OUR GREATEST GUEST

Our dearly beloved,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Romanian Martyrs

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

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

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



Problems of Conscience

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Number of Christians Triples

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

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

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



Mission to Armenia

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

(Ps. 80:6).

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

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

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



Your in Christ,

Richard Wurmbrand

Joy at the Cross

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

Meditation - What do we have to give in alms?

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

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

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

The guide to heaven

"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

I have not come to call the righteous

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