1.15.2013 TORTURED FOR CHRIST II

i suffer in the west more than i did in communist lands. (wurmbrand speaking)

my suffering consists first of all
in the longing after the unspeakable beauties of the underground church,
the church that fulfills the old latin saying,
nudisnudum christi sequi
naked, follow the naked Christ.

in captive nations,
the Son of Man and those who are his
have nowhere to lay their heads.
many christians there don't build houses for themselves.
to what good?
they will be confiscated at their first arrest.
just the fact that you have a new house
can be a greater motive for you
to be imprisoned,
because the others wish to take your house.
there you don't bury your father,
neither do you say farewell to your family before following Christ.
..mother and brother are for you
only those who fulfill the will of God...

the underground church is a poor and suffering church,
but it has few lukewarm members.

a religious service in the underground church
is like one nineteen hundred years ago in the early church.
the preacher knows no elaborate theology.
he knows no homiletic...
the bible verses are no well known in many countries,
because bibles are not permitted.
besides, the preacher has most likely
been in prison for years without a bible.
when they express their faith in a Father,
it means much because there is a drama behind this assertion.
in prison they have daily asked this almighty Father
for bread and have received instead
cabbage with unmentionable filth.
nevertheless, they believe God to be the loving Father.
they are like job who said that he would believe in God
even if He would slay him.
they are like Jesus who called god 'Father',
even when He was seemingly forsaken on the cross....

..i see with my own eyes western civilization dying.
oswald spengler wrote in 'decline of the west',
you are dying.
i see in you all the characteristic stigma of decay.
i can prove that your great wealth
and your great poverty..
your wars ad your revolutions,
your atheism and your pessimism  and your cynicism,
your immorality,
your broken down marriages,
your birth control,
(note: your millions of abortions spengler did not foresee)
that is bleeding you from the bottom
and killing you off..

this was written in 1926...much of the west sleeps.

but there is one force that does not sleep....
we christians are often half heartedly on the side of  the whole truth.
they are wholeheartedly on the side of the lie...

to keep liberty for all denominations and all theologies,
and to regain it where it has been lost due to widespread religious persecution,
is more important than to insist upon one certain theological opinion.

'the truth shall make you free, said Jesus john 8.32
but, the same freedom, only freedom, can give the truth.
and instead of quarreling about non essentials,
we should unite in this fight for freedom against the tyrannies in this world.

...men who suffer often seek a scapegoat,
someone on whom to place the guilt.
to find such a one eases the burden much.
i cannot do it.

i cannot put the guilt on some of the church leaders of the west
who compromise with the haters of christians.
the evil comes not from them.
these leaders are themselves the victims of a much older evil.
they did not create the mess in the church;
they found it.

since being in the west, i have visited many theological seminaries.
there i heard lectures about the history of bells
and the history of liturgical songs,
about canonical laws long since disused
or about A CHURCH DISCIPLINE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS.
i have heard that some students of theology
learn that the biblical story of creation is not true,
nor that of adam,
nor the flood,
nor the miracles of moses.
some are taught that the prophecies were written after their fulfillment;
that the virgin birth is a myth;
likewise the resurrection of Jesus, that His bones have remained somewhere in a grave;
that the epistles are not genuine;
and that revelation is the book of a madman.
otherwise, the bible is a holy book!
(this leaves a holy book in which there are allegedly more lies
 than in chinese communist newspapers.)

that is what some present western church leaders learned when they were in seminaries.
that is the atmosphere in which they live.
why should they be faithful to a master
about whom such strange things are said?
why should church leaders be faithful
to a church in which it can be freely taught that
God is dead.

some leaders of denominations are not of the bride of Christ.
they are leaders in a church in which many have long since
betrayed the master.
when they meet someone of the underground church,
a martyr,
they look at him strangely....

..another pain..even very close friends misunderstand me...accuse..of bitterness..resentment against..
communists..not true.

the mosaic writer claude motefiore said that
Jesus' attitude toward scribes and pharisees,
His public denunciation of them,
is contrary to His command to love our enemies
and bless those who curse us.
and dr. w. r. matthews, retired dean of st. paul's in london,
concluded that this is an
incoherence and inconsistency in Jesus.
he gives the excuse that Jesus was not an intellectual!

monte's impression of Jesus was wrong.
Jesus loved the pharisees,
although He denounced them publicly.
and i love the communist,
as well as their tools in the church.
although i denounce them.

constantly i am told,
'forget the communists!
work only in spiritual things!...

the underground church, if helped by christians in the free world,
will win the hearts of the communists
and will change the face of the world.
it will win them,
because it is unnatural to be a communist...
the hearts of communists rebel against the role they must play
and the absurdities they are forced to believe.

individual communists asserted that 'matter is everything' -
that we are a handful of chemicals organized in a certain fashion
and that after death we will again be salt and minerals.
it was therefore enough to ask them,
'how is it that communists in so many countries have given their lives for their belief?
does a 'handful of chemicals' have beliefs/
 can 'minerals' sacrifice themselves for the good of others?
to this they have no answer.

and then there is the issue of brutality.
men were not created as brutes
and cannot bear to be brutes for long.
we have seen it in the collapse of nazi rulers,
some of whom committed suicide,
while some repented and confessed their crimes.

the enormous amount of drunkenness in communist countries
exposes the longing for a more meaningful life,
which communism cannot give.
the average russian is a
deep, big hearted, generous person.
communism is shallow and superficial.
he seeks the deep life and,
finding it nowhere else,
he seeks it in alcohol.
he expresses in alcoholism his horror about
the brutal and deceitful life he must live.
for a few moments alcohol sets him free,
as truth would set him free forever
if he could know it....

many communists commit suicide...

communists are unhappy. so are even their great dictators.
how unhappy stalin was!
after having killed nearly all of his old comrades,
he was constantly in fear of being poisoned or killed himself.
he had eight bedrooms that could be locked up
like safes in a bank.
no one ever knew in which of these bedrooms
he slept on any given night.
he never ate unless the cook tasted the food in his presence.
communism makes no one happy,
not even its dictators.
they need Christ.

by converting those who persecute christians,
we would free not only their victims,
but the persecutors themselves...

the underground church represents the deepest need of
enslaved peoples in captive nations.
help her!

the distinctive feature of the underground church
is its earnestness in faith.

the minister who disguises himself under the name of 'george'
tells in his book about God's underground the following incident:

a russian army captain came to a minister in hungary
and asked to see him alone.
the young captain was very brash,
and very conscious of his role as a conqueror.
when he had been led to a small conference room
and the door was closed,
he nodded toward the cross that hung on the wall.

you know that thing is a lie, he said to the minister.
it's just a piece of trickery you ministers use
to delude the poor people to make it easier for the rich
to keep them ignorant.
come now, we are alone.
admit to me that you never really believed that
Jesus Christ was the Son of god!

the minister smiled.
but, my poor young man,
of course i believe it.
it is true.

i won't have you play these tricks on me!,
cried the captain,
this is serious.
don't laugh at me!

he drew out his revolver and held it close to the body of the minister.

unless you admit to me that it is a lie, i'll fire!

i cannot admit that,
for it is not true.
our Lord is really and truly the son of God,

the captain flung his revolver on the floor
and embraced the man of God.
tears sprang to his eyes.

it is true! he cried. it is true.
i believe so, too,
but i could not be sure men would die for this belief
until i found it out for myself.
oh, thank you!
you have strengthened my faith.
now i too can die for Christ.
you have shown me how....

i speak on behalf of my brethren who lie in countless nameless graves.
i speak on behalf of my brethren who now meet
secretly in forests, basements, attics and other such places.

the message i bring from the underground church is;
don't abandon us!
don't forget us!
don't write us off!
give us the tools we need!
we will pay the price for using them!
this is the message i have been charged
to deliver to the free church.
i speak for the underground church,
the silenced church.
the 'dumb' church,
which has no voice to speak.
hear the crises of your brothers and sisters in captive nations!...

..help at once in the following ways.

atheists are men who do not acknowledge the invisible sources of their life.
they have no sense for what is mystery in the universe and in life.
christians can help them best by walking themselves not by sight,
but by faith,
leading a life of fellowship with the invisible God.

they can help us best by leading the lives of consistent christians,
lives of sacrifice.
they can help by protesting publicly
as often as christians are persecuted.

western christians can help us by praying for the persecutors
that they may be saved.
such a prayer may seem naive.
we prayed for the communists
and they tortured us the next day
even worse than before the prayer.
but the prayer of the Lord in jerusalem
was also 'naive'.
they crucified Him after this prayer.
but only a few days later,
they beat their breasts
and 5000 were converted in one day....

we must love our neighbors as ourselves.
communists and other persecutors are our neighbors
as much as anyone else.

they are the result of our not making known the words of Christ:
I have some that they may have life,
and that they may have it more abundantly. john 10.10
christians have no yet made this abundant life available to everyone.
they have left some on the fringe of everything valuable in life.
these individuals have rebelled and constituted
the communist party and other false beliefs.
often the victims of social injustice themselves,
they are now bitter and cruel.
we have to fight against them.
but christians, even if they fight against an enemy,
understand and love him.

we are not guiltless of the fact that some live in rebellion.
we are guilty at least by neglect of duty.
for this we have to atone by loving them-
which is something entirely different from liking them-
and praying for them.

i am not so naive as to believe that love alone can solve these problems.
i would not advise the authorities of a state
to solve the problem of gangsterism only by love.
there must be a police force, judges and prisons for gangsters-
not just pastors.
if gangsters do not repent, they must be jailed.
i would never use the christian phrase about 'love'
to counteract the appropriate political, economic, or cultural fight
against communists and other tyrants,
who are nothing but gangsters on an international scale.
gangsters steal a purse;
they steal whole countries.

but the pastor and the individual christian have to do their best
to bring to Christ rebellious nations-
whatever crimes they commit-
as well as their innocent victims.
we have to pray for them with understanding.

another way free christians can help is by sending bibles and bible portions...
,..they are desperately needed...

we also print and send special literature to counterattack
the atheist poison  being given the youth from kindergarten to college.
in the soviet union, the communists prepared 'the atheist's guidebook,
which is the atheist's bible.
simple versions are taught to kindergarten children,
with more advanced versions of the same guidebook
taught as the children progress.
the evil 'bible' follows a child as he grows and advances-
poisoning him with atheism all the way.
we print and send 'the answer to the atheist's handbook'
as the christian answer to poisonous, atheistic teachings...

we also must 'join hands ' with members of the underground church
and give them the financial means o travel about with the gospel
in person to person evangelism.
so many..are chained to their homes for lack of funds..

afterword (this is from a copy of the 30th anniversary from the time of its first printing)
..within his first year in the united states,
pastor wurmbrand was detained twice for
'disrupting' pro communist rallies.
he was called to testify before the senate,
stripping to the waist to reveal
the scars of 18 embedded wounds from the frequent tortures.
some christian leaders called him a lunatic-
one who had lost his mind in the confines of a solitary prison cell.
to others he became the 'iron curtain paul
or the 'voice of the underground church'.
a reporter with the philadelphia herald said of wurmbrand,
he stood in the midst of lions, but they could not devour him...

although we are called to take every opportunity to help those in need,
we are to recognise that the 'rite of christians
is to be persecuted.
11 of the 12 disciples were murdered.
Jesus never said it would be any different for us,.
it is part of who we are in Christ.
not all of us are called to suffer persecution,
as pastor wurmbrand did.
but when trials do come,
we should not be surprised
but rather should rejoice
that we have been considered worthy to suffer for Christ.
for he has also stated,
blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. mathew 5.10