Peace words flew like doves through the crisp air of mid-February Moscow. In Russian, English, French, Bulgarian, German, Japanese, Arabic, Pashto, and a dozen languages even the official translators couldn't handle. One engaging delegate to the Soviet-sponsored International Forum for a Nonnuclear World and the Survival of Humanity persisted in switching from Urdu to Parsi and back again, to the consternation of a volunteer translator. It didn't matter. We met under an emblem depicting the globe as seen from outer space. If for only three days, and even though from some 60 nations, we were one world.
On February 16, from the Grand Kremlin Palace, General Secretary Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev sent his own covey of peace words winging around the world via newspaper, radio, and television. They included "democratization," "new thinking," "verification," "revolutionary changes," and "glasnost" ("openness"). I heard the peace words as one of four delegates from the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
The general secretary assured the 850 delegates in the Grand Kremlin Palace and a worldwide audience that the "new thinking" on the "humanitarian problem" was already reality. And in a sense, its reality sat only five or six seats from me, in the person of physicist Andrei Sakharov, released from a seven-year Gorki exile only two months before. During the week before the peace forum, 142 dissidents were released from prison camps and, in a few cases, psychiatric hospitals.
Our peace words
Our delegation was headed by Dr. Neal C. Wilson, president of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. It included also Dr. Jan Paulsen, president of the Trans-European Division, and Dr. Ray Hefferlin, a molecular physicist, and head of the Physics Department of Southern College of Seventh-day Adventists, in Collegedale, Tennessee.
We accepted an invitation to the peace forum for several reasons. Among them, first, because we believe further proliferation of nuclear weapons is insanity and nuclear war unthinkable. Second, because we had something other than the window dressing of tired propaganda to communicate. And third, because General Secretary Gorbachev's call for democratization and glasnost emboldened us to speak to a subject addressed by virtually every speaker in the religious section of the forum: How can a climate of trust be created in which the two superpowers can disarm?
Our peace words, however, differed somewhat from many we heard. They included "prisoners of conscience," "amnesty," and "religious liberty." They were set forth in "Proposals for Peace and Understanding," a paper addressed to General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and to the chairman of the Council on Church Affairs, Konstantin Kharchev. Wilson gave an abridged version orally to the religious section of the forum. (Full text follows.)
Whether Soviet intolerance was reality or only perception, Wilson said in presenting the proposals, the consequence was the same: "Perception is enough, in and of itself, to frustrate mankind's hope for peace." Western concerns about human rights and religious liberty must be addressed, he insisted, if nuclear disarmament is to become more than a hope phrase.
A paper presented by Dr. Alexander Haraszti on behalf of Dr. Billy Graham also reflected glasnost: "We must urge all nations—regardless of size, regardless of ideology—to adhere strictly to the terms concerning the religious rights of believers as outlined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We must urge all nations (as stated in the Final Act of Helsinki, to which both the United States and the Soviet Union are signators) to recognize and respect the freedom of the individual to profess and practice, alone or in community with others, religion or belief acting in accordance with the dictates of his own conscience (Final Act of Helsinki, section VII)."
The Adventist proposals argued that much U.S. mistrust of the Soviet Union originates with believers who find the atheism of the Soviet system repugnant and the persecution and imprisonment of fellow believers intolerable. Defuse this antipathy and provide a basis of trust, the paper urged, by granting amnesty to all prisoners of conscience— Christian, Jewish, Muslim—on or before the 1,000th anniversary (1988) of Christianity in Russia. Wilson asked for revision or reinterpretation of the laws governing religions to permit not only freedom of belief and worship within the church but the right to witness freely. (In the Soviet Union believers do not have equal rights with unbelievers to promote their faith.)
In conversations with Chairman Kharchev, Dr. Wilson included in the definition of prisoners of conscience those whose political "crimes" originated in conscientious conviction, but did not include those who had resorted to violence or threats of violence in support of their viewpoints.
Our proposals suggested several areas of cooperation, and Dr. Wilson elaborated on these with government officials, including Chairman Kharchev and Peter Demichev, first deputy of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. Wilson likely will return to the Soviet Union this summer with more detailed programs.
Point of no return
Mr. Gorbachev's speech in the Grand Kremlin Palace emphasized the horrors of a nuclear conflict. He spoke feelingly of the "point of no return" that man faces. He reminded us that one nuclear submarine carries several times the destructive potential of all the damage caused by World War II. Chernobyl, though of relatively local proportions, Gorbachev said, warned of the tragedy threatened by nuclear warfare. He addressed several problems and then observed somberly: "Nuclear war would leave no problems."
"There will be," he said, "no second Noah's ark to offer refuge from a nuclear deluge." If the contest spreads into space, he added, "the possibility of conflict and destruction increases enormously. "
He was not, however, without humor, observing wryly that President Reagan, in their 1985 meeting in Geneva, had said that "if the earth faced an invasion by extraterrestrials, the United States and the Soviet Union would join forces to repel such an invasion. I shall not dispute the hypothesis," he said, "although I think it too early to worry about such an intrusion."
Mr. Gorbachev cited Kremlin arms control initiatives—such as those at Reykjavik—and the new approaches to humanitarianism as examples of the Soviet Union's "new way of thinking." He said that Reykjavik had resulted in an arms control "breakthrough" and that Moscow's 18-month war on nuclear testing "showed the world that a nuclear test ban is realistic."
Of peace and evil empires
Our proposals did not address the technical problems intrinsic in nuclear disarmament, nor, as Wilson observed, did we reflect that "peculiar psychology" of which Mr. Gorbachev has spoken—"how to improve things without changing anything." Instead, we stuck to "constructive proposals and programs within the purview of our Christian commitment and theology." And these proved central to the issue with which all delegates wrestled in one forum or another: How can the superpowers be led to trust each other?
Perhaps they cannot. If so, the future is grim—with men crying, "Peace, peace; when there is no peace" (Jer. 6:14). To memory come also the haunting words of the apostle Paul: "For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them" (1 Thess. 5:3). But this is not the destruction of mankind by nuclear war fare; rather, this is the consequences of the revolutionary establishment of Christ's kingdom: "And in the days of these kings [the prophecy points to our day] shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall... break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms [of man], and it shall stand for ever" (Dan. 2:44). In this transition to a new world order, the Lord of the atom will unleash his own forces. Peter writes of the elements melting with "fervent heat" (2 Peter 3:10). The Greek words picture atoms being torn apart, as every mark of man's rebellion is wiped from the planet.
This future is grim only to those who have not accepted citizenship in the new world. To God's children, the verses just quoted are not threats, but promises of eternal happiness. And this is the perspective shared by our Soviet believers. Above and behind me in the Moscow church where I taught the Sabbath school lesson on February 14 is a round stained-glass window. The Russian words on it read "God is love." We who worshiped there love each other. We also trust each other. And we prayed together that our nations might learn the basis of love and trust. As I observed during the lesson: "Hopes for peace might well be enhanced if our nation's leaders would serve each other in that old biblical ordinance of foot washing."
(The previous two paragraphs have an irony not evident in their content, but rather in their composition. I write them as I wait with a group of my LIBERTY staffers to enter the NORAD complex in a mountain outside Colorado Springs.)
Two closing observations, all of which in some respect I intend should, in the spirit of Christ, further peace, understanding, and trust.
First, I am not one who echoes the "evil empire" theme promoted by the Christian Right in the United States and adopted by President Reagan. The Communist Party is, indeed, atheist, and it has for nearly 70 years promoted its nonbelief with evangelistic fervor. But neither persecution under Stalin nor antireligious propaganda under all the Soviet leaders has destroyed belief. Believers in the U.S.S.R. may number 60 million or more. And observation over 20 years leads me to believe that what survives is not the veneer of religiosity that characterizes much religion in the West, but the essence of vital witness—and the willingness to hold it even unto death.
One must ask whether God esteems more a nation that professes Him but whose heart is far from Him, or a nation that masks its sins beneath no pretext of discipleship. Which, indeed, does He regard as more evil? With Jacques Ellul I agree: "There is no truly Christian state."
Until the kingdom of justice and righteousness comes along, and God's judgment reveals the secrets of all men and all nations, it would befit us, who "see through a glass, darkly" (1 Cor. 13:12), to leave it to God to parse His own degrees of evil.
Second, I do not believe that the Soviet people or their government want nuclear war. We Americans who so easily assume that we virtually won World War II on our own, suffered more than 400,000 dead and more than 650,000 wounded on all battlefields of the conflict. A major contribution, indeed, and one written in valor and Leningrad, one city, more Soviets lost their lives (more than 600,000) than we lost in all of World War II! And in the war as a whole, more Soviets lost their lives (7.5 million) than our nation has lost in all the wars of its history (1.2 million).
It should be no surprise that most Soviets hate war—just as most Americans do. But to war or not to war is a question seldom left to the people. Which may mean that governments do well to mistrust each other. I would wish any disarmament treaty to contain titanium-clad on-site verification of disarmed missiles. And I would make a suggestion on behalf of the people: Let all nuclear weapons be disarmed on satellite television, with all the world watching the procedures. One for you. One for me. One for all the world. Let us watch. And when we get down to the final 100 on each side, let's tackle the problem of conventional forces. One missile disarmed and one division disbanded for you; one missile disarmed and one division disbanded for me . . .
These are not suggestions made by our delegation. They're dreams of a grandfather who wants his grandchildren to live long and breathe free. I believe that many babushkas and gedushkas share them.
