2008 recap

Dear friends and benefactors,

Greetings from our city of Laval! We hope that you passed a Merry Christmas and that you will also pass, with much pleasure, the threshold of the New Year; as we wish thrives for you and those who you love. Thank you, in the name of the One who was born in front to save us; thank you all those who helped us faithfully to lead our planned aid programmes to the poor and to the persecuted.

With the arrival of the New Year 2009, the Aid to the Martyr Churches’ Mission will enter its 21st year of existence. Its charitable work is known in all the province of Quebec. Its good performances were mentioned everywhere where we bring help. That encourages us to continue our work with a new dash.

The assessment of this year 2008 was positive; we succeeded in achieving important projects. And all that motivates us so that we redouble efforts in the year which starts. The bulletin “Brotherly Help to the Churches” is the privileged instrument which links us, us as mission of assistance, and you, the friends and benefactors of the nowadays’ martyrs. It will arrive to you faithfully, each month, during this year, by mail and/or by e-mail, bringing to you information which we receive and disseminate, as well as the messages of charity and some short description of the projects to be achieved, that we propose to you.

Continue to be with us, as builders of a new life of faith in these countries in which we bring help, where there are so many things to accomplish. We are not alone; the angels of the Lord are with us. Jesus, who was born in our hearts, needs you; He needs your love for His sons of predilection, the martyrs, the poor, the sick. Let the Spirit of God work through you, by liberally giving your surplus, or even from your indigence, for the comfort of the poor and sick, for the Christians who are still in suffering.

Dear friends and benefactors,

During this period of the great feasts, but also during all the 2009 year, let us think to our neighbour. Let us make a generous gift to help him, nourish him, dress him, and look after him. To give, it is also to make grow the kingdom of God, to spread it, by your own benefits. Be generous; bring help according to your means, through our projects. Your reward will be multiplied with the centuple. Help us to be able to help. And pray for the success of our apostolate, because we need your prayers! May the Lord, who was born in your hearts, inspires you in the life of faith and the exercise of charity?

Please receive our greetings in Christ, and receive the thanks of the God's people which await your gifts.

Yours, in the service of the Lord,

S. Prodan, director of the Mission,Rev. R. Roscanu, missionary

OUR GREATEST GUEST

Our dearly beloved,

Jesus was once told that a Roman officer was worthy of being helped. We may pray for individuals, but our request alone is not sufficient. If others ask us to pray for them, we must understand that our entreaty alone will not help. They must also take steps to sweep with their own brooms--they must allow Christ to cleanse their hearts and lives too.

Jesus is the greatest guest you will ever receive into your life.

There is a story about a Christian father who told his son to clean up the garden « because Jesus and His disciples will visit us today. » The boy knew Jesus and loved Him, so he worked diligently in the garden before telling his father, « I’m finished. »

The father, after walking through the garden, said, « Everything is really clean, but not clean enough for Jesus. »

The child went back to the garden with renewed vigor, picking up every withered leaf and every scrap from the pathways. The father then had a second look, saying, « Bravo! The garden is really clean now, but not with the special cleanliness needed for Son of God.»

The boy asked, « What is this special cleanliness like? »

The father replied, « For such a guest it is not enough to eliminate what is ugly. You must also beautify the garden as never before. Quickly, as a friend of Jesus, plant in it beautiful orchids, roses, and lilies--things it never had before--to adorn it. Then add lights to give it a warm glow. Jesus is a guest of unsurprising excellence and must be hosted accordingly. »



Romanian Martyrs

Thinking of this cleansing of the heart, I remember a Romanian martyr. In Communist Romania, many Christians died a martyr’s death. I knew a number of them personally. Nelu Sultaniuc was twenty, in prison for his faith. Hungry, cold, beaten, he fell sick of pulmonary tuberculosis, like so many other prisoners. The prison doctors were unable to help because they had no medicines, but his family brought him streptomycin, the cure for this disease. The political officer of the jail said to him, « I will give you the medicine on one condition: you must become an informer. » Now, the inmates were all there because of their anti-Communist stand. Since Communism is anti-God, what other attitude could a Christian have? Because of this, even their conversation with their cellmates were spied on, in order to provide an excuse for new accusations and longer sentences.

Sultaniuc refused. Matzkevitch, another young Christian (of Jewish origin), also refused. Both died of tuberculosis in jail. They sacrificed their lives to maintain their integrity. What would their lives have profited at such a price? They died as martyrs.

Virgil Ionescu was tied to a chair, with a strong electric lightbulb shining in his eyes. This meant certain blindness. He could escape this torture only by agreeing to be an informer. Today he is completely blind, in utter poverty, but happy to have remained clean in heart.



Problems of Conscience

While I was in Romanian prison (and surely now in Muslim jails), individuals with a tender conscience had problems.

In the morning, the guard would ask through the opening of the door, « How many in this cell? »

Now, if a prisoner had died during the night and we still answered « Sixteen » rather than « Fifteen, » we would have an extra piece of bread that day. This was a great boon to a sick prisoner. Should we tell this lie? We remembered that David once did a forbidden thing in order to feed his hungry soldiers (I Samuel 21:1-6). But what about us?

Several times when some prisoner was scheduled for twenty-five lashes with a whip for some trespass against the rules, the Hebrew Christian Milan Haimovici stepped forward and offered to take the beating in place of his fellow prisoner.

Since the guard who specialized in beating did not know the people on his list for the day, it was easy to deceive him. But is it right to tell the obvious lie, « I am so-and-so » in place of another? Isn’t this being deceptive?

We also had other problems besides those of conscience. In winter the Communists would offer the prisoners hot tea and hot soup. We had the choice of declining these and suffering the piercing cold or accepting a little bit of warmth and then suffering the protracted pain of needing to void and not being taken to the toilet. In the end, we sometimes solved the problem by using for this purpose the bowls from which we ate.

The brethren living lives with such choices were far from being depressed. How could they be? They desired to live according to the Bible, which says nothing about being depressed! This word isn’t even mentioned in Scripture. Instead, the Bible tells us to overcome every difficulty with the joy that God is ready to give abundantly to those who ask.

In the Sudan, the priest Bagriel Dwatuka was whipped while he hung from a rope, then salt was rubbed into his wounds. He and others who were beaten were obligated to say « Thank you » after every ordeal.

A Christian can do this even when not constrained. Those who hurt us ennoble us if we understand the mystery of suffering.

In the Sudan, many Christians have been killed. Some were confined in churches and tied to chairs with thick ropes. A Muslim officer then said, « We are going to shoot you in your church. May God come and save you! » Then the soldiers emptied their guns on the helpless people and the building was set on fire. We are shipping help to Sudanese Christians.

The martyrs live outside of time. The apostle Paul wrote, referring to such martyrs, « We are surrounded by them as by a great could of witnesses. » they have been the inspiration of our mission, which publicizes the heroic stories of martyrs in over forty languages. They « surround » us when we preach, write, and minister to the needs of today’s martyrs and their families.

Jesus desires to work together with His church. If you are willing to let Him unite with you will continue on the path of the heroes of the faith, past and present.



Number of Christians Triples

Shanghai is the second largest city of China. In the last ten years, the number of Christians there more than tripled. Among its seven and a half million inhabitants, 127,000 are Evangelical Christians. They gather in 111 registered churches, but there are also many house churches. These latter are persecuted.

Three house church leaders were beaten to death by the Chinese police. One is Sister Zhang Xiuju, 36 years old.

The Christian Li Moxi, 90, wrote thirty letters in his own blood to government officials explaining to them that Christians love the Communists but cannot compromise their beliefs to curry favor with them.



Mission to Armenia

« You have made us a strife to our neighbors, and our enemies laugh among themselves »

(Ps. 80:6).

These words could have been written for the Armenian people. Since the third century they have been Christians and have consequently left behind them a history of continuous persecution. The last holocaust of Armenians was perpetrated by the Turks in 1915.

Our Geman mission has printed Armenian language Bibles, Tortured for Christ, The Other Face of Marx, and What Christians Belive. These have been brought into the country and distributed freely. We have also created a Stephen Center in Armenia, as in several other countries. Cleansed through long suffering, Armenian Christians have a high spiritual tenor. The fire of love still burns in their hearts.

In our own Christian life and work we should all show ourselves worthy of the abundant blessings God gives us by being faithful to Him. May God bless you !



Your in Christ,

Richard Wurmbrand

Truth About the Truth

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.

Richard Wurmbrand

Remember the captives as if we were bound with them

Dear friends,


Hebrews 13:3, in the old King James Version, reads like this:

"Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being you also in the body."

In the Douay-Rheims, it reads like this:

"Remember them that are in bonds, as if you were bound with them: and them that labour, as being yourselves also in the body."

Older translations, speaking of those who are bound in chains, came to mind yesterday as I thought of the clergy and others who have been kidnapped and are held captive in various parts of the world. Iraq and the Philippines, of course, come first to my mind right now.
The newer translations speak of those who are in prison, rather than those who are in bonds. The Greek word, desmios, can mean a captive, one in bonds, or a prisoner. Somehow, the older translations seem better to me now, as they often do for other reasons.

The RSV translates the same verse:

"Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them; and those who are ill-treated, since you also are in the body."

That reminds me of Paris Hilton, who no doubt needs prayer right now too.

But the Roman prisons that Paul had in mind might be better expressed with the word "bonds" or "bands." He meant remembering those who are held captive for their faith and for their work in bringing Christ to a community. Those who have been held captive for their faith, with or without a court or legitimate prison are the kind of people the Epistle to the Hebrews had in mind.

Last December, I had a post titled Bound by These Chains: Thoughts on the Links to St. Paul's Chains, which was motivated in part by the links from St. Paul's chains that Pope Benedict XVI gave to His Beatitude Christodoulos during his visit to Rome. In that post, I quoted one of the meditations of the Christian missionary Richard Wurmbrand, speaking of the Lithuanian Christian Nijole Sadunaite, who was imprisoned and exiled for several years for distributing Church materials. Wurmbrand quoted a portion of her statement at her sentencing. A fuller quotation appears on the website of the Baltic priests:

"Thank God, not all people have been broken. Our strength in society is not in quantity but in quality. Fearing neither prison nor labour camp, we must condemn all actions which bring injustice and degradation or result in inequality or oppression....’’

"...This is the happiest day of my life. I am being tried on account of the Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania, which is struggling against physical and spiritual human tyranny. That means I am being tried for truth and the love of my fellow men. What can be more important in life than to love one's fellow man, his freedom and honour? Love of one's fellow man is the greatest form of love, while the struggle for human rights is the most beautiful hymn of love. May this hymn forever resound in our hearts and never fall silent. I have been accorded the enviable task, the honourable fate, not only to struggle for human rights, but also to be sentenced for them. My sentence will become triumph! My only regret is that I have been given so little opportunity to work on behalf of man. I will joyfully go into slavery for others and I agree to die so that others may live. Today, as I approach the Eternal Truth, Jesus Christ, I remember His fourth beatitude: "Blessed are they who thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied."

"...I would like to request the court to free from prisons, labour camps and psychiatric hospitals all of those who fought for human rights and justice...."

She would not sign a statement accusing other Catholics in exchange for her own freedom, because, she said "I am bound by the chains of witnesses who throughout the centuries gave their lives for Christ. I am a link in this chain. I will not break it."

Remembering those who are held captive today for their faith and for their work for Jesus, we too are links in this chain, remembering them as bound with them.

With my best wishes for you all,

Richard Wurmbrand

POSSESS the TRUTH

Dear friends,

A perceptive child can often spot insincerity or indifference. In Sunday school, when the teacher recounted the story of Jesus’suffferings and death, a child remarked, "The story is not true."

Taken aback, the teacher asked, "What makes you say that?"

"If it were true," the boy replied quietly, "you could not tell it without weeping."

Sorrily, some Christian writers, authors of religious hymns, and preachers are boring; others are very good but burn out quickly; and some become soul-less—perhaps it is because they spend too much of their souls on their work without taking due precautions to refill them daily.

William Cowper wrote the renowned hymn:

"There is a fountain, filled with blood,

Drawn from Emmanuel’s veins,

And sinners plunged beneath that flood

Lose all their guilty stains.

The dying thief rejoiced to see

That fountain in his day,

And there may I, though vile as he,

Wash all my sins away."

One feels there is life in this song. Cowper poured into it the blood of his own heart. In his old age, he suffered several bouts of insanity; he who had written that "the precious blood shall never lose its power" doubted during his depressions that his own sins were washed away by Christ’s sacrifice.

It is necessary that we allow ourselves to be cleansed and purified.

To be in error is dreadful thing, but it is even worse to embrace truth for the wrong reasons: because it is convenient, because it is pleasant, because it is profitable, because it is socially acceptable. God wants us to love the truth. It is the water of life He offers us. Don’t adulterate it with pollutants.

Love truth for its own sake, and it will come to you.

But is there no hurry to find the truth?

St. Augustine says, "You would never have sought the truth if you had not already found it." "The truth induces men to seek the truth," said St. Makarios the Great. And Blaise Pascal wrote, "We could not seek God unless in some real sense we already possessed Him." The fact that you seek truth, that you ask for it, shows you have a love for it. Love for truth is an essential part of truth itself. If you seek it earnestly, you can afford to sit down quietly, like Mary Magdalene.

Which is more real to you, your problem or your-self? You existed before you posed the question to yourself about finding truth. How many hours a day do you seek it even now? You are much bigger and more important than your search for truth.

Don’t throw away the whole of your life for this particular, though valuable, preoccupation—this search for truth. Live your life. When you work, work. When you eat, eat. When you sleep, sleep. When you amuse yourself, amuse yourself. Truth and life are good companions. They are friends, not enemies. You don’t have to exclude the one in order to have the other. Jesus said,"I am the Way." What does this "Way" consist of? He explained Himself immediately: "the Truth and the Life."

Take it easy, take one step at a time, and you will reach the truth. Meanwhile, be yourself.

Truth is the supreme goal, except that truth alone can be nowhere, just as one cannot find either iron or gold alone in the earth; they exist only in combination with other elements.

Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth and the life". if one wishes to know truth, he must know life too. If he wishes to fulfill the demands of truth, he must be attentive to the demands of life as well.

St. Paul taught us to beware of vain philosophy.

Long ago there lived a king who had a very valuable stallion. He appointed a watchman to do nothing else but guard the magnificent animal during the night. To satisfy his concerns, the king arose at night and went to the guard.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Well, your majesty, I was just reflecting on why a circle is round and a square rectangular."

The king exclaimed, "I am happy to have in my service a real philosopher. Just continue."

Later in the night, the king went again and asked the watchman, "What were you doing now?"

"I was trying to find out what happens to the hole in a bagel after it is eaten. I did not eat the hole, but notwithstanding it has disappeared."

the king was very pleased to have a soldier with such interesting thoughts. He came a third time and asked the watchman, "What now? What are you thinking?"

"Now I have a really serious problem. There was a stallion in the stable. It is no longer there. Where could it be?"

For the sake of philosophy, he had lost the stallion of truth.

Seek the truth, but be careful not to destroy your life and the lives of other men for the sake of philosophizing about truth. Without men, where will the truth settle and of what good will it be?

The story is told that Pol Pot, the Communist dictator of Cambodia, declared, "I have a truth that will make people happy."

He was asked, "What if your people do not accept your formula of truth?"

He replied, "I will kill al those who oppose the truth. Truth is for me above all things." Out of a population of five million, he killed two million of his own people.

This is the attitude of the inquisitors of all convictions. This is the philosophy of those who tyrannize their families, forcing them to accept what they consider as truth.

God says, "You shall therefore keep My statutes and My judgments, which if a man does, he shall live by them..."

Truth is given that you and others might live by it, not die by it.

Be careful. Be forewarned.

Richard Wurmbrand