Not to be Forgotten

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NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN

him. “I would have liked very much to know that a loving heart existed somewhere in the center of this universe,” he wrote in his early book, Tortured for Christ. “Since I had known few of the joys of childhood and youth, I longed that there should be a loving heart beating for me, too. I convinced myself that there was no God, but I was sad that such a God of love did not exist.” Wurmbrand’s encounter with this God of love came when he was “irresistibly drawn” to a certain village in the Romanian mountains where an old carpenter had been praying to bring a Jew to Christ. Seeing that the new arrival was a Jew, the old carpenter courted him like a young man courting a beautiful girl. Wurmbrand had read the Bible before, but when given one by the carpenter he saw in it not mere words but “flames of love.” Weeping, he accepted Christ, and shortly afterward Sabina 1909 – 2001 came to Christ as well. During World War II, Richard and Sabina evangelized to the occupying Born into Judaism, sidetracked briefly by German forces, preached in bomb shelatheism, and then converted to Christ- ters, and rescued scores of Jewish children ianity, Richard Wurmbrand, the “Iron from the ghettoes. For these activities, they Curtain St. Paul,” endured 14 years of were arrested repeatedly. Wurmbrand’s harsh imprisonment and brutal torture connection with Russia began during for his faith under communist rule. But this same time period. His own miracuunlike Paul, he regained his freedom and lous conversion had given him an intense was able to devote the next 35 years to sorrow for a people raised from childhelping other persecuted Christians. hood in atheism, and during the war he Wurmbrand was the fourth child of had an opportunity to minister to Russian a Jewish Romanian family. He grew up soldiers held in Romanian prisons. Seeing in bitter poverty, was orphaned in child- men who had lost the ability to think hood, and by 14 had become, in his own for themselves, Wurmbrand vowed to words, “as convinced an atheist as any dedicate his life to such men, “to give communist.” As a young man he was them back their personalities and to give drawn to the left-wing politics that them faith in God and Christ.” flourished in Bucharest in the 1930s. In Nine months before the end of the October, 1936, he married Sabina Oster, war in Europe, Wurmbrand got all the also a Jew by birth. potential converts he could hope for Wurmbrand’s conversion took place when 1 million Russian troops marched two years after his marriage. By his own into Romania. The communists seized admission, he considered the very notion control of the government, and a nightmare of God and Christ harmful to the human of oppression and capitulation began. mind, but still there was yearning inside The Russian occupiers convened a con-

Richard Wurmbrand

PRISM 2007

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gress of religious bodies, attended by over 4,000 ministers, priests, and rabbis. Joseph Stalin was named honorary president of the convocation, and one by one the religious leaders swore their allegiance to the new government. Sabina turned to her husband and said, “Richard, stand up and wash away this shame from the face of Christ!” Wurmbrand rose to his feet and told the delegates that their duty was to glorify God and Christ alone. Over the next two years,Wurmbrand distributed 1 million Bibles to Russian troops and also smuggled Bibles into Russia. By now he was head of the Norwegian Lutheran Mission in Bucharest, a position which helped cover his underground activities. His time ran out on February 29, 1948, when the secret police kidnapped him and threw him into prison with the designation “Prisoner Number 1.” He was held there for over eight years, subject to horrific torture. In a general amnesty brought about by the Khrushchev-Eisenhower “thaw,” Wurmbrand was released in 1956. Although warned never to preach again, he soon resumed his underground work. In 1959 he was rearrested, this time sentenced to 25 years. Among the tortures he endured were being placed in a wooden box with nails driven through the sides and repeated imprisonment in a “refrigerator cell,” where he would be frozen to the point of death, thawed out, and then frozen again. In 1964 Wurmbrand was released and then ransomed for $10,000 so that he could leave Romania with his family. The following year he appeared before a U.S. Senate subcommittee, at one point stripping to the waist to show 18 deep torture wounds. In 1967 the Wurmbrands began a ministry to the persecuted church in communist countries. Called the Voice of the Martyrs, the organization was established in 80 restricted countries by the mid-’80s. He died February 17, 2001, active in his ministry to the end. ■


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