The Turkish yoke

The Turkish yoke destroyed the Byzantine Empire’s admirable libraries were reduced to ashes, innocent women and children were carted off to slavery, while Christian men were executed by the thousands in Palestine, North Africa and Asia Minor.

After the Muslims came to power, Orthodox Christians became second-class citizens under the Turkish oppression. Today, it’s time to act. You have to dig to the bottom of your pockets to help these Christians to survive in Constantinople and throughout the Christian East. The Turkish state continually harassed the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

We urge you to contact your representative et the Parliament to put pressure on Turkey so that it gives full rights and recognition to the Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople.
Have your credit card handy and call 450-967-7792.

Thank you on behalf of God.

Desire to escape from the “I”

“I am crucified with Christ: neverthless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me”. (Gal. 2:20)

Dear brothers and sisters,

While in prison in Romania, I composed the following sermon in my mind:

In at least one respect I am like St. Anthony the Great. He never washed himself. I did not take a bath in years either. He slept in a tomb in order to remind himself constantly that this is the abode in which all earthly life inevitably ends. My cell is also like a tomb. It is thirty feet beneath the earth. The few planks which constitute my bed could as well become my coffin. I don’t fear death. I am in a tomb without having died.

What will be my future?

At this moment I am completely useless. My life consists of eating watery soups and getting endless beatings. The pain does not impress me much any more. Nothing ever happens in my life. Why should I wish to prolong my existence in this world? That I may be released? Of what use can a broken man be in freedom?

And if I recover some sermons again. Previously, when preaching on the subject of the blood of Christ, I had contemplated how to form the sentences more beautifully, instead of feeling the horror of Christ’s suffering and living the love which prompted Him to endure it. In one of the first Christian sermons I ever heard, the pastor yawned while preaching about Calvary. How unlike Dickens who, while reporting for a newspaper a speech in Parliament on the sufferings of the poor in Ireland, was so overcome that he was unable to take it down in shorthand.

A man speaks about the sufferings of a poor God and yawns. No wonder the audience yawned too. Pastors and flocks are fed up. They are also fed up with good sermons. They are too wise. Fools for Christ are needed, but I am not one of them. I don’t see any point in being free.

Neither di I wish to keep my “I” in eternity. Why should I care for life after death when I have none before death? My “I” has simply become uninteresting to me. I am as little concerned about its eternal destiny as about what will happen to it tomorrow. I wish to be an “I” no longer. I reject my “I”. My desire is to be a “he”. “When he shall appear, we shall be like him”. (1 John 3:2).

I once brought to Christ a Jew who was over ninety years old. He told me of a dream in which he saw himself in heaven and asked: “Where is Wurmbrand’s place?” But he received no answer. The question was probably still pending. At least, that was what I thought when he told me his dream. Now I am inclined to think that there will be no “Me” there. Why should I care about receiving a crown, which I will cast at His feet anyweay, over awned by His Majesty when I see Him? (Revelation 4:10). It is no best to finish completely with the “I” and become “He”?

Is this sheer madness, like so many other things happening to me, or am I one of the privileged few who have fulfilled the commandment of Christ to deny the “self”? But if I have denied the self, who is the one interested in knowing if this has really happened? Who then is happy that the denial of the “I” has occured? We are running around in a vicious circle. One must have a very strong “I” and be a giant in faith to reject his “I”, which is not only all that he is. Whoever burns the candle at both ends must have a great and glorious candle to burn. And what happens to the strong “I” who has rejected the “I”?

Jesus did not have the rich psychological vocabulary we have. He could not have spoken in Hebrew about the self, the ego, the id, the many complexes we worry about today.

I have always used Biblical language, speaking exactly as Scripture does about denying the self. In more precise modem language, I imagine that what Jesus meant us to leave was the ego.

In my dealings with people I have discovered that you don’t impress them by showing how smart you are.You win them rather by sitting at their feet and giving them a chance to teach you. Even an idiot can teach something. The usual attendance in churches is composed of men of lower IQ than that of a pastor. If a pastor does not know stupidity but only intelligence, he will not be fruitful.

We have to learn from another to raise his ego. The ego is the desire to be superior. It is the high opinion one holds about oneself and one’s achievments. I don’t believe as does Freud that the strongest desire of a man is the sexual urge, though it is enormous. The strongest desire is to uphold his ego, to appear valuable before his fellowmen.

Respect another’s ego, but renounce your own. I believe this is what was meant by Jesus’s commandment to deny the self.

There is a tension in us because the ego is torn apart in the effort to present a more beautiful image before the world. Tension ceases when we become indifferent to what people think about us. I have been a pastor much beloved by my family and my congregation, and much hated by anti-christian Jews because of my missionary work to win Jews for Christ. Now I am only despised and mocked by every man with whom I speak, because I speak only with wardens and interrogators. What do their opinions count? For Juliet it was enough to be loved by one single young man in Verona. Others might have passed near this girl of fourteen without even casting a glance at her. She was happy.

I don’t know how much I have achieved, but I wish to lose not the self - I have come to the conclusion that such an endeavor is chasing after the impossible - but self-assertion. One source says, “Clay is molded into a vessel, but the ultimate use of the vessel depends upon the part where nothing exists. Doors and windows are cut out of the wall of a house, but the ultimate use of the house depends upon the parts where nothing exists. ” wish to become such a useful nothing.

I am in the lowest social category, a man who will probably die in prison, sentenced for crime. But I am content to be so low. I have so little to renounce now. It seems ridiculous even to attempt to give up self-assertion. What have I to assert and before whom?

The Christian is Christ. Only this “He” lives eternally. He does not need the appendix of a little “I”.

When Michelangelo finished his “Pieta”, he exclaimed, “Only the marble separates me from my statue ”. I would say, “Only 120 pounds of flesh separate me from being fully He.”

”To the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.”

Sincerely in Christ,

Richard Wurmbrand

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.

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

March message

Dear friends and benefactors,

Friendly greetings from the city of Laval!

Thank you to those of you who responded to our calls for support of our projects which provide assistance to the poor and the persecuted. Your donations are very important to continue our work.

Our Quebec mission is celebrating its 21 years of existence and charitable work, and we were able, during all these years of missionary work, help the suffering, the sick, the ignored, the persecuted for their Christian faith. Help us to continue our assistance.

We supported small projects to help communities, families, and people from different regions of the world that are in dire need of help. Donations come to console and assist in cases of great distress. Thus, we can deliver aid to those who really need the most deprived. Our couriers and friends are often on missions in poor countries or they express their solidarity with the suffering. Any distress call is happening to us, we try to listen, encourage and assist.

With the help of the relationships we have developed over many years of missionary work, we try to keep each other aware of the needs of countries where torture and failure to respect human rights are still needed.

We are also helping to awaken consciences, dialogue and mutual understanding among human groups, through conferences, through our messages sent over the Internet, through reflection shared with those who live in the regions concerned. This helps to build our projects, bridges of human solidarity which always take into account the diversity of human societies in these countries suffer. Be generous, help according to your ways, through our projects. Your reward will be multiplied a hundredfold. Help us to help. And pray for the success of our ministry, because we need your prayers!

We are in the period of the Great Lent, the time for waiting the remembrance of the Passion of Christ, His death and Resurrection. It's time to think and bring help to our neighbours, to the sick, the poor, the elderly without means of subsistence. Become yourself missionaries, by realizing the value of our efforts for the development of a human face on societies where we help. Help us now to be helpful effectively. Be generous, because God gives you His graces a hundredfold, in return for your love expressed in action, by your donations.

Thank you on behalf of God.

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