Brotherly Help of the Churches

Emergency assistance to Haiti

2010-02-07T18:15:00.000-08:00

Thank you to all those who gave alms for their help. Haiti has experienced the worst earthquake in its tragic history. Hundreds of thousands of dead, injured and homeless. 80% of buildings in the city of Port-au-Prince have collapsed, more than 2 million people have lost everything. Churches, hospitals, infirmaries, schools and houses are completely destroyed.

Continue to pray and help the people of Haiti to survive and rebuild. The urgent needs are water, non perishable food, materials and medical equipment and tents for the hundreds of thousands of homeless.

Our emergency project to assist is ongoing. We have, for 22 years, proven experience and dozens of employees with integrity and professionalism in the Caribbean. Our assistance goes directly to those who suffer and is dedicated to the good cause. There is great urgency to continue to help now. You can donate directly through our website.

We must be ready to bring joy into the homes and faith communities battered by so much suffering atrocious. Your help, your prayers and support are a great encouragement to face this terrible disaster and help to save lives

Pray for the success of our ministry, because we need your prayers! In anticipation of your contribution we hope always generous, please receive our greetings in Christ and the thanks of the people of God who is waiting for your donations. Donate Now. Thank you on behalf of the Lord.

Yours to serve the Lord

Stela Prodan, Director

V. Rev. Radu Roscanu, missionary

Emergency Earthquake Assistance to HAITI

2010-01-17T15:56:00.000-08:00

Dear friends and benefactors,

As you know, Haiti has just experienced the worst earthquake in its history. Hundreds of thousands have died, are injured or homeless. Tens of thousands have perished. 80% of buildings in the city of Port-au-Prince have collapsed and more than 2 million people have lost everything. Churches, hospitals, infirmaries, schools and houses are completely destroyed.

We have contacts and friends in Haiti and our employees pull themselves together. Pray, and help the people of Haiti to survive and rebuild. The urgent needs are water, non-perishable food, materials and medical equipment and tents for the hundreds of thousands homeless.

We opened an emergency project to assist these people in distress. We have, for 22 years, proven experience and dozens of friends working with integrity and professionalism in the Caribbean. Our assistance goes directly to those who suffer and is dedicated to the good cause. Thank you for your generosity. There is a great urgency to give now. You can donate directly through our website:

www.entraidefraternelle.com

www.brotherlyhelp.com

Your help, your prayers and your support will be a great encouragement to face this terrible disaster and will help to save lives. With the help of the Almighty God we can rebuild a better Haiti, one person at a time.

Your journey is too great

2009-07-02T04:21:00.000-07:00

“Arise and eat; because the journey is too great for thee.” (1 Kings 19:7)

Dear brothers and sisters,

To begin a new year is somehow like contemplating a journey. We have come so far - perhaps the journey has been tiring. Who knows what is ahead? Will we have the strength and the courage to meet whatever lies in our path and to reach our objective?

We have put our trust in Christ! He has paid on the cross for all our sins. By faith in His sacrifice we have been considered righteous by God. By Him we are today what He is: the light of the world. (Mt 5:14).

“It is impossible but that offences will come” - said the Saviour (Luke 17:1). These offences came even to the most reliable men of God. They come to us, on our journey through life too. These do not disqualify us from being the light of the world.

Elijah the prophet passed one day through a very intense crisis for his soul. He wished to die. He was angry with God. He revolted against Him and didn’t agree with His plans. And in this state of mind, terribly furious, he fell asleep. How will God deal with his rebelliousness now... His servant deprived totally of hope?

He sent an angel.

Woe, what a damning message will this messenger of God bring to him? But instead, the angel awoke Elijah from his sleep. It must have been something very important if God took such trouble to send an angel from Heaven for this purpose. “Arise and eat!” the angel said to Elijah, and gave him a cake (1 Kings 19:5-6).

It seemed not too costly to God to send an angel for the rebellious Elijah. He was still His child, His prophet. Even if he passed now through a great spiritual crisis, he still remained Elijah the prophet. Even though he rebelled for a while, wishing to die, and seemed as if he didn’t want to know any more about God.

Elijah woke up and ate. But the bitterness he felt was not over. As it happens often with ourselves when we pass through a great crisis of our soul and suffering, we feel the need to sleep in order to forget. So Elijah did nothing else after that: he fell asleep again!

The angel of God came to him the second time. Now we would have surely expected that the angel would rebuke Elijah for his attitude that lacked gratitude. But no! To our surprise, the whole message brought to Elijah by the angel is again this: “Awake and eat, for the journey is too great for thee.”

God had not rejected Elijah. On the contrary, in His eyes, he still remained His prophet, the same man of God to whom such an important task had been entrusted, that it surpassed the natural strength of a mere man. The way prepared by God for Elijah, as a prophet, was too long and difficult for a simple man.

This journey of such great responsibility God has entrusted to the man who just then had passed through moments of difficult spiritual crisis - who was even in rebellion.

Do such moments also come over us? Have we, too, known hopelessness and rebellion? We can look back over a year and see where we have succeeded, but perhaps this backwards view is clouded with the memory of disappointment and failure. Never mind. Those do not annul the gifts and the calling to which God has called us.

It is true that in those moments we were a “light of the world”; we were without hope, rebellious, but we were still God’s children.

It is important that we are built on the Rock of Ages that is Christ. The waves of despair have passed and will still pass over us; but the Rock will remain unmoved. With the Rock, we too will remain.

Jesus said about Himself “I am the Light of the World”. Oh yes, with this we are all in agreement that He is the Light of the World! But we don’t believe that we are what He is. Let us look closer at this thing.

Jonah was also a prophet of God. The way of Jonah was not the way of obedience. On the contrary, Jonah fled from God. He did not agree with the plans of God, neither on behalf of others nor for himself. Jonah fled from Him. God did not flee from Jonah, but rather looked for him. He brought him back to Himself even with a strong hand. This not in order to punish him, but to tell him: “Your disobedience was only a parenthesis. Go on now and continue from where you left. You are a jight for the world.”

The world is mostly in darkness. Many of our brothers and sisters suffer trials and persecution. Through the days ahead we need to be like mirrors to reflect the light of Christ to needy people and to bring hope and encouragement to those in despair.

The journey is great but as we feed upon the Word of God we will find the grace and strength to fulfil His purposes.

Even we, too, have fled from God and have rebelled against His plans, He has not left us. We were and still remain His children. Not by our deeds or merit have we achieved this degree. Not by deeds, be those good or bad, shall we lose this honour. We are in Christ by His grace and mercy. By His grace we shall remain through to the end of the journey. We are the light of the world.

May He help us in this.

Sincerely in Christ,

Richard Wurmbrand

Sent by God

2009-06-26T04:41:00.000-07:00

Dear friends and benefactors,

We received this very nice letter:

Sent by God

Two children of God, humble, driven by their hearts and with great love for those in need, were sent by the Lord to rescue their brothers and sisters in Cuba.

Rev. Radu and his wife Stela have engraved in our hearts with great love for the poor, they have become instruments of God to rescue and give a helping hand to those who require aid and, through them, they send mercy and passion of our Lord to us.

Regardless of their age, regardless of their health, God has comforted them and like vultures as they flew from their distant Canada to bring us help. They know that God has supported them and renewed their strength in each of their four missionary journeys, and we hope to see them more often.

Always with a smile on their lips and with words that bring hope they provide us with a lot of love and they show us in practice the teaching that Christ gave us when he told us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. We give thanks to God and to all those whose donations make possible that the missionaries that we cherish can assist people of Cuba and especially those most disadvantaged.

Signed: Community of St. Francis de Paul in Havana, 9 June 2009.

Dear friends, this letter is a gift for us and shows us both that what we give to you grows the kingdom of God. Spread it on your own benefits. Be generous, help according to your means through our projects. Your reward will be multiplied a hundredfold.

In this summer, think of our neighbor. As you prepare your leisure and your vacation - well deserved - remember those who have no time to prepare a holiday because they can not take a vacation or give one to their family. How many children must work to help their family? How many? There would be only one, it would be one too many. Therefore please do not forget your neighbor. Make a generous donation to help feed him, clothe him, and treat him if he is sick, to console him if he is in pain. Our mission is there to receive your donations in order to transmit them to those who are suffering.

In this economic crisis, think of your neighbour. It is time to act, to Brotherly help others. Let us make a generous donation to help feed, clothe him, and treat him if he is sick, to console him if he is languishing in prison. Our mission is there to receive your donations in order to transmit relief to those who are more suffering than another.

Help right now by giving them a gift by calling 450-967-7792. Have your credit card with you.

We are all concerned about the difficulties of the brothers and sisters of the regions of the Caribbean (Mexico, Ecuador, Haiti), and also from Romanian country, Slovakia, Ukraine, Russia...

Your gifts can create once again, more joy. An illustrated Gospel for children costs $5; the average salary is of $40 a month; a prayer book costs $5; a car costs $5,000 and people cannot pay it.

It is now the privileged moment for us to be ready to help, to bring the joy in the homes and the communities where faith is so low, after so long and so much suffering.

We send our gifts exclusively to the persons in charge of the communities that we know, to the families in suffering and in scarcity of everything, that distribute the gifts. More than a million youth await our gifts and our books. Help us to distribute good to them!

And pray for the success of our apostolate, for we need your prayers! In the expectation of your contribution that we hope will be generous, please receive the thanks of God that awaits your gifts.

Yours, in the service of our Lord,

S. Prodan, Director of the Mission
Rev. Radu Roscanu, Missionary

The Turkish yoke

2009-06-15T04:16:00.000-07:00

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.

June Message of the Director

2009-06-02T04:29:00.000-07:00

Dear friends and benefactors,

The Lord compares the kingdom of God to a mustard seed, like leaven, a farmer and a hidden treasure in the earth. This suggests that the list of objects with which we can compare the kingdom of God is actually infinite.

We can therefore say that the kingdom of God is like this mission "Aid to the Martyr Churches", which made its entry onto the screen of your computer thru "http://brotherlyhelp.blogspot.com/". It gives you the fruit of the hard work of volunteers who carry out apostolic spirit in the countries of atrocious persecution, in groups or humiliated human where suffering is imposed, research, needs analysis, project assistance to the sick, the persecuted, the marginalized, for the elderly in danger...

The Kingdom of God is similar to anonymous men and women who create missions of aid for the development of ruined villages, for the development of national and religious heritages that were dilapidated, for helping printing and publishing books that can nurture moral to thirsty nations for the Word of God.

The Kingdom of God is within you, because thanks to you all this could happen, thanks to your prayers, through your gifts that you offer to our brothers and sisters here and elsewhere oppressed, suffering ill, to die by the wicked actions of the powerful and evil spirits that sometimes govern them.

To give is to grow the kingdom of God, to spread it with your own contributions. Be generous, help according to your means through our projects. Your reward will be multiplied a hundredfold.

My neighbour is also the one who makes me feel uncomfortable by the intensity of distress. «I was a stranger and you welcomed me,» «The Lord protects the stranger» ...

The theme of the alien is not in the Bible, in Psalms, in the Gospel. How many times «you shall love the alien» is in the Bible? Thirty-six times, and perhaps forty-six or fifty-six? Whatever, after all, because the key is there: to try every moment to invent the living relationship with our neighbour that he is no more to us "he who wants to deceive us" is not, our neighbour is a person beloved by God, rich in its history, its culture, its conscience, its faith, that we want to meet, know, act.

In this economic crisis, think of our neighbour. Let us make a generous donation to help feed, clothe him, and treat him if he is sick, to console him if he is languishing in prison. Our mission is there to receive your donations in order to transmit relief to those who are more suffering than another.

Help right now by giving them a gift by calling 450-967-7792. Have your credit card with you.

We are all concerned about the difficulties of the brothers and sisters of the regions of the Caribbean (Mexico, Ecuador, Haiti), and also from Romanian country, Slovakia, Ukraine, Russia...

Your gifts can create once again, more joy. An illustrated Gospel for children costs $5; the average salary is of $40 a month; a prayer book costs $5; a car costs $5,000 and people cannot pay it.

It is now the privileged moment for us to be ready to help, to bring the joy in the homes and the communities where faith is so low, after so long and so much suffering.

We send our gifts exclusively to the persons in charge of the communities that we know, to the families in suffering and in scarcity of everything, that distribute the gifts. More than a million youth await our gifts and our books. Help us to distribute good to them!

And pray for the success of our apostolate, for we need your prayers! In the expectation of your contribution that we hope will be generous, please receive the thanks of God that awaits your gifts.

Yours, in the service of our Lord,
S. Prodan, Director of the Mission
Rev. Radu Roscanu, Missionary

Problems of Conscience

2009-05-28T04:24:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends and Benefactors,

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 Believe. 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 !

Yours in Christ,

Richard Wurmbrand

Message for the mission

2009-05-21T04:23:00.000-07:00

Double Doses of Love

2009-05-14T13:01:00.000-07:00

"...they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword..." - Job 1:15.

Dear brothers and sisters,

Job lived in a very great country. In his country, people were free to do the most amazing things.

We read in chapter one of his book, verse 15, about some people -- the Sabeans. The Sabeans fell upon the asses and oxen of Job, and took them away. They slew the servants with the edge of the sword. One alone escaped.

We read in verse 17, the Chaldeans formed three bands and fell upon the cattle and carried them away. Yes, and killed the servants with the edge of the sword.

People were free, even as they are free in America or Australia, to commit crimes: robberies, murder, assault and rape. That is what was considered freedom in the time of Job.

Not everybody was a bandit or a robber at that time. There were very honest people like the friends of Job. But these friends of Job came only after all the catastrophes had happened to Job.

They did not do anything to prevent such terrible crimes from happening. They were not with him while he suffered. They were unconcerned. They came after Job had lost everything, and instead of words of comfort, they upbraided him.

The loneliness in suffering

In suffering, men usually have no friends. I know that not only in communist countries people are suffering, they are suffering here in America, too.

When the heart is most burdened, usually you are alone. Rarely you will find somebody to understand you, to be ready to listen to you. We Americans cannot listen to somebody's suffering because the problem on the color television is much too interesting. We see there people weeping, being shot, being wounded. There are many weeping next door to us. We have no time for them because we watch the picture.

In all our dramas, we are alone, we have no earthly friend. This problem can be solved only one way. You become a friend. Don't ask others to be your friends.

All men are one and we are meant to cooperate as kidneys, lungs, liver, legs and brain. As organs cooperate for the health of the body, so we all should feel that we are one and we should care for one another.

The great commandment which our Lord has given to us is found in John 13:34. "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have given My life for you... that ye also love one another."

The radiant flower of love

Because it so happens that I passed 14 years in communist prisons and also some time in Nazi prisons, everybody expects from me to speak out against communism. I prefer rather to speak out for Christ. Instead of speaking about the ugly things of the devil, I prefer to speak about the beautiful commandment of love which Christ gave us and about His beautiful example.

It is said about the Emperor of Japan that he heard about one of his nobility who had a splendid garden with orchids. No one else had such beautiful flowers. He said to this nobleman, "I will come on such and such a day. I wish to see the garden."

On that day, the man waited outside his palace. The emperor's carriage arrived and he said to the ruler, "Your highness, let us go first to the garden." They entered the garden. It was ploughed. Not a single flower could be seen in the garden. The emperor wondered, but did not say a word. Then the nobleman said to the emperor, "Let us have tea." They entered into the tea room.

There in a jar was just one flower, but a flower of radiant beauty, overwhelming beauty. The nobleman told the emperor, "I have kept the most beautiful flower for the best of emperors. The other flowers were not worthy to live."

I believe that for our emperor, Jesus Christ, we have to keep in our hears just one flower -- the flower of love. All the other flowers are not worthy to live.

Jesus Christ is embodied love. He gave his life for us. Every one of us should offer Him our self sacrificing, our burning love.

I am happy to tell you about the Christians behind the Iron Curtain that in spite of unspeakable persecution, have kept this love. The communists could kill bodies of Christians. They could maim them. They could torture them. They could slay Christians. But they cannot slay the love of Christians, neither their faith.

How the church in China grew

I imagine that many of you must have heard the name of Watchman Nee, the renowned Chinese evangelical writer. He passed away some 20 years ago after having spent 26 years in communist prisons. We have been told about what happened to him in prison.

They arrested him, Wang Min-Dao, and so many other Christian leaders. Samuel Lamb and Allen Yuan, with whom we continue to work today, were arrested at the same time and each suffered more than 20 years in prison.

The communists had closed all the churches. Red China is a country with 1.2 billion inhabitants. Every fifth man in the world is Chinese. God loves the Chinese very much. Proof is He has made so many of them: 1.2 billion. For such a population not one single church was left open. Everything had been destroyed.

The underground church, however, was blooming: hundreds came to Christ and were baptized although the church was underground. The communists were very alarmed about this and asked themselves how this was possible. Then they found out.

Watchman Nee himself had smuggled letters to the Christians outside the prison and his letters were of such beauty and such Christian depth that the Christians outside were strengthened in their faith. They became full of zeal and they won new souls for Christ.

So the communists said, "We can outsmart Watchman Nee. Henceforth, the guard in front of his cell will be changed every 6 hours and never will the same guard be twice on duty because he converts the guards, and persuades them to smuggle out the letters. If we change the guards every 6 hours, he will have no time to convert them and no letters will be smuggled out any more."

They multiplied the guards. More guards were converted and more letters were smuggled out. The church in China grew even faster.

We smuggle into China and other countries Bibles and other Christian books. We broadcast the Gospel in a number of languages, and we help the families of Christians who are in prisons. Thousands are in prison. Our couriers go and bring the news of what is happening where Christians are persecuted.

There are underground churches all over Red China. Also in Vietnam, Laos, and other communist and Muslim countries.

Overcoming hatred with double doses of love

When you meet hatred, don't reproach the perpetrators with "Why do you hate?" He hates because I don't love enough. If I would double the doses of love, it might overcome his hatred.

Once there was a a great fire in a town and a man came with a cup of water, and threw it onto the fire. The fire continued to blaze. He came back and said, "What stupidity. People believe that water quenches fire. You have seen, I threw water onto the fire and it was not quenched."

He did not know the truth -- a cup of water does not quench fire but many hoses with water quench fire. Christian love, as much as we have it today, does not quench the fire of anti God hatred. So we have to increase our love.

Christ has given us an example of love. He forsook heaven for us, was born in a stable, led a whole life of sorrows, allowed himself to be flogged, spat upon and crucified because He loved. He has given us the freedom, not the freedom to commit wicked things, but the freedom to spend our lives in love.

A torturer repents

I don't have much time to tell you all the beauties of the underground church. I should perhaps tell you just one episode which I have lived. We were in a prison cell; some 30 or 40 prisoners. The door was unlocked and the guards and pushed in a new prisoner. He was dirty like we were. We had not washed ourselves in 3 years. So he was dirty, and we were dirty. He was shorn and had the striped uniform of a prisoner. In the half darkness of the cell we did not recognize him, but at a certain moment, one of us exclaimed, "This is Captain Popescu, I recognize him!"

Captain Popescu had been one of the worst torturers of Christians. He had beaten and tortured even some of us who were now in the same cell with him. We wondered how he had become a prisoner of the communists and how he had been put in a prison cell reserved for Christians. So we surrounded him and asked him his story.

With tears in his eyes, he told us that a few months ago he sat in his office. The soldier on duty knocked at the door and said, "Outside is a boy of 12 or 13 who has a flower for your wife." The captain scratched his head. He did not remember that it was his wife's birthday, but in any case, he allowed the boy to enter.

The boy entered with the flower in his hand, very shy, but very decided, and said, "Comrade Captain, you are the one who has put my father and mother in prison. Today is my mother's birthday. I have the habit every year on this day, out of my little pocket money, to buy a flower for her. Because of you, I have no mother to gladden today. But my mother is a Christian and she taught me since I was a little child to love my enemies and to reward evil with good. Because of you, I have no mother to gladden today, I thought to give joy to the mother of your children. Please take this flower to your wife and tell her about my love and about the love of Christ."

It was too much even for a communist torturer. He was also a creature of God. He also has been enlightened with the light which enlightens every man who comes into this world. He embraced this child. He could not beat any more. He could not torture anymore. He was no longer useful as an officer of the communist secret police. He came to suffer together with the children of God and was happy for this new state.

Believe in love

We have all experienced the love of Christ towards us. Now this Christ, who died and resurrected for us, lives in our hearts and imparts in us this love. The enemies of God can kill us. They cannot kill love. If you tramp on a flower with your boots, the flower rewards you with its perfume.

Let us have before our eyes the love of Christ who saved us. Let us have before our eyes also the love of our brethren who have heavy burdens, thousands of times heavier than our burdens. Continue to simply believe in love.

Let us follow their heroic example. Let a new Christian life start with every one of us. You must not be shallow Christians. You must not be lukewarm Christians. Our love towards Christ can be a full, overflowing one. Amen.

Warmly yours in Christ Jesus,

Richard Wurmbrand

Sponsorship Project

2009-05-06T04:34:00.000-07:00

Once again we insist close to you, to help the needy caned abandoned children from Romania.

It’s absolutely necessary to continue with the founds raising. This project offers to 500 abandoned children the possibility to live a decent life. To Valenii-de-Munte, a priest had created a protection system for the helpless kids, abandoned by their own mothers who gave up the idea of abortion, but who lake the possibility to raise their children. Like this, the life of 40 orphan children is assured in 6 existing houses in Valea Plopului. Other houses have to be established for other 60 children. We want to help the families who accepted 4,5 even 6 children.

Would you accept to sponsorship one or more children-depending on your possibilities?
The proposed monthly rate is of 30$ for one child, which you have to sent to: Aid of the Martyr Churches—14, Avenue du Crochet, Laval, H7N-3Z2, with the specification; for the sponsorship project of Romanian children. Entrust us with your donation, it’s urgent.

For those who want to ârticipate to the of new houses in the village where children will be sheltered, we propose you 1000 dollars donation for one built shelter. The regular donations on a monthly base will be very welcome. In the name of the kids which you will help, thank you in the name of our Lord.

Possess the Truth

2009-04-29T04:01:00.000-07:00

Dear friends and benefactors,

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

Our greatest guest

2009-04-20T04:15:00.000-07:00

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

Easter Message of the Director

2009-04-14T04:14:00.000-07:00

Dear friends and benefactors,

After the period of Great Lent, time of prayer and asceticism, time for sharing, we are coming closer to the time of the painful passion of Christ, which precedes the time of great joy, his Resurrection. We had time to reflect on ourselves, our relations with others, and our relationship to God. In this journey towards the light of the Resurrection, we must listen to the voice of our conscience that tells us to be merciful.

By the time you read this, our envoys will be in Eastern Europe, Romania and Hungary to provide assistance and support to those suffering because of all the social inequalities in these areas. Some rich people, including some individuals of the former torturers, benefit while the vast majority live below the poverty line. We also respond to the invitation for our delegates to participate in meetings of the aid missions involved in these countries so that efforts are coordinated. Our mission will meet friends from different countries who have been helping for years to rebuild a life of faith and a more just society in that region.

Help right now by giving them a gift by calling 450-967-7792. Have your credit card with you.
Thus, you realized in the past acts of faith and of charity while helping our mission to accomplish its projects. All that we undertook is under the sign of your big love! The command of charity is situated in the same heart of our life of faith. Help all these well-loved martyrs, when you bring to them again and again your assistance. Find happiness to give... Put your gifts to the service of these martyrs and God will help you.

We are all concerned about the difficulties of the brothers and sisters of the regions of the Caribbean (Mexico, Ecuador, Haiti), and also from Romanian country, Slovakia, Ukraine, Russia...

Your gifts can create once again, more joy. An illustrated Gospel for children costs $5; the average salary is of $40 a month; a prayer book costs $5; a car costs $5,000 and people cannot pay it. Your gifts can make us much more effective. Help us to contribute again to the reconstruction of faith in these countries deteriorated by extreme poverty and by atheisms!
It is now the privileged moment for us to be ready to help, to bring the joy in the homes and the communities where faith is so low, after so long and so much suffering.

We send our gifts exclusively to the persons in charge of the communities that we know, to the families in suffering and in scarcity of everything, that distribute the gifts. More than a million youth await our gifts and our books. Help us to distribute good to them!

And pray for the success of our apostolate, for we need your prayers! In the expectation of your contribution that we hope will be generous, please receive the thanks of God that awaits your gifts.

Yours, in the service of our Lord,

Rev. Radu Roscanu, director of the Mission

The Turkish yoke

2009-03-30T04:22:00.000-07:00

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”

2009-03-20T04:23:00.000-07:00

“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

2009-03-09T04:30:00.000-07:00

March message

2009-03-05T10:43:00.000-08:00

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

2008 recap

2009-02-27T04:08:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-23T04:17:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-16T04:26:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-11T04:40:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-02T04:24:00.000-08:00

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

Richard Wurmbrand - a small biography for a great man

2009-01-27T08:49:00.001-08:00

Richard Wurmbrand (Bucharest, 24 March 1909 - Glendale, California, 17 February 2001) is one of the largest Christian preachers of the twentieth century, founder of the organization Voice of the Martyrs.

Born to a Jewish family, he spent his childhood in Istanbul. It was 9 years old when his father died and his family returned to Romania in 15 years.

Young, he is interested in Marxism: he went to meetings held secretly by the Romanian Communist Party, then illegal, and went to Moscow to study political science. Pursued by the secret police, he is incarcerated in prison Doftana. He later abandoned his political ideals.

He married in October 1936 with Sabina Oster. He converted to Christianity in 1938 and joined the Anglican mission to convert Jews. After the Second World War, he was ordained Lutheran.

Accused of proselytizing (against the Red Army), he was arrested on 29 February 1948 and his wife, Sabina, in 1950.

Released in 1956, he resumed his sermons, and was again arrested by the Securitate in 1959. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison and was tortured. In 1964, 2 Protestant associations are free Richard Wurmbrand, paying a deposit of $ 10,000.

He now defends the persecuted church. He went to the U.S. Senate in 1965, which reflects the situation.

In 1967, he founded the association Jesus to the Communist World, which later became Voice of the Martyrs, defending the right of Christians in communist countries and Muslims.

He wrote several books in English and Romanian.

Who we are

2009-01-20T04:29:00.000-08:00

St. Basil the Great Greco-Catholic Byzantine is to-day a Pan-Orthodox Parish of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

The languages and culture of this Orthodox Parish are Canadian, proper to the Canada’s human environment, as: French, English and Romanian. This is a first one for the city of Ottawa.
It opened its doors on January 30, 1994, in Ottawa.

The opening day was an act of trust in God's desire to plant a presence of the Orthodox Faith, Hope and Love in that neighbourhood.

In 2005 we moved out of Ottawa, to Laval – 14th Avenue du Crochet, Quebec, H7N 3Z2.
Here we joined the Mission Aid to the Martyr Churches (Canada) Inc. and the Holy Transfiguration Greco-Catholic Byzantine Parish in Montreal.

This environment helps us to concentrate our efforts in front to develop our projects and accommodate all our needs. All the work in the building, including the chapel, was done by volunteers.

Holy Transfiguration Greco-Catholic Byzantine is to-day a Pan-Orthodox Parish of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

It opened its doors on January 30, 1992, in Montreal.

The Parish uses the chapel of the rectory and supports also the work done at the St. Basil the Great Parish.

The languages and culture of this Orthodox Parish are Canadian, proper to the Quebecer’s human environment, as: French, English and Romanian. This is a first one for the city of Laval.
Sunday office:

11.30 a.m. Divine Liturgy/Reader Service
Followed by Agape meal
For confession, Church’s sacraments or for discussion with a priest, call Father Radu Roscanu at tel.: 450-967-7792
The Mission Aid to the Martyr Churches (Canada) Inc. is at this time the only charitable intercultural inclusive Mission in Laval and Montreal.

The Mission opened its doors in 1988, in Montreal.

The opening day was an act of trust in God's desire to bring help to the poor, the sick, the people persecuted for their faith. Many projects were accomplished throughout the Eastern Europe, Africa and Central America.

There is much work to be done. The hungry need food, the lost need purpose, the sad need comfort, but the heart of all we do is the place of intimacy with God who is Trinity.
St. Basil the Great Parish, as well as Holy Transfiguration Parish, and Aid to the Martyr Churches Mission are all incorporated as non-profit charitable corporations and issues tax receipts.

Since twenty years, the Mission had had strong local roots, while fostering a concrete solidarity with the persecuted and poor not only in our area, but throughout the world, especially in Eastern European countries, in Caribbean countries and in Africa.

Our life has been also centered on prayer. In order to truly be present to those who need our help, one needs to know how to live in the presence of God. Prayer is our means to do a work rooted in our faith,

The Very Rev. Radu Roscanu is the founder and the priest of the Mission.

Aid to the Martyr Churches (Canada) Inc.
Mission
14, Avenue du Crochet, Laval, Qc,
H7N 3Z2
Tel: 450-967 7792; Fax : 450 669 5016
www.entraidefraternelle.com
Charitable Registrations: # 89328 1832 RR 0001

For more information please visit us at www.brotherlyhelp.com and www.entraidefraternelle.com.

Living in jail with God

2009-01-10T10:22:00.000-08:00

Dear brothers and sisters,

"Walk in the Spirit..." (Galatians 5:16)

I am sorry I would have liked to paint the beautiful shining faces of Christians in Communist jail Their faces shone, and it was quite an achievement for the glory of God to shine on the face of a Christian in Communist jails. We did not wash (I had not washed in three years), but the glory of God can shine even from behind a crust of dirt. They had triumphant smiles on their faces.

I know about Christians who were released from Communist prisons. I was one who was stopped several times on the street by passers-by asking, "Sir, what is it in you? You look like such a happy man. What is the source of your happiness’?" I told them that I came from many years in Communist jails.

They could not understand this because they could not think beyond the difficulties of their own lives. They had not learned to walk in the Spirit and to experience the presence of God. So many would think, "If only you knew what a life I have - a husband who batters me, a wife who nags, children who break my heart - there are so many things." There are many material difficulties, tempests in your soul. I know these difficulties exist.

Horev was a Russian Christian who was in jail for many years. His father died in the same jail. Horev wrote in a letter, which he smuggled out from prison, that he was placed in a cell with common criminals. What they did to Christians is unimaginable.

The criminals beat Horev until lie fell unconscious. When he came to, he heard them talking among themselves, "We should grease some rope and hang him tonight." The others refused, because that was too complicated. They had better cut his throat and then place the bloody knife in his hand so it would look like suicide. That was the talk among them. You could believe it, because they did these things.

Then, walking in the Spirit, Horev envisioned another world for himself and said, "How beautiful it will be after they have cut my throat." He saw the angels receiving him, taking him in their armsto bring him to the bosom of Abraham. He saw himself encountering the martyrs of old. He enjoyed these things. He slept the whole night very quietly.

The next day, the criminals again beat him, and in the evening they talked about killing him. Horev said to himself, "But my father has died in this place. What an honor for me, and what a joy for my father, that I was not afraid and that I walked in his footsteps and will see Jesus." In thinking about this world that he envisioned for himself, he slept again quietly. It continued on like this until the eighteenth day, when he was moved from that jail. What he wrote is so beautiful: "I had to leave the cell. The criminal who had intended to cut my throat came to me, shook my hand, and said, "Truly, there is something supernatural in you."

What in the world does a criminal know about the supernatural? Horev was a page of the Bible, "an epistle of Christ ...written not with ink, but by the Spirit of the Living God" (2 Corinthians 3:3). The criminal knew from Horev, not from the Bible, that Horev belongs to Another. He has a divine nature. "There must be a God," the criminal said. "Every time we spoke about you, you were asleep and we did not think that you heard us. You kept your eyes closed. Why did you not jump at us? How could you sleep quietly and peacefully? Only one who really believes in eternal life can do this."

The criminal continued, "When you were taken for walk in the prison yard, you could have reported to the guard about us and requested to be placed in another cell. That is what is usually done, but you never did it. Why’? Why did you come back? Why did you not seek help with any man except with your God? Why did you pray on your knees every morning and every evening? You knew that we could kill you, as we have killed so many. Why did you give yourself quietly every day into our hands’? This is incomprehensible for us. Really, you have something supernatural in you." Once again he shook Horev’s hand and that is how they parted.

Horev did not live in this world.

We all expect that Jesus will come again and rapture us to heaven. No one will be raptured, I can assure you, if Christ hasn't raptured his heart already. No one will be in heaven if he is not in heaven already, if he does not live here in an entirely different world than the material world that surrounds us.

So whatever your circumstances - which initial be terrible for some of you - don't live this life. Live the new life, the eternal life, the timeless life, to which we are called by Jesus.

We were in prison cells with believers sentenced to death. As often as the door was unlocked, the prisoner did not know if he would be taken to a bath, to an interrogation or to be shot. Yet there was such a peace. There was no difference for him because lie knew he had eternal life.

I belong to the family of God. I have the nature of God. Because I also have the nature of a man, I know I may live sixty or eighty years. Since I have the nature of God, who in the world can kill me? Men can change only my outward form, but I will live in other circumstances.

We saw this peace - the peace of those who understood that godly nature - and I plead with you for this. You have your difficulties. You have your crosses. Trust in the God who makes faces to shine and know that in Him you have eternal life.

Sincerely,

Pastor Richard Wurmbrand

In memory of Julien Harvey

2008-12-29T04:16:00.000-08:00

With tears in our eyes, we give you a precious gift. The most generous appreciation ever made to our Mission made by a great Canadian friend, Father Julien Harvey:

"The disciples decided to send, each one according to his meant help to the brethren from Judaea, what they did by sending this help to the ancients through the intervention of Barnabas and Saul. "

Acts 11. 29-30

Jesus dedicated all his public life to giving credibility to the good news which he heralded. He did it mostly by becoming the consolation and the healer of everybody around him. So that his life could be resumed by saying that he was a man of good deeds.

When Paul began, some years after Jesus, to announce the same good news outside of Israel, he immediately understood that the Gospel would not be received if the young Churches did not realize that they were welcomed by the mother Church of Jerusalem. And simultaneously Paul had to demand the Jerusalem Church that the young Churches coming from the nations were their brothers and sisters. This explains Paul’s concern about his collections of money in Rome, in Corinth and elsewhere (see Rom. 15, 26; 1st Cor. 16~ 1). He cared to bring them himself to the elders in Jerusalem, so that nothing could be lost of the generosity of the brethren.

In this first century world where so few communications existed, where a stranger was a foe, where war was the normal situation between states or between cities, this intervention was certainly considered as strange and all of Paul’s prestige was needed to realize this sharing of help. And we know through the history of the first centuries of Christianity that this significant gesture was continued after Paul.

This apostolic tradition is what the Aid to the Martyr Churches is continuing. The Churches in material difficulty can continue to believe and to hope if we make visible the brotherly love of the more prosperous Churches. Much has been done in the past by the Churches which created our own Canadian Church, much is being done in our day because the message of Jesus, his message of brotherly love and of equality has been poorly accepted in our word. To the point that we always have to be critical to avoid our replacing justice by charity.

When however the asking for help comes from the Eastern Churches, we can be more secure about this last question. The Soviet block was so careful to isolate itself during the last 75 years that we do not have to ask ourselves whether its difficulties come from our commercial relationship or not. Its violent actions to suppress the faith have failed, but the consequences must now be repaired: ruined social institutions, Churches destroyed or needing basic repairs after years of neglect or of non-religious use, support personnel needing recycling or basic training. Generations of clandestinity have kept the faith alive and even have strengthened it. But a return to open Church life now requires our help in personnel and financing. Some initiatives are presently in action. I think for example of the Ukrainian Church, which is so strongly helped by its American and Canadian diaspora. Other Churches are poorer as the Churches of Romania, of Bulgaria or of Hungary. Those are precisely the ones which the Aid to the Martyr Churches helps. And as in the Pauline collections, the organization is very modest and needs practically no administration costs to bring help to the communities in financial difficulty. I can verify for example that the head responsible, Reverend Father Radu Roscanu, does not have to pay for his trips to Romania, that his office is in his residence, that the present contact bulletin is multigraphed .

I personally know many people who think that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Iron Curtain have put and end to the persecution and to the financial misery of the Eastern Churches. Unhappily, it is not the reality. Compensations for the damages have been claimed, but up to now they have been without result. And getting out of the socialist regime is visibly painful after so many years of isolation and of neglect. The consequence is that collaboration is needed more than ever before. I like to insist on the fact that the renewal is well planned and does not try to build monuments nor to reanimate a pre-conciliar Church.

Another important aspect which must be considered when we listen to the call of the Churches in need is the fact that they are Oriental catholic Churches, most of them of the Byzantine rite: Bulgarian, Romenian, Hungarian, Ruthenian, Slovaks, Italo-Albanian. It means that they preserve in the Church very precious traditions, which the Latin rite does not keep so visibly: synodal government, resistance to closed national Churches, treasures of prayer, of liturgy and of mystical experience, admirable religious arts, celibate and married priesthood, ancient deacons ministry, contemplative communities. All of us have seen that where the violent regime of the USSR has fallen, the fall was preceded by nights of prayer, by candles on the sidewalk! It is a grace to us Christians to have many witnesses of the memory of Jesus, for example the four Gospels.

The Eastern Churches play the same role, to help us avoid reducing the ways to follow Jesus, while remaining one Church.

And we must not forget the challenge of the other Oriental Churches, the Orthodox ones, which have been separated from Rome almost a thousand years ago (1054). Pope John Paul has expressed many times his desire to see them reunited before the year 2000. We are very close to it now, and we may doubt that the Pope’s wish will be realized. But the witnessing of our brotherhood will certainly make it more possible.

Julien Harvey, S.J.

With God in Solitary Confinement

2008-12-22T04:13:00.000-08:00

Dear brothers and sisters

... When we hear the cries of someone being beaten, all the others begin to bang on their doors, crying: «Help! Help! Stop beating!» There is nobody to hear us, except those who are beating and who now, instead of beating only one, beat us all up, one alter the other. You hear the doors being unlocked. Now it is the fourth prisoner to my right. Follows the third. I have only two left. Then I hear the cries of my nearest neighbour. Only two or three minutes left - how long these minutes are - and then I will be beaten, too. What is the sense of a collective protest here? What is the sense of expressing your solidarity with those who are beaten? It is non-sense, which means that it is pure love. Love does not think about what it will achieve, what it will gain. Love does not think at all. Love does not tare about reason. Why should it?

If we are to love our enemies, why should we not love reason, that bitter critic, too? We can succeed in doing this. But we shall never persuade reason to love love. Reason considered Jesus and Paul to be madmen. My reason condemns me as mad, too.

This time I attained a paroxysm of unreasonableness. When the guards entered to give me my share of the beating I jumped at one of them and kicked him. I am so thin. They are so many. It was foolish. Reason tells me: "Christ taught you to turn the other cheek." I answer: "Shut up! I have to turn the other cheek when I am slapped, not when my brother is tortured and my whole nation is oppressed: "

Now I am punished to stay, I don’t know for how long, in a cell I have known about for some time. It is full of dozens of rats which, being hungry, jump around, not allowing me to deep.

I have just passed the first hours here. I am not tired. I watch the rats and am reminded of Heisenberg’s law of the indeterminacy of elementary particles. (How foolish to think about physics in such circumstances.) When you bail water, you know that the mass of molecules as a whole enters into quicker movement. But what each single molecule will do is unpredictable. Some continue to move at the old speed, and some even slow down their movements. I observe the same thing happening with the rats. I had thought about them as a species. But rats are also individuals, and each one has a character of its own. Some are running around looking for food which does not exist. Some are trying to gnaw the rags I have on my feet. I don’t even drive them away. Some are gnawing their own tails. Some seem litre philosophers, resigned. They sit quietly and await for their death. They have given up the search.

Dear rats! It is written: "The young lions roar after their prey, and seek their meat from God." And God gives them their meat. Sometimes he gives them as meat the bodies of his saints. And why not? If a saint eats the meat of a guiltless lamb in a religious ceremony, why should not his own turn come, and his own guiltless life be eaten up by a lion? Shouldn’t you, rats, also seek your meat from God? I used to recite in church every Sunday that God is the maker of ail things, visible and invisible. So he is your maker too, although I don’t see the slightest reason why rats should exist. But neither do the Communists see any reason why Wurmbrand should exist. God’s thoughts are not my thoughts.

Richard Wurmbrand

Kingdom of God

2008-12-16T04:27:00.000-08:00

Dear friends and benefactors,

Greetings from our Laval!

Our missionaries are now back, arriving precisely from the Caribbean Countries and from Central America. Thank you, on behalf of the One who will be born soon in the stable in Bethlehem, thank to all those among you who responded to our needs and helped us to complete our projects, by providing assistance to the poor and to the persecuted.

Remember also that the Aid to the Martyr Churches’ mission, celebrates this year - twenty years since its existence, and since it became its charitable work in Quebec. Its results have been mentioned everywhere where we brought help, and this encourages us to continue our work.

Dear friends and benefactors,

The Lord compares the kingdom of God to a mustard seed, to leaven, to a sower

and to a treasure hidden in the earth. This suggests that the list of objects with which we can compare the kingdom of God is really infinite.

We can therefore say that the Kingdom of God is like the mission of the Aid to the Martyr Churches, speaking since twenty years about the Brotherly Help of the churches, which made now its entrance on your computer screen. It gives you the fruit of the hard work of volunteers who carry out an apostolic spirit in countries where still exists an atrocious persecution, against some human groups, or where humiliated human suffering makes necessary research, analysis of needs, projects to help the sick, the persecuted, the marginalized, the elderly in danger...

The kingdom of God is similar to those anonymous men and women who, through our mission work for developing assistance to some ruined villages, for developing of national and religious dilapidated heritages, or by printing and publishing books that can bring help morally and constitute sources of lifeblood of the Word of God.

The kingdom of God is you, because it is thanks to you that all this things could happen; thanks to your prayers, thanks to your donations and almsgiving that you offer as previously for those brothers and sisters who are oppressed. And also, for the suffering, the sick, for the sentenced to die by unjust actions taken by powerful oligarchs and by the evil spirit reigning in the world.

During this feast of the Nativity, think to our neighbour. Let us make a generous donation to bring him help, feeding, clothing, and medical care. Giving alms is also to increase the kingdom of God, to spread it with your own benefits. Be generous; bring help upon your means, 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!

May the Lord be born in your heart and do grow His kingdom.

Sincerely yours in Christ, and with the gratitude of the people of God who awaits your donations.

S. Prodan, director of Mission,

Rev. R. Roscanu missionary

Thank you in the name of God.

My body is so tired, my God

2008-12-09T12:32:00.001-08:00

My body is so tired, my God. It’s wearing out. It has served me well, carrying me through this world with great care and service. And now I know that my bones and muscle and all my substance are weakened by the inevitable passage of time.

I thank you for my body, for all that it has done for me in this world. I thank you for all the blessing that have come to me through my senses and physical awareness, for the many things I’ve seen, touched, and known.

I thank you for the strength I’ve had, for the ability to work and move and do many of the things I’ve wanted and chosen to do. I thank you too for play and pleasure, for the enjoyment of so many of your tangible gifts.

I thank you for my ability to think, to reason, to appreciate, to be aware. When my time has come, my loving God, receive me and help me to release my body with gratitude and love. Thank you, God, for my body, wonderfully made and gratefully lived in.

Even though I walk in the dark valley, I fear no evil; for you are at my side.
(Psalm 23:4)

It Was Christmas Eve

2008-12-01T04:31:00.000-08:00

Dear brothers and sisters,

"You must be born again" (John 3:7).

Let me tell you about a man who was in prison with me. Dimitri was a pastor whose backbone had been beaten with a hammer. When certain vertebra was hit, he was paralysed so that he could move only his neck.

You can imagine what a tragedy this was. If he had been in a home or hospital, he would have had a wife, mother, or nurse to take care of him. How would we take care of him? There was no running water to wash him, no linen to change him. He lay there in his human waste. He could not stretch out his hands to drink a cup of water. The others who could walk and work were taken to slave labour during the day. When they came back in the evening, he had to wait for them to help him drink a cup of water. He lay like this in prison for a couple of years. It was hell an earth.

Then in December 1989 Romania had a revolution and the dictator Ceausescu was overturned. Freedom came and Dimitri was released from prison to be with his family and friends. No doctor could help him, but now he had loving hands to help him. He still could not move hand or foot.

One day someone knocked at his door. It was the Communist who had crippled him. He said, "Sir, don’t believe that I have come to ask forgiveness from you. For what I have done, there is no forgiveness, not on earth or in heaven. You are not the only one I have tortured like this. You cannot forgive me; nobody can forgive me. Not even God! My crime is much too great. I have come only to tell you that I am sorry about what I have done. From you I go to hang myself. That is all.’ He turned to leave.

The paralysed Brother Dimitri said to him, "Sir, in all these years I have not been so sorry as I am now, that I cannot move my arms. I would like to stretch them cut to you and embrace you. For years I have prayed for you every day. I love you with all of my heart. You are forgiven."

Dimitri had learned love from Jesus, who called Judas "friend", who prayed for those who crucified Him, and who accepted Saul of Tarsus, the persecutor, and made him an apostle.

Our faith in Jesus means imitating Him. Jesus, as often as He met a sinner, did not reproach him. He took that man’s sin upon Himself and suffered on the cross for the sin. I could tell you many stories of others like Dimitri.

At one point in prison, I felt very sick. I had tuberculosis, diabetes; heart problems, jaundice, and I don’t know how many other kinds of sicknesses. I was near death. There was in that prison a cell reserved only for the dying. I am the only one who has survived that cell. I was in that room for over three years and came out on my feet to tell the story. It is a story not only of suffering, but also of so much beauty.

To my right side was a pastor by the name of Iscu. He had been so badly beaten and tortured that he lay dying. He was so quiet. He knew where he was going. Whenever he opened his mouth, he gave gems. In Hebrew the word TO TELL or TO SAY does not exist. The Hebrew word for SAY or TELL means SAPPHIRE, A GEM. TO SAY in Jewish means TO GIVE A GEM. If you open your mouth, give a gem. There may be times when you are sad or angry. Keep silent and wait for the moment when you can give a gem. Iseu gave gems when he spoke. He spoke about the beauties of heaven and the love of Jesus. His body was still an earth, at my right side, but mentally he was already in heaven.

On my left side was the Communist who had tortured him to the brink of death. The government had arrested their own comrade and tortured him. Now he too was near death. During the night, he would awaken, "Please, pastor, say a prayer for me. I have committed such crimes. I cannot die."

What I witnessed next was a scene from heaven (you need not be in heaven to see heaven). The agonizing pastor called two other prisoners to help him and, leaning an them, he very slowly passed my bed and sat down an the bedside of his torturer. Iscu caressed his torturer on his head. I will never forget the scene.

This was the man who had so beaten Iscu that now he waited for death, and Iseu caressed him. He said, "I have forgiven you with all of my heart and I love you. If I who am only a sinner can love and forgive you, more so can Jesus who is the Son of God and who is love incarnate. Return to Him. He longs for you much more than you long for Him. He wishes to forgive you much more than you wish to be forgiven. You just repent." In that prison setting where there was no place for intimacy, I overheard this torturer confess all of his murders to the tortured one. Then they prayed together and embraced each other.

Slowly, slowly, the pastor was helped to his deathbed. They both died the same night. It was Christmas Eve, but not a Christmas Eve at which you celebrate one who was born 2,000 years ago, far away in Bethlehem. Jesus had been born that very evening in the heart of a criminal.

This is what Jesus can do for you. I hope that I do not speak in vain. When I have a gem, I speak. This is the gem I have for you today. Jesus loves you and waits to be born in your heart.

God bless you,

Richard Wurmbrand

Message for the Advent

2008-11-25T04:20:00.000-08:00

Dear friends and benefactors,

Greetings from Laval! I hope this finds you well and enjoying these days of the Advent.

Thanks to those of you who have responded to our needs for our projects bringing our help to the poor and persecuted.

Our mission is celebrating its twenty years’ history in Quebec. Its aim is to practice charity. Our commitment does not fall solely to a moral system, to a humanist philosophy, or to a political ideology, because it is situated at a different level, the level of faith that gives meaning to our activity. In the parable of Last Judgement, the Christ, when He says that what we do to our neighbour is to Himself that we have done, He does not propose a categorical imperative, but He identifies him – self to the poor, to the smallest of His brothers. By serving him, we serve God. And that is what we translate into reality.

By that, we do what the apostle Paul himself did. He collected donations from churches situated far from the first church in Jerusalem and brought them to Jerusalem. We also collect donations from our friends and benefactors from here, and distribute them to the poor, sick, ignored, victims or to those who are hatred and discriminated here or elsewhere. We know that every being is created upon God's image, upon the image of Trinity, and precisely because he is created upon God's image, he can not be performed in autonomy but just in relation to the other one, to his neighbour.

"We are asked, wrote the bishop Kallistos Ware, to reproduce on earth the movement of the shared love, of mutual self-giving, of solidarity, of dialogue and reciprocity, as it exists eternally in the Trinity ".

In that way, we help to install the solidarity with the neighbour. My neighbour is my brother, is that the one that I meet in every step I make, the one that I try to avoid but he don’t let me to do that. As far as I try to run away, I always catch me up, he is here, he looks, he queries, he ask, he beg, mostly without words.

My neighbour is also the one who makes me uncomfortable by the intensity of his distress. "I was a stranger and you welcomed me," The Lord protects the stranger...

The theme from the stranger is common in the Bible, in Psalms, in the Gospel. How many times "you shall love the alien" is in the Bible? Thirty-six times, and, maybe forty-six or fifty-six? Regardless, after all, because the bottom line is this: try every moment to invent the living relationship with our neighbour to do more for us "whoever wants to deceive us, take us" but a beloved of God, rich in its history, his culture, his conscience, his faith, we want to meet him, to know him, to serve him.

In this time of Advent, think to our neighbour. Let you make a generous donation to help him with food, clothing, and medical care if he is sick, to consolate him if he languishes in prisons. Our mission is to receive your generous donations in order to transmit them to the most suffering of our brethren.

Give us the possibility to bring help to those in need.

May the Christ be born in your heart!

Thank you in the name of God.

Yours in Christ,

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

Believe in God, no matter what

2008-11-21T04:39:00.000-08:00

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

A legend says that Moses once sat near a well in meditation. A wayfarer stopped to drink from the well and when he did so his purse fell from his girdle into the sand.

The man departed. Shortly afterwards another man passed near the well, saw the purse and picked it up. Later a third man stopped to assuage his thirst and went to sleep in the shadow of the well.

Meanwhile, the first man had discovered that his purse was missing and assuming that he must have lost it at the well, returned, awoke the sleeper (who of course knew nothing) and demanded his money back. An argument followed, and irate, the first man slew the latter.

Where upon Moses asked God, "You see, therefore men do not believe you. There is too much evil and injustice in the world. Why should the first man have lost his purse and then become a murderer? Why should the second have gotten a purse full of gold without having worked for it? The third was completely innocent. Why was he slain?"

God answered, "For once and only once, I will give you an explanation. I cannot do it at every step. The first man was a thief’s son. The purse contained money stolen by his father from the father of the second man, who finding the purse only found what was due him. The third was a murderer whose crime had never been revealed and who recieved from the first the punishment he deserved. In the future believe that there is sense and righteousness in what transpires even when you do not understand."

Yours in Christ,

Richard Wurmbrand

Our greatest guest

2008-11-12T04:29:00.000-08:00

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

I am tired

2008-11-05T04:26:00.001-08:00

Those who suffer will reign

2008-10-27T04:16:00.000-07:00

We suffer, we shall also reign with him... (2, Tim. 2:12)

Dear brothers and sisters,

When the Soviet army invaded my homeland, Romania, a Russian officer entered into the house of a priest and shouted him:

He said,

The Russian officer took out his revolver, pointed it at the pastor and said,

The priest did not know what would happen. He thought in a minute he could be shot; but he was a faithful priest and said,

The officer put back his revolver, embraced the priest, and said,

In Communist and Islamic countries so many Christians have been given the choice to live, denying the Gospel; and then to go to hell (2, Tim. 2:12). Or better to die affirming the truth of the Gospel and go to heaven. We have the Gospel. We have also the duty to witness its truth to others. If we neglect this our responsability, will we not be in the situation of the men in Beth-shemesh who had the Ark of the Covenant? (1, Sam.6:19). They could have had so many blessings, not only heavenly, but earthly blessings because the Ark of the Covenant was with them. They did not understand their privilege.

I speak in the name of The Voice of the Martyrs. We smuggle Gospels into Communist and Islamic countries. Here was a great debate when we started smuggling. Christians were divided. Some said you should not smuggle. Others said nobody can forbid the Word of God in the world of God. So some were for and some were against. We never entered into the debate. We did not say a word for it. We did not say a word against it. We smuggled.

We continue today to bring Gospels into closed countries.

Our mission sent a Canadian to Russia. He was of Russian descent and spoke fluent Russian. He was in a train and opposite him was a Russian farmer. The Russian farmer saw he was a foreigner, and asked him where he was from. The man replied . He was asked if he had ever read a Gospel. Our courrier said,

Then the farmer asked him a hard gripping question, he said,

“I have been told 20 years ago such a verse exists. The sun gives light. It gives warmth. It gives life. I would like that my life should not be thrown away. It should be useful as the sun is useful to every living being. I would like to shine like the sun, but I have been told the promise is only to the righteous. The righteous will shine like the sun and I don’t know how to become righteous. Could you please tell me how I can become righteous?”

Then our brother said, Then the Russian asked,

There are so many in this world who thirst after the Word of God. We have it. We have it in all its richness. We can have many Gospels. Much of mankind cannot have a Gospel. Is it right? Does the Gospel not say that we should be the light of the world? The light communicates itself to others. Go, be My witness. Teach. Spread the Word. We have not done it and over half the population of the world is under Godless government.

We are very much like the men in Beth-shemesh who had what nobody else in the whole world had. They were the only ones to have the Ark of the Covenant with the Ten Commandments and the blessing of God connected with it. They scorned what they had. They did not know to use well their privilege. In the end they lost it as we might lose it.

How great this gift is. We have 1200 pages in all kinds of translations and interpretations. Nations are starving for the Word of God. We have it. We don’t value it. We are like those in Beth-shemesh. Value your Gospel. When you ponder it, see that it speaks about the eternal faith of souls.

The Russians have souls. The Chinese have souls and the Mongolians, the Koreans, Vietnamese and Sudanese. Ask yourself,

In our body we have also one of the smallest glands - the lacrymal gland. The gland which gives tears. Probably God wishes us to weep. To weep is a Christian obligation. In Romans 12 it is written, That is a commandment of God. Weep.

When strive to do this, but the same God who has said these things has said,

There are so many who weep to have a Gospel. Weep together with them and join hands with us to help them.

In Christ,

Richard Wurmbrand

Believe in God, no matter what

2008-10-21T04:24:00.000-07:00

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

A legend says that Moses once sat near a well in meditation. A wayfarer stopped to drink from the well and when he did so his purse fell from his girdle into the sand.

The man departed. Shortly afterwards another man passed near the well, saw the purse and picked it up.

Later a third man stopped to assuage his thirst and went to sleep in the shadow of the well. Meanwhile, the first man had discovered that his purse was missing and assuming that he must have lost it at the well, returned, awoke the sleeper (who of course knew nothing) and demanded his money back.

An argument followed, and irate, the first man slew the latter. Where upon Moses asked God, "You see, therefore men do not believe you. There is too much evil and injustice in the world. Why should the first man have lost his purse and then become a murderer? Why should the second have gotten a purse full of gold without having worked for it? The third was completely innocent. Why was he slain?"

God answered, "For once and only once, I will give you an explanation. I cannot do it at every step. The first man was a thief’s son. The purse contained money stolen by his father from the father of the second man, who finding the purse only found what was due him. The third was a murderer whose crime had never been revealed and who recieved from the first the punishment he deserved. In the future believe that there is sense and righteousness in what transpires even when you do not understand."

Yours in Christ,

Richard Wurmbrand

Grace of God

2008-10-14T13:16:00.000-07:00

Are we good? Are we seasoning the meals of others? Are we giving flavor to other men’s lives? Or do we leave them without salt, as we prisoners were once left without salt? The simple fact that the Gospel calls us salt is not enough.

How do we become good? We have to rely utterly on the grace of God. You become good when you make the great discovery that you are not good, and can never be so. Then you ask God to make you so. The result is that you die, and Christ comes to live within you. All of his righteousness and goodness as you are to proclaim yourself the owner of any estate that you have inherited or been given legally as a gift. Either all the Christians have been fools, or a Christian can say to Jesus, “You are me!” or like Luther in his commentary on Galatians, “A Christian is Christ”.

Now, how should I proceed practically to be not me, but Him? The Gospel speaks about the foolishness of the cross, even about the foolishness of God. So let us learn from the madmen.

There are madmen eho believe that they are others. Each behaves according to what he reckons himself to be. The man who thinks he is Napoleon will put on a tricorn hat and curse the English for having defeated him at Waterloo. Those who think they are St. Francis will fast and pray a great deal and speak holy phrases, even if they do not make sense. The man who reckons himself to be Churchill will always carry a thick cigar in his mouth and talk about politics. What you reckon yourself to be determines your behavior.

Faithfully consider yourself what so many other saints have considered themselves to be: you are He - Christlike.

This mad presupposition will have the same result as with other madmen. More and more, you will come to behave like Him. As Paul said, “For me to live is Christ”.

It requires faith to believe yourself to be He, when you are a sinner. But what do we really know about the lives of the prophets, from Isaiah to Malachi? We know their prophecies, not their virtues and failures. You become a child of God by faith, by virtues and by good deeds.

Have this faith in Him, and the salt can never lose its saltness. You will become the unalterable formula of “goodness”.

By faith, lay down your own life completely. Deny the self. Cease to “practice” its virtues as much as its lusts. You have been crucified with Christ, and have suffered the fate of every crucified man: you have died. Yet you live. Since you exist after having died, you must have been born again, this time not from an earthly union; you are begotten from God. You are once again a child, an “angel”. You have been born with a new, angelic, divine character.

The priority of repentance

2008-10-06T04:30:00.000-07:00

“Who among you, if he has a hundred sheep and loses one of them does not leave the ninety-nine in the wasteland and follow the lostone until he finds it?” Lk 15:4

Almost half of the Catholics in the USA and Canad are not practicing their faith. They don’t even go to Mass on Sunday. They are “fallen-away”. Yet, almost all church personnel, finances, and activities are directed to the ones who have not fallen away.

The shepherds of the church today certainly don’t leave ninety-nine Christians and go to find a lost one. Therefore, Jesus’ idea of leaving the many in order to seek the one seems strange to us.

Jesus has this “funny” idea because He putsa much higher priority on repentance than we do. According to Mark’s Gospel, “Repent” is the first command Jesus gives in His public ministry (Mk 1:15).

Calling us to repentance is such a high priority for Jesus, paul was even happy that the Corinthians were sorrowful since “sorrow for God’s sake produces a repentance without regrets, leading to salvation” (2 Cor 7:10). “There will likewise be more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need to repent” (Lk 15:7).

Repent. Go to Confession. Give Jesus and all heaven cause to rejoice.

Theophore

Tell the Gospel to Others

2008-10-01T04:23:00.000-07:00

By Richard Wrumbrand

Our dearly beloved,

“Go into all the world and preach the Gospel” (Mark 16:15)

The “world” into which the apostles were ordered to go eas not very big. They had no idea about the existence of the Americas, Japan, Norway or South Africa. They and their immediate successors did the best they could in the small world they knew.

When my wife, Sabina and I were converted in a tiny church in Romania, we knew nothing about the existence of world missions. When we read this verse, we thought we were beginning to fulfill its mandate by visiting Sabina’s family in the little town of Czernowitz to tell them about Jesus.

They were an Orthodox Jewish family, and we arrived on Sabbath eve. Her parents Elias and Rebecca, her three younger sisters, and her little brother received us with love.

At the meal, I was asked to sing the prescribed prayers and hymns in Hebrew. Having prepared myself for this, I was able to perform well.

Then we told them what happened to us: Previously we had both fallen away from Judaism, in fact, from any belief in God, but now a miracle had taken place. Some goyim (Gentiles) who had become Jews inwardly through faith in Jesus, whom they called “Messiah” and “King of the Jews,” had shared with us their belief. We had never known before that Jesus was ours, but now we had found salvation through Him. He brought us back to God and also to our Jewish people.

“He is the Messiah”, we assured my wife’s family.We had feared that we might be chased from their house for what we were telling them, but the contrary happened. My mother-in-law Rebecca knelt with us in prayer to Jesus that same evening. Encouraged by her example, Sabina’s younger sisters also accepted Jesus. The next week they went to church. My father-in-law encouraged them to walk in the new way.

Prayer had accomplished this miracle. It has opened doors of brass.

For Sabina and me this was our first missionary trip. Others followed. Eventually we were both jailed and sent from one prison and forced labor camp to another. There Christians were forbidden to preach, but they drew aside the veil that often covers Christ’s beauty on the faces of believers. It was a very useful and beautiful time.

After 30 years of missionary work in Romania, interrupted by 14 years in prison, we came to the USA, where Christians who heard our message formed this mission. Today we spread the message of the persecuted church in 70 countries through the printed page, radio, and personal testimonies. We thank all of you who have made this possible.

Still, we are not satisfied. We want to reach the whole world. Yet we tell no one, “Leave your religion or your lack of religion and take mine instead.” Rather, we say, “Consider your ways” (Hag.1:7). Enter in silence, in quietness. Then you will hear a gentle knock at the door of your heart. It is the knock of the heavenly Bridegroom, who wishes your soul to be His bride.

The message of the Cross

2008-09-24T04:42:00.000-07:00

To the sick and gasping even wholesome meats are unpleasant, friends and relations burdensome, who are oftentimes not even recognized, but are rather accounted intruders. Much like this often is the case of those who are perishing in their souls.

For the things which tend to salvation they do not know; and those who are careful about them they consider to be troublesome. Now this things which tend to salvation they do not know; and those who are careful about them they consider to be not know; and those who are careful about them they consider to be troublesome.

Now this does not ensue from the nature of the thing, but from their disease. And just what the insane do, hating those who take care of them and reviling them, the same is the case with unbelievers also...

This is the nature of the thing, that its power is not recognized by those who perish. For they are beside themselves... But what do you say, O man? Christ became a slave for you, `having taken the form of a slave,` and was crucified, and rose again.

And when you ought for this reason to adore Him risen and admire His lovingkindness, because what neither father, nor friend, nor son did for you, all this the Lord wrought for you. For suppose a man, wished to make out all things by reasoning, let him try by your discourse to convince himself how we see the light... No, you cannot...

Therefore, leaving this to God’s power and boundless wisdom, let us be silent. Just so with regard to the things of God, should we desire to explain them by the wisdom which is from without, great dreision will ensue... from the folly men. For the greatest things of all no language can explain...

Do not say then, Why did He not help Himself on the Cropss? For He was hastening on to close conflict with death himself. He did not descend from the Cross, not because He could not, but because He would not.

For Him Whom the tyranny of death did not restrain, how could the nails of the Cross restrain? ...What sort of philosopher, among those who have studied logic, of those knowledgable in Jewish matters, has saved us and made known the truth? Not one.

It was the fisherman’s work, the whole of it... But how did He`destroy wiosdom?`Being made known to us by Paul and others like him, He showed it to be unprofitable...

For he means to say how by contraries God has overcome, and how the Gospel is not of man.

St. John Chrysostom

Patience in asking

2008-09-14T08:43:00.000-07:00

Christ said, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."

He thus commanded us to ask, and pledged Himself to the giving. But this implies asking earnestly and sincerely, putting all other things out of our minds.

He also urges patience, warning that the door may not open immediately, but that we should persist in our knocking.

If you continue asking, though the answer is not there at once, you surely will receive. This was why the door was shut - that you would take the initiative to knock.

The answer will come. Would you, as a father, respond with a stone when your son asks for bread? Consider that if you persist in asking, yet receive not, maybe you are asking for a stone.

The fact you are the son does not assure that you will be asking for something worthy. So ask for nothing worldly. Being a son can, in fact, work to your disadvantage, since you may then be more likely to ask for that which does not have merit.

There are two essentials to effective prayer: 1) that you pray earnestly, and 2) that you ask that which you ought to ask.

If you claim to have asked for spiritual benefits, but did not receive, it is because you did not "knock at the door" with sufficient earnestness, or you have in other ways made yourself unworthy to receive what you ask, or did cease your prayers prematurely.

In no case is God responsible for prayers being unanswered. If we, being evil, know how to give good gifts to our children, our heavenly Father knows even better how to provide for our needs.

One should not have such confidence in prayer alone that he neglects performing good works; nor should one trust only in his own efforts. We should instead seek help from above, while also contributing our own efforts.

"In all things," He said, "whatsoever you would have men do to you, you also should do to them."

Virtue is consistent with each of our natures. Each of us knows his duties, so it is not possible for us to find any excuse in being ignorant of what we should do.

Saint John Chrysostom

Spiritual Exercises

2008-09-08T11:00:00.000-07:00

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 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.

Richard Wurmbrand

Salt is good

2008-08-27T12:30:00.000-07:00

Dear brothers and sisters,

Salt is good, but if the salt loses its flavor, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace with one another (Mark 9:50).

When Jews get up in the morning, they first wash themselves and then immediately start their prayers, which last for at least an hour. Christians, on the other hand, first read the Gospel, and only afterwards begin to pray.

Why?

Rabbi David Talner, contrary to the normal custom of the Jews, used to start the day by reading his mail, and only prayed afterwards. When asked why, he answered, “The more renowned a man is, the more difficult is his struggle against besetting evil though ts in prayer. So I always read my letters first. Usually, they begin by adressing me as a righteous rabbi, a teacher, a leader, a holy man, or some other complimentary phrase. Then I begin my prayer by saying, ‘Lord, you know that I do not deserve these titles of honor. But since so many men believe me to be so in all sincerity, do not put their faith to shame. Make me become what they believe I am.’”.

God speaks

This is why we read the Gospel before praying. Through the Gospel, we hear God Himself, not men, speak to us the most beautiful and undeserved words: “You are the salt of the earth” (Matth. 5:13). “You are the light of the world” (Matth. 5:14). “You are all sons of God” (Galat. 3:26); “ partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4); “heirs of God” (Romans 8:17), “I have loved you with an everlasting love” (Jeremiah 3;3). This incites us to prayer that we may become what we are called by God.

We are the salt of the earth. Jesus says, “Salt is good” (Mark 9:50). I wonder what made him say those simple words. Did he ever eat unsalted food? At one time, our prison guards poured spoonfuls of salt down our throats, and then left us without water. Then, on the contrary, for months we were given completely unsalted food. For us, these oats boiled in water, without any salt, were absolutely unbearable. We sometimes preferred to go hungry and not eat them. We, who were deprived of it, know that “salt is good”.

Grace of God

Are we good? Are we seasoning the meals of others? Are we giving flavor to other men’s lives? Or do we leave them without salt, as we prisoners were once left without salt? The simple fact that the Gospel calls us salt is not enough.

How do we become good? We have to rely utterly on the grace of God. You become good when you make the great discovery that you are not good, and can never be so. Then you ask God to make you so. The result is that you die, and Christ comes to live within you. All of his righteousness and goodness as you are to proclaim yourself the owner of any estate that you have inherited or been given legally as a gift. Either all the Christians have been fools, or a Christian can say to Jesus, “You are me!” or like Luther in his commentary on Galatians, “A Christian is Christ”.

Now, how should I proceed practically to be not me, but Him? The Gospel speaks about the foolishness of the cross, even about the foolishness of God. So let us learn from the madmen.

There are madmen eho believe that they are others. Each behaves according to what he reckons himself to be. The man who thinks he is Napoleon will put on a tricorn hat and curse the English for having defeated him at Waterloo. Those who think they are St. Francis will fast and pray a great deal and speak holy phrases, even if they do not make sense. The man who reckons himself to be Churchill will always carry a thick cigar in his mouth and talk about politics. What you reckon yourself to be determines your behavior.

Faithfully consider yourself what so many other saints have considered themselves to be: you are He - Christlike.

This mad presupposition will have the same result as with other madmen. More and more, you will come to behave like Him. As Paul said, “For me to live is Christ”.

It requires faith to believe yourself to be He, when you are a sinner. But what do we really know about the lives of the prophets, from Isaiah to Malachi? We know their prophecies, not their virtues and failures. You become a child of God by faith, by virtues and by good deeds.

Have this faith in Him, and the salt can never lose its saltness. You will become the unalterable formula of “goodness”.

By faith, lay down your own life completely. Deny the self. Cease to “practice” its virtues as much as its lusts. You have been crucified with Christ, and have suffered the fate of every crucified man: you have died. Yet you live. Since you exist after having died, you must have been born again, this time not from an earthly union; you are begotten from God. You are once again a child, an “angel”. You have been born with a new, angelic, divine character.

Believe God

Believe the Word of God: “In those days and in that time, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought, but there shall be none; and the sins of Judah, but they shall not be found ”. This refers to the time of the return of the Jews from Babylonian captivity. Looked at from the human level, they had plenty of sins. Nehemiah punished some of them for this. From the godly level, which is now yours, they had none. Self-diagnosis is no good. Only believe steadfastly that it is not you who live, but He, and you will succeed. You will achieve the goodness that does not fade.

Sincerely in Christ,

Richard Wurmbrand

Biography of SABINA WURMBRAND

2008-08-22T10:49:00.000-07:00

Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand

Not many women have their faith tested like Sabina Wurmbrand. Her husband, Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, was imprisoned and tortured for his faith for fourteen years.

During that time, Sabina selflessly helped other Christians of the Underground Church they had started together while struggling hard for her own and her little son's survival.

Sabina was subjected to unbelievable hardships and suffering. Yet, through it all, she never relented in her endeavours to continue the work her husband had begun, to unite the Underground Church.

Living in daily fear of discovery, her faith was tested to the limit--and held firm. She herself was arrested for subversive evangelism in 1948 in Romania and spent three years as a slave labourer on the never-completed Danube Canal. Nevertheless, she survived to tell her story.

Preparing for suffering

2008-08-18T10:59:00.000-07:00

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 religious liberty follows as never before. And so it begins. Some regimes come to power without having real power. They do not have the people on their side. They have not necessarily organized their police and their staff of the army yet.

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.

"Then Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he has done to Thy saints at Jerusalem: But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way; for he is a chosen vessel unto Me, to bear My name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel: For I will show him how great things he must suffer for My name's sake "-(Acts 9:13, 15 and 16).

Jesus, our Lord, told Ananias: "Meet Saul of Tarsus. He will be My underground pastor, My underground worker." That is what St. Paul was - a pastor of an Underground Church. Jesus started a crash course for this underground pastor. He started it with the words, "I will show (him) how great things he must suffer..."

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.

Richard Wurmbrand

Alms-Giving

2008-08-08T11:40:00.000-07:00

Alms giving moves God. Even when you may not know the way to eternal life but because of your giving to the poor and needy; God can be moved to save you and your loved ones.
He who is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward him for what he has done. (Proverbs 19:17)

A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed. (Proverbs 11:25)

Dorcas was brought back to life from the dead because she was a generous person

The Story of Dorcas
(Acts 9:36-42)

In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha (which, when translated, is Dorcas ), who was always doing good and helping the poor.

About that time she became sick and died, and her body was washed and placed in an upstairs room.

Lydda was near Joppa; so when the disciples heard that Peter was in Lydda, they sent two men to him and urged him, "Please come at once!"

Peter went with them, and when he arrived he was taken upstairs to the room. All the widows stood around him, crying and showing him the robes and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them.

Peter sent them all out of the room; then he got down on his knees and prayed. Turning toward the dead woman, he said, "Tabitha, get up." She opened her eyes, and seeing Peter she sat up.
He took her by the hand and helped her to her feet. Then he called the believers and the widows and presented her to them alive.

This became known all over Joppa, and many people believed in Christ.

The Beatitudes (Matthew 25:3-12)

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
(Ecclesiastes 12:13-14)

Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this are the whole duty of man.

For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.

February 29, 1948 • Prisoner Number One

2008-08-05T10:22:00.000-07:00

Richard Wurmbrand whose sufferings for Christ led him to found the Voice of the Martyrs.

One beautiful Sunday morning--it was on this date, February 29, 1948--pastor Richard Wurmbrand of Rumania set out on foot for church. He never arrived. For eight and one half years his wife and son did not know where he was or even whether he was alive or dead. "Ex-prisoners" assured Sabrina Wurmbrand they had witnessed her husband's funeral in a Communist prison. Sabrina was heartbroken and yet she had her doubts. The men might be government stooges.

Wurmbrand's disappearance was expected. Anyone who acted contrary to the regime could expect imprisonment or death. At a "Congress of Cults" held by the Communist government, he had asked for it. Religious leaders stepped forward to swear loyalty to the new regime. Sabrina asked Richard to "wipe the shame from the face of Jesus." Richard replied that if he stepped forward, she would no longer have a husband. "I don't need a coward for a husband," she answered. And so Richard stepped forward and told the 4,000 delegates that their duty as Christians was to glorify God and Christ alone.

He returned home to pastor an underground church and promote the gospel among Rumania's Russian invaders. He smuggled Bibles into Russia, disguised as Communist propaganda. And then he disappeared.

What had actually happened? As Richard walked to Church, a van full of secret police stopped in front of him. Four men jumped out and hustled him inside. He was taken to their headquarters and later locked in a solitary cell where he was designated Prisoner Number 1.

His years of imprisonment consisted of a ceaseless round of torture and brainwashing. For seventeen hours a day, repetitious phrases were dinned into his ears: Communism is good. Christianity is stupid! Give up. Give up! Over the years, he was carved in a dozen places and burned. "I prefer not to speak about those [tortures] through which I have passed. When I do, I cannot sleep at night. It is too painful." His jailers also broke many of his bones, including four vertebrae. Miraculously, he survived. Other martyrs did not.

Eight and one half years later, in 1956, Wurmbrand was released. Sabrina herself was brutalized for three years in prison. The Wurmbrand's nine year old son Mihai was orphaned during this time. Released, the Wurmbrands immediately recommenced underground work. Wurmbrand was returned to prison, not released again until 1964.

In 1965, Western churches ransomed Wurmbrand from Rumania for $10,000. Richard and Sabrina immediately spoke out for those still suffering in Communist hands. Wurmbrand was asked to testify before the US Senate. He displayed the eighteen holes cut in his body. Afterward, he was invited to speak before hundreds of groups.

By 1967, "Prisoner Number 1" had incorporated the Voice of the Martyrs, an organization dedicated to assisting those who suffer for Christ throughout the world.

Richard and Sabina were able to survive their ordeal through the power of love. "If the heart is cleansed by the love of Jesus Christ," wrote Wurmbrand, "and if the heart loves him, you can resist all tortures. What would a loving bride not do for a loving bridegroom? What would a loving mother not do for her child? If you love Christ as Mary did, who had Christ as a baby in her arms, if you love Jesus as a bride loves her bridegroom, then you can resist such tortures. God will judge us not according to how much we endured, but how much we could love. I am a witness for the Christians in communist prisons that they could love. They could love God and men."

God’s Hero

2008-07-17T11:55:00.000-07:00

By Richard Wurmbrand

Dear friends,

Violence is one of the chief gods of our day. A great portion of television programming is devoted to the present fighting among nations, murder, robbery, and rape in the large cities, and television dramas with violence as their theme. Murder and fighting are before us constantly.

Stress is placed upon carrying a gun for self-defense, or learning different forms of fighting so that the individual can protect himself. Some Christian people train their sons in various forms of self-defense. It may be better for the child to teach him to trust in the Lord than how to injure an opponent. Why should we teach our children to be violent when this is not the way of the Lord?

In the United States, as well as in some other countries, the violent man is glorified. He is the masculine hero who carries a machine gun in each hand or is expert in karate. He is not God’s hero.

God’s Hero is the Lord Jesus Christ. Of all men who have lived on the earth the Lord Jesus was the strongest in character, the most courageous. We should imitate Him in every aspect of His Person, not the reckless, wild, lustful adamic man of violence.

Whoever admires and seeks to imitate the violent adamic man is eating food offered to idols. The demons are gratified when human beings injure and kill each other.

Those who live by violence shall die by violence.

God’s saints are not violent people and they do not admire or practice violence.

It used to be that people would go to some form of entertainment once a month, or sometimes once a week. Now people are entertained by the television several hours a day. This is neither wholesome nor godly.

We do not need this much entertainment! The believer will never make a success of the Christian discipleship until he spends time each day in prayer, in waiting on the Lord, in meditating in the Scriptures. Religious devotion of this kind leaves little time for watching the antics of Satan and his demons.

Time spent in front of the television set is not only unprofitable, it is harmful—destructive of spiritual development. We have been commanded to not be conformed to the present world. The television set conforms us to the present world. We have been exhorted to make good use of our time. Watching television is not time occupied with building the Kingdom of God.

The five demon gods, lust, violence, drunkenness and revelry, covetousness, and witchcraft compose the great bulk of television programming. Those who occupy a portion of each day with television watching are partaking of these five gods and shall suffer accordingly.

The Christian family should never permit their children to watch the secular television… There are alternatives to television, such as indoor games, outdoor games, reading, puzzles, filmstrips, and video cassettes. There are a multitude of religious filmstrips and video cassettes that are useful for acquainting children with Christian values…

To sit the child in front of the secular television programs is to fill him or her with Satan’s values. Is this what we want?

If we deliver our children to Satan in this manner they will turn against us when they are older and hand us over to the authorities for being religious fanatics. The day of persecution is at hand!

To watch the secular television programs, even the news, can be to partake of food offered to demons if we do not continue to be diligent in prayer. We know the news is biased in favor of non-Christian values and we must keep this in the forefront of our mind.

If we want to know what really is going on in the world we need to spend an hour in prayer each day.

To party is to abandon one’s self to "fun." It is normal for children to have fun and play games. Children grow and learn about life and their surroundings while they are playing games.

The adamic believer, even though an adult in age, is still a child in that every once in a while he must have "fun." He must let his spiritual guard down, throw caution to the winds, and "enjoy himself." This is an excellent time for the enemy of his soul to cause him to say or do something harmful to the Kingdom of God.

Christians often do not understand the difference between fun and joy. Fun is a somewhat frantic exercise of the fleshly nature. Fun is possible only as long as the person’s circumstances are pleasing. One does not have fun while sick or in prison.

Joy, on the other hand, is a fruit of the Spirit of God. Joy is a deeply settled peace and sense of well-being. The saint has deep joy that flourishes in good times and bad, when at liberty or in prison, when in good health or sick, when prospects are good or dreadful. The further we walk with the Lord the stronger and more consistent our joy becomes.

The Lord said that He gives us of His joy.

These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full. (John 15:11)

Can you imagine the Lord saying, "that my fun might remain in you"? Do you believe the Lord Jesus had much fun while He was on the earth? Therefore we see there is an important difference between fun and joy. Fun is of the flesh. Joy is of the Lord.

The Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit of God.

Christians who love to "party," who believe that unless they are having fun they are not experiencing life as they should, are still of the first man, Adam. God in His love will soon chasten them severely so that Adam will be crucified and the new creation, the joyful creation, will come forth.

When we think of Pastor Richard Wurmbrand in a straitjacket, in solitary confinement thirty feet below ground in a Communist prison in Bucharest, gagged to muffle his insane howlings, in a cell so cold his pet spider froze to death, we find it difficult to sympathize with Christian adults or young people who did not have fun during their Saturday-night party (Richard Wurmbrand, With God in Solitary Confinement )

Another problem is that Christian people do not understand the difference between a party and Christian fellowship. It is a simple matter to tell the difference. If it is easy and compatible with what is going on to pray, to speak of the Lord, to prophesy, to build up one another in the faith, then one is having fellowship. These behaviors are out of place at a party. One is much more likely to hear jesting and gossip than words that build us up in the faith.

The demons are a merry group and love to dance and sing, as we can notice on the friezes on the temples in India. They love parties because they then can infiltrate the fleshly antics of unguarded believers.

To love parties is to love food sacrificed to idols.

Profanity is very common in our day…. There is now a rapidly increasing appearance of filthy language—especially in the Hollywood sentations.

A Christian would never employ profanity or obscene language if he could see the demon that was in his mouth. The demon world speaks constantly in profanities, obscenities—every unclean form of speech available. And in every language!

When people are filled with rage or fear they often take the Lord’s name in vain or spew out obscenities. The demons find gratification in such behavior… No Christian ever at any time is to speak profanely or in an obscene manner. To do so is to eat at the table of demons.

The world is a place of pain and dread. God has given to us His Holy Spirit to encourage and strengthen us so we can make our way through the world without succumbing to worry or discouragement.

People drink alcohol in order to escape momentarily from the pain and dread of life—and no doubt for other reasons. The Christian believer should never drink alcohol because it conflicts with the ministries, gifts, and movements of the Holy Spirit. We have been in a home group meeting where people had partaken of a little wine with their meal. The interference with the Holy Spirit was obvious.

We are aware that in many countries the use of wine and beer does not have the same stigma among Christians as is true of the United States.

The Nazirite vow, such as that resting on Samson (Judges 13:5), suggests that separation to God includes abstinence from alcohol. The Israelites could enjoy all the fruit of the vine, but not the Nazarite. He was separated to God for God’s special purposes.

Every Christian who desires to live the victorious life should regard himself or herself as a "Nazirite." The conquering Christian does not look for fleshly activities he can practice and yet remain a Christian. Rather, he is continually seeking to discover what he can do to improve his relationship to the Lord.

The Christian is a soldier, a spiritual warrior. His adversary the devil never rests. The Christian must keep all of his faculties finely honed, perpetually ready to counter the devices of Satan. The conquering Christian does not consider what other believers may do but is intent on serving the Lord to the utmost of his ability.

It is claimed that alcohol destroys brain cells. The Christian never, never does anything that would defile his or her body because it is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

Drunkenness, the impairment of the faculties through the use of alcohol, is one of the most common manifestations of demonic gratification in the world of today. It is food offered to idols.

Drugs also are food offered to idols. Like alcohol, people use drugs to gain some relief from the pain and dread of life on the earth. Drugs have been used historically in many—perhaps all—countries. The use of drugs is a major social concern of our day.

People employ drugs to gain entrance to the spirit realm, the realm of demons. Materialism does not satisfy the human personality and so the "scientific," "educated," "sophisticated" citizens of the large nations are turning to the occult for satisfaction. Drugs are one way of moving from the material to the spirit world.

There is evidence that drugs do permanent injury to the brain. Some authorities have stated that schizophrenia, for example, may result from drug use. It is obvious that the individual is disabled mentally, at least temporarily.

The victorious, obedient saint seeks always to be like his Lord. He is not, as we said previously, attempting to determine what he can do and still be a "Christian." He is not seeing how close he can walk to the Lake of Fire without toppling in.

People smoke or chew tobacco because they are not content with their body and their circumstances. They must add to their personality in order to be approved, to quiet their nerves, or for some other reason…

The scientific research that has been conducted relative to cigarette smoking has proved beyond all doubt that smoking produces a number of serious, debilitating ailments. Also, pipe smoking has been associated with cancer of the mouth.

The Scripture informs us that God will destroy the person who deliberately injures his or her own body with alcohol, drugs, or cigarettes.

Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are. (I Corinthians 3:16,17)

Alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes defile the temple of God. They are foods offered to idols. The demons derive satisfaction when they can prevail on a human being to partake of them.

Acquiring money. The Scriptures reveal clearly, from Balaam to Ananias and Sapphira, that the love of money is the root of all evil.

For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. (I Timothy 6:10)

The numerous sins and excesses of the several "civilized" nations of our day have their root in the love of money. Most of the crime is caused by the desire to acquire money. The professions, from school-teaching to law to medicine, are often not pursued with the idea of helping people but to get more money from them.

Money is the God of Western civilization. The citizens of the large nations could not conceive of a world without money. Everything that is done is carried through in terms of money, with very little exception.

Wars are fought because of money. Much of the world is naked and starving because those with a surplus love money. The governments govern unjustly because of the love of money. People look to money to bring them love, joy, and peace when these treasures can come only from God.

No person can serve God and money. We are forced to choose between the two. We can gain our security, pleasure, and achievement through the use of money or through prayer and obedience to God. This is one of the basic decisions we make in life.

The pursuit of more money than is needed for our welfare and the welfare of those for whom we are responsible is a food offered to idols. The wise believer will ask God to remove this demon-God from him. He will be infinitely happier as soon as he is totally delivered from the love and worship of money.

The love of luxury. A person’s life does not consist in the abundance of things he possesses, the Lord informed us. Yet, in the large nations of Western civilization, an abundance of material comforts is considered not only to be desirable but to be essential to the proper care and comfort of the believer.

In fact, we are being told lately that material prosperity is the sign of God’s blessing.

Your’s in Christ,

Richard Wurmbrand

Your journey is too great

2008-07-14T04:30:00.000-07:00

By Richard Wurmbrand

"Arise and eat; because the journey is too great for thee." (1 Kings 19:7)

Dear brothers and sisters,

To begin a new year is somehow like contemplating a journey. We have come so far - perhaps the journey has been tiring. Who knows what is ahead? Will we have the strength and the courage to meet whatever lies in our path and to reach our objective?

We have put our trust in Christ! He has paid on the cross for all our sins. By faith in His sacrifice we have been considered righteous by God. By Him we are today what He is: the light of the world. (Mt 5:14).

"It is impossible but that offences will come" - said the Saviour (Luke 17:1). These offences came even to the most reliable men of God. They come to us, on our journey through life too. These do not disqualify us from being the light of the world.

Elijah the prophet passed one day through a very intense crisis for his soul. He wished to die. He was angry with God. He revolted against Him and didn’t agree with His plans. And in this state of mind, terribly furious, he fell asleep. How will God deal with his rebelliousness now... His servant deprived totally of hope?

He sent an angel.

Woe, what a damning message will this messenger of God bring to him? But instead, the angel awoke Elijah from his sleep. It must have been something very important if God took such trouble to send an angel from Heaven for this purpose. «Arise and eat!» the angel said to Elijah, and gave him a cake (1 Kings 19:5-6).

It seemed not too costly to God to send an angel for the rebellious Elijah. He was still His child, His prophet. Even if he passed now through a great spiritual crisis, he still remained Elijah the prophet. Even though he rebelled for a while, wishing to die, and seemed as if he didn’t want to know any more about God.

Elijah woke up and ate. But the bitterness he felt was not over. As it happens often with ourselves when we pass through a great crisis of our soul and suffering, we feel the need to sleep in order to forget. So Elijah did nothing else after that: he fell asleep again!

The angel of God came to him the second time. Now we would have surely expected that the angel would rebuke Elijah for his attitude that lacked gratitude. But no! To our surprise, the whole message brought to Elijah by the angel is again this: «Awake and eat, for the journey is too great for thee.»

God had not rejected Elijah. On the contrary, in His eyes, he still remained His prophet, the same man of God to whom such an important task had been entrusted, that it surpassed the natural strength of a mere man. The way prepared by God for Elijah, as a prophet, was too long and difficult for a simple man.

This journey of such great responsibility God has entrusted to the man who just then had passed through moments of difficult spiritual crisis - who was even in rebellion.

Do such moments also come over us? Have we, too, known hopelessness and rebellion? We can look back over a year and see where we have succeeded, but perhaps this backwards view is clouded with the memory of disappointment and failure. Never mind. Those do not annul the gifts and the calling to which God has called us.

It is true that in those moments we were a «light of the world»; we were without hope, rebellious, but we were still God’s children.

It is important that we are built on the Rock of Ages that is Christ. The waves of despair have passed and will still pass over us; but the Rock will remain unmoved. With the Rock, we too will remain.

Jesus said about Himself «I am the Light of the World». Oh yes, with this we are all in agreement that He is the Light of the World! But we don’t believe that we are what He is. Let us look closer at this thing.

Jonah was also a prophet of God. The way of Jonah was not the way of obedience. On the contrary, Jonah fled from God. He did not agree with the plans of God, neither on behalf of others nor for himself. Jonah fled from Him. God did not flee from Jonah, but rather looked for him. He brought him back to Himself even with a strong hand. This not in order to punish him, but to tell him: «Your disobedience was only a parenthesis. Go on now and continue from where you left. You are a jight for the world.»

The world is mostly in darkness. Many of our brothers and sisters suffer trials and persecution. Through the days ahead we need to be like mirrors to reflect the light of Christ to needy people and to bring hope and encouragement to those in despair.

The journey is great but as we feed upon the Word of God we will find the grace and strength to fulfil His purposes.

Even we, too, have fled from God and have rebelled against His plans, He has not left us. We were and still remain His children. Not by our deeds or merit have we achieved this degree. Not by deeds, be those good or bad, shall we lose this honour. We are in Christ by His grace and mercy. By His grace we shall remain through to the end of the journey. We are the light of the world.

May He help us in this.

Sincerely in Christ,

Richard Wurmbrand

What do we have to give in alms?

2008-07-09T04:37:00.000-07:00

Jesus Christ asks us to give the poor of our surplus. He asks us to give even our little.

In Marc 12, 41-44, results that He asks us to give all that we have, all our richness. (It is about the parabola of the widow which gives two pennies in the church).

But Christ asks us to give even what we do not have, which we do not have. He asks us the impossible one. A famous French writer this fact, as follows:

In a monastery where he wished to enter, introduces himself an applicant wishing to become monk.

Would you know, father, that I have neither the faith, neither the light, neither the courage, nor confidence in myself and by consequence I cannot help myself and of as much less the others. I do not have anything.

It would have been normal that he should be returned instantly by the higoumen

But, this one says to him:

It doesn’t matter! You do not have the faith, you do not have the light, but, by giving them to the others, you will also acquire them for yourself. Go and take possession of your room of retirement in this monastery.

Not of his surplus, not of his little, nor even of his indigence, but of what he misses. While making alms to the others what you do not have, - the faith, the light, the confidence of oneself, the courage,- you will also acquire them for you. You can make alms with what you think that you don’t have, but which perhaps exist at the bottoms of your heart, and you will take conscience thus.

Paradoxically, Christ says to us:

If you want to lead, then become servant; if you want to be glorified, then humiliates yourself; if you want to save your soul, then take the risk for Me; if you want to regain your innocence, then recognize yourself to be guilty, and know that if you will give what you don’t have, you will acquire also what you gave to the others.

By making alms what we do not have, we will acquire by rebound what we dared to give to the others.

This is valid for any Christian, for the clerks and for the laymen. Even the monk or the deacon or the priest who cross the desert of the doubt or of the spiritual dryness, which is in the doubt or tempted by despair, must give to those which come to require from him assistance, which they await that one gives them, and even what he knows well that he cannot give them. In their making the gift, this gift will return on him, he will receive the mercy in return of those alms.

By giving the light that you do not have, you will have it also yourself. The gift that you made returns you like a boomerang, like a ray of light reflected by a mirror. And this gift will fill you, will enrich you.

It is that what Christ wants that we give in alms: the surplus, the little, our indigence, all. The monk, the deacon, the priest, have to give to the others the faith, the light, even if they misses those for short time or for more long time. Even if they are in a state of loss of their zeal.

Will they be able to do that? Yes, because they belong to the group of the friends of the Christ, who said that they are not world, as Me I am not world (Jean 17, 20).

And Paul also had known as:
You must help the weak ones and to remind you the words of Christ
Are happier those who give than those who receive. (Acts 20,35).

Fine words

Let us think of the crucifixion of Jesus. He is nailed on the cross, his body is bloody, he awaits the anguish and the death. On his right and on his left there are two other crosses, with two thieves, both offenders of the common right. The sun is to the zenith, Jesus is thirsty, all is desolation, and pain. The scribes, the Pharisees, defy him dying. Even the thief of his left causes him. He insults him.

The thief of the right-hand side finds the respite and the nobleness of heart to say fine words to his neighbour. He cannot help him, but he tells him fine words.

Jesus says to him:
Today you will be with me in the paradise.

Jesus gave him this single privilege to enter in the paradise with Him, who is either God and man, privilege which neither Isaiah, neither Moses, nor Noah will not have like privilege. The thief received for himself only, this single privilege.

Those fine words of the thief could soften the suffocating atmosphere, of spite, of venom, which reigned on Golgotha. Like a miracle, the fine words of affection, of confidence, of compassion, changed suddenly all, and transformed Golgotha - space vitiated by iniquity, by cruelty, by revenge, - into an anteroom of the paradise.

The thief did not remain closed in the world, isolated in its self-centredness, he became that which has seen, which has recognized, which comforted Jesus, who took his defence, by his fine words.

We also, can make the good deeds by giving our alms in the form of the fine words of encouragement, of confidence, of compassion, of participation in the distress of the others.

Never let us lose the occasion to make the good deeds by the word which brings the moral comfort to the suffering ones, to the poor, to the old men.

Let us be like the good thief

Faith - Pastor Richard Wurmbrand

2008-07-06T18:12:00.000-07:00

Dear brothers and sisters,

"Faith"

Faith is the bird that sings to the dawn while it is still dark.

Because I believe in you, my God,

I will keep singing in the darkness of my life.

Though I cannot see it now, I believe the dawn will come;

though I cannot find the right melody of joy,

I will sing a song of my trust in you.

And when I finally see the soft glow of a new day coming,

I will know all the more that you are the God
who always keeps promises.

Sincerely,

Pastor Richard Wurmbrand

The Guide to Heaven

2008-07-03T03:42:00.000-07:00

"Who are these people all dressed in white? And where have they come from?"
Revelation 7:13

Today we thank God for saving and sanctifying the saints on earth and in heaven. We especially thank Him for taking our family members, relatives, and friends to be with Him in heaven. We look forward to becoming holy and joining Jesus and the family in heaven. We cannot do this by our own power but we can let it be done to us (see Lk 1:38).

The Father and the Son have sent the Holy Spirit to make us holy. All we have to do is obey by following the lead of the Spirit (Gal 5:25).

However, this is difficult to do because our flesh (human nature) lusts against the Spirit (Gal 5:17).

There is a strong opposition between what we naturally want and what the Spirit wants. Therefore, to let the Spirit make us saints, we must allow the Spirit to crucify our flesh with its passions and desires (Gal 5:24).

In this way, we become holy, able to be like our Father and « see Him as He is » (1 Jn 3:2).

Holiness is the fruit of the Spirit, not the fruit of our efforts. All saints have been produced by the Spirit. Life in the Spirit leads to life in heaven.

Theophore

Vision, Values and Creed of the Richard Wurmbrand’s Academy

2008-06-26T16:12:00.000-07:00

The following is the Vision, Values and Creed of the Richard Wurmbrand’s Academy In Romania

Vision

It is our vision that the Richard Wurmbrand Christian Academy will stand as a beacon, a light, a candle in a dark nation showing people Christ in all of life’s aspects, and that our students will be the carriers of Christian love, faith, honesty, courage and integrity to Romania and the world.

In 1989, after living through 50 years under a brutal Communist regime, Romania finally proclaimed its freedom as a result of a very bloody revolution in which many young people were killed. Romanians paid for their freedom with their blood and the lives of many martyrs.

Thousands upon thousands suffered the tortures of the dark social order. But even though the revolution brought about many important changes to Romanian society - it did little to change people’s mentalities. Liliana and the leaders of the RWCA quickly realized that freedom without God can be even worse than oppression or persecution.

They knew that freedom in Christ is the ultimate answer to Romania’s problems, but the challenge remained; how to speak about God to a society of people who were told for 50 years that there is no God, no heaven, and no eternal life? Liliana soon realized that in order to bring Christian values to her society, she should have to start with children and young people who have not been as affected by the communist evil.

Values and Principles

Respect
Each employee and each student at RWCA must manifest respect towards himself/ herself, their fellow human beings, the authority, the law, the property and the environment.

Responsibility
Each employee and each student of R.W.C.A. must assume responsibility for his/ her attitudes, acts and words, achievements and failures.

Love
Each employee and each student of R.W.C.A.. must love God with all his/her being and his/her neighbor as himself/herself.

Work
Each employee and each student of R.W.C.A. must carry on a quality work, individually and in a team, pursuing excellence in everything he/ she does.

Honesty
Each employee and each student of R.W.C.A. must be an upright person and manifest integrity and honesty in all his/ her relationships.

Creed
We value the human being as the supreme creation of God.
We value the freedom God gave to man and we believe that man is responsible for all his actions and decisions.
We value God’s love for people, shown in the supreme sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
We value honest work and claim excellence in everything that is done.
We value the honesty and integrity of each person, manifested in attitudes, words and deeds.

I will be a Father to you

2008-06-25T04:22:00.000-07:00

In the human order it was not the little infant who first said, "Father", "Daddy" or "Mommy" before their child. The same is true in the religious order. The filial relationship between God and man was bestowed first by God, Himself, who said, "I will be a Father to you and you shall be my sons and daughters." (2, Cor.6:18).

Before any baptism humanity lived in sin which brought disharmony into the world. From that moment of baptism when we received a divine rebirth through the Holy Spirit we recreated in Christ everything in our life.

In the present time, there exist a high tension between the young generation and their parents and also between the children of God and Eternal Creator. In both cases the tension is generated by an affirmation of an independence of a young generation concerned with themselves.

They don’t lose their faith and it isn’t a frontier separating them and their parents, but rather is an agitated period of transition that exists in which something dormant in their life is disturbed.

Often it is the lack of spiritual training and the many temptations for the attractive pleasures in their lives in the worldly order. And so, in their formative years they easily glide out of a "sacral culture" and are encouraged by another cultural orientation to fight for a strange affirmation based on freedom.

Educated only by humanistic science and technology another climate is created where the dominant theme is Man and his freedom. But this new creed of life doesn’t resolve all the problems in our lives.

Indeed, many other unsolved problems exist which if not taken seriously will destroy all of the wonderful achievements of our life, and even we, ourselves, will collapse with all of our creations.

For these reasons, it is absolutely necessary to keep in highest regard all these ethic and religious problems that place in balance the whole of our life.

Nobody loves you more than your parents and your Eternal Creator. Only they who gave life, gave at the same time a deep secret to keep our life safe and progressive. It is a great error for us to think that our life will be preserved in an humanistic neutral orientation.

We all belong to our parents and to the ever greater family of God. Our parents and God want to defend us from the many errors in life that often are vain dreams of happiness which come and go with each downing life. And also, our parents with the Church have the same responsibility in the whole cosmos.

This is the focus of attention for our parents, to accord us an eternal guidance in our life. They don’t expect anything from their children except for them to enjoy a great success in their life. When the Creator of the Universe is our life on terra firma. Only then will be a new world with us.

Father V. Vasilachi

Joy at the Cross

2008-06-20T04:09:00.000-07:00

Suffering is regularly related to trials, since suffering is what we usually allow trials to produce in us. But sometimes we suffer in ways which cannot be traced to our failure to face trials with faith and fortitude. What then? Suffering – especially if it is unjust or otherwise repugnant to reason – is often considered to be quite the opposite of joy. Yet is that how Scripture considers it? This time we will ask St. Paul to speak.

“I am overflowing with joy all the more because of all our afflictions,” sayeth sagacious Saul (2 Cor. 7:4). And again, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings…” (Col. 1:24). What is he, nuts? Well, maybe. He did call himself a fool for Christ, after all (1 Cor. 4:10).

It's the “for Christ” part, though, that should keep us from being too hasty in our judgment about the Apostle's sanity. James and Peter gave us spiritual growth unto perfection and hope for everlasting reward as reasons for enduring trials joyfully. Now Paul expands our horizon by adding the elements of mission and mystical union with Christ to our reasons for rejoicing.

The full text of the passage quoted above from Colossians reads: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of His body, which is the Church.” So we can rejoice in our sufferings because of our mission to others, for the sake of their salvation. It is not only our perfection and eternal life we are concerned with, it is also that of our brothers and sisters. In this we become more like Christ, who came to give His life as a ransom for the many (Mk. 10:45).

The more we put on the mind of Christ and begin to love as He loved (which is not an option, but a commandment; see Jn. 13:34 and 15:12), the more we will joyfully accept whatever sufferings God permits to befall us. This task is beyond human strength (as you will readily agree), but despair not, for here is the answer: "“he joy of the Lord is your strength" (Neh. 8:10).

This passage should make us realize, though, that the joy of the Lord cannot be identified with mere happy feelings. It has been said that joy is not found in the absence of suffering, but in the presence of God. Similarly, it has been said that Christ did not come to take away our suffering, but to fill it with His presence. But how can we be sure, since it is only His presence that makes suffering bearable (and even fruitful and meaningful), that we are in Him and He in us “This is how we know that we remain in Him and He in us, that He has given us His Spirit” (1 Jn. 4:13).

The Holy Spirit’s gift of fortitude enables us to bear our crosses courageously (and dare I say even joyfully?) and to make our sufferings contribute to holiness, rather than create obstacles to it.

Now what is holiness if not union with our Lord Jesus Christ (with all the implications thereof)? He was willing to suffer anything, if only he could be united to his beloved Lord. No price was too high, no affliction too discouraging a prospect. So what was his goal? “To know Him and the power of His resurrection, and to share His sufferings by being conformed to His death…”

St. Paul thus teaches us that suffering is not something to avoid, but something to embrace – not as something good in itself, but insofar as it draws us into the mystery of the Crucified One and helps prepare us for an eternity with the Risen One.

Those who believe in Christ are to live “no longer for themselves but for Him who for their sakes died and was raised” (2 Cor. 5:15), and hence must follow in the footsteps of the Master and adopt His perspective, that which sees the ultimate good (see 2 Cor. 4:8 – 18 and 1 Pet. 2:21 and 4:12-16). Those who are most intimately in union with Jesus are those who share willingly in what was closest to Him – i. e. the Cross, for it was the means whereby He could express most fully His infinite love for us.

Fr. Joseph

Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord

2008-06-13T04:24:00.000-07:00

Prayer

Give praise with one accord, O peoples and nations: for the King of the angels rides now upon a foal, and He comes to smite His enemies with the Cross in His almighty power.

Therefore the children sing to Him with palms in their hands: “Glory be to Thee who hast come as Conqueror; glory be to Thee, O Christ the Saviour; glory be to Thee, our God, for Thou alone art blessed”…

O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful is Thy Name in all the earth! (Ps. 8:1)…

Blessed is He who cometh in the Name of the Lord: The Lord is God and hath appeared to us.

Matins, Palm Sunday (Triodion)

In God's Beauty Parlor

2008-06-10T04:20:00.000-07:00

This is a transcription of an audio biography done by my mother Sabina Wurmbrand, as transcribed by Andrea le Roi Hendrix.

It is wonderful to pass in the beauty parlor of Jesus, the Son of God, who has given His life for you and wishes to be Lord and master in your heart. He forgives your sins, He takes over your problems.

He brings His grace and His peace and His richness in your life. And you become beautiful like the angels in heaven. It is quite a beauty parlor, set apart but the best, which can exist.

And you will read further Acts 7. We see there another picture; the picture of those who were the enemies of Christ and the enemies of Stephen. And you saw how they are described. Ready to throw stones and to put to death Stephen.

Righteousness, love from heaven makes you beautiful. Anger, and fight against God and against his people makes you ugly. Remember these two. And I invite you everyone, come into the beauty parlor of Jesus. You need it. Your heart will be washed clean and will be filled with the joy of heaven.

And now I would like to tell you how God loves you. How He knows everyone of you. First we learned in prison how rich we are. Having such a Savior and having the Word of God. And now I would like to tell you, how beloved you are; every one of you. How God knew us. It is written that Jesus calls those who are His by their name. He calls us by name that means He knows everyone.

I would like to tell you that in Communist prisons when it was very, very hard. And it was very hard. There are no human words that could ever describe what it means for Christian women in the hands of the Communists. And when it was very, very hard. We thought, “Are we forgotten, nobody cares, no help from anywhere", and then the Lord Himself reminded us that He cares and knows us.

As I told you, our children, we did not know anything about them. Some were on the streets, hungry, eating from the garbage if they found something in the garbage. Mothers did you every think that the children of your sisters in the hands of the Communists, without father, without mother, hungry.

So working at the canal, hungry and sick, we got so weak that we could not work anymore. So the Communists thought to lure us, and they said,” If you work, and make such amount of work, (it was very, very hard), you will be able to see your children”. They will come on such and such a day.

Could any human words express what it meant for us, after, let me say 2 or 3 weeks, you will see your children. Nights and nights we did not sleep, preparing everyone, the words we will speak with our children. Because there was only 10 minutes fixed and the guards stood around, we could not speak whatever we have liked.

So during nights we did not sleep, and prepared the words we would tell our children. Then we had a very big problem, we were very dirty, and the stones had got our clothes and made them just like rags. We were ashamed to appear before our children. We tried to have a scarf from somewhere which went around to every women, somewhere a skirt in order to appear before our children.

Perhaps dear sisters, you know how we are the women, we always have the impression that we do not have enough clothes, and we absolutely need a new dress and we are ready to quarrel and to fight, “I need it, absolutely “.

Perhaps, when your heart is so unhappy about your new dress, which you need, remember your sisters, in rags, hungry, beaten, put to shame by the Communists. Pray for them and praying for them thank God for all you have. And learning to thank God your heart will be blessed and will be happy and you will be a blessing to those around you.

So the nights passed quickly, composing and recomposing and again composing the words we would speak to the children. And the great day came when 2 guards took me out from the prison cell let me say like this room. At the door, I being there stood my son, 2 guards around him. I looked at him.

He was so pale so frail, and while I looked at him, he looked at me, and all I had compose at nights and nights, in a second it was forgotten. And I did not know to say one word but neither would him speak. He told me he had prepared something to say. And the minutes passed and the guards were already taking him out, taking him out taking me back to the prison cell.

And while I saw him, leaving already, trying to give him my best, perhaps I would never see again, my child so I said, “Mihai, love Jesus with all your heart”. With these words he was taken out, I was brought back to my prison cell. The prisoners, the mothers, the women, came around me, gathered all around me, “How does your child look, what I did he tell you, how is it out in the free world?”

Many, many days I could not speak a word, but after a long time when I was freed, I had the great joy to find my son a young Christian ready to fight for the Kingdom of God. These few words, God has blessed them as a sign of His love.

As a sign that we were not forgotten. As a sign that our children were in His care. We have a Savior whose name is wonderful. All Praise be to Him. In Communist prisons, in tears and mocked by the Communists, we have seen the glory of God and there we have understood that our Lord and Master, Jesus, the Son of God, His name is wonderful. Wonderful are His deeds and my very, very beloved ones, wonderful are all those who are His.

And may God bless you and may God help you not to forget the beauty parlor. For whosoever takes Jesus in his heart, as Savor, as Lord, as master, as heavenly friend, He will be brought into the beauty parlor of Jesus and the glory of God will shine over him. Not only the Christians have seen it, even Communists saw the glory of God shining over those beaten and tortured by them. And therefore, in our country, in the Communist block we did not have Bibles.

We have changed a song of yours, you sing here, Jesus loves me, and this we have seen,” Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so.” Since we did not have the Bible, we changed the song, Jesus loves me so, for their faces tells me so.” Hungry, sick, beaten and mocked by the Communists, the faces of the Christians shone with the glory of God, And even Communists could learn this song, “Jesus loves me this I know for there faces tells me so.”

May God bless every one of you? May God fill your heart with His glory in order that your faces and your life should witness to all those around you that Jesus the Son of God loves you and loves all those who need Him as Savor and Lord.

God bless you all.

Proverbs

2008-06-06T04:48:00.000-07:00

Mothers carry their children in the morning, children carry their mothers in the evening, but God carries us all through the night.
Flemish proverb

The little kids step on Mother’s skirt. The big ones step on Mother’s heart.
Flemish proverb

More things happen through prayer than this world ever dreams.
Tennyson

Out of compassion, God takes upon Himself the suffering of each person. In his love, He suffers mysteriously, to the end of time, with the same suffering that is in each of us.
Mammos the Confessor

Meditation (2)

2008-06-05T04:32:00.000-07:00

Alms-Giving
Alms giving moves God. Even when you may not know the way to eternal life but because of your giving to the poor and needy; God can be moved to save you and your loved ones. He who is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward him for what he has done. (Proverbs 19:17)

A generous man will prosper; he who refreshes others will himself be refreshed. (Proverbs 11:25) Dorcas was brought back to life from the dead because she was a generous person

The Story of Dorcas
(Acts 9:36-42)

In Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha (which, when translated, is Dorcas ), who was always doing good and helping the poor.

About that time she became sick and died, and her body was washed and placed in an upstairs room.

Lydda was near Joppa; so when the disciples heard that Peter was in Lydda, they sent two men to him and urged him, "Please come at once!"

Peter went with them, and when he arrived he was taken upstairs to the room. All the widows stood around him, crying and showing him the robes and other clothing that Dorcas had made while she was still with them.

Peter sent them all out of the room; then he got down on his knees and prayed. Turning toward the dead woman, he said, "Tabitha, get up." She opened her eyes, and seeing Peter she sat up.

He took her by the hand and helped her to her feet. Then he called the believers and the widows and presented her to them alive.

This became known all over Joppa, and many people believed in Christ.

The Beatitudes
(Matthew 25:3-12)

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

(Ecclesiastes 12:13-14)

Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this are the whole duty of man.

For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.

Meditation - What do we have to give in alms?

2008-06-03T04:21:00.000-07:00

What do we have to give in alms?

Jesus Christ asks us to give the poor of our surplus. He asks us to give even our little.

In Marc 12, 41-44, results that He asks us to give all that we have, all our richness. (It is about the parabola of the widow which gives two pennies in the church).

But Christ asks us to give even what we do not have, which we do not have. He asks us the impossible one. A famous French writer this fact, as follows:

In a monastery where he wished to enter, introduces himself an applicant wishing to become monk.

Would you know, father, that I have neither the faith, neither the light, neither the courage, nor confidence in myself and by consequence I cannot help myself and of as much less the others. I do not have anything.

It would have been normal that he should be returned instantly by the higoumen

But, this one says to him:
It doesn’t matter! You do not have the faith, you do not have the light, but, by giving them to the others, you will also acquire them for yourself. Go and take possession of your room of retirement in this monastery.

Not of his surplus, not of his little, nor even of his indigence, but of what he misses. While making alms to the others what you do not have, - the faith, the light, the confidence of oneself, the courage,- you will also acquire them for you. You can make alms with what you think that you don’t have, but which perhaps exist at the bottoms of your heart, and you will take conscience thus.

Paradoxically, Christ says to us:
If you want to lead, then become servant; if you want to be glorified, then humiliates yourself; if you want to save your soul, then take the risk for Me; if you want to regain your innocence, then recognize yourself to be guilty, and know that if you will give what you don’t have, you will acquire also what you gave to the others.

By making alms what we do not have, we will acquire by rebound what we dared to give to the others.

This is valid for any Christian, for the clerks and for the laymen. Even the monk or the deacon or the priest who cross the desert of the doubt or of the spiritual dryness, which is in the doubt or tempted by despair, must give to those which come to require from him assistance, which they await that one gives them, and even what he knows well that he cannot give them. In their making the gift, this gift will return on him, he will receive the mercy in return of those alms.

By giving the light that you do not have, you will have it also yourself. The gift that you made returns you like a boomerang, like a ray of light reflected by a mirror. And this gift will fill you, will enrich you.

It is that what Christ wants that we give in alms: the surplus, the little, our indigence, all. The monk, the deacon, the priest, have to give to the others the faith, the light, even if they misses those for short time or for more long time. Even if they are in a state of loss of their zeal.

Will they be able to do that? Yes, because they belong to the group of the friends of the Christ, who said that they are not world, as Me I am not world (Jean 17, 20).

And Paul also had known as:
You must help the weak ones and to remind you the words of Christ
Are happier those who give than those who receive. (Acts 20,35).

Fine words

Let us think of the crucifixion of Jesus. He is nailed on the cross, his body is bloody, he awaits the anguish and the death. On his right and on his left there are two other crosses, with two thieves, both offenders of the common right. The sun is to the zenith, Jesus is thirsty, all is desolation, and pain. The scribes, the Pharisees, defy him dying. Even the thief of his left causes him. He insults him.

The thief of the right-hand side finds the respite and the nobleness of heart to say fine words to his neighbour. He cannot help him, but he tells him fine words.

Jesus says to him:
Today you will be with me in the paradise.

Jesus gave him this single privilege to enter in the paradise with Him, who is either God and man, privilege which neither Isaiah, neither Moses, nor Noah will not have like privilege. The thief received for himself only, this single privilege.

Those fine words of the thief could soften the suffocating atmosphere, of spite, of venom, which reigned on Golgotha. Like a miracle, the fine words of affection, of confidence, of compassion, changed suddenly all, and transformed Golgotha - space vitiated by iniquity, by cruelty, by revenge, - into an anteroom of the paradise.

The thief did not remain closed in the world, isolated in its self-centredness, he became that which has seen, which has recognized, which comforted Jesus, who took his defence, by his fine words.

We also, can make the good deeds by giving our alms in the form of the fine words of encouragement, of confidence, of compassion, of participation in the distress of the others.

Never let us lose the occasion to make the good deeds by the word which brings the moral comfort to the suffering ones, to the poor, to the old men.

Let us be like the good thief.

Learn to smile like Jesus

2008-05-30T04:23:00.000-07:00

Dear brothers and sisters,

In Isaiah 53:3a we read: "...He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering..."

While the above scripture verses clearly refer to the Lord Jesus Christ, these words, to some degree, can also be applied to some of his followers. In communist prison, we were very badly treated. For years, I and others were kept in solitary confinement, 30 feet beneath the earth. The only thing we could do was sit quietly and look at the same spot on the wall. There were times when they gave us one slice of bread a week. At other times we were given soup of potato peels and cabbage with unwashed intestines and such dainties. We only sat, looked at the wall, meditated and prayed.

Then after years of such solitary confinement, they put us in common cells. It was a very depressing atmosphere. All men passed through tortures. None of them knew anything about their families. All had years of prison behind them and years yet to go.

There was among us a Jewish believer. His name was Milan Haimovitch. This man had been so beaten. He was often beaten for his own "crimes" but frequently, just as another prisoner was to be beaten, he would step forward and say, "I will take his place". He was a model of Christ.

Once there was a discussion between him and a great scientist who was also in jail with us. He was a member of the Academy of Science and a godless man. Milan Haimovitch was not of the same intellectual and cultural level as this professor. He had not read so many thousands of books as this professor, but he tried to tell the professor about the Messiah, about Jesus.

The professor laughed and scorned him and said, "Why do you come with such stupidities. Why do you believe in Jesus? How do you know He exists?"

Milan replied, "Well, I know by the fact that I walk with Him and talk with Him." The professor said, "You are such a liar. How can you walk with Jesus? Jesus lived 2000 years ago, somewhere in Israel Then He died. How can you walk and talk with Him? " Milan replied, "Yes, sir, it is true that He died 2000 years ago, but He also resurrected and is living even now. " The scientist continued: "Where is He now? Maybe in heaven? Where is heaven? Is it thousands of miles away beyond the sun, or on the moon, or beyond all the stars? Or in an another world? Can he walk and talk with you? Don’t you see that you speak stupid things? " Milan replied, "I myself have no explanation. I wonder myself, too, but the fact is that He walks and talks with me."

The professor was indignant and said, "Well, I will ask you one more question. You say that He talks with you. How does He talk with you? What is the expression of His face? Does He look angry? Or wrathful? Does He look interested or disinterested? Does He look lovingly at you? Does He perhaps smile at you? " He was mocking with these questions.

Milan answered, "Sir, you have guessed. Sometimes He smiles at me. " The scientist interrupted and said: "Ha, ha, ha, such a lie, such a lie. I never met such a liar. Jesus smiles at you. When you say Jesus smiles at you, show me how He smiles. " Milan said, "I will show how Jesus smiles. "

Now, you must realize how Milan looked. Like all of us, he was shorn. He was only skin and bones with dark circles around his eyes. He was without teeth. He was in the uniform of a prisoner. He looked like a scarecrow. We were all very ugly.

Yet such a beautiful smile appeared on his lips. His dirty face shone. The glory of God can shine from behind a thick crust of dirt. There was so much peace, so much contentment and so much joy on his face, in a smile that was not from this earth. This atheist, godless professor bowed his head and said, "Sir, I have seen Jesus".

I have been witness of such a thing. My aim in life has been also to bring to a world, in which there is so much suffering and so much darkness, the smile of Jesus. What must the purpose of believers be in this dark and sad world with so much suffering of so many kinds?

I have seen this man. He was also human like us, but he could bring the smile of heaven to a sad world. He had learned to smile like Jesus. Jesus has suffered more than every one of us. Not only that he was crucified, but he bore the sufferings of everyone. It is written about Him, in Isaiah 53, that He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Yet He has brought so much joy in life.

Learn to smile like Jesus.

God bless you,

Richard Wurmbrand

They that hate thee have lifted up their heads

2008-05-27T04:26:00.000-07:00

If you ever have anything against another, if a brother disparages you, and you are humble for the sake of the devil, you are imitating Him who says: :learn from me, for I am meek and lowly in heart” (Mt. 11:29).

But the proud man who glorifies himself follows the example of him who says: “I will scale the heavens, I will set my throne above the stars of heaven… I will be like the Most High!” (Ida. 14:13,14).

“Against Thy people they have taken wicked counsel.” All that is necessary is to be God-s people. “And have conspired against Thy saints”…

St. Jerome, Homily

Double Doses of Love

2008-05-22T04:33:00.000-07:00

By Pastor Richard Wurmbrand

"...they have slain the servants with the edge of the sword..." - Job 1:15.

Dear brothers and sisters,

Job lived in a very great country. In his country, people were free to do the most amazing things.
We read in chapter one of his book, verse 15, about some people -- the Sabeans. The Sabeans fell upon the asses and oxen of Job, and took them away. They slew the servants with the edge of the sword. One alone escaped.

We read in verse 17, the Chaldeans formed three bands and fell upon the cattle and carried them away. Yes, and killed the servants with the edge of the sword.

People were free, even as they are free in America or Australia, to commit crimes: robberies, murder, assault and rape. That is what was considered freedom in the time of Job.

Not everybody was a bandit or a robber at that time. There were very honest people like the friends of Job. But these friends of Job came only after all the catastrophes had happened to Job.

They did not do anything to prevent such terrible crimes from happening. They were not with him while he suffered. They were unconcerned. They came after Job had lost everything, and instead of words of comfort, they upbraided him.

The loneliness in suffering

In suffering, men usually have no friends. I know that not only in communist countries people are suffering, they are suffering here in America, too.

When the heart is most burdened, usually you are alone. Rarely you will find somebody to understand you, to be ready to listen to you.

We Americans cannot listen to somebody's suffering because the problem on the color television is much too interesting. We see there people weeping, being shot, being wounded. There are many weeping next door to us. We have no time for them because we watch the picture.

In all our dramas, we are alone, we have no earthly friend. This problem can be solved only one way. You become a friend. Don't ask others to be your friends.

All men are one and we are meant to cooperate as kidneys, lungs, liver, legs and brain.

As organs cooperate for the health of the body, so we all should feel that we are one and we should care for one another.

The great commandment which our Lord has given to us is found in John 13:34. "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have given My life for you... that ye also love one another."

The radiant flower of love Because it so happens that I passed 14 years in communist prisons and also some time in Nazi prisons, everybody expects from me to speak out against communism.

I prefer rather to speak out for Christ.

Instead of speaking about the ugly things of the devil, I prefer to speak about the beautiful commandment of love which Christ gave us and about His beautiful example.

It is said about the Emperor of Japan that he heard about one of his nobility who had a splendid garden with orchids. No one else had such beautiful flowers. He said to this nobleman, "I will come on such and such a day. I wish to see the garden."

On that day, the man waited outside his palace. The emperor's carriage arrived and he said to the ruler, "Your highness, let us go first to the garden." They entered the garden. It was ploughed. Not a single flower could be seen in the garden. The emperor wondered, but did not say a word.

Then the nobleman said to the emperor, "Let us have tea." They entered into the tea room. There in a jar was just one flower, but a flower of radiant beauty, overwhelming beauty. The nobleman told the emperor, "I have kept the most beautiful flower for the best of emperors. The other flowers were not worthy to live."

I believe that for our emperor, Jesus Christ, we have to keep in our hears just one flower -- the flower of love. All the other flowers are not worthy to live. Jesus Christ is embodied love. He gave his life for us. Every one of us should offer Him our self sacrificing, our burning love.

I am happy to tell you about the Christians behind the Iron Curtain that in spite of unspeakable persecution, have kept this love. The communists could kill bodies of Christians. They could maim them. They could torture them. They could slay Christians. But they cannot slay the love of Christians, neither their faith.

How the church in China grew

I imagine that many of you must have heard the name of Watchman Nee, the renowned Chinese evangelical writer. He passed away some 20 years ago after having spent 26 years in communist prisons.

We have been told about what happened to him in prison. They arrested him, Wang Min-Dao, and so many other Christian leaders. Samuel Lamb and Allen Yuan, with whom we continue to work today, were arrested at the same time and each suffered more than 20 years in prison.

The communists had closed all the churches. Red China is a country with 1.2 billion inhabitants. Every fifth man in the world is Chinese. God loves the Chinese very much. Proof is He has made so many of them: 1.2 billion.

For such a population not one single church was left open. Everything had been destroyed. The underground church, however, was blooming: hundreds came to Christ and were baptized although the church was underground.

The communists were very alarmed about this and asked themselves how this was possible. Then they found out. Watchman Nee himself had smuggled letters to the Christians outside the prison and his letters were of such beauty and such Christian depth that the Christians outside were strengthened in their faith.

They became full of zeal and they won new souls for Christ. So the communists said, "We can outsmart Watchman Nee. Henceforth, the guard in front of his cell will be changed every 6 hours and never will the same guard be twice on duty because he converts the guards, and persuades them to smuggle out the letters. If we change the guards every 6 hours, he will have no time to convert them and no letters will be smuggled out any more."

They multiplied the guards. More guards were converted and more letters were smuggled out. The church in China grew even faster. We smuggle into China and other countries Bibles and other Christian books.

We broadcast the Gospel in a number of languages, and we help the families of Christians who are in prisons. Thousands are in prison. Our couriers go and bring the news of what is happening where Christians are persecuted. There are underground churches all over Red China. Also in Vietnam, Laos, and other communist and Muslim countries.

Overcoming hatred with double doses of love

When you meet hatred, don't reproach the perpetrators with "Why do you hate?" He hates because I don't love enough. If I would double the doses of love, it might overcome his hatred.

Once there was a a great fire in a town and a man came with a cup of water, and threw it onto the fire. The fire continued to blaze.

He came back and said, "What stupidity. People believe that water quenches fire. You have seen, I threw water onto the fire and it was not quenched."

He did not know the truth -- a cup of water does not quench fire but many hoses with water quench fire. Christian love, as much as we have it today, does not quench the fire of anti God hatred. So we have to increase our love.

Christ has given us an example of love. He forsook heaven for us, was born in a stable, led a whole life of sorrows, allowed himself to be flogged, spat upon and crucified because He loved.

He has given us the freedom, not the freedom to commit wicked things, but the freedom to spend our lives in love.

A torturer repents

I don't have much time to tell you all the beauties of the underground church. I should perhaps tell you just one episode which I have lived.

We were in a prison cell; some 30 or 40 prisoners. The door was unlocked and the guards and pushed in a new prisoner. He was dirty like we were. We had not washed ourselves in 3 years. So he was dirty, and we were dirty.

He was shorn and had the striped uniform of a prisoner. In the half darkness of the cell we did not recognize him, but at a certain moment, one of us exclaimed, "This is Captain Popescu, I recognize him!"

Captain Popescu had been one of the worst torturers of Christians. He had beaten and tortured even some of us who were now in the same cell with him. We wondered how he had become a prisoner of the communists and how he had been put in a prison cell reserved for Christians.

So we surrounded him and asked him his story. With tears in his eyes, he told us that a few months ago he sat in his office. The soldier on duty knocked at the door and said, "Outside is a boy of 12 or 13 who has a flower for your wife."

The captain scratched his head. He did not remember that it was his wife's birthday, but in any case, he allowed the boy to enter.

The boy entered with the flower in his hand, very shy, but very decided, and said, "Comrade Captain, you are the one who has put my father and mother in prison. Today is my mother's birthday. I have the habit every year on this day, out of my little pocket money, to buy a flower for her. Because of you, I have no mother to gladden today. But my mother is a Christian and she taught me since I was a little child to love my enemies and to reward evil with good. Because of you, I have no mother to gladden today, I thought to give joy to the mother of your children. Please take this flower to your wife and tell her about my love and about the love of Christ."

It was too much even for a communist torturer. He was also a creature of God. He also has been enlightened with the light which enlightens every man who comes into this world. He embraced this child.

He could not beat any more. He could not torture anymore. He was no longer useful as an officer of the communist secret police. He came to suffer together with the children of God and was happy for this new state.

Believe in love

We have all experienced the love of Christ towards us. Now this Christ, who died and resurrected for us, lives in our hearts and imparts in us this love.

The enemies of God can kill us. They cannot kill love. If you tramp on a flower with your boots, the flower rewards you with its perfume. Let us have before our eyes the love of Christ who saved us.

Let us have before our eyes also the love of our brethren who have heavy burdens, thousands of times heavier than our burdens. Continue to simply believe in love. Let us follow their heroic example.

Let a new Christian life start with every one of us. You must not be shallow Christians. You must not be lukewarm Christians. Our love towards Christ can be a full, overflowing one.

Amen.

Warmly yours in Christ Jesus,

Pastor Richard Wurmbrand

Why All the Suffering?

2008-05-12T04:28:00.000-07:00

Dear brothers and sisters,

“…that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2).

Reading the Gospel in a solitary cell, from memory, I was struck by the extent to which suffering pervades it. It begins with the catastrophe of mankind's expulsion from paradise, and it concludes with the majority of mankind entering hell.

Why do even saints have to suffer? Why are there sufferings in the animal kingdom? Why is a baby born with suffering? Is suffering God’s only educational method?

Why does evil exist? Why have Christians suffered for decades in Communist jails?

After dedicating forty years of his life to missionary work among the Australian aborigines, a pastor fell sick. He suffered greatly as he was barely able to breathe. He asked his family to sing and read to him from the Gospel. Finally, he said, “Stop the praises, I have served Him my whole life and He does not care for me.” He took the Gospel from his wife's hand and threw it into the bush. He could find no answer to the problem of suffering.

The only answer which, I believe, should be given is not to ask the question. Jesus, when He was on the Cross, asked God why He had forsaken even His only begotten Son. His question is followed only by a question mark. All that is revealed to us is that the question exists and that we can live with it.

A sufferer once came to a pastor and asked him many questions. The pastor answered, “Kneel here in church and ask Jesus for the answers.” The man replied, “Do you really think I will hear a voice from heaven?” “No,” said the pastor, “but by keeping quiet in prayer for several hours before God, you will realize that you can get along without answers to all your problems.

This would have been Jesus ”answer and it will quiet you.” You do not need more than His peace, which passes all understanding. You do not need both peace and understanding, for understanding presupposes qualifications which most of us do not have.

The Talmud (Haghiga) says that there were four men who ascended to the highest firmament, Ben Azai, Ben Zoma, Elisha ben Abuya and Rabbi Akiba. Ben Azai saw the glory of God and died. Ben Zoma saw and went mad. Elisha ben Abuya became irreligious. Only Rabbi Akiba returned unharmed.

Paul writes about a man who was caught up into paradise, but he could not communicate to anyone about what he experienced because the words he heard in paradise were unspeakable words (2 Cor. 12:2-4).

A legend says that Moses once sat near a well in meditation. A wayfarer stopped to drink from the well and when he did, his purse fell from his girdle into the sand. The man departed. Shortly afterwards another man passed near the well, saw the purse and picked it up. Later a third man stopped to assuage his thirst and went to sleep in the shadow of the well.

Meanwhile, the first man had discovered that his purse was missing and, assuming that he must have lost it at the well, returned, awoke the sleeper (who of course knew nothing) and demanded his money back. An argument followed, and irate, the first man killed the latter.

Whereupon Moses said to God, “You see? Therefore men do not believe in You. There is too much evil and injustice in the world. Why should the first man have lost his purse and then become a murderer? Why should the second have gotten a purse full of gold without having worked for it? The third was completely innocent. Why was he slain?”

God answered, “For once and only once, I will give you an explanation. I cannot do it at every step. The first man was a thief's son. The purse contained money stolen by his father from the father of the second, who, finding the purse, only found what was due him. The third was a murderer whose crime had never been revealed and who received from the first the punishment he deserved. In the future believe that there is sense and righteousness in what transpires even when you do not understand.”

Faith in God is the sole answer to the mystery of evil.

In Christ,

Richard Wurmbrand

Kontakion Of Eustathius

2008-05-05T05:29:00.000-07:00

Kontakion

O Holy Eustathius, you werean imitator of Christ in his passion; you drank of his cup with courage and became a sharer pf his glory: wherefore the God of us all granted you a divine power to work wonders.

TROPARION of the honorable and glorious Prophet, the Forerunner JOHN THE BAPTIST

Joy to you, O barren one unable to give bieth! Behold, you conceive today the one who is really a Torch of the Sun, who will enlighten the whole that suffred from blindness. Rejoice, O Zachary, and cry out in all confidence : « Thee One who will be born is a Prophet of the Most High! »

KONTAKION of the honorable and glorious Prophet, the Forerunner JOHN THE BAPTIST

Zachary rejoices greatly with his wife Elizabeth, for she conceived John the Forerunner whom thw angel announced in gladness. As for us, we honor him in witness of this blessing.

Thoughts

2008-04-28T04:25:00.000-07:00

The start of stillness is the rejection of all noisiness as something that will trouble the depths of the soul. The final point is when one has no longer a fear of noisy disturbance, when one is immune to it.

He who when he goes out does not go out in his intellect is gentle and wholly a house of love, rarely move to speech and never to anger.

St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 27: On Stillness; Paulist Press pg. 262

TROPARION of the EXALTATION of the Holy CROSS

2008-04-21T04:09:00.000-07:00

TROPARION of the EXALTATION of the Holy CROSS;

LORD OUR GOD, your Holy Martyrs EUSTATHIUS and THEOPISTA, AGAPIUS and THEOPISTA have deserved the crown of immortality on account of their good fight.

Armed with your strength, they have vanquished their persecutors and crushed Satan`s dreadful might.

Through their supplications, O Christ God, save our souls!

You walk with me, my God

2008-04-14T04:08:00.001-07:00

Even though I walk in the dark valley, I fear no evil; for you are at my side.
(Psalm 23:4)

When I struggle with pain that tortures me,
You walk with me, my God.
When my path is filled with worry and fear,
You walk with me, my God.
When sorrow and regret are haunting me,
You walk with me, my God.
When my life feels overwhelming and threatens to be too much,
You walk with me, my God.
When my time has come and death is waiting for me,
You walk with me, my God.
I count on you to be ever with me.
And so you are.

My body is so tired - Prayer

2008-04-11T04:15:00.000-07:00

My body is so tired, my God. It's wearing out. It has served me well, carrying me through this world with great care and service. And now I know that my bones and muscle and all my substance are weakened by the inevitable passage of time.

I thank you for my body, for all that it has done for me in this world. I thank you for all the blessing that have come to me through my senses and physical awareness, for the many things I've seen, touched, and known.

I thank you for the strength I've had, for the ability to work and move and do many of the things I've wanted and chosen to do. I thank you too for play and pleasure, for the enjoyment of so many of your tangible gifts.

I thank you for my ability to think, to reason, to appreciate, to be aware. When my time has come, my loving God, receive me and help me to release my body with gratitude and love. Thank you, God, for my body, wonderfully made and gratefully lived in.

We absolutely need God

2008-03-31T04:11:00.000-07:00

This is a text of Sabine Wurmbrand, this great missionary personality who spent all her life to accomplish good deeds in the Spirit of the Ressusrection of our Lord.

Dear brothers and sisters,

I was a slave worker in a Romanian prison camp and worked at building a huge canal with thousands of women. We were sad, but we had among us a young Jewish lady who was a doctor. She was sadder than all the others. Nobody could speak with her.

One day I was on my straw mattress. Near me was this Jewish doctor, and I tried to comfort her sad heart. I said, "You, as Jewish lady, should not be in despair. For God has promised to our forefather, Abraham, that the Jewish people will have a bright future. They will be like the sand on the seashore and the stars in the sky."

She lifted up her beautiful, sad eyes, tears ran down her cheeks. She said, "Surely, like the sand on the seashore, trodden under the feet of everyone as we are trodden here under the feet of the prison guards… Don’t speak to me any more about your God."

She went away. Nobody could speak with her. A few days after this, I awoke one morning deathly sick. So in order not to die in this cell, I was thrown in a van of the police and taken to another prison that they called the hospital. Many dying women were there – two or even three in a small bed – everyone waiting to be taken out to the nearby cemetery.

There we were. In the evening the director of the prison entered. Together with about ten of his officers. He looked around among the dying women. We looked like ghosts. (Remember thousands like them, your sisters, are in prisons and slave labor camps today in dictatorial countries like China, Vietnam, North Korea.)

He looked around at the dying women and delivered a speech : "Now you see? We have all the power. We prevailed. We are stronger than your God. We have doctors and we don’t need your God any more, your Christ. In here, in our hospital, you are not meant even to mention the name of God or Christ".

A big silence followed. Nobody dared to answer nor did any of the women even have strength to speak. But the Holy Spirit was there. He gave me strength. He gave the right words. I said, "Mr. Officer, as long as death and sickness will be on earth and you see how near death we all are together, we absolutely need God. We need Jesus Christ the Son of God, the only giver of life."

The director went into a rage and answered. I answered him back. When he didn’t know any more what to say, he went out and banged the door. The women were so happy. It was the most beautiful event, which had happened in their sad prison life. On the beds of happiness they embraced each other because someone had stood up to this brute.

Early the next morning when it was still dark, a guard entered with a list of three names – women who were fit to go back to work. The first of the three names was mine, although I was dying. No question about going. I was thrown again into the van and brought back to the prison cell.

When the prisoners saw me, they started to cry. They banged at the door calling for help. Nobody came. The next morning when the thousand were gathered in order to be taken to the field, I had to go with them. The other prisoners took me on their arms, walking miles and miles. Who could ever describe what it meant – marching, hungry, sick, marching to the fields day by day, surrounded by the many prison guards with their rifles, surrounded by big dogs. Only seeing them, your heart would freeze.

So the weak women walked, having also to carry me on their arms. When we arrived, they had to put me down on the ground. Nobody was allowed to stand near me.

Everyone had to work. There I was. Many of the Christians worked and wept, being convinced that they had put me there in my grave forever.

While nobody was allowed to come near me, in a second, Jesus stood before me. He had passed the guards. Jesus touched my dying body and in the evening, when the thousands of prisoners were brought to the prison cell, I was with them. Like a fire, it spread all over the prison.

Late in the evening, when I was on my straw mattress, on the concrete, this Jewish lady doctor came. She confessed that, in seeing such a miraculous healing, she acknowledged now her belief in the Messiah who had touched my body and had healed me.

An American army officer in World War II told his men : "The enemy troops are in front of us, in our back, to the right and to the left. We are totally surrounded. This time the enemy cannot escape!"

The opportunity to help cannot be exhausted. People in desperate need surround us. Let us forget forever the sins that the Lord has forgiven. Let us forget our human heart in its despair. But let us also not forget what we need to remember : our beloved Lord Jesus Christ! Thanks for all your hard efforts in behalf of our persecuted family in dictatorial countries.

Yours in Christ,

Sabina Wurmbrand

Easter, Message from the director

2008-03-28T04:26:00.000-07:00

Dear friends and benefactors,

We just came back from Cuba and we were suprised by the enormous needs of the Cuban people.

These men and women, happy and talented, lack everything. We gave joy to the communities that we visited.

We left 5 huge boxes full of gifts. More than 350 children have new glasses provided by us. M

ore than 100 families have received clothing, and money in the form of medicines and vitamins.

Help us to continue our projects in that so poor country.

Yours, in the service of our Lord,

Rev. Radu Roscanu, director of the Mission

Walk in the Spirit

2008-03-26T04:19:00.000-07:00

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

"Walk in the Spirit..." (Galatians 5:16).

I am sorry I would have liked to paint the beautiful shining faces of Christians in Communist jail. Their faces shone, and it was quite an achievement for the glory of God to shine on the face of a Christian in Communist jails. We did not wash (I had not washed in three years), but the glory of God can shine even from behind a crust of dirt. They had triumphant smiles on their faces.

I know about Christians who were released from Communist prisons. I was one who was stopped several times on the street by passers by asking, "Sir, what is it in you? You look like such a happy man. What is the source of your happiness’?" I told them that I came from many years in Communist jails.

They could not understand this because they could not think beyond the difficulties of their own lives. They had not learned to walk in the Spirit and to experience the presence of God. So many would think, "If only you knew what a life I have - a husband who batters me, a wife who nags, children who break my heart - there are so many things." There are many material difficulties, tempests in your soul. I know these difficulties exist.

Horev was a Russian Christian who was in jail for many years. His father died in the same jail. Horev wrote in a letter, which he smuggled out from prison, that he was placed in a cell with common criminals. What they did to Christians is unimaginable.

The criminals beat Horev until lie fell unconscious. When he came to, he heard them talking among themselves, "We should grease some rope and hang him tonight." The others refused, because that was too complicated. They had better cut his throat and then place the bloody knife in his hand so it would look like suicide. That was the talk among them. You could believe it, because they did these things.

Then, walking in the Spirit, Horev envisioned another world for himself and said, "How beautiful it will be after they have cut my throat." He saw the angels receiving him, taking him in their arms to bring him to the bosom of Abraham. He saw himself encountering the martyrs of old. He enjoyed these things. He slept the whole night very quietly.

The next day, the criminals again beat him, and in the evening they talked about killing him. Horev said to himself, "But my father has died in this place. What an honor for me, and what a joy for my father, that I was not afraid and that I walked in his footsteps and will see Jesus." In thinking about this world that he envisioned for himself, he slept again quietly. It continued on like this until the eighteenth day, when he was moved from that jail. What he wrote is so beautiful: "I had to leave the cell. The criminal who had intended to cut my throat came to me, shook my hand, and said, "Truly, there is something supernatural in you.""

What in the world does a criminal know about the supernatural? Horev was a page of the Bible, "an epistle of Christ ...written not with ink, but by the Spirit of the Living God" (2 Corinthians 3:3). The criminal knew from Horev, not from the Bible, that Horev belongs to another. He has a divine nature. "There must be a God," the criminal said. "Every time we spoke about you, you were asleep and we did not think that you heard us. You kept your eyes closed. Why did you not jump at us? How could you sleep quietly and peacefully? Only one who really believes in eternal life can do this."

The criminal continued, "When you were taken for walk in the prison yard, you could have reported to the guard about us and requested to be placed in another cell. That is what is usually done, but you never did it. Why’? Why did you come back? Why did you not seek help with any man except with your God? Why did you pray on your knees every morning and every evening? You knew that we could kill you, as we have killed so many. Why did you give yourself quietly every day into our hands’? This is incomprehensible for us. Really, you have something supernatural in you." Once again he shook Horev’s hand and that is how they parted.

Horev did not live in this world.

We all expect that Jesus will come again and rapture us to heaven. No one will be raptured, I can assure you, if Christ hasn't raptured his heart already. No one will be in heaven if he is not in heaven already, if he does not live here in an entirely different world than the material world that surrounds us.

So whatever your circumstances - which initial be terrible for some of you - don't live this life. Live the new life, the eternal life, the timeless life, to which we are called by Jesus.

We were in prison cells with believers sentenced to death. As often as the door was unlocked, the prisoner did not know if he would be taken to a bath, to an interrogation or to be shot. Yet there was such a peace. There was no difference for him because lie knew he had eternal life.

I belong to the family of God. I have the nature of God. Because I also have the nature of a man, I know I may live sixty or eighty years. Since I have the nature of God, who in the world can kill me? Men can change only my outward form, but I will live in other circumstances.

We saw this peace - the peace of those who understood that godly nature - and I plead with you for this. You have your difficulties. You have your crosses. Trust in the God who makes faces to shine and know that in Him you have eternal life.

Sincerely,

Pastor Richard Wurmbrand

Value every verse of the Gospel

2008-03-19T04:24:00.000-07:00

“Then He struck the men of Beth Shemesh, because they had looked into the ark of the Lord” (1 Samuel 6:19)

Beloved brothers and sisters,

If you have read the story in 1 Samuel 6, you will know that the inhabitants of the town of Beth Shemesh in Israel had been given a wonderful blessing from God – a very valuable emblem of their faith, the ark of the covenant.

The Jews had, first of all, spiritual blessings. Those in Beth Shemesh could have from the ark also material blessings because the law obliged the Jews to make a pilgrimage three times a year to the ark of the covenant. Imagine hundreds of thousands of tourists in a little town. However, the inhabitants of Beth Shemesh did not appreciate this blessing. They wrongly handled the ark. It was meant to be kept with very great reverence, but they peeked into it to find out its secrets, which angered God and brought His punishment. They had to send the ark to another town, Kirjath Jearim.

Many men have exceptional blessings from God and don't value them. I have been in the town of Kimberley, in South Africa, which is the diamond capital of the world. More diamonds are mined there than anywhere else on earth. The town's museum documents that more than a hundred years ago a very poor man found the first diamond. Hw saw a big glittering stone. He gave it to his son as a toy, because he did not know its value. This child passed the stone to another child, then to a third, until it eventually arrived in the hands of the British Governor, who gave $ 10,000 for it. You can imagine what the value of this diamond would be today. The one who found the first diamond died as a beggar. The family did not have enough for the burial. He did not appreciate the jewel that he had.

That is the story of the town of Beth Shemesh. It had great privileges from God and great opportunities, but it forfeited them.

I wonder if we in the free world are not the same. We have such wonderful blessings from God, but we don't always value them. We are not thankful at times, and, therefore, we might lose the privileges.

For example, we have a Gospel. We can have as many Gospels as we like. We can hear it preached in churches. We can read it. But we don't realize this huge privilege.

More than a billion people are living under communism. They can not have a Gospel. They love the Word of God, as we do, and they can not have it. In Red China the Communists confiscated Gospels, hymnbooks, and whatever other Christian books they found. In the town of Chungking, they made a big bonfire and burned all these Gospels. They compelled the Christians to attend the burning of their holy books. Now Gospels don’t burn easily because they are thick and the oxygen cannot pass easily through the pages. It took quite some time for the Gospels to burn. Profiting from a moment of inattention by the Communists, a Christian thrust his hand into the fire and quickly, just at random, snatched one page of the Bible out of the fire. He could not choose the one page he snatched. The church in the town of Chungking gathered every Sunday and each week read the same page of the Bible. They lived for two years on one page of the Bible.

It is said about John Wesley that he preached again and again on one verse, “You must be born again”. One who had heard him preaching ten times, twenty times, got annoyed and said, “But Mr. Wesley, there are thousands of verses in the Bible… Why do you always preach about this one verse? Wesley replied, “Because you must be born again.”

So one verse of the Bible, of the Gospel, is of great value. The Chungking believers had several verses of the Bible -–a whole page. They read this page repeatedly. After two years they smuggled out a slip of paper, a small letter, to Christians in the West through Hong-Kong. They wrote in this letter, “Dear brethren, don't strive to become better Christians. Strive only to be the kind of Christians whom Christ meant us to be – Christ-like Christians.” This letter went directly to my heart, and I determined to do everything possible to find out what page of the Bible they had.

I learned that they had Matthew 16. They gathered again and again to hear the assurance of Jesus. You are Peter and on this rock I, Jesus Christ – not your bishops, pastors, deacons, evangelists – will build – not the Catholic Church, nor the Anglican Church, nor the Protestant Church, - will build My Church, and not even the gates of hell will prevail against it.

The church lived on one page of the Gospel. How much they valued it! They went to prison and to death for teaching from this one page. We have 1,200 pages of the Bible. How grateful we should be to God! How careful we should be! Does my Chinese brother have a Bible? The North-Korean people do not have many. The Bible is a rarity in the Communist camp and the Muslim country. We have it.

Those in Beth Shemesh had the ark of the covenant with blessings that could have been poured upon them. They did not know to value it, to handle it rightly, and so they lost everything.

How much do we value every verse of the Gospel?

Yours in Christ,

Richard Wurmbrand

Wood Overlaid With Gold

2008-03-17T04:21:00.000-07:00

“He (Moses) put the gold altar in the tabernacle of meeting in front of the veil” (Exodus 40:26)

Beloved brothere and sisters,

It is written that Moses put the golden altar, on which incense was burned, in the tabernacle of meeting. Was this altar gold^ The Bible calls it a gold altar. But, if we look at Exodus 30:1,3, we have a surprise. There God tells Moses, @You shall make an altar to burn incense on; you shall make it of acacia wood…and you shall make for it a molding of gold all around.

So it was a wooden altar with a little bit of gold on it, God calls it the golden altar.

We ask ourselves often, how does God look upon me^ There is so much wickedness in me. We sometimes have thoughts that are so evil, hell would be ashamed of them. We also have bad deeds. We are wooden, but God asks Himself, Is this wood overlaid with gold? If it is overlaid with a little bit of gold, He will not call it a wooden altar overlaid with gold, but a golden altar.

We have Christ, the whole Christ, living in us. God sees us as being Christians through and through, children of God, because Christ is in our hearts.

We continue to broadcast the gospel to China. We receive very few responses. Years ago, one listener smuggled an interesting letter through Hong Kong. He said the following: “I was in the Red Guard. I was a teenager. I did not believe in God, in any heaven, in any hell, in any Savior, nothing at all. Just playing with the radio, I accidentally tuned into your transmissions. I was interested. I tuned in again and again. Now I believe in Christ. But I have two questions. The first one: Does God receive anybody from Red China? In your broadcasts you speak about the church; but with us, it is so that God is in heaven, we are in Red China and we have almost no churches. Can God accept somebody without a church? Is a church absolutely necessary?” The poor lad did not know how many churches he had. Those who love Christ are in the one church universal.

Then he asked a second question: “Would you please teach me to pray? You start every radio program with a prayer. I would like to pray, but I don’t know how.”

He who has never been in a church, who does not know the Lord’s Prayer, who has never heard a liturgy, says what he imagines prayer to be. You can be a doctor in theology and you would not know about prayer, but this former Communist knows. He says, "“ imagine that prayer means to speak the whole day so that after everything you say, you might be able to add Amen."”What a beautiful definition of prayer.

This manner of praying we have learned from a Chinese Communist who has heard perhaps three or four times a short broadcast telling him what the gospel is. We don’t know anything more about this Chinese man. He is uninstructed in matters of God. It is wood, but it is wood overlaid with a little bit of gold. He guessed from a few broadcasts what the Bible is about. A yearning after a church. A yearning after speaking to God in a manner that is pleasing to Him. God calls such a bit of wood, overlaid with a little bit of gold, a golden altar.

I remember speaking with a Russian officer about Christ. Everything I told him was new to him. They learned in school that religion is an invention of the American imperialists, that it is all stupid, and that the Bible is not true. When I told him the story, he listened attentively and said; “Sir, the story is not entirely new to me. On an autumn afternoon I watched through the window of my apartment and I saw in the garden the big branches of a tree. I said to myself, “These same branches will be full with leaves, flowers, and afterwards with fruit. ‘I spit on the earth and the earth rewards me by giving me wheat and flowers. I throw black coal into the fire and the fire changes this black coal into white and beautiful flames. I love the person or thing – I don’t know who or what it is – that fills bare branches with fruits. You can spit upon Him and He will love you, and reward you with the perfume of flowers. I love the One to whom you can come and He can change this soul into a beautiful white, burning flame. I thank you very much that you have told me His name, Jesus Christ. I did not know the name, but I had a sentiment that such a Being existed.”

He did not know much. It was a wooden altar. His life might have been wrong, but God observed in him that there was something golden, a seeking of the highest, a seeking after God. Because of this, God rewarded him. He brought him into touch with men who knew God, so he could become His child.

There are sometimes such beginnings in men which we would consider to be a trifle, not worth mentioning, but which are highly valuable with God. You might have only the small beginnings of a Christian life, but God values it very much. We are frail. We are human. We are weak. All that remains seems to be wood, but God who sees the heart knows how to find the hidden gold.

Yours in Christ,

Richard Wurmbrand

If your heart

2008-03-14T04:25:00.000-07:00

If your heart has been softened either by repentance before God or by learning the boundless love of God towards you, do not be proud with those whose hearts are still hard. Remember how long your heart was hard and incorrigible.

Seven brothers were ill in one hospital. One recovered from his illness and got up and rushed to serve his other brothers with brotherly love, to speed their recovery.

Be like this brother. Consider all men to be your brothers, and sick brothers at that. And if you come to feel that God has given you better health than others, know that it is given through mercy, so in health you may serve your frailer brothers.

Bishop Nikolai

Sunday Tropar and Sunday Kontak

2008-03-11T04:27:00.000-07:00

Sunday Tropar
By your cross, you destroyed death! You opened paradise to the thief! You changed the weeping of the ointment bearing women to joy! And charged them to proclaim to your apostles that you arose, O Christ God, granting great mercy to the world!

Sunday Kontak
The dominion of death can no longer hold men captive, for Christ descended, shattering and destroying its powers! Hades is bound. The prophets together rejoice, for the Savior stood before them and said to those who believe: O you faithful! Come out to resurrection!

Message for a friend

2008-02-26T04:20:00.000-08:00

I begin my daily work by reading the last news concerning the persecution which prevails around the world.

I hear that there are massacres in Rwanda, assassinations in Iran, in Nepal, in Bosnia...

Too often Christians of different confessions are sacrificed just because they believe in Jesus Christ.

Thinking of them, praying for them is another way of living the Good News today and waiting for the times when hatred will no longer exist and men and women will live in peace.

Each day my love grows stronger for the members of the Uniate Church of Romania who experience, since two generations, a perfidious persecution and are not free to live according to their faith. All this Church's goods have been confiscated together with some 2,500 churches, and the present authorities are continuing the persecutions which prevailed under the Ceausescu regime.

And each time I feel the pain of knowing what the women and children of Bosnia are suffering in this long and cruel war.

And I pray for these persecuted people, forgotten by this world. In fact, they are more numerous today than ever: in our century, more christians have been killed because of their faith than during the nineteen previous centuries.

Bringing back peace, respect of human dignity and of freedom of belief, helping the martyrs which are suffering today, is a blessed cause. I pray for the martyrs and for the persecuted, and I also send to you, dear friend, a complimentary copy of this information bulletin, "The Voice of the Martyrs". I only ask you to read it, today. And also to think of those who are persecuted today and of ways to help us in this fight for freedom and justice.

You can truly be helpful to those who suffer today. By giving from your surplus, you will truly help those who suffer, the hungry children and the widows of those who died fro their faith.

So how can you participate, by giving and by being informed, to our charitable work for the Martyr Churches? Just remember the women who were asking themselves, in front of our Lord's tomb: How can we move the tombstone? They did not lose hope, and the angels came and moved the tombstone.

Like these women, I am not alone in this combat. Angels are on my side. Their work has brought a partial ceasing of the anti-religious persecutions in the former communist countries. You can contribute to the work of the angels, who have already defeated communist tyrants, by helping the Uniates of Romania, the Hungarians, the Bulgarian, the eastern Slovaks, the catholic Ukrainians, the Russians, the christians persecuted in the muslim and buddhist countries, all these forgotten people in our world of wealth.

This information bulletin can become the good friend who faithfully enters your home once a month. It will bring you, if you wish, the information which will keep you in touch with a world where christian faith struggles for survival. It can be the lever with which you can move the tombstone, so that in the glory of the empty tomb, you can be the instrument and the witness of the resurrection of the Church in distress.

Yours in Christ,

Rev. Radu Roscanu, Director

I have not come to call the righteous

2008-02-19T04:28:00.000-08:00

But for what reason do the Pharisees blame the Savior for eating with sinners? Because it was the law to put a distinction between the holy and the profane: that is, that whatever was hallowed was not to be brought into contact with things profane.

They made the accusation therefore supposedly vindicating the law; but really it was envy against the Lord, and readiness to find fault.

But He shows them that He is present now, not as a judge, but as a physician; and He performs the proper duty of the physician’s office, in being in the company of those in need of healing.

But no sooner had they received an explanation of their first accusation, than they bring forward another, finding fault because His disciples did not fast, wishing to obtain hereby an opportunity against Him.

St. Cyril of Alexandria

Hymn of the Birthgiver of God

2008-02-15T04:28:00.000-08:00

It is truly right to call you blessed, o Birthgiver of God, ever blessed and most pure and Mother of our God.

More honourable than the cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the seraphim; who without loss of virginity gave birth to God the Word, true Birthgiver of God we praise you.

Pray

Bear one another’s burden

2008-02-14T04:25:00.000-08:00

It being impossible for man to be without failings, he exhorts them not to scrutinize too severely the offences of others, but even to bear their failings, so their own may in turn be borne by others.

In the building of a house, all the stones do not hold the same position: one is fitted for a corner but not for the foundations, another for the foundations and not for the corner.

So too it is in the body of the Church. The same thing holds true in the frame of our own flesh: one member bears with the other, and we do not require everything from each, but what each contributes in common constitutes both the body and the building...

For example, this man is irascible, you are dull-tempered: bear, therefore, with his vehemence so that he in turn may bear with your sluggishness... So do you by reaching forth a hand one to another when about to fall, fulfil the Law in common, each completing what is wanting in his neighbor by his own endurance.

But if you do not do it in this way, but each of you will investigate the faults of his neighbor, nothing will ever be performed by you as it ought...

He shows that we ought to be our own lives, and this not lightly, but carefully to weigh our actions... He who plants in the flesh wantonness, drunkenness, or inordinate desire, will reap the fruits of these things.

And what are these fruits? Punishment, retribution, shame, derision, destruction... Have you sown almsgiving? The treasures of heaven and eternal glory await you. Have you sown temperance? Honor and reward, and the applause of angels, and a crown from the Judge await you.

St. John Chrysostom

The priority of repentance

2008-02-12T05:22:00.001-08:00

"Who among you, if he has a hundred sheep and loses one of them does not leave the ninety-nine in the wasteland and follow the lostone until he finds it?" Lk 15:4

Almost half of the Catholics in the USA and Canad are not practicing their faith. They don’t even go to Mass on Sunday. They are "fallen-away". Yet, almost all church personnel, finances, and activities are directed to the ones who have not fallen away. The shepherds of the church today certainly don’t leave ninety-nine Christians and go to find a lost one. Therefore, Jesus’ idea of leaving the many in order to seek the one seems strange to us.

Jesus has this "funny" idea because He putsa much higher priority on repentance than we do. According to Mark’s Gospel, "Repent" is the first command Jesus gives in His public ministry (Mk 1:15). Calling us to repentance is such a high priority for Jesus, paul was even happy that the Corinthians were sorrowful since "sorrow for God’s sake produces a repentance without regrets, leading to salvation" (2 Cor 7:10). "There will likewise be more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need to repent" (Lk 15:7).

Repent. Go to Confession. Give Jesus and all heaven cause to rejoice.

Theophore

The guide to heaven

2008-02-11T04:13:00.000-08:00

"Who are these people all dressed in white? And where have they come from?" Revelation 7:13

Today we thank God for saving and sanctifying the saints on earth and in heaven. We especially thank Him for taking our family members, relatives, and friends to be with Him in heaven.

We look forward to becoming holy and joining Jesus and the family in heaven. We cannot do this by our own power but we can let it be done to us (see Lk 1:38).

The Father and the Son have sent the Holy Spirit to make us holy. All we have to do is obey by following the lead of the Spirit (Gal 5:25). However, this is difficult to do because our flesh (human nature) lusts against the Spirit (Gal 5:17).

There is a strong opposition between what we naturally want and what the Spirit wants. Therefore, to let the Spirit make us saints, we must allow the Spirit to crucify our flesh with its passions and desires (Gal 5:24). In this way, we become holy, able to be like our Father and "see Him as He is" (1 Jn 3:2).

Holiness is the fruit of the Spirit, not the fruit of our efforts. All saints have been produced by the Spirit. Life in the Spirit leads to life in heaven.

Theophore

Praying for the dead

2008-02-09T06:13:00.000-08:00

"If the dead are not raised, what about those who have themselves baptized on behalf of the dead?" 1, Cor. 15:29

The resurrection was violently disputed in the Judaism of Christ’s time and in the early Church (i.e. Acts 23:6; Lk 20:27; 1 Cor. 15:12). However, those who believed in the resurrection assumed we could pray for the dead. In our day, most people assume our resurrection in some way, but may dispute the validity pf praying for the dead. What was disputed in Christ’s time, we assume. What was assumed by the early Christians, we dispute.

These differences in assumptions and disputed questions tempt us that since the Bible rarely mentions praying for the dead (see 2 Mc 12:44; 1 Cor 15:29), this practice must not have been acceptable. Others reason that some practices not mentioned often in the Bible were assumed to be acceptable and needed no further explanation.

For example, Paul referred to the Corinthian practice of baptizing the dead by proxy. People today feel a need for further explanation of such a dubious practice. However, Paul didn’t question the validity of this practice and didn’t bother to explain it. Rather, he used it to illustrate the validity of our resurrection, the main concern of the Church at that time.

Therefore, when we pray for the dead, one of the main things we do is to affirm the resurrection. The "poor souls" in purgatory are risen, victorious over death, and certain of eternal happiness in heaven. Praying for the dead is proclaiming the resurrection.

Theophore

Message for a friend

2008-02-01T04:29:00.000-08:00

Dear friend,

I begin my daily work by reading the last news concerning the persecution which prevails around the world.

I hear that there are massacres in Rwanda, assassinations in Iran, in Nepal, in Bosnia...

Too often Christians of different confessions are sacrificed just because they believe in Jesus Christ.

Thinking of them, praying for them is another way of living the Good News today and waiting for the times when hatred will no longer exist and men and women will live in peace.

Each day my love grows stronger for the members of the Uniate Church of Romania who experience, since two generations, a perfidious persecution and are not free to live according to their faith. All this Church's goods have been confiscated together with some 2,500 churches, and the present authorities are continuing the persecutions which prevailed under the Ceausescu regime.

And each time I feel the pain of knowing what the women and children of Bosnia are suffering in this long and cruel war.

And I pray for these persecuted people, forgotten by this world. In fact, they are more numerous today than ever: in our century, more christians have been killed because of their faith than during the nineteen previous centuries.

Bringing back peace, respect of human dignity and of freedom of belief, helping the martyrs which are suffering today, is a blessed cause. I pray for the martyrs and for the persecuted, and I also send to you, dear friend, a complimentary copy of this information bulletin, "The Voice of the Martyrs". I only ask you to read it, today. And also to think of those who are persecuted today and of ways to help us in this fight for freedom and justice.

You can truly be helpful to those who suffer today. By giving from your surplus, you will truly help those who suffer, the hungry children and the widows of those who died fro their faith.

So how can you participate, by giving and by being informed, to our charitable work for the Martyr Churches? Just remember the women who were asking themselves, in front of our Lord's tomb: How can we move the tombstone? They did not lose hope, and the angels came and moved the tombstone.

Like these women, I am not alone in this combat. Angels are on my side. Their work has brought a partial ceasing of the anti-religious persecutions in the former communist countries. You can contribute to the work of the angels, who have already defeated communist tyrants, by helping the Uniates of Romania, the Hungarians, the Bulgarian, the eastern Slovaks, the catholic Ukrainians, the Russians, the christians persecuted in the muslim and buddhist countries, all these forgotten people in our world of wealth.

This information bulletin can become the good friend who faithfully enters your home once a month. It will bring you, if you wish, the information which will keep you in touch with a world where christian faith struggles for survival. It can be the lever with which you can move the tombstone, so that in the glory of the empty tomb, you can be the instrument and the witness of the resurrection of the Church in distress.

Yours in Christ,

Rev. Radu Roscanu, Director

I have not come to call the righteous

2008-01-30T04:30:00.000-08:00

But for what reason do the Pharisees blame the Savior for eating with sinners? Because it was the law to put a distinction between the holy and the profane: that is, that whatever was hallowed was not to be brought into contact with things profane.

They made the accusation therefore supposedly vindicating the law; but really it was envy against the Lord, and readiness to find fault. But He shows them that He is present now, not as a judge, but as a physician; and He performs the proper duty of the physician’s office, in being in the company of those in need of healing.

But no sooner had they received an explanation of their first accusation, than they bring forward another, finding fault because His disciples did not fast, wishing to obtain hereby an opportunity against Him.

St. Cyril of Alexandria

A Lutheran Pastor's Firsthand Account of Prison Life

2008-01-28T07:17:00.000-08:00

by Pastor Richard Wurmbrand

I am a Christian from an Orthodox country-the country of Romania. Having been in prison for fourteen years for my faith, it is now my missionary work to help persecuted Christians in Communist countries. I would like to tell you the stories of several Orthodox Christians with whom I was privileged to come into contact during my time in prison. Their examples and their deeds have been a constant source of encouragement to me throughout the years.

Always Rejoice

The first man was a priest who was put in jail at the age of seventy. His name was Surioanu. When he was brought in with his big white beard and white pate, some officers at the gate of the jail mocked him. One asked, "Why did they bring this old priest here'?" And another replied with a jeer, "Probably to take the confessions of everybody." Those were his exact words.

This priest had a son who had died in a Soviet jail. His daughter was sentenced to twenty years. Two of his sons-in-law were with him in jail--one with him in the same cell. His grandchildren had no food, they were forced to eat from the garbage. His whole family was destroyed. He had lost his church. But this man had such a shining face--there was always a beautiful smile on his lips. He never greeted anyone with "Good morning" or "Good evening," but instead with the words, "Always rejoice."

One day we asked him, "Father, how can you say 'always rejoice'--you who passed through such a terrible tragedy?"

He said, "Rejoicing is very easy. If we fulfill at least one word from the Bible, it is written, 'Rejoice with all those who rejoice.' Now if one rejoices with all those who rejoice, he always has plenty of motivation for rejoicing. I sit in jail, and I rejoice that so many are free. I don't go to church, but I rejoice with all those who are in church. I can't take Holy Communion, but I rejoice about all those who take. I can't read the Bible or any other holy book, but I rejoice with those who do. I can't see flowers [we never saw a tree or a flower during those years. We were under the earth, in a subterranean prison. We never saw the sun, the moon, stars--many times we forgot that these things existed. We never saw a color, only the gray walls of the cell and our gray uniforms. But we knew that such a world existed, a world with multicolored butterflies and with rainbows], but I can rejoice with those who see the rainbows and who see the multi-colored butterflies."

In prison, the smell was not very good. But the priest said, "Others have the perfume of flowers around them, and girls wearing perfume. And others have picnics and others have their families of children around them. I cannot see my children but others have children. And he who can rejoice with all those who rejoice can always rejoice. I can always be glad." That is why he had such a beautiful expression on his face.

Heaven's Smile

Let me interrupt to tell you about another Orthodox Christian. He was not a priest, but a simple farmer. In our country, farmers are almost always illiterate, or nearly so. He had read his Bible well, but other than that he had never read a book. Now he was in the same cell with professors, academicians, and other men of high culture who had been put in jail by the Communists. And this poor farmer tried to bring to Christ a member of the Academy of Science. But in return, he received only mockery.

"Sir, I can't explain much to you, but I walk with Jesus, I talk with Him, I see Him." "Go away. Don't tell me fairy tales that you see Jesus. How do you see Jesus?"

"Well, I cannot tell you how I see Him. I just see Him. There are many kinds of seeing. In dreams, for instance, you see many things. It's enough for me to close my eyes. Now I see my son before me, now I see my daughter-in-law, now I see my granddaughter. Everybody can see. There is another sight. I see Jesus."

"You see Jesus?"

"Yes, I see Jesus."

"What does He look like? How does He look to you? Does He look restful, angry, bored, annoyed, happy to see you? Does He smile sometimes?"

He said, "You guessed it! He smiles at me."

"Gentlemen, come hear what this man says to us. He mocks us. He says Jesus smiles at him. Show me, how does He smile?"

That was one of the grandest moments of my life. The farmer became very, very earnest. His face began to shine. In the Church today there are pastors and theologians who can't believe the whole Bible. They believe half of it, a quarter of it. Somehow they can't believe the miracles. I can believe the whole of it because I have seen miracles. I have seen transfigurations-not like that of Jesus, but something apart. I have seen faces shining.

A smile appeared on the face of that farmer. I would like to be a painter to be able to paint that smile. There was a streak of sadness in it because of the lost soul of the scientist. But there was so much hope in that smile. And there was so much love and so much compassion, and a yearning that this soul should be saved. The whole beauty of heaven was in the smile on that face. The face was dirty and unwashed, but it held the beautiful smile of heaven.

The professor bowed his head and said, "Sir, you are right. You have seen Jesus. He has smiled at you."

Pure Orthodoxy

Now, to come back to this priest, Surioanu. He was always such a happy being. When we were taken out for walks, in a yard where there was never a flower, a piece of herb, or grass, he would put his hand on the shoulder of some Christian and ask, "Tell me your story."

Usually the men would talk about how bad the Communists were. "They've beaten me and they've tortured me and they've done terrible things."

He would listen attentively; then he would say, "You've said plenty about the Communists; now tell me about yourself. When did you confess last?"

"Well, some forty years ago."

"Let us sit down and forget the Communists and forget the Nazis. For you are also a sinner. And tell me your sins."

Everybody confessed to him--I confessed to him, too, and I remember that as I confessed to him, and the more I told him sins, the more beautiful and loving became his face. I feared in the beginning that when he heard about such things he would loathe me. But the more I said bad things about myself, the more he sat near to me. And in the end he said, "Son, you really have committed plenty of sins, but I can tell you one thing. Despite all of these sins, God still loves you and forgives you. Remember that He has given His Son to die for you, and try one day a little bit, and another day a little bit, just to improve your character so it should be pleasant to God."

My experiences with this priest were among the most beautiful encounters of my life. He is no longer on this earth. He was an example of what real Orthodoxy is all about. There exists such Orthodoxy. I don't see much point in becoming an Orthodox from a Lutheran background or from a Baptist background or from any other background unless one desires that kind of Orthodoxy. His was an excellent Orthodoxy, a pure Orthodoxy. May God help us all to be truly Orthodox, after the example of so many saints who are depicted on the icons, and after the example of so many saints alive today.

A Good Confession

There was a brigade in Romania which was only for priests, bishops, pastors, rabbis, and laymen--whoever was in prison for his faith. One day a political officer came to inspect that brigade. Everybody stood at attention, and at random he called out a young man (whose name was Coceanga) and asked him, "What have you been in your civilian life?"

And he replied, "Sir, what I have been in my civilian life, I will be forever. I am a priest of God."

"Aha, a priest! And do you still love Christ?"

The priest was silent for a few seconds-seconds as long as eternity, because he knew that his eternal destiny would be decided in those seconds. The Lord said, "Whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 10:32, 33). And then after a little meditation, his face began to shine--I have seen so many shining faces--and with a very humble but very decided voice he said, "Captain, when I became a priest, I knew that during Church history thousands had been killed for their faith. And as often as I ascended to the altar dressed in those beautiful, ornate robes, surrounded by the respect and love of the congregation, I promised to God that if ever I had to suffer, if ever I wore the uniform of the prisoner, I would still love Christ.

"Captain ," he went on to say, "I so pity you. We have the truth, and you have whips. We have love, and you have iron bars on prison cells. Violence and hatred is a very poor argument against truth and love. If you were to hang all the professors of mathematics, if all the mathematicians were hanged, how much would be four plus four then? It would still be eight. And eight plus eight would still be sixteen.

"You can't change the truth by hanging those who speak the truth. If all the Christians were hanged, it would still remain so that there is a God, and He is love. And there is a Savior; His name is Jesus Christ, and by confessing Him a man can be saved. And there exists a Holy Spirit, and a host of angels around the earth. And there exists a beautiful paradise--you can't change the truth."

I wish there was a way to convey the tone with which he said those words. We, the others, were ashamed because we believed in Christ, we hoped in Christ, but this man loved Christ as Juliet loved Romeo and as the bride loves the bridegroom.

An Undying Love

When I was in jail I fell very, very ill. I had tuberculosis of the whole surface of both lungs, and four vertebrae were attacked by tuberculosis. I also had intestinal tuberculosis, diabetes, heart failure, jaundice, and other sicknesses I can't even remember. I was near to death.

At my right hand was a priest by the name of Iscu. He was abbot of a monastery. This man, perhaps in his forties, had been so tortured he was near to death. But his face was serene. He spoke about his hope of heaven, about his love of Christ, about his faith. He radiated joy.

On my left side was the Communist torturer who had tortured this priest almost to death. He had been arrested by his own comrades. Don't believe the newspapers when they say that the Communists only hate Christians or Jews--it's not true. They simply hate. They hate everybody. They hate Jews, they hate Christians, they hate anti-Semites, they hate anti-Christians, they hate everybody. One Communist hates the other Communist. They quarrel among themselves, and when they quarrel one Communist with the other, they put the other one in jail and torture him just like a Christian, and they beat him.

And so it happened that the Communist torturer who had tortured this priest nearly to death had been tortured nearly to death by his comrades. And he was dying near me. His soul was in agony.

During the night he would awaken me, saying, "Pastor, please pray for me. I can't die, I have committed such terrible crimes."

Then I saw a miracle. I saw the agonized priest calling two other prisoners. And leaning on their shoulders, slowly, slowly he walked past my bed, sat on the bedside of this murderer, and caressed his head--I will never forget this gesture. I watched a murdered man caressing his murderer! That is love--he found a caress for him.

The priest said to the man, "You are young; you did not know what you were doing. I love you with all my heart." But he did not just say the words. You can say "love," and it's just a word of four letters. But he really loved. "I love you with all my heart."

Then he went on, "If I who am a sinner can love you so much, imagine Christ, who is Love Incarnate, how much He loves you! And all the Christians whom you have tortured, know that they forgive you, they love you, and Christ loves you. He wishes you to be saved much more than you wish to be saved. You wonder if your sins can be forgiven. He wishes to forgive your sins more than you wish your sins to be forgiven. He desires for you to be with Him in heaven much more than you wish to be in heaven with Him. He is Love. You only need to turn to Him and repent."

In this prison cell in which there was no possibility of privacy, I overheard the confession of the murderer to the murdered. Life is more thrilling than a novel--no novelist has ever written such a thing. The murdered--near to death-received the confession of the murderer. The murdered gave absolution to his murderer.

They prayed together, embraced each other, and the priest went back to his bed. Both men died that same night. It was a Christmas Eve. But it was not a Christmas Eve in which we simply remembered that two thousand years ago Jesus was born in Bethlehem. It was a Christmas Eve during which Jesus was born in the heart of a Communist murderer.

These are things which I have seen with my own eyes.

Pastor Richard Wurmbrand was the founder of The Voice of the Martyrs. He helped us create Brotherly Help of the Churches

I have not come to call the righteous

2008-01-23T04:18:00.000-08:00

But for what reason do the Pharisees blame the Savior, Jesus, for eating with sinners? Because it was the law to put a distinction between the holy and the profane: that is, that whatever was hallowed was not to be brought into contact with things profane.

They made the accusation therefore supposedly vindicating the law; but really it was envy against the Lord, and readiness to find fault. But He shows them that He is present now, not as a judge, but as a physician; and He performs the proper duty of the physician’s office, in being in the company of those in need of healing.

But no sooner had they received an explanation of their first accusation, than they bring forward another, finding fault because His disciples did not fast, wishing to obtain hereby an opportunity against Him.

St. Cyril of Alexandria

If your heart

2008-01-21T03:10:00.000-08:00

Bear one another’s burden

2008-01-18T04:13:00.001-08:00

It being impossible for man to be without failings, he exhorts them not to scrutinize too severely the offences of others, but even to bear their failings, so their own may in turn be borne by others. In the building of a house, all the stones do not hold the same position: one is fitted for a corner but not for the foundations, another for the foundations and not for the corner.

So too it is in the body of the Church. The same thing holds true in the frame of our own flesh: one member bears with the other, and we do not require everything from each, but what each contributes in common constitutes both the body and the building...

For example, this man is irascible, you are dull-tempered: bear, therefore, with his vehemence so that he in turn may bear with your sluggishness... So do you by reaching forth a hand one to another when about to fall, fulfill the Law in common, each completing what is wanting in his neighbor by his own endurance.

But if you do not do it in this way, but each of you will investigate the faults of his neighbor, nothing will ever be performed by you as it ought... He shows that we ought to be our own lives, and this not lightly, but carefully to weigh our actions...

He who plants in the flesh wantoness, drunkenness, or inordinate desire, will reap the fruits of these things. And what are these fruits? Punishment, retribution, shame, derision, destruction... Have you sown almsgiving? The treasures of heaven and eternal glory await you. Have you sown temperance? Honor and reward, and the applause of angels, and a crown from the Judge await you.

St. John Chrysostom

Small prayers

2008-01-17T04:30:00.000-08:00

Hymn of the Birthgiver of God
It is truly right to call you blessed, o Birthgiver of God, ever blessed and most pure and Mother of our God. More honourable than the cherubim and more glorious beyond compare than the seraphim; who without loss of virginity gave birth to God the Word, true Birthgiver of God we praise you.

Sunday Tropar
By your cross, you destroyed death! You opened paradise to the thief! You changed the weeping of the ointment bearing women to joy! And charged them to proclaim to your apostles that you arose, O Christ God, granting great mercy to the world!

Sunday Kontak
The dominion of death can no longer hold men captive, for Christ descended, shattering and destroying its powers! Hades is bound. The prophets together rejoice, for the Savior stood before them and said to those who believe: O you faithful! Come out to resurrection!

Apostle THOMAS

2008-01-14T04:44:00.000-08:00

TROPARION of Apostle THOMAS

Holy Apostle Thomas, intercede with God all merciful that He may grant us the remission of our sins.

KONTAKION of Apostole THOMAS

Thomas, disciple of Christ and his faithful servant filled with divine grace, cried out in the sincerity of his love: "You are my Lord and my God!"

Gospel: John, 20:19-31

Kontakion Of Eustathius, JOHN THE BAPTIST

2008-01-11T04:37:00.000-08:00

Kontakion Of Eustathius

O Holy Eustathius, you werean imitator of Christ in his passion; you drank of his cup with courage and became a sharer pf his glory: wherefore the God of us all granted you a divine power to work wonders.

TROPARION of the honorable and glorious Prophet, the Forerunner JOHN THE BAPTIST

Joy to you, O barren one unable to give bieth! Behold, you conceive today the one who is really a Torch of the Sun, who will enlighten the whole that suffered from blindness. Rejoice, O Zachary, and cry out in all confidence : "Thee One who will be born is a Prophet of the Most High!"

KONTAKION of the honorable and glorious Prophet, the Forerunner JOHN THE BAPTIST

Zachary rejoices greatly with his wife Elizabeth, for she conceived John the Forerunner whom the angel announced in gladness. As for us, we honor him in witness of this blessing.

TROPARION of the EXALTATION of the Holy CROSS

2008-01-07T19:10:00.000-08:00

LORD OUR GOD, your Holy Martyrs EUSTATHIUS and THEOPISTA, AGAPIUS and THEOPISTA have deserved the crown of immortality on account of their good fight. Armed with your strength, they have vanquished their persecutors and crushed Satan`s dreadful might. Through their supplications, O Christ God, save our souls!

Poem to meditate

2008-01-05T05:50:00.000-08:00

Even though I walk in the dark valley, I fear no evil; for you are at my side.
(Psalm 23:4)

When I struggle with pain that tortures me,
You walk with me, my God.

When my path is filled with worry and fear,
You walk with me, my God.

When sorrow and regret are haunting me,
You walk with me, my God.

When my life feels overwhelming and threatens to be too much,
You walk with me, my God.

When my time has come and death is waiting for me,
You walk with me, my God.

I count on you to be ever with me.
And so you are.

Thank you, God, for my body

2008-01-03T04:20:00.000-08:00

Christmas

2007-12-25T09:58:00.000-08:00

He has risen.

The Staff of the Mission whishes you a Blessed period of Christmas.

We thank you for your prayers and gifts.

Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

Happy Christmas!

Let your generosity grow.

In the Spirit of Christmas

2007-12-22T17:44:00.000-08:00

Dear friends and benefactors,

The Aid to the Martyr Churches Inc. feasts its 20th years of existence in Canada.

You have, in your hands, our call for sharing - the call for funds - of this New Year 2008. Indeed, we are confronted, day after day, with the basic difficulties of our brothers and sisters from countries as Rumania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Russia, Caribbean countries, African countries... Can you bring us help? Can you send us your gift which would fit in one of the following categories?

- Mass intentions for the priests to whom we give assistance - and which have insufficient incomes for a decent life;

- Pastoral assistance (purses for students in need, purchase of didactic material and books for the teaching of the religion; maintenance of the seminars and schools; wages for professors; financing for summer camps for rest and prayer);

- Apostolate through the media of information (financing of radio and television broadcasts, local pamphlets; booklets having as theme the Christian faith and the prayer; training for Christian agents working in the Medias);

- Assistance for subsistence, for priests and deacons;

- Construction of churches in villages, chapels, homes for children, classrooms, dispensaries, community workshops (monthly financing);

- Training of seminarians in monasteries and institutions of Eastern tradition;

- Charitable Assistance for the families of those who suffered in the totalitarian-atheist period

- Impression of books and booklets with religious catechetic subjects;

- Resourcement of priests in monasteries; etc

By helping in the past our mission, you contributed to the realization of projects like:

- Construction of a church in Oradea, in Romania. Costing 150,000 $, its plans were provided by one community from St. Laurent City, which also made a gift of 40,000 $ for its construction. The new church was built between 1992 and 1995;

- Installations and works in a monastery named Maxineni, Romania. The cost of the fence and other works was 2,000 $, the Quebecer benefactors provided this amount of money in offering;

- Medical Dispensary in Oradea, Romania. The instruments in value of 15,000 $ were provided by several benefactors and Quebecer institutions;

- Drugs for the parish of the Mother of God in Bucharest. Total value: 17,000 $. Provided by Quebecer pharmacists;

- Cars given in Baia-Mare, Cluj, Gherla, Oradea, Romania. Total cost: 5,000 $, provided by Quebecer benefactors (the new cars were worth at the time 1,000 $ each one);

- Books for schools and seminars. Total cost: 10,000 $. Provided or financed by the printing, by Quebecer benefactors;

- Sewing machines, computers, printers, in Oradea and Cluj. Total price: 5,000 $ provided by Quebecer benefactors. The sewing machines received gracefully in Switzerland were used for the needs of students in theology to sew all the bed linen necessary, and gave work to 5 people;

- Impression in Montreal, in Rumanian language, of 8 titles of books, necessary to the evangelization. Total cost of the impression: 6,000 $, provided by Quebecer benefactors;

- Mass intentions for Rumanian and Hungarian priests of 3 dioceses. Approx. 5,000 $ provided by Quebecer parishes; etc

Once again, your gifts can create great joys. An illustrated Gospel for children costs 6 $; the wages of a priest are 42 $ per month, therefore an intention of mass will make it live 2 weeks; a catechism costs 6 $; a car costs 6.000 $ and the priests cannot treat to it. Your gift can make us more effective. Help us to be able to contribute even more to the rebuilding of the life in Faith in these countries dilapidated by the atheistic totalitarianism!

It is now the privileged moment for us, to hold us ready to help, to bring the joy in the hearths and in the ravaged communities of faith, after a so long suffering.

We send our gifts exclusively to the persons in charge for the communities which we know, to the families in suffering and serious shortage, which distribute the gifts. More than one million young people await our gifts and our books. Help us to distribute much of it! And pray for the success of our apostolate, because we need your prayers!

Waiting for your contribution that we hope for generous, please receive our greetings in the Christ and the thanks of the people of God who awaits your gifts. May the Christ be born in your hearts!

Please donate.

Yours, in the service of the Mission

Rev. Radu Roscanu,

It was Christmas Eve

2007-12-20T07:10:00.000-08:00

Dear brothers and sisters,

"You must be born again" (John 3:7).

Let me tell you about a man who was in prison with me. Dimitri was a pastor whose backbone had been beaten with a hammer. When certain vertebra was hit, he was paralysed so that he could move only his neck.

You can imagine what a tragedy this was. If he had been in a home or hospital, he would have had a wife, mother, or nurse to take care of him. How would we take care of him? There was no running water to wash him, no linen to change him. He lay there in his human waste. He could not stretch out his hands to drink a cup of water. The others who could walk and work were taken to slave labour during the day. When they came back in the evening, he had to wait for them to help him drink a cup of water. He lay like this in prison for a couple of years. It was hell an earth.

Then in December 1989 Romania had a revolution and the dictator Ceausescu was overturned. Freedom came and Dimitri was released from prison to be with his family and friends. No doctor could help him, but now he had loving hands to help him. He still could not move hand or foot.

One day someone knocked at his door. It was the Communist who had crippled him. He said, "Sir, don't believe that I have come to ask forgiveness from you. For what I have done, there is no forgiveness, not on earth or in heaven. You are not the only one I have tortured like this. You cannot forgive me; nobody can forgive me. Not even God! My crime is much too great. I have come only to tell you that I am sorry about what I have done. From you I go to hang myself. That is all.' He turned to leave.

The paralysed Brother Dimitri said to him, "Sir, in all these years I have not been so sorry as I am now, that I cannot move my arms. I would like to stretch them cut to you and embrace you. For years I have prayed for you every day. I love you with all of my heart. You are forgiven."

Dimitri had learned love from Jesus, who called Judas "friend", who prayed for those who crucified Him, and who accepted Saul of Tarsus, the persecutor, and made him an apostle.

Our faith in Jesus means imitating Him. Jesus, as often as He met a sinner, did not reproach him. He took that man's sin upon Himself and suffered on the cross for the sin. I could tell you many stories of others like Dimitri.

At one point in prison, I felt very sick. I had tuberculosis, diabetes; heart problems, jaundice, and I don't know how many other kinds of sicknesses. I was near death. There was in that prison a cell reserved only for the dying. I am the only one who has survived that cell. I was in that room for over three years and came out on my feet to tell the story. It is a story not only of suffering, but also of so much beauty.

To my right side was a pastor by the name of Iscu. He had been so badly beaten and tortured that he lay dying. He was so quiet. He knew where he was going. Whenever he opened his mouth, he gave gems. In Hebrew the word TO TELL or TO SAY does not exist. The Hebrew word for SAY or TELL means SAPPHIRE, A GEM. TO SAY in Jewish means TO GIVE A GEM. If you open your mouth, give a gem. There may be times when you are sad or angry. Keep silent and wait for the moment when you can give a gem. Iseu gave gems when he spoke. He spoke about the beauties of heaven and the love of Jesus. His body was still an earth, at my right side, but mentally he was already in heaven.

On my left side was the Communist who had tortured him to the brink of death. The government had arrested their own comrade and tortured him. Now he too was near death. During the night, he would awaken, "Please, pastor, say a prayer for me. I have committed such crimes. I cannot die."

What I witnessed next was a scene from heaven (you need not be in heaven to see heaven). The agonizing pastor called two other prisoners to help him and, leaning an them, he very slowly passed my bed and sat down an the bedside of his torturer. Iscu caressed his torturer on his head. I will never forget the scene.

This was the man who had so beaten Iscu that now he waited for death, and Iseu caressed him. He said, "I have forgiven you with all of my heart and I love you. If I who am only a sinner can love and forgive you, more so can Jesus who is the Son of God and who is love incarnate. Return to Him. He longs for you much more than you long for Him. He wishes to forgive you much more than you wish to be forgiven. You just repent." In that prison setting where there was no place for intimacy, I overheard this torturer confess all of his murders to the tortured one. Then they prayed together and embraced each other.

Slowly, slowly, the pastor was helped to his deathbed. They both died the same night. It was Christmas Eve, but not a Christmas Eve at which you celebrate one who was born 2,000 years ago, far away in Bethlehem. Jesus had been born that very evening in the heart of a criminal.

This is what Jesus can do for you. I hope that I do not speak in vain. When I have a gem, I speak. This is the gem I have for you today. Jesus loves you and waits to be born in your heart.

God bless you,

Richard Wurmbrand

Feeling down

2007-12-19T04:17:00.000-08:00

When I am feeling down, it can be from three possible sources. It is possible that certain chemicals in my body are in disarray.

A physician for my body can help me.

Or it could be that I am down because the feelings of my heart are sore and confused by the experiences of my life.

A psychologist can help me understand and accept my feelings.

Or it could be that I feel sadness in my soul because I have not chosen well or lived well.

God, the physician of my soul, can help me with forgiveness, peace, and love, and a chance to start over anew.

Help me, my God, to find the way to life again.

Christmas is coming!

Message for a friend

2007-12-18T04:16:00.000-08:00