Voice Of The Martyrs
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Voice Of The Martyrs
© 2001 WorldNetDaily.com
By Joseph Farah
March 20, 2001
The New York Times claims to be the newspaper of record -- proudly boasting it covers "all the news that's fit to print."
The Times takes particular care to note all significant obituaries around the world.
But the newspaper of record -- and, indeed, the entire U.S. establishment press -- missed a big passing last month.
I'm talking about Richard Wurmbrand, who spent 14 years in Romanian prisons for following Jesus Christ in a Communist country that persecuted Christians and the founder of the mission that became known as Voice of the Martyrs.
Wurmbrand went home to be with his Lord Feb. 17 at the age of 91.
From the first day he became a Christian, Wurmbrand had a burden to witness his faith to Russians. He got his chance when the Russians invaded Romania. He, his wife and son often visited with the soldiers and brought them Bibles.
But, soon, it became dangerous business to talk about the Christian faith in Romania. He found himself in prison, subject to constant torture by authorities who demanded he confess to political crimes against the state.
He got out of prison in 1964 and testified before the U.S. Congress two years later.
At one point in his dramatic testimony, he stripped to the waist to show 18 deep scars on his neck, chest and back.
"My body represents Romania, my country, which has been tortured to a point that it can no longer weep," he explained. "These marks on my body are my credentials."
Wurmbrand recounted his prison ordeal in the 1968 book, "In God's Underground" -- sleep deprivation; starvation diet; forced to race around his tiny cell for hours until he collapsed; beatings with truncheons and boots; water funneled down his throat until it filled his stomach, which was then violently kicked; the soles of his feet flogged Inquisition-style; guards urinating and spitting into his open mouth; drugged into delirium; terrorized by dogs kept inches from his throat; three years of solitary confinement.
"It was an image of hell," Wurmbrand reported, "in which the torment is eternal and you cannot die." He confessed to any false charges concerning himself -- adultery, homosexuality -- but steadfastly refused to implicate other believers, irrespective of denomination.
While in prison, Wurmbrand learned that his wife had been arrested in 1950 and pressed into slave labor digging and carting dirt for the Danube-Black Sea canal, a project eventually abandoned as infeasible. Held for three years, she ate grass for survival when necessary.
Wurmbrand himself was released in 1956, and rejoined his wife, Sabina, and his son, Mihai, in Bucharest. But rather than live quietly, Wurmbrand resumed his preaching of Christianity.
"I knew, of course," he wrote, "that sooner or later I would be rearrested."
Less than three years later, he was re-imprisoned during a renewed crackdown on the clergy. He was sentenced to his original 20 years at hard labor, plus five more years.
Upon his release, where Wurmbrand began his ministry in the name of what he came to call the Underground Church, which comprised members of all Christians persecuted under Communist governments -- regimes he referred to collectively as "the Beast of the Apocalypse." Throughout Europe and the United States, where he and his family eventually settled in 1966 (they became naturalized U.S. citizens in 1971), the pastor railed publicly against Communists' brutal treatment of Christians. He also attacked free-world church leaders, whom he accused of complacency, accommodation and gullibility regarding "easing of religious oppression" behind the Iron Curtain.
Wurmbrand established Jesus to the Communist World, Inc., in Glendale, Calif., in 1967 to address the needs of the international Underground Church. Wurmbrand served as president, and in 1990 the group officially changed its name to Voice of the Martyrs, Inc. With branches in 35 nations, VOM still engages in a variety of missionary and relief activities, notably Bible smuggling.
Wurmbrand published more than a dozen books, among them 1967's best-selling "Tortured for Christ"; 1975's "My Answer to the Moscow Atheists"; and my favorite, the eternal "Marx and Satan," which shows that Communism's founders had their own very religious foundation -- occultic Satanism.
After Romanians toppled Communist tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu on Christmas Day 1989, Richard, age 80, and Sabina, 76, returned to their homeland. Greeted as heroes, they preached, appeared on television and visited one of Wurmbrand's former cells, now used as a library for his many books.
Despite that heroic, dramatic life, he died in relative obscurity in Torrance, Calif., last month.
However, he will not be forgotten here.
Already Posted, original Thread Here
Thank you. Great post.
Thank you for posting this.
Bump.
Thanks for posting the link to Rev. Wurmbrand's testimony before the U.S. Congress. I recommend it to all. The anti-religious persecution in China today should prompt us to remember when he said "We ask you only one thing. Do not help our oppressors and do not praise them."
Thank you Sir! DOUBLE BUMP!
My wife and I contribute to support this wonderful ministry. Please consider it. Thanks.
Thank you for posting this terrific testimonial to a real hero, and heroine (his wife) of our time.
I can only imagine the condition our society would be in if we all had the intense faith and unbelievable courage possessed by Mr. Wurmbrand.
I'll bet I can tell you where Mr. Wurmbrand is sitting at this moment! He truly fought the good fight.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
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