FROM A BROTHER IN BELGRADE

On Saturday, March 27, 1999, I received a heart-wrenching e-mail from Goran Zarubica, a Christian brother in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, forwarded to me from a vocational missionary in China who is my cousin in the flesh. I reprint part of Brother Zarubica’s unedited letter to remind us that God is not a nationalist, that his kingdom includes men and women of all peoples and nations, and that the day will come when the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.

* * *“Brothers and sisters in Christ — Hope is in God! The country we live in is our temporary home. NATO bombs are all around us. Lot of people have lost their beloved ones, there are a lot of people that have lost their properties and our church building cracked inside and outside walls. Tomorrow is Sunday, the day we gather around the Lord’s Supper and I don’t know what to do. It was announced that they will start bombing bridges, roads, electricity and water systems, and what if the church members come and they can’t go back home? The war in Bosnia taught me to be careful, to gather experience, and directed me to believe in God and especially what He says to me.

“Last night, we gathered to pray. There were 8 of us. And during the prayer the hospital in Nis (little town at south Serbia) was stricken, three schools in Belgrade, one in Novi Sad, the refugee camp in Pristina with refugees from Croatia and Bosnia and one refugee camp near Prokuplje. We were praying just for one thing: the fog or the rain and He heard us. When we went out from our apartment that is in the basement we couldn’t see the moon. It was too cloudy. The sirens announced the end of the danger so our brothers and sisters could leave for home, just between the two sirens.

“The main characteristics of the war are violence and hate, it destroys and damages but I understand that (John 8:44) because the devil destroys man from the beginning. The war is always the story of the death. The life is a gift of God. The life fulfilled with the peace from God is SHALOM. This week will be very long and hard. Our only hope is in Christ. We know that He is the Lord of all. He is our shepherd, king of kings and Lord of lords, my God.”