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Richard Wurmbrand: A Persecuted Christian with an Important Voice for Today · Centrally Speaking

• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: The topic today is Richard Bornbrand.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: Richard Bornbrand, a persecuted Christianist, with an important voice for today.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: Richard Bornbrand, founder of Voice of the Martyrs, also a Romanian Christianist, and we're pleased to talk with Dr.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: Octavian Boban today about our important person of Romanian Christian history.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: Dr.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: Baban is a professor of Skinicus at Siena and Ocarus Romania.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: He's also an associate professor of New Testament and Institute, and Ocarus.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: Perhaps but most importantly for this podcast, he worked about half of his life under communism for about some 30 years.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for inviting me.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I would like to greet everybody who's listening to this very interesting topic.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we're glad to have you speak to us about Richard Wernbrand.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm wondering if you could just introduce him to the audience, to somebody maybe that has never heard of who Richard Wernbrand is.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: How would you describe?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he was a Romanian citizen of Jewish descent, Jewish German, if you want.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: His name was Richard or Richard Wurbrand.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: He was born in 1909, and his life almost spanned 100 years because he went to be with the Lord in February 2001.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And he was one of the most influential priests or pastors in Romania, a Christian martyr under communism, after 1945, when the communists came in all the Eastern Europe and started with the help of Russia, communist regimes and all these countries.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: All of them were persecuting Christians but in different ways and with different intensities, depending on the kind of leadership the country had.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: He is a very, very, very interesting person, to be sure.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: He followed Christ.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: He was always one step behind his own opportunities and was taking decisions, maybe the right decisions at the wrong time.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because he started as a Jew, as an atheistic Jew.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: He was very anarchic and unruly young person, but very intelligent.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Very early in his life, his father, who was a dentist, died.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: So he and his brothers uh were left somehow to manage living without the father.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: He was a Jew, an atheistic Jew, very intelligent, not very interested in school, in going to school, but learning very fast almost any subject.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he was very well connected with the Western world of the Jewish intelligentsia.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Only in this way you would understand how when he was 17 years old, he was introduced to the Moscow ambassador in Bucharest because he had very good connections among the Jews in France, in Germany, and in Moscow.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And everybody could see he's a very talented young man.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: At that age, he was able to speak nine languages well, and maybe have a knowledge about 11, all in all.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: So he was taken and led to Moscow.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: They were sent to study Marxism in Moscow when he was actually 15, not 17.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he came there after three years of good quality communist revolutionary college, ready to be a communist agent in Romania.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: So in the first part of his life, he was uh followed by the Romanian capitalistic police because he was trying to organize all kinds of communistic cells.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: He got married finally, he was very heavy into drinking and partying, but very smart to be ready for all his actions.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And after one year after his marriage, he came to know the Lord.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: A Cesish, a German person somewhere in Transylvania, that is central Romania, gave him a Bible and advised him to read.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: That guy was not particularly smart or particularly well trained in theology, but just told him he would find good things there for everybody, and especially for a Jew.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And he read it and found himself becoming a Christian.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: The issue is that when he became a Christian, so after a communist with highest revolutionary studies, he became a Christian.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: He became an Anglican.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: He was baptized by the Anglicans and put in charge with certain missions in Bucharest.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: After the war, he was invited in 1945 with many other pastors to priests to participate to a communist gathering where it was supposed that everybody would hail communists.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't feel like he would like to hail it because he knew everything he studied it too much.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And he said there is no point in us hailing it.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: He asked for his wife's uh advice whether he should ask for an opportunity to address the the Congress, the conference.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: He was given that.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: His wife encouraged him to say uh to speak his mind.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: But what he said was very unfavorably looked uh upon.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: His mic was interrupted, was cut.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: He continued speaking with a big voice, and not for long, he was arrested.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is how uh his ordeals have started.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: He became then a bit later a Lutheran, Norwegian Lutheran priest or pastor, and because of his anti-communistic testimonies and uh activities, he was in jail for about 40, 14 years in two stages with a small break between.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: When everybody loved capitalistic world and freedom, he was a communist.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: When the whole world became communist, I mean our country and the whole balcony world became communist, he became a Christian.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: He was the right man at the wrong place, but maybe in the right time.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: So this is why I said what I said.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: So and his testimony was great.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he suffered greatly.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: He's in a way a sort of Romanian Jewish poor who turned from being against Christians and being one who suffered through Christ and in was a great preacher.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: When he got out in 64, out from prison, but because uh his Norwegian priests, the Lutheran Church, Norwegian Lutheran Church paid uh a huge sum, not very huge, but uh acceptably a large sum of uh I think ten thousand dollars uh for him.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: But the secret police told him to leave the country, so he was forced to leave.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, they will have enough things to raise against him, like his passion for women in his youth, yes, before he he was a Christian, of course.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he could accuse, they could accuse him of embezzling funds because he was heavily involved with helping the poor during the war and with bringing Bibles in the country.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not difficult for for secret police to build up some cases uh against, or even to fake some so-called proofs.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, because of this, he was sent in the United States, and I think that uh people in the United States know something about his history, because in the United States he continued living his life from 64 to 2001.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: He became a huge public figure involved in um Christian testimony, organizing missions in the communist countries, cooperating with Brother Andrew, another well-known mission, and with other missions as well, fighting against atheism and communism, uh, communist ideology.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he was a man who brought into attention of a very politicized, I would say, American audience, that uh communism has two faces, uh, a public, international one, where they want to be seen as generous, as uh philosophically minded, as oriented, uh focused on the welfare of the people, and one at home, a face for for the citizens, which is very harsh, very very cruel, and uh very decidedly uh turn against Christianity, to the point that they could arrest you, they could fake uh judicial case uh against you, uh false with false accusations, they could imprison you without any notice and without the capacity to defend yourself, or you could get killed by an accident, usually a car accident, or some work accident that could be fixed.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: So he said in front of the whole United States uh and in the front of the Senate, this is the true phase of communism at home, beyond their their proclaimed philosophy of life, and he had to show his own proofs uh the marks on of torture on his body was something irrefutable.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: It is one thing to speak philosophically and to compare ideologies, and another thing to say this was my life experience.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and uh he did show the whole world his scars at the US Congress back in the 1960s.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: He found himself again that that was one of his characteristics.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: He very easily would would uh speak out his mind because of this incident.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: He was invited to the Senate.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: His courage to debate, and I think he was a great debater, a good Christian, a good preacher with a good heart.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, his organizations have helped thousands of people during the war and after that, during the communist years.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: It would be a reductionist thing to say he defended human rights, but he did it from the position of a deep believer in Christ and being ready to accept uh losing these rights.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: Since you grew up during the times of communism, and I would assume that the communists uh did not exactly want to publicize Richard Wermbrand and all that he was doing.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: How did you first come to hear about this courageous Christian?
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was pretty early, let's say.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was 14 years.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was very little Christian literature that would come into the country at that time.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: Oh Romanian evangelicals exiled in the West would be able to produce and smuggle some of it, Bibles and a few books.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: There were a few also translated, but not many.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: There were a few books written by uh Wurbrandt, not under his name, but other secret name or pseudonym.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And uh one of these were Radu Valentine.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: Radu, that's a pretty interesting uh name of Slavic, I think, origin coming from uh Rad uh Joy or something like that.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: It has feminine and masculine uh forms.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And he wrote two books.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: I I came to read when I was about 13 years old, 14 years old.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: One was The Heart of Man, a straightforward evangelistic book explaining how our mind and heart function and how we need Christ.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the other was Fill Your Void, which was uh a book written against communism, uh pretending that science and revolutionary ideology would help you have a good mind and a healthy attitude towards life.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And he actually said there is just a big void in the atheist's heart, so fill your void.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it was full with good arguments, philosophical, scientifically, and like anything else, not like anything else you could come across, especially on the official uh shelves, the libraries or bookshelves.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, I didn't know the guy, so I asked my parents, who is the guy who wrote this?
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Where is he?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, where and they told me in a hush-hash manner that actually this is not his name, his Richard Burbrand.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then I found many things because he had some friends in um the Romanian town by the Danube, um, not far from the delta of the Danube, called Galats, was an important river harbor, and there was a strong Jewish evangelical community, and he would visit that place.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: My mom came from that town.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: She saw him a couple of times before he was arrested.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: She told me uh about that church, about his visits there.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Isaac Feinstein was the pastor of that evangelical Jewish community.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: It was just called like that evangelical Jewish community, didn't belong to Baptist because of something else, which like any of ours, but without being aligned to a certain uh doctrine.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: So my mom explained to me who he was, and then I started to look for more about him.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: I learned he went to prison.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, I couldn't hear his voice and uh read uh more of his books only after 89 when communism fell.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Then several were translated back into Romania because he has written a lot in uh English after 64.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's how I came to know him.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: I like him, I was impressed with his logic and courage, although I didn't have the same temple or state of mind like him.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I liked very much his little stories about how to understand the Bible or to relate to people in need of counseling.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: They were going around lots of uh Bible stories about how he solved some problems as a pastor.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: I found these little stories very interesting.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: And did you find his uh writings uh rather gripping?
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: Were they enthusiastic?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't like the lack of footnotes.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: I understood later that actually you could check anything.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: He was a sort of C.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: S.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis in terms of memory.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: He would read once and then remember for all his life.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: He was very good.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: His uh son Michael, who is living now in the United States, he says that he checked some of his books.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: He was known for not writing with footnotes in a Talmudic style, but he said that barely he could find one or two words misquoted.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, he was very accurate.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: He would remember very well everything he read.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I came to trust him and his references.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: I like him.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was a time when it was difficult to find discussions about how science and fate are not going against each other, what scientists have said about believing in God from the 16th century or earlier to the 20th century and so on.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And he would introduce the reader to such debates.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: I had a sort of technical mind, so I like that.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Then later we had some other Romanians like Peter Popovich, he was uh Alexa Popovich, they were professors, and Valentine Popovich, they were professors in the Bucler seminary, and they were forced to emigrate.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: They wrote some interesting, nice little books about the dialogue between science and faith, about believing because the Bible has many provable uh obtainments and facts.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: He was part of this group that would teach and inform Christians at home and encouraged to be bold in their witness.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure that was quite important as physics being a subject that you were you were interested in in your youth, uh, to have a Christian be able to speak about those things, I'm sure.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: Richard Wernbrand was against communism.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, he ended up being persecuted, but what was it that you found so revolting, we say, about communism?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: He's quite outspoken about it.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: Very outspoken, not like anyone who'd be ready to study it from a political point of view, comparing uh policies and history of revolutions and so on, or social point of view.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think he was very outspoken, very clearly against communism, but not only after he went out of the prison, he was so before he went to prison.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, this is why he went to prison.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: I read some words that somebody asked him, Why did you go to prison?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, This question is not good for Easterners uh in Europe, because the question is why somebody is not going to prison, because they are uh ready to arrest anybody, Christians or Buddhists or Jews, anybody.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was difficult if you were against the regime.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: So he was against the communism because he knew it.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: He was an insider.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: He learned in Moscow for three years how to become an active communist that would organize the communist party and revolution.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: He was part of that Jewish communist intelligence that was very well connected with France, Germany, and Moscow, was heavily working with some vision, only God overturned that vision, but they were able to make plans to get the whole Europe communist if possible.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: So he was like gold for this international uh network of communist parties because he could speak uh many languages, he was very active, very passionate in his arguments, he could win over people.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: He was an insider.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: He knew what he was taught at the college in Moscow, and he knew that this is a political and economical way to subjugate people, to fight against the church, because there was no place to be a good communist Christian.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: A Christian could live in a communist state, but only as a minority and always in oppositions, in a way or another, a stronger or milder opposition, but you cannot you cannot actually love communism when you know that this kind of ideology asks all of you and the best of you.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's like when Jesus says you can't serve two masters.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: So either you are here or are there.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, communism is not allowing you to believe anything, but you have to renounce everything for the sake of certain economical and political uh goals.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: For example, there is no higher thing than obeying the Communist Party commandments.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Communists always had a very low ethics, anything was allowed.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's like being a spy.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Once somebody is a spy, you can you should do everything to uh promote the policy of your state.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Killing or complacing in adultery, it doesn't matter.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: These are not the values.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: The values if the policy is reached properly.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the same thing with uh communists.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: So he knew that everything was geared against Christianity.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: There is no place for the church.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: The church at best was tolerated until extinction, as Lenin said.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: There was a time when they fought against the church uh with strong measures, and then they realized that fighting against the church just multiplies believers.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: As Tertullians has said, that the blood of Christians is the seed of Christians.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: The more you kill, the more come out.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: He understood very early that communism is against the church, against Christ, replaces everything with other ideals, with uh human organization, human uh capabilities, human dreams.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's oriented or focused on human welfare.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's a sort of subjugate the many in view of the policies of the few.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's not for the good of community, it's not creating communities, it's just creating peoples who are manipulating and uh subjugated and sacrificed uh for higher purposes than their own individual life.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Or this is exactly what is not happening, and I pray it's not happening in the United States or Western world.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Individual faith is important.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: He knew communism from inside, and he was very right about it.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: From this perspective, I say that he also was in a measure to say that there were he felt certain occult connections between communism and some communist leaders, including Marx here.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: You could say this about Nazi leaders as well.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: So anywhere where you see a very serious persecution of Christianity, uh bloody persecution against Christianity, then you could feel there is more than human misunderstanding and conflict.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: So he was convinced of this too.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: And for this reason, and for his love for truth, he was persecuted, to be sure.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Always said he loves communists.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: And his years in a prison were a school where he learned to love everybody, including his persecutors and everybody of all denominations.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: That was a great experience God has given Christians in Eastern Europe to understand that maybe we need a reform, but beyond reform, we need the reform of Christ's love, no Christian witness.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: So you can't tell all the lessons they learned there.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: So he was very good friend with Catholics and Orthodox, everybody else, Baptists, priests and non-priests, Christians, he met within the walls of the prison.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: So he didn't come as a man who is against society and so no, he was against communism as ideology.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: He came out of prison as a great lover of people, loving them with Christ's love.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: And for his belief in Christ, he was uh thrown in prison and suffered some very harsh things in prison.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, one time being in solitary confinement underground for three years.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: How does someone endorse something like that?
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: He was part of that group of prisoners.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: There were about three or four prisoners like that in Romania.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: He was part of that group whom the communists tried to exterminate or to very heavily brainwash.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: So it you either would exterminate somebody who really loved Christ and make him perish in prison, make him die there.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Or you could apply so devilish ways of torture to change his mind, bring him out as a defender of communism.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there were a few cases.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: Then you could see how the Christian testimony is destroyed.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, they did all kinds of stuff.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't let them communicate the prisoners.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: They uh beaten them very, very harshly, they tortured them in all manners, uh, they didn't feed them enough, only just 100 grams of bread per day just to keep you breathing, actually, not to live.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, he was confined for three years underground.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: He wrote about these years.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: He says that he survived by uh writing, well, it was not only his case.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: A good number of Christian poets wrote hundreds of poems while being imprisoned in communist prison and repeated them every day.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: They would go as far as 300 or 400 poems or songs.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Very uh like Moldogano, a good composer, very spiritual.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: He wrote most of his creation in the prison.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Not only, but but a great part of his creation there.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And there were some other important poets, orthodox poets.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a time when you could compose and repeat every day to keep your mind alive.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: He would preach to himself or to an imaginary audience of brothers and sisters.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: He would play chess with breadcrumbs.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And he says somewhere that he identified a spider in his cells.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: He tried to befriend the spider until one day the spider died of cold.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: You had to do something to communicate, to pray, to remember the Bible, to compose, to express yourself, otherwise you would die intellectually first and then physically.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was very difficult.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: He said he would sleep during the day, but be creative during the night.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: He just reversed the normal day-night cycle.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: There were ways of keeping himself active, in touch with God.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, there was very much to discuss with God.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't understand why you let him.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: He told one of my friends, and he is pastor at the same church with me, he's 75 now.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: He told this friend who is a pastor with me in the same church in Bucharest that one of the things that bothered him most is that when they uh were despised and laughed at as priests and pastors, and they were offered by the gods the Holy Communion, not with wine and bread, but with peace and fetch, and they were forced to eat it.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And his understanding about it was that God has allowed for this experience to understand how deeply fallen is sin and how people could really fall in their behavior and love and really do despicable things.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Being active intellectually and spiritually, praying and composing was the only way of keeping one's alive.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: He is representative of so many Christians around the world who are being persecuted for the faith.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe you have uh looked into uh the numbers of people who are persecuted for the faith.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have a figure on that?
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think that the persecution of Christians, it's an ongoing thing, and Christ has given us a reason.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: He said that if the Lord or he as God's son was rejected, the same thing would be done to his followers.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it would not or should not come as a surprise.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Persecution is continuing in various ways, even in a democratic country.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you say you believe the Bible, you but you must teach, let's say, evolution and you are not convinced about it, you could lose your academic position very easily.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: If you think that you should pray and other people think you shouldn't pray, then you could uh feel that uh your freedom is being uh denied.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: Christian persecution in a democratic country, while it is true, is very subtle.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's not very harsh.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, we have still communist countries like North Korea, Russia, and China, and we have no communist countries like Sri Lanka, Thailand, Turkey, where still being a Christian could easily be identified as a great guilt because you don't share the normal ideology, the common ideology of the state, and uh very harsh measures will be taken against you.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I know that you also are involved with praying for Christians in prison in various parts of the world.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I would just say, for example, that uh this summer I went to Transylvania, that is northern Romania, and uh I met there a pastor who is a Russian.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: He's a pastor in a Romanian church.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: He learned Romanian and he studied theology in Romania, Baptist theology.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: And he became a pastor in a Romanian church.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: He speaks Romanian preaches in Romanian, but he's a Russian.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: And he I asked him, of course, when I met him, that's interesting for me.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: So this was this summer.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: We are talking uh 2021.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Why have you come from Russia?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, actually, there is no freedom there.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, How can you say that?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: He said, We are allowed to exist until we are extinct.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to do evangelism and to start a big church, you'll be visited by the secret police and they would say, Hey, cool it.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't, we can very easily find something to accuse you and you will finish in the jail.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: And when the state uh dominated uh police are bringing some accusation against you or counterfeit uh accusations, that would be difficult.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: And when the state-dominated uh justice or judges will judge you for that, you'll be found guilty immediately.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of staying there and feeling I could die slowly together with my congregation, I came here with at least I can preach, and a church can grow or not, but you can evangelize and explain God's word, and people would turn to faith.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: So there are countries where bad things are happening.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: I I had some friends in China as missionaries, and China is a great country, but technology there will keep trace of you with anything you do.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: There it's an underground church, very strong.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, communism was our experience in the years past, but nowadays persecution against Christians is not at an end, and we should pray and be helpful and feel with them and being compassionate and not forgetting those who are living to persecution time.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_02: You mentioned some countries where there's persecution, uh some directly related to uh communism, like North Korea or or Laos or Uzbekistan, but then some not uh related to communism, such as Afghanistan or um Iran or Iraq, but there are many still being uh persecuted today, and they're not fanatics, are they?
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, I wouldn't say that.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's how one preparing or helping God's kingdom to develop and preparing for the coming of Christ.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I have a phrase I would like to write an article, but for God's call for anonymous Christians or anonymity, usually we feel a call to become famous.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: I I think some sometime there was an ironical poem written by somebody.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I've been called to become famous.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: But in such countries, some people are they are only famous in front of God.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know what they suffer, they're anonymous for us, and we should pray and feel with them because there's real life there, and the church is growing in an unknown way, but is growing.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things that Richard Wernbrand said in one of his books was this the West sleeps and must be awakened to see the plight of the captive nations, meaning persecuted nations.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: What do you believe that he would want the West to do?
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: It would be best to ask him, but it's not possible, obviously.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think that I will learn from his life a few things.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: One is that regardless of the life we might have lived before, when we find Christ, we should entirely and passionately follow him.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think he's a great example in this.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: Then we should encourage young people.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: He acknowledges that he was a very unruly and anarchical young man dedicated to communist anarchy.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: He's a sort of second Jewish Romanian uh Apostle Paul for Romania and the countries in the East.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think we should pray for the persecutors, for the young people, because God has all the power in the world to change the hearts of some great enemy of the church and of Christ and to turn them into great believers.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: So and we should be active evangelizing.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: I will not forget that example of a simple Christian German person who gave him a Bible.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think his name was Wolf, Christian Wolfe.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes evangelism could mean this, to present somebody with a New Testament and say, There is a book.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: I found it very useful.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: You might find it as well if you read it.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we don't need great, great arguments, but just let the speak the world speak for it.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Are we prepared to invest in youth?
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: Even in the worst kind of youth, God can change everybody's life and make him a nice thing for the whole eternity.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think that being in touch with those who suffer, not uh letting their voice and witness be disregarded, be helpful, letting the world know what are their trials and their difficulties, and helping them either with food, with books, with shelter, in many ways, being aware with next to them with our prayers and with our actions, political or missionary.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is what he would like us to do.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, he did all of these things.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: He's been an author, a missionary, an outspoken mindful of Christ.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's quite a legacy uh uh for today.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_02: And uh thank you so much for coming and sharing about uh Richard Wernbrand and uh his uh influence in the world and also in your life, too.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's a good uh way to uh end this interview today.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: So Monsumes Petru uh interview uh Tao uh thank you for your interview today and uh to have uh Benny Coventet.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: And we welcome all of our listeners to a showing of uh the movie Sabina Tortured for Christ.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: Sabina is uh Richard Warmbrand's a wife, and that story will be told at the Central Five Father Church on Sunday evening, uh March the 6th, from 6:30 to 830 in the evening.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: The movie will also be introduced by uh Reverend Louis Nichols, who was also prosecuted during time of time that we normally talk about followers to the third special.