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Christian Conversion, Dramatic and Ordinary · Centrally Speaking

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Centrally speaking, it's the central point of the church's podcast.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: It speaks about issues that would be of interest to our society.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: In particular, it addresses how a Christian worldview intersects with Western secular culture.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: In the spirit of the church's founder, we take the perspective of the middle way, which is in agreement with the historic Christian church.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_03: I'm Dr.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_03: Drake Williams, Minister of Mission and Theology of the Church.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_03: Our website is www.cscfamily.org.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_04: Today we're speaking about true conversions, dramatic and ordinary.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_04: And we're very fortunate to have Reverend Dr.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_04: Lumenitsa Nichols, who was born in Romania and is from the city of Timeswara.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_04: She became a Christian as a youth in 1983 during communist times.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_04: And as a result of her conversion, she was persecuted by family and country, even being in prison during the time of the revolution.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_04: After the Communist Revolution in 1989, she traveled to America to study the Bible at Tennessee Temple University.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_04: Then she was her from Palmer Theological Seminary in St.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_04: Davidson, Pennsylvania.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_04: And then her doctor of ministry from Gordon Congress Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_04: She's pastored at the first Methodist Church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_04: And she has a lovely family married to her husband and two daughters and welcome to the church.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for the invitation to be here.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_04: Let's talk about conversion.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_04: And let's uh start by talking about your conversion.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_04: You were raised in Romania and Eastern Europe and during the time of communism.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_04: Many of our listeners will not know where the city of Timishwara is.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_04: Can you describe Timeshwara and what uh area of Romania that is and what it's like?
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, uh Timeshwara was uh and is a fairly big city in the western part of Romania.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's a beautiful city uh with lots of uh parks and universities.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's a very youthful city.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um some may disagree, uh, but I believe uh we were more free-thinking in our part of the country more than in other parts of the country, and perhaps because we had access to uh radio stations late at night that were illegal to listen to, that broadcasted news from uh Western Europe, which were illegal in our country.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: So we were more informed, and those news could not be uh heard in in the central part or in other parts of the country.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: So we're privileged in that way.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: So it is no surprise that the communist overthrow, I believe, that contributed to starting in our city.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_04: Many of our listeners will be able to place uh uh Romania in East Europe, uh near uh Turkey and Bulgaria, Bucharest, the main city being in southeast, the southeastern part of the country.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_04: But Timishwara is in the in the west.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_04: The Transylvania region?
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh no, a little bit even more to the west.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: Transylvania is more in the middle uh of the country, sort of between the two uh Carpathian mountain ranges.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, Timishora is pretty flat.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's a it's a city uh in the western part.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_04: And of how many, how many people, at least in the day that you were there?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh when I was there, I think there were about 300,000 people who lived there, all of us in those lovely communist bloc apartments.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_02: Mother still lives in one of those.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the uh masterpieces of communism can still be seen today, unfortunately.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_04: But not too far from Hungary, correct?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: Not at all.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: No, very close to the border.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'm very close to the border with uh former Yugoslavia, uh Serbia.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_04: So in the uh old uh communist uh uh blocs uh throughout uh East Europe, fairly close to the West, uh so or to where the demarcation was between East and West uh Europe.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_04: Can you tell us what life was like under communism in the 1980s when you came to faith in Jesus?
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: No, I remember when I was uh about 10 or 11, early 80s, my mother one day sent me to the store to buy sugar.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: I looked uh on every shelf where I knew that previously there was sugar, I couldn't find it.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I asked one of the shop assistants, and she said, Little girl, tell your mother that if she wants sugar, she needs to wake up at five o'clock in the morning and stand in line for it.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_02: And for me, that was sort of the beginning of the realization that something was wrong.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: Something was has changed.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: It was not the same as it was before.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: And soon after uh food started going on ration, basic necessities of life, items like toilet paper and other things just were not there.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, or we would have to stand in line for hours and hours to get them.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: And uh even then there was no guarantee that there would be enough supply for for uh everybody in line.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: So when I came to faith, that was sort of the backdrop uh of life uh just becoming harder in my perception as a child.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_02: At school, I remember uh there was this push for more praise to be given to the dictator, and and then his wife wanted to be included.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember they had to have now pictures of his wife in our classrooms.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: There were more songs that we had to learn and more poems that we had to recite uh in the classroom to pay homage to our beloved leaders, is what they called themselves and liked to be called.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: And then one day a classmate invited me to go to church with her, 13 years old, that uh and that night I surrendered my life to the Lord in a radical way, in most joyful way.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I had no idea the price that I would have to pay for that night's decision.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_04: And uh just before going to talk more about your conversion, uh, there are things that were limited to, as you say, about uh whether being getting sugar or uh eggs, I've heard uh have been uh uh hard to get eggs, uh even in the remaining society where there having been Romania, there are plenty of chickens.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Plenty of chickens, yes.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_04: How about the electricity?
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, the electricity would go off at uh certain times of the day too.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, the electricity uh we had to economize.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: That was what we learned.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and it's funny because even to this day, if I see a light that is just on uh in the house, I go and turn it off.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's in my blood.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: We were taught to economize, and we had two hours of electricity in the evening.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: And in the winter, that was that was a problem.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_02: How do you do your homework?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember going to the Orthodox Church and buying candles so we can do our homework by candle.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: The water, well, warm water was also rationed, electricity, food, and then heat in the winter was also rationed.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: So that that seemed, after a while, that seemed normal.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: We were doing it for the good of the country.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's how it was presented to us.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: And every time we would receive a little bit of warm water or heat, we would be like, oh, isn't our beloved leader so wonderful?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: He gives us heat.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't realize that.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: No, we were deprived.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_02: We were deprived.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_04: The resources being taken to uh other other places.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_04: And when it came to, let's say, TV or radio, I assume there were only uh maybe one or two channels and they were directed by the state.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, everything was censored by the government.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, one TV station uh for the whole country, uh, one radio, maybe two radio stations.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there was, as I said, because we live so close to the border, uh, late at night when our TV station ended at 10 o'clock, we could uh capture some of the Hungarian TV or the Yugoslavian TV stations.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: And ultimately that's how we heard the news that communism fell in Czechoslovakia and East Germany and Poland and in other places before it happened in our country.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: We're completely unaware, but people in the West heard it on Free Europe and Voice of America and other illegal stations that we would listen at a very high cost if we were caught or if the neighbors heard us and reported us that we we listen late at night to the radio station in the West.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_04: So you heard these uh radio stations even before your conversion experience?
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: I was too young to do that.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: And my father uh was the president of the Communist Party at his workplace, so he would not have listened to those, but I knew about those.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember we would uh um go to uh a uh uh uh to prayer meetings, and sometimes there were sermons on those uh stations too in Romanian, uh either by Brother Yusuf Tson or by others that were preached uh on uh Free Europe, and we would huddle around this radio at my mentor's house, and we would listen to sermons, but we knew that that was also to talk about news and world news and and really what was going on in Romania that we we didn't know, or yeah, we were not told.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_04: And then maybe these were uh precursor to uh uh your conversion there at that uh one uh at that meeting.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_02: No, but no, my conversion uh came before, and then with my friend and other people from our youth group, we met in these private homes for prayer and encouragement, just to grow in the faith.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_02: And especially a few of us didn't have Christian parents, so we needed mentors, we needed somebody to disciple us.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_02: We went we went to these prayer meetings, then we would listen to sermons by brother from eastern from uh western Germany broadcasted.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_04: Can you talk about uh the conversion experience that you had when you first gave your life uh to the Lord?
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so um I went to church uh with, as I said, with a classmate who dared to ask me uh to go to church with her.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: That was uh risky in itself for her, and I did.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: And uh brother Petrika Dugulescu, who was pivotal in in the revolution as well in Timishara, he was uh preaching.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: I just felt the the spirit of God was so present there.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I didn't know what that was, why I felt this urge to raise my hand and uh and give my life to the Lord.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_02: It was a simple, simple sermon, simple invitation.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: Peter walking on water, Jesus saying to Peter, come.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: And Jesus is telling you to come today.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I just felt very convicted.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: I raised my hand, felt like my hand was pushed up in the air, didn't know that there was the Holy Spirit.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: When I went home, I felt like uh I was I was floating on air, I was happy, I was hopeful, I uh felt like I contained this this joy that that was uh greater than than uh I could bear.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: And uh when I got home, my grandmother who lived with us, she was a Christian, uh, she was the first one that I told.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't want to tell my parents.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: I knew it wouldn't have mattered.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: And uh one thing that my grandmother told me was just keep it until the end.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought that she could have said, I'm I'm so happy for you, I'm I'm uh excited, something like that.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: I knew she was, but her words were very sobering, keep it until the end.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_02: And she knew what she was talking about.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_02: She lived her Christian faith through wars and through loss, a major loss and poverty and so on, and now in communism.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: And here she was looking at me, this 13-year-old, excited about having surrendered to the Lord and uh having that first love and first joy of salvation.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: I think she knew that there would be a cost for me.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: And that was the advice that she gave me.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_04: And that was not the way, though, that your parents reacted.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_04: Um, can you talk about their background and uh how that uh led to the reaction that they had?
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, my father was raised Eastern Orthodox as that's the dominant religion, uh, if you will, in our country.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_02: And my mother was raised in a Protestant home, but she she was not living for the Lord, which is is quite a sad situation because both religions, if you will, or both both faiths are a Christian faith, Orthodox and Protestant.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: And at the core of our belief, the core of our beliefs is the same, which is we're we're both Trinitarian faiths.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_02: We uh believe in Christ's redemptive work on the cross, but there there was this perception from the Protestant perspective that within the Orthodox tradition, very few people lived according to the precepts of Christianity.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: Because of this, Protestants viewed the Orthodox faith as an apostate faith.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: People called themselves Christian, they were baptized as babies into the Orthodox Church, but for very few there was a life change.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_02: And in turn, uh the Orthodox Church called Protestantism a Western religion and therefore not the true faith of the apostles.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: We are the oldest Christian faith, and you are just uh uh offshoot of Christianity coming from Martin Luther or whatever, and you're not the true faith of the apostles.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: So Protestants were called um repenters.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we were a minority, so they were in majority.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: We were called repenters, which was a mockery, name, because we emphasized the importance of repenting of our sins.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: And anyone who converted to Protestantism could expect to be persecuted first by the Orthodox family members, as it was in my case, uh, and most assuredly at some point by by the government in different ways.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: My father was very strict when it came to what came into our home, and uh this was uh a shameful thing.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_02: So even getting baptized was risky for me because my father would not have allowed it.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: I remember at my baptism, I was so scared that at any moment my father would show up in the church and drag me by the hair out and not let me get baptized.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_02: But it was risky for many other reasons.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we were not, uh we did not practice infant baptism, uh, we practiced believers' baptism.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: And that not only went against the Orthodox tradition, but it was a public profession of faith, uh, which could be interpreted as a defiance against everything that an atheist uh regime uh engendered, because communism is an ideology that is avowedly atheistic, meaning that it excludes God and Christ from all, at all costs, from all spheres of life and society.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: Karl Marx said communism begins where atheism begins.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: What does that mean?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: Communism and the exclusion of God go hand in hand.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: So this quickly becomes a problem for any new believer who publicly professes faith in Jesus.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, if God is supposed to be excluded from all spheres of life and society, and to Christians, God is the highest authority, this creates a clash between the followers of Jesus and the government, a government which demanded absolute allegiance to the dictator and to the Communist Party, and not offering that allegiance first to them was considered unpatriotic, was maybe even an act of treason with potentially serious consequences.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_02: So that that was what was going on.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: And for me to become a Christian in that context, and with my father being part of the Communist Party, it made it very, very difficult.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_02: And you had to have a true conversion to withstand those difficulties and that that persecution.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I would like to add that if you were raised in a Christian home at that time, in a Christian family in communism, and you're somewhat sheltered, you went to church and you sort of hid behind your parents' faith growing up.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: You maybe you experienced uh Christianity and your faith in communism differently.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: That was not my story.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: My father was the president of the Communist Party at his workplace.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: He had medals and he had awards to show for his loyalty and contribution to the communist cause.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: So when I became a repenter, it was chaotic in our home.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so that's putting communism and uh the repenter uh uh uh conversion uh faith right in uh uh direct conflict with each other.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_04: Uh can you say more what happened in the in the home between you and your father?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_02: Well, one of the potential consequences of being a repenter in communism as a young person was that you could be denied uh entrance into any college if you are in if you're a repenter.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_02: Now, this was done intentionally by the government.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: And it was done to maintain this narrative that Christians were anti-intellectual, uh, to send the message to other young people.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you don't want to be like them.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, look at them.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_02: They they can't even go to college.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: Forget that you were not allowed, but they can't even go to college.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: Why can they go to college?
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: Because they're not bright, because they can they still believe that there is an invisible God.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: So one of my father's fears was that I would not be able to go to college.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_02: And education was very important in our home to pull us out of poverty or anonymity or whatever.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: Now, another fear for him was that he could lose his job, he could lose his status at work, because if you were in leadership in the Communist Party, you could not have, interestingly enough, you could not have a repenter in your immediate family.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: So here was my father having his child now going to church and and uh and and messing up his his potential promotions and things like that.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: It was uh I think the overarching feeling that was there for my father was really the shame.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: The shame of having a repenter in the family.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: That was probably it was probably worse than having a juvenile delinquent in the house to have a repenter.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_02: And he told me multiple times, I am ashamed of you and what you've become.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I couldn't understand why.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I could, but at the same time, I was a good girl.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: And and he he uh kept repeating, I am ashamed of you.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_02: I do not tell anybody at work that I have you, I only have one daughter.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: So emotionally he disowned me when I became a Christian.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: So we clashed.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the biggest um clashes that we had was one day when my father stopped me on my way to my room and he asked me uh if it was true that I called God my father.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: I knew where he was going with that question, and I really didn't want to answer.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to just just go to my room, and he did not let me leave.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, You listen to me.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_02: Do you call God your father?
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Yes.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: And then he said, Who buys you clothes?
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: Who buys you food?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: Is it God or is it me?
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_02: And he was pushing and he was he was telling me all this put a roof over your your head.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: Who and uh is it God or is it me?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: Then he said, If God is your father, then I am your God.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: Do you hear me?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: I am your God.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_02: Go ahead, call me God.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: And I looked at him and I said, No, I will not.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: No, I was a teenager and I was very Mao too, but I mean that's I was stubborn and and and and I thought it was ridiculous that a grown man would think he was God.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, call me God.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: And and I said, No, call me God.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: Do you hear me?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: Call me God.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: I said, No, you are not God.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: And uh when I refused, he raised his hand and he slapped me with the back of his hand on the face.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, I remember with everything inside me, I wanted to run and lock myself in my room.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I was almost like in mid-movement to to run away from him when suddenly I heard the spirit of God so clear.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: It was such a clear voice, such a soft but very clear voice that said to me, turn the other chair.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I looked at my father, I almost thought that he heard it too.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: It was that real to me.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: And I looked at my father and I turned my face and he slapped me again and he began to hit me in interrogation style, which is like back, forth, back, forth, like that.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: And then he Started with both hands started to slap me.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: And then suddenly my sister, uh two years older, was not a believer.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: She burst out of her room and she she screams at my father.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: Hit me too because I believe what she believes.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_02: And my father stops, doesn't know what to do.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: My sister was the golden child.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: My parents, uh all hopes and dreams uh were in her.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: But that was pivotal for my sister.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: She started coming to church with me, and uh a few months later she she was baptized.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_02: And it's this idea of redemptive suffering that I know that a lot of there's a lot of uh going back and forth on on this, but you know, if you look back at history, you know, the the blood of the martyrs was seen for more more Christians.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: I I believe in redemptive suffering, and and the Lord gave me that privilege to do that that day and stand strong.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: And my sister since then married the pastor and they serve.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_04: And that must have been an incredibly uh tense experience uh that day.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_04: And not uh only uh that day was a tense experience, but you also had uh one as you were walking home from church one day, right at the time of uh the revolution, uh, when uh uh you were interrogated by Romanian police uh and they had seen your Bible uh that you were carrying.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_04: Uh can you share a little bit about that day?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: That was a little bit later.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_02: It was not during um during the revolution, it was actually when I was 16.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, just came home from a youth group, as uh as we know teenagers are.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: I have teenagers.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, did not think about it.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: Just I was flinging my Bible back and forth, walking down the street.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: And uh yeah, and I was I was seen by uh a police officer, uh militia, we call them at the time, a militia guy.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: And uh he asked me, and I was actually with a high school uh friend of mine that I invited to come to youth group with us, and she came.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so she was not a believer, so here we are interrogated.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: I was a Christian, she wasn't, but we were both taken to the police station.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: But I had an amazing mentor, uh, as I said, every week we we met in her home for prayer.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: And one thing that she taught us, among many other things, she taught us the importance of witnessing, of telling others about our faith.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: This is our context.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: We live in communism.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: This is um something that is uh the government is hostile to what we have, but it does not matter.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: We witness, we witness with our lives, we witness with our words.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: But one thing that she taught us never to pray for safety.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_02: She said, because sometimes the only way govern government authorities could hear the gospel is if we get arrested, it's if we get interrogated.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: That uh that night was was uh was was pretty intense.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: I oh my goodness, I think I spent we spent two hours about two hours or so was uh past midnight.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and the main thing that they wanted to know was who gave me that Bible?
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: They wanted a source, they wanted names.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: And uh another thing that my mentor taught uh taught us don't you ever be a Judas.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: You do not betray your brothers and sisters where we meet in private for prayer or in the situation who gave you the Bible, you never do that.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: And uh it's interesting how the scripture is fulfilled where where it says, um, do not worry what you're gonna say, uh, because the spirit of God in that moment will give you what to say.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: And here I was, 16 years old, and I looked at that officer unintimidated and said, I will tell you everything you want to know about me, but I cannot give you any names.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_02: And and then they were angry and decided they're going to search our house.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I write in the book about just the miracle of that.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_02: But one thing that came out of this was um when I finally got home that night after my interrogation, it was very late.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: My mother was just absolutely worried and angry.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember I came through the door, where have you been?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: And and I told her that I was interrogated by the police because they they saw me with a Bible with my Bible.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: And she slapped me across the face and she screamed at me some words that I stayed with and and and uh thought about for a long time.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: She said, Why can't you just be normal?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: Like other Christians who don't talk about Jesus all the time and get themselves into trouble with the police.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: And that was something that I asked myself and I asked the Lord, why am I not normal?
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: Other kids in my youth group, they don't get into these kind of situations.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_02: They don't, they don't have this like burning desire uh to to witness and to make disciples.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: I I felt I felt this this pain in my heart in a country that had no hope to give them the good hope, the good hope and the good news of Jesus.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: And that's that was that was part of who I was.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's not like I was forcing myself to do that.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to do that, and and it was inside me.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: And here's my mother asking me why are you not normal like other Christians?
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that not everybody gets interrogated by the police, not everybody.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: So that was part of the beginning of the process of the Lord telling me, this is what I want you to do, this is what I've called you to do, to tell others about me.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_04: And then the revolution took place, which was another intense these intense experiences.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, but I'm sure you remember in December 1989 in Tim Ashwar when revolution happened.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um can you share with us uh what took place and how your conversion experience gave you a lens to look at it?
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I was uh I was coming home from uh from work and I was 19.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_02: I already started working.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: And from the tram, I saw a large group of people gathered in in front of uh what I knew then was a reformed uh church, was a pastoral house there too, of this Hungarian church.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_02: And uh when I got home, I asked my father and if he knew anything about it, and he was he was very well informed, as you can imagine.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_02: He knew what was going on.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: He told me that the pastor of that church, in his words, spoke one too many times against the government and in the inhumane way and the injustices uh that were going on.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: He spoke one too many times to his congregation about that.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and they came to remove him from his congregation and from his home.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_02: And he said, and the people that are there are probably just a few Hungarians, you know, his congregation, um, trying to see him as he's removed.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: But then my father proceeded to tell me in detail how they cut off his electricity and water and they how they beat him and uh and his pregnant wife and he had a small child, and and that he deserved uh what was happening to him.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: He deserved that because of the things that he talked about that he should not have talked about publicly.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_02: As my father was speaking and describing in detail what they did to this man and to his family, I could feel rage rising inside me.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I began to shout at my father.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_02: I said something like, How long will we live like animals?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_02: And my father just was shocked, he just looked at me, huh?
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: How long will we live like animals when they can do whatever they want to us?
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_02: And he knew who they were, who I was referring to.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and I grabbed my coat and I left, and that was the last time my father saw me until after later, after the revolution.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I talk in my book that in that moment it hit me right between the eyes the reality that my father's loyalty will never be with anyone else except the communist party.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_02: Like he cannot even see the human side of the situation.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: It was all about being loyal to the agenda, to the communist platform.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: That is what he saw.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_02: And anyone that fought that, he he agreed with whatever the consequences they they would have.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_02: Does that include me?
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_02: Does that include me?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_02: He's no longer seeing me as a human, he's seeing me as this machine or or or any uh an object that that stands in the way of communism.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_02: And the night I went to church and after the service, I didn't want to go home.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: I I wanted to see what was going on at the pastor's house.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_02: And I stayed, and the crowd grew with now Romanians, and uh it turned into an anti-communist protest.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh now I could have gone home, could have gone home, especially when things got heated.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: But as a Christian, and I may have not been able to articulate this that way at that time, but social issues are our business.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_02: What's going on in the country where God put us is our business.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: And and I felt compelled to get involved despite the danger, uh, because it was the right thing to do.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: There was something that drew me to stay, to stay as a 19-year-old girl.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: I I felt like I had to be there.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember first time a man next to me shouted, down with communism, down with Chaos.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: I was mortified.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: Because up to that point, it was kind of quiet.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_02: People just gathered, gathered, gathered.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_02: But when I first heard that, that uh shouted, I was terrified.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I knew that we will all be put to the wall just for saying that, just for being in the crowd with somebody shouting that slogan.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but I didn't want to leave.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't want to leave.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: I also felt a deep conviction and compassion for the pastor and for his family.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I wanted, I wanted to show my support, and I wanted to show almost like uh this protection.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted to defend him, and I wanted, I wanted to show him that I was, even though I've never met him, he never met me.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_02: But it was the principle of I'm going to be here for this man who is mistreated by uh a corrupt government.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: And it shouldn't be like that.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: I couldn't put my thoughts together exactly, but but that was that was what was going on in my in my heart, in my mind.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't want to go home.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: So that's how we started uh that night, and we made history.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_04: And it eventually led to um a big uh uprising in Bucharest and then uh uh Ceausescu trying to flee, and then uh he and his wife being killed.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_04: So tremendous, uh tremendously uh um emotional and um great upheaval um in Romania, at least in case uh you've experienced this firsthand, but uh maybe some of our listeners are less familiar.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_04: Then eventually your your path uh took a different direction after that, didn't it?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_04: You guys were able to get uh a scholarship to um uh uh to uh university in the states, and now you've been uh in America um since that time, is that correct?
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, since um August of 1990.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_04: So you're very familiar now with uh life in America and of course have gotten your uh own theological training and served in a church.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_04: And um I'm wondering if you could talk about conversions and how they might take place in American life.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_04: Um maybe when somebody prays a prayer of confession or a sinner's prayer, um, compared to your own.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_04: How do you how do you evaluate such conversions?
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting, because I had a conversation about this a few weeks ago with my oldest daughter.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_02: Do we do we believe that asking Jesus to come into our heart is all that we need to do to be saved?
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_02: And and she said, How else would you uh how did you do it in Romania?
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: How how Christians became Christians in Romania?
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I remember uh our baptisms and what the pastor said, do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God?
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_02: Do you believe that he died and rose from the dead, that he's coming back to judge the living and the dead?
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_02: And based on your confession of faith, I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_02: So it's based on your confession of faith.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: It was not this abstract ask Jesus to come into your heart.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh to me, that always felt a little a little abstract.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: But I've learned over the years not to judge people's conversions because I don't know their hearts.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know their hearts.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_02: Now, I don't think that all conversions have to be dramatic to be valid.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_02: I believe that for some people, conversion takes place uh after months and maybe even years of contemplation and searching uh to make a decision.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_02: And then they they make that decision.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: The question that I would ask would be: Is there fruit in their lives?
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_02: Is there a desire to grow in the faith, to abide with Christ, to bring that fruit that remains?
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: Is there a desire for sanctification?
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_02: That tells me more that there was a real conversion, a real um surrender to the worship of Christ.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_02: Is there a conviction of sin by the Holy Spirit where things that I've done in the past now I don't want to do again?
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh after after a person made the confession of faith, uh now they have a this desire to meet with other believers, to learn more about the Lord, to expand the kingdom of God.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: Now their mindset has changed.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I would say that those qualities and those that that disposition and attitude and leaning is important to see if a person truly possesses uh saving faith.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_04: So it may not be the uh intense uh experiences of communism or um even the resistance of parents uh from what you're saying.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_04: It's uh what happens in the heart and what takes place as a as a result.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_04: Am I correct in saying that?
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, very much very much so.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_02: We we don't choose sometimes the context in which we're born or uh where we accept the Lord.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_02: It could be in a very difficult situation, God gives us grace for that.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's important for me to, as you said, uh, because I lived the the Christian faith in two very like radically different contexts in in persecution, communist persecution in the worst place in the world, in a communist prison, uh admitting that I was a Christian and uh in freedom here in America, what I what I discovered uh was that it's more difficult to live the faith here, uh, which is very interesting.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_02: In Romania, you knew who the enemy was, you knew the enemy, a frontal attack uh by the enemy through the government, through the at school, through parents.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: You knew you knew that the enemy was this roaring lion trying to devour you, and he was not hiding it.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_02: It was frontal attack.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: Here, there's more this fluffy pillow, the lulls you sleep.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: And that would be one of my just advice and and something that I do for myself is stay alert, stay alert, you're a soldier.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: No matter where you are, the enemy is the same.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, his tricks and schemes may be different.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I found it that here uh it's a little bit harder.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: And and it was hard, the transition was harder for me.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_02: How do you go from being persecuted and not being allowed to walk with a Bible in your hand on the street or witness or so on in a country where I don't care, they don't care if you have a Bible in your hand walking down the street.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: How do I live the Christian life in this country?
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: And and I wish somebody discipled us before we came to America, uh, me and and the other young people that came.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: How do you live now in freedom?
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_04: Still the the true conversion, as um uh you're uh alluding to is uh one in the heart and one that uh is made sincerely that results uh in fruit, whether it be in uh times of persecution and remaining, or I guess you'd say the fluffiness of America.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_04: We're closing into this podcast and want to recommend to our listeners limiting this as a book.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_04: Thanks for having this uh interview with us.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_04: Um it's great to uh be able to hear your story, Louie, and uh, we wish you uh the very best in your service here.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Dr.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: Will.