http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wurmbrand
Richard Wurmbrand (March 24, 1909 – February 17, 2001) was a Romanian
Christian minister of Jewish descent. He was a youth during a time of
anti-Semitic activity in Romania, but it was later, after becoming a
believer in Jesus Christ as Messiah, and daring to publicly say that
Communism and Christianity were not compatible, that he experienced
imprisonment and torture for his beliefs. After serving five years of
a second prison sentence, he was ransomed for $10,000. His colleagues
in Romania urged him to leave the country and work for religious
freedom from a location less personally dangerous. After spending time
in Norway and England, he and his wife Sabina, who had also been
imprisoned, emigrated to America and dedicated the rest of their lives
to publicizing and helping Christians who are persecuted for their
beliefs. He wrote more than 18 books, the most widely known being
Tortured for Christ. Variations of his works have been translated into
more than 60 languages. He founded the international organization
Voice of the Martyrs, which continues to aid Christians around the
world who are persecuted for their faith.
Early life
Richard Wurmbrand, the youngest of four boys, was born in 1909 in
Bucharest in a Jewish family. He lived with his family in Istanbul for
a short while; his father died when he was 9, and the Wurmbrands
returned to Romania when he was 15.
As an adolescent, he was sent to study Marxism in Moscow, but returned
clandestinely the following year. Pursued by Siguranţa Statului (the
secret police), he was arrested and held in Doftana prison. When
returning to his mother country, Wurmbrand was already an important
Comintern agent, leader and coordinator directly paid from Moscow.
Like other Romanian communists he was arrested several times, then
sentenced and released again.
He married Sabina Oster on October 26, 1936. Wurmbrand and his wife
(known as Bintzea to her friends) became believers in Jesus as Messiah
in 1938 through the witness of Christian Wolfkes, a Romanian Christian
carpenter; they joined the Anglican Mission to the Jews. Wurmbrand was
ordained twice - first as an Anglican, then, after World War II, as a
Lutheran minister. In 1944, when the Soviet Union occupied Romania as
the first step to establishing a communist regime, Wurmbrand began a
ministry to his Romanian countrymen and to Red Army soldiers. When the
government attempted to control churches, he immediately began an
"underground" ministry to his people. Richard is remembered for his
courage in standing up in a gathering of church leaders and denouncing
government control of the churches.[1] He was arrested on February 29,
1948, while on his way to church services.[2]
Prisons
Wurmbrand, who passed through the penal facilities of Craiova, Gherla,
the Danube – Black Sea Canal, Văcăreşti, Malmaison, Cluj, and
ultimately Jilava, spent three years in solitary confinement. This
confinement was in a cell twelve feet underground, with no lights or
windows. There was no sound because even the guards wore felt on the
soles of their shoes. He later recounted that he maintained his sanity
by sleeping during the day, staying awake at night, and exercising his
mind and soul by composing and then delivering a sermon each night.
Due to his extraordinary memory, he was able to recall more than 350
of those, a selection of which he included in his book "With God in
Solitary Confinement," which was first published in 1969. During part
of this time, he communicated with other inmates by tapping out Morse
code on the wall. In this way he continued to "be sunlight" to fellow
inmates rather than dwell on the lack of physical light.[3]
At the beginning of his first imprisonment, he recalls being in deep
remorse as thoughts of past sins and duties undone were remembered.
Unlike the discipline that helped him through later days of
imprisonment, he later wrote that God came to him and fellow prisoners
in a vision not unlike that which Stephen experienced:
We didn't see that we were in prison. We were surrounded by angels; we
were with God. We no longer believed about God and Christ and angels
because Bible verses said it. We didn't remember Bible verses anymore.
We remembered about God because we experienced it. With great humility
we can say with the apostles, "What we have seen with our eyes, what
we have heard with our ears, what we have touched with our own
fingers, this we tell to you."[4]
Wurmbrand was released from his first imprisonment in 1956, after
eight and a half years. Although he was warned not to preach, he
resumed his work in the underground church. He was arrested again in
1959 and sentenced to 25 years. During his imprisonment, he was beaten
and tortured. Psychological torture included incessant broadcasting of
phrases denouncing Christianity and praising Communism. His body bore
the scars of physical torture for the rest of his life. For example,
he later recounted having the soles of his feet beaten until the flesh
was torn off, then the next day beaten again to the bone. This
prolific writer said there were not words to describe that pain.[5]
However, Wurmbrand considered worse than torture the coerced
denunciations of parents by their own children.
During his first imprisonment, Wurmbrand's supporters were unable to
get information about him; later they found out that a false name had
been used in the prison records so that no one could trace his
whereabouts.[6] Secret police visited Sabina and posed as released
fellow prisoners. They claimed to have attended Richard's funeral in
prison.[7] During his second imprisonment, his wife Sabina was given
official news of Richard's death, which she did not believe.[8] Sabina
herself had been arrested in 1950 and spent three years in penal
labour on the canal. Sabina's autobiographical account of this time is
titled The Pastor's Wife. Their only son, Mihai, by then a young
adult, was expelled from college-level studies at three institutions
because his father was a political prisoner; an attempt to obtain
permission to emigrate to Norway to avoid compulsory service in the
Communist army was unsuccessful.[8]
Eventually, Wurmbrand was a recipient of an amnesty in 1964. Concerned
with the possibility that Wurmbrand would be forced to undergo further
imprisonment, the Norwegian Mission to the Jews and the Hebrew
Christian Alliance negotiated with Communist authorities for his
release from Romania for $10,000 (though the going rate for political
prisoners was $1900.[9]) He was convinced by underground church
leaders to leave and become a voice for the persecuted church.[10] He
devoted the rest of his life to this effort, despite warnings and
death threats.
He was a good friend of Costache Ioanid, a well known Romanian Christian poet.
Achievements and influence
Wurmbrand travelled to Norway, England, and then the United States. In
May, 1966, he testified in Washington, D.C. before the US Senate's
Internal Security Subcommittee. That testimony, in which he took off
his shirt in front of TV cameras to show the scars of his torture,
brought him to public attention.[11] He became known as "The Voice of
the Underground Church," doing much to publicise the persecution of
Christians in Communist countries. He compiled circumstantial evidence
that Marx was a satanist.[12][13]
In April 1967, the Wurmbrands formed Jesus To The Communist World
(later renamed The Voice of the Martyrs), an interdenominational
organisation working initially with and for persecuted Christians in
Communist countries, but later expanding its activities to help
persecuted believers in other places, especially in the Muslim world.
In 1990 Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand returned to Romania for the first
time in 25 years. The Voice of the Martyrs opened a printing facility
and bookstore in Bucharest. The new mayor of Bucharest had offered a
storage space for the books under former dictator Ceaucesceu's palace
- where Richard had spent years in confinement, praying for a ministry
to his homeland.[14] Wurmbrand engaged in preaching with local
ministers of nearly all denominations.
Wurmbrand wrote 18 books in English and others in Romanian. His
best-known book, titled Tortured for Christ, was released in 1967. In
several of them he writes very boldly and emphatically against
Communism; yet he maintained a hope and compassion even for those who
tortured him by "looking at men .. not as they are, but as they will
be ... I could also see in our persecutors ... a future Apostle Paul
... (and) the jailer in Philippi who became a convert."[15] Wurmbrand
last lived in Palos Verdes, California. He died at the age of 92 on
February 17, 2001[16] in a hospital in Torrance, California. (His
wife, Sabina, had died six months earlier on August 11, 2000.) In
2006, he was voted fifth among the greatest Romanians according to the
Mari Români poll.
Books
" 101 Prison Mediations"
Alone With God: New Sermons from Solitary Confinement
Answer to Half a Million Letters
Christ On The Jewish Roads
From Suffering To Triumph!
From The Lips Of Children
If Prison Walls Could Speak
If That Were Christ, Would You Give Him Your Blanket?
In God's Underground
Jesus (Friend to Terrorists)
Was Karl Marx A Satanist ? or Marx and Satan
My Answer To The Moscow Atheists
My Correspondence With Jesus
Reaching Toward The Heights
The Answer to Moscow's Bible
The Oracles of God
The Overcomers
The Sweetest Song
The Total Blessing
Tortured for Christ
Victorious Faith
With God In Solitary Confinement
...
