July 2023

By Richard Ibbett

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was born on December 11, 1918 at Kislovodsk, which lies in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains in southwestern Russia. He grew up in the town of Rostov, on the Don River. Desiring to be a writer from childhood, he attended the grammar school there, leaving in 1936. During WWII he served as the commander of a sound-ranging battery in the Soviet Army. He was decorated three times for heroism. Arrested in 1945 for criticizing Stalin, he was sentenced to eight years in a labor camp. At the end of his sentence he was exiled for life to Kok-Terek in Kazakhstan. This exile was cut short by the death of Stalin. In the early 1960's he was allowed to publish some of his works. Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970. After the publication of ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ he was again arrested in 1974, stripped of his citizenship, and flown out of the country to Frankfort, West Germany.

In speeches given throughout the free world, he warned against the dangers caused by the internal moral decay of the nations of the West.

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

Compiled from the sermon notes of Pastor Don Elmore

August 6, 2023

Scripture Reading: John 7:13 and John 20:19a

13) “Howbeit no man spake openly of Him [Jesus] for fear of the Jews.”

19a) “Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews,…”

It seems that America and most of the rest of the world is afraid of the Big Bad Wolf. But their European ancestors weren’t. For they kicked the “Big Bad Jews” out of their cities, counties and nations many times in the past--over 100 times. But now, many of these same nations have laws that one can go to prison for saying anything that is against the Jews, even if it is true. Russia was the first nation to have these laws, called antisemitism hate laws, after the Bolshevik Revolution and the penalty was death!