Blue Fire

By Kathryn Nell Donev

This past weekend while camping on top of the mountain of Petrohan with fellow believers, the Lord displayed his glory in many unique manifestations.  Some people were baptized in the Spirit, while others received a fresh blessing with new direction for their lives. Many more were healed instantaneously, as the Lord’s presence was both glorious and gentle remaining with us throughout the night.

Saturday evening, while in prayer around one of the torches which surrounded the perimeter of the tents, the Lord revealed to me in an ever peaceful way that we are to be “Blue Fire”.

The blue fire is the part of the flame which one does not really consider when thinking about a flame.  It is the element, which is at the base of the flame burning closest to the source. Therefore, the blue fire is the part with the most oxygen which allows for complete combustion.  It is in this state, leaving no residue, where the flame is the purest. The blue fire is the hardest to blow out and remains light even in the strongest winds. And despite popular belief, the blue part of the flame, and not the red one, is the hottest part of the fire.

The red flame receives its color from the impurities in the air that are being combusted.  These impurities absorb heat and are the cause for the red fire not being as hot as the blue fire. Since the red fire is not hot enough to reach the state of complete combustion not being close enough to the source, it leaves a soot residue, which contaminates its surroundings.  And when the wind blows it does not remain strong.

We are not simply to be on fire for God with a red flame, but we are to be on fire for God with a blue flame.  We are to be “Blue Fire”.  We are to be the hottest and most constant of the fire.  And it is in doing this that we provide true light to our surroundings and not residue.  We are to remain as hot as blue fire in order to be without impurities, uncontaminated by the world.  For it is the blue fire which does not to waiver in the wind; and it is the blue fire which remains as one with the source of the flame.

Village Ministry

Last Saturday we were again privileged to minister in the villages of the Yambol region.  Services were held consecutively in the churches of Kamenetz, Lulin, Alexandrovo and Polyana. Normally, it is somewhat difficult to gather the people in the villages due to harvest season when they are working in the fields all day long with no way to contact them. However, when our team arrived on site, the people from the local villages have taken the day off due to being warned by national news of the upcoming heat wave. Most of them had just gathered under the tree shadows by the close convenient store seeking shelter from the sun and waiting for a fresh water supply to arrive from Yambol as it was the hottest day of the year so far of some 105(F) degrees.

This allowed for us the opportunity to minister to the crowd and share once again the Message of Eternal Life. The church members were encouraged by the service as many of their neighbors and colleagues were hearing the Good News for a very first time. We committed to continue the services through Wednesday and then our team will reconvene in Yambol Wednesday evening as we will be broadcasting LIVE our services in Yambol on the internet at 12:00 PM ET.

National Youth Camp in Bulgaria

In years past, we have visited and ministered to a dozen different youth camps in Bulgaria. Each of them has been unique and special, but it has been a while since we have ministered at a youth camp where people have been so hungry to receive from God.

We were asked to visit the National Youth Camp at Petrohan and to lecture on our new translation of the Bulgarian New Testament. Pastor Vasil Petrov and his team from the Gabrovo Church of God accompanied us for the evening services. People from the churches in Sofia, Bankia, Aheloy, Bourgas, Varshetz, Gabrovo, Nova and Stara Zagora, Kazanlak, Sliven, Yambol and many other places joined with tents and campers for the occasion. Visiting missionaries from the Untied States and Switzerland were also present.

As our publisher provided us with several hundred copies of the translation, we were able to give each of the attendees a copy to read and to study. This helped us tremendously in the presentation of somewhat difficult material from the translator’s notes. The lectures were followed by the evening services with an inspiring message from pastor Vasil Petrov. Each night, prayer and worship at the alter continued well after midnight. We prayed for the healing of dozens of people. Many more were delivered instantly from various infirmities, both in soul and in body. Eight young people received the baptism with the Holy Spirit the very first night and many more were baptized in the following evenings. You could see parents and children praying for each other around the clock. One girl saw a vision of the “Heart of God” being exalted in our midst. As we continued with our next ministry appointment in the city of Varshetz, some stayed behind to spend one more day in the presence of the Lord on the top of the mountain. We will reconvene with them this week at the next youth camp organized by the Assemblies of God on the Karandila Mountain near Sliven.

Published in the Bulgarian National Geographic

The March issue of the Bulgarian National Geographic featured an article about the Bulgarian Bogomils – a medieval Bulgarian sect that split from the Orthodox Church forming its own religious community with peculiar customs. The author of the article, the renowned Bulgarian journalist Lubormir Kiumurdjiev, interviewed a number of Bulgarian theologians in an effort to investigate the Christian roots of the Bogomil’s theology. The view of the Bulgarian protestant community was represented in the article by Dr. Dony K. Donev, who elaborates on two main points in the faith of the Bogomils namely, their purposeful simplification of liturgy, as a sign of proto-reformation theology within the context of the Eastern Orthodox Church and their continuous efforts toward a new literal Bible translation in the spoken Bulgarian vernacular of their times.

The National Geographic’s publication comes as a high recognition of long years of hard labor in the publication of three biweekly series. Two of them are still ongoing with the Bulgarian Evangelical Newspaper as one tells the story of Bulgarian Protestantism, and the other focuses on chronological paleographical examination of Biblical manuscripts, in comparison of versions and revisions of the Bulgarian Bible. The third one is published in the Pentecostal Evangel and is almost finished with the examination of early Bulgarian Pentecostal history, while many of its findings will be presented at the 2010 SPS meeting.

Letters from Bulgaria: Overview of Rev. Ivan Voronaev’s Correspondence

The following article comprises the available documents on the life and ministry of Rev. Ivan Voronaev drafted as a chronological outline for a longer paper, which will be presented at the 2010 SPS meeting in Minneapolis. The materials were gathered from several archives across the United States among which were three major ones:

(1) The Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center where Voronaev’s ministerial records and his reports to Pentecostal periodicals are kept;

(2) The Southern Baptist Historical Library & Archives, where records of Voronaev’s publication are preserved;

(3) The Graduate Theological Union of Berkeley, which holds in archive the California Baptist records, where much could be found about Vornoaev’s early minister in the United States (California, Oregon and Washington State) as an ordained Baptist minister.

1886: Ivan Ephremovitch Voronaev was born in Russia under the name of Nikita Petrovitch Tcherkesov.

1908: Having married Ekaterina Bahskirova, Tcherkesov received Christ as his personal savior, during a visit to a Baptist church service, while serving in the Tzar’s army. Shortly thereafter, he was court-martialed for his refusal to bеаr arms. In order to escape, he was provided with the passport of a Christian brother from the Tashkent Baptist Church, whose identity he took for the remaining of his life under the name of Ivan Ephremovitch Voronaev.

1910: Together with his family Voronaev crossed the Chinese border and remained for a short time in the city of Carbin, Manchuria, where he preached in the Baptist church and work in the bank of one of the church members by the name of Shubin.

August 25, 1912: The Voronaev family, along with their two children, after receiving visas for the United States through the consulate in the Japanese port city of Kobe, arrived in San Francisco. Voronaev began working with the First Russian Baptist Church in town, which was founded several years earlier on 928 Atkinson Street by S. K. Kunakov. Voronaev also worked as a typesetter, travelled and preached to the Russian communities in Los Angeles and Seattle, where he established a Baptist church and a mission. Meanwhile, he began publishing the “Truth and Love” magazine for the Russian speaking emigrants.

November, 1912: Voronaev is mentioned for a first time in the annual report of the North California Baptist Convention as a newly accepted minister.

February, 1913: A revival began among the Russian Baptists in Los Angeles and they requested the sending of Voronaev to minister among them.

September 18, 1913: The San Francisco Bay Baptist Association held its meeting at the Russian Baptist Church in town. Voronaev was represented as a pastor, who led the benediction. North California Baptist Convention ordained him as pastor in San Francisco. While living in town, Voronaev attended Berkeley Baptist Divinity School for three years, although school archives do not have his student records. Later on, when ministering in Odessa, Voronaev receives Assemblies of God ordination thanks to his seminary preparation and ministry as a Baptist pastor. In a handwritten request to Assemblies of God headquarters, he points out his date of ordination as October 17, 1913, while the ministerial certificate which he receives as evangelist and pastor in Bulgaria is dated March 10, 1920.

1914: S. Gromov assumes the pastoral position at the Russian Baptist Church of San Francisco, after Voronaev had left for unknown reasons. According to Voronaev, this is the time when he first hears about the teaching of Pentecost while ministering in Los Angeles.

November, 1915: Voronaev arrived in Seattle to begin work among the Russian emigrants and renews the publication of the “Truth and Love” periodical.

October 1916-1917: Voronaev was mentioned in the annual reports of the Baptist Convention of West Washington State as Russian missionary in Seattle.

October 1918: Voronaev was mentioned in the annual reports of the Baptist Convention West of Washington State again, but now as a pastor. The Russian group met regularly at the church pastored by Earners Williams who will later serve as Assemblies of God superintendent in the period 1929-1949. It was Williams who introduced Voronaev to the Pentecostal doctrine.

1917: A number of members of the Russian Diaspora in California and of the Russian Baptist community returned to Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution. The Baptist Church of San Francisco went through a period of church split in 1915-1916, noted in the record of the Baptist Association, as follows: “During the past year this church has passed through dark days on account of the interference of a man of the Pentecostal faith …”

November, 1917: Voronaev organized a Baptist church on Henry Street in New York. His family is befriended by their neighbors by the name of Siritz who are Pentecostal Christians.

1918-1919: The New York Baptist Association reports Voronaev as a pastor of the New York Baptist Church organized in 1916. The church has 10 members in 1917 and 18 in 1918. The 1920 report states that the church has remained without a pastor in the middle of 1919.

June, 1919: Voronaev receives the baptism of Pentecost after his daughter began attending Glad Tidings Tabernacle (Hall).

July 1, 1919: Along with some 20 believers, Voronaev left the Baptist denomination and founded the first Russian Pentecostal Assembly of New York, which held meetings at the building of the 6^th Street Presbyterian Church.

Fall of 1919: In a cottage prayer meeting at the home of Koltovich, through the wife Ana, a prophecy was given: “Voronaev, Voronaev, go to Russia!” Voronaev ignored the word until several days later he heard them again while praying alone and obeyed the Heavenly call.

December 13, 1919: Voroneav sent the Pentecostal Evangel a letter which was published under the title “Pray for Russia.”

December 19, 1919: Voroneav contacted the Missionary Department of the Assemblies of God with a letter to H. E. Bell to inquire about Pentecostal believers and missionaries in Russia.

January 1, 1920: Upon Assemblies of God recommendation received in response to his last letter, Voronaev contacted J. Roswell Flower with a request for sponsoring a mission trip to Russia. In return, the “Evangelization of Russia” fund was open. In the letter, Voronaev changed the name of his church from “Russian Christian Apostolic Mission of New York” to “First Russian Pentecostal Assembly of New York.”

March 10, 1920: Assemblies of God issued Voronaev a certificate as a “pastor and evangelist in Bulgaria” valid till September 1, 1921.

June 22, 1920: Voronaev notifies the Assemblies of God about his plans to set sail for Russia with his family on July 13, 1920. The Missionary Department marked the letter with the words: “He plans to return to Russia.”

July 13, 1920: The Voronaev, Koltovitch and Zaplishny’s families set sail on the “Madonna” steamboat from New York to Constantinople. Along with them traveled a group of Kavkaz believers among which was the Bulgarian Boris Klibok.

August 10, 1920: After arriving to Constantinople, they had to wait for visas to enter Russia. Voronaev immediately began meeting with the Russian community in town recognizing the lack of Russian Bibles and Pentecostal churches.

August 15, 1920: „ ….with the help of God opened Russian mission here [Constantinople], and God our work blessed;” Voronaev wrote.

August 30, 1920: „…. we had first baptism with water in river. I baptized one lady wife of a Russian office. Glory to Jesus!”

September 2, 1920: Voronaev sent the Assemblies of God a report about his work in Turkey, which is marked by the receiver with “Works among 100,000 Russian refugees in Constantinople.

September 1920: The annual report of the San Francisco Bay Baptist Association recorded the reuniting of the Baptist church split in 1917.

November, 1920: After waiting for three months in Constantinople, Voronaev arrive in the Bulgarian port city of Bourgas along with the Bulgarian Boris Klibok.

March 5, 1921: The Pentecostal Evangel published Voronaev’s report from Bulgaria where he has been holding Russian-Bulgarian revival services in various churches in the cities of Sliven, Yambol, Varna and Sofia. Seven had received the baptism with the Holy Spirit.

April 16, 1921: The Pentecostal Evangel published Voronaev’s second report from Bulgaria about services in Sliven, Bourgas, Plovdiv and the Baptist Church in Stara Zagora where the daughter of the Baptist pastor from Kazanlak received the baptism with the Holy Spirit.

May 14, 1921: Services in the Congregational Church in Plovdiv and baptismal service in the Martiza River.

June 11, 1921: „In Bourgas, Bulgaria the Lord baptized with the Holy Spirit about fourteen souls. We have about twenty candidates for baptism with water, and about thousand Bulgarians and Russian were there and were much interested.”

July, 1921: The Latter Rain Evangel published an article under the title “Pentecost in Bulgaria” in which Voronaev wrote about new Pentecostal believers in seven Bulgarian cities, his relocation in Varna to work with the local Methodist church and his plan to move to Odessa. The Pentecostal Evangel from the same month wrote, “God called Brother J.W. Voronaeff, who had charge of a Russian Pentecostal Assembly in New York City, to Russia.”

August 6, 1921: The Pentecostal Evangel reported Voronaev to be working “among Russian refuges in Varna at the Black Sea.” The same issue records Voronaev’s apparent intent to move to Odessa: “Brother J.E. Voronaeff writes that the Lord could use American missionaries in Bulgaria. At the present time He particularly needs two Americans, a man and his wife. Anyone who feels a burden for carrying the Gospel to the Bulgarian and Russian people can address Brother Voronaeff through this office.”

August 21, 1921: The Voronaev and Koltovitch families received the long-awaited visas for Russia and moved to Odessa.

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