As the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters its second month, we must understand that this is a spiritual battle as well as a physical one.

Today I talk with Alan Eason - Independent Digital Marketing Consultant and Journalist and owner of AE Communications in Oak Ridge, TN. Alan has been in various forms of ministry for over 30 years - including doing missionary work in both Russia and Ukraine. He brings an interesting perspective to this invasasion - reminding us that this is not just a battle of land - but over the soul.

Alan Eason:
Oh, yeah. I mean, when I was there, it was and I'm talking about the evangelical church right now. I don't know that much about the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which, by the way, did officially separate from the Russian Orthodox Church a few years ago. And that's a whole other discussion. But I'm talking about the evangelical church. It was very small and very persecuted when we spent those days in Lviv. We attended basically the only registered non-Orthodox non-Catholic church in Lviv, which is a pretty good sized city. And we had a tremendous reception there. They would always ask us to preach, although it had to be bringing greetings because you weren't allowed to preach if you were a Westerner. So but you were allowed to bring greetings from churches in the West. So they would say, we bring greetings and we would say, Well, how long should we speak for? And they say, Oh, about an hour.

Reuel Sample:
Christians are such a subversive people, you know.

Alan Eason:
Oh, we're radicals. We're the real, we're the true underground. And speaking of that, there were some underground churches there, too, which we had a little bit of contact with. But anyway, back to my point that I'm saying about the revival, you know, that little church which well, I say little, they had maybe 2000 people that would come. And when we would speak, they would fill the building, which would hold about maybe 500, and they'd have another 500 out in the courtyard, in the pouring rain, listening to us. And they wanted us to come and speak every night. It was amazing. That was back in 72, 73, and and again to some degree in 75 when I went there. But another thing that happened was. The people there would continually beg us to just do more, do more, do more, spread the gospel, spread the gospel. And so that was the atmosphere under communism in the early seventies. And then come to find out Franklin Graham was there and did a Hope festival in 2015. And he had, I believe, 90,000 people in 2007 was his first one. We had 90,000 people come to it in. Levine Wow, 90,000. And then there's a YouTube video that you and maybe some of your listeners would like to look up. It's when Franklin Graham went back at 2015, the Festival of Hope and Revive. They had they filled the the soccer stadium. They filled it. It was like 70, 70 or 80,000 people. And they had Michael W Smith leading them and singing with a Ukrainian choir of 2800 people.