Richard

wurmbrand

FROM

Suffering

TRIUMPH!

The dramatic

and extraordinary sequel

to Tortured for Christ

From Suffering to Triumph

Richard Wuimbrand is a Hebrew Christian and a

Romanian evangelical pastor. He and his wife

Sabina suffered great persecution under Fascism and

Communism. Under the Communist authorities in

Romania Richard Wurmbrand spent fourteen years

in prison for his faith. He and Sabina were ultimately

rescued by the Norwegian Israeli Mission and the

Hebrew Christian Alliance.

After coming to the West the Wurmbrands were*

used by God to set up the international Christian

Mission to the Communist World, which now has

bases in many different countries.

In 1990, after the revolution in Romania which

overthrew Ceaushescu's dictatorship, Richard and

Sabina were able to return to their homeland from

which they had been banned for twenty-five years.

This book is not so much about the suffering they

found there as about the beauty which God gave to

the Romanian believers during their years of oppres-

sion.

Other books by Richard Wurmbrand:

Tortured for Christ

In God's Underground

Sermons in Solitary Confinement

If Prison Walls Could Speak

Alone with God

Christ on the Jewish Road

Marx—Prophet of Darkness

Answer to Moscow's Bible

Little Notes Which Like Each Other

100 Prison Meditations

From the Lips of Children

My Correspondence with Jesus

Richard

wurmbrand

FROM

Suffering

TO

TRIUMPH!

The dramatic

and extraordinary sequel

to Tortured tor Christ

kjegel

PUBLICATIONS

Grand Rapids, Ml 49501

From Suffering to Triumph by Richard Wurmbrand.

© 1991 by Richard Wurmbrand and published in

1993 by Kregel Publications, a division of Kregel, Inc.,

P.O. Box 2607, Grand Rapids, MI 49501. All rights

reserved.

Cover Illustration: Vic Mitchell

Cover & Book Design: Alan G. Hartman

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wurmbrand, Richard.

[From torture to triumph]

From suffering to triumph / Richard Wurmbrand.

p. cm.

Orginally published: From torture to triumph.

Eastbourne: Monarch, 1991.

Sequel to: Tortured for Christ.

1. Wurmbrand, Richard. 2. Luthern Church—

Romania—Clergy—Biography. 3. Persecution—

Romania—History—20th century. 4. Romania—

Church history. 5. Romania—History—Revolution,

1989. 6. Romania—History—1989. 7. Romania-

Description and travel—1978. 8. Communism and

Christianity—Romania. I. Title

BX8080.W86A3 274.98 1993 92-42091

CIP

ISBN 0-8254-4061-0

12 3 4 5 Printing / Year 97 96 95 94 93

Printed in tlie United States of America

Introduction

A brother who had been terribly tortured by the

Communist police shared the same prison cell

with me and told the following incident:

I once saw an impressive scene in a circus. A

sharpshooter set out to demonstrate his skill. In the

arena was his wife, with a burning candle on her

head. From a distance he shot the candle so that it

fell, leaving his wife unharmed.

Later I asked her, "Were you afraid?" She

replied, "Why should I be? He aimed at the candle,

not at me."

I thought about this when I was under torture.

Why should I be afraid of the torturers? They don't

beat me. They beat my body. My "me," my real

being, is Christ. I was seated with Him in the heav-

enly places. This—my real person—could not be

touched by them.

I have lived through the years of enforced exile

with the image of such heroes of faith in my

heart. Now, on my return to my homeland, I again

found this same spirit among the Christians I met.

My purpose in writing this book is to help you

ascend to such heights.

A Prophet in Disguise

After eight years in Romanian Communist jails,

I was released, but only for a short period. I had

failed to pass the test. The Communists considered

my sermons after liberation as bad as those before

my arrest. The brainwashing to which I had been

subjected in prison had not been effective. My mind

still harbored the same "wrong" religious ideas.

There was only one solution: send me back to jail—

this time for twenty-five years, though I eventually

served only six. My total prison experience was

fourteen years.

Captain Stanciu of the Securitate (Romanian

Secret Police), who had to interrogate me when I

was arrested for the second time, was an apostate

Christian who had been brought up in the home of

devout believers. Now he jailed God's children to

convince them that they were wrong. For some

unknown reason, he was nice to me. At the risk of

losing his own liberty if overheard, he whispered to

me on the first day, "My superiors have committed

a terrible mistake in ordering your arrest. At first you

were an unknown pastor in a small church. Then we

imprisoned you for eight years and turned you into

a national figure. Now all Romanian Christians

know you, and you have become a hero in their

eyes.

"Your rearrest will make you an international fig-

ure. That was the wrong thing to do."

8 From Suffering to Triumph

Though an enemy of the gospel, he uttered a

prophecy, just like Caiaphas the high priest who sen-

tenced Jesus to death (John 11:50).

When I was freed in 1964 after my stint of four-

teen years in Communist dungeons, I was not

allowed even to attend churches. Pastors of con-

gregations where I tried to worship were threatened

by the Communists: "Don't allow Wurmbrand to

enter your building—or else!" I had no other choice

but to leave the country, which I did with my wife

Sabina and my son Mihai in December 1965.

For twenty-five years we have been forced

exiles during which time the Romanian Communists

have not ceased to denounce me in their press as

their archenemy, principally because of my books

exposing their activities and my involvement in the

Christian Mission to the Communist World. God

used me to start this mission devoted to spreading

the gospel in countries under atheist dictatorships

and to helping the persecuted. I was able to write

books that have been translated into over sixty lan-

guages. For more than two decades I have traveled

and preached the world over in the service of this

mission, which has expanded to all continents. I

have indeed become internationally known. Captain

Stanciu's prophecy has been fulfilled.

Return to Romania

I value the fellowship of brothers and sisters of all

nations and confessions, but my heart has never

ceased to yearn for my Romanian fatherland, the

country in which I had been born twice.

Patriotism is not very fashionable today. But since

Jesus taught us to love even our enemies, how can

From Suffering to Triumph 9

we do so if we don't love our own country first?

And so wherever I traveled, the heart that beat in my

breast was the bleeding heart of my country and the

oppressed Romanian church. There seemed to be no

hope of my ever seeing it again, except in heaven

where the great reunion will take place. Although we

felt no hope for this earth, my wife and I practiced

hope against hope and saw it fulfilled. In a matter of

a few days God overthrew Ceaushescu's bloody dic-

tatorship. He and his wife were killed. I could final-

ly return to my beloved country.

My lovely wife Sabina and I boarded the plane in

Zurich. We were not sure if we would be allowed to

enter the country. A few days before our departure,

the Romanian King Michael I and Queen Anna had

tried to return. Though much loved by the people,

who of course were not consulted, they had been

denied entry by the Communists. They had been

stopped at Zurich airport. The new Romanian gov-

ernment, presumed to be democratic, forbade the

King and Queen, pride of the Romanian nation, to

visit their own land in which the Communists were

intruders as puppets of the Soviet Union. (In January

1991, the Romanian government finally restored their

citizenship.) The new government, with Iliescu as

President, still consists almost entirely of

Communists—"reformed" Communists to be sure,

but still Communists. A tamed wolf is still a wolf.

A stewardess interrupted our reveries: "Will

passenger Richard Wurmbrand please identify him-

self?" My heart sank. We thought we were sure to be

asked to leave the plane.

To our great surprise and relief, unknown friends

who had heard that we would be on this jet had sent

TO From Suffering to Triumph

us a box of chocolates and a beautiful message of

encouragement.

Some two hours later we heard the almost unbe-

lievable words: "Please fasten your seatbelts and

prepare to land in Bucharest."

My granddaughter Amely once gave this expla-

nation of the city's name: "Romania is a Communist

country. If they catch you there with a Christian

BOOK, ARREST follows."

This explanation was no longer valid when we

arrived in Romania, exactly a quarter of a century

after we had left. The mission to which I belong, and

many others, now cross the border with truckloads

of Christian literature. Our organization has even

created a large printing press in Bucharest itself

where we hope very soon to produce Bibles and

other books. The printing presses themselves would

have cost us a fortune which we did not have.* But

the printing press of Germany's ruling Communist

Party went broke, and their machines were sold at

auction. We obtained first-class machinery for half

the price. Moreover, Romanian Bibles will be

printed on machines that had printed atheist litera-

ture!

We are also setting up the first Christian book-

shop and video store.

Seeing Angels and Jesus

At long last we were in Romania! Overcome by

emotion, I kissed the soil.

Later, when I returned to western Europe and

America, many people asked me about the situation

in Romania. I cannot really comment on the situation

in its totality. I can say only what I saw. The

From Suffering to Triumph 11

observer is part of the reality observed. Beauty is in

the eye of the beholder. If one has a good eye (Matt.

6:22), a dove's eye (Song 1:15), he will see things

differently from the one who looks with other eyes.

When Peter and John heard a rumor that Jesus

had risen, they immediately ran to the tomb,

entered, and saw linen and a handkerchief, nothing

else. Then they left (John 20:7). Moments later,

Mary Magdalene looked into the same tomb and

saw two angels. How come the disciples didn't see

them? But Mary Magdalene was not satisfied with

seeing angels. She thought to herself "Where there

are angels, there must be something even better."

She did no more than turn her head, but she saw the

risen One.

I went to Romania to see angels and Jesus.

They are my first love. Why should I spend time

with lesser beings? I saw angelic beings and Jesus

dwelling in the lives of His saints.

Only One Sadness—Not to Be a Saint

Twenty-five years had passed since we left

Romania A voice whispered in our ears, "Why not

give up hope? Perhaps no one will remember you."

We could hardly have anticipated the crowds that

gathered from many cities far and near to welcome

us. Our joy and astonishment knew no bounds. The

first person I saw was my former cell-mate Nicolaie

Moldovanu from the Army of the Lord, a Romanian

version of the Salvation Army, but without uniforms

and bands. We had been in the same cell in the

ancient prison in Gherla. The regime had been very

harsh. From time to time, wardens would shout,

"Everyone on the ground!" It was winter. We had no

12 From Suffering to Triumph

sweaters, let alone overcoats. The floor was cold

concrete with not even a bit of straw for warmth.

Prisoners cursed the brutality of the wardens. Not

so Moldovanu. He believed that praising God was

better than cursing Communists. With a beautiful

smile on his lips, he would say, "Let's forget our sur-

roundings. I'll sing you the song I just composed

while lying on my stomach." It was a hymn full of

joy, hope and praise, sung now in many countries.

I remember the Orthodox priest Ghiush with

whom I had been in the Jilava jail near Bucharest.

The whole prison is underground. Cows graze

over the subterranean cells.

I was then in the eighth year of my sentence, I

had grown used to everything. But one day a

whole group of newcomers, all Orthodox priests,

were brought in. From time to time, the wardens

would shout, "All priests out in the corridor!" and

would beat them.

I sat down near the priest Ghiush, whom I had

known when we were both still free. My intention

was to comfort him. "Are you sad?" I asked He lift-

ed beautiful eyes to me and replied, "I know only

one sadness: not to be a saint."

Moldovanu was the same type of man. What an

honor it was for me to receive his brotherly kiss! I

did not feel worthy to untie his shoelaces.

Holy Kisses

Many were the kisses I received at the airport. I

believe that kisses should have a much greater place

in Christ's church. Paul wrote, "Greet one another

with a holy kiss" (Rom. 16:16), not with a cold

handshake. Jesus Himself longs for our kisses.

From Suffering to Triumph 13

"Kiss the Son" wrote the psalmist (Ps. 2:12). He is

not satisfied with anything less.

One evening Jesus was at the house of a Pharisee

named Simon who had invited Him to dinner.

Doubtless, on the table were beautiful flowers,

choice foods, and wine. Jesus looked at them and

said with sadness, "I have come into your house, and

you did not give me a kiss." This was what He real-

ly desired.

In the New Testament, the word for worship in the

original Greek is proskuneo, which means a rever-

ential kiss. When Jesus was on earth, it was easy to

kiss Him. His mother Mary must have kissed Him

countless times. But how can we kiss Him now? My

wife had more kisses from me when I was in jail than

she has now. So often when I want to kiss her now,

the phone rings or I have to hurry to a meeting. But

kissing is not so much a touch between two pairs of

lips as a coming together of two loving hearts.

Unsinged by Fire

And so I was kissed by Constantin Caraman who

had been one of the main contacts of our mission

with the underground churches. It was through

him that we had channeled much relief to the fam-

ilies of those who were being persecuted.

He, too, had been in prison three times. He had

worked as a slave laborer, just like my wife, building

a canal uniting the Danube with the Black Sea. What

a place of cruelty that had been! A prisoner was

caught stealing twenty onions which he intended to

share with others to enable them to swallow the taste-

less food: oats cooked in water, without salt, without

fat. The guard gave the prisoner a choice: twenty-five

14 From Suffering to Triumph

lashes on the soles of his feet or eating the onions

without salt or bread. He chose the latter. Tears

streamed from his eyes which swelled and made him

look like a frog. In the end, he fell into convulsions.

Another time, a convoy of women prisoners were

being driven from their barracks to their place of

work. On the way, they saw a dog's corpse. One

woman smashed its head with a stone, then others

jumped on it to eat its brain, so great was the hunger

for protein.

In the USSR horses were used to carry wagon

loads of stone. Prisoners picked worms from their

excrement and washed them. Again, valuable protein.

I looked at the shining face of Caraman, former

slave laborer. He had a triumphant, loving smile on

his lips. Observing him, one would never guess what

he had passed through.

In ancient Babylon, three Jewish youths who had

been thrown into a fiery furnace because they

refused to bow down to an idol emerged without

even the smell of fire on them. So it was with

Caraman and a host of other former prisoners I met.

A Convicted Pickpocket

There was Brother X. I would not have recog-

nized him after twenty-five years, but he reminded

me who he was: a former pickpocket with whom I

had been in jail. He had been won for Christ when I

preached in a cell full of common prisoners about

Jesus' love for thieves.

Far from loathing them, Jesus went so far as to

compare Himself with a thief who comes at night

when the residents of the house would not expect

him. Even more, He uses thieves as models for hon-

From Suffering to Triumph 15

est men. He praised thieves in His Sermon on the

Mount for being good to each other.

Now we laughed as we remembered the time I

fell asleep in my cell with my shoes on, only to

awaken as he tried to take them off! At the time, I

was moved by his kindness, thinking his desire was

to enable me to sleep better. On the contrary! He had

played dice, and my shoes were the stake. After win-

ning, he expressed surprise that I failed to recognize

him as their legitimate owner.

There was Vasile Rascol whom I had known

from childhood. He, too, had been in jail for the

crime of distributing smuggled Bibles. Now he is

working with us in establishing a press where

Bibles and other books can be freely printed.

My Children in Romania

I could not begin to describe everyone I knew in

the crowd, but I must say at least a few words about

my children.

All my friends in the West know that I have one

son, Mihai. He was the only one about whom I

spoke and wrote because he had emigrated with us.

But he is not my only son. In the airport, Sandu was

waiting. Since he had remained in Romania, I

could never mention him as I didn't want to endan-

ger him.

Many years ago I buried a Christian who had two

small children. Since his widow was very poor, I

took one child into my home, and he never left. He

became Mihai's brother. Because he was adopted,

the Communists would not allow him to leave with

us. Today he is married, and I was able to meet him,

his wife Sylvia, and their children.

16 From Suffering to Triumph

I could embrace my granddaughter Doina whom

I had never seen. She is married and has given me

my first great-grandchild. I also embraced my

grandson Richard, named after me. Richard had

been arrested in the final days of the Ceaushescu

regime and expected to be shot. In his cell he

thought, "Well, I belong to the Wurmbrand family.

Prison and persecution are its fate." When he was

taken out of his cell for what he thought would be

execution, he received an incredible surprise.

"Ceaushescu has been shot," he was told. "You

can go home."

There was also Lenutza. Once, as I sat in my

office, a girl of thirteen entered. She was shy,

poorly dressed, and very thin and pale.

"Are you Pastor Wurmbrand?" she asked.

"Yes."

'Then you are my father from now on. My own

father is an alcoholic and has forsaken us. My moth-

er is always bringing home some other man who

beats and chases me. I heard that you are a good

man, so I will be your daughter."

I called my wife from the kitchen.

"Congratulations! You have given birth to a child

without any birth pangs. Here she is."

She, too, remained in our home. Just after I was

kidnapped by the Communists in 1948, my wife,

instead of brooding about her misfortune, prepared

a beautiful wedding for Lenutza.

She, too, was at the airport, with her husband

Gheorghe and their daughter Cornelia.

We had six other children, all war orphans whom

we had taken for our own, though under

Communism it was not possible to adopt them

From Suffering to Triumph 17

legally. There was plenty of joy and noise in our two-

bedroom apartment We never had to go to the circus

or cinema for amusement We had plenty at home.

All six of these children were killed on one day.

To reveal the circumstances would mean accusing

some whom I would not like to mention. Great sor-

row has been my companion from childhood. God

has taught me to rejoice in tribulation. He is with me

in the free world too. My wife and I suffer here more

than we ever suffered under the Nazis and

Communists.

The Politics of Kindly Smiles

At the airport we all joined in singing, accompa-

nied by Moldovanu on the harmonica. I'm sure the

angels participated in this joyous reunion. Police

officers from die Securitate (the dreaded Communist

organ of repression) stood by. They are still in power

and wear the same uniforms, but they have been par-

alyzed by the uprising of December 1989 which

overthrew their boss Ceaushescu.

After the singing, there were speeches. A video-

tape was made by brothers Neureder and Wieser of

our German mission, great friends of Romania who

had come especially for this occasion. A number of

individuals from the crowd went with us for an inti-

mate meeting in a house on University Square. From

the window we could see the many thousands who

demonstrated against the government day and night.

The University Square had been declared a non-

Communist zone that refused to acknowledge the

authorities. There were tents for some twenty

hunger-strikers (one in the 36th day) who were call-

ing for the demise of the government. Some of the

18 From Suffering to Triumph

demonstrators, almost all young, sang a hymn,

"Better to be a rascal and a scoundrel than a

Communist." This hymn was in response to the

prime minister who had characterized them in

such terms. From a balcony, leaders of the opposi-

tion harangued the Communists.

The aversion to Communism was understand-

able, but it was not wise to turn it into a political

platform. The Communist Party had four million

members. Together with the membership of the

Communist youth and their nearest relatives, they

numbered ten million, the great majority of the vot-

ers in a country of only twenty million. Instead of

trying to win the rank-and-file Communists to

their side, the leaders of the opposition frightened

them. The Communists thought, "We will all have

to suffer if the opposition comes to power." Unwise

anti-Communism assured the success of the

Communists in the elections.

Jesus knows best what is right in the political

sphere. Words of love for the enemy serve the cause

better than expressions of hate. It would have

been easy to win the hearts of Communists. They

were shattered by the bankruptcy of their ideology

in the Eastern European nations. They were

depressed as well as disappointed. With a few good

words, President Sadat of Egypt obtained great con-

cessions from Israel, after five bitter wars had led to

terrible loss of lives and territories for the Arabs.

I am for the politics of kind words and friendly

smiles in all human relations.

The Hebrew word for "to tell" is lesaper, which

comes from saper, meaning sapphire. 'To tell" in

Hebrew means "to give a jewel."

From Suffering to Triumph 19

We should only speak if we have a jewel to give.

If you can enrich another, if you have a jewel to

give, talk. If not, it is better to keep your mouth shut

If this simple Hebrew rule were respected, there

would be no family strife, no divorce, no political

splits, no feuds in churches or between individuals.

Subverting Communism with the Gospel

The Communists have done great evil in

Romania, but most of them were unaware of it.

They did not know about the satanic roots of

Communism, which I have revealed in my book

Marx—Prophet of Darkness (Marshall Pickering).

Many only joined the Party for a better job or high-

er education. They should have found compassion,

but instead they were hardened by evil attitudes.

Finally, the Communist President Iliescu had had

enough of the demonstrators in University Square.

One day he shot and wounded many of them.

Over a thousand were arrested on one day.

How is it that Communism has crumbled, that,

while it is far from losing the war (China, Cuba,

North Korea, Vietnam—about one-fifth of

mankind—are still under Communist one-party

rule), it has lost some decisive battles?

For years politicians believed that Communism

could only be defeated through nuclear deterrents.

They spent billions and billions of dollars producing

them and now have to spend billions more in dis-

mantling them as useless. Others believed we should

accept Communism as an unchangeable reality and

come to terms with it. Their slogan was détente.

The Romanian dictator Ceaushescu was a mav-

erick. Like Tito, he had played the game of being a

20 From Suffering to Triumph

Communist apart, at odds with Moscow, but friend-

ly with the West. He was even granted a title at the

British court. But he was a Communist just like the

other dictators, only of a different stripe. There are

several species of tyrants just as there are several

species of wolves, but they all have the same pri-

mary characteristics.

Neither anti-Communist armaments nor courting

the Communists helped.

In all my writings and speeches I advocated

something else: "Communism infiltrates and sub-

verts the free world. Let us subvert the Communist

world with the gospel. Let us win them with love.

Christ taught us to hate sin but love the sinner. Let

us introduce, by secret means if necessary, the word

of God. Let us raise an army of prayer warriors."

Alliance with Angels

Furthermore, I said, we should ponder the

secret of the Jewish people. Though small in

number, they have had to fight powerful foes in

order to exist. In the end, they have conquered all

their enemies. Today Israel faces the enmity of hun-

dreds of millions of Arabs.who will succeed no

more than the powerful Romans, the Inquisition, or

the Nazis.

The Jews are 3% of the population of the United

States. They are 25% of its millionaires, but also of

its revolutionaries. They play an enormous role in

science and the arts. A large percentage of Nobel

prize-winners are Jewish. The nation of Israel,

although among the smallest, is in the headlines

every day. A third of the world now awakens from

the nightmare in which a Jew—Marx—played the

From Suffering to Triumph 21

principal role. The only one who can save it from

this nightmare is another Jew—Jesus.

What is the secret of the uniqueness of the

Jewish nation? One can say God willed it, and that

is true. But there was one event in Jewish history

through which this will was manifested.

Jacob, ancestor of my people (I am Jewish),

fought with an angel and prevailed (Gen. 32:28).

With one man on its side, a colony of ants is invin-

cible in its fight against other ants. With a few steps

the man can destroy the enemy. Likewise one man,

one nation, one church with an angel on its side will

prove in the end invincible.

Each of us has a guardian angel. How can two

walk together if they do not agree (Amos 3:3)? It

was one of the greatest events of my life to know

my guardian angel. Many Christians worked togeth-

er with their angels for the defeat of Communism.

Learn from them and do the same! In some places

angels are described as having wings. They are nec-

essary for communication between men and a dis-

tant God. But if God is nearer, wings are not

needed. In Jacob's vision, it was enough that angels

had a ladder (Gen. 28:12). For some, even a ladder

is not needed. The angel of the Lord surrounds them

(Ps. 34:7). He is at their disposal.

Christian Mission to the Communist World and

other similar organizations that followed its exam-

ple have worked hard in the spiritual as well as prac-

tical realms. Angels were by our side. Our prayers

were added to the prayers and sacrifices of num-

berless martyrs. And so it happened that Communist

walls have come tumbling down.

22 From Suffering to Triumph

How the Revolution Began

A Romanian bishop, one of the many who

became stooges of the Communists, fired the

Reformed Pastor Tökes of Timisoara for preaching

faithfully. When fie was to be evicted from his

home and church, a crowd of Christians of all

denominations and several nationalities surrounded

his house and obstructed the police. The number of

demonstrators grew. When they proceeded to

march toward the center of town, the army was

called out to stop them. The soldiers began shoot-

ing, and many were killed or wounded. Little chil-

dren gathered on the steps of the cathedral and

sang religious hymns. Again the troops fired,

and some children died. The rest sought shelter in

the cathedral, but heartless priests had locked the

sanctuary.

Then an amazing thing happened. The entire

crowd, instead of fighting the army, knelt and

prayed. This was too much for the soldiers. They

refused to shoot any more. Meanwhile, the whole

town had gathered. Pastor Dugulescu seized the

opportunity to address everyone from the balcony of

the Opera House. A poem by Constantin Ioanid,

"God Exists," was recited. The crowd shouted,

"God exists!" Leaflets with the text had been dis-

tributed. Some who knew the music began to sing

the song that had been composed for the words.

Soon thousands joined in singing it again and

again. It became the song of the revolution.

One day when my son Mihai, at about age five,

was walking with us through the park, he stopped in

front of a man sitting on a bench reading.

From Suffering to Triumph 23

"What are you reading?" he asked with childish

simplicity.

"A novel."

"Better read the Bible," said Mihai, "because if

you don't follow it, you will go to hell."

"What kind of words are those?" asked the

stranger.

"Do you see the tall man with a little lady there

behind me? They are my parents. Ask them and they

will tell you everything. It's a very serious matter."

Curious by now, the man did ask. It turned out he

had been a member of a virulent anti-Jewish orga-

nization. Through the witness of a little Jewish boy

named Mihai, he was converted and became one of

the best Christian poets of Romania It was his song

that became the hymn of the revolution.

When it became known elsewhere that innocent

people had been killed in Tïmisoara (it was rumored

they numbered thousands), other demonstrations

broke out spontaneously in different locations.

Thirteen children, the oldest fourteen, made a barrier

with their bodies against the troops of the Secret

Police who could advance only by murdering them.

The children knelt and shouted, "Please don't kill

us!" The police paid no attention. When the first fell,

the others did not run away but remained kneeling

with arms outstretched in love and childish confi-

dence toward the murderers as they continued to

beg, "Please don't kill us!"

A cross now stands where the children died.

A legend arose in Romania. It said that angels

began the revolution. Coming down from heaven,

they entered the children, giving them holy courage

like that of the good angels who had defeated the

24 From Suffering to Triumph

hosts of Satan in heaven. The martyrdom of these

children gave victory to the unarmed against an army.

Tanks and troops were called out against the popu-

lace, but in vain. The soldiers were as fed up with the

dictator as the people. In Sibiu, two Orthodox

priests who were lifted onto tanks asked everyone to

kneel for prayer. The demonstrators, numbering

thousands, as well as soldiers and officers, did so. An

"Our Father" was said together by those who still

remembered prayers. Soldiers and citizens embraced.

It was no longer possible to repress the uprising.

Communists Hate Each Other

At the same time, another scenario was taking

place in the capital.

Communists have a religion of hate. They hate

not only capitalists, Christians, and Jews, but also

each other. Almost all members of the Central

Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR

had been killed by their comrade Stalin. In China,

the president of the Communist republic, Liu-

Shao-Chi, died under torture ordered by his comrade

Mao-Tse-Tung. In Romania, Lucretiu Patrashcanu,

the Communist who brought his party to power, was

killed by his own secret police.

So it happened that Ceaushescu's comrades in

evil deeds, Iliescu, Roman, and others, plotted to

overthrow him. For them the uprising in provincial

towns was the spark they needed. They prepared to

arrest Ceaushescu who had just returned from Iran

and was scheduled to deliver a speech from a bal-

cony in the center of Bucharest.

When he spoke, instead of receiving the usual

cheers (which were compulsory), Iliescu's men in the

From Suffering to Triumph 25

secret police began to boo. No one else would have

dared. But this signal was enough to stir up the crowd.

They had long desired to boo. Nothing could stop

them now. The shouts against Ceaushescu became

louder and louder. Sensing the danger, he fled, but

something was wrong with his car. He flagged down

another. The security officer who was with him and his

wife drew out a revolver and instructed the driver—

who happened to be a Christian—where to go.

Pretending that the battery was low, he stopped

right where men were ready to apprehend their

leader. After being paraded on television,

Ceaushescu and his wife Elena were killed. Several

of his adherents were jailed. Romania now has a

new government, but one which consists (at the time

of writing) almost exclusively of former Communist

leaders, schooled in Marxism from youth. They

claim to have renounced Communism, but

Communism does not abandon a Communist.

The Bible tells the story of the exodus of the Jews

from slavery. They followed Moses for a while, but

at the first opportunity they made a golden calf to

bow down and worship, just as they had seen the

Egyptians do. They had gone out of Egypt, but

Egypt had not gone out of them. The idolatrous

practices learned while they were slaves in a heathen

country remained in the Jewish mind for centuries.

The new government of Romania, like the old,

has also shot and jailed innocents. Ceaushescu can

be happy about his successor.

A Church I Founded

On Sunday, I had my first service in the Baptist

church of Valaori Street in Bucharest.

26 Front Suffering to Triumph

In a sense, I was its founder. The Communists

were not the first to persecute evangelicals in

Romania. By 1940, the right-wing Iron Guard,

who were fanatically Orthodox, had come to power.

The first thing they did was to forbid Baptist,

Adventist, Pentecostal, and Brethren Churches to

worship. Consequently, all their buildings were

closed. Then Marshal Antonescu dispensed with the

Iron Guard and established his own dictatorship,

again banning religious freedom. Not one

Romanian-language evangelical church remained

open. Hundreds of evangelical Christians were

sentenced for up to twenty years. The Orthodox

Church stood solidly behind this persecution. There

has been no Reformation in Romania. The Orthodox

Church is still as authoritarian as the Catholic

Church was before Vatican 2.

All Lutheran churches were free except mine

because I was Jewish and so were the majority of

my congregation (the government was fiercely

anti-Jewish). The Lutheran bishop Stadel was not

inclined to defend us. He gained renown through his

sermon that proclaimed, "Mankind has had three

geniuses: Christ, Beethoven and Hitler. I dare to

assert that Christ is even greater than Hitler."

And so, like the Baptists and other evangelicals,

we, too, gathered in the underground.

Toward the end of the war, a friend of ours, the

Swedish ambassador van Reuterswarde, succeeded

in obtaining the authorization for us to worship. In

one day, we removed all the furniture from our

apartment and turned it into a church. As soon as

this was known, hundreds of brethren from all the

forbidden denominations came to our services

From Suffering to Triumph 27

which we had to conduct five times a day. Thus we

were the only Romanian-speaking evangelical

church.

When the Nazis lost the war, my former church

again enjoyed religious freedom and was given back

its old building. Those who had gathered in our

apartment formed a Baptist congregation. This has

become the Valaori church. Thus, in a sense, its

Baptist pastor Talosh is my successor.

Many who now gathered to hear me had known

me personally before. The others knew about me,

my books, and my life story. For them I was not a

mere human but the incarnation of a legend that had

grown more and more beautiful over the years, to

the point of losing touch with reality. I had the prob-

lem of convincing them that I was not the legendary

hero they imagined, but an ordinary man.

The Wurmbrand Land

A joke is told in Romania: the dictator

Ceaushescu's car was forced to stop on a country

road for a small repair. Nearby he saw an old peas-

ant woman painfully shoveling dirt and asked

about her life. She told him how hard it was and

then asked, "Who are you?"

Amazed at not being recognized, he replied,

"Read the newspaper. Watch TV. They tell who I

am. I am 'the genial leader,' 'the lay god,' 'the

genius of the Carpathians.' I am the one who

brings truth, light and love to this country."

The woman, full of joy, shouted to her husband

who was working at a distance, "Come quickly,

John! Brother Wurmbrand has arrived!"

An American Christian has written a book about

28 From Suffering to Triumph

Romania which he calls The Wurmbrand Land.

Dispelling the legend, and speaking as a simple man,

I preached in church after church, my heart over-

flowing with love and joy.

How Much Am I?

One evening I was in the Popa-Rusu church,

where I had been secretly ordained as deacon during

Nazi times, when it was inconceivable that a Jew

should be given office in a church. But this was a

German-speaking church, and the Romanian

Fascists did not dare to close it.

The ordination took place in the greatest secrecy.

Only the two who laid hands on me and two wit-

nesses were present. The door was locked. The

German brethren Fleischer and Strobel were not con-

cerned about the anti-Jewish tempest raging outside.

It was in this same church that I later performed

my first baptism—of a Jew who did not know one

word of Romanian. During the services he would

read his Russian New Testament and just let me talk.

Before baptizing him I said, "I cannot just perform

this ceremony. I bear a responsibility. I must find out

what you have learned from Scripture. Read any

verse you like and explain it to me."

He opened his Bible at 2 Corinthians 12:11

where Paul writes, "I am nothing," closed the

book, and asked, "If Paul was nothing, how much

are you?"

I thanked him. He knew Scripture better than I.

A Heroine of the Faith

After Bucharest, I traveled from town to town.

We saw the miracles of socialism everywhere.

From Suffering to Triumph 29

Where there had once been cars and trucks, men

now rode behind horses. The shop windows were

empty. People stood in line for hours for tomatoes,

cabbage, milk. There were ration cards for many

articles. An individual was allotted one kilogram of

meat every two months. The streets and houses were

poorly lighted.

In every town I met the great and little heroes of

faith, as well as cowards and outright traitors. One

heroine who traveled with us to some places was Dr.

Margareta Pescaru.

In 1950,1 was close to death in the prison hospital

of Tirgul Ocna. The Communists had inherited from

the capitalists they despised the notion that every jail

should have an infirmary and a physician. However,

physicians were told, "You must practice veterinary

medicine on these prisoners. Give them the sort of

medicine and care you would give to oxen and hors-

es in order that they might be able to work as

slaves. If they can no longer recuperate, let them die."

In such prisons we knew two kinds of physicians.

Some of them, among whom were young female

doctors, would be present at the torture sessions and

would joke with the savages. From time to time the

doctor would take one's pulse and say, "Now let him

rest for a while." During this time, he—or more like-

ly she—would amuse herself with the police officer,

then say, "Now you can start again, but be careful

not to beat him in the region of the heart. He might

die too soon, and you won't get any more informa-

tion out of him."

But there were others who took seriously their

primary duty to save fife. Preeminent among them

was Margareta Pescaru. A Christian, she smuggled

30 From Suffering to Triumph

medicine into the jail. Physicians, just like others,

were frisked when they entered, but she succeeded

time and time again. Many lives, including mine,

were saved in this manner.

If a doctor was caught smuggling, he or she

would be badly beaten, then imprisoned for many

years. The risk was considerable.

Dr. Pescam made contact with my family and

friends. She also provided me, and others through

me, with streptomycin, the miracle medicine for

tuberculosis which was widespread in prison.

Preventing an Orgy of Cruelty

But she did even more than that In the prisons of

Pi tes h ti, Suceava, and the Canal, the Communists

had begun the so-called "reeducation" of prisoners.

Some had been corrupted through promises of

freedom if they would beat and torture their fellow

inmates to get them to reveal deeds against the state

they had not divulged during the investigation. The

prisoners also had to abjure all their convictions,

political or religious, for which they had been sen-

tenced. They had to promise full allegiance to

Communism.

Any method that would produce results was per-

mitted: severe beating on the soles of the feet and on

the genitals; breaking teeth with gravel; forcing pris-

oners to ingest feces and urine; sleep deprivation;

forbidding them to go to the toilet; and any other

degrading measures.

Men had to be reduced to heaps of fear, nothing

else. The Communists succeeded with most of

them. When prisoners were forced to run up and

down the stairs pursued by whips and sticks,

From Suffering to Triumph 31

everyone ran for his life, which, though wretched,

was at that time all that mattered to him. Some did

not yield, but they were few. Some died under tor-

ture. The henchmen, not satisfied with mere killing,

would urinate over the corpses.

Each prisoner was allowed to take one cup of

water from the tap each day, but he first had to pre-

sent it to the re-educator, who would spit in it. Then

the prisoner could drink. Jesus used spittle for

healing. I know one prisoner who at that time asked

himself, "If Jesus' spittle could heal a blind man, can

the spittle of such wicked men also heal if we accept

it with quiet resignation and love for the evildoer?"

The authorities brought some of these re-educa-

tors to my prison hospital, designated for tubercu-

losis patients, to start their work of destruction.

Re-education had been hell for the sane; what

havoc would it wreak among the sick, many of them

near to death? In a whisper, we communicated the

danger to Dr. Margareta Pescaru. She did the

unthinkable. She decided to go to the worst of beasts

to plead the cause of lambs.

After traveling a whole night to the capital, she

went to the top officials who had oversight of the

prisons—in simpler terms, to the chief butchers. God

gave her grace in their eyes, as He did to Esther in

the eyes of Ahasuerus. We have no idea what con-

vinced them. Was it her physical beauty, or rather

rays of God's power shining through her? But she

pleaded with success. She appealed to pride. Tirgul

Ocna was the only large prison hospital; the prestige

of the country was at stake, and so on. The fact is

that, for the first time in the history of Romanian

Communism, the torturing of innocents was stopped.

32 From Suffering to Triumph

Christian Becomes

Communist Police Officer

Another hero was X. (It is not safe to reveal his

name even now, since the Securitate, the Communist

Secret Police, is still in power.) During those dark

years, some wore the prisoner's garb for Christ But

X brought a greater sacrifice. To destroy the church

from the inside, the Communists infiltrated their

numbers, placing men who had become priests and

pastors for this purpose in positions of trust. Brother

X thought, "Why not reverse the process?" David

said, 'There is none like the sword of Goliath" (1

Sam. 21:9). Translators often believe they are wiser

than the original authors and should correct them.

This is true of Bible translators as well. In the orig-

inal Greek in Matthew 10:1, it is written that Jesus

gave his twelve disciples the power of unclean spir-

its. The English says "over," which is something

entirely different.

In time of war, the enemy's spying cannot be

counteracted only by preaching the gospel. There

must also be counterespionage. So young Brother X

became an officer of the Secret Police to serve the

underground church, and especially me. Brothers

and sisters who had become prisoners wore a uni-

form that was highly honored by believers. X was

loathed as a traitor who had passed to the ranks of

the enemy. Believers might well have thought,

"Who knows what he really does? Perhaps he has

even become a torturer."

He bore the shame and did his job well. He was

not the only one. Through men such as him we

came to know beforehand about threats of arrest. I

From Suffering to Triumph 33

was informed even after I had been exiled to the

West about threats to my life.

I met this hero of the faith, Brother X. Romanian

believers still don't know his story. What a privilege

it was to embrace him!

Some brethren, instructed by their faithful pastors,

accepted the role of becoming informers of the

Secret Police when it was proposed to them (and it

was proposed to almost all Christians). Police offi-

cers would meet with these "informers" in conspir-

atorial apartments, and we were thus able to learn

the addresses. Then members of the underground

church could spy on these apartments belonging to

the police and learn the identity of the real traitors.

These sham informers were very careful to tell the

police only things that would lead them astray. It is

wise to say little more, even today.

Collaborators of the Communists

I met with top leaders of different denominations.

Some of them had been collaborators with the

Communists. Feeling terribly guilty, they did not

dare to lift up their eyes. They trembled for fear that

the archives of the Secret Police and the Ministry of

Cults would be opened, and the public would

know all the details of what they had done. Some of

them were elderly men. Considering the fact that

Communism had reigned in Romania for forty-five

years, they probably asked themselves what they

would do at such an age, deprived of their positions

and probably of their pensions as well. I tried to ease

their conscience by telling them, first of all, that a

measure of collaboration had been legitimate.

I was not saying that it would be right to submit

34 From Suffering to Triumph

to dictators, for Paul said in Romans 13:1: "Let

every soul be subject to the governing authorities,

for there is no authority except from God." A God-

hating government is not from God. If it were, God

would be like the Jewish king Saul, who asked an

enemy, an Amalekite, to kill him (2 Sam. 1:9). God

would be advocating a kind of suicide.

I believe, with Saint Augustine, that "without jus-

tice, states are nothing more than robber-gangs."

Our duty is to uproot them as gangs and try to save

the souls of individuals in the gang.

Why, then, did Paul not write like Augustine?

I believe it is wise to say a few pleasant words to

tyrants under whom you are obliged to live, as long

as you cannot overthrow them. Daniel the prophet

said some very pleasant things to King

Nebuchadnezzar who was the Hitler of his day.

Diplomatic talk belongs in the arsenal of Christians.

Commenting on the king's dream that foretold

terrible sufferings for him, Daniel said to

Nebuchadnezzar, who not long before had thrown

Daniel's three friends into the fire. "My lord, may

the dream concern those who hate you, and its inter-

pretation concern your enemies!" (Dan. 4:19). In his

heart, Daniel might have thought, "All the punish-

ments from God, O king, are only just, and I hope

God will not change his mind."

What Should We Render to Caesar?

Jesus said, "Render to Caesar what is Caesar's,"

a very clear teaching. The Jews were to render to the

Roman emperor what was his. Now, what was legit-

imately his in Palestine? Simply—nothing. The

Roman army had invaded Palestine by force and

From Suffering to Triumph 35

ruled in a tyrannical way. The historian Flavius

Josephus wrote that, when the Jews rose up claiming

minimal human rights, the Romans crucified so

many of them "that there remained no wood for more

crosses and no place to put them." The Caesars had

planted not one tree and built not one house in

Palestine. "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's" means

give him nothing, except a boot in the back.

Who are the governing authorities everywhere?

They are the successful rebels of yesterday or their

successors. Cromwell and others fought against

tyrants in Britain; therefore the democratic regime

was God-willed. One royal house has been over-

thrown through violence by another; therefore the

actual queen of Britain is a God-willed authority.

Americans broke an oath of allegiance to the king

of England and made a successful revolution. The

American authorities of today are therefore of God.

The conclusion? Overthrow Communist and

other dictators. If you do not succeed, you are a

rebel. If you are victorious, you will be a ruler

appointed by God Who gave you victory.

Under Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Ceaushescu, as

with many despots of old, Christians have been mis-

led, by a false interpretation of this one verse from

Romans 13, to become collaborators in evil deeds.

They have failed to observe that these polite words,

"Let every soul be subject to governing authorities,"

appear only towards the end of a book that teaches

on all preceding pages that one should withstand and

tear down injustice and tyranny. This is what

Moses, Gideon, Barak, Samson, David and others

did, all of whom are honored as heroes in the Holy

Book.

36 From Suffering to Triumph

I did not consider the collaborators with the

Communists personally guilty. One born in a hea-

then or animist environment naturally becomes

heathen. He cannot be blamed. Likewise one

brought up in a church in which everyone submits to

rogues, considers the practice normal.

One of the top leaders of the official Soviet

Baptist Church, now deceased, said, "We have to be

submissive to the authorities, which does not mean

only to the government, but also to the KGB (the

murderous Soviet Secret Police), because it is also

an authority and as such is willed by God." This

means that if they asked me to spy on my brethren

in the faith, to report on and denounce them, know-

ing murderous arrests will follow, I must do so. How

can one ask Christians educated in such a faith to act

otherwise? It is like wondering why a child educat-

ed in English does not converse in Arabic.

I managed to have fellowship with the former col-

laborators who had caused much harm to individuals

and churches. They had considered it right to inform

the authorities about everything that happened in the

church—every word spoken, every decision taken.

As for the consequences of what they did? They

thought, "Let the chips fall where they may."

I tried to show them understanding. I told them

that for the Jews the Talmudic teaching is: when a

persecutor of religion arises, the rabbis have to

divide into two parties. One must stick to the

inherited faith and not change even the Jewish man-

ner of tying shoelaces. The other, on the contrary,

must be friendly to the oppressor, wine and dine

with him, in order to obtain at least some alleviation

of suffering. The merit before God of the suffering

From Suffering to Triumph 37

first group is not greater than that of the second

group who feast with the tyrant, provided they are

prompted by good intentions. These words helped

some to understand themselves better.

Some collaborated very wisely. By giving only a

little verbal allegiance to Ceaushescu, they were able

to receive many concessions. They would abstain

totally from the deification of Ceaushescu who was

called "the lay god," "the genius of the Carpathians,"

"the greatest thinker ever," and so forth. The

Lutheran bishop Müller consented to be a member

of the Communist parliament, though he never

voted. But the little compromise of being there with-

out ever flattering the Communist rulers had the

result that the Lutheran church was among those that

suffered the least.

The Traitors

The church in Romania had others besides col-

laborators in its ranks. Some were outright traitors

who sold the lives of innocents for money, though

they never got more than a pittance, like Judas with

his thirty pieces of silver. Even then, I am reminded

that Jesus sat at the table with Judas even after he

had betrayed Him. All the many words of love spo-

ken by Jesus to the disciples at the last meal

included him, too.

Jesus said, "Let not your hearts be troubled. You

believe in God, believe also in me." This was

meant for Judas, who was assured that in the

Father's house there are many mansions, even one

for a disciple who already had the price of betrayal

in his pocket, if only he would repent. Jesus was

saying, "There is still time to return" as He contin-

38 From Suffering to Triumph

ued, "I will receive you to myself" (John 14:1-3).

When Judas led the soldiers to arrest Jesus and gave

Him a treacherous kiss, Jesus even then called him

"friend," for His friendship is everlasting.

In the original, John 5:2 reads: "By the sheep

there was a pool" (the word "gate" here is an inter-

polation of the translators). Near every sheep of

Christ there is an opportunity to be washed from

every sin. The great tragedy is that some of the trai-

tors were recruited not only from among the worst

Christians but sometimes from the best, even from

those who had been heroes of faith, who had suf-

fered torture and imprisonment for many years.

There is a Latin saying: De hic historia silet—

"about these history is silent." Not everything

should be told. Some things are too sad.

Preaching to Unseen Audiences

What were the highlights of our trip to Romania?

Sabina and I stood before the gorgeous palace of

Ceaushescu which dwarfs Buckingham Palace. It is

said that even the taps in the bathroom are gold, but

"the lay god" never once had the pleasure of using

them. The palace is built over the spot on which the

Uranus prison of the Securitate had stood. This

prison was torn down to make way for the dictator's

residence. I sat in that underground fortress. I even

dare to assert that I ruled from my cell, though this

may sound like boasting. Let me explain.

I was kept alone in a cell from which I never saw

sun, moon, stars, birds, flowers, trees, or butterflies.

In time I forgot that nature exists, even that colors

exist. In my dull gray world of dingy cement

walls, tattered clothing, and ashen skin, I forgot

From Suffering to Triumph 39

what blue, green, and violet look like. There was

never a book nor a scrap of paper. In that deep sub-

terranean prison, silence reigned. I heard never a

word nor a whisper. This was sensory deprivation at

its crudest.

Every night in my dark cell I preached to an

unseen audience. I was accustomed to this audience,

even when I was free. In 1 Peter 1:12^ it says that

angels desire to look into the preaching of the

gospel. Whenever I preached in churches, I was

aware that angels were also present, not only men.

(Where else would our guardian angels be when we

are in church?) I always endeavored to say a kind

word for them, too. But I made the mistake of think-

ing that only angels could be my unseen audience. It

was not so.

After I came to the West, I published three

books of sermons I had delivered in my solitary cell:

Sermons in Solitary Confinement, If Prison Walls

Could Speak, and Alone with God.

And then something very strange took place.

I received a letter from a man in Canada who

wrote that he was from a good Christian family but

had gone astray as a young man and wound up in

jail. There he misbehaved and was put in a solitary

punishment cell. In despair, he thought how sad his

godly parents must be. He would have liked to

return to God but did not know how. He prayed,

"God, if there is somewhere in this world another

lonely prisoner who knows You, bring me his

thoughts." Then he heard an inner voice telling him,

"God seeks you more assiduously than you seek

Him. The desire of a cow to be sucked is greater

than that of a calf to suck. He seeks you and He

40 From Suffering to Triumph

knows how to find what He seeks. Sit quietly and

confidently. He will reach you."

And then, evening after evening, he heard a kind

of sermon from far away.

He repented. Mercifully, his prison term was

short, and he was released. Years passed during

which he married, had a family, and became a dea-

con in a church.

One. day he entered a Christian bookshop and saw

a strange title on a book cover: Sermons in Solitary

Confinement. Having been in solitary confinement

himself he wondered, 'To whom does someone in

solitary confinement preach?" He read the book and

later wrote to me: "Mr. Wurmbrand, you did not

preach to nobody. I was in solitary at the same time

•as youi I recognized the sermons. It was yours that

I heard and that brought me back to Christ. Thank

you for having delivered them."

I might not have paid too much attention to this

letter if I had not received another from a lady in

England who described the same sort of effect.

Then I met a French pastor. He told me he had

been an unbeliever when he saw a vision of a pastor

with a clerical collar who told him about Christ. He

was converted and in time became a clergyman who

won many souls to his Master. One day he too saw

the same book, Sermons in Solitary Confinement

On the cover of the French edition is a picture of me

wearing a clerical collar. He recognized me imme-

diately as the man he had seen in his vision.

Preaching beyond Space and Time

The Hebrews have three words for soul: nephesh,

ruach and neshamah. Neshamah is its highest

From Suffering to Triumph 41

stage. The Kabbalah, principal book of Jewish

mysticism, calls it "the supersoul."

At its highest level, the soul is beyond space and

time. A man enclosed behind four walls can reach

men thousands of miles away. When I received these

letters, they shed new light on some strange assertions

of St Paul: 'The word of the truth of the gospel,

which has come to you, as it has also in all the

world' (Col. 1:5-6, my italics); "Your faith is spoken

of throughout the whole world' (Rom. 1:8, my ital-

ics), and so on. These words seem such gross exag-

gerations that they could almost be called outright lies.

Paul had no knowledge of Japan or America. The

gospel was far from having reached even the known

world But the hidden man of the heart, the inner man,

the neshamah, communicates beyond all bound-

aries. Things happen to the inner man of which the

outward man, the conscious, knows nothing.

It is written that all the Jews who passed through

the Red Sea at their exodus from Egypt "were bap-

tized" (1 Cor. 10:2). They numbered perhaps two or

three million. Not one knew that this was happening

to them. "All those who were baptized into Christ

Jesus were baptized into his death" (Rom. 6:3).

Ninety percent of those baptized, even at maturity,

did not know this. My wife and I learned this only

years later and wondered about it. Who of us knew

that we were "buried with him" (v. 4), or that our old

man had been "crucified with him" (v. 6). A man

would remember if he had been crucified. None of

us does. Things happen with our neshamah, things

which the conscious, that very little part of our mind,

does not experience.

Personally, I never had the experience of accept-

42 From Suffering to Triumph

ing Christ as a novelty. When, at the age of twenty-

seven, I heard the gospel from a village carpenter, I

had rather the impression of recognizing something

I had always desired, for which I had been search-

ing. Plato wrote, "To know is to recognize."

A real sermon that flows from the inner castle of

the heart, a sermon to which the preacher also lis-

tens in wonder, never having thought that he knew

such things, is an existential event remembered by

listeners even after decades. It reaches to the ends of

the earth and produces an impalpable effect. In his

book, The Peace Child, Richardson tells about

many missionaries who have found tribes with a

knowledge of tenets of the Christian faith that they

had no way of learning from other Christians.

Sermons from far away have reached them.

As my wife and I stood before Ceaushescu's

enormous palace, I remembered these things and

meditated on them. In my subterranean cell I had

more joy than he could ever have dreamed of, even

when he was at the peak of his power. His work was

in vain. In this palace, as in all others, one day there

will not remain one stone on another. But souls won

for Christ will remain for ever and ever and will

ascend without end from glory to glory.

Sabina and I embraced each other and said a

prayer of thanksgiving.

Winning Souls in Jail

From there we went to the former building of

the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

From its balcony, Ceaushescu had started to deliv-

er his last speech when he was rudely interrupted

with shouts of "Murderer! Criminal! Down with

From Suffering to Triumph 43

Communism!" He fled in a helicopter that was on

the roof and went to his death. This building is the

former headquarters of the Secret Police and host-

ed another underground prison. There, too, I spent

two years in solitude. Deep underground I had

preached the gospel by tapping on the wall to pris-

oners in cells on either side. The inmates changed

frequently.

The Norwegian pastor Fjeldstad, a missionary in

Israel, told me he had met there a Jew who, when he

started to tell him the gospel, replied with a smile,

"You come too late. I heard the gospel years ago

from a fellow inmate who tapped in Morse code

when I was in a solitary cell in Romania. I believed

it then and I still believe it."

I rejoiced every step I took in Romania. Each

place brought back beautiful memories.

We stood before the actual police headquarters

where my wife and I had often been detained in

Fascist and Communist times. In Bucharest, I saw

again a sister who, with her father, a Baptist preach-

er, had been imprisoned by the Fascists in these

police headquarters, along with me and several oth-

ers. We had been denounced for organizing under-

ground services in homes. We remembered how

happily we had sung there.

Then there was the Malmezon prison in

Bucharest, where I had been in both Fascist and

Communist times (it was much worse under the lat-

ter). During the war, six brothers and sisters were

there. It was a loose arrangement, with male and

female prisoners together during the day. On one

occasion the commander, a colonel, entered the

room and shouted, "I heard that you sing your

44 From Suffering to Triumph

hymns here, which is forbidden. What kind of

hymns are these? Let me hear one."

We sang "0 sacred head, now wounded, with

grief and shame bowed down." He turned around

and left without saying a word. Many years later I

heard from Filip Shmuilovici, an outstanding

Hebrew Christian who had been my fellow prison-

er on this occasion and now lives in Israel, that the

colonel had become a brother in Christ. Our singing

might have helped others to salvation as well.

The Central Place of My Life

I found myself again on Olteni Street, where my

church had been. On the same street there had also

been an Orthodox church and a synagogue.

Ceaushescu had no need of such buildings so they

were all torn down. Olteni! What memories I had of

this place. It was here, through many tears, that I

had said my first public prayer of repentance. The

service had been conducted by Pastor Adeney of the

Anglican Church's Mission to the Jews. He had

dedicated his life to the Jews and had preached

some forty years with little visible fruit But he did

not abandon his mission. It became evident later that

he had not worked in vain. He had brought to Christ

Isac Feinstein, who became a well-known Hebrew

Christian preacher and died a martyr's death.

Another was Asher Pitara, who was with me later in

a Communist jail. Prisoners and Communist war-

dens alike called him "Mr. 1 Corinthians 13,"

because this was his main subject when speaking to

anyone, even to the guards, who treated him

respectfully. When Pitaru was before court, an inti-

mate Christian friend of his was the main prosecu-

From Suffering to Triumph 45

tion witness against him. He never spoke about this

man with anything but love; he never mentioned his

sin. These and many others were the fruit of

Adeney's service.

The main preacher was Pastor Ellison, himself

also of Jewish descent Oiteni was the place of my

conversion and later my pastorate. Everyone called

the church "the church of love" because, though

nominally Lutheran, it was really the only interde-

nominational place in Romania. Worshipers of all

kinds—Orthodox, Baptists, Pentecostals, Nazarenes,

Adventists—felt at home in this nesL When someone

who believed in christening brought his child, we all

rejoiced with him. When another asked for baptism

at maturity, those who baptized children were present

to celebrate. My colleague, Pastor Solheim, preached

his belief that at Holy Communion we receive with

bread and wine the real body and blood of Christ. I

said that I believe in a symbolic presence. No one

quarreled about it Jesus had said, 'Take, eat, drink."

He had not said, "Squabble about which interpreta-

tion is correct." Communion is what it is, not what

we think about it.

We took good care of the poor in this church and

helped many other churches as well. It was here that

we started the first secret mission to the Soviet army

that had invaded our country. New Testaments and

Gospels were printed for them.

The Oiteni church is dear to my heart for anoth-

er reason: it was here that we met secretly in the

attic, which was my "parsonage," the Rev. Stuart

Harris, now Chairman of the International Christian

Mission to the Communist World, and his friend the

Rev. Moseley from the USA. They were the first

46 From Suffering to Triumph

foreign visitors who did not allow themselves to be

fooled by official church leaders. We met at night,

and I told them the whole story of our suffering.

This meeting was really the foundation stone of

our Mission to the Communist World, which has

expanded to over forty countries, has introduced

millions of Bibles, New Testaments, Gospels and

other pieces of literature into Communist lands, and

has mobilized hundreds of thousands in prayer for

the persecuted. We also helped with radio broad-

casts and financial support for families of prisoners.

Are You Ready to Enter a Chariot of Fire?

I delivered many sermons in Romania which I

cannot reproduce here. But I would like to share a

few of my main thoughts connected with the special

situation in that country.

I spoke about the ease with which one can be

raptured to heaven. Anyone can be raptured today if

he is willing to travel as Elijah did. This is how: "A

chariot of fire appeared with horses of fire... and

Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven"

(2 Kings 2:11).

"Is anyone here ready to enter such an uncom-

fortable chariot?" I asked. "Then he can be raptured

at once.

"Where would you like to be taken? Jesus has

given us a great promise: To take him who over-

comes I will grant to sit with me on my throne, as I

also overcame and sat down with my Father on his

throne' (Rev. 3:21).

"Anyone can come to sit on this throne. Daniel

gives us a description: 'His throne was a fiery

flame, its wheels a burning fire. A fiery stream

From Suffering to Triumph 47

issues from it' (Dan. 7:9). Are you ready to sit on

such a throne? Then you can have a place of honor

on it.

"I come from the West where some preach easy

salvation. Just believe, that is all. If you believe, you

will not only have heaven in eternity but also

health and prosperity here.

"You might escape totally from Communist per-

secution, but this false western teaching is around

the corner to destroy your spiritual life much more

than Communism could have done.

'To be a Christian means to believe in Him,

which is to believe in His sacrifice on Golgotha and

His teaching that we too must deny ourselves and

follow Him. We are meant to be crucified and buried

together with Him, not in a physical sense (though

in southern Sudan Christians have been crucified

even in 1990) but in fighting to the uttermost

against sin, the world and the devil, and never giv-

ing up even if you lose many battles. About Britain,

it is said that in war it loses all the battles but has the

final victory. So must we too.

"Christian faith can bring healing. My wife, my

son, and I have been healed repeatedly by faith. But

it is also true that many fall sick because of their

faith. Perfectly sane men became Christians. For this

they were jailed, beaten, tortured; they lost their

health because of Christ He has made many prosper

in business, but many with a good living lost

everything. Their houses and property were confis-

cated, or they had to pay heavy fines again and again

because they became Christians.

"Don't serve Christ for what you can get from

Him. John and Mary Magdalene and others loved

48 From Suffering to Triumph

Christ when He could do nothing for them. He hung

in pain and thirst on a rade cross and even shouted

words that seemed to indicate despair.

"Mary Magdalene loved Jesus, period. Even if

He could give nothing. She loved Him even when

He was a corpse in a tomb, and she spent money on

spices to embalm Him.

"Where, then, is Christian joy? Paul says, 'I now

rejoice in my sufferings for you.' A Christian

weeps with all those who weep—-not only for

those who weep for a little while, but also for those

who weep and gnash their teeth in hopeless pain in

eternity. Not only Jesus, but also all His disciples

share in everyone's pain.

'They fill up in their flesh what is lacking in the

afflictions of Christ He was not satisfied with just

being crucified for mankind. He descended into hell.

Even if no one did Him any harm there, just being

in such a place of horror, hearing the shrieks and the

howling, sensing the fire and brimstone, must

have been terrible. No sensitive man can read

Dante's description of hell without shuddering.

Union with God

"But this was not enough for Jesus. By His

choice He is crucified again as often as spiritual

Christians fall away in sin (Heb. 6:6).

'This, too, is not enough for Him to reveal the

abundance of His love toward us. He inhabits

believers. He lives our life with us. He does it

patiently, but He still sometimes asks, 'How long

will I bear with you?' (Matt. 17:17). Every fall,

every sin, every weakness and doubt of ours tor-

tures Him, because He has become one with us. In

From Suffering to Triumph 49

us, He is not a separate 'I.' A symbiosis has taken

place.

"In Hebrew, Isaiah 48:12 sounds like this: Ani-

Hu-Ani rishon, afani acharon. Translated literally:

'A me who is a me-he is the first; one who is only

me is the last.' God and I have united in one person.

There is no grief of mine He does not share, no

doubt, no rebellion, no mistake. It is also His. Out of

love, He takes it upon Himself.

"And we find our joy in the supreme priestly ser-

vice of bringing ourselves as sacrifices. We suffer for

everyone, for Christ the sufferer lives in us. Christ is

not only in glory now, but has also remained the

Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief."

I gave an extreme example of this taken from life.

"Baptize Me or I'll Shoot You!"

Annmarie had been arrested for her underground

work in the church. As is usually the case, she was

beaten and tortured to make her betray the names of

other brethren and sisters implicated in her work. The

temptation to yield did not even occur to her. She was

so preoccupied, I would say possessed, by one

thought how to bring salvation to the torturer. For her

the question was not how to escape further pain, how

to forego being sentenced to long years of prison, but

how to make her torturer escape sin and hell.

She said to him, "You beat me in vain. You will

never beat out of me my love, not only for God, but

also for you."

The torturer laughed heartily. "What a foolish girl

you are! I beat you, and you declare your love for

me."

There were times when one could have lengthy

50 From Suffering to Triumph

talks with the torturers. Occasionally, they got

tired of beating.

One of them said to me, "You prisoners shout

when you are beaten. Why? You feel pain, but what

is your suffering compared with mine? You get beat-

en at most for half an hour. We have to beat so many.

There is not time for more than that Then you rest in

your cell. But I have to beat eight hours a day. I have

done this six days a week, twelve months a year, for

ten years. The only music I hear is the noise of the

whip and the cries of the tortured. It is maddening.

"In the evening I get drunk and then go home,

where I beat my wife, too. This is my life. I am a

greater sufferer than you."

Torturers took coffee breaks. They would also

smoke cigarettes. If the prisoner smoked, they

would offer him a cigarette as well. For a quarter of

an hour, the torturer would be a jolly fellow, ready to

converse and even joke with his victim.

And so this one torturer took the girl's declaration

of love as a joke.

She continued: "I will now tell you words that

under normal circumstances you would never hear

from a girl. While you beat me, I looked at your

hands. How beautiful they are! I imagine how

your wife enjoys it when you caress her. I put to you

a simple question: is caressing not better than beat-

ing? When you caress your wife, you and she have

pleasure. You surely cannot enjoy torturing more

than caressing.

"You have very attractive lips. How your wife

must have rejoiced when you first kissed her. Is kiss-

ing not better than swearing at people and cursing

with foul words?"

From Suffering to Triumph 51

He gave her a slap. "Stop this stupid talk! I am

not interested in your idiotic lies. You'd better tell us

with whom you worked in your underground activ-

ity. We are not in the business of love here, but in

discovering counter-revolutionist activities."

She responded, "I have a boyfriend who not only

loves me. He simply is love itself. From Him I have

learned to love everyone heartily. I love those who

do me good. I love those who hurt me."

He gave her a blow, and she fell to the concrete

floor of the cell, hitting her temple, and fainted.

When she awoke, she saw the torturer sitting,

deep in meditation. He asked her, "Who is this

strange boyfriend of yours who taught you to love

both the good and the bad without distinction?"

She told him, "It is Jesus," and spoke to the tor-

turer about him.

"How can I become His friend too?" he asked.

"You must repent of your sins, put your faith in

His dying for you on the cross, and be baptized."

'Then baptize me," he demanded.

She replied, "I cannot baptize you," which was

not true. Anyone can baptize in such exceptional cir-

cumstances. But she did not know this.

He took out his revolver, pointed it at her, and

said, "Baptize me or I'll shoot you!"

If this seems strange, it shouldn't He fulfilled the

words of Jesus, who said, "Some take the kingdom

of God by violence" (Matt. 11:12). "By violence"

can mean threatening with a revolver.

He dragged her to a pool, threw her into the

water, and she baptized him. It was a sincere con-

version. The proof was that, at great risk to himself,

he succeeded in freeing her.

52 Front Suffering to Triumph

This Annmarie is an Ani-Hu-Ani, a symbiosis

between Him and herself. Even under the worst of

tortures, she had one thought: the salvation of the

worst of men. She accepted an especially severe

beating because of her missionary endeavor, but she

also triumphed.

Forgiving a Torturer

Continuing my sermon, I insisted: "You have all

suffered much at the hands of the Communists, in

one way or another, physically or psychologically or

socially.

'There is something lacking in the cross of

Christ. All He did for mankind till now is not

enough. You belong to His body, you are a new

embodiment of His. Wherever you are, Christ is, as

it was when the Virgin Mary was pregnant. If she

went from the kitchen to the dining room, He was

with her. He and His mother were one. You are part

of His body, just as He was part of Mary's body.

'Take all tribulations upon yourself with resig-

nation and joy. They are Jesus' tribulations first.

Thus you will fill up what is lacking in the cross of

Christ Apply this to all the hurts you receive in the

family, in your job, in society.

'The Uniate priest Demeter had been a prison

colleague of mine. When he was in jail, a warden

amused himself by beating him again and again

with a hammer on the backbone. As a result,

Demeter was paralyzed and has lain unable to move

for twenty years.

"Now there has been a revolution, and

Ceaushescu has been overthrown. The Securitate

officer who had destroyed his life came to

From Suffering to Triumph 53

Demeter's door and said, 'I know I cannot be for-

given. What I did was too heinous. But only listen to

my words of apology and I will go.'

'The priest replied, 'For twenty years I have

prayed for you daily. I waited for you. You are for-

given/

'This is the essence of Christianity. Any other

attitude is not.

"When Jesus taught us the 'Our Father,' to

make sure we understood the most important part of

it He added immediately, "If you forgive men their

trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive

you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses,

neither will your Father forgive your trespasses'

(Matt. 6.14-15)."

Communists Broadcast My

Sermons on Television

Something very strange happened after I had

delivered a few sermons in which I stressed our duty

to love our enemies, including the Communists. My

sermons were broadcast at state expense on TV.

For years the Communists had kept me in solitary

confinement so that I could not tell my thoughts,

considered poisonous, to even one fellow-prisoner.

Now the Romanian government, still Communist,

took special care to ensure that the whole populace

heard what I had to say.

Why?

The government well knows that the people

hate its activities. The dictator Iliescu, wiser than his

predecessor Ceaushescu, understands this. He con-

sidered it profitable for the oppressed to be taught to

love their oppressors. The paradox was that my ene-

54 From Suffering to Triumph

mies and Christ's were eager for people to listen to

me. In fact, today Communist leaders actually beg

Romanian pastors, "Please preach all you want, even

in public squares, but stress love for one's enemies.

Otherwise the people will tear us to pieces."

Did Jesus foresee that His teaching of love to the

uttermost would be welcomed by His enemies

when they were in danger and would help the spread

of the gospel because it offered them protection?

We dare to walk our dangerous way, in which we

seem to be fellow-travelers with the worst of men and

to strengthen their hands (this is the case with almost

all who do good to those who do evil), because we

believe that the Word is God and in the end this Word

will change the hearts even of God-haters.

Two thousand years ago, the Jews hated their

Roman oppressors. Was it because Jesus taught love

for one's enemies that Pontius Pilate, Roman gov-

ernor of Israel, desired to free Him?

Love, just because it is love, exposes itself to all

risks—even the risk of being misused by the

wicked—in order to win all. We will not give up

teaching love for one's enemies, even though for a

time God-haters profit at our expense.

Not Interested in My Sermons

We met Angela Cazacu.

She had been our coworker during the War, busy

stealing Jewish children from the ghettoes and

thus saving lives, smuggling food and clothing to

scores of female Christian prisoners in the Mislea

jail, and so on. Then the Soviet army invaded our

country. She gave out Russian Gospels and New

Testaments in railway stations to trains full of

From Suffering to Triumph 55

Soviet soldiers. Some sisters were arrested for this,

but started again as soon as they were released.

When I was in the Tirgul-Ocna jail in 1951,

Romania had its heaviest snowfall ever, in some

places five feet high. At the time I was seriously ill

with pulmonary and spinal tuberculosis, as well as a

couple of other illnesses. When the cold was most

bitter, the prison commander gave the order that no

prisoner was allowed to have more than one blanket

We shuddered endlessly with the cold. Transport was

at a standstill. The administration had no food to give

us. No family members or friends could come to the

jail with a parcel because of the snow. Only one pris-

oner of the hundreds who were in this jail received a

parcel at that time. Angela, whose name in Romanian

means "female angel," made her way to the jail

through the mountains of snow and left a package for

me. At that time I looked like a skeleton. I accepted

the gifts that she had struggled to bring us, and we

shared them, comforted that we were not alone.

Now she attended a service at which I preached.

I asked her what she thought about the sermon. Her

reply was not very complimentary: "I did not listen

to it much. I was not very much interested in what

you said. For me it is enough to see that, after all

you have endured, you are well enough to preach. I

see your radiant face. I feel the love that emanates

from you both. If you had given only the blessing at

the end of the service after someone else had

preached, it would have been enough for me."

Do Today What You Neglected Before

Many leaders from the World Council of

Churches, Lutherans, Baptists, Reformed,

56 From Suffering to Triumph

Pentecostals, Adventists, World Federations, and

world-renowned evangelists now flock to Romania

and the other freed Communist countries. None of

them has apologized for having praised non-existent

religious liberty in Romania under Communist

rule. None has apologized that during the forty-five

years of terror not one of these great bodies or any

national denomination had done anything to give

practical help to the families of Christian martyrs.

Though my name was known abroad, my children

never received one cent, one parcel, or one letter

expressing concern during all my years of impris-

onment I could vouch for the fact that not one of the

families of Christian prisoners of that time received

anything until our Christian Mission to the

Communist World was formed.

That is all in the past now, and I would not men-

tion it if this hard-hearted attitude was not still pre-

sent. I challenge anyone to ask the leaders of these

denominations if they have in their budget at least

£50 ($100) a year for families of Christians jailed in

Muslim countries. There are prisoners of faith in

Egypte Malaysia, and Iran. Christians are heavily per-

secuted in Muslim Turkey. Perhaps the universal

church could make up now for what it neglected

then. There are missions that now work effectively in

this regard in Communist countries. Let the denom-

inations do the same in Muslim countries.

The Language of Passion

When I started to tell in the West the story of per-

secution in the East, I was accused at the very least

of gross exaggeration. Bishops and leading evan-

gelists who had been to Russia, Romania, and

From Suffering to Triumph 57

Hungary were quick to give the Communist rulers

certificates of good behavior. I myself heard one of

the most renowned evangelists in the USA say upon

his return from Russia, "There is more religious free-

dom there than in Britain." Such kind words were

also spoken about my homeland.

Did I exaggerate?

First of all, what's wrong with exaggeration?

Why should anyone object to it, since it is the nor-

mal response of individuals speaking about a subject

that they feel passionately about?

We read in Mark 1:4, "A// the land of Judea and

those from Jerusalem went out to John the Baptist

and were all baptized by him." Is this an exaggera-

tion or not? Those who place high hopes in the vic-

tory of the kingdom see in small beginnings the

mighty events that will follow, just like a father with

his son.

Have the descendants of Abraham become as

numerous as the stars of heaven or the sand of the

sea? These are beyond calculation. Yet the promise

was such. Was God exaggerating?

Is the bride of Solomon's Song really the only

beauty, beside whom other girls are ugly? If not,

why does the bridegroom say, "As a lily among

thorns, so is my love among the daughters"?

I don't mind being accused of exaggeration

when speaking passionately about the sufferings of

the persecuted. When one tortured man cries, I hear

more than one voice crying. All true believers suf-

fer with the one who suffers. Jesus Himself suffers

in them. Why do you hear only the cry of one

insignificant man and not the cry of Jesus Who

dwells within him?

58 From Suffering to Triumph

How many suffer? How great is the suffering? Do

you have good ears? When Abel was killed by his

brother, his cry was so loud it reached from the

ground to highest heaven (Gen. 4:10). Why then do

you hold it against me that I hear one voice as the

voice of a multitude?

I never exaggerate willingly, but neither am I a

stickler for exact figures. Eichmann, the war crim-

inal judged in Jerusalem for his participation in the

Holocaust, gave as his defense: "Not six million but

only one million Jews were killed by the Nazis." For

me and my wife, who had family among the victims,

the one million would never be only one million.

When all is said and done, anyone who now reads

even Communist publications from the former

USSR, Romania, and other Communist countries

realizes that not only I, but also Solzhenitsyn,

Bourdeaux and others are guilty of understate-

ment.

Even now I have not told the whole story.

Patrashcanu, the one who brought Communism to

power in Romania, was later tortured by his own

comrades in such a manner that I could never tell

anyone, including my wife. No publisher would

print such violent obscenities. It is strange that we

can stand to see pictures of Jesus crucified, but we

cannot stand to see the suffering of His saints.

Meanwhile, several newspapers and magazines in

Europe have asked the World Council of Churches

and the Lutheran World Federation to apologize to

me. I absolve them of this obligation. But I would be

gratified if they would take a stand against the atroc-

ities committed today where Communists are still in

power and would expel from their leadership those

From Suffering to Triumph 59

who have led people astray about non-existent

religious liberty under the Reds unless they repent

A Bleak Situation

After speaking in many services, I was invited to

meals in the homes of believers.

In one very poor house my wife and I were

served chicken, but from the expression on the faces

of the children I realized they had never had such a

thing. In Romania there is a proverb: "If a poor fam-

ily eats chicken, either the chicken or the family is

sick." We said we were not hungry and each took

only a wing.

In other homes we were given good food, but we

soon realized that it had been purchased on the black

market for exorbitant prices and that the families

would eat minimally after our departure. My own

children, knowing for a long time that we would be

in Romania, had hoarded food by standing in line for

hours day after day, for weeks.

The Talmud says, "Every meal where the con-

versation is about something other than the word of

God is idolatrous." I try to abide by this. Families

have so little time to converse that mealtime should

be used for spiritual as well as physical nourishment

But there were also jokes. A former member of the

Communist Party said, "In times past, you had to be

recommended by two members of the Party to be

accepted. Now, only a certificate from a psychiatric

asylum that you are mad is sufficient."

There was joy and happiness at meals in spite of

the great poverty. But the situation was bleak,

without any hope of improvement in the foreseeable

future. I know the figures: in the first quarter of

60 From Suffering to Triumph

1990, the productivity of workers and the gross

national product had decreased by 42% compared to

the year before. International trade had virtually

come to a standstill. There was no new capital infu-

sion into the economy. All socialist economic

planning went out the window. With no raw mate-

rial, many factories stand idle. Private enterprise is

now permitted, but where does one begin when

there is no capital? There are no goods for even the

smallest venture.

The transition from capitalism to socialism is

easy. You simply destroy what your predecessors

have accomplished. But the transition from

Communism to capitalism and the free market sys-

tem has never yet taken place. Will it succeed? To

create or recreate a free market, capital is needed.

Historically, capitalism began in Europe because of

the huge amounts of gold discovered in America.

Where is Romania to obtain capital? The west-

ern capitalists have no confidence in the new

government because it represents no real change.

The leaders still feel free to slaughter innocents at

whim, just as their predecessors did. Between the

13th and 15th of June, 1990, a multitude of

corpses (no one knows how many) and countless

wounded, many mutilated for life, lay on the

streets of Bucharest. The killers were allegedly

miners, as reported in the western press, though the

people know they were men of the old Securitate

who wore miners' helmets as a disguise. These

"miners" had been called by President Iliescu

and were congratulated when they finished their

bloody work, because they had shown "proletarian

solidarity." Those were apocalyptic days. Hoards of

From Suffering to Triumph 61

Communist police armed with iron sticks and

axes roamed the streets killing people in the name

of a government that called itself democratic.

Demonocratic would be more accurate. The image

of such scenes persists long after the streets are

cleared. People still hear the wild howling of the

killers and the moaning of the wounded.

A sane economy, a free market system, cannot be

built on such a foundation. Romania receives no

substantial help from the West, unlike all the other

Eastern European countries, which were also

Communist. This was decided at a conference of

twenty-four industrial nations in Brussels.

Capitalism and Communism

There were spiritual discussions at meals, along

with songs and jokes, but no palpable hope for the

immediate future of the country as far as living con-

ditions are concerned. In view of all their bitter expe-

riences with socialist economies, it is proper that

Christians consider what their attitude should be in

the conflict between capitalism and Communism.

Wicked men cannot construct good social sys-

tems. Slavery, feudalism, capitalism, Communism—

all are tainted with sin. However, the wise

distinguish not only between good and bad, but also

between good and better or between bad and worse.

Of all the social systems devised by men until

now, Communism is surely the worst. One hundred

and fifty years ago, Marx believed that capitalism

would soon perish. Seventy years ago, Lenin

believed in the near victory of the Communist

revolution. In the United States, the great depression

of the thirties was considered a sign that capitalism

62 From Suffering to Triumph

was on its deathbed. It was not. Capitalism has great

vitality. Communism is sick.

Capitalism has proved to be the only system of

production that by its very nature assures the devel-

opment of new techniques that in turn raise the stan-

dard of living of the multitudes. Under capitalism,

periods of crisis are followed by periods of recovery.

Technical developments assure this. New discover-

ies result in new branches in the economy.

Competition assures that products will become

cheaper with time. The number of consumers

grows. New enterprises are created and with them

more jobs. The great number of unemployed in cap-

italist countries is due to the fact that job-seekers

have not qualified themselves. For those who do and

who are willing to work, joblessness is not general-

ly a long-term problem under capitalism. In other

words, there is no permanent crisis under capitalism.

Under socialism, by way of contrast, there can be

no long periods of progress. No one is interested in

investing capital because all the profit goes to the

state. A political organism, the state, decides what

factories should be built and how the goods should

be distributed. 4t takes no advanced degree to

observe that as a result the shops are almost always

empty. Politicians decide on salaries. Romania

provides a bitter example. During the election

campaign in June 1990, the government announced

a salary increase of 50% in many industries. Since

all enterprises belong to the state, this was simple.

After the elections, the same government that had

used this ruse to win declared that no one in

industry would have a fixed salary but rather it

would be determined by productivity. However,

From Suffering to Triumph 63

since there is neither capital for productivity nor

goods for even the most urgent repairs of machinery,

industry is hobbled and workers are stymied.

Warning signals about the shape of the economy

do not worry the planning commissions, who are

the real bosses, because their members have no

profit motive for what they do. They receive a

modest salary whether or not the plan is fulfilled.

Capitalists, on the other hand, react quickly to eco-

nomic indicators because their capital is at stake.

They can become millionaires or go broke. The

profit incentive tends to prevent economic cata-

strophes. Under Communism, antiquated enter-

prises continue to function even though they bring

no profit. The breakdown of Communism came in

many countries without revolution. Romania was

the exception. In Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland,

East Germany, and Russia, Communism died a nat-

ural death because it simply doesn't work.

Capitalism has grave weaknesses, but it is the best

system mankind has produced. Of necessity,

Christians must prefer it to something far worse—

Marxist economics. Nations that have tasted

Communism now show their aversion to the system.

In Romania, as in neighboring Eastern European

countries, people have torn down the statues of

Marx, Stalin, and Lenin with strong ropes and

multiple manpower, so strong is their revulsion to

the "gods" that have been imposed on them. Some

are offered for good money to western collectors.

"Lord, when you awake, you will despise their

image" (Ps. 73:20). Previously, pictures of

Ceaushescu were seen everywhere. Now there is

not one.

64 From Suffering to Triumph

The Specter of Famine

Christians in Romania, like the rest of its inhab-

itants, have little time nowadays to think about

heavy social or spiritual problems. The mere earn-

ing of daily bread consumes more than a normal

man's power. And there is even worse danger for all

former European Communist countries, and espe-

cially for Romania, which is excluded from aid

from the USA and the European Community.

Romania is also shunned by those who could

invest capital because of the brutality and instabil-

ity of its government, consisting almost exclusive-

ly of Communists who so far give few signs of

having changed.

There is rampant inflation. The price of necessary

goods has increased. Income is lower. Widespread

unemployment is inevitable, since unproductive,

inefficient factories kept alive by unreasonable

state planners will have to be shut down. There is no

legislation providing for the unemployed. All

Christian charitable institutions have long since been

abolished.

Meanwhile, the specter of famine towers over

Romania. In winter there is not enough heat in the

houses. Babies nurtured in a warm womb are born

into cold hospital rooms and fall sick. In neighbor-

ing Hungary, also formerly Communist, Mother

Theresa of Calcutta was allowed to open soup

kitchens—but not in Romania. Leading specialists

in economics, finance and industry have been dis-

missed because the public simply abhors

Communists. Furthermore, other Communists in

government sacrificed their comrades to the fury of

From Suffering to Triumph 65

the mob, with the result that the economy is ruled by

ignoramuses.

The agricultural collectives are no longer pro-

ductive. While no one really cares to work for them,

who has the capital and machinery for individual

farming? Former peasants would refuse land even if

it were given back to them because they do not trust

the Communists. Romanian peasants once owned

land, and it was stolen from them by the

Communists. So agriculture was destroyed. What

warrant do they have that the Communists in

power now, after allowing them to become produc-

tive again, would not take everything away from

them a second time?

Whoever can manage to do so flees from

Romania, not only German, Hungarian, and Jewish

minorities, but also ethnic Romanians. But what

country is ready to accept the millions hoping to

emerge from the former Eastern bloc? Except for

Christians, no one really knows in Romania (or

Hungary, or Bulgaria, or Poland, or Russia) what to

do. The believers know exactly what to do even

under the worst circumstances: when one does not

know what to do, it is imperative to do nothing, but

with patience and trust to let God take over. He has

known worse situations than these.

Not Everything Was Taken Away

When the Communists seized power, most of

Romania was composed of small peasant holdings.

The land was collectivized by the Communists who

were inspired by Lenin's teaching: "We will intro-

duce collectivization, not fearing coercion.

Revolutions were never accomplished without coer-

66 From Suffering to Triumph

cion. The proletariat also has the right to use it to

obtain its purpose in order to assure that its will is

fulfilled."

Trotsky said, "Our peasantry is an ally of

American millionaires. We cannot reach America,

but we can suppress these with our cavalry, tanks

and swords."

Bukharin, another leading Russian Communist

theoretician, wrote, "Our party is the most militar-

ily shaped organization."

In Romania, the Communists did indeed act mil-

itarily in taking away from the peasantry everything

they owned: fields, sheep, cattle, implements,

houses, furniture. Every small farmer became a

slave of the state, working for a pittance on a field

no longer his. Ceaushescu was one of the principal

organizers of this collectivization. In Dobrogea

province, he did it with the utmost simplicity. All

the villagers were gathered together in a square and

were asked to renounce their possessions of their

own free will. "Who is for this?" No one raised his

hand. So Ceaushescu personally shot ten people.

Then the vote was taken a second time. All voted to

renounce their possessions "voluntarily." There

was military music. They were forced to dance. To

add insult to injury, a film was made about their

enthusiastic adherence to socialism.

With this, the agricultural sector of Romania was

destroyed. In a country that formerly could feed all

of western Europe, farmers were forced to stand in

line for bread and were unable to obtain it. Now I

met once more a farmer who had come to see me

immediately after collectivization. He reported at

that time, "They thought they took everything. But

From Suffering to Triumph 67

I told my family, They left something very impor-

tant—our hymnals.' We sat down and sang praises

to the Lord."

I was reminded of those who "accepted joyfully

the plundering of their goods, knowing that they

have a better and enduring possession for themselves

in heaven" (Heb. 10:34).

We embraced again. I, too, had known this joy

several times in my life.

Hearing My Sermons Again

One of the most striking aspects of this visit to

Romania was thé encounters with brethren who said

they had heard me preach thirty, forty, even fifty

years before.

When someone tells me he heard a sermon of

mine years ago, I always ask, "What did I say?" I

believe that listening to a sermon should be an exis-

tential event, something that changes life for better

or worse. In a sermon the preacher should not only

speak about Christ but should impersonate Him. An

actor does not speak about Hamlet or Romeo; he is

the person while on stage. During those several

hours in the theater his personal life is put aside

completely. He speaks exactly as Romeo would

speak if he encountered Juliet. Just so the minister.

Not only by his words, but also by his gestures, by

the expression on his face, by his appearance, his

tone of voice, by the light of the Spirit shining

through him, he must convey the impression, "I had

an encounter with Jesus today. He speaks through

me." Fifty years ago I heard just such an existential

sermon, and today I could reproduce even the ges-

tures of the bishop who delivered it.

68 From Suffering to Triumph

When I became a preacher, I took seriously the

words that we should "run so as to receive the

prize" (1 Cor. 9:24). This is possible only by out-

running all the others. So I read sermons by great

preachers, listened to the best preachers of all

denominations in Romania, and nurtured a desire to

attain to their level and if possible surpass it.

I have not yet become the great preacher I

intended to be (I still have hope—I am only eighty-

two), but wanted to find out how much I had

achieved. Therefore I asked those who said they had

heard me half a century ago my usual question:

"What did I say?" Some told me.

Telling a Legend

One sermon had begun with the legend of

Gorun, a very beloved disciple of the Master.

'There is good stuff in you," Jesus said to him. "I

want you to pitch a tent for yourself on Mount

Carmel and stay there for a time in meditation and

prayer." And so he did.

Soon the rumor spread to all the villages round

about that a young saint had made his habitation in

the region.

One day Gorun went to the nearest village and

begged, "Please give me a blanket. Rats have

gnawed on my old one and they leave a bad smell.

[I know this from my prison life.] Because of this I

am unable to sleep."

The villagers gladly gave him what he asked.

After a few days, he asked for another blanket

because rats had gnawed on the second blanket,

too. Soon he was back again with the same

request, then again. Finally, someone said, "We'd

From Suffering to Triumph 69

better give you a cat. That will solve the problem

for good.'*

Gorun returned happily to his abode. The rats

were no longer in control. But after two days he was

back. "Could you please give me some mük for the

cat?" The villagers were happy to comply. But the

need persisted. So they decided to give him a cow.

Again he came back. "I need something to feed

the cow." They decided to give him pasture land in

anticipation of future needs. Soon he came back. He

was not used to taking care of both land and animals,

so they gave him two workers to help him. Then he

needed bricks and materials to build houses for the

workers. Then the cow calved, and so on and on.

Years passed, and Jesus went to see his beloved

disciple. A fat man greeted him and asked, "What

business brings you to this place? What would you

like to buy?" The now well-to-do merchant no

longer recognized his Master.

Beginning with this legend, I had taught that we

should not put distance between us and Jesus, not

even so much as a stone's throw. Even at such a

small distance, disciples slept while Jesus agonized

in Gethsemane. Do business only if the Lord works

beside you with accompanying signs (Mark 16:20),

as He does in your Christian endeavors. If not, aban-

don the business.

Don't leave Jesus even for holy meditation or great

missionary deeds. To lie quietly on His breast like the

apostle John is preferable to the greatest enterprises in

His service. Whoever has once leaned on this breast

can no longer find full joy anywhere else.

Jesus said, 'The first of all the commandments

is: 'Hear, O Israel' (Mark 12:29). Hear the beating

70 From Suffering to Triumph

of my loving heart. Everything else follows from

this."

Nothing should be preferred to loving gestures for

the One Who leads us to eternal life. There is a depth

in renunciation of everything else. The devil can tear

one away from the life of a hermit on Carmel but not

from the very breast of Christ Blessed is the man

who can do both his secular work and visible work

for the church while lying spiritually on His breast.

If he cannot do both, he should forego the work

rather than the quiet adoration.

A brother of almost eighty repeated this sermon

to me, heard fifty years before. He served me well.

Curiously, I have no recollection of ever having read

or heard the legend of Goran. Yet I am told it was

part of a sermon of mine. Perhaps I composed it

myself. Legends are often good clothing for truth.

Count Your Seconds

Another person reminded me of a sermon thirty

years old about Psalm 90:12. Again, I had started

with a story (sermons without illustrations are not

remembered).

A man was obliged to walk late at night to a vil-

lage far away. The journey was monotonous, espe-

cially since it was dark and he could scarcely see the

road. At a certain moment he stumbled on some-

thing in his path. Reaching down, he picked up a

small bag full of pebbles. To distract himself from

time to time he threw one in the river bordering the

road on which he traveled. Plitch... plitch The

sound of the splash was harmless amusement.

When he reached his destination, only two pebbles

remained. In the lighted house he glanced down and

From Suffering to Triumph 71

saw that they were diamonds. He had squandered a

fortune.

Our days are made up of seconds. There are 32

million seconds in a year. A person who has lived

thirty years is responsible for one billion. Every sec-

ond comes to us from God as a gift to use in His ser-

vice. If we do not, the second returns to God in

sadness and reports that we have neglected His pre-

cious gift.

Then I told about a general in the former Royal

Army with whom I had been in jail. He was very ill.

When spoke to him about God, he showed no inter-

est. But then his last hour came, and he asked for a

priest There were plenty of priests in that jail, but it

took time to bring one from another cell. When he

came, the general was no longer able to speak and

make confession. The priest gave him Communion,

but he could not swallow the wafer. He died without

confession and Communion. He valued the treasure

only when the last diamonds remained in the bag.

I spoke about how well Jesus used his seconds,

even when crucified: pardon for his crucifiers, sal-

vation to a robber, good words to his holy mother

and to a beloved disciple, the assurance that all

things needed for our salvation were fulfilled, a trust-

ing prayer to God. Even in those dire circumstances,

moments were not lost.

"Use your time well. Time is the most precious

commodity. You can regain money lost but not time

lost. Use your time in the Lord's service."

Physical Acts Communicate the Spirit

I visited Oradea, the city with the largest evan-

gelical churches in Romania: a Baptist church led by

72 From Suffering to Triumph

Dr. Gheorghitza and Pastor Negrutz, with 2,500

members attending, and a Pentecostal church with

some 2,000. Space forbids my recounting all the

things I preached in these churches, but I will men-

tion one pronouncement that stunned the audience.

Ceaushescu is hated by the whole populace. I

never heard one good word spoken about him. All

speak evil of him, except Christians who have

learned from the Arch-angel Michael not to dare to

bring against even the devil a railing accusation

(Jude 9). We often bring such accusations against

men, even dead men. I was once warned in the night

by a voice which said, "Don't speak evil against any

dead persons. They hear us. If they are lost, they

have pain enough. Don't add to it."

Now the congregation was anxious to hear my

message. All eyes were fixed on me.

I spoke from John 20:22-23—"Jesus breathed on

them, and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit. If

you forgive the sins of men, they are forgiven

them.'"

"A physical act, a special manner of breathing," I

continued, "can impart the Holy Spirit. At ordination,

another physical act, the laying-on of hands, imparts

the gifts of the Spirit. Bodies can be the tool of the

Spirit, which can be communicated not only through

words, but also through a really warm handshake, a

loving look, a face expressing goodness and under-

standing, a brotherly kiss. A spiritual man should be

such not only in words but in all his gestures."

I Defend Ceaushescu

Then I made my second point, to the stupefaction

of my listeners: "Why did Jesus impart the Spirit to

From Suffering to Triumph 73

the apostles? He answers the question: that they may

be able to forgive or retain sins.

"I regret not having been in Romania when

Ceaushescu was judged. I would have volunteered

to defend him."

It was obvious the audience could not believe

their ears. I was reputed to be a fierce anti-

Communist, having opposed Communism when

even some of the best pastors had compromised their

beliefs. Defend Ceaushescu? Out of the question!

Not only had he and his wife been killed, to every-

one's satisfaction, but all his children, brothers, and

in-laws were in jail. To bear the name Ceaushescu

was crime enough.

I went on to explain: "I was in jail with a former

major in the police during Fascist times. His sen-

tence was twenty years. He claimed to be a

Christian, blessed himself the whole time with the

sign of the cross, and prayed to God, the Virgin, and

a number of other saints.

"This man was sentenced for having arrested dur-

ing the war (in the early forties Romania was at war

with the Soviet Union) a lad of fourteen who had

distributed Communist leaflets, then strictly for-

bidden. This lad was a member of an atheist orga-

nization, the Communist Youth.

"What an occasion this was for a Christian! The

major should have seated the young lad and taken

the opportunity to show him lovingly how wrong he

was. He should have pointed him to a better way, the

way of Christ.

"Instead, he beat the boy savagely. With every

lash he inflicted, he strengthened in him his atheist

convictions and confirmed his hatred for God.

74 Front Suffering to Triumph

"The name of that young boy was Nicolae

Ceaushescu. Some of the foremost criminals of his-

tory—Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Marx—also had early

encounters with Christians who had not used the

occasion well.

"At a certain moment, the guards threw into my

cell a Catholic priest who had been beaten badly and

was bleeding. We washed him as best we could and

gave him water to drink.

"When he came to himself I asked him, 'Can you

pray, like Jesus. "Father, forgive them, for they know

not what they do"?'

"He replied, 'Jesus could, I cannot. My prayer

would rather be, "Father, forgive me and them,

because if I had been a better priest, they might not

have become torturers."'

'"I would have told the court which judged the

Ceaushescu all this,' I went on, 'and would have

concluded: "Judge for yourselves if you have no part

in their crimes.'" Then I challenged the audience:

'You judge yourselves and ask if you have done

your utmost to share with the Communists the teach-

ing of Jesus and to turn them from their wicked

ways.*

"In 1918, the Russian Communists killed Czar

Nicholas II, his wife, his four daughters, the twelve-

year-old crown prince, and their servants. After the

murder they found in the house a handwritten

poem from the pen of Princess Olga, aged fifteen:

On the threshold of the grave,

Put on the lips of Your servants

Superhuman power to pray humbly

For our enemies.

From Suffering to Triumph 75

'This too I would have quoted to the judges. May

we all learn the beautiful art of forgiveness."

There were tears in the eyes of many in the con-

gregation.

"Gorbachev, Remember

Ceaushescu's Lot!"

Obviously I was not able to appear in court to

defend Ceaushescu. He and his wife Elena had both

been sentenced to death. She was executed. He was

badly tortured to get him to reveal where he had

deposited—abroad—the millions he had allegedly

stolen from the country. He is said to have died of a

heart attack during the torture. His corpse was shot

and displayed on public TV.

Ceaushescu's death frightened other Communist

dictators and their stooges. The president of the

court that had sentenced him committed suicide

one week later. In East Germany, seven generals of

the Stasi, their Secret Police, also committed sui-

cide. These are known. No one knows how many

of their subalterns did the same thing. There were

many suicides among the officers of the Soviet

KGB as well.

On the 15th of July, the Russian magazine

Gudok reported on a demonstration in Moscow with

an estimated attendance of 400,000.

There were posters with messages that were

unthinkable a year ago: "Down with the Communist

Party!" "Down with the KGB!" "Communism is the

scourge of the twentieth century." "The Communist

Party consists of henchmen and deceivers." And so on.

But the most striking slogan was: "Gorbachev,

remember Ceaushescu's lot!" There was another

76 From Suffering to Triumph

praising Fanny Kaplan, a girl who in 1921 had

wounded Lenin in an attempt on his life.

A member of the Supreme Soviet, Murashov,

delivered a speech in which he said: "We don't want

a restructuring (perestroïka) of Communism. No

reforms, no changes. Communism should perish.

The Romanians did well with Ceaushescu."

A general of the KGB, Oleg Kalughin, joined the

ranks of the opponents of Gorbachev. He declares he

has become a democrat, but the opponents don't

believe him. They ask him to enumerate the crimes

committed in his career that allowed him to rise to

the rank of general. In the debates in the press about

him, it is suggested that he and others have changed

sides only because of the fate of Ceaushescu. What

happened to him also frightened the Communist dic-

tators of Albania, Mongolia, Korea, and Ethiopia,

who began to take steps to come to terms with their

own people. Romanian blood shed for the cause of

liberty by martyrs of the revolution has had wide-

ranging effects.

Do We Need Two Religions?

In Oradea, I had one of my most memorable

encounters. I met my former fellow-inmates Pastor

Visky, Pastor Szöke, and others from the so-called

Bethanists, a revival movement within the

Hungarian-speaking Reformed Church. Several

members of this group, theological students as

well as pastors, along with pastors of the Hungarian

Unitarian Church, were in one huge cell together

with Catholic and Orthodox priests, some sixty or

seventy in all. Each confession gathered separately,

with no common fellowship in Christ Instead,

From Suffering to Triumph 11

there were heated debates, not so much about

which religion was right but about what was wrong

with another's religion.

The story is told of a lone survivor of a shipwreck

who made it to a desert island where he lived like

Robinson Crusoe. Two years later, when he was dis-

covered, his rescuers were surprised to find that he

had built two prayer houses. "Why would you, alone

on an island, build even one prayer house, let

alone two?" they asked.

"Every man needs two religions," he explained.

"One that he is for and one that he is against."

What was the essential question we debated in

our overcrowded cell?

The essence of religion cannot be the subject of

debate. If it is, the debaters reveal their ignorance.

Religion is life, adoration, silence. Though words

may indeed be spoken, it is not in the English sense

of the expression "word."

The Hebrew word for "word," davar, also means

"the real thing." In Hebrew, John's Gospel reads: "In

the beginning was Davar, 'the real thing,' and 'the

real thing' was with God, and 'the real thing' was

God." The verb "to speak" in Hebrew is ledaber,

from the root davar in its sense of giving a real

thing. Even in Greek the word logos has both

meanings.

Unhappily, at that time I too got caught up in the

debates, but I remember telling the following

Jewish joke. A young couple went to a rabbi to

obtain a divorce. Among Christians, people go to the

pastor or priest only for weddings, but in Judaism a

rabbi is needed for divorces as well. The astonished

rabbi responded, "I married you only a year ago, and

78 • From Suffering to Triumph

you seemed so much in love with each other. Why

do you want a divorce now?"

The woman replied, "Let's not waste any time.

Reconciliation is useless. Just go through the for-

mality. That's all we want At this point talk is super-

fluous."

The rabbi insisted: "At least satisfy my curiosity.

What happened? What is the reason for divorce?"

The man said, "We had a child, a boy."

'That's no reason for divorce."

"Yes it is, because we cannot agree on a name for

him."

"What name did you choose?"

"I chose 'Nahum,'" he replied.

"Very good—the name of a prophet But why did

you choose this name?"

"Because* it was the name of my father."

"Even better. You wish to honor your parent."

The rabbi then turned to the woman. "What name

do you wish to give your son?"

She replied, "Nahum."

Surprised, the rabbi asked, "Why did you choose

this name?"

"My father's name was also Nahum."

The rabbi couldn't help asking, with wonder, "If

you both want the same name for the same reason,

why do you quarrel?"

The man replied, "My wife is shrewd. I wish to

call him Nahum for my father and she for hers. But

her father was a horse thief and mine was a

sage."

This is the impression I get of religious squabbles

among Christians. All Christians want to glorify

God's name, work for the coming of His kingdom,

From Suffering to Triumph 79

spread the gospel and the message of His love, and

more. Then let us love one another!

The rabbi counseled the couple, "Call him

Nahum after the prophet Then live together happi-

ly for some twenty years. By that time, if your son

becomes either a rabbi or a thief, you will know

which parent's name he bears. Why start the quarrel

now?"

In the divided cell, it took a long time for us to

persuade even the priests of the two Catholic

Churches, Roman and Byzantine Rite, to say an

"Our Father" together.

A Christlike Pastor

During all this mental, physical and spiritual

anguish, Pastor Visky was a unique example to us.

Many considered him the most Christlike among us.

During the time when we had one small slice of bread

a day with some soup of potato peels or rotten carrots,

he would give half of his bread to a sick, weak or

older prisoner. Once I remember he shared a sweater

with a fellow prisoner. His words were always

pleasant, and a smile did not disappear from his lips.

As for the rest of us, we were happy if we

chanced to observe in him some little sign of irrita-

tion or a harsh word, because we knew then that we

still had a chance with God. We reasoned that if a

Christian had to be as advanced in holiness as Pastor

Visky to be acceptable to God, our chances were nil.

He retained this composure though he suffered more

than us. Somehow he had received news that his

wife and seven small children had been deported to

a barren part of the country where not only food but

also water were lacking.

80 From Suffering to Triumph

In Gethsemane, where Peter was ready to defend

Jesus with a sword, he said to the disciples, "Permit

even this." The worst must be accepted with com-

posure and even with joy. Now I had the joy of

meeting Visky and his family. Our mission had sup-

ported such families through secret channels in

Romania and several other Communist countries. He

expressed deep gratitude to all donors who helped

him survive.

Which Is the True Biography?

First there was just small talk, but then he gave

me the outline of a book on his prison experiences

that he was writing. I could not believe my ears. All

the beautiful attitudes and laudatory deeds I had said

about him as illustrations in my sermons, he attrib-

uted to me. Bemused, I asked him, "Was it you or I?

Which of us is telling the truth?" Then I knew the

answer. It was simply what minds with great love,

true attachment, and holy fantasy see in their

beloved.

Never believe biographies. If they are written by

adversaries, they tell not what the man truly was but

what enmity, rancor, or jealousy saw in him. If they

are written by admirers, they will reveal the noble

heart of the biographer, who ornaments the subject

of his book with his own virtues. As for "objective"

biographies that tell the story with pedantic exacti-

tude and thrifty dosages of praise or criticism,

don't waste your time reading them. They are bor-

ing, worth nothing.

Truth is truth only when told by the passionate.

The original of the New Testament had no punctua-

tion marks. It is up to us to decide how to punctuate

From Suffering to Triumph 81

John. 14:6, where Jesus says, "I am the way the truth

and the life." I would suggest the following: "I am

the way: the truth and the life." Those who think like

Him never offer prosaic truth by itself, but animate it

with the beautiful passions of lives worth living.

Visky's children, who grew up in utter misery, are

all believers now, some engineers, some pastors,

every one in some useful work for the kingdom. Men

like Visky brought love, peace and light to shepherds

at loggerheads with one another, even in a prison cell

where all suffered for the same Savior. But this com-

mon suffering was worthwhile. Christians learned in

time to understand and admire each other.

Now in 1990, Romanian Christians have formed

for the first time in history an evangelical alliance,

which includes Baptists, Lutherans, Pentecostals,

Brethren, and the Army of the Lord. The latter, with

an estimated membership of 800,000, is the cream of

the Orthodox Church.

The Roman Catholic Church is not in the alliance,

but relations with it are correct and friendly. The

enmity of past times no longer exists. One side does

not call the other "idolaters" and the other does not

respond with "heretics." The Catholic archbishop

Robu is the only head of a denomination who, in his

sermons, took a public stand against the murder of

innocents instigated by the new president Iliescu.

The Most Persecuted

As for the Byzantine Rite Catholic Church (1.5

million members), also known as Uniates, we all

admire the heroism in faith of their members.

Almost all its bishops and many priests died in jail

after severe torture. Their jail sentences totaled 600

82 From Suffering to Triumph

years. All their church buildings, schools, and

charitable institutions were stolen from them by the

Communists and given to the Orthodox Church,

whose hierarchy was foremost in collaborating

with the Reds.

The crime against the Uniate Church has not been

repaired even now. The government has assured

them that in principle they are completely free. But

how can 1.5 million people enjoy religious freedom

when deprived of all their buildings? Stolen property

has not yet been returned.

The Uniate church has a history of two hundred

years of great suffering. The church began in the

eighteenth century in the Romanian province of

Transylvania, at that time under the domination of

the Austro-Hungarian monarchy of the Hapsburgs.

It was a split from the Orthodox church, to which

most Romanians belong. The Uniates retained all the

Orthodox rituals but accepted all the dogmas of the

Catholic church. Composed only of Romanians, it

suffered in Transylvania all the vexations to which

the nation was subjected under the years of

Hungarian rule. The church enjoyed freedom for

only thirty years, from 1918 when Transylvania unit-

ed with Romania until 1956 when the Communists

abolished it.

The second most persecuted group is the Army of

the Lord whose very existence had not been recog-

nized, either by the state or by the Orthodox church

subservient to the state until late in 1990.

My First Encounter with Jesus

How can I tell all that I experienced in Romania?

One day as a boy, with deep emotion I entered an

From Suffering to Triumph 83

Orthodox church in Bucharest. It was the first

Christian church I had ever seen on the outside.

Brought up by non-practicing Jewish parents, I never

heard in my childhood either a bad or a good word

about Jesus. He was simply unknown to me.

One day as I returned home from school with

another boy, he stopped in front of this church and

said, "Wait for me a minute. My father asked me to

tell the priest something." I said, "No, I'll go in with

you." This is how I crossed the threshold of a church

for the first time.

I was deeply impressed. Now, re-entering the

same church after some seventy years, I relived

vividly my initial experience.

As a child I saw a picture of a man crucified. I

had no idea who this man was, but thought he must

have been very bad or this would not have been

done to him. As a child I was much spanked and

probably deserved it But this man, bleeding all over,

attached with nails to a cross—why?

I also saw at that time a picture of a beautiful

young lady, who looked at me with great love. I was

not accustomed to such an expression. I was

despised for being a Jewish boy, and was also very

poorly dressed, thin, frail, small. This lady loved me.

I loved her, too, from that moment

I wonder why some Christians never think of

Mary with love. The Bible says "all generations will

call her blessed." Why don't we?

Reason tells me that I did not actually see the

Cucified One or that lady, but only a representation.

At that time I had the impression that I was seeing

real persons. It was one of the several existential

events in my life.

84 From Suffering to Triumph

The other boy spoke with the priest, who then

came to me and caressed me on the head. It meant

much to me, since my parents were not demonstra-

tive. He had a fine touch, the kind I felt at my ordi-

nation. Bishop Argay really loved me. Only

ordinations performed by those with divine love

impart gifts of the Holy Spirit.

As the priest caressed me, he asked, "Little fel-

low, what can I do for you?"

I was embarrassed, thinking perhaps I was not

permitted to be in that strange place. I replied,

"Nothing."

He said, 'That can't be. I belong to Jesus, who

taught us not to allow anyone to pass near us

without doing him some good. It is summertime and

it is hot outside. I will bring you a cup of cold

water."

Jesus—what a strange being! To that point no one

I had met knew anything of His teachings. I was

given no toys, no chocolate. (When other children

ate chocolate, I licked the paper in which it was

wrapped.) Jesus changed the water I received into

wine. I was stunned.

Being young, I soon forgot this incident. But

when I became a Christian, it came back to my

memory. The name of that priest was Cavane.

Many years later when I was an evangelical pas-

tor, the Fascists came to power. A new priest in that

church, Chiricuta, was the only Orthodox priest who

allowed me, a Protestant and, even worse, a Jew, to

preach regularly at evensong in his church. He was

unconcerned that other priests bullied him for this.

I became a contributor to his Orthodox magazine.

During the war, when my wife and I and several

From Suffering to Triumph 85

other Hebrew Christians were court-marshaled, he

dared to offer himself as a defense witness. He

defended a Jew when Hitler ruled Europe! His

defense and that of a German Baptist pastor result-

ed in ours being the only case in which Jews were

acquitted under Hitler. Normally, we would have

been condemned, whether guilty or not guilty.

Now, back in Romania after an absence of twen-

ty-five years, I was able to pray in that same

church, remembering how much good God had done

to me there. God surely has a reward for the one

who offered a cup of cold water and unconditional

love in His name.

Anti-Semitism

Only some 15,000 Jews have remained in

Romania, which at one time had a Jewish population

of 600,000. Many of those—among them my wife

Sabina's family—perished in the Holocaust Quite a

few have emigrated to Israel and other countries. But

even this small remnant wants to leave the country

now. The stirrings of anti-Semitism, which were sti-

fled under Ceaushescu, are evident again.

Why didn't this dictator persecute the Jews?

Because no one persecutes a cow that gives him

milk. The Jews were a great source of income for

the government. They were sold to the state of

Israel, sometimes at very high prices, depending on

their qualifications. The sale of Jews to Israel and

ethnic Germans to West Germany enriched the trea-

sury and—it is said—Ceaushescu personally. Anti-

Semitic publications were forbidden.

Now the situation has changed in Eastern Europe.

There is glasnost and relative freedom of speech. So

86 From Suffering to Triumph

anti-Semites are free to reveal the hatred they have

in their hearts for Jews.

The Romanian president ïliescu is a former

school colleague and personal friend of Gorbachev,

who has shown how he feels about Jews by naming

to his presidential council Valentin Rasputin (the

name means "profligate" in Russian and gained

notoriety in the person of an immoral monk who

was an intimate adviser to the Russian imperial fam-

ily). In an interview given to the New York Times

Magazine, Rasputin said, "Our Jews must feel

responsibility for the sins of the revolution and for its

consequences .. . responsibility for the terror that

existed during the revolution and especially after it.

... Their guilt is great, for they killed God and also

Russians."

It is moving to read how painful it is for this high-

ranking leader of a God-hating regime to think of

God being killed when He came to earth. Certain

Jews of old did play a role in the death of Jesus. It

was because He Himself was a Jew and lived in

Israel. Curiously, I never heard accusations against

the Greek people for having killed Socrates or the

Italian nation for having persecuted Galileo.

The interview with Rasputin was published in

January 1990. In March he was named to

Gorbachev's presidential council. This was his

reward. Some knew what conclusion to draw from

this interview. In the Moscow magazine Nedelia

(16/1990), one person proposed a simple solution to

the Jewish problem. If everyone who understands

the Jewish danger would free the country of one sin-

gle Jew, tomorrow there would be no more Jews.

Certainly a program to which Ayatollah Khomeini

From Suffering to Triumph 87

and the leaders of the Lebanese terrorist organization

Hezbollah would subscribe.

"Nothing distorts human nature so much as

maniacal ideas. If a man is possessed by the idea that

all evil in the world comes from the Jews, Masons,

Bolsheviks, heretics, capitalists, etc., even the best

man becomes a wild beast." So wrote Berdiaev.

One can choose among many accusations against

the Jews: "Christianity is a Jewish ideology into

which nations have been tricked to create a Judeo-

Christian civilization, so that in the end the whole

world will become an enlarged Israel."

"Communists were right in fighting capitalism,

but they did not say who is guilty of it: the Jews."

"Columbus was a Jew who discovered America

with the purpose of making it a center of Zionism

from which the Jews would dominate the world

through the dollar."

"International Communism was also created by

the Jew Marx for the purpose of destroying love for

one's nation and fatherland." And so on.

This anti-Jewish propaganda could not be spread

in the USSR without the connivance of Gorbachev's

government.

From the Soviet Union, anti-Semitism spreads to

other countries just freed from the shackles of

Communism. All are passing through a grave eco-

nomic crisis. In Romania, the new government has

declared it will no longer subsidize the prices of

bread, milk, meat, etc., which means prices may

soon rise by 50%. In times of crisis people need to

blame someone, and the Jews provide a convenient

scapegoat For two thousand years of history this has

been the case.

88 From Suffering to Triumph

Some of the Romanian Communist leaders were

Jewish: Ana Pauker, Kishinevski, Rautu, along

with some of the leaders of the Secret Police. That

the majority were Romanians or Hungarians doesn't

matter; the Jews are guilty.

While it is true that Roman, the first prime min-

ister after the revolution, was a Jew, it must be

remembered that Marx himself was also a Jew and

a Jew-hater.

Romanian anti-Semites who are also anti-

Hungarians are grouped under the name Vatra

Romaneasca 'The Romanian Home."

Romanian Jews, as well as those in other Eastern

European countries, are concerned. But where

should they go? The USA does not receive them. In

Israel, Arabs kill Jews and there is always imminent

danger of war. In Romania there are Jewish

Christian efforts to acquaint Jews with their King,

Jesus. Many are from the province of Bessarabia,

theater of the Second World War. They remember

that when the Nazi army entered, posters were seen

everywhere: "Calamities come from the dirty Jews";

"Jews have provoked this war**; "Jews are behind

Communism"; "Death to the Jews." And the Jew-

haters did not only threaten. Rare are the Jewish

families from that province who had no relatives

executed by firing squads or deported to concen-

tration camps. Almost the whole of my wife's

family (both parents, three sisters, and a brother aged

six) perished in such a camp. Since the situation in

Romania cannot be assessed apart from the rest of

Eastern Europe and especially the Soviet Union, a

few words are in order about the latter.

From Suffering to Triumph 89

Gorbachev a Blessing

Gorbachev has been a blessing for the western

world. Just imagine the Gulf crisis with the USSR

and the West opposed to each other, as in the cold

war!

When, during the thirties, Stalin killed all the high

command of his own army, suspecting them of

intrigue against him, Italy's Fascist dictator

Mussolini wrote, "Stalin is a disguised Fascist."

Gorbachev was hardly an agent of the American

CIA, but he has done its work well. He undermined

the power of the Soviet Union and with it the power

of Communism in the whole of Eastern Europe. The

western Communist Parties have also been shattered.

I remember how, when I arrived in the USA, the

general secretary of the World Council of Churches

begged me not to publish the atrocities of

Communism. But Gorbachev caused them to be

publicized. Today you can read in the Soviet news-

papers about the millions of innocents killed and

about the whole populace being robbed, exploited,

and oppressed by the Communists.

But while he himself exposes the cataclysm

Communism brought to Russia, Communist

Leaders, nicknamed the nomenklatura, still cling to

power. They acknowledge they have nothing to give

to the people, yet they continue to wield power and,

begging money from the capitalists, they lead

Russia to tragedy, a bloodbath that might surpass

everything history has known till now.

Perhaps they are guided by the instinct of self-

preservation. Or perhaps they have simply abandoned

planning and thinking about a more distant future.

90 Front Suffering to Triumph

Though Gorbachev played a leading role in the

preparation of the drama, he himself would be better

suited to play the actor in a farce. He presided over

the dismantling of his Party and of the Soviet

Union itself, yet ended the congresses by singing the

"Internationale," the venerable hymn of

Communism. He and his cohorts chant about fight-

ing to the end the deadly battle that will give the

whole world the "ideal" society that is now in its

death throes in its homeland, Russia Their slogan is

still "Proletarians of the world, unite!" Then they

decide at their congresses that the Ukrainian,

Russian, Byelorussian, Baltic, and Uzbek

Communists should go their separate ways. These

decisions only help to enhance extreme nationalism.

The result will be a new brand of Fascism, or, more

likely, several brands of Fascism, because each of the

Soviet republics will have its own to foster against

others. Gorbachev and his ilk have played a major

role in emasculating Soviet and Eastern European

Communism. Without intending to do so, they have

rendered the free world a great service, putting off for

a time the threat of war between East and West.

Yeltsin, also a former Communist leader, though

in personal conflict with Gorbachev, walks the

same way.

Should Christians Be in Politics?

Before going further, I feel I must reply to a fre-

quently heard and pertinent question. Should a

Christian, and especially a pastor, depart from the

Bible and speak out on political matters? This ques-

tion is very acute for Romanian Christians as well.

Some claim we should speak out on political issues,

From Suffering to Triumph 91

while others say we shouldn't. Somehow they don't

realize that by speaking out fervently about not mak-

ing politics, they are playing the political game. Why

don't they use their energy to explain the atonement

of Christ or the doctrine of the Trinity?

The word "politics" comes from the Greek polis,

meaning city. "Alms" is doing good to a few men,

"philanthropy" is doing good to many, and "politics"

is the art of doing good to a nation and even

beyond.

Some 70% of the Bible is concerned with poli-

tics: the constitution of a nation, its liberation from

slavery, the multitude of its wars against other

nations, laws regarding social relations, agriculture,

hygiene, matrimony, inheritance, the establishment

of monarchies and the rivalries among them, along

with the misdeeds of rulers, much as the media

would expose them today.

"Give to Caesar what is Caesar's" is political

advice, as is incitement to rebellion. "Be submissive

to authorities" is also political advice, along with

descriptions by Daniel and the Revelation of world

rulers as ferocious beasts.

We have to evaluate political events to find our

way through them. Many discussions among

Romanian Christians were not only about the

ascent of the soul from the earthly to the angelic,

which is holiness, but also about political events in

the country and under Communism in particular.

Preaching Under Escort

Another place with powerful memories for me is

the Baptist church in Giuleshti, a suburb of

Bucharest. I had been invited to preach there the first

92 From Suffering to Triumph

Sunday after Romania entered the Second World

War, in 1941. At that time the Nazis dominated pur

country, and when their army attacked Russia, it was

in alliance with our troops. The slogan was,

"Destroy Communism created by the dirty Jews.

Beat the Jews!"

I went to church with a group of other Hebrew

Christians. The brethren had invited many unbe-

lievers, telling them who would be the preacher. The

Baptists were already hated by the Orthodox. Now

something even worse was about to take place: a

Jew would preach in the pulpit of the despised

Baptist sect Anti-Semites could not stomach the sit-

uation. They denounced this intolerable crime to the

police, and we six Hebrew Christians were arrested.

A Romanian Christian lady, Sister Mindrutz,

knocked at the gate of the prison where my wife and

I and the four other Jews were detained and said,

"My brethren from the chosen people suffer here for

Christ I wish to suffer with them." Her demand was

graciously accepted. She was put in the same cell

with us. Now we were seven: three Jews, three

Jewesses, and the Romanian.

The cell was small, with only one single bed. The

police officer said, "You priest (meaning me), will

sleep in the bed and all the others on the floor."

Meanwhile, the Orthodox priest of Giuleshti

went to the police to make sure that we would not be

freed. He also spoke with me to convince me that

there was no place for Jews in Christianity. At that

time, the patriarchy had forbidden the baptism of

Jews.

Following the Giuleshti arrest we were taken to

the prison of the Military Tribunal for interrogation.

From Suffering to Triumph 93

While we were being questioned, the air raid alarm

sounded. Bucharest was being attacked by Soviet

planes. Soldiers with bayonets on their rifles escort-

ed us to the basement, along with our investigators,

the staff of the Tribunal, our prosecutors and future

judges. We prisoners were kept in a corner under

strict surveillance. The conversation of the others

was about trifles. One young lady complained

about a new garment she had not yet worn—and

now the bombing!

Then the first bombs were heard falling. The

explosions shook the earth. Weeping and panic

broke out. Seizing the opportunity, I said with

authority, "You have a pastor among you. I will give

you a word of comfort from Scripture, and then we

will pray. Please kneel."

Everyone knelt, including guards, prosecutors,

and judges. I was then able to speak to them from

the word of God.

When the bombing was over, we were taken back

to our cells, escorted again by soldiers with bayonets

they would not hesitate to use if we attempted to

escape. Those who had knelt at my command half

an hour before were again my prosecutors and

judges.

I relived all these events on seeing the Malmezon

prison. What I have just recounted took place in

Fascist times. Later, under the Communists, I was

again a guest in this same prison.

A Spiritual Experience

In one of its solitary cells, I had had a spiritual

experience to which I alluded in several sermons

delivered in Romania upon my recent return. I say

94 Front Suffering to Triumph

"alluded" because a deep spiritual experience cannot

be adequately expressed in any language. One

enters into contact with a reality that is neither nam-

able nor explainable. Therefore, the Bible is God's

revelation in both senses of the word: it reveals

something so that we may perceive it, but it also re-

veils it.

Explaining what you experience often does little

good. Beethoven had experiences and put them in

music. A sculptor in Buenos Aires carved for a

cemetery nine statues symbolizing the nine sym-

phonies. After I had visited the site, someone

asked me to explain what the statues were.

Sentiments had become music, which then became

sculpture, which needed words for interpretation.

How much of a relationship would these words have

had with Beethoven's experiences?

The Bible says, "Taste and see that the Lord is

good" (Ps. 34:8). No speech, no music, could

explain to you the difference between the taste of a

watermelon and a peach. Only tasting works.

We can hint at spiritual experiences but only with

the aim of encouraging others to have their own. Put

through the filter of words, such experiences are

diminished in value. Everyone has to make an indi-

vidual effort to obtain the capacity to see reality

beyond appearance.

A Zen master was asked by a disciple, "What is

Buddha?" He replied, "This flax weighs three

pounds"—another way of saying, "What Buddha is

cannot be expressed in words. Let us spend our time

better by talking about practical things."

If Buddha cannot be expressed in words, even

less can Jesus.

From Suffering to Triumph 95

Timelessness

I have spent years in solitary confinement in three

different prisons. While there, I lost track of time.

Our solitary cells had only a window facing the cor-

ridor, none on the outside. We never knew if it was

bitter winter or beautiful spring. We could not tell

night from day. The same electric bulb burned con-

stantly. Probably for the purpose of confusing us, the

prisons had no fixed program of hours when they

would awaken prisoners, give them food, or allow

them to go to the toilet. We were time-disoriented.

We lived in timelessness as astronauts live in

weightlessness. If prolonged for years, timelessness

produces a state of mind apart, not comprehensible

intellectually. Our senses had nothing to sense.

Perfect silence reigned. We almost never heard a

voice or a whisper, and the guards wore felt-soled

shoes. There was nothing to see. We were sur-

rounded by the same gray walls. We forgot that col-

ors exist. The stench was overpowering and

unrelenting, to the point of paralyzing the olfactory

nerve. To this day I cannot smell the perfume of

flowers. As for taste, the food was always bland and

bad and always the same.

Our minds were not oriented to the senses or reg-

ulated by logic.

As I tried to relive those days on my return to

Romania as a free man, it was difficult to interpret

those experiences for contemporary ears as I spoke

in churches. However, being Jewish helps when it

comes to timelessness.

Biblical Hebrew does not have our tenses: I eat,

I ate, I have eaten, I had eaten, I will eat, I will have

96 Front Suffering to Triumph

eaten, and so on. God's people are not intended to

cut time in pieces: past, present and future. This

dividing of time is not natural. The past is not only

past; it lives very much in the present, often carrying

with it joy or sadness. It will also live in the

future. The basis of today and tomorrow is what has

been accumulated in the past Some of the past was

also determined by the previous perspective of the

future. We are part of one undivided ocean in

which waves flow back and forth but remain part of

the same ocean. And so as I gazed at the prison

walls that had contained me and thought of what

went on below, I tried to relive old experiences.

Crucified for You Today

How easy it is for one who can divide time to

accept salvation. I can be forgiven of all my sins and

obtain heaven by believing that Jesus died for me a

long time ago. He chose to suffer for me without ask-

ing me. He suffered on the cross for a few hours and

then died. On the third day He was resurrected, then

returned to heaven, where He has lived now for two

thousand years. It would give Him great joy if I was

converted Then why shouldn't I become a Christian?

It would give us mutual joy. Many people come for-

ward during evangelistic appeals with a smile on

their face. In great crusades, few tears are shed.

With us, dwelling in timelessness, it was other-

wise. Everything was experienced only in the pre-

sent. Golgotha did not belong to the past but was a

present event. It was as if Jesus was standing

before me, saying, "You have sinned. For you I will

be whipped and crucified. Before your very eyes

you will see and hear nails being driven into my

From Suffering to Triumph 97

flesh. You will see my holy mother weeping at the

foot of the cross. Do you accept this my actual sac-

rifice for you, or do you prefer to bear the punish-

ment of your sins yourself?"

The crucifixion was no longer an old story read in

a book. I had to decide then and there who should

die: Barabbas or Jesus. Peter, John, and Mary

Magdalene did not have to accept a past sacrifice of

Christ, but one in the present or near future. No

guilty person with a sense of decency would allow

himself to be the eyewitness of the actual cruel death

of someone else for what he had done. Neither could

we in solitary confinement

Now I relived what I understood then. It was

never intended that salvation should be the result of

His dying for me, period. There is no period after

His death, not even a comma. We are meant to be

"crucified and buried together with him" (Rom. 6:6),

which is something entirely different.

Luther called the book of James "an epistle of

straw" because it teaches that faith alone without

deeds is not sufficient. He was wrong. "We are

saved by faith"—no period after this assertion. We

have to add many sacrifices to this faith (2 Peter 1:5-

8). It is a sacrifice to remain always pure, loving,

forgiving, active in God's service. We have to fill up

what is lacking in the cross of Christ.

The priest Cheruvian did so. Forced after

unspeakable torture to give a Satanist Communion,

pronouncing the holy words "This is My body" and

'This is My blood" over human excrement and

urine, he later told me, "I have suffered more than

Christ." As far as physical torture was concerned,

perhaps this is true.

98 From Suffering to Triumph

In timelessness, we lived simultaneously the

passion of Christ, His resurrection, His ascension,

and His final triumph.

In that solitary cell, we were also concerned not

only with the earthly life of men but with their eter-

nal life as well. Death is not an end. In timelessness,

we also experienced the afterlife.

Where is Ceaushescu Today?

With these thoughts in mind, I preached again in

Romanian churches. I asked my listeners, "Where

are the Ceausescus today? He was not able to finish

his last speech. The audience booed him and he fled.

But now he speaks again. Don't you hear him?

"In Jesus' parable, the rich man in hell begged

Abraham to send someone to his brothers to tell

them not to lead lives that would bring them to the

same place of torment. He was refused; he had

asked the wrong man. Abraham had been very harsh

with Hagar, mother of his own child. He expelled

her from his house with only a loaf of bread and a

skin full of water. Why should he show pity to those

in hell?

"But perhaps Ceaushescu petitions Jesus, with

whom he has a better chance. The rich man was not

totally wicked. At least he had love for his lost

brothers. Perhaps Ceaushescu too loves some of his

old Communist comrades. Perhaps he asks each of

us now, 'Go to other Communists and tell them that

I suffer the fire and brimstone of condemnation.

Warn them to seek another Way.'

"Whoever has experienced timelessness or, in

better words, reality beyond the temporal, hears not

only the songs of cherubim and seraphim calling

From Suffering to Triumph 99

him, but also the howling of those in despair in hell.

And there is something even more unbearable to lis-

ten to: the deep silence of those kept in darkness (1

Sam. 2:9).

•The silence of some pleads from hell, 'Tell the

good news to the worst of men. Think about their

terrible destiny. Jesus is interested in them. He

proved it by descending into hell.'"

There were unusual strains in my Romanian ser-

mons. I thank God they were well received. For

these moments of triumph in my homeland, I had

passed through much suffering and sickness and per-

ils of all kinds. It was all by God's grace.

A Sign from God

In the case of Chinese women over seventy, mor-

tality diminishes by 35% before the harvest feast In

the week following, it returns to normal. This has

been established in the studies of the death dates of

Chinese-Americans in California. The expectation of

a feast, the sentiment of duty to help prepare for it,

can influence mortality. With Orthodox Jews, mor-

tality diminishes before the Passover feast and

returns to normal during the week following.

Epidemiological research reports only on physical,

chemical, and psychological factors mat influence

mortality. Religion has its influence too. My wife and

I believed that God would prove that we were justi-

fied in our fight, in which we had encountered much

opposition and contradiction. He would give us a

sure sign. We willed not to die before revisiting the

old places, bearing triumphantly the banner of

Christ. More were on our side than the enemy's. I

revisited Romania and its churches at the age of

100 From Suffering to Triumph

eighty-two. I will not disclose my wife's age, but she

too knew the triumph when well advanced in years.

Romania Not Yet Whole

What one sees on the map is not the whole of

Romania. The vicissitudes of history have caused

much of the nation to live outside its boundaries.

In 1939, when Hitler and Stalin divided up

Eastern Europe, Russia obtained the Romanian

provinces of Bessarabia and Bucovina. The Red

Army occupied them at the end of the Second World

War. The Soviets renamed Bessarabia "Moldavia"

and invented a language that the Bessarabian

Romanians were obliged to use. To do so, they

mixed Romanian with a number of Russian words

and then required that the result be written in the

Cyrillic alphabet of Russian instead of the Latin

alphabet used in the West. Romanians are the only

Latins of Eastern Europe, but they were forbidden to

use their own alphabet.

Bulgaria also stole from Romania—the province

of Cadrilater. To the east of Bessarabia is

Transnistria, another territory thickly populated by

Romanians. The province of Banat, in Yugoslavia,

is ethnically Romanian, as is the language spoken

there. We hope this whole territory will be reunited

with the motherland once and for all under our

beloved King Michael I. It should certainly be the

concern of the Romanian churches.

It is a special sorrow to me that the Bible, even

the New Testament, has not yet been translated into

the Macedo-Romanian language spoken by a com-

pact Romanian minority in Greece, Bulgaria,

Yugoslavia, and Albania. Lydia, the first Christian in

From Suffering to Triumph 101

Europe, was a Macedonian (Acts 16:12-14). Her

language must have been Macedo-Romanian, which

is nothing but a dialect of Romanian, but the dif-

ference is still so great that an uncultured Macedo-

Romanian would not understand a plain Romanian

Bible. It would be like Languedocian and French,

Frizian and Dutch, Swiss-German and German,

though the Swiss-German, being cultured, would

know classical German. European Christians owe it

to the memory of Lydia, the first European Christian,

to care about the translation of the Bible into

Macedo-Romaman.

Romanian Martyrs

Romanian Christians also miss much through the

lack of communication with Bessarabia. This east-

ern province, stolen by the USSR, is known for its

many wonderful Christians.

The renowned martyr, Vania Moiseev, was from

that area. In spite of his Russian name, he was

Romanian and did not even know the Russian lan-

guage. The Soviets have Russified Romanian

names. Moisiu was renamed Moiseev. He had been

a soldier in the Red Army. He had the same faith

that we have, with one difference: his faith was con-

tagious. True faith is like the flu. If you have the flu,

it is catching. So is faith. In his regiment, soldiers

and officers were converted.

His superiors ordered him to keep silent, to

avoid speaking about his beliefs, to stop singing. He

replied, "What would a nightingale do if ordered to

stop singing? It cannot stop, and neither can I."

So they tortured him and in the end drowned him

after stabbing him repeatedly in the heart.

102 From Suffering to Triumph

While under persecution, he sent word to his

mother: 'They give me much pain. I might die at

their hands. But don't weep, mother. [He was

twenty-one. At that age it is still possible to believe

you can stop a mother from weeping.] An angel

showed me heavenly Jerusalem, and it is beautiful.

Do your best, mother, to meet me there."

Did this Vania really see an angel? People can

have foolish hallucinations. But we have proof he

did, because, as an uncultured peasant boy, he

described this angel as no professor of theology

would.

He went on to say, "Angels are transparent When

you have one in front of you and a man stands

behind him, the presence of the angel does not keep

you from seeing the man. On the contrary, you see

him better. Seen through an angel, all men look

more lovely. You can understand and appreciate

even a torturer."

Many regret they have never looked upon an

angel. They are wrong. You see an angel as often as

you accept an unlovely person, as often as you love

the one who hurts you.

Vania Moiseev is the pride of our Romanian

nation.

Another is the young girl Sophia Chiriac. From

the age of eighteen she worked in the underground

print shop of the unregistered Soviet Baptists.

Confined in a small cellar full of machines, paper,

ink, and stocks of books, she had little room to

move, stagnant air to breathe, and never any sun-

shine. She became sick but could not go to a

physician. The rule of conspiracy is that once on the

staff of such a secret enterprise you never leave it till

From Suffering to Triumph 103

near death. When she was finally taken to a hospital,

it was too late. Sophia was a Romanian girl who had

sacrificed her life to give light to the Russian

nation that had subjugated her own.

And then there is another Bessarabian, the well-

known confessor Nikolai Horev, who was repeatedly

in Soviet jails and came out each time strengthened

in faith, a shining example to others. From all he

said and wrote, I value most a prayer of his: "Lord,

you are my shepherd forever, and I am your sheep

forever. May your rod always be in your hand so

that when I am in danger, you will protect me from

my enemies, or when I stray from your way into

wrong paths, either through temptation or through

the fear of difficulties, you will use your rod to bring

me back to the right way. And should I ever ask you,

O Lord, for anything different from what I am ask-

ing you now, please ignore it."

Have you ever asked God to ignore your prayers

if they should keep you, or others through you, from

becoming a saint?

We hope Bessarabia, as well as all the other ter-

ritories formerly belonging to Romania, will soon

unite with the motherland. At this moment, the fact

that we have a Communist government bodes ill for

the fulfillment of our national ideal: the union of all

Romanians.

Confessions

Much of my time in Romania was taken up with

hearing confessions.

I was terribly tired after having preached twice or

thrice a day, but was not allowed to go to bed. Some

with burdened hearts asked me to listen to them.

104 From Suffering to Triumph

Perhaps it is good for confessors to be tired,

because then they speak less and don't interrupt, let-

ting the words and tears of the penitents just flow.

Not one of the main collaborators with the

Communists and none of the outright traitors con-

fessed this particular sin. I met with men who had

denounced their brethren in faith to the authorities,

knowing how much they would have to suffer as a

result. When I was arrested, the police officer who

interrogated me let slip the name of one who had

denounced me. In another case, I was given the

actual denunciation to read. Those guilty of such

extremes of apostasy never confessed the worst they

had done. They told of sins that were minimal, but

their disproportionate regret showed that they car-

ried a much heavier, though unacknowledged,

burden.

I understood. Cain, after killing his brother, said

to God, "Gadol avoni linso—My sin is greater than

one can bear" (Gen. 4:13).

When conscience reproaches a person for an

extreme sin, memory tells him, "You never did it."

And memory usually succeeds in convincing con-

science. This happened in Germany. It was too dif-

ficult to acknowledge that millions of Jews had been

killed, so conscience was silenced. Memory won: "It

did not happen."

I know how difficult it is for me to admit the

worst sins I have committed and my reluctance to

confess them to anyone, even to God. On the other

hand, reason tells me—very often rightly—that it is

far from wise for a person with standing in the

church to tell his sins to any man. An American

evangelist produced havoc for the babes in Christ by

Front Suffering to Triumph 105

confessing on TV, before an audience of millions, a

sin that only two or three persons knew about.

In Romania we had an Orthodox monk, Arsène

Boca, who would tell the penitent, "I know it is too

difficult for you to relate certain things you did.

Therefore 1 will tell them to you." He was a man

with clairvoyance. But a confessor doesn't need this

quality. It can drive one mad to know all the sins of

his interlocutors. Be modest Be happy about the lit-

tle you are told. God is a modest God. David and

Manasseh did not spell out all the gruesome details

of their sins. David simply said to Nathan, "I have

sinned against the Lord" (2 Sam. 12:13). No more

was required.

However, the brethren who have sinned most pro-

foundly under Communism did not confess, though

some of them might have made decisions in their

heart to change. You may wonder who confessed

with tears: it was the best, the most heroic. They felt

guilty, some for having survived. If they had been

heroic the whole time—and no one could have

been—if they had stepped forward and protested

each time another was beaten, they would have died

of the many beatings they would have received.

Others felt guilty that, because of their involve-

ment in the underground church, the family had bro-

ken up. Their children had not approved of the fact

that father or mother went to jail for their beliefs and

left them to eat from the garbage, suffer poor

health, and forego proper schooling. Their reproach

was always the same: "If father had kept quiet like

so many other believers, we would not have been

deprived of a normal childhood." And so the parent

returned from jail and found hostile children and

106 From Suffering to Triumph

sometimes a bitter spouse, too. They felt it was all

their fault.

It is difficult to win in this life. Other children

were rebellious against parents who had played a

treacherous role. These children could not bear the

thought of being children of a Judas. Many felt

guilty for having lied to the police during investi-

gation, to protect themselves or to keep others from

being arrested. They had been taught strict honesty.

For Christians who think like this, it would have

been wise never to engage in secret work. Such

work is impossible for someone who considers it a

sacred principle always to tell the full truth. A Bible

smuggler from the West to Eastern Europe told me,

"I never said a lie." I asked him, "When applying for

a Russian or Romanian visa, what did you declare as

the purpose of your visit?" He replied, "Tourism."

This was a lie.

"Lies" in self-defense, in defense of innocents or

the church, are not really lies. When in danger of

death, Paul defended himself before the priestly

council with these words: "I am a Pharisee, the son

of a Pharisee; concerning the hope and resurrection

of the dead I am being judged" (Acts 23:6), which

was certainly not the issue. But those who felt the

guilt of having lied were indifferent to any ethical

niceties. They said, "If these Communist police were

to find out that I lied to them in matters about which

I was questioned, how would they believe what I

told them about salvation?"

Others had something else on their heart. They

had not seen a female for years, even decades. Once

free, they found every girl an irresistible temptation.

(This was less true of Catholic priests, who had been

From Suffering to Triumph 107

brought up with the discipline of celibacy, than of

evangelicals.) I told everyone about the blood of

Christ that cleanses every sin, and souls found rest.

Such conversations in intimacy were as important as

speeches delivered to audiences of thousands.

I had the advantage of having known great con-

fessors personally. One was an English missionary

to the Romanian Jews, David Adeney. When a per-

son confessed a major sin to him, Adeney would

weep. His tears spoke. He added to them not a word.

I had also known the Lutheran bishop, Frederic

Mullen No matter what sin of mine I told him, he

would always reply, "This I have, too. It belongs to

all men, just as forgiveness belongs to God."

I had known the Orthodox priest Suroianu who,

when I told him many sins of mine, said, "Well, you

have plenty of sins, and grievous ones. But beware

of one sin, that of despair. Never believe that your

sins can be more or greater than God's grace. You

can never out-sin God. He forgives for Christ's sake.

Go in peace."

The Brother Who Died for Me

To each person who came to me, sometimes four

or five in an evening, I told a story that I had told to

robbers and murderers in jail. I felt it was appro-

priate for saints carrying remorse, and I offer it to the

reader for comfort, regardless of the monstrous sins

he may have committed.

In the olden days there were two brothers, the

elder good and devout, the younger a libertine who

reveled with unsavory companions. The elder

brother prayed for the younger and often begged him

to change his life, but all seemed in vain.

108 From Suffering to Triumph

One night as the elder brother.sat in his study

reading, the younger brother rushed into his room,

begging, "Save me! The police are after me! I have

killed a man." There were bloodstains on his

clothes.

The older brother grasped the situation immedi-

ately and said, "I will save you. Let us change

clothes." He took the bloodstained suit of the crim-

inal and gave him his white robe.

The two had barely dressed when the police

arrived. They had pursued the criminal from the

place where the deed had been committed and

seized the brother in the bloodstained garment.

Brought before the judge, he pleaded guilty, say-

ing, "I bear the whole responsibility for the crime."

Faced with the evidence before him—the pursuit,

the blood, the confession—the judge had no doubt.

He sentenced the man to death, then asked him his

final wish.

"Only one," said the supposed criminal. "I want

my brother to receive this letter, which I have pre-

pared for him, at the very moment I am hanged."

The wish was granted.

The next day, his brother received the letter.

Opening it, he read: "My beloved, at this very

moment, I die in your place, in your bloodstained

clothes, for your crime—and I am happy to offer this

sacrifice on your behalf.

"But I would like you, in the white clothes I gave

you, to lead a life of righteousness and purity. I have

no other desire!"

The younger brother, on reading these words, was

taken by remorse. He ran to stop the execution—but

it was too late. Then he ran to the judge to confess

From Suffering to Triumph 109

his crime, but the judge would not listen to him. "A

murder was committed; it has been expiated. What

was between you two brothers is of no interest to

us."

After that, as often as his former comrades in rev-

elry called the young lad to drinking parties and

loose living, he would say, "In the white clothes left

to me by the brother who gave his life for me, I can

no longer do the evil deeds I did before."

You Received an Angel

I was in the Christian home of a couple I had

married some forty years before. They reminded me

of what I had preached at their wedding.

I had told them that on the preceding evening,

unable to sleep, I was wondering what to say to

them at the ceremony. My wife was already asleep.

I was having considerable difficulty finding a suit-

able text for the occasion. Only one verse of the

Bible kept coming to my mind: "Do not forget to

entertain strangers, for by so doing some have

unwittingly entertained angels" (Heb. 13:2). I dis-

missed it. How can one make a wedding sermon out

of that?

But since it was on my mind, I tried to figure out

who of the many who had stayed in our home was

an angel. Some later proved to be devils, some were

nice people, but angels? None fell into this catego-

ry. While speculating like this, I chanced to look at

my sleeping wife, and said to myself, 'This is the

angel entertained by me unwittingly." That became

the text of my wedding sermon. "You, the bride-

groom, are now receiving an angel. Angels were

badly treated in Sodom. Others are not taken into

110 From Suffering to Triumph

consideration. You give to your bride the honor due

to an angel."

Forty years have passed. He still calls her not by

her name, but "angel."

In the USA, 50% of marriages end in divorce,

and probably a good percentage of the other half are

torn by quarrels. Even a great number of pastors

divorce. I rejoice that it is not so in my homeland.

Divorce among evangelicals is a rare event.

It would be easy to say that this situation is due to

the greater spirituality among believers, but there is

a more down-to-earth explanation: the hardship of

life. When husband and wife, after a day of hard

labor, have to stand in line many hours for the bare

necessities of life, there is less time to quarrel. One

man told me, "Our apartment is not heated in winter.

The electricity bill is high. We cannot afford to have

many bulbs burning. The cozy atmosphere needed

for a good quarrel is missing, so we forego it."

In contrast to this, the opulence in the West favors

divorce. I have known couples who divorced

because of quarrels about how to squander their sur-

plus on futilities. If western Christians gave more of

their surplus to good causes, the number of divorces

would drastically decrease.

Christianity and Communism

This leads me to express a few thoughts about the

relationship between Christianity and Communism.

I have long been aware that, on a practical level,

sinful mankind does not know a better economic sys-

tem than capitalism. This system conflicts with

Communism; between Christianity and Communism

there is not a total contradiction. How is it that the

From Suffering to Triumph 111

name "Communism" is so much akin to notions dear

to Christians, such as "the communion of saints,"

"holy communion," etc.? Whenever I met with a

convinced revolutionary, I felt guilty. I would say to

myself, "He is the wrong kind of Communist,

because I am not the right kind."

Nowadays we discuss how one becomes a

Christian: is it through infant or believer's baptism,

sprinkling or immersion? Does one receive the Holy

Spirit at the same time, or is this a second experi-

ence? Which denomination should one join, if

any? It was not so in the beginning. In the early

years of the Christian church, all believers "had all

things in common, and sold their possessions and

goods and divided them among all, as anyone had

need" (Acts 2:44-45). Today it is difficult to guess

which confession is the church that Christ willed. Is

it the Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Baptist,

Pentecostal, Adventist? However, we can be sure

that one church was organized as Jesus willed it.

After the resurrection, he spent forty days with his

disciples and surely must have told them what to do.

He taught that the multitude of those who believe

should be of one heart and one soul; that no one

should say that anything he possessed was his

own; that they should have all things in common

(Acts 5:32). Measured by this standard, all today's

Christian denominations are heresies.

It is obvious that contemporary Christianity,

which numbers hundreds of millions on all conti-

nents, must have other life structures than those

Christianity had when it numbered only a few

thousand in Jerusalem, but the principle should

remain the same. We should all be able to say,

112 From Suffering to Triumph

"None of us lives to himself, and no one dies to him-

self ' (Rom. 14:7).

A theoretician of the New Age movement read

my book Tortured for Christ, in which I describe the

heroic virtues of Christians in the underground

church under Communism. Then he wrote, "If

today's Christians in the West were like this, the

New Age movement would not have arisen." I para-

phrase him: "If we had been the right kind of

Communists, we would not have the wrong kind of

Communists opposing us."

Meanwhile, we should not deceive ourselves.

The Communist ideal has lost some very important

battles, but it is far from being defeated or extin-

guished. A fourth of mankind is still under

Communist rule. China with 1.1 billion people and

Russia with 280 million which still has a one-party

Communist system at the moment I write these

lines. There is Communism in Vietnam, Ethiopia,

Zimbabwe, Angola, and Cuba. In Nicaragua, the

army, police, and trade unions are still under

Communist control, while the government belongs to

a divided opposition.

And there are still thousands in Romania and

other eastern countries, where a major change has

taken place, who still want Communism—some to

regain the privileges they lost, some because they

retain their Communist ideology. Many of the

political concepts they believed in, many axioms

they took for granted, crumbled with the Berlin

Wall, but they are still sure that a society in which

people have all things in common and share accord-

ing to need, a society without millionaires on one

side and homeless on the other, is to be preferred to

From Suffering to Triumph 113

the capitalist society in which profit is the main-

spring for action.

Is there any Christian who loves Jesus' teachings

who does not see that they have a point? It might not

be practical, but many impractical things have

spiritual value. We should all feel some uneasiness

in our conscience when we read the Master's

words: "Sell all you have and give to the poor, if you

wish to be perfect." Is there anyone among us who

does not have a longing for perfection?

Our God is modest and looks at our modest, sin-

cere desires as if they were accomplished facts. It is

not easy to go back two thousand years and fulfill all

commands literally just as they were given. But I

feel a bond uniting me with every sincere

Communist and can extend to him wholehearted

love. The fact that I suffered under Communism is

not sufficient motive to reject it totally.

Communists no longer kill wholesale in Russia or

Romania, but they continue to kill retail wherever

they have guerrillas, as in India, the Philippines, and

Latin America. Though they are killers, they are also

ready to die for their beliefs. Therefore, they should

not be simply discarded as worthless junk.

Communism is the old dream of mankind for a king-

dom of justice and happiness. Whence did this ideal

arise if not from a reminiscence of paradise? Many

anthropologists maintain that Communism is the

first primitive social order. Communism as practiced

by Marxism has been and still is horrible. Today,

even the Communist press in Russia admits this.

Distinguish Ideals from Their Supporters

Some will be shocked that I, a man who has suf-

114 From Suffering to Triumph

fered so much, can still say a good word about

Communism as a principle. Intellectual and spiritual

progress is impossible if we do not make a clear-cut

distinction between an ideal that can be sublime and

the gruesome deeds of those who proclaim them-

selves its adherents.

If we were to take into account the very base

deeds committed at a certain stage of their lives by

David, Solomon, and Paul, we would have to dis-

card their writings as unacceptable.

Great crimes have been committed over the

centuries against Jews and fellow Christians of other

persuasions as well. Because of this, should we

forego Christian teaching altogether? Christians

love their enemies—all their enemies. They have a

loving understanding for what makes a man an

enemy. Communists, on the other hand, are pas-

sionate in evil. They have learned Communism from

Marx, who had connections with Satanism, as I

proved in my book Marx—Prophet of Darkness.

Christians can teach what the first Christians

learned directly from Jesus: to have all things in

common; not to claim anything for oneself; to

share with the brethren. After two thousand years,

living as we do under entirely different circum-

stances, we may not be able to follow this command

explicitly. But the great principle remains: Christians

have to deny themselves, deny their ego, their

selfishness. Not one of us lives or dies to himself.

Let us show that the spirit of primitive Christianity

has not been extinguished.

I believe there is no greater and more effective

Communism ever propagated in the world than the

loving, giving Communism practiced by the first

From Suffering to Triumph 115

Christians and continued by many groups since. It is

the only solution for the economic and social ills of

the world Mankind will have to ascend a steep road

toward this ideal. For the time being, however, cap-

italism is surely better than Communism as we have

seen it.

Dancing in Prison

Once when I was especially hungry in the Jilava

jail, Lieutenant Franco from the Securitate came to

investigate me. Angry about such an untimely

visit, I decided I would investigate him. I asked him

about his soul, with the result that he was converted

and gave me the lunch he had brought for himself:

sandwiches with fine, white bread and the most

expensive sausage. I even had dessert—luscious

chocolate candies. He now lives in Israel.

Another time, in the solitary cell under what later

became the headquarters of the Central Committee

of the Communist Party, I remembered Jesus'

words: "When men hate you and revile you, rejoice

and leap for joy" (Luke 6:23). It occurred to me that

I had neglected a duty. I had rejoiced but not

leaped for joy, as Jesus had taught us to do. So I

began to dance around the cell. The warden, who

kept an eye on me through the peephole in the door,

was sure I had gone mad. Guards had orders to

behave well towards madmen so they would not dis-

turb the silence of the prison. To quieten me down,

he brought a large loaf of bread, cheese, and two

pieces of sugar.

Romania should do what all believers are intend-

ed to do when in distress. Do nothing practical to

remedy a situation that is irremediable. Just praise

116 From Suffering to Triumph

the Lord, sing and dance in His honor. Angels can

take care of the rest, not only for individuals but also

for whole nations. Isaiah recommended just "quiet-

ness and confidence" (Isa. 30:15). Some will discard

such advice as foolishness. But surely it is more

practical to be a fool in Christ than to be a "wise"

man foolishly angry about what he cannot change.

Why No Apology?

In spontaneous actions, western evangelical and

Catholic groups have done much to help the

Romanian people in need since the revolution.

Great quantities of Bibles and good Christian books

have also been sent in.

But this is not enough to establish right relations

between East and West.

After the War, the churches of Germany,

acknowledging that Nazism killed millions of Jews,

made public statements of apology for having sup-

ported the Nazis or at least for allowing mass

slaughter to take place without protesting and help-

ing the persecuted to escape. The German democ-

ratic government itself recognized their national guilt

and gave great sums of money in restitution to the

surviving victims.

Romania and other Eastern European states

were given into the hands of Communist butchers—

already known as such—by Britain and the USA at

Yalta. In his memoirs, Churchill says that he passed

a slip of paper to Stalin, whom he had characterized

previously as a bloody criminal, with the following

proposal: "You give me Greece and Romania will be

yours." He disposed of Romania as if it were his pri-

vate possession. Roosevelt went along with him as

From Suffering to Triumph 117

they committed their nations to handing over whole

countries to God-hating rulers. Hundreds of thou-

sands of innocents died as a result. My country has

been ruined.

Until Vatican 2, the papacy was the only large

religious body that took an anti-Communist stance

and defended the persecuted. After Vatican 2, they

gave up their crusade. Meanwhile, the World

Council of Churches for thirty years has harshly crit-

icized the western world while covering up the

atrocities taking place in the East. It has vigorously

supported liberation theology, which means libera-

tion from capitalism but never from the injustices of

Communism. The great Protestant bodies, such as

Lutheran and Reformed World Federation, fol-

lowed suit. During the worst years of terror,

Romania was visited by bishops, pastors and

renowned evangelists. Not one said a word in

defense of the sufferers.

I was reminded of the fact that in 1935, when

Hitler ruled Germany, the Baptist World Alliance

chose Berlin as the location for its world congress.

Hitler's program to exterminate the Jews was

known. While the delegates quoted Bible verses

written by Jews about the Jew Jesus and spoke about

His sufferings, not one word of compassion or sol-

idarity was spoken on behalf of the German Jews

threatened with mass murder. There was only one

American Jewish Christian among the delegates, a

Mr. Gartenhaus, but he was not allowed to speak

from the rostrum.

On one occasion, I read the report of an Anglican

bishop in his diocesan bulletin about his visit to

Romania. He wrote glowingly about the many lav-

118 From Suffering to Triumph

ish breakfasts (wrongly so-called, because they

broke no fasts), luncheons, and dinners, but said

nothing about the Christians starving in jail.

Today foreign church leaders are certainly wel-

come in Romania, but it would be appropriate for

them to express some word of repentance. They

might also publicly acknowledge that during the years

of terror not one denomination had budgeted so much

as one pound for the families of Christian martyrs,

who never received one parcel of food from abroad.

On the other hand, through the World Council of

Churches, many denominations have given money to

Communist guerrillas in Africa who, when they came

to power, imprisoned and killed Christians.

Mozambique and Angola are prime examples. Again,

no money ever went to families of prisoners.

Teach, but Also Learn

Something else needs to be said about the rela-

tionship of the West with Romanian churches (and

also for other countries of the former eastern bloc).

Western Christians can afford the luxury of

expensive journeys to teach others. Why then don't

they invite Romanian or Russian Christians to

evangelize in the West? Why, at large evangelistic

congresses, are only well-fed, affluent western

evangelists the key speakers? It was not so in the

early church. There, men like Paul shared the mys-

teries of Christ learned while in chains.

Hands that have worn chains can give blessings

and should be awarded this privilege. In the first

centuries, the church in Rome was heeded by others

because it had given the most martyrs.

One more detail: in Romanian evangelical

From Suffering to Triumph 119

churches women use no makeup and wear no jew-

elry. Believers who do so are not accepted as

church members. Smoking and drinking are strictly

forbidden. American evangelists who wear rings and

whose wives use lipstick are not acceptable.

It is helpful to know this.

The Duty to Howl

Many western preachers have had the advantage

of a theological education, which can be very prof-

itable. Many of the Romanian preachers, as well as

Russian, Bulgarian, etc., have not been in seminar-

ies but in dark cells, hungry, beaten, and suffering

with the cold.

I cannot explain why, but in certain cells in utter

cold and darkness, prisoners could not refrain from

howling. God says, "I will howl for Moab" (Jer.

48:31). Before being in such a cell, I had never

imagined how terrible is God's pain for sinners. It

makes Him howl. I now knew another aspect of

God: a God who howls. This is also a revelation

about Him.

It can be learned best from those who have been

through this school. They have fulfilled an amazing

commandment from God: "Howl for Babylon."

Howl for the worst enemy of your people. We

howled in these cells for our Communist torturers,

knowing that if we did so, "they may be healed"

(Jer. 51:8). We consider it important that a minister

should be trained in homiletics, dogmatics, Greek,

Hebrew, and church history. The West can give us

teachers for these. But ministers must also be pre-

pared for howling, for being men who feel they will

die if souls are not saved.

120 From Suffering to Triumph

The prophet Joel says, "Howl, all you who min-

ister before the altar" (Jer. 1:13). Preachers should

imitate Micah, who at a given moment made the

decision, "I will wail and howl" (Micah 1:8), not, "I

will preach according to the rules of rhetoric."

Perhaps eastern preachers can teach the West how

to weep when you have been stabbed with the knife

of treason, how to bear the burden of suffering for

the honor and good of the holy church. They will

add that the great suffering is not produced by lost

battles (no warrior can win them all) or by physical

wounds, but by brothers and sisters who do not take

up a cross and fight the good fight, who renounce

the holy dream. They will teach us to smile not only

when comforted by friends, with lilies strewn in their

path, but also when surrounded by enemies, with

nails driven into their bodies.

A Heavenly Smile

Speaking of smiles, let me write about one fel-

low-prisoner whom I did not meet again on

Romanian soil because he is now in a better land.

We usually imagine the saints as being in a heav-

en far away. The Bible tells us in Hebrews 12:1 that

they surround us. They continue to be interested in

all they left behind and participate in the fight. They

inspire us in the very strict sense of the word.

It is said about a disciple of John Chrysostom, the

greatest preacher Christianity has ever had, that he

peered into the room where his master was prepar-

ing a sermon and saw two unknown beings whis-

pering something in his ears. Curious, he asked

about them and received this reply: "It was wrong of

you to peek, but since you did, I will tell you. These

From Suffering to Triumph 121

were the apostles Paul and John, who sometimes

suggest what I should preach about."

This story might be legend, but the fact remains

that we are in the communion of the saints of all

times. It is good for those who visit Romania not

only to look around to see living saints, but also to

look up and through the spirit get a glimpse of those

in glory who surround them.

I remembered Milan Haimovici, a Hebrew

Christian pastor who spent seven years in jail.

Even enemies of both Jews and the gospel admired

his courage. He would protest against any injustice

on the part of the wardens though he knew that for

this he would be savagely beaten.

Once I was in a large cell holding perhaps a hun-

dred prisoners. We were crammed together in utter

misery with no room to walk even a few steps. We

were over come with the dirt and the stench. At

night it was impossible to sleep because there

were always three or four who snored, each on a dif-

ferent melody. When they stopped others started.

Some coughed, some sneezed, some quarreled.

In these close quarters were Christians of many

denominations, Jews, atheists, men of all political

parties and social categories. Among them was

Milan, who witnessed for Jesus. He had no Bible

and had seen no book for many years. He could

advance no intellectual arguments. He could only

say repeatedly, "I know Jesus. Walk and talk with

Him."

A professor, member of the Royal Academy of

Sciences, scoffed: "Jesus has been dead for two

thousand years. How can you talk with Him? Even

admitting that He was resurrected, as you Christians

122 From Suffering to Triumph

believe, and went to heaven, this heaven is millions

of miles away. Don't tell us any more lies. No one

can walk and talk with Him."

Milan simply repeated, "I wonder myself how it

can happen and have no real explanation, but it is a

fact. He walks and talks with me." A great circle of

prisoners listened to the discussion. Continuing,

Milan asserted, "I even see Him sometimes."

This was too much for a man of science. "What

you say is the greatest lie I have heard in all my life.

Since you claim you see Him, can you please tell us

how He looks at you: angry, wrathful, bored, indif-

ferent, polite, interested, loving? Does He perhaps

also smile at you?"

Milan replied, "How did you guess that? Really,

He sometimes smiles at me."

"Well, well," said the professor. "You are lucky I

am not a psychiatrist, or I would diagnose you as

having religious mania. Perhaps you can show us

how Jesus smiles."

"I will gladly try," said Milan.

The scene that followed was the most beautiful in

the eighty-one years of my life. Like all the rest of

us, Milan resembled a scarecrow. Shorn, dirty,

with dark circles around his eyes; only skin and

bones, with teeth missing, and in a zebra uniform, he

was anything but attractive. But when he received

this challenge, his face began to shine—the glory of

God can shine through a thick crust of dirt—and a

beautiful smile appeared on his lips. Romeo must

have looked like this when he smiled at Juliet

There was a touch of sadness in the smile

because of the lost condition of his questioner's soul.

But one could read on his lips a passionate love, an

From Suffering to Triumph 123

unquenchable longing, a sure hope and an ardent

desire of a lover to receive the kiss of the beloved.

All the splendor of heaven was in this magnificent

smile. (An ugly thought passed through my mind on

seeing this smile: the definition of the word "kiss" in

a Russian dictionary—"the mutual touch of two

pairs of lips with reciprocal transmission of microbes

and carbon dioxide." Who can avoid such wrong

thoughts at a sublime moment?) The atheist pro-

fessor bowed his head and said, "Sir, you have seen

Jesus."

When I became a Christian, I was advised to read

every day a page from the Bible and the life of a

saint, a martyr, or a renowned missionary, which I

do. But before I was in jail, I read the lives of saints

with skepticism. The writers always seemed to exag-

gerate. I knew the story of the charming and con-

vincing smile of Bernadette de Soubiroux of

Lourdes. I had known several Christians on earth

who had heavenly smiles (one of whom is my wife

Sabina). But now I saw such smiles in conditions of

utter suffering.

I have seen them many times, in many jails.

Sometimes I have difficulty remembering the cir-

cumstances. All the great smilers became one for

me, fusing into the smile of Jesus. Saints bring the

smile of heaven into the deepest valleys of the shad-

ow of death. Men with such a smile do not die. They

surround us after death as well, encouraging and

helping us. Romania has just such a cloud of wit-

nesses above it. This too is a Romanian reality. A

Christian who goes to such a place must look for it.

A renowned church leader told me that he had

visited Lenin's tomb in Moscow and had seen his

124 From Suffering to Triumph

mummy. I asked him if he had perceived the pres-

ence of some other dead person in Russia. He had

not. But Paul says in Hebrews 13:1 that he had seen

a cloud of God's witnesses from thousands of

years before.

Killed for Distributing Bibles

Milan Haimovici is one of many martyrs who

beautify the sky over Romania. I am very much

attached to some of them because in a certain

sense I played a role in their dying under tragic cir-

cumstances.

We know the names of four Romanian Christians

who had to die for the crime of distributing Bibles

they had received from us through underground

channels. Clipa was caught and badly tortured to

reveal how he obtained and distributed the Bibles.

Then he was found hanged. No one really knows

how he died. Did the Communists hang him? Did he

commit suicide, like many others in Communist

China, fearing he might weaken and betray when

subjected to further torture? Another Bible distrib-

utor, Bogdam, was also found hanged. Tudose was

found electrocuted. Pastor Radu Cruceru died of a

staged automobile accident, a method of killing

much practiced by the Communists.

If we and others from abroad had not smuggled in

Bibles, these persons would have lived. We bear a

responsibility that their wives are widows and their

children orphans. Every Christian who contributes to

such a work should know that someone at the

receiving end might give blood in the cause for

which we in the free world give money.

Some do this underground work in Communist

From Suffering to Triumph 125

and Muslim countries without pangs of conscience.

But I know directors, personnel, and supporters of

our mission who are very conscious of the risks and

suffer because of it. They feel it is not enough to

give money and send Bibles; we must share with

those in Communist countries the pain, the tears, and

the sorrows of the distributors and their families.

Some dear saints in the West have broken down

mentally under this burden. It gives me many

sleepless nights. Couriers of our mission have been

killed in China, too. And some were imprisoned for

many years under the appalling conditions of

Communist jails, among them the translator of my

book Tortured for Christ into the Amharic language

of Ethiopia.

Don't Give Money Easily

I was scheduled to preach at a large meeting in

Norway that was called for the special purpose of

gathering money for Ukrainian Bibles. The mission

counted on my presence to be an encouragement to

others to give more.

I told the crowd the story of Nikolai Hmara, a

Soviet Christian who had died for Christ after hav-

ing his tongue cut off and his eyes gouged out, and

I ended by saying, "Don't be quick to give. You

might be punished by God for having given money

to print Ukrainian Bibles. Some will believe so

devoutly that the Bible you donate is the word of

God that they will be ready to endure prison, torture

and death for sharing it. Your Bibles will be read in

the Soviet Ukraine, where those who read the

word will follow its command and renounce every-

thing for the sake of the kingdom. Some will prefer

126 From Suffering to Triumph

Jesus to wife, mother, and children, and will fulfill

dangerous tasks in the underground church, such as

working in secret print shops or running forbidden

Sunday schools. If they are caught, their wives might

remain widows and their children orphans, who may

later accuse their father of putting religion above

duty to provide daily bread for the family.

'The Bible you donate might inspire someone

else to become a Nikolai Hmara. You will answer to

God for having given this money if your life does

not show that you yourself obey the Bible as the

word of God, if you do not lead a life of intimacy

with Jesus, following Him on the way of the cross,

of prayer and praise and self-sacrifice.

"If you do not intend to commit yourselves

wholeheartedly to Jesus, it is best for you not to

give. Please forego giving."

It remains for the reader of these lines to guess

whether the offering on that evening was large or

small.

I constantly hear the cries of those suffering in

Communist countries because they desire the

spreading of the gospel and relief for their aban-

doned families. This spurs me on when I feel my

age and feel tempted to give up. But Bishop

Meshkala died in Albania at the age of eighty-four

after forty-three years in jail! He was not too old to

suffer for Christ and never gave up. Should I give

up my fight under entirely different circum-

stances?

Some, after reading this book, might feel like giv-

ing money for the cause of Christians in Communist

countries or in those only recently liberated. Giving

will oblige you to have fellowship with them in their

From Suffering to Triumph 127

heavy tribulations. Think carefully about what you

intend to do.

Loving the Enemy

Every place I visited in Romania brought back

other memories to my mind.

In Bucharest, I preached in the Dragosh Voda

Brethren church. This building had been used

before by my church in its peregrinations from one

place to another under different dictatorships.

It was immediately after the invasion of Romania

by Soviet troops toward the end of the Second

World War. Whole units of the German army that

had occupied our country were taken captive. They

had no illusions. Slavery in Siberia would be their

lot. For many it would mean death. While a large

group of German prisoners of war were being led to

their barracks, two officers succeeded in escaping

from the surveillance of the escort. Still wearing

their Nazi uniforms, they wandered trembling

through the streets of Bucharest. The one thing that

shielded them was the night We were still at war,

and the streets were only very dimly lit.

All at once they spotted a ray of hope: a sign say-

ing "Lutheran Chapel." They knew the Lutherans of

Romania to be of German extraction. Here someone

would help them. What a disappointment awaited

them when they heard that we were Jewish! Jews

had more reason to hate the German soldiers than

even the Soviets did.

I quieted their fears. "We are Jews, but also

Christians and give no one into the hands of their

enemies. There is a story about a lamb led to

slaughter that fled and ran to Moses, asking him to

128 From Suffering to Triumph

protect it. He replied, "I cannot do so. God has

ordained that your meat should serve as food for

men," and he handed the lamb to the butcher. A

Jewish writing says that God hid His face for

shame at what a man who bore His name could

do.

"We have suffered under the German occupation.

But you personally may not be guilty. In any case,

we are not your judges. You are welcome in our

home. We will also give you civilian clothes so that

you can try to make your way to Germany."

We were then under a decree forbidding anyone

to hide a German soldier under pain of death. In

time this developed into a systematic work of

helping persecuted Germans just as, during the war,

we had used our influence in Christian circles to

help persecuted Jews.

The believers in the Brethren church where I was

now asked to preach knew all this. They knew that

I meant it when I spoke about forgiving those who

have abused you, even the God-hating Communists.

So I traveled from one place to another in

Bucharest and then to different cities and towns,

reliving events of the past.

Revisiting Places where I Sinned

I not only saw places that held pleasant or

sacred memories, but also places where I had

gravely sinned.

I saw once again the homes in which my family

had lived when I was young. I had been very evil

towards a mother who had sacrificed herself for her

orphaned children.

Here was the quarter called—I don't know

From Suffering to Triumph 129

why—"The Stone Cross." It was a place of prosti-

tution. "Friends" led me here when I was twelve. No

Christian stood before the ill-famed house warning

youngsters not to enter. The first time I saw the half-

naked women, I fled. Not so the second time. I saw

again the places where I had taken advantage of

other women. I saw gambling houses that I had fre-

quented, places where I had met with other blas-

phemers and mocked God, places where I had failed

and sinned even as a Christian and then a pastor.

I had confessed this whole life of sin and

believed that Christ had forgiven everything. Paul

wrote that he pressed forward, forgetting those

things that were behind him. But he, too, could not

forget his whole past. He tells us about it. Neither

could I forget it all.

In Romania I thought, too, of all the shortcomings

and grave sins committed during the quarter of a

century lived abroad.

How happy I was that "there is a fountain filled

wit blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins" and that

if one plunged into this fountain, a great miracle

takes place. Not only are sins (even crimes) forgiv-

en, but they become white as snow. They become

visible tokens of actual purity. What happens to

them is beyond description. Jesus was made sin. One

of the purposes was to show what beauties can be

made of sins through repentance, as a potter can

make a luxurious vase out of what had been mud.

However, like the pieces of pottery or like metal

that has to be refined, we must pass through the fires

of affliction. This cleansing process lasts until all

impurity has disappeared, which in our case means

until all complaining, all rebellion, all pestering God

130 From Suffering to Triumph

with the question "Why?," all selfishness, pride, and

an unreadiness to forgive have disappeared.

A little girl watched a goldsmith hold the costly

metal in a jar for purifying. Repeatedly he took out

the slack and the metal shone more and more

beautifully. The girl asked, "How long does this go

on?" He said, "Have patience." The goldsmith had

to repeat the words often as he waited for the

moment called "the silver look," when he saw his

image in the metal.

This is how the heavenly Goldsmith works. A

sinner who has passed through His purification has

a beauty he never had before, the beauty of Christ

Himself.

Encounter with a Top Soviet Official

For twenty-five years I have played in the world

the role of Tychicus (Eph. 6:21), who during Paul's

day made known to the brethren how the persecut-

ed were doing. While in Romania, I had the opposite

role: to tell how the church in the free world is far-

ing, as well as how we worked for the persecuted

while they were under the yoke of Communism.

Romanian Christians were aware of the fact

that Bibles and other books entered their country,

along with financial aid and radio broadcasts, but

they did not know about the vast organizations that

were behind all this and about the thousands upon

thousands of fellow believers who gave sacrificial-

ly and prayed for them. They were most interested

in our Christian Mission to the Communist World

and its work in over forty countries. I told them not

only about the relief work for the persecuted but also

about our missionary endeavors among their perse-

From Suffering to Triumph 131

cutors. I will mention here just one of my most inter-

esting experiences in this area.

In Switzerland, another brother and I visited a

world industrial exhibition. The most beautiful sec-

tion was the Soviet department, the only one to add

a fashion show, which attracted thousands, and a reli-

gious exhibit which was very well put together.

At the entrance was a huge picture of Billy

Graham preaching in Moscow, of the Patriarchy, and

of the one single synagogue in Moscow, a city with

200,000 Jews, of a mosque, and so on. The obvious

aim was to reveal the perfect religious freedom that

exists under Communism.

An album was prepared for each visitor to regis-

ter his impressions.

I wrote the following: "I congratulate you for this

unique idea to ornament an industrial exposition with

words and pictures about religion. If there were no

God, there would be no human mind and no industry.

Everything you show is well arranged, but as a friend

of the USSR, I would suggest that you enrich this

exposition with other valorous pictures: that of

Nikolai Hmara, a Baptist who, because of his faith,

had his tongue cut off and his eyes gouged out I can

provide you with the picture of his corpse. The pic-

ture of Nikolai Hrapov would fit well, too. He spent

thirty-four years in jail for his faith. Also that of

Vania Moiseev, stabbed seven times in the region of

his heart and then drowned," and so on and on.

A gentleman I believed to be from the Soviet staff

read what I wrote and said, "There is a wicked man

by the name of Wurmbrand who spreads such

slander about us." After I told him I was that very

same Wurmbrand, we spoke with each other for four

132 From Suffering to Triumph

hours. He was the head of the Foreign Department

of their Ministry of Cults, a top man of the Soviet

government on religious matters. He spoke fluent

English and German. He had read all my books as

well as other publications of our mission.

He started in a bellicose manner by saying there

is no persecution. I answered, "It would be useless

to contradict you, because you are obliged to speak

thus. Let us rather pass to something much more

important.

"A day will come when you will no longer be a

man in high position in the Communist Party and

government, and I will no longer be a pastor. We

will both die. For a short time someone who loves us

will weep at our grave. Then those who knew us

will die too, and we will lie in a forgotten grave.

"What happens after that? If at this point every-

thing is ended, then it is stupid to be a Christian pas-

tor and just as stupid to be an atheist opponent of

religion. The best course is to eat, drink, and have

some amusement; nothing more. In my homeland of

Romania, there was a custom in the olden days to

give a person sentenced to death a good meal with

all his favorite dishes before his execution. The

accused ate and drank well, and then he was shot. If

everything ends with death, the most beautiful life

that Communism or capitalism can provide is no

more than a henchman's meal. It would not be worth

while to fight for any cause."

He listened without interrupting.

I told him that in my youth I was meditative and

inclined to melancholy. I had had a bitter childhood,

without any such childish pleasures as toys or

chocolate. When other children in school ate choco-

From Suffering to Triumph 133

late, I would lick the wrapping paper because it

smelled good.

"I was sure that a God could not exist. If he did,

he would have given me a nicer childhood. But for

some reason I liked to take lonely walks through

cemeteries and read the inscriptions on grave-

stones. I do so even now. It makes for highly

interesting reading. This person had been a general,

and he died. Another was a renowned poet, and he

died. Another was a banker, another a beggar. But

the end of life was death.

"On every gravestone there were two figures, the

year of birth and the year of death, with a stroke in

between. This is the sign that nature draws over

every life: a stroke. Thus life is annulled. Without

knowing a thing about any religion, I said to

myself at that time, 'I wish to find Someone who

can give youth without old age and life without

death.' It took me a long time, but I finally found

this Someone."

He continued to absorb my words without inter-

ruption. He had a soul hungry for God. I told him

how I had prayed the prayer of an atheist: "God, I

know for sure you don't exist But if you exist—and

this I contest—it is not my duty to believe in you. It

is your duty to reveal yourself to me. I regret that

you do not exist. I could have wished that some-

where in this universe there should beat a heart of

love. I speak as a madman to the nonexistent.

Well, that is all."

I went on: "This prayer was accepted. God sent a

carpenter my way, who told my wife and me the

story of the Carpenter of Nazareth who lived and

died for us and was resurrected."

134 From Suffering to Triumph

He asked question after question. At the end of

four hours, he said, "I must admit there are two

problems to which we Marxists have no answers.

First, how is it that something exists? We explain

everything by evolution, but how come evolution

exists and that the first living cell existed from which

all animals, the monkey, and man came into being?

Secondly, what happens to man after death? We

have no answers; you have. Therefore you are strong

and we are weak."

Later he played a role in liberalizing the Soviet

policy towards religion, which in turn had an effect

on Romania and the other Eastern European coun-

tries.

Our mission sees to it that specific Christian lit-

erature for Communists, such as my books Answer

to Moscow's Bible and Marx—Prophet of Darkness,

gets into their hands and those of their leaders, with

amazing results. These books have been translated

into many languages and distributed in Romania,

Russia, China, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ethiopia,

Mozambique, and Angola, among others. The pro-

fessor of atheism at the highest school of the

Romanian Communist Party was converted through

their ministry, along with many others in a number

of Communist countries.

A Country Reduced to Poverty

Back in Bucharest I was driven around and I also

walked the streets, but it was no more the same city.

In times past it had been called "the Paris of the

East" because of its beauty, but it had long since

foregone its proud boast. The impression was one of

hopelessness.

From Suffering to Triumph 135

Grand avenues such as grace the largest western

cities lie unfinished; they end in nothing. Ceaushescu

had the sickness of gigantomania. All his enterprises

were to be unsurpassed in greatness, but he could

never finish what he began. Most houses are

decayed. They were in ruins before the windows

were put in. You can see the results of the ravaging

earthquakes of the recent past, but also of the

bloody unrest Facades are blackened by fire, and in

the walls are bullet holes.

The shops are empty. Long lines of people wait

for hours in the hope, often vain, that there will be

something to buy. The queues for bread begin at four

in the morning. By seven there is no more bread. The

black market flourishes. There you can buy straw-

berries, furs and shirts, or suspect alcoholic beverages

made with chemicals that have killed many people.

Small children beg. Crime is rampant. Tourists

are advised not to walk at night carrying money. The

economy is in a coma and the populace lacks even

basic necessities. Skyrocketing unemployment

seems unavoidable. The USA and the European

community have stopped giving aid because

Communists are still in power. The present regime

is unhappy, but the rulers continue to live well. In

fact, Ceaushescu would be pleased with his suc-

cessor, who has also killed innocents, just like his

predecessor.

Although Communists are still in power in

Romania, they are politically bankrupt, reduced to

the level of a theatrical prop, just as in Russia.

The Danger of Commentaries

God declared "I am what I am, not what men

136 From Suffering to Triumph

believe me to be." He is the entirely Other. We can-

not fathom His ways.

Innumerable books have been written explaining

how biblical prophecies correspond to current

events. Many books were full of predictions about

how the Communist colossus in the north, Russia,

would attack Israel. Then the much-dreaded Battle

of Armageddon would ensue, along with the reign of

the Antichrist.

Some said that Kissinger was the Antichrist.

Before these, others had offered biblical proof that

Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini were the Antichrist.

Now a book denounces Gorbachev as this enigmatic

person, especially since he is marked with an indis-

putable sign: a red spot on his forehead.

To one such writer I said, "Every book on

prophecy written till now has proved to be false after

twenty years." He did not mind.

When my twelve-year-old grandson Alex was

with me at a Christian booksellers" convention

recently, he saw à great deal of advertising for Bible

commentaries. "What's a commentary?" he asked.

I responded that there are many things in the Bible

that are difficult to understand, for example, pre-

dictions of doom and great suffering that will arise

in the latter days. These are explained in the com-

mentaries.

His reply was, "Such predictions should not be

explained but contradicted. Abraham did not write

a commentary on God's prediction that Sodom

would be destroyed, nor did Moses on the predic-

tion that God would destroy the Jewish people.

Instead, they pleaded with God that it should not

take place, and they changed His mind. Why

From Suffering to Triumph 137

shouldn't we do the same instead of writing com-

mentaries?"

The Power to Overturn Communism

God is not bound by what men say who are not

commissioned to write or speak in His name. He has

destroyed a great deal of the power of Communism

and will destroy the rest, not through political

events, but through the prayers of the saints and the

power of the Word distributed under duress.

He altered the mind of Gorbachev and many of

his comrades. They in turn destroyed the power of

Communism as no bombs or political action could

have done. No plagues from above were needed.

Men can forestall tribulations even if predicted in the

Bible. God foretold Nineveh's destruction but then

relented from this decision. His love is more reliable

than any word spoken or written in His name.

When God has shed His love in our hearts, we

have enormous power. We can affect God.

Zephaniah 3:17 says that we can make God rejoice

with singing. Our burning love can change men, too.

They can be consciously won by it. Others will be

confused by the rays of our spirit and will lose the

capacity to oppose us. The sun shines on some and

gives them life; it burns others. So love is always

effective regardless of whom it touches. Humans do

not realize what enormous power they possess. It

extends not only to the whole earth but also to the

cosmos.

Daniel 8 tells about a king who cast down some

of the host of heaven, exalted himself as high as the

Prince of hosts, and cast truth down to the earth. A

very great power of evil can exist in a man. But at

138 From Suffering to Triumph

least this much power exists in good and saintly men

and women.

The church of Christ can finish with

Communism, with fanatical Islam, with the darkness

of heathenism, with a Judaism without the King of

the Jews.

I have many more things to say about my visits to

Romania after twenty-five years of enforced exile.

But I will permit myself to imitate Paul when he

said, 'Time would fail me to tell of Gideon and

Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and

Samuel and the prophets" (Heb. 11:32).

Strange Communion Services

Pastor Vasile Vadan's church in Bistritza was

destroyed with bulldozers. Treacherous official

Baptist leaders connived in this act. In a heavy frost,

he gave Communion to his flock on the ruins. The

surface of the wine was frozen. After preaching in

the open, he fell gravely ill of pneumonia, but that

did not prevent the Communists from putting him in

jail.

Many Communion services in Romania have

been strange. In home churches there would be

bread and wine on the table, but also a pot of tea and

biscuits in reserve. When a guest appeared unex-

pectedly, a person known as a Christian but sus-

pected as an informer, the wine would disappear

from the table in a second. The pot of tea and bis-

cuits gave the impression that the meeting was just

a social gathering.

In jail there were times when we had no bread

and certainly no wine. We took Communion with

nothing, remembering how precious a thing "noth-

From Suffering to Triumph 139

ing" was. The world was created out of nothing. The

earth is suspended on nothing. Paul wrote that he

was nothing. We learned to appreciate the value of

nothing.

To write about all the beautiful things that can be

said about Romania today and its church would fill

a large volume. But I would like to say a few words

about what our Christian Mission to the Communist

World is doing in other parts of the world.

A Great Communist Strategem

When I left Romania, I thought that I would

work only for my own country, but then the Rev.

Stuart Harris, director of the European Mission,

offered me a larger sphere: the whole of Europe.

However, Communism stretches to all continents.

And so we enlarged our vision to include the

whole Communist world, though I never forgot

Romania. [When I say "we," I mean all the co-

founders of our international mission: the Rev.

Stuart Harris (UK); Myrus Knutson and Casus

Styrdy (USA); J. Mans (Holland); Hans Braun

(Germany); H. Zürcher and Hedi Fluri

(Switzerland); Pat Henegan (S. Africa); Laiso

(Italy); Colette Grarsu (France); Reg Werry

(Australia); and many, many others.]

We confront Communism as a whole, of which

Romania is only a small part. The whole is affected

by any one of the parts. What is happening in

Communism today? We have seen great changes.

Are they for real?

The changes in the USSR and Eastern Europe are

real enough and concern politics, economics, even

religion, all institutions that can be controlled. But

140 From Suffering to Triumph

there is no change in the attitude towards God or in

the basic outlook on life. In his speech on the

Seventieth Anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution,

Gorbachev said, "We are moving towards a new

world, the world of Communism. We shall never

turn off that road." He repeated, with the same vigor,

that he remains an atheist. If there is one thing we

can learn from the Communists, it is consistency.

They abide by their teachings.

At the end of the Second World War, the

Communists were granted dominion over all of

Eastern Europe, without firing a shot Roosevelt and

Churchill ceded them this hegemony at the Yalta

conference because they promised free elections,

which of course never occurred. They had won

through deceit.

The bloody dictator Stalin, whom the Soviet press

now accuses of having killed fifty million innocents,

had made a tremendous impression on western

rulers. After meeting him, an American diplomat

commented, "His brown eyes are exceedingly wise

and gentle. A child would like to sit on his lap and a

dog would sidle up to him." Nothing has changed.

After meeting Gorbachev, even a world-renowned

evangelist praised his charm and his "warm eyes."

But Gromyko, former president of the USSR, had

recommended Gorbachev as successor with the

words, "He can smile beautifully, but he also has

steel teeth for biting."

Marx said, "Religion is the opiate of the people,"

which means it must be countered as resolutely as

drugs. Lenin wrote, 'Thousands of epidemics and

natural catastrophes are to be preferred to the

slightest notion of a god." Marx wrote in his poem

From Suffering to Triumph 141

'The Player" that "hellish vapors" filled his brain

and that he "bought a sword from the Prince of

Darkness." (Elements of satanic rituals.)

Communism continues to brandish this sword

against religion.

God-haters are also haters of mankind. In a letter

to Engels on the 18th of June, 1882, Marx called

mankind "a bunch of rascals" who can "kiss my

[obscenity]." But miracle of miracles, the party he

created, which never renounced its militant atheism,

has now reopened hundreds of churches and closes

its eyes to intense religious activity. Today there is

mass evangelism, Sunday school for children, and

charitable work—all totally proscribed a short time

ago. There are even processions on the street in

which these words are sung: "For the Czar [title of

Russian emperors], for our country and faith."

Bibles and other Christian literature continue to enter

freely. We have 100,000 letters from the USSR

alone, thanking us for the literature individually

received.

Communism is far from being defeated, but it has

received mortal wounds. The Berlin Wall and the

Iron Curtain crumble!

Communists have killed millions of believers, and

they were sure religion was dying. Now the church

triumphs. It is Communism that straggles for sur-

vival in Eastern Europe. There is no human expla-

nation for these events. Thanks be to God for

working this miracle!

When we began our mission twenty-four years

ago, anti-Communists thought that Communism

could be defeated only through war. They said,

"Only a dead Communist is a good Communist."

142 From Suffering to Triumph

We came with a new message: just as Communists

subvert the free world with their poisonous doctrine,

let us subvert them with the Gospel. Let us work

secretly to make Christ known. Let us help the

underground churches. Though the Communists hate

us, let us win them with love. Let us pray for them

and bring them to Christ.

I ended my book Answer to Moscow's Bible by

calling upon the Reds to repent and confess their

crimes openly. The Soviet press now acknowl-

edges that their Party has killed tens of millions of

innocents, and Gorbachev has apologized to the

Patriarch. Articles by atheist lecturers and officers of

their Secret Police appear, acknowledging that they

have lied to the people and shed innocent blood. Yet

many Communists still stick to their ideology,

modified by what they call "glasnost" and "pere-

stroika."

Glasnost and Perestroika

What is the secret behind these words? We fear it

is another example of Communist deceit, a maneu-

ver intended to lull the West to sleep. Terror could

not uproot religion—the blood of the martyrs has

always been the seed of the church—so the

Communists are trying another approach.

In an article in Kommunist, Lunacharsky, author

of Socialism and Religion, is quoted as predicting

that persecution of religion would be counterpro-

ductive. (After seventy years of terror, 70% of adults

are still believers.) He advocated that Communists

create a "religion without God," a "religious athe-

ism."

"Let the Christians believe," the argument runs.

From Suffering to Triumph 143

"Communists will infiltrate Christian ranks, will

befriend them, disguising themselves as having sim-

ilar ideals on many points. They will attract

Christians to common social actions and will influ-

ence them to keep only an external form of religion,

while becoming basically as godless as ourselves."

The same situation took place in the Roman

Empire during the fourth century, under Constantine

the Great. Ten emperors had slaughtered Christians.

Constantine did an about-face, gave them full liberty,

and made Christianity a state religion. Under him

every baby was baptized and declared a Christian.

Thus Christianity seemed to triumph—but it ceased

to be truly Christian. The church leadership increas-

ingly became a tool of the emperors.

In the USSR, the Orthodox patriarch Pimen

cabled to Gorbachev, "We express deep thankfulness

for your attention to the needs of believers and for

all you do to reestablish the Leninist norms."

(Lenin's norms included the killing of millions of

Christians and the destruction of churches.)

Kharchev, then head of the Religious Council of the

Soviet government, declared, "Religion is pene-

trating socialism, not on foot but on wheels. And

since power belongs to the Party, it is up to us to

steer those wheels in one direction or another,

according to our interests."

Few Soviet Christians are aware that Gorbachev

and his kin follow the same Constantinian road. He

wants to give liberty to the church, but to a church

that will not be really Christian. It will be an out-

reach of Communism just as it had been of the Czar.

Yeltsin asserts he is converted, but in his government

he has hard core Communists.

144 Front Suffering to Triumph

The media have created the impression that

Communism has been overthrown and a Communist

world no longer exists. If this is true, there is no need

for our mission. On the contrary, Communism has

full power over a third of mankind, including

China (1.1 billion), the USSR (280 million),

Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, Ethiopia, Angola, and

Zimbabwe. In Eastern Europe, Communist gov-

ernments have been overthrown, but not Communist

domination over the minds of men. Marxism has

filled the whole populace with fear. People feared to

say what they thought, whether by phone, in the

marketplace, or even in the privacy of their own

homes. Everyone was forced to inform on everyone

else, even on members of their own family. Priests

had to report privileged confessions to the police.

Letters were censored. It was dangerous to meet a

foreigner. Spies of the Secret Police were every-

where.

Publicly, everyone was on the side of the

Communists, who always got 99% of the vote

because no one dared to vote on his convictions. But

in reality everyone hated the government. Millions

have passed through jail. Many died before gaining

freedom. Their relatives well knew what took place

in prison. Torture has been used throughout the

whole history of mankind. It would seem that all

methods of torture were already known.

But Communists are innovators. Knowing that

few men volunteer to do the work of torturing and

those they victimize are many, thus allowing much

respite between torture sessions, they forced others

into torturing. Not satisfied with squeezing out of the

victims a denial of their convictions and a betrayal

From Suffering to Triumph 145

of the secrets of their organization, the Communists

tortured them to the extreme until they consented to

become torturers of their brethren in faith. The result

was that a new prisoner, thinking he was in a cell

with fellow-believers, was subjected to the worst

ignominies, not by officers of the Secret Police, but

by those he had trusted and worshiped with. He was

together with them day and night, tortured without

pause, until he too consented to become a torturer.

Some became sadists for life, others went mad.

AU nations under Communism have been trau-

matized, not only those of Eastern Europe, but also

Mozambique, Laos, Mongolia, etc. It will take

decades for them to recover. The best medicine is

the Gospel. The work of our mission in providing

these people with the word of God is needed now

more than ever before. Neglect of our duty angers

God. Fulfilling it will make Him rejoice with

singing. Jesus said, 'Take heed that no one deceives

you" (Matt. 24:4).

The warning is pertinent because Christians in the

free world are in danger of being deceived by

changes in the USSR. Apologists are saying,

"Gorbachev is democratizing the country and

extending liberty, so missions to the Communist

world are no longer necessary." Lenin, founder of

Communism and Gorbachev's avowed mentor,

wrote: "Hundreds of epidemics and natural cata-

strophes are to be preferred to the slightest notion of

God. Even flirting with a god is an unspeakable

abomination." He also wrote: 'The more represen-

tatives of the reactionary clergy are killed, the bet-

ter." In their Communist Manifesto, Marx and

Engels wrote that the aim of Communism is "the

146 From Suffering to Triumph

abolition of all religion and all morals." Gorbachev

calls himself a Communist and remains such even if,

like Yeltsin, he ceases to be a member of the Party.

Let us not forget that Communists seized power

in Russia under the name "Social Democrat Party

(Bolshevik)" and in Romania under the name

"National Democratic Front." A change of name is

not a change of heart. Stressing the point that

Gorbachev is still a Communist and thus a God-

hater, let us remember, too, that Castro, general sec-

retary of the World Council of Churches, wrote in a

letter to Gorbachev, "Christianity and Communism

pursue the same aims."

Why So Much Suffering?

The one pain above all others endured by

Romanians and inhabitants of other Communist

countries is not knowing why they suffer such

pain. The thought paralyzes the mind.

In the USSR, an estimated fifty million innocents

were killed, another fifty million in China. No one

knows how many were killed in Romania and

other lands. One person was in prison for being a

Jew, another for being an anti-Semite. Pastors were

imprisoned for spreading religious propaganda,

atheist lecturers for not having been effective in their

anti-religious propaganda. Anti-Communists suf-

fered next to convinced Communists who had fall-

en foul of their party about the interpretation of some

tenet of Marxist teaching.

Communists used to condemn whole families if

one member had done something amiss. I remember

being imprisoned with a father and his four sons. His

wife and daughters were in other cells.

From Suffering to Triumph 147

Hungry and beaten prisoners renounced some of

the few hours of sleep allotted them to discuss with-

out end such questions as "Why did all this come

upon us and upon the world?" "Is there a God?"

"Where is God in all this? He is supposed to be all-

powerful and loving. He could have kept these

things from happening or could at least end them

now. Why doesn't He?"

A Jewish prisoner went out of his mind. He con-

stantly repeated one Hebrew word: Maduah—

"why?" He said, "I could fill volumes with mah

(what) is happening, but no one can reply to the

question moduah."

I never met even one sufferer who was satisfied

with the explanation that all evil—Auschwitz, the

Gulag, Piteshti, and so on—is due in the last resort

to the fact that Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit

Their sin was inherited by their descendants down

all generations. It even passed into nature. Lambs are

eaten by wolves, little fish by bigger fish, and chil-

dren are beaten to the blood by Communist torturers

in the presence of their parents to make them con-

fess—all because many thousands of years ago a

couple ate some fruit. The original sin is to blame.

It might be because of the sinful nature inherited

from Adam that his descendants in our generation

cannot comprehend this explanation. Other expla-

nations I heard in these marathon discussions over

the years were: 'There is no God and therefore no

sense." "It is punishment for our own personal sins."

"Suffering is not real, it is maya. It belongs to a

world of delusion." None satisfied.

One prisoner who had escaped from Nazi camps,

in which he had lost almost his whole family, and

148 From Suffering to Triumph

now suffered under Communism, shouted in despair

at a certain moment, "Haven't I endured enough

from the Nazis and the Reds? Why must I bear the

torment of listening to your senseless explana-

tions? Suffering is bad enough. Don't make it

worse with explanations." Believers who know

God personally should trust him without asking

questions. Our minds cannot comprehend the ulti-

mate answers.

The Jewish people, generally considered to be

very intelligent, had Jesus in the flesh in their midst

He spoke to them in plain language, but they did not

understand Him even when He spoke in very simple

parables. The disciples themselves understood Him

only in part, but they believed in the unintelligible

Jesus. This is faith. It supplements reason, which can

know only an infinitely small range of things in this

huge universe. We still don't know what an atom is.

The image of an atom provided by science changes

every couple of years. How then can we understand

God?

I learned something in this regard from my

grandson Alex when he was eight. We had guests in

our home who discussed higher mathematics in his

presence. I did not know how to hint to them in a

polite manner that they should change the subject

because it was boring for a child. So I asked him,

"Alex, do you understand what we're talking about?

Do you know what logarithms are?"

He replied, "Yes, I do."

Amazed, I asked, "What are they?"

"Logarithms are things I will learn about when

I'm in high school."

Like children in school, Jesus' disciples advance

From Suffering to Triumph 149

from the merely human to the divine. They are

learners. One cannot learn in elementary school what

is taught in universities. One day "I shall know even

as also I am known" (1 Cor. 13:12).

Of all the explanations in answer to the question,

"Why so much suffering?" the most compelling is

simply, "We don't know." One day God will be ail

in all, which means that He will be all in Richard

Wurmbrand. There will be no questioner, no ques-

tioned, and no question. We will be one spirit It will

be a mini-incarnation.

Jesus said, 'To him who overcomes I will grant to

sit with me on my throne, even as I also overcame

and sat down with my Father on his throne" (Rev.

3:21). Somewhere there is a throne from which uni-

verses are created and ruled. This will be my

throne too. Today I have to learn patiently all I will

need at the moment of enthronement The knowl-

edge of suffering is part of the curriculum. Jesus

himself was made perfect through suffering.

Some theologians adopt a softer tone than the

Bible, claiming that God only permits evil. But

according to Isaiah, God said, "I make the good and

create the evil" (Isa. 45:7, as the original).

A racehorse trainer not only constructs a course

but also obstacles which the horse must overcome.

This comparison may seem inadequate to us because

we have to overcome terrible physical and psycho-

logical torture. When we meet Jesus at last, we will

see that our sufferings were insignificant in com-

parison with what we have attained. Scars will be

ornaments. The wounded will be enriched by what

they lost. Those who were killed will have exuber-

ant life.

150 From Suffering to Triumph

Christians face not the problem of evil, but its

challenge. Problems depress, challenges spur us to

activity. Christians in Romania see no possibility of

solving problems, but they have learned to transcend

them, to view them from heavenly places. For us, it

was enough that the Communists tortured us. We

decided not to add self-inflicted torments, such as

philosophizing about the unknowable. Every torment

was only a challenge to surmount the biggest

obstacle: to win the tormentor through love.

David was our example. He wrote Psalm 9 on the

tragic death of one of his sons, as is indicated in the

title. But he does not complain about God and his

own fate. He says what he would have said at the

birth of a son: "I will praise you, O Lord, with my

whole heart."

The Bible tells us that in the beginning was

Tohuwabohu—dark, formless chaos. God, the Spirit

of love, worked on this, encountering resistance to

create a kingdom of unspeakable beauty and truth. I

adore the audacity of this enterprise, His persistence

in the face of failure, and His readiness to sacrifice

His dearest for the salvation of the children of chaos.

Psalm 121 tells us that from Him comes your

help, not your sorrow.

The Legend of Kishagotami

In my visit to Romania, whenever I was con-

fronted with questions about suffering, which were

very often overwhelming, I told the old legend of

Kishagotami, a young woman whose only baby had

died and who could not bear to bury him. She went

from one person to another asking how she could

have him back alive.

From Suffering to Triumph 151

One man told her, "Your only hope is the Savior.

He has miraculous power like none other."

She brought her baby's body, knelt before the

Lord, and begged "Please resuscitate my child."

He replied, *Xjladly, if only you will bring a little

bit of salt to me."

Now, salt could easily be obtained, so she started

to run. But he shouted after her. "The salt must be

from a house in which no one has died."

"All right, all right!" she shouted back.

At every gate at which she knocked, she was

gladly given salt. But when she asked if there had

been a death in the family, she was always told, 'Tm

sorry, yes. My Father or my spouse ... or my

child died."

She wept with everyone who gave such a reply,

because now she knew what the sorrow of bereave-

ment was. She comforted them and received comfort

from the consolation she gave to others.

In the end she came to the Savior again and said,

"Thank you for what you taught me. I will give back

the body of my baby to the earth. Praise to you who

give to my child and to all of us eternal life."

I have seen many a sad face illuminated when

they heard Jesus' teaching.

"Why suffering?" is a wrong question. No right

answer exists for wrong questions. Who can tell the

melody of a peach? The question is wrong. Ask

instead, "What good can I do with my sorrow? How

can I use it to become more loving and more

understanding towards others?" Sympathy will

surely do them more good than theological expla-

nations.

As for the rest, accept what Jesus said to Peter:

152 From Suffering to Triumph

"What I am doing you do not understand now, but

you will know after this."

Why Is There Cruelty in the Bible?

One more very troublesome question I often met in

Romania was, "Why does God order so many hor-

rors? He commanded Moses, Joshua, and others to

exterminate whole populations, specifying each time

that children and infants should be slaughtered, ani-

mals hamstrung, and trees felled. Such destruction

surpasses even what Stalin and Ceaushescu have

done."

I had heard these questions in the West, too, but

rarely and not with such insistence as in my home-

land. The many mass murders to which my nation

was subjected made hearts more sensitive to such

passages of Scripture. I am therefore against what is

much practiced in the East nowadays: the indis-

criminate distribution of Bibles to everyone we can

reach. This was not originally God's intention. He

gave to mankind a Bible and a church with wise

teachers to explain it Where there are no such teach-

ers, it is preferable to give at first books explaining

the main biblical messages.

But as I had to answer this difficult question, I

preferred to give the simplest answer possible. In a

sense, criminals decide what weapons the forces of

law and order should use against them. Police

don't use guns against pickpockets, because pick-

pockets have no guns. But they do use guns against

armed robbers. Some methods used in just war

might be considered inhumane if the same results

could have been obtained otherwise. Against Nazi

and Japanese aggressors who had tanks and

From Suffering to Triumph 153

bombers, tanks and bombers had to be used; other-

wise evil would have been victorious.

God can evaluate evil in certain nations and social

structures as we cannot If widespread anti- American

feelings in the West had not impeded the victory of

the US in Vietnam, Cambodia would not have

become Communistic and its leader Pol Pot would

not have killed two million innocents. God alone

knows the whole of a person, including the genes

that will determine a baby's character. Jesus says

about some, "It would have been better if they had

not been born." He calls others devils and has a right

to treat them as devils deserve to be treated. His

decisions and actions are not subject to our judg-

ment. We have to submit to His.

Lenin, founder of Russian Communism, said, "If

Kerensky (prime minister of Russia before the

Communist takeover) had arrested in time two

dozen leaders of our party, we would never have

come to power." And millions of innocents would

not have been killed and mankind would have

been spared a seventy-year bloodbath. No doubt

some crusader for human rights would then have

criticized Kerensky for depriving Communists of

their "right" to prepare evil.

Don't philosophize about the Bible, but enter into

the holy nation of God's children. Flee from those

who deserve God's wrath. But do be attentive. In the

original text of the Bible, there are no punctuation

marks. There is not one single full-stop or comma.

Only in translations is there a full-stop after expres-

sions such as "They killed" or "God killed." In

Hebrew, it is 'The Lord kills and makes alive" (1

Sam. 2:6).

154 From Suffering to Triumph

In heaven, we will meet many of those we

thought were slaughtered. Alive and happy, they are

thankful to God for elevating them from the level of

pagan notions to that of children of God.

It is also good to know what the words "God

said" mean in the Bible.

No one has seen the heavenly Father (except

Moses, in one instance). When biblical authors, like

today's believers, say, "God spoke to me," they

mean an inner voice. We are composed of many

parts. We have the conscious, the unconscious, dif-

ferent inclinations and impulses, even contradicto-

ry ones. All these can take, in our mind, the shape of

voices that counsel and prompt us to action.

Religious people call the voice that calls them to

what they consider the noblest action the "voice of

God." Sometimes they are right. But they can also

be terribly mistaken. Ayatollah Khomeini, the Rev.

Moon, Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism—each

was sure that what he said was "God's word."

Jesus is skeptical about some events in the Old

Testament The prophet Elijah caused fire to fall on the

troop of a wicked king. Elijah was sure that his action

fulfilled God's will. But when Jesus' disciples want-

ed to proceed in such a manner against those who

opposed Him, confident that what Elijah had done was

inspired by God, He chided them: "You don't know

what manner of spirit you are of." The Old Testament

prophets did not always act from the inspiration of

God's spirit, though they believed they were.

Let us cherish Jesus' revelation: God is love.

The Task of Healing Nations

Communism is finished as a political institution

F mm Suffering to Triumph 155

in almost all of the former satellite states of the

USSR. But in Romania and Bulgaria, Communism

still struggles to retain political power. Although it

still does much harm, we can be sure that it is a

rearguard fight; it is the despairing fight of a

defeated enemy, the last writhing of a serpent

before it dies. It will not survive in the Soviet Union

either, except that Communism is more than a polit-

ical institution. A Filipino who heard me speak

twenty years ago in the Military Academy of

Manila and who took part in armed fighting against

Marxist guerrillas, reminded me that I said then

something that made a lasting, because unexpected,

impression on him: 'There is a Communist rebel in

each of us."

Marxist hatred of God is the most powerful

expression of the human heart alienated from the

Creator. It has always existed in fallen mankind in a

latent form, but all societies tried to repress it.

Communism lifted the lid. Marx wrote, "It is the evil

side that makes history." I heard a Communist tor-

turer say, "I thank God, in whose existence I don't

believe, for making me live just at such a time when

I can do all the evil I want without fear of punish-

ment—yes, even with the assurance I'll be reward-

ed for it." This evil spirit has come out of the box

under Communism, and the church will have to fight

for many decades against Communism's poison in

human hearts: hatred, envy, betrayal, lawlessness.

(The Hebrew word Belial means etymologically

"without yoke.")

In Romania, as in Bulgaria and Mongolia, the

1990 elections were free. After forty-five years of

fierce terror, the Communists won great victories.

156 From Suffering to Triumph

There were several serious reasons for this, which I

have already mentioned. The opposition parties

pleaded for friendship with the West Romanians had

been taught for decades that western governments

were oppressors and exploiters and that their people

went hungry. But the principal reason for the success

of Communism lay elsewhere: who dared vote

against the Party?

If Communism had fallen from power and the

volumes of the Secret Police were opened, whole

families would have been split apart because wives

had denounced husbands; brides, bridegrooms;

children, their parents; pastors and priests, members

of their churches and vice versa. Even where the

transition from Communism to a free society has

been greatest, as in East Germany and

Czechoslovakia, the archives of the Secret Police

were not made public. If they were opened up to

public scrutiny in Russia or Romania, these would

cease to exist as nations. People would not be able to

look into each other's eyes.

The pastor of a small Romanian Baptist church of

only forty members confessed to me that he had

been an informer of the Secret Police and that he

knew five members who informed against him. I

was in jail with an atheist who had had a quarrel

with his bride. She told the police that he had

expressed anti-Communist sentiments to her, and he

received twenty years in prison.

Romania feels guilty. (In Nazi-occupied countries,

there were also a significant number of collaborators,

but the numbers were not so high as in Communist

countries as the time-span was shorter.) Romania

fears disclosure. Thousands voted for the

From Suffering to Triumph 157

Communists they hated because they had been

their accomplices. It is estimated that every tenth

adult was an informer for at least a time. Our

Orthodox synod called back Patriarch Theoctist, a

bootlicker of Ceaushescu, when he retired after

Ceaushescu's fall. The guilt had been collective,

involving the priesthood as a whole.

When the final judgment is near, Satan will be

released from his prison of a thousand years. Only

he, restored to power, could cover up—men will

hope—all the satanic deeds they themselves have

done (Rev. 20:7).

All Romanian writers, almost without exception,

had flattered Ceaushescu's pride, calling him "the

greatest genius ever" and other such stupidities. Not

one has admitted guilt. They all keep silent. The

Romanian churches have an enormous task: to

heal the nation.

God's Remnant

God has a remnant in Romania as He has in other

Eastern European countries. Very many Christians

died in the revolution of December 1989. Thanks to

them, Ceaushescu has been overthrown. It was on

Christmas Eve—a sign from God. The celebration

of Christmas had been forbidden. But thousands of

others are alive, and they have an amazing Christian

spirit.

On the 13th of July, 1990, just a few days after

so-called miners (in fact men of the former

Communist Secret Police) had killed five, wounded

hundreds, and arrested over one thousand peaceful

demonstrators in Bucharest, there was another

demonstration. Thousands marched with flowers in

158 From Suffering to Triumph

their hands, chanting a slogan that rhymes in

Romanian: "You came to us with clubs and axes, but

we come to you with flowers." The army sent out to

quell the demonstrators was showered with flowers.

The soldiers were overwhelmed. This time there

were no bloody incidents. This was the first demon-

stration in which flowers were used against ah

oppressor, epitomizing Jesus' teaching: "Respond to

evil with good."

Our mission had taught Romanians this for over

twenty years through the written word and by

radio. It was my message from the first day of my

pastorate, at liberty and in jail, and it was what I

preached in Romania on my return. It was Christ's

triumph, but also the greatest personal satisfaction of

my life.

And it has not remained the only one. The river

Prut separates Romania as it is today from its

province of Bessarabia, stolen by the Soviets and

renamed the Moldavian Republic. On the fortieth

anniversary of this tragic event, Romanians from

both sides of the river turned it into a flowery carpet

in a huge demonstration as people threw blossoms

into the water. A people that has such a remnant will

not perish. God will turn its mourning into feasting.

Marx and Lenin, the deceivers, will be defeated by

Jesus, the Truth.

But the true Romanian church, like that of other

former Communist countries, needs your help.

Give them Bibles and Christian literature. Give them

Christian teaching by radio. Help the impoverished

churches rebuild their prayer houses. Help former

prisoners remake their lives. And help us bring

Communists to Christ If conquerors are not capable

From Suffering to Triumph 159

of converting the conquered, the conquests are not

complete. The Allies conquered Germany in the

First World War but did not convert the Germans to

their ways of thinking. And so the stage was set for

the Second World War.

Communists have lost decisive battles in Eastern

Europe. If they are not won for Christ or at least for

decent human behavior, the devil will be loose again

in a very few years. We have to be on the alert. I cer-

tainly am. Many aged people live only on rehashing

the past, which is nonproductive. I am only eighty-

two. I still have a present as Christ's soldier and a

great future in prospect. Come, fight with me.

About Richard Wurmbrand

In October of 1967, Pastor Richard Wurmbrand,

along with his wife Sabina, founded a non-profit

missionary organization to bring assistance to

persecuted Christians around the world.

Today The Voice of the Martyrs, Inc., directed by

Pastor Wurmbrand, continues to carry out this

work. For more information about the mission

activities or a complete listing of books and tapes by

Richard Wurmbrand, please write to THE VOICE

OF THE MARTYRS at the address below:

USA: P.O. Box 443

Bartlesville, OK 74005-0443

CANADA: P.O. Box 117

Port Credit

Mississuaga, Ontario L5G4L5

AUSTRALIA: P.O. Box 598

Penrith NSW 2751

NEW ZEALAND: P.O. Box 69-158

Glendene, Auckland 8

ENGLAND: P.O. Box 19

Bromley, Kent, BRI 1DJ

^* FROM

Suffering

TRIUMPH!

"/ regret not having been in Romania when

Ceaushescu was judged. I would have volunteered to

defend him."

Richard Wurmbrand spent fourteen years in

Communist prisons. Since then he has endured 25

years of exile. From Suffering to Triumph describes his

return to his beloved homeland, and the astonishing

situation he found there. There are many tragedies and

much heartbreak, but also abundant evidence of God's

transforming power.

For Richard Wurmbrand himself the issue is not

revenge but the proclamation of Christ's love. Why did

Ceaushescu act as he did? Pastor Wurm-

brand's answer is simple: "Ask yourselves

if you have done your utmost to share with

the Communists the teaching of Jesus . . .

may we all learn the beautiful art of

forgiveness."

ISBN G-

90000

780825 440618

Biography

Table of Contents

From Suffering to Triumph