By the Way

The Most Famous Corpse in the World

My wife and I stood in line to see what is arguably the most famous corpse in the world. It may seem strange that it was no one we knew personally; he had died almost 40 years before we were born. It was not a man we admired—quite the opposite. We wanted simply to be witnesses to history.

So, we stood with thousands of others in Red Square advancing in a line that snaked along the outside wall of the Moscow Kremlin. Guards moved us through a metal detector and rifled through our daypacks. We entered beneath a name, ɅEHИH, inscribed on the red and black stone mausoleum. A guard suddenly shouted at us: “No photos!”

Embalmed autocrats

Eventually, we walked down steps to the somber funeral hall to see the remains, embalmed and repaired many times, of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin, who imposed Communism on Russia. In the name of creating a workers’ paradise, he coldly wielded the power of life and death over a great nation. He overthrew an empire, abolished Christianity, killed millions of his own people to maintain power and was copied by callous dictators in other countries.

The similarly embalmed bodies of Ho Chi Minh and Mao Zedong, emulators of Lenin, are also on public display to this day—murderous men venerated instead of a merciful God.

The worldwide death toll of communist regimes that followed Lenin’s path is estimated to be as high as 150 million! It is impossible to imagine so many people; the number is higher than the entire population of Russia today. A better way is needed.

Such cruelty and barbarism deserve to be remembered with repugnance alone—heinous arrogance evoked only to teach lessons about human conceit. Instead, Lenin is yet idolized in places around the world, and blinkered people insist his theory is good and just, only poorly executed every time it was tried. Better if such a miscreant were buried in an unmarked grave.

“We were buried with Him”

Then, remembering words of Paul, I thought of a certain other body I must make sure remains buried: “Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3-4, emphasis added throughout).

He continued: “Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin” (verse 6).

At baptism, the Father applies, to the repentant person, the sacrifice of His Son, which biblical Christians will soon commemorate in the ceremony of the New Testament Passover (Luke 22:15). The old men we were, motivated by egotism and greed, must remain in their watery grave. In every old man is the same human nature that gave rise to the evil of a Lenin or Hitler or Mao. It would inexorably rise again if the slave of sin were allowed to do so.

Dead men need to be buried—and remain buried—so that we can walk in newness of life.

Joel Meeker @JoelMeeker

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