Here, while in exile, he secured a Bible and (according to his son’s account) after two years of study began to keep the seventh-day Sabbath and to expect the second coming of Jesus Christ to this earth. Babienko never returned he was arrested and exiled to Stavropol, in the northern Caucasus.
3 In 1883, when the “brethren” of Tarashcha “decided to erect a church building, they sent their leader, Babienko, to the governor in Kiev to obtain the necessary permission. Babienko became a minister with “Adventist” inclinations even before meeting any Adventist. 2 This group started preaching in the surrounding villages in Ukraine about the holiness of the Sabbath, the inadmissibility of the worship of the saints, the non-immortality of soul, and the soon coming of Christ. In 1877 Babienko organized a Bible study group, Community of Brothers Who Study the Word of God, and broke away from Orthodoxy. Babienko then purchased his own Bible from Kiev and continued reading. When he came with his doubts to the priest, the priest responded harshly and made Theofil return the Bible. While reading, he discovered that many of the teachings of the Orthodox Church were in contradiction with the Bible. Having heard that the church’s choir director had the Bible at home, some neighbors began to come to him in order to listen to the words from the Book. After the services, Theofil asked the priest for permission to take the Bible home. Therefore, the priest asked him to read the Psalms on Sunday services. Their union produced seven daughters and two sons. After a while he became a choir director in the Orthodox church of Tarashcha, where he married Ekaterina Stupka. Marriage and ConversionĪpart from his artistic talents, Theofil had a musical interest. By that time the noble surname Gordowski disappeared, together with the estate, and the common Ukrainian surname Babienko remained. As a result the boy was in great need and began to earn money by painting icons. Theofil’s young years were marred by the confiscating of his family’s estate byPolish magnates. In his passport there was mentioned a double surname, Gordowski-Babienko, but in the estate’s papers he was listed as Gordowski.
The boy Theofil was a good artist and liked to paint pictures and icons, which were in good demand. 1 By the time of her marriage, she already had a 12-year-old son, Theofil, from her first husband, General Gordowski. When General Gordowski was killed in one of the wars, his wife, who feared retaliation from the local Ukrainian population, quickly married the manager of her estate, Babienko. His father, Gordowski, was a Polish general who owned large estates in Ukraine. Theofil Arsentievich Babienko was born near Kiev in the town of Tarashcha (Тараща) in 1850. Theofil Arsentievich Babienko served the Seventh-day Adventist Church as a pastor, pioneer native worker, and missionary in czarist Russia, Romania, and Canada.
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