She saw her husband killed by terrorists and her nation destroyed by evil men. Born to royalty, she married a leading member of the Russian aristocracy and lived in absolute luxury. When leftists killed her husband with a crude bomb, she had to return to the palace as a widow, her dress covered with his blood.
Instead of retreating from Russia or indulging her passions, this saintly woman began to minister to the poorest of Moscow. Her Mary and Martha Convent became a center of outreach to lost women in the city and even some of the communists respected her. Her virtue was her death warrant in the eyes of the tyrant ideologue.
Lenin ordered her execution.
The communists tossed her down a mineshaft with other “enemies of the state” and she spent her last moments in prayerful song, ministering to the needs of others as they lay dying. Elizabeth Romanov, nun and martyr, was a woman of courage.
He saw the church move from accepted to marginal.
He began his ministry touring the world, thundering in such venues as the Royal Albert Hall and ended it preaching the same gospel in American campgrounds and rural churches. He had been prepared for an upper-class career by his family and his Yale education. When D.L. Moody called him to save souls, he abandoned “success,” gave revivalism his first-rate mind, and began to preach the old time gospel with an educated accent. Instead of a career teaching in the Ivy Leagues, he developed the curriculum for Moody Bible Institute and helped found the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. When mocked by one young man, he turned his passionate nature on him and said, “I accuse you of betraying the High King of Heaven.” R.A. Torrey, evangelist and teacher, was a man of courage.
Courage is the first of seven traditional virtues, the starting point for living a good life. Courage is what enables a man to act when he should act, despite significant opposition. In dangerous or changing times like those facing Elizabeth Romanov and R.A. Torrey, courage is what enables these people to become saints or heroes. The church does not need more intellectuals, athletes, or business leaders; instead she needs people in each of those fields with courage to match their competence.
Virtue cannot be learned from a book, but is the product of good discipleship. It is the end goal of a traditional, Christian education. A person cannot learn virtue without another person such as a parent, pastor, or peer.
Classical Greek and Roman culture discovered the first four virtues: courage, moderation, practical wisdom, and justice. These virtues are available to any man or woman based on the common image and grace of God which endows them with this capacity for moral behavior. These virtues cannot save or even create a fully moral man. The Jewish and Christian religions revealed three higher virtues which can only be gained by spiritual regeneration: hope, faith, and love.
Traditional Christians have always sought a Vision of God. This sight, the greatest a human can imagine, transforms. Like the mythical Holy Grail was to the knights of Camelot, seeing Jesus in Himself is the goal of any true Christian. The virtues are the disciplines that enable any Christian to begin the journey that will lead to this vision. All of culture, every school, business, and family, should exist to enable its members to better prepare themselves for Paradise.
This world is good, but fallen from its perfect state and in need of redemption. This redemption was accomplished in the Cross of Jesus Christ. When Christians drink his blood and eat his flesh, they become one with Him and begin to become fit citizens of Paradise. In the meantime, this world continues as a school for souls in which perfection is not found, but can be dimly seen. The Christian owes his first allegiance to the church which will always face great dangers. This age presents the church with challenges from secularism, liberalism, radical religions, and post-modernism.
The dangers facing the Church are unique, but not insurmountable. The church of Jesus Christ is always losing, just to someone or something new. There has existed through the long ages since Jesus ascended to heaven: Christendom, the growing culture of Christ on Earth. It is not the same as any kingdom of this world, though any kingdom can swear allegiance to it if it wishes. It is not the church, but the earthly manifestation of the life of the church in this age. This is not yet the New Jerusalem and so, Christians must live in the world and create small and imperfect images of the City to come in the city as it is. New Jerusalem serves as a constant model, an image to imitate, and a reminder that anything built in this time will fail. To paraphrase Tennyson, any system built by the best of men will never live up to its dreams and aspirations, but men must dream this side of heaven.
The work of Christendom is hard work. No ethnic group, family, or nation is ever perfectly part of Christ’s Kingdom, but all can become more harmonious with it. When the United States had segregated drinking fountains, she was not in harmony with Christendom. When Britain fought the Nazi terror in the Battle of Britain she was acting to some measure in harmony with Christian civilization. Every golden age of such cooperation ends, but every Dark Age ends as well. Christendom and corruption will always be growing together until Christ returns.
Some will think churchmen should just preach the Gospel and remain separate from the civil order. This might be possible for saintly men and women, but for the rest of the human race there are babies to be raised, salaries to be earned, and civil governments to be obeyed. Most men cannot choose whether they will create civilization, caught up in the act of living, producing civilization whether they will or not. The good news is that the Holy Spirit has helped the church learn over the centuries what it means to educate, govern, and work in this fallen world. Christendom is always imperfect, but it is better than any alternative.