file in rank
drawn by love’s purest communion.

When the tanks
roll through the cities of Russia again,
the new revolutionary
army will be there to meet them.
Poised without a weapon,
their voices will penetrate
as far as the ear can hear,
as deep as the heart can believe.
Thousands
will believe
turning on their knees,
setting flinty faces
firm against the dimming sun.

Upon that eve,
their strength will magnify.
Miraculous and awesome,
underground
they’ll grow in the dark
magnificent
like a baby
in its mother’s womb,
knitted together in secret,
life springing
from the black
places of the earth.

When the tanks roll into Russia again, the new revolutionary army will be there to greet them…