*"You'll never have me for a disciple." Richard said aloud. "I want money, travel, pleasure. I have suffered enough. Yours is the way of the cross and even if it is the way of truth as well, I won't follow it."
At the age of twenty -five Richard Wurmbrand had already gained significant wealth and influence. He knew the vices of the world well and, though he recognized that they were 'counterfeits' - incapable of satisfying, he had determined to take full advantage of the pleasures they offered him. Not yet a Christian, Richard had eyes to see what many miss - he could not walk both the road of pleasure and the road to heaven. It had to be one or the other, for the paths opposed each other.
“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few." (Matthew vii. 13-14)
The ease of the one way was familiar to him and he was not sure that he liked the idea of abandoning it. The road called 'difficult' would be just that. Still the beckoning to live for a purpose greater than his present pleasure could not be ignored. All his life he had been unable to satisfy the emptiness that accompanied the materialistic philosophies he believed. The answer to Richard's prayer came like a plea: *"Come My way! Do not fear the cross! You will find that it is the greatest of joys."
On the day that he become a Christian, the man who had told the Lord he would never walk the way of the cross knelt to make a very different request: *"God, I was an atheist. Now let me go to Russia to work as a missionary among atheists, and I shall not complain if afterwards I have to spend all the rest of my life in prison."
Instead of taking him to Russia, God brought the Russians to him in Romania. For at the close of the Second World War, the Russians took the country as their spoils. Now an ordained, Lutheran minister, Wurmbrand recognized God's answer and took every opportunity to share the gospel with the Russian soldiers who had invaded the entire country. Even as he ministered, Richard began to prepare himself to face the suffering that would come as a result. The man who had once dreaded the cross was impatiently awaiting its coming.
*"My life as a pastor, until this time, had been full of satisfaction. I had all I needed for my family. I had the trust of my parishioners. But I was not at peace. Why was I allowed to live as usual, while a cruel dictatorship was destroying everything dear to me and while others were suffering for their faith? On many nights, Sabina and I prayed together, asking God to let us bear a cross."
As He had before, God gave Richard what he had audaciously asked for. It came by the means of an opportunity to defend the name of His Lord... In 1945, four thousand clergyman of varying denominations were gathered together by the communist government for the 'Congress of Cults'. The Prime Minister began the meeting with lavish promises for any who would cooperate with the government and Richard Wurmbrand watched as one minister after another spoke to welcome the sacrilegious proposal. It wasn't long before Sabina had heard enough! She leaned close to her husband.
*"Go and wash this shame from the face of Christ!"She said. He did not look surprised by the charge.
"If I do, you'll loose your husband."
"I don't need a coward. Go and do it!" He nodded. Then he rose and asked for permission to speak.
"It is our duty as priests to glorify God and Christ, not transitory earthly powers! To support His everlasting kingdom of love against the vanities of the day!" So began both Wurmband's speech and the fourteen long years that would follow it. He was arrested shortly after and taken to prison, where he faced many forms of the cruelest torture - both mental and physical. To these were added the struggles of prolonged isolation, tuberculosis, freezing temperatures, and starvation. Two years into Richard's imprisonment, his wife, Sabina, was also arrested. She was sent to face the harsh conditions of a labour camp, leaving their only son, who was not yet ten, without both of his parents. In all these trials the Wurmbrands proved faithful to their God.
How did Richard Wurmbrand go from being the man who told his Saviour that he would not take up a cross, not even to follow Him, to the pastor who not only faced trials well but actually prayed for them? The answer is simple: Richard chose to believe His Lord when He said, "Do not fear the cross! You will find that it is the greatest of joys."
"My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing."( James i. 2-4)
*"I had prepared myself for prison and torture as a soldier in peacetime prepares for the hardships of war. I had studied the lives of Christians who had faced similar pains and temptations to surrender and thought how I might adapt their experiences. Many who had not so prepared themselves were crushed by suffering, or deluded into saying what they should not."
Suffering is a part of the Christian life whether or not we are willing to accept it. If their job is to be done well the Christian must prepare for and rejoice in suffering, but how is that practically done? We can be training for war even while we still have peace but the problem is that most of us have no idea how to practice suffering. Thankfully, our Father has given us others who are willing to teach us the way! Pastor Richard Wurmbrand wrote the following ten points for the purpose of teaching the church how to prepare to suffer well, for the sake of Christ:
Part One - Preparing to Suffer Well
Suffering cannot be avoided in the Underground Church, whatever measures are taken, but suffering should be reduced to the minimum. What happens in a country when oppressive powers take over? In some countries the terror starts at once, as in Mozambique and Cambodia. In other places a false sense of religious liberty follows and then, suddenly, after the necessary police force and army staff have been established, the clamp-down begins. In Russia, the Communists gave immediately great liberty to the Protestants in order to destroy the Orthodox. When they had destroyed the Orthodox, the turn came for the Protestants. The initial situation does not last long. During that time they infiltrate the churches, putting their men in leadership. They find out the weaknesses of pastors. Some might be ambitious men; some might be entrapped with the love of money. Another might have a hidden sin somewhere, wherewith he may be blackmailed. They explain that they would make it known and thus put their men in leadership. Then, at a certain moment the great persecution begins. In Romania such a clamp-down happened in one day. All the Catholic bishops went to prison, along with innumerable priests, monks and nuns. Then many Protestant pastors of all denominations were arrested. Many died in prison. Preparation for underground work begins by studying sufferology, martyrology. Later, we will look at the technical side of underground work, but first of all there must be a certain spiritual preparation for it. In a free country, to be a member of a church, it is enough to believe and to be baptized. In the Church Underground it is not enough to be a member in it. You can be baptized and you can believe, but you will not be a member of the Underground Church unless you know how to suffer. You might have the mightiest faith in the world, but if you are not prepared to suffer, then when you are taken by the police, you will get two slaps and you will declare anything. So the preparation for suffering is one of the essentials of the preparation of underground work. A Christian does not panic if he is put in prison. For the rank and file believer, prison is a new place to witness for Christ. For a pastor, prison is a new parish. It is a parish with no great income but with great opportunities for work. Free church-goers look at their watch; "Already he has preached for thirty minutes. Will he never finish?" When arrested, watches are taken away from you; you have the church-goers with you the whole week and can preach to them from morning to night! They have no choice. There have never been, in the history of the Romanian or the Russian Church, so many conversions brought about as there have been in prison. So do not fear prison. Look upon it as just a new assignment given by God. But what about the terrible tortures which are inflicted on prisoners? What will we do about these tortures? Will we be able to bear them? If I do not bear them, I put in prison another fifty or sixty men whom I know because that is what the oppressors wish from me, to betray those around me. Hence comes the great need for preparation for suffering, which must start now. It is too difficult to prepare yourself for it when you are already in prison.
Part Two - You Must Really Know Jesus
How much each one of us can suffer depends on how much he is bound up with a cause, how dear this cause is to him, and how much it means for him. In this respect we have had in Communist countries very big surprises. There have been gifted preachers and writers of Christian books who have become traitors. The composer of the best hymnal of Romania became the composer of the best communist hymnal of Romania. Everything depends on whether we have remained in the sphere of words or if we are merged with the divine realities. God is the Truth. The Bible is the truth about the Truth. Theology is the truth about the truth about the Truth. A good sermon is the truth about the truth about the truth, about the Truth. It is not the Truth. The Truth is God alone. Around this Truth there is a scaffolding of words, of theologies, and of exposition. None of these is of any help in times of suffering. It is only the Truth Himself Who is of help, and we have to penetrate through sermons, through theological books, through everything which is 'words' and be bound up with the reality of God Himself. I have told in the West how Christians were tied to crosses for four days and four nights. The crosses were put on the floor and other prisoners were tortured and made to fulfill their bodily necessities upon the faces and the bodies of the crucified ones. I have since been asked: "Which Bible verse helped and strengthened you in those circumstances?" My answer is: "NO Bible verse was of any help." It is sheer cant and religious hypocrisy to say, "This Bible verse strengthens me, or that Bible verse helps me." Bible verses alone are not meant to help. We knew Psalm 23 - "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want... though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...." When you pass through suffering you realize that it was never meant by God that Psalm 23 should strengthen you. It is the Lord who can strengthen you, not the Psalm which speaks of Him so doing. It is not enough to have the Psalm. You must have the One about whom the Psalm speaks. We also knew the verse: "My Grace is sufficient for thee." But the verse is not sufficient. It is the Grace which is sufficient and not the verse. Pastors and zealous witnesses who are handling the Word as a calling from God are in danger of giving holy words more value than they really have. Holy words are only the means to arrive at the reality expressed by them. If you are united with the Reality, the Lord Almighty, evil loses its power over you; it cannot break the Lord Almighty. If you only have the words of the Lord Almighty you can be very easily broken.
Part Three - Start Practicing “Living Without”
The preparation for underground work is deep spiritualization. As we peel an onion in preparation for its use, so God must "peel" from us what are mere words, sensations of our enjoyments in religion, in order to arrive at the reality of our faith. Jesus has told us "that whosoever will follow" Him will have to "take up their cross," and He, Himself, showed how heavy this cross can be. We have to be prepared for this. We have to make the preparation now before we are imprisoned. In prison you lose everything. You are undressed and given a prisoner's suit. No more nice furniture, nice carpets or nice curtains. You do not have a wife or husband any more and you do not have your children. You do not have your library and you never see a flower. Nothing of what makes life pleasant remains. Nobody resists who has not renounced the pleasures of life beforehand. I personally use an exercise. I now live in the United States of America. Can you imagine what an American supermarket looks like? You find there many delicious things. I look at everything and say to myself, "I can go without this thing and that thing; this thing is very nice, but I can go without: this third thing I can go without, too." I visited the whole supermarket and did not spend one dollar. I had the joy of seeing many beautiful things and the second joy to know that I can go without.
Part Four - Doubt will Make you a Traitor
I am Jewish. In Hebrew, the language which Jesus Himself spoke and in which the first revelation has been given, the word "doubt" does not exist. To doubt is as wrong for a man as it would be for him to walk on four legs - he is not meant to walk on four legs. A man walks erect; he is not a beast. To doubt is subhuman. To every one of us doubts come, but do not allow doubts about essential doctrines of the Bible such as the existence of God, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, or the existence of eternal life to make a nest in your mind. Every theological or philosophical doubt makes you a potential traitor. You can allow yourself doubts while you have a nice study and you prepare sermons, and you eat well - or you write a book. Then you can allow yourself all kinds of daring ideas and doubts. When you are tortured these doubts are changed into treason because you have to decide to live or die for this faith. One of the most important things about the spiritual preparation of an underground worker is the solution of his doubts. In mathematics, if you do not find the solution you may have made a mistake somewhere, so you continue until you find out. Don't live with doubts, but seek their solution.
Part Five - Passing the Test of Torture
Now to come to the very moment of torture. Torture is sometimes very painful. Sometimes it is a simple beating. We have all been spanked as children and beating is just another spanking. A simple beating is very easy to take. Jesus has said we should come to Him like children, which is rather like candidates for spanking! However, with us, Communists did not stop at beatings - they used very refined tortures. Now torture, you must know, can work both ways. It can harden you and strengthen your decision not to tell the police anything. There are thieves who resist any torture and would not betray those with whom they have co-operated in theft. The more you beat them the more obstinate they become. Or, torture can just break your will. Now I will tell you of one very interesting case which was published by the Czech Communist Press. Novotny, who was the predecessor of Dubcek and who was a Communist dictator, had arrested one of his intimate comrades, a Communist leader, a convinced atheist, and a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. (Not only Christians, Jews or patriots were in prison. One Communist arrested another and tortured him just as they would do anybody else.) They arrested this Communist leader and put him in a prison cell alone. Electromagnetic rays, which disturb the mind, passed through this cell. A loudspeaker repeated day and night: "Is your name Joseph or not Joseph?" (His name was not Joseph.) They tried to drive him mad. Day and night. He felt that he would lose his mind. At a certain moment, he got an illumination. "I have now met unmitigated evil. If Communists torture a Christian, it is not absolutely evil because Communists believe that they will construct an earthly paradise. Christians hinder them, so it is right to torture Christians. But when a Communist tortures a Communist, it is torture for torture's sake. There is absolutely no justification for it. But wait a little bit. Every coin has two sides, every electric cable has two poles. If there is an unmitigated evil, against whom does this unmitigated evil fight? There must be an unmitigated good. This is God, and against Him they fight." When he was called to the interrogator, he entered smiling into the room and told him that he could switch off the loudspeaker now because it had attained its result. "I have become a Christian." The officer asked him, "How did it happen?" He told him the whole story. The officer said, "Wait a little bit." He called a few of his comrades and said, "Please repeat the story before my comrades." He repeated the story, and the captain told the other police officer, "I told you that this method will not work. You have overdone it." The Devil is not all mighty and all wise like God. He makes mistakes. Evil torture is an excess which can be used very well spiritually.
Part Six - Preparing for “The Moment of Crisis”
Torture has a moment of explosion, and the torturer waits for this critical moment. Learn how to conquer doubt and to think thoroughly. There is always one moment of crisis when you are ready to write or pronounce the name of your accomplice in the underground work, or to say where the secret printing shop is, or something of that kind. You have been tortured so much nothing counts any more; the fact that I should not have pain also does not count. Draw this last conclusion at the stage at which you have arrived and you will see that you will overcome this one moment of crisis; it gives you an intense inner joy. You feel that Christ has been with you in that decisive moment. Jailers today are now trained and refined, aware that there is a moment of crisis. If they cannot get anything from you in that moment, then they abandon torturing: they know its continuation to be useless. There are a few more points in connection with torture. It is very important to understand what Jesus said: "Take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for itself." I have had fourteen years of prison. Brother Hrapov had twenty six, Wong MingDao had twenty-eight. It seems impossible to bear long years of prison. You are not asked to bear it all at once. Do not bear even one day at a time - bear an hour at a time. One hour of pain everybody can bear. We have had a terrible toothache, a car accident - passing, perhaps, through untold anguish. You are not meant to bear pain more than this one present minute. What amplifies pain is the memory that I have been beaten and tortured so many times and that tomorrow they will take me again, and the day after tomorrow. Tomorrow, I might not be alive - or they might not be alive. Tomorrow, there can be an overthrow, as in Romania. Yesterday beating has passed: tomorrow's torture has not come yet.
Part Seven - Christ Must Rank Highest
The Bible teaches some words very hard to take: "Whosoever does not hate father, mother, child, brother, sister - cannot be My disciple." These words mean almost nothing in a free country. You probably know from The Voice of the Martyrs literature that thousands of children had been taken away from their parents in the former Soviet Union because they were taught about Christ. You must love Christ more than your family. There you are before a court and the judge tells you that if you deny Christ you may keep your children. If not, this will be the last time you will see them. Your heart may break, but your answer should be, "I love God." Nadia Sloboda left her house for four years of prison. Her children were taken from her, but she left her house singing. The children, for whom the police waited with a truck to take them as she left, told their singing mother, "Don't worry about us. Wherever they put us, we will not give up our faith." They did not. When Jesus was on the cross He not only suffered physically; He had His mother in front of Him, suffering. His mother had the Son suffering. They loved each other, but the glory of God was at stake and here any human sentiment must be secondary. Only if we take this attitude once and for all can we prepare for underground work. Only Christ, the Great Sufferer, the Man of Sorrows, must live in us. There have been cases in Communist countries when Communist torturers threw away their rubber truncheons with which they beat a Christian and asked, "What is this halo which you have around your head? How is it that your face shines? I cannot beat you anymore." It is said of Stephen in the Bible, that "his face shone." We have known cases of Communist torturers who told the prisoner, "Shout loudly, cry loudly as if I would beat you so that my comrades will know that I torture you. But I cannot beat you." Thus, you would shout without anything happening to you. There are other cases when prisoners really are tortured, sometimes to death. You have to choose between dying with Christ and for Christ or becoming a traitor. What is the worth of continuing to live when you will be ashamed to look into the mirror, knowing that the mirror will show you the face of a traitor?
Part Eight - Resisting Brainwashing
One of the greatest methods is not only physical torture; it is brainwashing. We have to know how to resist brainwashing. Brainwashing exists in the free world, too. The press, radio and television brainwash us. There exists no motive in the world to drink Coca-Cola. You drink it because you are brainwashed. Water is surely better than Coca-Cola. But nobody advertises, "Drink water, drink water." If water were advertised, we would drink water. Some have driven this technique of brainwashing to its extreme. The methods vary, but brainwashing in my Romanian prison consisted essentially of this: we had to sit seventeen hours on a form which gave no possibility to lean, and you were not allowed to close your eyes. For seventeen hours a day we had to hear, "Communism is good, Communism is good, Communism is good, etc.; Christianity is dead, Christianity is dead, Christianity is dead, etc.; Give up, give up, etc." You were bored after one minute of this but you had to hear it the whole seventeen hours for weeks, months, years even, without any interruption. I can assure you, it is not easy. It is one of the worst tortures. Much worse than physical torture. I had passed through brainwashing for over two years. Now the Communists would have said that my brain was still dirty. In the same rhythm in which they said, "Christianity is dead," I and others repeated to ourselves: "Christ also has been dead, but He rose from the dead.” We remembered that we lived in the communion of saints.
Part Nine - Enduring Solitude
One of the greatest problems for an underground fighter is to know how to fill up his solitude. We had absolutely no books. Not only no Bible, but no books, no scrap of paper, and no pencil. We never heard a noise, and there was absolutely nothing to distract our attention. You looked at the walls, that was all. Now normally a mind under such circumstances becomes mad. I, and many other prisoners, did it like this. We never slept during the night. We slept during the day. One prayer at night is worth ten prayers during the day. The demonic forces are forces of the night, and therefore, it is so important to oppose them during the night. In solitary confinement we awoke when the other prisoners went to bed. We filled our time with a program which was so heavy, we could not fulfill it. We started with a prayer, a prayer in which we traveled through the whole world. We prayed for each country, for where we knew the names of towns and men, and we prayed for great preachers. It took a good hour or two to come back. We prayed for pilots, and for those on the sea, and for those who were in prisons. After having traveled through the whole world, I read the Bible from memory. To memorize the Bible is very important for an underground worker.
Part Ten - Exercising the Joy of the Lord
Just to make us laugh also a little bit, I will tell you one thing which happened. Once while I lay on the few planks which were my bed, I read from memory the Sermon on the Mount, according to Luke. I arrived at the part where it is said, "When you are persecuted... for the Son of man's sake, rejoice you, in that day and leap for joy...." You will remember that it is written like this. I said, "How could I commit such a sin of neglect? Christ has said that we have to do two different things. One to rejoice, I have done. The second, to 'leap for joy,' I have not done." So I jumped. I came down from my bed and I began to jump around. In prison, the door of a cell has a peep hole through which the warden looks into the cell. He happened to look in while I jumped around. So he believed that I had become mad. They had an order to behave very well with madmen so that their shouting and banging on the wall should not disturb the order of the prison. The guard immediately entered, quieted me down and said, "You will be released; you can see everything will be all right. Just remain quiet. I will bring you something." He brought me a big loaf of bread. Our portion was one slice of bread a week, and now I had a whole loaf, plus cheese. It was white. Never just eat cheese; first of all admire its whiteness. It is beautiful to look upon. He brought me also sugar. He spoke a few nice words again and locked the door and left. I said, "I will eat these things after having finished my chapter from St. Luke." I lay down again and tried to remember where I had left off. "Yes, at 'when you are persecuted for My Name's sake, rejoice... and leap for joy because great is your reward." I looked at the loaf of bread and the cheese. Really, the reward was great! 10 So the next task is to think of the Bible and to meditate upon it. Every night, I composed a sermon beginning with "Dear brethren, and sisters" and finishing with "Amen." After I composed it, I delivered it. I put them afterwards in very short rhymes so that I could remember them. My books, With God In Solitary Confinement and If Prison Walls Could Speak, contain some of these sermons. I have memorized three hundred and fifty of them. Out of bread I made chessmen, some of them whitened with a little bit of chalk and the others gray. I played chess with myself. Never believe that Bob Fisher is the greatest chess master of the world. He won the last match with Spassky. He won eight games and lost two. I, in three years, never lost a game; I always won either with white or gray! Never allow your mind to become distressed because then the Communists have you entirely in their hands. Your mind must be continually exercised. It must be alert, it must think. It must, everyone according to his abilities, compose different things, etc. I have told you all these things because they belong to the secrets of the underground worker when he suffers.
On the day that he become a Christian, the man who had told the Lord he would never walk the way of the cross knelt to make a very different request: *"God, I was an atheist. Now let me go to Russia to work as a missionary among atheists, and I shall not complain if afterwards I have to spend all the rest of my life in prison."
Instead of taking him to Russia, God brought the Russians to him in Romania. For at the close of the Second World War, the Russians took the country as their spoils. Now an ordained, Lutheran minister, Wurmbrand recognized God's answer and took every opportunity to share the gospel with the Russian soldiers who had invaded the entire country. Even as he ministered, Richard began to prepare himself to face the suffering that would come as a result. The man who had once dreaded the cross was impatiently awaiting its coming.
*"My life as a pastor, until this time, had been full of satisfaction. I had all I needed for my family. I had the trust of my parishioners. But I was not at peace. Why was I allowed to live as usual, while a cruel dictatorship was destroying everything dear to me and while others were suffering for their faith? On many nights, Sabina and I prayed together, asking God to let us bear a cross."
As He had before, God gave Richard what he had audaciously asked for. It came by the means of an opportunity to defend the name of His Lord... In 1945, four thousand clergyman of varying denominations were gathered together by the communist government for the 'Congress of Cults'. The Prime Minister began the meeting with lavish promises for any who would cooperate with the government and Richard Wurmbrand watched as one minister after another spoke to welcome the sacrilegious proposal. It wasn't long before Sabina had heard enough! She leaned close to her husband.
*"Go and wash this shame from the face of Christ!"She said. He did not look surprised by the charge.
"If I do, you'll loose your husband."
"I don't need a coward. Go and do it!" He nodded. Then he rose and asked for permission to speak.
"It is our duty as priests to glorify God and Christ, not transitory earthly powers! To support His everlasting kingdom of love against the vanities of the day!" So began both Wurmband's speech and the fourteen long years that would follow it. He was arrested shortly after and taken to prison, where he faced many forms of the cruelest torture - both mental and physical. To these were added the struggles of prolonged isolation, tuberculosis, freezing temperatures, and starvation. Two years into Richard's imprisonment, his wife, Sabina, was also arrested. She was sent to face the harsh conditions of a labour camp, leaving their only son, who was not yet ten, without both of his parents. In all these trials the Wurmbrands proved faithful to their God.
How did Richard Wurmbrand go from being the man who told his Saviour that he would not take up a cross, not even to follow Him, to the pastor who not only faced trials well but actually prayed for them? The answer is simple: Richard chose to believe His Lord when He said, "Do not fear the cross! You will find that it is the greatest of joys."
"My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing."( James i. 2-4)
The world perceives suffering as a bad thing and many Christians yet share this view. We need to realize that the heavenly perspective of suffering is altogether different. In heaven, suffering is a commodity of the greatest value. Every heavenly treasure comes from God Himself, but suffering is the means by which many of those gifts are imparted to us.
"...we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." (Romans v. 3-5)
Later in his life, Pastor Wurmbrand explained that the means to suffering well is not suddenly gained when one is thrown into prison and tortured.
"...we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." (Romans v. 3-5)
Our reaction to the cross should not be one of fear, but rather rejoicing. All Christians should pray for crosses and carry them willingly, not just Richard Wurmbrand. For in Matthew xvi. Jesus did not say, "Some of my disciples will carry a cross." He said, "Unless you take up your cross...You can not be my disciple."
Later in his life, Pastor Wurmbrand explained that the means to suffering well is not suddenly gained when one is thrown into prison and tortured.
*"I had prepared myself for prison and torture as a soldier in peacetime prepares for the hardships of war. I had studied the lives of Christians who had faced similar pains and temptations to surrender and thought how I might adapt their experiences. Many who had not so prepared themselves were crushed by suffering, or deluded into saying what they should not."
Suffering is a part of the Christian life whether or not we are willing to accept it. If their job is to be done well the Christian must prepare for and rejoice in suffering, but how is that practically done? We can be training for war even while we still have peace but the problem is that most of us have no idea how to practice suffering. Thankfully, our Father has given us others who are willing to teach us the way! Pastor Richard Wurmbrand wrote the following ten points for the purpose of teaching the church how to prepare to suffer well, for the sake of Christ:
Preparing for the Underground Church
By Richard Wurmbrand
By Richard Wurmbrand
Part One - Preparing to Suffer Well
Suffering cannot be avoided in the Underground Church, whatever measures are taken, but suffering should be reduced to the minimum. What happens in a country when oppressive powers take over? In some countries the terror starts at once, as in Mozambique and Cambodia. In other places a false sense of religious liberty follows and then, suddenly, after the necessary police force and army staff have been established, the clamp-down begins. In Russia, the Communists gave immediately great liberty to the Protestants in order to destroy the Orthodox. When they had destroyed the Orthodox, the turn came for the Protestants. The initial situation does not last long. During that time they infiltrate the churches, putting their men in leadership. They find out the weaknesses of pastors. Some might be ambitious men; some might be entrapped with the love of money. Another might have a hidden sin somewhere, wherewith he may be blackmailed. They explain that they would make it known and thus put their men in leadership. Then, at a certain moment the great persecution begins. In Romania such a clamp-down happened in one day. All the Catholic bishops went to prison, along with innumerable priests, monks and nuns. Then many Protestant pastors of all denominations were arrested. Many died in prison. Preparation for underground work begins by studying sufferology, martyrology. Later, we will look at the technical side of underground work, but first of all there must be a certain spiritual preparation for it. In a free country, to be a member of a church, it is enough to believe and to be baptized. In the Church Underground it is not enough to be a member in it. You can be baptized and you can believe, but you will not be a member of the Underground Church unless you know how to suffer. You might have the mightiest faith in the world, but if you are not prepared to suffer, then when you are taken by the police, you will get two slaps and you will declare anything. So the preparation for suffering is one of the essentials of the preparation of underground work. A Christian does not panic if he is put in prison. For the rank and file believer, prison is a new place to witness for Christ. For a pastor, prison is a new parish. It is a parish with no great income but with great opportunities for work. Free church-goers look at their watch; "Already he has preached for thirty minutes. Will he never finish?" When arrested, watches are taken away from you; you have the church-goers with you the whole week and can preach to them from morning to night! They have no choice. There have never been, in the history of the Romanian or the Russian Church, so many conversions brought about as there have been in prison. So do not fear prison. Look upon it as just a new assignment given by God. But what about the terrible tortures which are inflicted on prisoners? What will we do about these tortures? Will we be able to bear them? If I do not bear them, I put in prison another fifty or sixty men whom I know because that is what the oppressors wish from me, to betray those around me. Hence comes the great need for preparation for suffering, which must start now. It is too difficult to prepare yourself for it when you are already in prison.
Part Two - You Must Really Know Jesus
How much each one of us can suffer depends on how much he is bound up with a cause, how dear this cause is to him, and how much it means for him. In this respect we have had in Communist countries very big surprises. There have been gifted preachers and writers of Christian books who have become traitors. The composer of the best hymnal of Romania became the composer of the best communist hymnal of Romania. Everything depends on whether we have remained in the sphere of words or if we are merged with the divine realities. God is the Truth. The Bible is the truth about the Truth. Theology is the truth about the truth about the Truth. A good sermon is the truth about the truth about the truth, about the Truth. It is not the Truth. The Truth is God alone. Around this Truth there is a scaffolding of words, of theologies, and of exposition. None of these is of any help in times of suffering. It is only the Truth Himself Who is of help, and we have to penetrate through sermons, through theological books, through everything which is 'words' and be bound up with the reality of God Himself. I have told in the West how Christians were tied to crosses for four days and four nights. The crosses were put on the floor and other prisoners were tortured and made to fulfill their bodily necessities upon the faces and the bodies of the crucified ones. I have since been asked: "Which Bible verse helped and strengthened you in those circumstances?" My answer is: "NO Bible verse was of any help." It is sheer cant and religious hypocrisy to say, "This Bible verse strengthens me, or that Bible verse helps me." Bible verses alone are not meant to help. We knew Psalm 23 - "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want... though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...." When you pass through suffering you realize that it was never meant by God that Psalm 23 should strengthen you. It is the Lord who can strengthen you, not the Psalm which speaks of Him so doing. It is not enough to have the Psalm. You must have the One about whom the Psalm speaks. We also knew the verse: "My Grace is sufficient for thee." But the verse is not sufficient. It is the Grace which is sufficient and not the verse. Pastors and zealous witnesses who are handling the Word as a calling from God are in danger of giving holy words more value than they really have. Holy words are only the means to arrive at the reality expressed by them. If you are united with the Reality, the Lord Almighty, evil loses its power over you; it cannot break the Lord Almighty. If you only have the words of the Lord Almighty you can be very easily broken.
Part Three - Start Practicing “Living Without”
The preparation for underground work is deep spiritualization. As we peel an onion in preparation for its use, so God must "peel" from us what are mere words, sensations of our enjoyments in religion, in order to arrive at the reality of our faith. Jesus has told us "that whosoever will follow" Him will have to "take up their cross," and He, Himself, showed how heavy this cross can be. We have to be prepared for this. We have to make the preparation now before we are imprisoned. In prison you lose everything. You are undressed and given a prisoner's suit. No more nice furniture, nice carpets or nice curtains. You do not have a wife or husband any more and you do not have your children. You do not have your library and you never see a flower. Nothing of what makes life pleasant remains. Nobody resists who has not renounced the pleasures of life beforehand. I personally use an exercise. I now live in the United States of America. Can you imagine what an American supermarket looks like? You find there many delicious things. I look at everything and say to myself, "I can go without this thing and that thing; this thing is very nice, but I can go without: this third thing I can go without, too." I visited the whole supermarket and did not spend one dollar. I had the joy of seeing many beautiful things and the second joy to know that I can go without.
Part Four - Doubt will Make you a Traitor
I am Jewish. In Hebrew, the language which Jesus Himself spoke and in which the first revelation has been given, the word "doubt" does not exist. To doubt is as wrong for a man as it would be for him to walk on four legs - he is not meant to walk on four legs. A man walks erect; he is not a beast. To doubt is subhuman. To every one of us doubts come, but do not allow doubts about essential doctrines of the Bible such as the existence of God, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, or the existence of eternal life to make a nest in your mind. Every theological or philosophical doubt makes you a potential traitor. You can allow yourself doubts while you have a nice study and you prepare sermons, and you eat well - or you write a book. Then you can allow yourself all kinds of daring ideas and doubts. When you are tortured these doubts are changed into treason because you have to decide to live or die for this faith. One of the most important things about the spiritual preparation of an underground worker is the solution of his doubts. In mathematics, if you do not find the solution you may have made a mistake somewhere, so you continue until you find out. Don't live with doubts, but seek their solution.
Part Five - Passing the Test of Torture
Now to come to the very moment of torture. Torture is sometimes very painful. Sometimes it is a simple beating. We have all been spanked as children and beating is just another spanking. A simple beating is very easy to take. Jesus has said we should come to Him like children, which is rather like candidates for spanking! However, with us, Communists did not stop at beatings - they used very refined tortures. Now torture, you must know, can work both ways. It can harden you and strengthen your decision not to tell the police anything. There are thieves who resist any torture and would not betray those with whom they have co-operated in theft. The more you beat them the more obstinate they become. Or, torture can just break your will. Now I will tell you of one very interesting case which was published by the Czech Communist Press. Novotny, who was the predecessor of Dubcek and who was a Communist dictator, had arrested one of his intimate comrades, a Communist leader, a convinced atheist, and a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. (Not only Christians, Jews or patriots were in prison. One Communist arrested another and tortured him just as they would do anybody else.) They arrested this Communist leader and put him in a prison cell alone. Electromagnetic rays, which disturb the mind, passed through this cell. A loudspeaker repeated day and night: "Is your name Joseph or not Joseph?" (His name was not Joseph.) They tried to drive him mad. Day and night. He felt that he would lose his mind. At a certain moment, he got an illumination. "I have now met unmitigated evil. If Communists torture a Christian, it is not absolutely evil because Communists believe that they will construct an earthly paradise. Christians hinder them, so it is right to torture Christians. But when a Communist tortures a Communist, it is torture for torture's sake. There is absolutely no justification for it. But wait a little bit. Every coin has two sides, every electric cable has two poles. If there is an unmitigated evil, against whom does this unmitigated evil fight? There must be an unmitigated good. This is God, and against Him they fight." When he was called to the interrogator, he entered smiling into the room and told him that he could switch off the loudspeaker now because it had attained its result. "I have become a Christian." The officer asked him, "How did it happen?" He told him the whole story. The officer said, "Wait a little bit." He called a few of his comrades and said, "Please repeat the story before my comrades." He repeated the story, and the captain told the other police officer, "I told you that this method will not work. You have overdone it." The Devil is not all mighty and all wise like God. He makes mistakes. Evil torture is an excess which can be used very well spiritually.
Part Six - Preparing for “The Moment of Crisis”
Torture has a moment of explosion, and the torturer waits for this critical moment. Learn how to conquer doubt and to think thoroughly. There is always one moment of crisis when you are ready to write or pronounce the name of your accomplice in the underground work, or to say where the secret printing shop is, or something of that kind. You have been tortured so much nothing counts any more; the fact that I should not have pain also does not count. Draw this last conclusion at the stage at which you have arrived and you will see that you will overcome this one moment of crisis; it gives you an intense inner joy. You feel that Christ has been with you in that decisive moment. Jailers today are now trained and refined, aware that there is a moment of crisis. If they cannot get anything from you in that moment, then they abandon torturing: they know its continuation to be useless. There are a few more points in connection with torture. It is very important to understand what Jesus said: "Take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for itself." I have had fourteen years of prison. Brother Hrapov had twenty six, Wong MingDao had twenty-eight. It seems impossible to bear long years of prison. You are not asked to bear it all at once. Do not bear even one day at a time - bear an hour at a time. One hour of pain everybody can bear. We have had a terrible toothache, a car accident - passing, perhaps, through untold anguish. You are not meant to bear pain more than this one present minute. What amplifies pain is the memory that I have been beaten and tortured so many times and that tomorrow they will take me again, and the day after tomorrow. Tomorrow, I might not be alive - or they might not be alive. Tomorrow, there can be an overthrow, as in Romania. Yesterday beating has passed: tomorrow's torture has not come yet.
Part Seven - Christ Must Rank Highest
The Bible teaches some words very hard to take: "Whosoever does not hate father, mother, child, brother, sister - cannot be My disciple." These words mean almost nothing in a free country. You probably know from The Voice of the Martyrs literature that thousands of children had been taken away from their parents in the former Soviet Union because they were taught about Christ. You must love Christ more than your family. There you are before a court and the judge tells you that if you deny Christ you may keep your children. If not, this will be the last time you will see them. Your heart may break, but your answer should be, "I love God." Nadia Sloboda left her house for four years of prison. Her children were taken from her, but she left her house singing. The children, for whom the police waited with a truck to take them as she left, told their singing mother, "Don't worry about us. Wherever they put us, we will not give up our faith." They did not. When Jesus was on the cross He not only suffered physically; He had His mother in front of Him, suffering. His mother had the Son suffering. They loved each other, but the glory of God was at stake and here any human sentiment must be secondary. Only if we take this attitude once and for all can we prepare for underground work. Only Christ, the Great Sufferer, the Man of Sorrows, must live in us. There have been cases in Communist countries when Communist torturers threw away their rubber truncheons with which they beat a Christian and asked, "What is this halo which you have around your head? How is it that your face shines? I cannot beat you anymore." It is said of Stephen in the Bible, that "his face shone." We have known cases of Communist torturers who told the prisoner, "Shout loudly, cry loudly as if I would beat you so that my comrades will know that I torture you. But I cannot beat you." Thus, you would shout without anything happening to you. There are other cases when prisoners really are tortured, sometimes to death. You have to choose between dying with Christ and for Christ or becoming a traitor. What is the worth of continuing to live when you will be ashamed to look into the mirror, knowing that the mirror will show you the face of a traitor?
Part Eight - Resisting Brainwashing
One of the greatest methods is not only physical torture; it is brainwashing. We have to know how to resist brainwashing. Brainwashing exists in the free world, too. The press, radio and television brainwash us. There exists no motive in the world to drink Coca-Cola. You drink it because you are brainwashed. Water is surely better than Coca-Cola. But nobody advertises, "Drink water, drink water." If water were advertised, we would drink water. Some have driven this technique of brainwashing to its extreme. The methods vary, but brainwashing in my Romanian prison consisted essentially of this: we had to sit seventeen hours on a form which gave no possibility to lean, and you were not allowed to close your eyes. For seventeen hours a day we had to hear, "Communism is good, Communism is good, Communism is good, etc.; Christianity is dead, Christianity is dead, Christianity is dead, etc.; Give up, give up, etc." You were bored after one minute of this but you had to hear it the whole seventeen hours for weeks, months, years even, without any interruption. I can assure you, it is not easy. It is one of the worst tortures. Much worse than physical torture. I had passed through brainwashing for over two years. Now the Communists would have said that my brain was still dirty. In the same rhythm in which they said, "Christianity is dead," I and others repeated to ourselves: "Christ also has been dead, but He rose from the dead.” We remembered that we lived in the communion of saints.
Part Nine - Enduring Solitude
One of the greatest problems for an underground fighter is to know how to fill up his solitude. We had absolutely no books. Not only no Bible, but no books, no scrap of paper, and no pencil. We never heard a noise, and there was absolutely nothing to distract our attention. You looked at the walls, that was all. Now normally a mind under such circumstances becomes mad. I, and many other prisoners, did it like this. We never slept during the night. We slept during the day. One prayer at night is worth ten prayers during the day. The demonic forces are forces of the night, and therefore, it is so important to oppose them during the night. In solitary confinement we awoke when the other prisoners went to bed. We filled our time with a program which was so heavy, we could not fulfill it. We started with a prayer, a prayer in which we traveled through the whole world. We prayed for each country, for where we knew the names of towns and men, and we prayed for great preachers. It took a good hour or two to come back. We prayed for pilots, and for those on the sea, and for those who were in prisons. After having traveled through the whole world, I read the Bible from memory. To memorize the Bible is very important for an underground worker.
Part Ten - Exercising the Joy of the Lord
Just to make us laugh also a little bit, I will tell you one thing which happened. Once while I lay on the few planks which were my bed, I read from memory the Sermon on the Mount, according to Luke. I arrived at the part where it is said, "When you are persecuted... for the Son of man's sake, rejoice you, in that day and leap for joy...." You will remember that it is written like this. I said, "How could I commit such a sin of neglect? Christ has said that we have to do two different things. One to rejoice, I have done. The second, to 'leap for joy,' I have not done." So I jumped. I came down from my bed and I began to jump around. In prison, the door of a cell has a peep hole through which the warden looks into the cell. He happened to look in while I jumped around. So he believed that I had become mad. They had an order to behave very well with madmen so that their shouting and banging on the wall should not disturb the order of the prison. The guard immediately entered, quieted me down and said, "You will be released; you can see everything will be all right. Just remain quiet. I will bring you something." He brought me a big loaf of bread. Our portion was one slice of bread a week, and now I had a whole loaf, plus cheese. It was white. Never just eat cheese; first of all admire its whiteness. It is beautiful to look upon. He brought me also sugar. He spoke a few nice words again and locked the door and left. I said, "I will eat these things after having finished my chapter from St. Luke." I lay down again and tried to remember where I had left off. "Yes, at 'when you are persecuted for My Name's sake, rejoice... and leap for joy because great is your reward." I looked at the loaf of bread and the cheese. Really, the reward was great! 10 So the next task is to think of the Bible and to meditate upon it. Every night, I composed a sermon beginning with "Dear brethren, and sisters" and finishing with "Amen." After I composed it, I delivered it. I put them afterwards in very short rhymes so that I could remember them. My books, With God In Solitary Confinement and If Prison Walls Could Speak, contain some of these sermons. I have memorized three hundred and fifty of them. Out of bread I made chessmen, some of them whitened with a little bit of chalk and the others gray. I played chess with myself. Never believe that Bob Fisher is the greatest chess master of the world. He won the last match with Spassky. He won eight games and lost two. I, in three years, never lost a game; I always won either with white or gray! Never allow your mind to become distressed because then the Communists have you entirely in their hands. Your mind must be continually exercised. It must be alert, it must think. It must, everyone according to his abilities, compose different things, etc. I have told you all these things because they belong to the secrets of the underground worker when he suffers.
May God bless you,
Richard Wurmbrand
God is currently giving us a season of peace in North America; it is a time to practice and prepare for the persecution that will come. Do not to waste this time! I hope that you will not only read the above message, but that you will read and re-read it, learn the lessons in it, and begin to put them into practice.
We easily recall that Jesus went to the cross for us, but most of us prefer to forget that He called us to take up a cross as well. Leonard Ravenhill said, “People don’t need to know that there is yet room at the cross, they need to know that there is yet room on it!”
"Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy." (1 Peter iv. 12-13)
God is currently giving us a season of peace in North America; it is a time to practice and prepare for the persecution that will come. Do not to waste this time! I hope that you will not only read the above message, but that you will read and re-read it, learn the lessons in it, and begin to put them into practice.
We easily recall that Jesus went to the cross for us, but most of us prefer to forget that He called us to take up a cross as well. Leonard Ravenhill said, “People don’t need to know that there is yet room at the cross, they need to know that there is yet room on it!”
"Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy." (1 Peter iv. 12-13)
In Christ
quiana
(* Quoting Richard Wurmbrand, In God's Underground )
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