Richard
wurmbrand
FROM
Suffering
TRIUMPH!

The dramatic
and extraordinary sequel
to Tortured for Christ

From Suffering to Triumph
Richard Wuimbrand is a Hebrew Christian and a
Romanian evangelical pastor. He and his wife
Sabina suffered great persecution under Fascism and
Communism. Under the Communist authorities in
Romania Richard Wurmbrand spent fourteen years
in prison for his faith. He and Sabina were ultimately
rescued by the Norwegian Israeli Mission and the
Hebrew Christian Alliance.
After coming to the West the Wurmbrands were*
used by God to set up the international Christian
Mission to the Communist World, which now has
bases in many different countries.
In 1990, after the revolution in Romania which
overthrew Ceaushescu's dictatorship, Richard and
Sabina were able to return to their homeland from
which they had been banned for twenty-five years.
This book is not so much about the suffering they
found there as about the beauty which God gave to
the Romanian believers during their years of oppres-
sion.

Other books by Richard Wurmbrand:
Tortured for Christ
In God's Underground
Sermons in Solitary Confinement
If Prison Walls Could Speak
Alone with God
Christ on the Jewish Road
Marx—Prophet of Darkness
Answer to Moscow's Bible
Little Notes Which Like Each Other
100 Prison Meditations
From the Lips of Children
My Correspondence with Jesus

Richard
wurmbrand
FROM
Suffering
TO
TRIUMPH!
The dramatic
and extraordinary sequel
to Tortured tor Christ
kjegel
PUBLICATIONS
Grand Rapids, Ml  49501

From Suffering to Triumph by Richard Wurmbrand.
© 1991 by Richard Wurmbrand and published in
1993 by Kregel Publications, a division of Kregel, Inc.,
P.O. Box 2607, Grand Rapids, MI 49501. All rights
reserved.
Cover Illustration: Vic Mitchell
Cover & Book Design: Alan G. Hartman
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wurmbrand, Richard.
[From torture to triumph]
From suffering to triumph / Richard Wurmbrand.
p.     cm.
Orginally published: From torture to triumph.
Eastbourne: Monarch, 1991.
Sequel to: Tortured for Christ.
1. Wurmbrand, Richard. 2. Luthern Church—
Romania—Clergy—Biography. 3. Persecution—
Romania—History—20th century. 4. Romania—
Church history. 5. Romania—History—Revolution,
1989. 6. Romania—History—1989. 7. Romania-
Description and travel—1978. 8. Communism and
Christianity—Romania. I. Title
BX8080.W86A3       274.98        1993        92-42091
CIP
ISBN 0-8254-4061-0
12 3 4 5 Printing / Year 97 96 95 94 93
Printed in tlie United States of America

Introduction
A brother who had been terribly tortured by the
Communist police shared the same prison cell
with me and told the following incident:
I once saw an impressive scene in a circus. A
sharpshooter set out to demonstrate his skill. In the
arena was his wife, with a burning candle on her
head. From a distance he shot the candle so that it
fell, leaving his wife unharmed.
Later I asked her, "Were you afraid?" She
replied, "Why should I be? He aimed at the candle,
not at me."
I thought about this when I was under torture.
Why should I be afraid of the torturers? They don't
beat me. They beat my body. My "me," my real
being, is Christ. I was seated with Him in the heav-
enly places. This—my real person—could not be
touched by them.
I have lived through the years of enforced exile
with the image of such heroes of faith in my
heart. Now, on my return to my homeland, I again
found this same spirit among the Christians I met.
My purpose in writing this book is to help you
ascend to such heights.

A Prophet in Disguise
After eight years in Romanian Communist jails,
I was released, but only for a short period. I had
failed to pass the test. The Communists considered
my sermons after liberation as bad as those before
my arrest. The brainwashing to which I had been
subjected in prison had not been effective. My mind
still harbored the same "wrong" religious ideas.
There was only one solution: send me back to jail—
this time for twenty-five years, though I eventually
served only six. My total prison experience was
fourteen years.
Captain Stanciu of the Securitate (Romanian
Secret Police), who had to interrogate me when I
was arrested for the second time, was an apostate
Christian who had been brought up in the home of
devout believers. Now he jailed God's children to
convince them that they were wrong. For some
unknown reason, he was nice to me. At the risk of
losing his own liberty if overheard, he whispered to
me on the first day, "My superiors have committed
a terrible mistake in ordering your arrest. At first you
were an unknown pastor in a small church. Then we
imprisoned you for eight years and turned you into
a national figure. Now all Romanian Christians
know you, and you have become a hero in their
eyes.
"Your rearrest will make you an international fig-
ure. That was the wrong thing to do."

8	From Suffering to Triumph
Though an enemy of the gospel, he uttered a
prophecy, just like Caiaphas the high priest who sen-
tenced Jesus to death (John 11:50).
When I was freed in 1964 after my stint of four-
teen years in Communist dungeons, I was not
allowed even to attend churches. Pastors of con-
gregations where I tried to worship were threatened
by the Communists: "Don't allow Wurmbrand to
enter your building—or else!" I had no other choice
but to leave the country, which I did with my wife
Sabina and my son Mihai in December 1965.
For twenty-five years we have been forced
exiles during which time the Romanian Communists
have not ceased to denounce me in their press as
their archenemy, principally because of my books
exposing their activities and my involvement in the
Christian Mission to the Communist World. God
used me to start this mission devoted to spreading
the gospel in countries under atheist dictatorships
and to helping the persecuted. I was able to write
books that have been translated into over sixty lan-
guages. For more than two decades I have traveled
and preached the world over in the service of this
mission, which has expanded to all continents. I
have indeed become internationally known. Captain
Stanciu's prophecy has been fulfilled.
Return to Romania
I value the fellowship of brothers and sisters of all
nations and confessions, but my heart has never
ceased to yearn for my Romanian fatherland, the
country in which I had been born twice.
Patriotism is not very fashionable today. But since
Jesus taught us to love even our enemies, how can

From Suffering to Triumph	9
we do so if we don't love our own country first?
And so wherever I traveled, the heart that beat in my
breast was the bleeding heart of my country and the
oppressed Romanian church. There seemed to be no
hope of my ever seeing it again, except in heaven
where the great reunion will take place. Although we
felt no hope for this earth, my wife and I practiced
hope against hope and saw it fulfilled. In a matter of
a few days God overthrew Ceaushescu's bloody dic-
tatorship. He and his wife were killed. I could final-
ly return to my beloved country.
My lovely wife Sabina and I boarded the plane in
Zurich. We were not sure if we would be allowed to
enter the country. A few days before our departure,
the Romanian King Michael I and Queen Anna had
tried to return. Though much loved by the people,
who of course were not consulted, they had been
denied entry by the Communists. They had been
stopped at Zurich airport. The new Romanian gov-
ernment, presumed to be democratic, forbade the
King and Queen, pride of the Romanian nation, to
visit their own land in which the Communists were
intruders as puppets of the Soviet Union. (In January
1991, the Romanian government finally restored their
citizenship.) The new government, with Iliescu as
President, still consists almost entirely of
Communists—"reformed" Communists to be sure,
but still Communists. A tamed wolf is still a wolf.
A stewardess interrupted our reveries: "Will
passenger Richard Wurmbrand please identify him-
self?" My heart sank. We thought we were sure to be
asked to leave the plane.
To our great surprise and relief, unknown friends
who had heard that we would be on this jet had sent

TO	From Suffering to Triumph
us a box of chocolates and a beautiful message of
encouragement.
Some two hours later we heard the almost unbe-
lievable words: "Please fasten your seatbelts and
prepare to land in Bucharest."
My granddaughter Amely once gave this expla-
nation of the city's name: "Romania is a Communist
country. If they catch you there with a Christian
BOOK, ARREST follows."
This explanation was no longer valid when we
arrived in Romania, exactly a quarter of a century
after we had left. The mission to which I belong, and
many others, now cross the border with truckloads
of Christian literature. Our organization has even
created a large printing press in Bucharest itself
where we hope very soon to produce Bibles and
other books. The printing presses themselves would
have cost us a fortune which we did not have.* But
the printing press of Germany's ruling Communist
Party went broke, and their machines were sold at
auction. We obtained first-class machinery for half
the price. Moreover, Romanian Bibles will be
printed on machines that had printed atheist litera-
ture!
We are also setting up the first Christian book-
shop and video store.
Seeing Angels and Jesus
At long last we were in Romania! Overcome by
emotion, I kissed the soil.
Later, when I returned to western Europe and
America, many people asked me about the situation
in Romania. I cannot really comment on the situation
in its totality. I can say only what I saw. The

From Suffering to Triumph	11
observer is part of the reality observed. Beauty is in
the eye of the beholder. If one has a good eye (Matt.
6:22), a dove's eye (Song 1:15), he will see things
differently from the one who looks with other eyes.
When Peter and John heard a rumor that Jesus
had risen, they immediately ran to the tomb,
entered, and saw linen and a handkerchief, nothing
else. Then they left (John 20:7). Moments later,
Mary Magdalene looked into the same tomb and
saw two angels. How come the disciples didn't see
them? But Mary Magdalene was not satisfied with
seeing angels. She thought to herself "Where there
are angels, there must be something even better."
She did no more than turn her head, but she saw the
risen One.
I went to Romania to see angels and Jesus.
They are my first love. Why should I spend time
with lesser beings? I saw angelic beings and Jesus
dwelling in the lives of His saints.
Only One Sadness—Not to Be a Saint
Twenty-five years had passed since we left
Romania A voice whispered in our ears, "Why not
give up hope? Perhaps no one will remember you."
We could hardly have anticipated the crowds that
gathered from many cities far and near to welcome
us. Our joy and astonishment knew no bounds. The
first person I saw was my former cell-mate Nicolaie
Moldovanu from the Army of the Lord, a Romanian
version of the Salvation Army, but without uniforms
and bands. We had been in the same cell in the
ancient prison in Gherla. The regime had been very
harsh. From time to time, wardens would shout,
"Everyone on the ground!" It was winter. We had no

12	From Suffering to Triumph
sweaters, let alone overcoats. The floor was cold
concrete with not even a bit of straw for warmth.
Prisoners cursed the brutality of the wardens. Not
so Moldovanu. He believed that praising God was
better than cursing Communists. With a beautiful
smile on his lips, he would say, "Let's forget our sur-
roundings. I'll sing you the song I just composed
while lying on my stomach." It was a hymn full of
joy, hope and praise, sung now in many countries.
I remember the Orthodox priest Ghiush with
whom I had been in the Jilava jail near Bucharest.
The whole prison is underground. Cows graze
over the subterranean cells.
I was then in the eighth year of my sentence, I
had grown used to everything. But one day a
whole group of newcomers, all Orthodox priests,
were brought in. From time to time, the wardens
would shout, "All priests out in the corridor!" and
would beat them.
I sat down near the priest Ghiush, whom I had
known when we were both still free. My intention
was to comfort him. "Are you sad?" I asked He lift-
ed beautiful eyes to me and replied, "I know only
one sadness: not to be a saint."
Moldovanu was the same type of man. What an
honor it was for me to receive his brotherly kiss! I
did not feel worthy to untie his shoelaces.
Holy Kisses
Many were the kisses I received at the airport. I
believe that kisses should have a much greater place
in Christ's church. Paul wrote, "Greet one another
with a holy kiss" (Rom. 16:16), not with a cold
handshake. Jesus Himself longs for our kisses.

From Suffering to Triumph	13
"Kiss the Son" wrote the psalmist (Ps. 2:12). He is
not satisfied with anything less.
One evening Jesus was at the house of a Pharisee
named Simon who had invited Him to dinner.
Doubtless, on the table were beautiful flowers,
choice foods, and wine. Jesus looked at them and
said with sadness, "I have come into your house, and
you did not give me a kiss." This was what He real-
ly desired.
In the New Testament, the word for worship in the
original Greek is proskuneo, which means a rever-
ential kiss. When Jesus was on earth, it was easy to
kiss Him. His mother Mary must have kissed Him
countless times. But how can we kiss Him now? My
wife had more kisses from me when I was in jail than
she has now. So often when I want to kiss her now,
the phone rings or I have to hurry to a meeting. But
kissing is not so much a touch between two pairs of
lips as a coming together of two loving hearts.
Unsinged by Fire
And so I was kissed by Constantin Caraman who
had been one of the main contacts of our mission
with the underground churches. It was through
him that we had channeled much relief to the fam-
ilies of those who were being persecuted.
He, too, had been in prison three times. He had
worked as a slave laborer, just like my wife, building
a canal uniting the Danube with the Black Sea. What
a place of cruelty that had been! A prisoner was
caught stealing twenty onions which he intended to
share with others to enable them to swallow the taste-
less food: oats cooked in water, without salt, without
fat. The guard gave the prisoner a choice: twenty-five

14	From Suffering to Triumph
lashes on the soles of his feet or eating the onions
without salt or bread. He chose the latter. Tears
streamed from his eyes which swelled and made him
look like a frog. In the end, he fell into convulsions.
Another time, a convoy of women prisoners were
being driven from their barracks to their place of
work. On the way, they saw a dog's corpse. One
woman smashed its head with a stone, then others
jumped on it to eat its brain, so great was the hunger
for protein.
In the USSR horses were used to carry wagon
loads of stone. Prisoners picked worms from their
excrement and washed them. Again, valuable protein.
I looked at the shining face of Caraman, former
slave laborer. He had a triumphant, loving smile on
his lips. Observing him, one would never guess what
he had passed through.
In ancient Babylon, three Jewish youths who had
been thrown into a fiery furnace because they
refused to bow down to an idol emerged without
even the smell of fire on them. So it was with
Caraman and a host of other former prisoners I met.
A Convicted Pickpocket
There was Brother X. I would not have recog-
nized him after twenty-five years, but he reminded
me who he was: a former pickpocket with whom I
had been in jail. He had been won for Christ when I
preached in a cell full of common prisoners about
Jesus' love for thieves.
Far from loathing them, Jesus went so far as to
compare Himself with a thief who comes at night
when the residents of the house would not expect
him. Even more, He uses thieves as models for hon-

From Suffering to Triumph	15
est men. He praised thieves in His Sermon on the
Mount for being good to each other.
Now we laughed as we remembered the time I
fell asleep in my cell with my shoes on, only to
awaken as he tried to take them off! At the time, I
was moved by his kindness, thinking his desire was
to enable me to sleep better. On the contrary! He had
played dice, and my shoes were the stake. After win-
ning, he expressed surprise that I failed to recognize
him as their legitimate owner.
There was Vasile Rascol whom I had known
from childhood. He, too, had been in jail for the
crime of distributing smuggled Bibles. Now he is
working with us in establishing a press where
Bibles and other books can be freely printed.
My Children in Romania
I could not begin to describe everyone I knew in
the crowd, but I must say at least a few words about
my children.
All my friends in the West know that I have one
son, Mihai. He was the only one about whom I
spoke and wrote because he had emigrated with us.
But he is not my only son. In the airport, Sandu was
waiting. Since he had remained in Romania, I
could never mention him as I didn't want to endan-
ger him.
Many years ago I buried a Christian who had two
small children. Since his widow was very poor, I
took one child into my home, and he never left. He
became Mihai's brother. Because he was adopted,
the Communists would not allow him to leave with
us. Today he is married, and I was able to meet him,
his wife Sylvia, and their children.

16	From Suffering to Triumph
I could embrace my granddaughter Doina whom
I had never seen. She is married and has given me
my first great-grandchild. I also embraced my
grandson Richard, named after me. Richard had
been arrested in the final days of the Ceaushescu
regime and expected to be shot. In his cell he
thought, "Well, I belong to the Wurmbrand family.
Prison and persecution are its fate." When he was
taken out of his cell for what he thought would be
execution, he received an incredible surprise.
"Ceaushescu has been shot," he was told. "You
can go home."
There was also Lenutza. Once, as I sat in my
office, a girl of thirteen entered. She was shy,
poorly dressed, and very thin and pale.
"Are you Pastor Wurmbrand?" she asked.
"Yes."
'Then you are my father from now on. My own
father is an alcoholic and has forsaken us. My moth-
er is always bringing home some other man who
beats and chases me. I heard that you are a good
man, so I will be your daughter."
I called my wife from the kitchen.
"Congratulations! You have given birth to a child
without any birth pangs. Here she is."
She, too, remained in our home. Just after I was
kidnapped by the Communists in 1948, my wife,
instead of brooding about her misfortune, prepared
a beautiful wedding for Lenutza.
She, too, was at the airport, with her husband
Gheorghe and their daughter Cornelia.
We had six other children, all war orphans whom
we had taken for our own, though under
Communism it was not possible to adopt them

From Suffering to Triumph	17
legally. There was plenty of joy and noise in our two-
bedroom apartment We never had to go to the circus
or cinema for amusement We had plenty at home.
All six of these children were killed on one day.
To reveal the circumstances would mean accusing
some whom I would not like to mention. Great sor-
row has been my companion from childhood. God
has taught me to rejoice in tribulation. He is with me
in the free world too. My wife and I suffer here more
than we ever suffered under the Nazis and
Communists.
The Politics of Kindly Smiles
At the airport we all joined in singing, accompa-
nied by Moldovanu on the harmonica. I'm sure the
angels participated in this joyous reunion. Police
officers from die Securitate (the dreaded Communist
organ of repression) stood by. They are still in power
and wear the same uniforms, but they have been par-
alyzed by the uprising of December 1989 which
overthrew their boss Ceaushescu.
After the singing, there were speeches. A video-
tape was made by brothers Neureder and Wieser of
our German mission, great friends of Romania who
had come especially for this occasion. A number of
individuals from the crowd went with us for an inti-
mate meeting in a house on University Square. From
the window we could see the many thousands who
demonstrated against the government day and night.
The University Square had been declared a non-
Communist zone that refused to acknowledge the
authorities. There were tents for some twenty
hunger-strikers (one in the 36th day) who were call-
ing for the demise of the government. Some of the

18	From Suffering to Triumph
demonstrators, almost all young, sang a hymn,
"Better to be a rascal and a scoundrel than a
Communist." This hymn was in response to the
prime minister who had characterized them in
such terms. From a balcony, leaders of the opposi-
tion harangued the Communists.
The aversion to Communism was understand-
able, but it was not wise to turn it into a political
platform. The Communist Party had four million
members. Together with the membership of the
Communist youth and their nearest relatives, they
numbered ten million, the great majority of the vot-
ers in a country of only twenty million. Instead of
trying to win the rank-and-file Communists to
their side, the leaders of the opposition frightened
them. The Communists thought, "We will all have
to suffer if the opposition comes to power." Unwise
anti-Communism assured the success of the
Communists in the elections.
Jesus knows best what is right in the political
sphere. Words of love for the enemy serve the cause
better than expressions of hate. It would have
been easy to win the hearts of Communists. They
were shattered by the bankruptcy of their ideology
in the Eastern European nations. They were
depressed as well as disappointed. With a few good
words, President Sadat of Egypt obtained great con-
cessions from Israel, after five bitter wars had led to
terrible loss of lives and territories for the Arabs.
I am for the politics of kind words and friendly
smiles in all human relations.
The Hebrew word for "to tell" is lesaper, which
comes from saper, meaning sapphire. 'To tell" in
Hebrew means "to give a jewel."

From Suffering to Triumph	19
We should only speak if we have a jewel to give.
If you can enrich another, if you have a jewel to
give, talk. If not, it is better to keep your mouth shut
If this simple Hebrew rule were respected, there
would be no family strife, no divorce, no political
splits, no feuds in churches or between individuals.
Subverting Communism with the Gospel
The Communists have done great evil in
Romania, but most of them were unaware of it.
They did not know about the satanic roots of
Communism, which I have revealed in my book
Marx—Prophet of Darkness (Marshall Pickering).
Many only joined the Party for a better job or high-
er education. They should have found compassion,
but instead they were hardened by evil attitudes.
Finally, the Communist President Iliescu had had
enough of the demonstrators in University Square.
One day he shot and wounded many of them.
Over a thousand were arrested on one day.
How is it that Communism has crumbled, that,
while it is far from losing the war (China, Cuba,
North Korea, Vietnam—about one-fifth of
mankind—are still under Communist one-party
rule), it has lost some decisive battles?
For years politicians believed that Communism
could only be defeated through nuclear deterrents.
They spent billions and billions of dollars producing
them and now have to spend billions more in dis-
mantling them as useless. Others believed we should
accept Communism as an unchangeable reality and
come to terms with it. Their slogan was détente.
The Romanian dictator Ceaushescu was a mav-
erick. Like Tito, he had played the game of being a

20	From Suffering to Triumph
Communist apart, at odds with Moscow, but friend-
ly with the West. He was even granted a title at the
British court. But he was a Communist just like the
other dictators, only of a different stripe. There are
several species of tyrants just as there are several
species of wolves, but they all have the same pri-
mary characteristics.
Neither anti-Communist armaments nor courting
the Communists helped.
In all my writings and speeches I advocated
something else: "Communism infiltrates and sub-
verts the free world. Let us subvert the Communist
world with the gospel. Let us win them with love.
Christ taught us to hate sin but love the sinner. Let
us introduce, by secret means if necessary, the word
of God. Let us raise an army of prayer warriors."
Alliance with Angels
Furthermore, I said, we should ponder the
secret of the Jewish people. Though small in
number, they have had to fight powerful foes in
order to exist. In the end, they have conquered all
their enemies. Today Israel faces the enmity of hun-
dreds of millions of Arabs.who will succeed no
more than the powerful Romans, the Inquisition, or
the Nazis.
The Jews are 3% of the population of the United
States. They are 25% of its millionaires, but also of
its revolutionaries. They play an enormous role in
science and the arts. A large percentage of Nobel
prize-winners are Jewish. The nation of Israel,
although among the smallest, is in the headlines
every day. A third of the world now awakens from
the nightmare in which a Jew—Marx—played the

From Suffering to Triumph	21
principal role. The only one who can save it from
this nightmare is another Jew—Jesus.
What is the secret of the uniqueness of the
Jewish nation? One can say God willed it, and that
is true. But there was one event in Jewish history
through which this will was manifested.
Jacob, ancestor of my people (I am Jewish),
fought with an angel and prevailed (Gen. 32:28).
With one man on its side, a colony of ants is invin-
cible in its fight against other ants. With a few steps
the man can destroy the enemy. Likewise one man,
one nation, one church with an angel on its side will
prove in the end invincible.
Each of us has a guardian angel. How can two
walk together if they do not agree (Amos 3:3)? It
was one of the greatest events of my life to know
my guardian angel. Many Christians worked togeth-
er with their angels for the defeat of Communism.
Learn from them and do the same! In some places
angels are described as having wings. They are nec-
essary for communication between men and a dis-
tant God. But if God is nearer, wings are not
needed. In Jacob's vision, it was enough that angels
had a ladder (Gen. 28:12). For some, even a ladder
is not needed. The angel of the Lord surrounds them
(Ps. 34:7). He is at their disposal.
Christian Mission to the Communist World and
other similar organizations that followed its exam-
ple have worked hard in the spiritual as well as prac-
tical realms. Angels were by our side. Our prayers
were added to the prayers and sacrifices of num-
berless martyrs. And so it happened that Communist
walls have come tumbling down.

22	From Suffering to Triumph
How the Revolution Began
A Romanian bishop, one of the many who
became stooges of the Communists, fired the
Reformed Pastor Tökes of Timisoara for preaching
faithfully. When fie was to be evicted from his
home and church, a crowd of Christians of all
denominations and several nationalities surrounded
his house and obstructed the police. The number of
demonstrators grew. When they proceeded to
march toward the center of town, the army was
called out to stop them. The soldiers began shoot-
ing, and many were killed or wounded. Little chil-
dren gathered on the steps of the cathedral and
sang religious hymns. Again the troops fired,
and some children died. The rest sought shelter in
the cathedral, but heartless priests had locked the
sanctuary.
Then an amazing thing happened. The entire
crowd, instead of fighting the army, knelt and
prayed. This was too much for the soldiers. They
refused to shoot any more. Meanwhile, the whole
town had gathered. Pastor Dugulescu seized the
opportunity to address everyone from the balcony of
the Opera House. A poem by Constantin Ioanid,
"God Exists," was recited. The crowd shouted,
"God exists!" Leaflets with the text had been dis-
tributed. Some who knew the music began to sing
the song that had been composed for the words.
Soon thousands joined in singing it again and
again. It became the song of the revolution.
One day when my son Mihai, at about age five,
was walking with us through the park, he stopped in
front of a man sitting on a bench reading.

From Suffering to Triumph	23
"What are you reading?" he asked with childish
simplicity.
"A novel."
"Better read the Bible," said Mihai, "because if
you don't follow it, you will go to hell."
"What kind of words are those?" asked the
stranger.
"Do you see the tall man with a little lady there
behind me? They are my parents. Ask them and they
will tell you everything. It's a very serious matter."
Curious by now, the man did ask. It turned out he
had been a member of a virulent anti-Jewish orga-
nization. Through the witness of a little Jewish boy
named Mihai, he was converted and became one of
the best Christian poets of Romania It was his song
that became the hymn of the revolution.
When it became known elsewhere that innocent
people had been killed in Tïmisoara (it was rumored
they numbered thousands), other demonstrations
broke out spontaneously in different locations.
Thirteen children, the oldest fourteen, made a barrier
with their bodies against the troops of the Secret
Police who could advance only by murdering them.
The children knelt and shouted, "Please don't kill
us!" The police paid no attention. When the first fell,
the others did not run away but remained kneeling
with arms outstretched in love and childish confi-
dence toward the murderers as they continued to
beg, "Please don't kill us!"
A cross now stands where the children died.
A legend arose in Romania. It said that angels
began the revolution. Coming down from heaven,
they entered the children, giving them holy courage
like that of the good angels who had defeated the

24	From Suffering to Triumph
hosts of Satan in heaven. The martyrdom of these
children gave victory to the unarmed against an army.
Tanks and troops were called out against the popu-
lace, but in vain. The soldiers were as fed up with the
dictator as the people. In Sibiu, two Orthodox
priests who were lifted onto tanks asked everyone to
kneel for prayer. The demonstrators, numbering
thousands, as well as soldiers and officers, did so. An
"Our Father" was said together by those who still
remembered prayers. Soldiers and citizens embraced.
It was no longer possible to repress the uprising.
Communists Hate Each Other
At the same time, another scenario was taking
place in the capital.
Communists have a religion of hate. They hate
not only capitalists, Christians, and Jews, but also
each other. Almost all members of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR
had been killed by their comrade Stalin. In China,
the president of the Communist republic, Liu-
Shao-Chi, died under torture ordered by his comrade
Mao-Tse-Tung. In Romania, Lucretiu Patrashcanu,
the Communist who brought his party to power, was
killed by his own secret police.
So it happened that Ceaushescu's comrades in
evil deeds, Iliescu, Roman, and others, plotted to
overthrow him. For them the uprising in provincial
towns was the spark they needed. They prepared to
arrest Ceaushescu who had just returned from Iran
and was scheduled to deliver a speech from a bal-
cony in the center of Bucharest.
When he spoke, instead of receiving the usual
cheers (which were compulsory), Iliescu's men in the

From Suffering to Triumph	25
secret police began to boo. No one else would have
dared. But this signal was enough to stir up the crowd.
They had long desired to boo. Nothing could stop
them now. The shouts against Ceaushescu became
louder and louder. Sensing the danger, he fled, but
something was wrong with his car. He flagged down
another. The security officer who was with him and his
wife drew out a revolver and instructed the driver—
who happened to be a Christian—where to go.
Pretending that the battery was low, he stopped
right where men were ready to apprehend their
leader. After being paraded on television,
Ceaushescu and his wife Elena were killed. Several
of his adherents were jailed. Romania now has a
new government, but one which consists (at the time
of writing) almost exclusively of former Communist
leaders, schooled in Marxism from youth. They
claim to have renounced Communism, but
Communism does not abandon a Communist.
The Bible tells the story of the exodus of the Jews
from slavery. They followed Moses for a while, but
at the first opportunity they made a golden calf to
bow down and worship, just as they had seen the
Egyptians do. They had gone out of Egypt, but
Egypt had not gone out of them. The idolatrous
practices learned while they were slaves in a heathen
country remained in the Jewish mind for centuries.
The new government of Romania, like the old,
has also shot and jailed innocents. Ceaushescu can
be happy about his successor.
A Church I Founded
On Sunday, I had my first service in the Baptist
church of Valaori Street in Bucharest.

26	Front Suffering to Triumph
In a sense, I was its founder. The Communists
were not the first to persecute evangelicals in
Romania. By 1940, the right-wing Iron Guard,
who were fanatically Orthodox, had come to power.
The first thing they did was to forbid Baptist,
Adventist, Pentecostal, and Brethren Churches to
worship. Consequently, all their buildings were
closed. Then Marshal Antonescu dispensed with the
Iron Guard and established his own dictatorship,
again banning religious freedom. Not one
Romanian-language evangelical church remained
open. Hundreds of evangelical Christians were
sentenced for up to twenty years. The Orthodox
Church stood solidly behind this persecution. There
has been no Reformation in Romania. The Orthodox
Church is still as authoritarian as the Catholic
Church was before Vatican 2.
All Lutheran churches were free except mine
because I was Jewish and so were the majority of
my congregation (the government was fiercely
anti-Jewish). The Lutheran bishop Stadel was not
inclined to defend us. He gained renown through his
sermon that proclaimed, "Mankind has had three
geniuses: Christ, Beethoven and Hitler. I dare to
assert that Christ is even greater than Hitler."
And so, like the Baptists and other evangelicals,
we, too, gathered in the underground.
Toward the end of the war, a friend of ours, the
Swedish ambassador van Reuterswarde, succeeded
in obtaining the authorization for us to worship. In
one day, we removed all the furniture from our
apartment and turned it into a church. As soon as
this was known, hundreds of brethren from all the
forbidden denominations came to our services

From Suffering to Triumph	27
which we had to conduct five times a day. Thus we
were the only Romanian-speaking evangelical
church.
When the Nazis lost the war, my former church
again enjoyed religious freedom and was given back
its old building. Those who had gathered in our
apartment formed a Baptist congregation. This has
become the Valaori church. Thus, in a sense, its
Baptist pastor Talosh is my successor.
Many who now gathered to hear me had known
me personally before. The others knew about me,
my books, and my life story. For them I was not a
mere human but the incarnation of a legend that had
grown more and more beautiful over the years, to
the point of losing touch with reality. I had the prob-
lem of convincing them that I was not the legendary
hero they imagined, but an ordinary man.
The Wurmbrand Land
A joke is told in Romania: the dictator
Ceaushescu's car was forced to stop on a country
road for a small repair. Nearby he saw an old peas-
ant woman painfully shoveling dirt and asked
about her life. She told him how hard it was and
then asked, "Who are you?"
Amazed at not being recognized, he replied,
"Read the newspaper. Watch TV. They tell who I
am. I am 'the genial leader,' 'the lay god,' 'the
genius of the Carpathians.' I am the one who
brings truth, light and love to this country."
The woman, full of joy, shouted to her husband
who was working at a distance, "Come quickly,
John! Brother Wurmbrand has arrived!"
An American Christian has written a book about

28	From Suffering to Triumph
Romania which he calls The Wurmbrand Land.
Dispelling the legend, and speaking as a simple man,
I preached in church after church, my heart over-
flowing with love and joy.
How Much Am I?
One evening I was in the Popa-Rusu church,
where I had been secretly ordained as deacon during
Nazi times, when it was inconceivable that a Jew
should be given office in a church. But this was a
German-speaking church, and the Romanian
Fascists did not dare to close it.
The ordination took place in the greatest secrecy.
Only the two who laid hands on me and two wit-
nesses were present. The door was locked. The
German brethren Fleischer and Strobel were not con-
cerned about the anti-Jewish tempest raging outside.
It was in this same church that I later performed
my first baptism—of a Jew who did not know one
word of Romanian. During the services he would
read his Russian New Testament and just let me talk.
Before baptizing him I said, "I cannot just perform
this ceremony. I bear a responsibility. I must find out
what you have learned from Scripture. Read any
verse you like and explain it to me."
He opened his Bible at 2 Corinthians 12:11
where Paul writes, "I am nothing," closed the
book, and asked, "If Paul was nothing, how much
are you?"
I thanked him. He knew Scripture better than I.
A Heroine of the Faith
After Bucharest, I traveled from town to town.
We saw the miracles of socialism everywhere.

From Suffering to Triumph	29
Where there had once been cars and trucks, men
now rode behind horses. The shop windows were
empty. People stood in line for hours for tomatoes,
cabbage, milk. There were ration cards for many
articles. An individual was allotted one kilogram of
meat every two months. The streets and houses were
poorly lighted.
In every town I met the great and little heroes of
faith, as well as cowards and outright traitors. One
heroine who traveled with us to some places was Dr.
Margareta Pescaru.
In 1950,1 was close to death in the prison hospital
of Tirgul Ocna. The Communists had inherited from
the capitalists they despised the notion that every jail
should have an infirmary and a physician. However,
physicians were told, "You must practice veterinary
medicine on these prisoners. Give them the sort of
medicine and care you would give to oxen and hors-
es in order that they might be able to work as
slaves. If they can no longer recuperate, let them die."
In such prisons we knew two kinds of physicians.
Some of them, among whom were young female
doctors, would be present at the torture sessions and
would joke with the savages. From time to time the
doctor would take one's pulse and say, "Now let him
rest for a while." During this time, he—or more like-
ly she—would amuse herself with the police officer,
then say, "Now you can start again, but be careful
not to beat him in the region of the heart. He might
die too soon, and you won't get any more informa-
tion out of him."
But there were others who took seriously their
primary duty to save fife. Preeminent among them
was Margareta Pescaru. A Christian, she smuggled

30	From Suffering to Triumph
medicine into the jail. Physicians, just like others,
were frisked when they entered, but she succeeded
time and time again. Many lives, including mine,
were saved in this manner.
If a doctor was caught smuggling, he or she
would be badly beaten, then imprisoned for many
years. The risk was considerable.
Dr. Pescam made contact with my family and
friends. She also provided me, and others through
me, with streptomycin, the miracle medicine for
tuberculosis which was widespread in prison.
Preventing an Orgy of Cruelty
But she did even more than that In the prisons of
Pi tes h ti, Suceava, and the Canal, the Communists
had begun the so-called "reeducation" of prisoners.
Some had been corrupted through promises of
freedom if they would beat and torture their fellow
inmates to get them to reveal deeds against the state
they had not divulged during the investigation. The
prisoners also had to abjure all their convictions,
political or religious, for which they had been sen-
tenced. They had to promise full allegiance to
Communism.
Any method that would produce results was per-
mitted: severe beating on the soles of the feet and on
the genitals; breaking teeth with gravel; forcing pris-
oners to ingest feces and urine; sleep deprivation;
forbidding them to go to the toilet; and any other
degrading measures.
Men had to be reduced to heaps of fear, nothing
else. The Communists succeeded with most of
them. When prisoners were forced to run up and
down the stairs pursued by whips and sticks,

From Suffering to Triumph	31
everyone ran for his life, which, though wretched,
was at that time all that mattered to him. Some did
not yield, but they were few. Some died under tor-
ture. The henchmen, not satisfied with mere killing,
would urinate over the corpses.
Each prisoner was allowed to take one cup of
water from the tap each day, but he first had to pre-
sent it to the re-educator, who would spit in it. Then
the prisoner could drink. Jesus used spittle for
healing. I know one prisoner who at that time asked
himself, "If Jesus' spittle could heal a blind man, can
the spittle of such wicked men also heal if we accept
it with quiet resignation and love for the evildoer?"
The authorities brought some of these re-educa-
tors to my prison hospital, designated for tubercu-
losis patients, to start their work of destruction.
Re-education had been hell for the sane; what
havoc would it wreak among the sick, many of them
near to death? In a whisper, we communicated the
danger to Dr. Margareta Pescaru. She did the
unthinkable. She decided to go to the worst of beasts
to plead the cause of lambs.
After traveling a whole night to the capital, she
went to the top officials who had oversight of the
prisons—in simpler terms, to the chief butchers. God
gave her grace in their eyes, as He did to Esther in
the eyes of Ahasuerus. We have no idea what con-
vinced them. Was it her physical beauty, or rather
rays of God's power shining through her? But she
pleaded with success. She appealed to pride. Tirgul
Ocna was the only large prison hospital; the prestige
of the country was at stake, and so on. The fact is
that, for the first time in the history of Romanian
Communism, the torturing of innocents was stopped.

32	From Suffering to Triumph
Christian Becomes
Communist Police Officer
Another hero was X. (It is not safe to reveal his
name even now, since the Securitate, the Communist
Secret Police, is still in power.) During those dark
years, some wore the prisoner's garb for Christ But
X brought a greater sacrifice. To destroy the church
from the inside, the Communists infiltrated their
numbers, placing men who had become priests and
pastors for this purpose in positions of trust. Brother
X thought, "Why not reverse the process?" David
said, 'There is none like the sword of Goliath" (1
Sam. 21:9). Translators often believe they are wiser
than the original authors and should correct them.
This is true of Bible translators as well. In the orig-
inal Greek in Matthew 10:1, it is written that Jesus
gave his twelve disciples the power of unclean spir-
its. The English says "over," which is something
entirely different.
In time of war, the enemy's spying cannot be
counteracted only by preaching the gospel. There
must also be counterespionage. So young Brother X
became an officer of the Secret Police to serve the
underground church, and especially me. Brothers
and sisters who had become prisoners wore a uni-
form that was highly honored by believers. X was
loathed as a traitor who had passed to the ranks of
the enemy. Believers might well have thought,
"Who knows what he really does? Perhaps he has
even become a torturer."
He bore the shame and did his job well. He was
not the only one. Through men such as him we
came to know beforehand about threats of arrest. I

From Suffering to Triumph	33
was informed even after I had been exiled to the
West about threats to my life.
I met this hero of the faith, Brother X. Romanian
believers still don't know his story. What a privilege
it was to embrace him!
Some brethren, instructed by their faithful pastors,
accepted the role of becoming informers of the
Secret Police when it was proposed to them (and it
was proposed to almost all Christians). Police offi-
cers would meet with these "informers" in conspir-
atorial apartments, and we were thus able to learn
the addresses. Then members of the underground
church could spy on these apartments belonging to
the police and learn the identity of the real traitors.
These sham informers were very careful to tell the
police only things that would lead them astray. It is
wise to say little more, even today.
Collaborators of the Communists
I met with top leaders of different denominations.
Some of them had been collaborators with the
Communists. Feeling terribly guilty, they did not
dare to lift up their eyes. They trembled for fear that
the archives of the Secret Police and the Ministry of
Cults would be opened, and the public would
know all the details of what they had done. Some of
them were elderly men. Considering the fact that
Communism had reigned in Romania for forty-five
years, they probably asked themselves what they
would do at such an age, deprived of their positions
and probably of their pensions as well. I tried to ease
their conscience by telling them, first of all, that a
measure of collaboration had been legitimate.
I was not saying that it would be right to submit

34	From Suffering to Triumph
to dictators, for Paul said in Romans 13:1: "Let
every soul be subject to the governing authorities,
for there is no authority except from God." A God-
hating government is not from God. If it were, God
would be like the Jewish king Saul, who asked an
enemy, an Amalekite, to kill him (2 Sam. 1:9). God
would be advocating a kind of suicide.
I believe, with Saint Augustine, that "without jus-
tice, states are nothing more than robber-gangs."
Our duty is to uproot them as gangs and try to save
the souls of individuals in the gang.
Why, then, did Paul not write like Augustine?
I believe it is wise to say a few pleasant words to
tyrants under whom you are obliged to live, as long
as you cannot overthrow them. Daniel the prophet
said some very pleasant things to King
Nebuchadnezzar who was the Hitler of his day.
Diplomatic talk belongs in the arsenal of Christians.
Commenting on the king's dream that foretold
terrible sufferings for him, Daniel said to
Nebuchadnezzar, who not long before had thrown
Daniel's three friends into the fire. "My lord, may
the dream concern those who hate you, and its inter-
pretation concern your enemies!" (Dan. 4:19). In his
heart, Daniel might have thought, "All the punish-
ments from God, O king, are only just, and I hope
God will not change his mind."
What Should We Render to Caesar?
Jesus said, "Render to Caesar what is Caesar's,"
a very clear teaching. The Jews were to render to the
Roman emperor what was his. Now, what was legit-
imately his in Palestine? Simply—nothing. The
Roman army had invaded Palestine by force and

From Suffering to Triumph	35
ruled in a tyrannical way. The historian Flavius
Josephus wrote that, when the Jews rose up claiming
minimal human rights, the Romans crucified so
many of them "that there remained no wood for more
crosses and no place to put them." The Caesars had
planted not one tree and built not one house in
Palestine. "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's" means
give him nothing, except a boot in the back.
Who are the governing authorities everywhere?
They are the successful rebels of yesterday or their
successors. Cromwell and others fought against
tyrants in Britain; therefore the democratic regime
was God-willed. One royal house has been over-
thrown through violence by another; therefore the
actual queen of Britain is a God-willed authority.
Americans broke an oath of allegiance to the king
of England and made a successful revolution. The
American authorities of today are therefore of God.
The conclusion? Overthrow Communist and
other dictators. If you do not succeed, you are a
rebel. If you are victorious, you will be a ruler
appointed by God Who gave you victory.
Under Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Ceaushescu, as
with many despots of old, Christians have been mis-
led, by a false interpretation of this one verse from
Romans 13, to become collaborators in evil deeds.
They have failed to observe that these polite words,
"Let every soul be subject to governing authorities,"
appear only towards the end of a book that teaches
on all preceding pages that one should withstand and
tear down injustice and tyranny. This is what
Moses, Gideon, Barak, Samson, David and others
did, all of whom are honored as heroes in the Holy
Book.

36	From Suffering to Triumph
I did not consider the collaborators with the
Communists personally guilty. One born in a hea-
then or animist environment naturally becomes
heathen. He cannot be blamed. Likewise one
brought up in a church in which everyone submits to
rogues, considers the practice normal.
One of the top leaders of the official Soviet
Baptist Church, now deceased, said, "We have to be
submissive to the authorities, which does not mean
only to the government, but also to the KGB (the
murderous Soviet Secret Police), because it is also
an authority and as such is willed by God." This
means that if they asked me to spy on my brethren
in the faith, to report on and denounce them, know-
ing murderous arrests will follow, I must do so. How
can one ask Christians educated in such a faith to act
otherwise? It is like wondering why a child educat-
ed in English does not converse in Arabic.
I managed to have fellowship with the former col-
laborators who had caused much harm to individuals
and churches. They had considered it right to inform
the authorities about everything that happened in the
church—every word spoken, every decision taken.
As for the consequences of what they did? They
thought, "Let the chips fall where they may."
I tried to show them understanding. I told them
that for the Jews the Talmudic teaching is: when a
persecutor of religion arises, the rabbis have to
divide into two parties. One must stick to the
inherited faith and not change even the Jewish man-
ner of tying shoelaces. The other, on the contrary,
must be friendly to the oppressor, wine and dine
with him, in order to obtain at least some alleviation
of suffering. The merit before God of the suffering

From Suffering to Triumph	37
first group is not greater than that of the second
group who feast with the tyrant, provided they are
prompted by good intentions. These words helped
some to understand themselves better.
Some collaborated very wisely. By giving only a
little verbal allegiance to Ceaushescu, they were able
to receive many concessions. They would abstain
totally from the deification of Ceaushescu who was
called "the lay god," "the genius of the Carpathians,"
"the greatest thinker ever," and so forth. The
Lutheran bishop Müller consented to be a member
of the Communist parliament, though he never
voted. But the little compromise of being there with-
out ever flattering the Communist rulers had the
result that the Lutheran church was among those that
suffered the least.
The Traitors
The church in Romania had others besides col-
laborators in its ranks. Some were outright traitors
who sold the lives of innocents for money, though
they never got more than a pittance, like Judas with
his thirty pieces of silver. Even then, I am reminded
that Jesus sat at the table with Judas even after he
had betrayed Him. All the many words of love spo-
ken by Jesus to the disciples at the last meal
included him, too.
Jesus said, "Let not your hearts be troubled. You
believe in God, believe also in me." This was
meant for Judas, who was assured that in the
Father's house there are many mansions, even one
for a disciple who already had the price of betrayal
in his pocket, if only he would repent. Jesus was
saying, "There is still time to return" as He contin-

38	From Suffering to Triumph
ued, "I will receive you to myself" (John 14:1-3).
When Judas led the soldiers to arrest Jesus and gave
Him a treacherous kiss, Jesus even then called him
"friend," for His friendship is everlasting.
In the original, John 5:2 reads: "By the sheep
there was a pool" (the word "gate" here is an inter-
polation of the translators). Near every sheep of
Christ there is an opportunity to be washed from
every sin. The great tragedy is that some of the trai-
tors were recruited not only from among the worst
Christians but sometimes from the best, even from
those who had been heroes of faith, who had suf-
fered torture and imprisonment for many years.
There is a Latin saying: De hic historia silet—
"about these history is silent." Not everything
should be told. Some things are too sad.
Preaching to Unseen Audiences
What were the highlights of our trip to Romania?
Sabina and I stood before the gorgeous palace of
Ceaushescu which dwarfs Buckingham Palace. It is
said that even the taps in the bathroom are gold, but
"the lay god" never once had the pleasure of using
them. The palace is built over the spot on which the
Uranus prison of the Securitate had stood. This
prison was torn down to make way for the dictator's
residence. I sat in that underground fortress. I even
dare to assert that I ruled from my cell, though this
may sound like boasting. Let me explain.
I was kept alone in a cell from which I never saw
sun, moon, stars, birds, flowers, trees, or butterflies.
In time I forgot that nature exists, even that colors
exist. In my dull gray world of dingy cement
walls, tattered clothing, and ashen skin, I forgot

From Suffering to Triumph	39
what blue, green, and violet look like. There was
never a book nor a scrap of paper. In that deep sub-
terranean prison, silence reigned. I heard never a
word nor a whisper. This was sensory deprivation at
its crudest.
Every night in my dark cell I preached to an
unseen audience. I was accustomed to this audience,
even when I was free. In 1 Peter 1:12^ it says that
angels desire to look into the preaching of the
gospel. Whenever I preached in churches, I was
aware that angels were also present, not only men.
(Where else would our guardian angels be when we
are in church?) I always endeavored to say a kind
word for them, too. But I made the mistake of think-
ing that only angels could be my unseen audience. It
was not so.
After I came to the West, I published three
books of sermons I had delivered in my solitary cell:
Sermons in Solitary Confinement, If Prison Walls
Could Speak, and Alone with God.
And then something very strange took place.
I received a letter from a man in Canada who
wrote that he was from a good Christian family but
had gone astray as a young man and wound up in
jail. There he misbehaved and was put in a solitary
punishment cell. In despair, he thought how sad his
godly parents must be. He would have liked to
return to God but did not know how. He prayed,
"God, if there is somewhere in this world another
lonely prisoner who knows You, bring me his
thoughts." Then he heard an inner voice telling him,
"God seeks you more assiduously than you seek
Him. The desire of a cow to be sucked is greater
than that of a calf to suck. He seeks you and He

40	From Suffering to Triumph
knows how to find what He seeks. Sit quietly and
confidently. He will reach you."
And then, evening after evening, he heard a kind
of sermon from far away.
He repented. Mercifully, his prison term was
short, and he was released. Years passed during
which he married, had a family, and became a dea-
con in a church.
One. day he entered a Christian bookshop and saw
a strange title on a book cover: Sermons in Solitary
Confinement. Having been in solitary confinement
himself he wondered, 'To whom does someone in
solitary confinement preach?" He read the book and
later wrote to me: "Mr. Wurmbrand, you did not
preach to nobody. I was in solitary at the same time
•as youi I recognized the sermons. It was yours that
I heard and that brought me back to Christ. Thank
you for having delivered them."
I might not have paid too much attention to this
letter if I had not received another from a lady in
England who described the same sort of effect.
Then I met a French pastor. He told me he had
been an unbeliever when he saw a vision of a pastor
with a clerical collar who told him about Christ. He
was converted and in time became a clergyman who
won many souls to his Master. One day he too saw
the same book, Sermons in Solitary Confinement
On the cover of the French edition is a picture of me
wearing a clerical collar. He recognized me imme-
diately as the man he had seen in his vision.
Preaching beyond Space and Time
The Hebrews have three words for soul: nephesh,
ruach and neshamah. Neshamah is its highest

From Suffering to Triumph	41
stage. The Kabbalah, principal book of Jewish
mysticism, calls it "the supersoul."
At its highest level, the soul is beyond space and
time. A man enclosed behind four walls can reach
men thousands of miles away. When I received these
letters, they shed new light on some strange assertions
of St Paul: 'The word of the truth of the gospel,
which has come to you, as it has also in all the
world' (Col. 1:5-6, my italics); "Your faith is spoken
of throughout the whole world' (Rom. 1:8, my ital-
ics), and so on. These words seem such gross exag-
gerations that they could almost be called outright lies.
Paul had no knowledge of Japan or America. The
gospel was far from having reached even the known
world But the hidden man of the heart, the inner man,
the neshamah, communicates beyond all bound-
aries. Things happen to the inner man of which the
outward man, the conscious, knows nothing.
It is written that all the Jews who passed through
the Red Sea at their exodus from Egypt "were bap-
tized" (1 Cor. 10:2). They numbered perhaps two or
three million. Not one knew that this was happening
to them. "All those who were baptized into Christ
Jesus were baptized into his death" (Rom. 6:3).
Ninety percent of those baptized, even at maturity,
did not know this. My wife and I learned this only
years later and wondered about it. Who of us knew
that we were "buried with him" (v. 4), or that our old
man had been "crucified with him" (v. 6). A man
would remember if he had been crucified. None of
us does. Things happen with our neshamah, things
which the conscious, that very little part of our mind,
does not experience.
Personally, I never had the experience of accept-

42	From Suffering to Triumph
ing Christ as a novelty. When, at the age of twenty-
seven, I heard the gospel from a village carpenter, I
had rather the impression of recognizing something
I had always desired, for which I had been search-
ing. Plato wrote, "To know is to recognize."
A real sermon that flows from the inner castle of
the heart, a sermon to which the preacher also lis-
tens in wonder, never having thought that he knew
such things, is an existential event remembered by
listeners even after decades. It reaches to the ends of
the earth and produces an impalpable effect. In his
book, The Peace Child, Richardson tells about
many missionaries who have found tribes with a
knowledge of tenets of the Christian faith that they
had no way of learning from other Christians.
Sermons from far away have reached them.
As my wife and I stood before Ceaushescu's
enormous palace, I remembered these things and
meditated on them. In my subterranean cell I had
more joy than he could ever have dreamed of, even
when he was at the peak of his power. His work was
in vain. In this palace, as in all others, one day there
will not remain one stone on another. But souls won
for Christ will remain for ever and ever and will
ascend without end from glory to glory.
Sabina and I embraced each other and said a
prayer of thanksgiving.
Winning Souls in Jail
From there we went to the former building of
the Central Committee of the Communist Party.
From its balcony, Ceaushescu had started to deliv-
er his last speech when he was rudely interrupted
with shouts of "Murderer! Criminal! Down with

From Suffering to Triumph	43
Communism!" He fled in a helicopter that was on
the roof and went to his death. This building is the
former headquarters of the Secret Police and host-
ed another underground prison. There, too, I spent
two years in solitude. Deep underground I had
preached the gospel by tapping on the wall to pris-
oners in cells on either side. The inmates changed
frequently.
The Norwegian pastor Fjeldstad, a missionary in
Israel, told me he had met there a Jew who, when he
started to tell him the gospel, replied with a smile,
"You come too late. I heard the gospel years ago
from a fellow inmate who tapped in Morse code
when I was in a solitary cell in Romania. I believed
it then and I still believe it."
I rejoiced every step I took in Romania. Each
place brought back beautiful memories.
We stood before the actual police headquarters
where my wife and I had often been detained in
Fascist and Communist times. In Bucharest, I saw
again a sister who, with her father, a Baptist preach-
er, had been imprisoned by the Fascists in these
police headquarters, along with me and several oth-
ers. We had been denounced for organizing under-
ground services in homes. We remembered how
happily we had sung there.
Then there was the Malmezon prison in
Bucharest, where I had been in both Fascist and
Communist times (it was much worse under the lat-
ter). During the war, six brothers and sisters were
there. It was a loose arrangement, with male and
female prisoners together during the day. On one
occasion the commander, a colonel, entered the
room and shouted, "I heard that you sing your

44	From Suffering to Triumph
hymns here, which is forbidden. What kind of
hymns are these? Let me hear one."
We sang "0 sacred head, now wounded, with
grief and shame bowed down." He turned around
and left without saying a word. Many years later I
heard from Filip Shmuilovici, an outstanding
Hebrew Christian who had been my fellow prison-
er on this occasion and now lives in Israel, that the
colonel had become a brother in Christ. Our singing
might have helped others to salvation as well.
The Central Place of My Life
I found myself again on Olteni Street, where my
church had been. On the same street there had also
been an Orthodox church and a synagogue.
Ceaushescu had no need of such buildings so they
were all torn down. Olteni! What memories I had of
this place. It was here, through many tears, that I
had said my first public prayer of repentance. The
service had been conducted by Pastor Adeney of the
Anglican Church's Mission to the Jews. He had
dedicated his life to the Jews and had preached
some forty years with little visible fruit But he did
not abandon his mission. It became evident later that
he had not worked in vain. He had brought to Christ
Isac Feinstein, who became a well-known Hebrew
Christian preacher and died a martyr's death.
Another was Asher Pitara, who was with me later in
a Communist jail. Prisoners and Communist war-
dens alike called him "Mr. 1 Corinthians 13,"
because this was his main subject when speaking to
anyone, even to the guards, who treated him
respectfully. When Pitaru was before court, an inti-
mate Christian friend of his was the main prosecu-

From Suffering to Triumph	45
tion witness against him. He never spoke about this
man with anything but love; he never mentioned his
sin. These and many others were the fruit of
Adeney's service.
The main preacher was Pastor Ellison, himself
also of Jewish descent Oiteni was the place of my
conversion and later my pastorate. Everyone called
the church "the church of love" because, though
nominally Lutheran, it was really the only interde-
nominational place in Romania. Worshipers of all
kinds—Orthodox, Baptists, Pentecostals, Nazarenes,
Adventists—felt at home in this nesL When someone
who believed in christening brought his child, we all
rejoiced with him. When another asked for baptism
at maturity, those who baptized children were present
to celebrate. My colleague, Pastor Solheim, preached
his belief that at Holy Communion we receive with
bread and wine the real body and blood of Christ. I
said that I believe in a symbolic presence. No one
quarreled about it Jesus had said, 'Take, eat, drink."
He had not said, "Squabble about which interpreta-
tion is correct." Communion is what it is, not what
we think about it.
We took good care of the poor in this church and
helped many other churches as well. It was here that
we started the first secret mission to the Soviet army
that had invaded our country. New Testaments and
Gospels were printed for them.
The Oiteni church is dear to my heart for anoth-
er reason: it was here that we met secretly in the
attic, which was my "parsonage," the Rev. Stuart
Harris, now Chairman of the International Christian
Mission to the Communist World, and his friend the
Rev. Moseley from the USA. They were the first

46	From Suffering to Triumph
foreign visitors who did not allow themselves to be
fooled by official church leaders. We met at night,
and I told them the whole story of our suffering.
This meeting was really the foundation stone of
our Mission to the Communist World, which has
expanded to over forty countries, has introduced
millions of Bibles, New Testaments, Gospels and
other pieces of literature into Communist lands, and
has mobilized hundreds of thousands in prayer for
the persecuted. We also helped with radio broad-
casts and financial support for families of prisoners.
Are You Ready to Enter a Chariot of Fire?
I delivered many sermons in Romania which I
cannot reproduce here. But I would like to share a
few of my main thoughts connected with the special
situation in that country.
I spoke about the ease with which one can be
raptured to heaven. Anyone can be raptured today if
he is willing to travel as Elijah did. This is how: "A
chariot of fire appeared with horses of fire... and
Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven"
(2 Kings 2:11).
"Is anyone here ready to enter such an uncom-
fortable chariot?" I asked. "Then he can be raptured
at once.
"Where would you like to be taken? Jesus has
given us a great promise: To take him who over-
comes I will grant to sit with me on my throne, as I
also overcame and sat down with my Father on his
throne' (Rev. 3:21).
"Anyone can come to sit on this throne. Daniel
gives us a description: 'His throne was a fiery
flame, its wheels a burning fire. A fiery stream

From Suffering to Triumph	47
issues from it' (Dan. 7:9). Are you ready to sit on
such a throne? Then you can have a place of honor
on it.
"I come from the West where some preach easy
salvation. Just believe, that is all. If you believe, you
will not only have heaven in eternity but also
health and prosperity here.
"You might escape totally from Communist per-
secution, but this false western teaching is around
the corner to destroy your spiritual life much more
than Communism could have done.
'To be a Christian means to believe in Him,
which is to believe in His sacrifice on Golgotha and
His teaching that we too must deny ourselves and
follow Him. We are meant to be crucified and buried
together with Him, not in a physical sense (though
in southern Sudan Christians have been crucified
even in 1990) but in fighting to the uttermost
against sin, the world and the devil, and never giv-
ing up even if you lose many battles. About Britain,
it is said that in war it loses all the battles but has the
final victory. So must we too.
"Christian faith can bring healing. My wife, my
son, and I have been healed repeatedly by faith. But
it is also true that many fall sick because of their
faith. Perfectly sane men became Christians. For this
they were jailed, beaten, tortured; they lost their
health because of Christ He has made many prosper
in business, but many with a good living lost
everything. Their houses and property were confis-
cated, or they had to pay heavy fines again and again
because they became Christians.
"Don't serve Christ for what you can get from
Him. John and Mary Magdalene and others loved

48	From Suffering to Triumph
Christ when He could do nothing for them. He hung
in pain and thirst on a rade cross and even shouted
words that seemed to indicate despair.
"Mary Magdalene loved Jesus, period. Even if
He could give nothing. She loved Him even when
He was a corpse in a tomb, and she spent money on
spices to embalm Him.
"Where, then, is Christian joy? Paul says, 'I now
rejoice in my sufferings for you.' A Christian
weeps with all those who weep—-not only for
those who weep for a little while, but also for those
who weep and gnash their teeth in hopeless pain in
eternity. Not only Jesus, but also all His disciples
share in everyone's pain.
'They fill up in their flesh what is lacking in the
afflictions of Christ He was not satisfied with just
being crucified for mankind. He descended into hell.
Even if no one did Him any harm there, just being
in such a place of horror, hearing the shrieks and the
howling, sensing the fire and brimstone, must
have been terrible. No sensitive man can read
Dante's description of hell without shuddering.
Union with God
"But this was not enough for Jesus. By His
choice He is crucified again as often as spiritual
Christians fall away in sin (Heb. 6:6).
'This, too, is not enough for Him to reveal the
abundance of His love toward us. He inhabits
believers. He lives our life with us. He does it
patiently, but He still sometimes asks, 'How long
will I bear with you?' (Matt. 17:17). Every fall,
every sin, every weakness and doubt of ours tor-
tures Him, because He has become one with us. In

From Suffering to Triumph	49
us, He is not a separate 'I.' A symbiosis has taken
place.
"In Hebrew, Isaiah 48:12 sounds like this: Ani-
Hu-Ani rishon, afani acharon. Translated literally:
'A me who is a me-he is the first; one who is only
me is the last.' God and I have united in one person.
There is no grief of mine He does not share, no
doubt, no rebellion, no mistake. It is also His. Out of
love, He takes it upon Himself.
"And we find our joy in the supreme priestly ser-
vice of bringing ourselves as sacrifices. We suffer for
everyone, for Christ the sufferer lives in us. Christ is
not only in glory now, but has also remained the
Man of Sorrows acquainted with grief."
I gave an extreme example of this taken from life.
"Baptize Me or I'll Shoot You!"
Annmarie had been arrested for her underground
work in the church. As is usually the case, she was
beaten and tortured to make her betray the names of
other brethren and sisters implicated in her work. The
temptation to yield did not even occur to her. She was
so preoccupied, I would say possessed, by one
thought how to bring salvation to the torturer. For her
the question was not how to escape further pain, how
to forego being sentenced to long years of prison, but
how to make her torturer escape sin and hell.
She said to him, "You beat me in vain. You will
never beat out of me my love, not only for God, but
also for you."
The torturer laughed heartily. "What a foolish girl
you are! I beat you, and you declare your love for
me."
There were times when one could have lengthy

50	From Suffering to Triumph
talks with the torturers. Occasionally, they got
tired of beating.
One of them said to me, "You prisoners shout
when you are beaten. Why? You feel pain, but what
is your suffering compared with mine? You get beat-
en at most for half an hour. We have to beat so many.
There is not time for more than that Then you rest in
your cell. But I have to beat eight hours a day. I have
done this six days a week, twelve months a year, for
ten years. The only music I hear is the noise of the
whip and the cries of the tortured. It is maddening.
"In the evening I get drunk and then go home,
where I beat my wife, too. This is my life. I am a
greater sufferer than you."
Torturers took coffee breaks. They would also
smoke cigarettes. If the prisoner smoked, they
would offer him a cigarette as well. For a quarter of
an hour, the torturer would be a jolly fellow, ready to
converse and even joke with his victim.
And so this one torturer took the girl's declaration
of love as a joke.
She continued: "I will now tell you words that
under normal circumstances you would never hear
from a girl. While you beat me, I looked at your
hands. How beautiful they are! I imagine how
your wife enjoys it when you caress her. I put to you
a simple question: is caressing not better than beat-
ing? When you caress your wife, you and she have
pleasure. You surely cannot enjoy torturing more
than caressing.
"You have very attractive lips. How your wife
must have rejoiced when you first kissed her. Is kiss-
ing not better than swearing at people and cursing
with foul words?"

From Suffering to Triumph	51
He gave her a slap. "Stop this stupid talk! I am
not interested in your idiotic lies. You'd better tell us
with whom you worked in your underground activ-
ity. We are not in the business of love here, but in
discovering counter-revolutionist activities."
She responded, "I have a boyfriend who not only
loves me. He simply is love itself. From Him I have
learned to love everyone heartily. I love those who
do me good. I love those who hurt me."
He gave her a blow, and she fell to the concrete
floor of the cell, hitting her temple, and fainted.
When she awoke, she saw the torturer sitting,
deep in meditation. He asked her, "Who is this
strange boyfriend of yours who taught you to love
both the good and the bad without distinction?"
She told him, "It is Jesus," and spoke to the tor-
turer about him.
"How can I become His friend too?" he asked.
"You must repent of your sins, put your faith in
His dying for you on the cross, and be baptized."
'Then baptize me," he demanded.
She replied, "I cannot baptize you," which was
not true. Anyone can baptize in such exceptional cir-
cumstances. But she did not know this.
He took out his revolver, pointed it at her, and
said, "Baptize me or I'll shoot you!"
If this seems strange, it shouldn't He fulfilled the
words of Jesus, who said, "Some take the kingdom
of God by violence" (Matt. 11:12). "By violence"
can mean threatening with a revolver.
He dragged her to a pool, threw her into the
water, and she baptized him. It was a sincere con-
version. The proof was that, at great risk to himself,
he succeeded in freeing her.

52	Front Suffering to Triumph
This Annmarie is an Ani-Hu-Ani, a symbiosis
between Him and herself. Even under the worst of
tortures, she had one thought: the salvation of the
worst of men. She accepted an especially severe
beating because of her missionary endeavor, but she
also triumphed.
Forgiving a Torturer
Continuing my sermon, I insisted: "You have all
suffered much at the hands of the Communists, in
one way or another, physically or psychologically or
socially.
'There is something lacking in the cross of
Christ. All He did for mankind till now is not
enough. You belong to His body, you are a new
embodiment of His. Wherever you are, Christ is, as
it was when the Virgin Mary was pregnant. If she
went from the kitchen to the dining room, He was
with her. He and His mother were one. You are part
of His body, just as He was part of Mary's body.
'Take all tribulations upon yourself with resig-
nation and joy. They are Jesus' tribulations first.
Thus you will fill up what is lacking in the cross of
Christ Apply this to all the hurts you receive in the
family, in your job, in society.
'The Uniate priest Demeter had been a prison
colleague of mine. When he was in jail, a warden
amused himself by beating him again and again
with a hammer on the backbone. As a result,
Demeter was paralyzed and has lain unable to move
for twenty years.
"Now there has been a revolution, and
Ceaushescu has been overthrown. The Securitate
officer who had destroyed his life came to

From Suffering to Triumph	53
Demeter's door and said, 'I know I cannot be for-
given. What I did was too heinous. But only listen to
my words of apology and I will go.'
'The priest replied, 'For twenty years I have
prayed for you daily. I waited for you. You are for-
given/
'This is the essence of Christianity. Any other
attitude is not.
"When Jesus taught us the 'Our Father,' to
make sure we understood the most important part of
it He added immediately, "If you forgive men their
trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive
you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses,
neither will your Father forgive your trespasses'
(Matt. 6.14-15)."
Communists Broadcast My
Sermons on Television
Something very strange happened after I had
delivered a few sermons in which I stressed our duty
to love our enemies, including the Communists. My
sermons were broadcast at state expense on TV.
For years the Communists had kept me in solitary
confinement so that I could not tell my thoughts,
considered poisonous, to even one fellow-prisoner.
Now the Romanian government, still Communist,
took special care to ensure that the whole populace
heard what I had to say.
Why?
The government well knows that the people
hate its activities. The dictator Iliescu, wiser than his
predecessor Ceaushescu, understands this. He con-
sidered it profitable for the oppressed to be taught to
love their oppressors. The paradox was that my ene-

54	From Suffering to Triumph
mies and Christ's were eager for people to listen to
me. In fact, today Communist leaders actually beg
Romanian pastors, "Please preach all you want, even
in public squares, but stress love for one's enemies.
Otherwise the people will tear us to pieces."
Did Jesus foresee that His teaching of love to the
uttermost would be welcomed by His enemies
when they were in danger and would help the spread
of the gospel because it offered them protection?
We dare to walk our dangerous way, in which we
seem to be fellow-travelers with the worst of men and
to strengthen their hands (this is the case with almost
all who do good to those who do evil), because we
believe that the Word is God and in the end this Word
will change the hearts even of God-haters.
Two thousand years ago, the Jews hated their
Roman oppressors. Was it because Jesus taught love
for one's enemies that Pontius Pilate, Roman gov-
ernor of Israel, desired to free Him?
Love, just because it is love, exposes itself to all
risks—even the risk of being misused by the
wicked—in order to win all. We will not give up
teaching love for one's enemies, even though for a
time God-haters profit at our expense.
Not Interested in My Sermons
We met Angela Cazacu.
She had been our coworker during the War, busy
stealing Jewish children from the ghettoes and
thus saving lives, smuggling food and clothing to
scores of female Christian prisoners in the Mislea
jail, and so on. Then the Soviet army invaded our
country. She gave out Russian Gospels and New
Testaments in railway stations to trains full of

From Suffering to Triumph	55
Soviet soldiers. Some sisters were arrested for this,
but started again as soon as they were released.
When I was in the Tirgul-Ocna jail in 1951,
Romania had its heaviest snowfall ever, in some
places five feet high. At the time I was seriously ill
with pulmonary and spinal tuberculosis, as well as a
couple of other illnesses. When the cold was most
bitter, the prison commander gave the order that no
prisoner was allowed to have more than one blanket
We shuddered endlessly with the cold. Transport was
at a standstill. The administration had no food to give
us. No family members or friends could come to the
jail with a parcel because of the snow. Only one pris-
oner of the hundreds who were in this jail received a
parcel at that time. Angela, whose name in Romanian
means "female angel," made her way to the jail
through the mountains of snow and left a package for
me. At that time I looked like a skeleton. I accepted
the gifts that she had struggled to bring us, and we
shared them, comforted that we were not alone.
Now she attended a service at which I preached.
I asked her what she thought about the sermon. Her
reply was not very complimentary: "I did not listen
to it much. I was not very much interested in what
you said. For me it is enough to see that, after all
you have endured, you are well enough to preach. I
see your radiant face. I feel the love that emanates
from you both. If you had given only the blessing at
the end of the service after someone else had
preached, it would have been enough for me."
Do Today What You Neglected Before
Many leaders from the World Council of
Churches, Lutherans, Baptists, Reformed,

56	From Suffering to Triumph
Pentecostals, Adventists, World Federations, and
world-renowned evangelists now flock to Romania
and the other freed Communist countries. None of
them has apologized for having praised non-existent
religious liberty in Romania under Communist
rule. None has apologized that during the forty-five
years of terror not one of these great bodies or any
national denomination had done anything to give
practical help to the families of Christian martyrs.
Though my name was known abroad, my children
never received one cent, one parcel, or one letter
expressing concern during all my years of impris-
onment I could vouch for the fact that not one of the
families of Christian prisoners of that time received
anything until our Christian Mission to the
Communist World was formed.
That is all in the past now, and I would not men-
tion it if this hard-hearted attitude was not still pre-
sent. I challenge anyone to ask the leaders of these
denominations if they have in their budget at least
£50 ($100) a year for families of Christians jailed in
Muslim countries. There are prisoners of faith in
Egypte Malaysia, and Iran. Christians are heavily per-
secuted in Muslim Turkey. Perhaps the universal
church could make up now for what it neglected
then. There are missions that now work effectively in
this regard in Communist countries. Let the denom-
inations do the same in Muslim countries.
The Language of Passion
When I started to tell in the West the story of per-
secution in the East, I was accused at the very least
of gross exaggeration. Bishops and leading evan-
gelists who had been to Russia, Romania, and

From Suffering to Triumph	57
Hungary were quick to give the Communist rulers
certificates of good behavior. I myself heard one of
the most renowned evangelists in the USA say upon
his return from Russia, "There is more religious free-
dom there than in Britain." Such kind words were
also spoken about my homeland.
Did I exaggerate?
First of all, what's wrong with exaggeration?
Why should anyone object to it, since it is the nor-
mal response of individuals speaking about a subject
that they feel passionately about?
We read in Mark 1:4, "A// the land of Judea and
those from Jerusalem went out to John the Baptist
and were all baptized by him." Is this an exaggera-
tion or not? Those who place high hopes in the vic-
tory of the kingdom see in small beginnings the
mighty events that will follow, just like a father with
his son.
Have the descendants of Abraham become as
numerous as the stars of heaven or the sand of the
sea? These are beyond calculation. Yet the promise
was such. Was God exaggerating?
Is the bride of Solomon's Song really the only
beauty, beside whom other girls are ugly? If not,
why does the bridegroom say, "As a lily among
thorns, so is my love among the daughters"?
I don't mind being accused of exaggeration
when speaking passionately about the sufferings of
the persecuted. When one tortured man cries, I hear
more than one voice crying. All true believers suf-
fer with the one who suffers. Jesus Himself suffers
in them. Why do you hear only the cry of one
insignificant man and not the cry of Jesus Who
dwells within him?

58	From Suffering to Triumph
How many suffer? How great is the suffering? Do
you have good ears? When Abel was killed by his
brother, his cry was so loud it reached from the
ground to highest heaven (Gen. 4:10). Why then do
you hold it against me that I hear one voice as the
voice of a multitude?
I never exaggerate willingly, but neither am I a
stickler for exact figures. Eichmann, the war crim-
inal judged in Jerusalem for his participation in the
Holocaust, gave as his defense: "Not six million but
only one million Jews were killed by the Nazis." For
me and my wife, who had family among the victims,
the one million would never be only one million.
When all is said and done, anyone who now reads
even Communist publications from the former
USSR, Romania, and other Communist countries
realizes that not only I, but also Solzhenitsyn,
Bourdeaux and others are guilty of understate-
ment.
Even now I have not told the whole story.
Patrashcanu, the one who brought Communism to
power in Romania, was later tortured by his own
comrades in such a manner that I could never tell
anyone, including my wife. No publisher would
print such violent obscenities. It is strange that we
can stand to see pictures of Jesus crucified, but we
cannot stand to see the suffering of His saints.
Meanwhile, several newspapers and magazines in
Europe have asked the World Council of Churches
and the Lutheran World Federation to apologize to
me. I absolve them of this obligation. But I would be
gratified if they would take a stand against the atroc-
ities committed today where Communists are still in
power and would expel from their leadership those

From Suffering to Triumph	59
who have led people astray about non-existent
religious liberty under the Reds unless they repent
A Bleak Situation
After speaking in many services, I was invited to
meals in the homes of believers.
In one very poor house my wife and I were
served chicken, but from the expression on the faces
of the children I realized they had never had such a
thing. In Romania there is a proverb: "If a poor fam-
ily eats chicken, either the chicken or the family is
sick." We said we were not hungry and each took
only a wing.
In other homes we were given good food, but we
soon realized that it had been purchased on the black
market for exorbitant prices and that the families
would eat minimally after our departure. My own
children, knowing for a long time that we would be
in Romania, had hoarded food by standing in line for
hours day after day, for weeks.
The Talmud says, "Every meal where the con-
versation is about something other than the word of
God is idolatrous." I try to abide by this. Families
have so little time to converse that mealtime should
be used for spiritual as well as physical nourishment
But there were also jokes. A former member of the
Communist Party said, "In times past, you had to be
recommended by two members of the Party to be
accepted. Now, only a certificate from a psychiatric
asylum that you are mad is sufficient."
There was joy and happiness at meals in spite of
the great poverty. But the situation was bleak,
without any hope of improvement in the foreseeable
future. I know the figures: in the first quarter of

60	From Suffering to Triumph
1990, the productivity of workers and the gross
national product had decreased by 42% compared to
the year before. International trade had virtually
come to a standstill. There was no new capital infu-
sion into the economy. All socialist economic
planning went out the window. With no raw mate-
rial, many factories stand idle. Private enterprise is
now permitted, but where does one begin when
there is no capital? There are no goods for even the
smallest venture.
The transition from capitalism to socialism is
easy. You simply destroy what your predecessors
have accomplished. But the transition from
Communism to capitalism and the free market sys-
tem has never yet taken place. Will it succeed? To
create or recreate a free market, capital is needed.
Historically, capitalism began in Europe because of
the huge amounts of gold discovered in America.
Where is Romania to obtain capital? The west-
ern capitalists have no confidence in the new
government because it represents no real change.
The leaders still feel free to slaughter innocents at
whim, just as their predecessors did. Between the
13th and 15th of June, 1990, a multitude of
corpses (no one knows how many) and countless
wounded, many mutilated for life, lay on the
streets of Bucharest. The killers were allegedly
miners, as reported in the western press, though the
people know they were men of the old Securitate
who wore miners' helmets as a disguise. These
"miners" had been called by President Iliescu
and were congratulated when they finished their
bloody work, because they had shown "proletarian
solidarity." Those were apocalyptic days. Hoards of

From Suffering to Triumph	61
Communist police armed with iron sticks and
axes roamed the streets killing people in the name
of a government that called itself democratic.
Demonocratic would be more accurate. The image
of such scenes persists long after the streets are
cleared. People still hear the wild howling of the
killers and the moaning of the wounded.
A sane economy, a free market system, cannot be
built on such a foundation. Romania receives no
substantial help from the West, unlike all the other
Eastern European countries, which were also
Communist. This was decided at a conference of
twenty-four industrial nations in Brussels.
Capitalism and Communism
There were spiritual discussions at meals, along
with songs and jokes, but no palpable hope for the
immediate future of the country as far as living con-
ditions are concerned. In view of all their bitter expe-
riences with socialist economies, it is proper that
Christians consider what their attitude should be in
the conflict between capitalism and Communism.
Wicked men cannot construct good social sys-
tems. Slavery, feudalism, capitalism, Communism—
all are tainted with sin. However, the wise
distinguish not only between good and bad, but also
between good and better or between bad and worse.
Of all the social systems devised by men until
now, Communism is surely the worst. One hundred
and fifty years ago, Marx believed that capitalism
would soon perish. Seventy years ago, Lenin
believed in the near victory of the Communist
revolution. In the United States, the great depression
of the thirties was considered a sign that capitalism

62	From Suffering to Triumph
was on its deathbed. It was not. Capitalism has great
vitality. Communism is sick.
Capitalism has proved to be the only system of
production that by its very nature assures the devel-
opment of new techniques that in turn raise the stan-
dard of living of the multitudes. Under capitalism,
periods of crisis are followed by periods of recovery.
Technical developments assure this. New discover-
ies result in new branches in the economy.
Competition assures that products will become
cheaper with time. The number of consumers
grows. New enterprises are created and with them
more jobs. The great number of unemployed in cap-
italist countries is due to the fact that job-seekers
have not qualified themselves. For those who do and
who are willing to work, joblessness is not general-
ly a long-term problem under capitalism. In other
words, there is no permanent crisis under capitalism.
Under socialism, by way of contrast, there can be
no long periods of progress. No one is interested in
investing capital because all the profit goes to the
state. A political organism, the state, decides what
factories should be built and how the goods should
be distributed. 4t takes no advanced degree to
observe that as a result the shops are almost always
empty. Politicians decide on salaries. Romania
provides a bitter example. During the election
campaign in June 1990, the government announced
a salary increase of 50% in many industries. Since
all enterprises belong to the state, this was simple.
After the elections, the same government that had
used this ruse to win declared that no one in
industry would have a fixed salary but rather it
would be determined by productivity. However,

From Suffering to Triumph	63
since there is neither capital for productivity nor
goods for even the most urgent repairs of machinery,
industry is hobbled and workers are stymied.
Warning signals about the shape of the economy
do not worry the planning commissions, who are
the real bosses, because their members have no
profit motive for what they do. They receive a
modest salary whether or not the plan is fulfilled.
Capitalists, on the other hand, react quickly to eco-
nomic indicators because their capital is at stake.
They can become millionaires or go broke. The
profit incentive tends to prevent economic cata-
strophes. Under Communism, antiquated enter-
prises continue to function even though they bring
no profit. The breakdown of Communism came in
many countries without revolution. Romania was
the exception. In Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland,
East Germany, and Russia, Communism died a nat-
ural death because it simply doesn't work.
Capitalism has grave weaknesses, but it is the best
system mankind has produced. Of necessity,
Christians must prefer it to something far worse—
Marxist economics. Nations that have tasted
Communism now show their aversion to the system.
In Romania, as in neighboring Eastern European
countries, people have torn down the statues of
Marx, Stalin, and Lenin with strong ropes and
multiple manpower, so strong is their revulsion to
the "gods" that have been imposed on them. Some
are offered for good money to western collectors.
"Lord, when you awake, you will despise their
image" (Ps. 73:20). Previously, pictures of
Ceaushescu were seen everywhere. Now there is
not one.

64	From Suffering to Triumph
The Specter of Famine
Christians in Romania, like the rest of its inhab-
itants, have little time nowadays to think about
heavy social or spiritual problems. The mere earn-
ing of daily bread consumes more than a normal
man's power. And there is even worse danger for all
former European Communist countries, and espe-
cially for Romania, which is excluded from aid
from the USA and the European Community.
Romania is also shunned by those who could
invest capital because of the brutality and instabil-
ity of its government, consisting almost exclusive-
ly of Communists who so far give few signs of
having changed.
There is rampant inflation. The price of necessary
goods has increased. Income is lower. Widespread
unemployment is inevitable, since unproductive,
inefficient factories kept alive by unreasonable
state planners will have to be shut down. There is no
legislation providing for the unemployed. All
Christian charitable institutions have long since been
abolished.
Meanwhile, the specter of famine towers over
Romania. In winter there is not enough heat in the
houses. Babies nurtured in a warm womb are born
into cold hospital rooms and fall sick. In neighbor-
ing Hungary, also formerly Communist, Mother
Theresa of Calcutta was allowed to open soup
kitchens—but not in Romania. Leading specialists
in economics, finance and industry have been dis-
missed because the public simply abhors
Communists. Furthermore, other Communists in
government sacrificed their comrades to the fury of

From Suffering to Triumph	65
the mob, with the result that the economy is ruled by
ignoramuses.
The agricultural collectives are no longer pro-
ductive. While no one really cares to work for them,
who has the capital and machinery for individual
farming? Former peasants would refuse land even if
it were given back to them because they do not trust
the Communists. Romanian peasants once owned
land, and it was stolen from them by the
Communists. So agriculture was destroyed. What
warrant do they have that the Communists in
power now, after allowing them to become produc-
tive again, would not take everything away from
them a second time?
Whoever can manage to do so flees from
Romania, not only German, Hungarian, and Jewish
minorities, but also ethnic Romanians. But what
country is ready to accept the millions hoping to
emerge from the former Eastern bloc? Except for
Christians, no one really knows in Romania (or
Hungary, or Bulgaria, or Poland, or Russia) what to
do. The believers know exactly what to do even
under the worst circumstances: when one does not
know what to do, it is imperative to do nothing, but
with patience and trust to let God take over. He has
known worse situations than these.
Not Everything Was Taken Away
When the Communists seized power, most of
Romania was composed of small peasant holdings.
The land was collectivized by the Communists who
were inspired by Lenin's teaching: "We will intro-
duce collectivization, not fearing coercion.
Revolutions were never accomplished without coer-

66	From Suffering to Triumph
cion. The proletariat also has the right to use it to
obtain its purpose in order to assure that its will is
fulfilled."
Trotsky said, "Our peasantry is an ally of
American millionaires. We cannot reach America,
but we can suppress these with our cavalry, tanks
and swords."
Bukharin, another leading Russian Communist
theoretician, wrote, "Our party is the most militar-
ily shaped organization."
In Romania, the Communists did indeed act mil-
itarily in taking away from the peasantry everything
they owned: fields, sheep, cattle, implements,
houses, furniture. Every small farmer became a
slave of the state, working for a pittance on a field
no longer his. Ceaushescu was one of the principal
organizers of this collectivization. In Dobrogea
province, he did it with the utmost simplicity. All
the villagers were gathered together in a square and
were asked to renounce their possessions of their
own free will. "Who is for this?" No one raised his
hand. So Ceaushescu personally shot ten people.
Then the vote was taken a second time. All voted to
renounce their possessions "voluntarily." There
was military music. They were forced to dance. To
add insult to injury, a film was made about their
enthusiastic adherence to socialism.
With this, the agricultural sector of Romania was
destroyed. In a country that formerly could feed all
of western Europe, farmers were forced to stand in
line for bread and were unable to obtain it. Now I
met once more a farmer who had come to see me
immediately after collectivization. He reported at
that time, "They thought they took everything. But

From Suffering to Triumph	67
I told my family, They left something very impor-
tant—our hymnals.' We sat down and sang praises
to the Lord."
I was reminded of those who "accepted joyfully
the plundering of their goods, knowing that they
have a better and enduring possession for themselves
in heaven" (Heb. 10:34).
We embraced again. I, too, had known this joy
several times in my life.
Hearing My Sermons Again
One of the most striking aspects of this visit to
Romania was thé encounters with brethren who said
they had heard me preach thirty, forty, even fifty
years before.
When someone tells me he heard a sermon of
mine years ago, I always ask, "What did I say?" I
believe that listening to a sermon should be an exis-
tential event, something that changes life for better
or worse. In a sermon the preacher should not only
speak about Christ but should impersonate Him. An
actor does not speak about Hamlet or Romeo; he is
the person while on stage. During those several
hours in the theater his personal life is put aside
completely. He speaks exactly as Romeo would
speak if he encountered Juliet. Just so the minister.
Not only by his words, but also by his gestures, by
the expression on his face, by his appearance, his
tone of voice, by the light of the Spirit shining
through him, he must convey the impression, "I had
an encounter with Jesus today. He speaks through
me." Fifty years ago I heard just such an existential
sermon, and today I could reproduce even the ges-
tures of the bishop who delivered it.

68	From Suffering to Triumph
When I became a preacher, I took seriously the
words that we should "run so as to receive the
prize" (1 Cor. 9:24). This is possible only by out-
running all the others. So I read sermons by great
preachers, listened to the best preachers of all
denominations in Romania, and nurtured a desire to
attain to their level and if possible surpass it.
I have not yet become the great preacher I
intended to be (I still have hope—I am only eighty-
two), but wanted to find out how much I had
achieved. Therefore I asked those who said they had
heard me half a century ago my usual question:
"What did I say?" Some told me.
Telling a Legend
One sermon had begun with the legend of
Gorun, a very beloved disciple of the Master.
'There is good stuff in you," Jesus said to him. "I
want you to pitch a tent for yourself on Mount
Carmel and stay there for a time in meditation and
prayer." And so he did.
Soon the rumor spread to all the villages round
about that a young saint had made his habitation in
the region.
One day Gorun went to the nearest village and
begged, "Please give me a blanket. Rats have
gnawed on my old one and they leave a bad smell.
[I know this from my prison life.] Because of this I
am unable to sleep."
The villagers gladly gave him what he asked.
After a few days, he asked for another blanket
because rats had gnawed on the second blanket,
too. Soon he was back again with the same
request, then again. Finally, someone said, "We'd

From Suffering to Triumph	69
better give you a cat. That will solve the problem
for good.'*
Gorun returned happily to his abode. The rats
were no longer in control. But after two days he was
back. "Could you please give me some mük for the
cat?" The villagers were happy to comply. But the
need persisted. So they decided to give him a cow.
Again he came back. "I need something to feed
the cow." They decided to give him pasture land in
anticipation of future needs. Soon he came back. He
was not used to taking care of both land and animals,
so they gave him two workers to help him. Then he
needed bricks and materials to build houses for the
workers. Then the cow calved, and so on and on.
Years passed, and Jesus went to see his beloved
disciple. A fat man greeted him and asked, "What
business brings you to this place? What would you
like to buy?" The now well-to-do merchant no
longer recognized his Master.
Beginning with this legend, I had taught that we
should not put distance between us and Jesus, not
even so much as a stone's throw. Even at such a
small distance, disciples slept while Jesus agonized
in Gethsemane. Do business only if the Lord works
beside you with accompanying signs (Mark 16:20),
as He does in your Christian endeavors. If not, aban-
don the business.
Don't leave Jesus even for holy meditation or great
missionary deeds. To lie quietly on His breast like the
apostle John is preferable to the greatest enterprises in
His service. Whoever has once leaned on this breast
can no longer find full joy anywhere else.
Jesus said, 'The first of all the commandments
is: 'Hear, O Israel' (Mark 12:29). Hear the beating

70	From Suffering to Triumph
of my loving heart. Everything else follows from
this."
Nothing should be preferred to loving gestures for
the One Who leads us to eternal life. There is a depth
in renunciation of everything else. The devil can tear
one away from the life of a hermit on Carmel but not
from the very breast of Christ Blessed is the man
who can do both his secular work and visible work
for the church while lying spiritually on His breast.
If he cannot do both, he should forego the work
rather than the quiet adoration.
A brother of almost eighty repeated this sermon
to me, heard fifty years before. He served me well.
Curiously, I have no recollection of ever having read
or heard the legend of Goran. Yet I am told it was
part of a sermon of mine. Perhaps I composed it
myself. Legends are often good clothing for truth.
Count Your Seconds
Another person reminded me of a sermon thirty
years old about Psalm 90:12. Again, I had started
with a story (sermons without illustrations are not
remembered).
A man was obliged to walk late at night to a vil-
lage far away. The journey was monotonous, espe-
cially since it was dark and he could scarcely see the
road. At a certain moment he stumbled on some-
thing in his path. Reaching down, he picked up a
small bag full of pebbles. To distract himself from
time to time he threw one in the river bordering the
road on which he traveled. Plitch... plitch	The
sound of the splash was harmless amusement.
When he reached his destination, only two pebbles
remained. In the lighted house he glanced down and

From Suffering to Triumph	71
saw that they were diamonds. He had squandered a
fortune.
Our days are made up of seconds. There are 32
million seconds in a year. A person who has lived
thirty years is responsible for one billion. Every sec-
ond comes to us from God as a gift to use in His ser-
vice. If we do not, the second returns to God in
sadness and reports that we have neglected His pre-
cious gift.
Then I told about a general in the former Royal
Army with whom I had been in jail. He was very ill.
When spoke to him about God, he showed no inter-
est. But then his last hour came, and he asked for a
priest There were plenty of priests in that jail, but it
took time to bring one from another cell. When he
came, the general was no longer able to speak and
make confession. The priest gave him Communion,
but he could not swallow the wafer. He died without
confession and Communion. He valued the treasure
only when the last diamonds remained in the bag.
I spoke about how well Jesus used his seconds,
even when crucified: pardon for his crucifiers, sal-
vation to a robber, good words to his holy mother
and to a beloved disciple, the assurance that all
things needed for our salvation were fulfilled, a trust-
ing prayer to God. Even in those dire circumstances,
moments were not lost.
"Use your time well. Time is the most precious
commodity. You can regain money lost but not time
lost. Use your time in the Lord's service."
Physical Acts Communicate the Spirit
I visited Oradea, the city with the largest evan-
gelical churches in Romania: a Baptist church led by

72	From Suffering to Triumph
Dr. Gheorghitza and Pastor Negrutz, with 2,500
members attending, and a Pentecostal church with
some 2,000. Space forbids my recounting all the
things I preached in these churches, but I will men-
tion one pronouncement that stunned the audience.
Ceaushescu is hated by the whole populace. I
never heard one good word spoken about him. All
speak evil of him, except Christians who have
learned from the Arch-angel Michael not to dare to
bring against even the devil a railing accusation
(Jude 9). We often bring such accusations against
men, even dead men. I was once warned in the night
by a voice which said, "Don't speak evil against any
dead persons. They hear us. If they are lost, they
have pain enough. Don't add to it."
Now the congregation was anxious to hear my
message. All eyes were fixed on me.
I spoke from John 20:22-23—"Jesus breathed on
them, and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit. If
you forgive the sins of men, they are forgiven
them.'"
"A physical act, a special manner of breathing," I
continued, "can impart the Holy Spirit. At ordination,
another physical act, the laying-on of hands, imparts
the gifts of the Spirit. Bodies can be the tool of the
Spirit, which can be communicated not only through
words, but also through a really warm handshake, a
loving look, a face expressing goodness and under-
standing, a brotherly kiss. A spiritual man should be
such not only in words but in all his gestures."
I Defend Ceaushescu
Then I made my second point, to the stupefaction
of my listeners: "Why did Jesus impart the Spirit to

From Suffering to Triumph	73
the apostles? He answers the question: that they may
be able to forgive or retain sins.
"I regret not having been in Romania when
Ceaushescu was judged. I would have volunteered
to defend him."
It was obvious the audience could not believe
their ears. I was reputed to be a fierce anti-
Communist, having opposed Communism when
even some of the best pastors had compromised their
beliefs. Defend Ceaushescu? Out of the question!
Not only had he and his wife been killed, to every-
one's satisfaction, but all his children, brothers, and
in-laws were in jail. To bear the name Ceaushescu
was crime enough.
I went on to explain: "I was in jail with a former
major in the police during Fascist times. His sen-
tence was twenty years. He claimed to be a
Christian, blessed himself the whole time with the
sign of the cross, and prayed to God, the Virgin, and
a number of other saints.
"This man was sentenced for having arrested dur-
ing the war (in the early forties Romania was at war
with the Soviet Union) a lad of fourteen who had
distributed Communist leaflets, then strictly for-
bidden. This lad was a member of an atheist orga-
nization, the Communist Youth.
"What an occasion this was for a Christian! The
major should have seated the young lad and taken
the opportunity to show him lovingly how wrong he
was. He should have pointed him to a better way, the
way of Christ.
"Instead, he beat the boy savagely. With every
lash he inflicted, he strengthened in him his atheist
convictions and confirmed his hatred for God.

74	Front Suffering to Triumph
"The name of that young boy was Nicolae
Ceaushescu. Some of the foremost criminals of his-
tory—Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Marx—also had early
encounters with Christians who had not used the
occasion well.
"At a certain moment, the guards threw into my
cell a Catholic priest who had been beaten badly and
was bleeding. We washed him as best we could and
gave him water to drink.
"When he came to himself I asked him, 'Can you
pray, like Jesus. "Father, forgive them, for they know
not what they do"?'
"He replied, 'Jesus could, I cannot. My prayer
would rather be, "Father, forgive me and them,
because if I had been a better priest, they might not
have become torturers."'
'"I would have told the court which judged the
Ceaushescu all this,' I went on, 'and would have
concluded: "Judge for yourselves if you have no part
in their crimes.'" Then I challenged the audience:
'You judge yourselves and ask if you have done
your utmost to share with the Communists the teach-
ing of Jesus and to turn them from their wicked
ways.*
"In 1918, the Russian Communists killed Czar
Nicholas II, his wife, his four daughters, the twelve-
year-old crown prince, and their servants. After the
murder they found in the house a handwritten
poem from the pen of Princess Olga, aged fifteen:
On the threshold of the grave,
Put on the lips of Your servants
Superhuman power to pray humbly
For our enemies.

From Suffering to Triumph	75
'This too I would have quoted to the judges. May
we all learn the beautiful art of forgiveness."
There were tears in the eyes of many in the con-
gregation.
"Gorbachev, Remember
Ceaushescu's Lot!"
Obviously I was not able to appear in court to
defend Ceaushescu. He and his wife Elena had both
been sentenced to death. She was executed. He was
badly tortured to get him to reveal where he had
deposited—abroad—the millions he had allegedly
stolen from the country. He is said to have died of a
heart attack during the torture. His corpse was shot
and displayed on public TV.
Ceaushescu's death frightened other Communist
dictators and their stooges. The president of the
court that had sentenced him committed suicide
one week later. In East Germany, seven generals of
the Stasi, their Secret Police, also committed sui-
cide. These are known. No one knows how many
of their subalterns did the same thing. There were
many suicides among the officers of the Soviet
KGB as well.
On the 15th of July, the Russian magazine
Gudok reported on a demonstration in Moscow with
an estimated attendance of 400,000.
There were posters with messages that were
unthinkable a year ago: "Down with the Communist
Party!" "Down with the KGB!" "Communism is the
scourge of the twentieth century." "The Communist
Party consists of henchmen and deceivers." And so on.
But the most striking slogan was: "Gorbachev,
remember Ceaushescu's lot!" There was another

76	From Suffering to Triumph
praising Fanny Kaplan, a girl who in 1921 had
wounded Lenin in an attempt on his life.
A member of the Supreme Soviet, Murashov,
delivered a speech in which he said: "We don't want
a restructuring (perestroïka) of Communism. No
reforms, no changes. Communism should perish.
The Romanians did well with Ceaushescu."
A general of the KGB, Oleg Kalughin, joined the
ranks of the opponents of Gorbachev. He declares he
has become a democrat, but the opponents don't
believe him. They ask him to enumerate the crimes
committed in his career that allowed him to rise to
the rank of general. In the debates in the press about
him, it is suggested that he and others have changed
sides only because of the fate of Ceaushescu. What
happened to him also frightened the Communist dic-
tators of Albania, Mongolia, Korea, and Ethiopia,
who began to take steps to come to terms with their
own people. Romanian blood shed for the cause of
liberty by martyrs of the revolution has had wide-
ranging effects.
Do We Need Two Religions?
In Oradea, I had one of my most memorable
encounters. I met my former fellow-inmates Pastor
Visky, Pastor Szöke, and others from the so-called
Bethanists, a revival movement within the
Hungarian-speaking Reformed Church. Several
members of this group, theological students as
well as pastors, along with pastors of the Hungarian
Unitarian Church, were in one huge cell together
with Catholic and Orthodox priests, some sixty or
seventy in all. Each confession gathered separately,
with no common fellowship in Christ Instead,

From Suffering to Triumph	11
there were heated debates, not so much about
which religion was right but about what was wrong
with another's religion.
The story is told of a lone survivor of a shipwreck
who made it to a desert island where he lived like
Robinson Crusoe. Two years later, when he was dis-
covered, his rescuers were surprised to find that he
had built two prayer houses. "Why would you, alone
on an island, build even one prayer house, let
alone two?" they asked.
"Every man needs two religions," he explained.
"One that he is for and one that he is against."
What was the essential question we debated in
our overcrowded cell?
The essence of religion cannot be the subject of
debate. If it is, the debaters reveal their ignorance.
Religion is life, adoration, silence. Though words
may indeed be spoken, it is not in the English sense
of the expression "word."
The Hebrew word for "word," davar, also means
"the real thing." In Hebrew, John's Gospel reads: "In
the beginning was Davar, 'the real thing,' and 'the
real thing' was with God, and 'the real thing' was
God." The verb "to speak" in Hebrew is ledaber,
from the root davar in its sense of giving a real
thing. Even in Greek the word logos has both
meanings.
Unhappily, at that time I too got caught up in the
debates, but I remember telling the following
Jewish joke. A young couple went to a rabbi to
obtain a divorce. Among Christians, people go to the
pastor or priest only for weddings, but in Judaism a
rabbi is needed for divorces as well. The astonished
rabbi responded, "I married you only a year ago, and

78 •	From Suffering to Triumph
you seemed so much in love with each other. Why
do you want a divorce now?"
The woman replied, "Let's not waste any time.
Reconciliation is useless. Just go through the for-
mality. That's all we want At this point talk is super-
fluous."
The rabbi insisted: "At least satisfy my curiosity.
What happened? What is the reason for divorce?"
The man said, "We had a child, a boy."
'That's no reason for divorce."
"Yes it is, because we cannot agree on a name for
him."
"What name did you choose?"
"I chose 'Nahum,'" he replied.
"Very good—the name of a prophet But why did
you choose this name?"
"Because* it was the name of my father."
"Even better. You wish to honor your parent."
The rabbi then turned to the woman. "What name
do you wish to give your son?"
She replied, "Nahum."
Surprised, the rabbi asked, "Why did you choose
this name?"
"My father's name was also Nahum."
The rabbi couldn't help asking, with wonder, "If
you both want the same name for the same reason,
why do you quarrel?"
The man replied, "My wife is shrewd. I wish to
call him Nahum for my father and she for hers. But
her father was a horse thief and mine was a
sage."
This is the impression I get of religious squabbles
among Christians. All Christians want to glorify
God's name, work for the coming of His kingdom,

From Suffering to Triumph	79
spread the gospel and the message of His love, and
more. Then let us love one another!
The rabbi counseled the couple, "Call him
Nahum after the prophet Then live together happi-
ly for some twenty years. By that time, if your son
becomes either a rabbi or a thief, you will know
which parent's name he bears. Why start the quarrel
now?"
In the divided cell, it took a long time for us to
persuade even the priests of the two Catholic
Churches, Roman and Byzantine Rite, to say an
"Our Father" together.
A Christlike Pastor
During all this mental, physical and spiritual
anguish, Pastor Visky was a unique example to us.
Many considered him the most Christlike among us.
During the time when we had one small slice of bread
a day with some soup of potato peels or rotten carrots,
he would give half of his bread to a sick, weak or
older prisoner. Once I remember he shared a sweater
with a fellow prisoner. His words were always
pleasant, and a smile did not disappear from his lips.
As for the rest of us, we were happy if we
chanced to observe in him some little sign of irrita-
tion or a harsh word, because we knew then that we
still had a chance with God. We reasoned that if a
Christian had to be as advanced in holiness as Pastor
Visky to be acceptable to God, our chances were nil.
He retained this composure though he suffered more
than us. Somehow he had received news that his
wife and seven small children had been deported to
a barren part of the country where not only food but
also water were lacking.

80	From Suffering to Triumph
In Gethsemane, where Peter was ready to defend
Jesus with a sword, he said to the disciples, "Permit
even this." The worst must be accepted with com-
posure and even with joy. Now I had the joy of
meeting Visky and his family. Our mission had sup-
ported such families through secret channels in
Romania and several other Communist countries. He
expressed deep gratitude to all donors who helped
him survive.
Which Is the True Biography?
First there was just small talk, but then he gave
me the outline of a book on his prison experiences
that he was writing. I could not believe my ears. All
the beautiful attitudes and laudatory deeds I had said
about him as illustrations in my sermons, he attrib-
uted to me. Bemused, I asked him, "Was it you or I?
Which of us is telling the truth?" Then I knew the
answer. It was simply what minds with great love,
true attachment, and holy fantasy see in their
beloved.
Never believe biographies. If they are written by
adversaries, they tell not what the man truly was but
what enmity, rancor, or jealousy saw in him. If they
are written by admirers, they will reveal the noble
heart of the biographer, who ornaments the subject
of his book with his own virtues. As for "objective"
biographies that tell the story with pedantic exacti-
tude and thrifty dosages of praise or criticism,
don't waste your time reading them. They are bor-
ing, worth nothing.
Truth is truth only when told by the passionate.
The original of the New Testament had no punctua-
tion marks. It is up to us to decide how to punctuate

From Suffering to Triumph	81
John. 14:6, where Jesus says, "I am the way the truth
and the life." I would suggest the following: "I am
the way: the truth and the life." Those who think like
Him never offer prosaic truth by itself, but animate it
with the beautiful passions of lives worth living.
Visky's children, who grew up in utter misery, are
all believers now, some engineers, some pastors,
every one in some useful work for the kingdom. Men
like Visky brought love, peace and light to shepherds
at loggerheads with one another, even in a prison cell
where all suffered for the same Savior. But this com-
mon suffering was worthwhile. Christians learned in
time to understand and admire each other.
Now in 1990, Romanian Christians have formed
for the first time in history an evangelical alliance,
which includes Baptists, Lutherans, Pentecostals,
Brethren, and the Army of the Lord. The latter, with
an estimated membership of 800,000, is the cream of
the Orthodox Church.
The Roman Catholic Church is not in the alliance,
but relations with it are correct and friendly. The
enmity of past times no longer exists. One side does
not call the other "idolaters" and the other does not
respond with "heretics." The Catholic archbishop
Robu is the only head of a denomination who, in his
sermons, took a public stand against the murder of
innocents instigated by the new president Iliescu.
The Most Persecuted
As for the Byzantine Rite Catholic Church (1.5
million members), also known as Uniates, we all
admire the heroism in faith of their members.
Almost all its bishops and many priests died in jail
after severe torture. Their jail sentences totaled 600

82	From Suffering to Triumph
years. All their church buildings, schools, and
charitable institutions were stolen from them by the
Communists and given to the Orthodox Church,
whose hierarchy was foremost in collaborating
with the Reds.
The crime against the Uniate Church has not been
repaired even now. The government has assured
them that in principle they are completely free. But
how can 1.5 million people enjoy religious freedom
when deprived of all their buildings? Stolen property
has not yet been returned.
The Uniate church has a history of two hundred
years of great suffering. The church began in the
eighteenth century in the Romanian province of
Transylvania, at that time under the domination of
the Austro-Hungarian monarchy of the Hapsburgs.
It was a split from the Orthodox church, to which
most Romanians belong. The Uniates retained all the
Orthodox rituals but accepted all the dogmas of the
Catholic church. Composed only of Romanians, it
suffered in Transylvania all the vexations to which
the nation was subjected under the years of
Hungarian rule. The church enjoyed freedom for
only thirty years, from 1918 when Transylvania unit-
ed with Romania until 1956 when the Communists
abolished it.
The second most persecuted group is the Army of
the Lord whose very existence had not been recog-
nized, either by the state or by the Orthodox church
subservient to the state until late in 1990.
My First Encounter with Jesus
How can I tell all that I experienced in Romania?
One day as a boy, with deep emotion I entered an

From Suffering to Triumph	83
Orthodox church in Bucharest. It was the first
Christian church I had ever seen on the outside.
Brought up by non-practicing Jewish parents, I never
heard in my childhood either a bad or a good word
about Jesus. He was simply unknown to me.
One day as I returned home from school with
another boy, he stopped in front of this church and
said, "Wait for me a minute. My father asked me to
tell the priest something." I said, "No, I'll go in with
you." This is how I crossed the threshold of a church
for the first time.
I was deeply impressed. Now, re-entering the
same church after some seventy years, I relived
vividly my initial experience.
As a child I saw a picture of a man crucified. I
had no idea who this man was, but thought he must
have been very bad or this would not have been
done to him. As a child I was much spanked and
probably deserved it But this man, bleeding all over,
attached with nails to a cross—why?
I also saw at that time a picture of a beautiful
young lady, who looked at me with great love. I was
not accustomed to such an expression. I was
despised for being a Jewish boy, and was also very
poorly dressed, thin, frail, small. This lady loved me.
I loved her, too, from that moment
I wonder why some Christians never think of
Mary with love. The Bible says "all generations will
call her blessed." Why don't we?
Reason tells me that I did not actually see the
Cucified One or that lady, but only a representation.
At that time I had the impression that I was seeing
real persons. It was one of the several existential
events in my life.

84	From Suffering to Triumph
The other boy spoke with the priest, who then
came to me and caressed me on the head. It meant
much to me, since my parents were not demonstra-
tive. He had a fine touch, the kind I felt at my ordi-
nation. Bishop Argay really loved me. Only
ordinations performed by those with divine love
impart gifts of the Holy Spirit.
As the priest caressed me, he asked, "Little fel-
low, what can I do for you?"
I was embarrassed, thinking perhaps I was not
permitted to be in that strange place. I replied,
"Nothing."
He said, 'That can't be. I belong to Jesus, who
taught us not to allow anyone to pass near us
without doing him some good. It is summertime and
it is hot outside. I will bring you a cup of cold
water."
Jesus—what a strange being! To that point no one
I had met knew anything of His teachings. I was
given no toys, no chocolate. (When other children
ate chocolate, I licked the paper in which it was
wrapped.) Jesus changed the water I received into
wine. I was stunned.
Being young, I soon forgot this incident. But
when I became a Christian, it came back to my
memory. The name of that priest was Cavane.
Many years later when I was an evangelical pas-
tor, the Fascists came to power. A new priest in that
church, Chiricuta, was the only Orthodox priest who
allowed me, a Protestant and, even worse, a Jew, to
preach regularly at evensong in his church. He was
unconcerned that other priests bullied him for this.
I became a contributor to his Orthodox magazine.
During the war, when my wife and I and several

From Suffering to Triumph	85
other Hebrew Christians were court-marshaled, he
dared to offer himself as a defense witness. He
defended a Jew when Hitler ruled Europe! His
defense and that of a German Baptist pastor result-
ed in ours being the only case in which Jews were
acquitted under Hitler. Normally, we would have
been condemned, whether guilty or not guilty.
Now, back in Romania after an absence of twen-
ty-five years, I was able to pray in that same
church, remembering how much good God had done
to me there. God surely has a reward for the one
who offered a cup of cold water and unconditional
love in His name.
Anti-Semitism
Only some 15,000 Jews have remained in
Romania, which at one time had a Jewish population
of 600,000. Many of those—among them my wife
Sabina's family—perished in the Holocaust Quite a
few have emigrated to Israel and other countries. But
even this small remnant wants to leave the country
now. The stirrings of anti-Semitism, which were sti-
fled under Ceaushescu, are evident again.
Why didn't this dictator persecute the Jews?
Because no one persecutes a cow that gives him
milk. The Jews were a great source of income for
the government. They were sold to the state of
Israel, sometimes at very high prices, depending on
their qualifications. The sale of Jews to Israel and
ethnic Germans to West Germany enriched the trea-
sury and—it is said—Ceaushescu personally. Anti-
Semitic publications were forbidden.
Now the situation has changed in Eastern Europe.
There is glasnost and relative freedom of speech. So

86	From Suffering to Triumph
anti-Semites are free to reveal the hatred they have
in their hearts for Jews.
The Romanian president ïliescu is a former
school colleague and personal friend of Gorbachev,
who has shown how he feels about Jews by naming
to his presidential council Valentin Rasputin (the
name means "profligate" in Russian and gained
notoriety in the person of an immoral monk who
was an intimate adviser to the Russian imperial fam-
ily). In an interview given to the New York Times
Magazine, Rasputin said, "Our Jews must feel
responsibility for the sins of the revolution and for its
consequences .. . responsibility for the terror that
existed during the revolution and especially after it.
... Their guilt is great, for they killed God and also
Russians."
It is moving to read how painful it is for this high-
ranking leader of a God-hating regime to think of
God being killed when He came to earth. Certain
Jews of old did play a role in the death of Jesus. It
was because He Himself was a Jew and lived in
Israel. Curiously, I never heard accusations against
the Greek people for having killed Socrates or the
Italian nation for having persecuted Galileo.
The interview with Rasputin was published in
January 1990. In March he was named to
Gorbachev's presidential council. This was his
reward. Some knew what conclusion to draw from
this interview. In the Moscow magazine Nedelia
(16/1990), one person proposed a simple solution to
the Jewish problem. If everyone who understands
the Jewish danger would free the country of one sin-
gle Jew, tomorrow there would be no more Jews.
Certainly a program to which Ayatollah Khomeini

From Suffering to Triumph	87
and the leaders of the Lebanese terrorist organization
Hezbollah would subscribe.
"Nothing distorts human nature so much as
maniacal ideas. If a man is possessed by the idea that
all evil in the world comes from the Jews, Masons,
Bolsheviks, heretics, capitalists, etc., even the best
man becomes a wild beast." So wrote Berdiaev.
One can choose among many accusations against
the Jews: "Christianity is a Jewish ideology into
which nations have been tricked to create a Judeo-
Christian civilization, so that in the end the whole
world will become an enlarged Israel."
"Communists were right in fighting capitalism,
but they did not say who is guilty of it: the Jews."
"Columbus was a Jew who discovered America
with the purpose of making it a center of Zionism
from which the Jews would dominate the world
through the dollar."
"International Communism was also created by
the Jew Marx for the purpose of destroying love for
one's nation and fatherland." And so on.
This anti-Jewish propaganda could not be spread
in the USSR without the connivance of Gorbachev's
government.
From the Soviet Union, anti-Semitism spreads to
other countries just freed from the shackles of
Communism. All are passing through a grave eco-
nomic crisis. In Romania, the new government has
declared it will no longer subsidize the prices of
bread, milk, meat, etc., which means prices may
soon rise by 50%. In times of crisis people need to
blame someone, and the Jews provide a convenient
scapegoat For two thousand years of history this has
been the case.

88	From Suffering to Triumph
Some of the Romanian Communist leaders were
Jewish: Ana Pauker, Kishinevski, Rautu, along
with some of the leaders of the Secret Police. That
the majority were Romanians or Hungarians doesn't
matter; the Jews are guilty.
While it is true that Roman, the first prime min-
ister after the revolution, was a Jew, it must be
remembered that Marx himself was also a Jew and
a Jew-hater.
Romanian anti-Semites who are also anti-
Hungarians are grouped under the name Vatra
Romaneasca 'The Romanian Home."
Romanian Jews, as well as those in other Eastern
European countries, are concerned. But where
should they go? The USA does not receive them. In
Israel, Arabs kill Jews and there is always imminent
danger of war. In Romania there are Jewish
Christian efforts to acquaint Jews with their King,
Jesus. Many are from the province of Bessarabia,
theater of the Second World War. They remember
that when the Nazi army entered, posters were seen
everywhere: "Calamities come from the dirty Jews";
"Jews have provoked this war**; "Jews are behind
Communism"; "Death to the Jews." And the Jew-
haters did not only threaten. Rare are the Jewish
families from that province who had no relatives
executed by firing squads or deported to concen-
tration camps. Almost the whole of my wife's
family (both parents, three sisters, and a brother aged
six) perished in such a camp. Since the situation in
Romania cannot be assessed apart from the rest of
Eastern Europe and especially the Soviet Union, a
few words are in order about the latter.

From Suffering to Triumph	89
Gorbachev a Blessing
Gorbachev has been a blessing for the western
world. Just imagine the Gulf crisis with the USSR
and the West opposed to each other, as in the cold
war!
When, during the thirties, Stalin killed all the high
command of his own army, suspecting them of
intrigue against him, Italy's Fascist dictator
Mussolini wrote, "Stalin is a disguised Fascist."
Gorbachev was hardly an agent of the American
CIA, but he has done its work well. He undermined
the power of the Soviet Union and with it the power
of Communism in the whole of Eastern Europe. The
western Communist Parties have also been shattered.
I remember how, when I arrived in the USA, the
general secretary of the World Council of Churches
begged me not to publish the atrocities of
Communism. But Gorbachev caused them to be
publicized. Today you can read in the Soviet news-
papers about the millions of innocents killed and
about the whole populace being robbed, exploited,
and oppressed by the Communists.
But while he himself exposes the cataclysm
Communism brought to Russia, Communist
Leaders, nicknamed the nomenklatura, still cling to
power. They acknowledge they have nothing to give
to the people, yet they continue to wield power and,
begging money from the capitalists, they lead
Russia to tragedy, a bloodbath that might surpass
everything history has known till now.
Perhaps they are guided by the instinct of self-
preservation. Or perhaps they have simply abandoned
planning and thinking about a more distant future.

90	Front Suffering to Triumph
Though Gorbachev played a leading role in the
preparation of the drama, he himself would be better
suited to play the actor in a farce. He presided over
the dismantling of his Party and of the Soviet
Union itself, yet ended the congresses by singing the
"Internationale," the venerable hymn of
Communism. He and his cohorts chant about fight-
ing to the end the deadly battle that will give the
whole world the "ideal" society that is now in its
death throes in its homeland, Russia Their slogan is
still "Proletarians of the world, unite!" Then they
decide at their congresses that the Ukrainian,
Russian, Byelorussian, Baltic, and Uzbek
Communists should go their separate ways. These
decisions only help to enhance extreme nationalism.
The result will be a new brand of Fascism, or, more
likely, several brands of Fascism, because each of the
Soviet republics will have its own to foster against
others. Gorbachev and his ilk have played a major
role in emasculating Soviet and Eastern European
Communism. Without intending to do so, they have
rendered the free world a great service, putting off for
a time the threat of war between East and West.
Yeltsin, also a former Communist leader, though
in personal conflict with Gorbachev, walks the
same way.
Should Christians Be in Politics?
Before going further, I feel I must reply to a fre-
quently heard and pertinent question. Should a
Christian, and especially a pastor, depart from the
Bible and speak out on political matters? This ques-
tion is very acute for Romanian Christians as well.
Some claim we should speak out on political issues,

From Suffering to Triumph	91
while others say we shouldn't. Somehow they don't
realize that by speaking out fervently about not mak-
ing politics, they are playing the political game. Why
don't they use their energy to explain the atonement
of Christ or the doctrine of the Trinity?
The word "politics" comes from the Greek polis,
meaning city. "Alms" is doing good to a few men,
"philanthropy" is doing good to many, and "politics"
is the art of doing good to a nation and even
beyond.
Some 70% of the Bible is concerned with poli-
tics: the constitution of a nation, its liberation from
slavery, the multitude of its wars against other
nations, laws regarding social relations, agriculture,
hygiene, matrimony, inheritance, the establishment
of monarchies and the rivalries among them, along
with the misdeeds of rulers, much as the media
would expose them today.
"Give to Caesar what is Caesar's" is political
advice, as is incitement to rebellion. "Be submissive
to authorities" is also political advice, along with
descriptions by Daniel and the Revelation of world
rulers as ferocious beasts.
We have to evaluate political events to find our
way through them. Many discussions among
Romanian Christians were not only about the
ascent of the soul from the earthly to the angelic,
which is holiness, but also about political events in
the country and under Communism in particular.
Preaching Under Escort
Another place with powerful memories for me is
the Baptist church in Giuleshti, a suburb of
Bucharest. I had been invited to preach there the first

92	From Suffering to Triumph
Sunday after Romania entered the Second World
War, in 1941. At that time the Nazis dominated pur
country, and when their army attacked Russia, it was
in alliance with our troops. The slogan was,
"Destroy Communism created by the dirty Jews.
Beat the Jews!"
I went to church with a group of other Hebrew
Christians. The brethren had invited many unbe-
lievers, telling them who would be the preacher. The
Baptists were already hated by the Orthodox. Now
something even worse was about to take place: a
Jew would preach in the pulpit of the despised
Baptist sect Anti-Semites could not stomach the sit-
uation. They denounced this intolerable crime to the
police, and we six Hebrew Christians were arrested.
A Romanian Christian lady, Sister Mindrutz,
knocked at the gate of the prison where my wife and
I and the four other Jews were detained and said,
"My brethren from the chosen people suffer here for
Christ I wish to suffer with them." Her demand was
graciously accepted. She was put in the same cell
with us. Now we were seven: three Jews, three
Jewesses, and the Romanian.
The cell was small, with only one single bed. The
police officer said, "You priest (meaning me), will
sleep in the bed and all the others on the floor."
Meanwhile, the Orthodox priest of Giuleshti
went to the police to make sure that we would not be
freed. He also spoke with me to convince me that
there was no place for Jews in Christianity. At that
time, the patriarchy had forbidden the baptism of
Jews.
Following the Giuleshti arrest we were taken to
the prison of the Military Tribunal for interrogation.

From Suffering to Triumph	93
While we were being questioned, the air raid alarm
sounded. Bucharest was being attacked by Soviet
planes. Soldiers with bayonets on their rifles escort-
ed us to the basement, along with our investigators,
the staff of the Tribunal, our prosecutors and future
judges. We prisoners were kept in a corner under
strict surveillance. The conversation of the others
was about trifles. One young lady complained
about a new garment she had not yet worn—and
now the bombing!
Then the first bombs were heard falling. The
explosions shook the earth. Weeping and panic
broke out. Seizing the opportunity, I said with
authority, "You have a pastor among you. I will give
you a word of comfort from Scripture, and then we
will pray. Please kneel."
Everyone knelt, including guards, prosecutors,
and judges. I was then able to speak to them from
the word of God.
When the bombing was over, we were taken back
to our cells, escorted again by soldiers with bayonets
they would not hesitate to use if we attempted to
escape. Those who had knelt at my command half
an hour before were again my prosecutors and
judges.
I relived all these events on seeing the Malmezon
prison. What I have just recounted took place in
Fascist times. Later, under the Communists, I was
again a guest in this same prison.
A Spiritual Experience
In one of its solitary cells, I had had a spiritual
experience to which I alluded in several sermons
delivered in Romania upon my recent return. I say

94	Front Suffering to Triumph
"alluded" because a deep spiritual experience cannot
be adequately expressed in any language. One
enters into contact with a reality that is neither nam-
able nor explainable. Therefore, the Bible is God's
revelation in both senses of the word: it reveals
something so that we may perceive it, but it also re-
veils it.
Explaining what you experience often does little
good. Beethoven had experiences and put them in
music. A sculptor in Buenos Aires carved for a
cemetery nine statues symbolizing the nine sym-
phonies. After I had visited the site, someone
asked me to explain what the statues were.
Sentiments had become music, which then became
sculpture, which needed words for interpretation.
How much of a relationship would these words have
had with Beethoven's experiences?
The Bible says, "Taste and see that the Lord is
good" (Ps. 34:8). No speech, no music, could
explain to you the difference between the taste of a
watermelon and a peach. Only tasting works.
We can hint at spiritual experiences but only with
the aim of encouraging others to have their own. Put
through the filter of words, such experiences are
diminished in value. Everyone has to make an indi-
vidual effort to obtain the capacity to see reality
beyond appearance.
A Zen master was asked by a disciple, "What is
Buddha?" He replied, "This flax weighs three
pounds"—another way of saying, "What Buddha is
cannot be expressed in words. Let us spend our time
better by talking about practical things."
If Buddha cannot be expressed in words, even
less can Jesus.

From Suffering to Triumph	95
Timelessness
I have spent years in solitary confinement in three
different prisons. While there, I lost track of time.
Our solitary cells had only a window facing the cor-
ridor, none on the outside. We never knew if it was
bitter winter or beautiful spring. We could not tell
night from day. The same electric bulb burned con-
stantly. Probably for the purpose of confusing us, the
prisons had no fixed program of hours when they
would awaken prisoners, give them food, or allow
them to go to the toilet. We were time-disoriented.
We lived in timelessness as astronauts live in
weightlessness. If prolonged for years, timelessness
produces a state of mind apart, not comprehensible
intellectually. Our senses had nothing to sense.
Perfect silence reigned. We almost never heard a
voice or a whisper, and the guards wore felt-soled
shoes. There was nothing to see. We were sur-
rounded by the same gray walls. We forgot that col-
ors exist. The stench was overpowering and
unrelenting, to the point of paralyzing the olfactory
nerve. To this day I cannot smell the perfume of
flowers. As for taste, the food was always bland and
bad and always the same.
Our minds were not oriented to the senses or reg-
ulated by logic.
As I tried to relive those days on my return to
Romania as a free man, it was difficult to interpret
those experiences for contemporary ears as I spoke
in churches. However, being Jewish helps when it
comes to timelessness.
Biblical Hebrew does not have our tenses: I eat,
I ate, I have eaten, I had eaten, I will eat, I will have

96	Front Suffering to Triumph
eaten, and so on. God's people are not intended to
cut time in pieces: past, present and future. This
dividing of time is not natural. The past is not only
past; it lives very much in the present, often carrying
with it joy or sadness. It will also live in the
future. The basis of today and tomorrow is what has
been accumulated in the past Some of the past was
also determined by the previous perspective of the
future. We are part of one undivided ocean in
which waves flow back and forth but remain part of
the same ocean. And so as I gazed at the prison
walls that had contained me and thought of what
went on below, I tried to relive old experiences.
Crucified for You Today
How easy it is for one who can divide time to
accept salvation. I can be forgiven of all my sins and
obtain heaven by believing that Jesus died for me a
long time ago. He chose to suffer for me without ask-
ing me. He suffered on the cross for a few hours and
then died. On the third day He was resurrected, then
returned to heaven, where He has lived now for two
thousand years. It would give Him great joy if I was
converted Then why shouldn't I become a Christian?
It would give us mutual joy. Many people come for-
ward during evangelistic appeals with a smile on
their face. In great crusades, few tears are shed.
With us, dwelling in timelessness, it was other-
wise. Everything was experienced only in the pre-
sent. Golgotha did not belong to the past but was a
present event. It was as if Jesus was standing
before me, saying, "You have sinned. For you I will
be whipped and crucified. Before your very eyes
you will see and hear nails being driven into my

From Suffering to Triumph	97
flesh. You will see my holy mother weeping at the
foot of the cross. Do you accept this my actual sac-
rifice for you, or do you prefer to bear the punish-
ment of your sins yourself?"
The crucifixion was no longer an old story read in
a book. I had to decide then and there who should
die: Barabbas or Jesus. Peter, John, and Mary
Magdalene did not have to accept a past sacrifice of
Christ, but one in the present or near future. No
guilty person with a sense of decency would allow
himself to be the eyewitness of the actual cruel death
of someone else for what he had done. Neither could
we in solitary confinement
Now I relived what I understood then. It was
never intended that salvation should be the result of
His dying for me, period. There is no period after
His death, not even a comma. We are meant to be
"crucified and buried together with him" (Rom. 6:6),
which is something entirely different.
Luther called the book of James "an epistle of
straw" because it teaches that faith alone without
deeds is not sufficient. He was wrong. "We are
saved by faith"—no period after this assertion. We
have to add many sacrifices to this faith (2 Peter 1:5-
8). It is a sacrifice to remain always pure, loving,
forgiving, active in God's service. We have to fill up
what is lacking in the cross of Christ.
The priest Cheruvian did so. Forced after
unspeakable torture to give a Satanist Communion,
pronouncing the holy words "This is My body" and
'This is My blood" over human excrement and
urine, he later told me, "I have suffered more than
Christ." As far as physical torture was concerned,
perhaps this is true.

98	From Suffering to Triumph
In timelessness, we lived simultaneously the
passion of Christ, His resurrection, His ascension,
and His final triumph.
In that solitary cell, we were also concerned not
only with the earthly life of men but with their eter-
nal life as well. Death is not an end. In timelessness,
we also experienced the afterlife.
Where is Ceaushescu Today?
With these thoughts in mind, I preached again in
Romanian churches. I asked my listeners, "Where
are the Ceausescus today? He was not able to finish
his last speech. The audience booed him and he fled.
But now he speaks again. Don't you hear him?
"In Jesus' parable, the rich man in hell begged
Abraham to send someone to his brothers to tell
them not to lead lives that would bring them to the
same place of torment. He was refused; he had
asked the wrong man. Abraham had been very harsh
with Hagar, mother of his own child. He expelled
her from his house with only a loaf of bread and a
skin full of water. Why should he show pity to those
in hell?
"But perhaps Ceaushescu petitions Jesus, with
whom he has a better chance. The rich man was not
totally wicked. At least he had love for his lost
brothers. Perhaps Ceaushescu too loves some of his
old Communist comrades. Perhaps he asks each of
us now, 'Go to other Communists and tell them that
I suffer the fire and brimstone of condemnation.
Warn them to seek another Way.'
"Whoever has experienced timelessness or, in
better words, reality beyond the temporal, hears not
only the songs of cherubim and seraphim calling

From Suffering to Triumph	99
him, but also the howling of those in despair in hell.
And there is something even more unbearable to lis-
ten to: the deep silence of those kept in darkness (1
Sam. 2:9).
•The silence of some pleads from hell, 'Tell the
good news to the worst of men. Think about their
terrible destiny. Jesus is interested in them. He
proved it by descending into hell.'"
There were unusual strains in my Romanian ser-
mons. I thank God they were well received. For
these moments of triumph in my homeland, I had
passed through much suffering and sickness and per-
ils of all kinds. It was all by God's grace.
A Sign from God
In the case of Chinese women over seventy, mor-
tality diminishes by 35% before the harvest feast In
the week following, it returns to normal. This has
been established in the studies of the death dates of
Chinese-Americans in California. The expectation of
a feast, the sentiment of duty to help prepare for it,
can influence mortality. With Orthodox Jews, mor-
tality diminishes before the Passover feast and
returns to normal during the week following.
Epidemiological research reports only on physical,
chemical, and psychological factors mat influence
mortality. Religion has its influence too. My wife and
I believed that God would prove that we were justi-
fied in our fight, in which we had encountered much
opposition and contradiction. He would give us a
sure sign. We willed not to die before revisiting the
old places, bearing triumphantly the banner of
Christ. More were on our side than the enemy's. I
revisited Romania and its churches at the age of

100	From Suffering to Triumph
eighty-two. I will not disclose my wife's age, but she
too knew the triumph when well advanced in years.
Romania Not Yet Whole
What one sees on the map is not the whole of
Romania. The vicissitudes of history have caused
much of the nation to live outside its boundaries.
In 1939, when Hitler and Stalin divided up
Eastern Europe, Russia obtained the Romanian
provinces of Bessarabia and Bucovina. The Red
Army occupied them at the end of the Second World
War. The Soviets renamed Bessarabia "Moldavia"
and invented a language that the Bessarabian
Romanians were obliged to use. To do so, they
mixed Romanian with a number of Russian words
and then required that the result be written in the
Cyrillic alphabet of Russian instead of the Latin
alphabet used in the West. Romanians are the only
Latins of Eastern Europe, but they were forbidden to
use their own alphabet.
Bulgaria also stole from Romania—the province
of Cadrilater. To the east of Bessarabia is
Transnistria, another territory thickly populated by
Romanians. The province of Banat, in Yugoslavia,
is ethnically Romanian, as is the language spoken
there. We hope this whole territory will be reunited
with the motherland once and for all under our
beloved King Michael I. It should certainly be the
concern of the Romanian churches.
It is a special sorrow to me that the Bible, even
the New Testament, has not yet been translated into
the Macedo-Romanian language spoken by a com-
pact Romanian minority in Greece, Bulgaria,
Yugoslavia, and Albania. Lydia, the first Christian in

From Suffering to Triumph	101
Europe, was a Macedonian (Acts 16:12-14). Her
language must have been Macedo-Romanian, which
is nothing but a dialect of Romanian, but the dif-
ference is still so great that an uncultured Macedo-
Romanian would not understand a plain Romanian
Bible. It would be like Languedocian and French,
Frizian and Dutch, Swiss-German and German,
though the Swiss-German, being cultured, would
know classical German. European Christians owe it
to the memory of Lydia, the first European Christian,
to care about the translation of the Bible into
Macedo-Romaman.
Romanian Martyrs
Romanian Christians also miss much through the
lack of communication with Bessarabia. This east-
ern province, stolen by the USSR, is known for its
many wonderful Christians.
The renowned martyr, Vania Moiseev, was from
that area. In spite of his Russian name, he was
Romanian and did not even know the Russian lan-
guage. The Soviets have Russified Romanian
names. Moisiu was renamed Moiseev. He had been
a soldier in the Red Army. He had the same faith
that we have, with one difference: his faith was con-
tagious. True faith is like the flu. If you have the flu,
it is catching. So is faith. In his regiment, soldiers
and officers were converted.
His superiors ordered him to keep silent, to
avoid speaking about his beliefs, to stop singing. He
replied, "What would a nightingale do if ordered to
stop singing? It cannot stop, and neither can I."
So they tortured him and in the end drowned him
after stabbing him repeatedly in the heart.

102	From Suffering to Triumph
While under persecution, he sent word to his
mother: 'They give me much pain. I might die at
their hands. But don't weep, mother. [He was
twenty-one. At that age it is still possible to believe
you can stop a mother from weeping.] An angel
showed me heavenly Jerusalem, and it is beautiful.
Do your best, mother, to meet me there."
Did this Vania really see an angel? People can
have foolish hallucinations. But we have proof he
did, because, as an uncultured peasant boy, he
described this angel as no professor of theology
would.
He went on to say, "Angels are transparent When
you have one in front of you and a man stands
behind him, the presence of the angel does not keep
you from seeing the man. On the contrary, you see
him better. Seen through an angel, all men look
more lovely. You can understand and appreciate
even a torturer."
Many regret they have never looked upon an
angel. They are wrong. You see an angel as often as
you accept an unlovely person, as often as you love
the one who hurts you.
Vania Moiseev is the pride of our Romanian
nation.
Another is the young girl Sophia Chiriac. From
the age of eighteen she worked in the underground
print shop of the unregistered Soviet Baptists.
Confined in a small cellar full of machines, paper,
ink, and stocks of books, she had little room to
move, stagnant air to breathe, and never any sun-
shine. She became sick but could not go to a
physician. The rule of conspiracy is that once on the
staff of such a secret enterprise you never leave it till

From Suffering to Triumph	103
near death. When she was finally taken to a hospital,
it was too late. Sophia was a Romanian girl who had
sacrificed her life to give light to the Russian
nation that had subjugated her own.
And then there is another Bessarabian, the well-
known confessor Nikolai Horev, who was repeatedly
in Soviet jails and came out each time strengthened
in faith, a shining example to others. From all he
said and wrote, I value most a prayer of his: "Lord,
you are my shepherd forever, and I am your sheep
forever. May your rod always be in your hand so
that when I am in danger, you will protect me from
my enemies, or when I stray from your way into
wrong paths, either through temptation or through
the fear of difficulties, you will use your rod to bring
me back to the right way. And should I ever ask you,
O Lord, for anything different from what I am ask-
ing you now, please ignore it."
Have you ever asked God to ignore your prayers
if they should keep you, or others through you, from
becoming a saint?
We hope Bessarabia, as well as all the other ter-
ritories formerly belonging to Romania, will soon
unite with the motherland. At this moment, the fact
that we have a Communist government bodes ill for
the fulfillment of our national ideal: the union of all
Romanians.
Confessions
Much of my time in Romania was taken up with
hearing confessions.
I was terribly tired after having preached twice or
thrice a day, but was not allowed to go to bed. Some
with burdened hearts asked me to listen to them.

104	From Suffering to Triumph
Perhaps it is good for confessors to be tired,
because then they speak less and don't interrupt, let-
ting the words and tears of the penitents just flow.
Not one of the main collaborators with the
Communists and none of the outright traitors con-
fessed this particular sin. I met with men who had
denounced their brethren in faith to the authorities,
knowing how much they would have to suffer as a
result. When I was arrested, the police officer who
interrogated me let slip the name of one who had
denounced me. In another case, I was given the
actual denunciation to read. Those guilty of such
extremes of apostasy never confessed the worst they
had done. They told of sins that were minimal, but
their disproportionate regret showed that they car-
ried a much heavier, though unacknowledged,
burden.
I understood. Cain, after killing his brother, said
to God, "Gadol avoni linso—My sin is greater than
one can bear" (Gen. 4:13).
When conscience reproaches a person for an
extreme sin, memory tells him, "You never did it."
And memory usually succeeds in convincing con-
science. This happened in Germany. It was too dif-
ficult to acknowledge that millions of Jews had been
killed, so conscience was silenced. Memory won: "It
did not happen."
I know how difficult it is for me to admit the
worst sins I have committed and my reluctance to
confess them to anyone, even to God. On the other
hand, reason tells me—very often rightly—that it is
far from wise for a person with standing in the
church to tell his sins to any man. An American
evangelist produced havoc for the babes in Christ by

Front Suffering to Triumph	105
confessing on TV, before an audience of millions, a
sin that only two or three persons knew about.
In Romania we had an Orthodox monk, Arsène
Boca, who would tell the penitent, "I know it is too
difficult for you to relate certain things you did.
Therefore 1 will tell them to you." He was a man
with clairvoyance. But a confessor doesn't need this
quality. It can drive one mad to know all the sins of
his interlocutors. Be modest Be happy about the lit-
tle you are told. God is a modest God. David and
Manasseh did not spell out all the gruesome details
of their sins. David simply said to Nathan, "I have
sinned against the Lord" (2 Sam. 12:13). No more
was required.
However, the brethren who have sinned most pro-
foundly under Communism did not confess, though
some of them might have made decisions in their
heart to change. You may wonder who confessed
with tears: it was the best, the most heroic. They felt
guilty, some for having survived. If they had been
heroic the whole time—and no one could have
been—if they had stepped forward and protested
each time another was beaten, they would have died
of the many beatings they would have received.
Others felt guilty that, because of their involve-
ment in the underground church, the family had bro-
ken up. Their children had not approved of the fact
that father or mother went to jail for their beliefs and
left them to eat from the garbage, suffer poor
health, and forego proper schooling. Their reproach
was always the same: "If father had kept quiet like
so many other believers, we would not have been
deprived of a normal childhood." And so the parent
returned from jail and found hostile children and

106	From Suffering to Triumph
sometimes a bitter spouse, too. They felt it was all
their fault.
It is difficult to win in this life. Other children
were rebellious against parents who had played a
treacherous role. These children could not bear the
thought of being children of a Judas. Many felt
guilty for having lied to the police during investi-
gation, to protect themselves or to keep others from
being arrested. They had been taught strict honesty.
For Christians who think like this, it would have
been wise never to engage in secret work. Such
work is impossible for someone who considers it a
sacred principle always to tell the full truth. A Bible
smuggler from the West to Eastern Europe told me,
"I never said a lie." I asked him, "When applying for
a Russian or Romanian visa, what did you declare as
the purpose of your visit?" He replied, "Tourism."
This was a lie.
"Lies" in self-defense, in defense of innocents or
the church, are not really lies. When in danger of
death, Paul defended himself before the priestly
council with these words: "I am a Pharisee, the son
of a Pharisee; concerning the hope and resurrection
of the dead I am being judged" (Acts 23:6), which
was certainly not the issue. But those who felt the
guilt of having lied were indifferent to any ethical
niceties. They said, "If these Communist police were
to find out that I lied to them in matters about which
I was questioned, how would they believe what I
told them about salvation?"
Others had something else on their heart. They
had not seen a female for years, even decades. Once
free, they found every girl an irresistible temptation.
(This was less true of Catholic priests, who had been

From Suffering to Triumph	107
brought up with the discipline of celibacy, than of
evangelicals.) I told everyone about the blood of
Christ that cleanses every sin, and souls found rest.
Such conversations in intimacy were as important as
speeches delivered to audiences of thousands.
I had the advantage of having known great con-
fessors personally. One was an English missionary
to the Romanian Jews, David Adeney. When a per-
son confessed a major sin to him, Adeney would
weep. His tears spoke. He added to them not a word.
I had also known the Lutheran bishop, Frederic
Mullen No matter what sin of mine I told him, he
would always reply, "This I have, too. It belongs to
all men, just as forgiveness belongs to God."
I had known the Orthodox priest Suroianu who,
when I told him many sins of mine, said, "Well, you
have plenty of sins, and grievous ones. But beware
of one sin, that of despair. Never believe that your
sins can be more or greater than God's grace. You
can never out-sin God. He forgives for Christ's sake.
Go in peace."
The Brother Who Died for Me
To each person who came to me, sometimes four
or five in an evening, I told a story that I had told to
robbers and murderers in jail. I felt it was appro-
priate for saints carrying remorse, and I offer it to the
reader for comfort, regardless of the monstrous sins
he may have committed.
In the olden days there were two brothers, the
elder good and devout, the younger a libertine who
reveled with unsavory companions. The elder
brother prayed for the younger and often begged him
to change his life, but all seemed in vain.

108	From Suffering to Triumph
One night as the elder brother.sat in his study
reading, the younger brother rushed into his room,
begging, "Save me! The police are after me! I have
killed a man." There were bloodstains on his
clothes.
The older brother grasped the situation immedi-
ately and said, "I will save you. Let us change
clothes." He took the bloodstained suit of the crim-
inal and gave him his white robe.
The two had barely dressed when the police
arrived. They had pursued the criminal from the
place where the deed had been committed and
seized the brother in the bloodstained garment.
Brought before the judge, he pleaded guilty, say-
ing, "I bear the whole responsibility for the crime."
Faced with the evidence before him—the pursuit,
the blood, the confession—the judge had no doubt.
He sentenced the man to death, then asked him his
final wish.
"Only one," said the supposed criminal. "I want
my brother to receive this letter, which I have pre-
pared for him, at the very moment I am hanged."
The wish was granted.
The next day, his brother received the letter.
Opening it, he read: "My beloved, at this very
moment, I die in your place, in your bloodstained
clothes, for your crime—and I am happy to offer this
sacrifice on your behalf.
"But I would like you, in the white clothes I gave
you, to lead a life of righteousness and purity. I have
no other desire!"
The younger brother, on reading these words, was
taken by remorse. He ran to stop the execution—but
it was too late. Then he ran to the judge to confess

From Suffering to Triumph	109
his crime, but the judge would not listen to him. "A
murder was committed; it has been expiated. What
was between you two brothers is of no interest to
us."
After that, as often as his former comrades in rev-
elry called the young lad to drinking parties and
loose living, he would say, "In the white clothes left
to me by the brother who gave his life for me, I can
no longer do the evil deeds I did before."
You Received an Angel
I was in the Christian home of a couple I had
married some forty years before. They reminded me
of what I had preached at their wedding.
I had told them that on the preceding evening,
unable to sleep, I was wondering what to say to
them at the ceremony. My wife was already asleep.
I was having considerable difficulty finding a suit-
able text for the occasion. Only one verse of the
Bible kept coming to my mind: "Do not forget to
entertain strangers, for by so doing some have
unwittingly entertained angels" (Heb. 13:2). I dis-
missed it. How can one make a wedding sermon out
of that?
But since it was on my mind, I tried to figure out
who of the many who had stayed in our home was
an angel. Some later proved to be devils, some were
nice people, but angels? None fell into this catego-
ry. While speculating like this, I chanced to look at
my sleeping wife, and said to myself, 'This is the
angel entertained by me unwittingly." That became
the text of my wedding sermon. "You, the bride-
groom, are now receiving an angel. Angels were
badly treated in Sodom. Others are not taken into

110	From Suffering to Triumph
consideration. You give to your bride the honor due
to an angel."
Forty years have passed. He still calls her not by
her name, but "angel."
In the USA, 50% of marriages end in divorce,
and probably a good percentage of the other half are
torn by quarrels. Even a great number of pastors
divorce. I rejoice that it is not so in my homeland.
Divorce among evangelicals is a rare event.
It would be easy to say that this situation is due to
the greater spirituality among believers, but there is
a more down-to-earth explanation: the hardship of
life. When husband and wife, after a day of hard
labor, have to stand in line many hours for the bare
necessities of life, there is less time to quarrel. One
man told me, "Our apartment is not heated in winter.
The electricity bill is high. We cannot afford to have
many bulbs burning. The cozy atmosphere needed
for a good quarrel is missing, so we forego it."
In contrast to this, the opulence in the West favors
divorce. I have known couples who divorced
because of quarrels about how to squander their sur-
plus on futilities. If western Christians gave more of
their surplus to good causes, the number of divorces
would drastically decrease.
Christianity and Communism
This leads me to express a few thoughts about the
relationship between Christianity and Communism.
I have long been aware that, on a practical level,
sinful mankind does not know a better economic sys-
tem than capitalism. This system conflicts with
Communism; between Christianity and Communism
there is not a total contradiction. How is it that the

From Suffering to Triumph	111
name "Communism" is so much akin to notions dear
to Christians, such as "the communion of saints,"
"holy communion," etc.? Whenever I met with a
convinced revolutionary, I felt guilty. I would say to
myself, "He is the wrong kind of Communist,
because I am not the right kind."
Nowadays we discuss how one becomes a
Christian: is it through infant or believer's baptism,
sprinkling or immersion? Does one receive the Holy
Spirit at the same time, or is this a second experi-
ence? Which denomination should one join, if
any? It was not so in the beginning. In the early
years of the Christian church, all believers "had all
things in common, and sold their possessions and
goods and divided them among all, as anyone had
need" (Acts 2:44-45). Today it is difficult to guess
which confession is the church that Christ willed. Is
it the Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, Baptist,
Pentecostal, Adventist? However, we can be sure
that one church was organized as Jesus willed it.
After the resurrection, he spent forty days with his
disciples and surely must have told them what to do.
He taught that the multitude of those who believe
should be of one heart and one soul; that no one
should say that anything he possessed was his
own; that they should have all things in common
(Acts 5:32). Measured by this standard, all today's
Christian denominations are heresies.
It is obvious that contemporary Christianity,
which numbers hundreds of millions on all conti-
nents, must have other life structures than those
Christianity had when it numbered only a few
thousand in Jerusalem, but the principle should
remain the same. We should all be able to say,

112	From Suffering to Triumph
"None of us lives to himself, and no one dies to him-
self ' (Rom. 14:7).
A theoretician of the New Age movement read
my book Tortured for Christ, in which I describe the
heroic virtues of Christians in the underground
church under Communism. Then he wrote, "If
today's Christians in the West were like this, the
New Age movement would not have arisen." I para-
phrase him: "If we had been the right kind of
Communists, we would not have the wrong kind of
Communists opposing us."
Meanwhile, we should not deceive ourselves.
The Communist ideal has lost some very important
battles, but it is far from being defeated or extin-
guished. A fourth of mankind is still under
Communist rule. China with 1.1 billion people and
Russia with 280 million which still has a one-party
Communist system at the moment I write these
lines. There is Communism in Vietnam, Ethiopia,
Zimbabwe, Angola, and Cuba. In Nicaragua, the
army, police, and trade unions are still under
Communist control, while the government belongs to
a divided opposition.
And there are still thousands in Romania and
other eastern countries, where a major change has
taken place, who still want Communism—some to
regain the privileges they lost, some because they
retain their Communist ideology. Many of the
political concepts they believed in, many axioms
they took for granted, crumbled with the Berlin
Wall, but they are still sure that a society in which
people have all things in common and share accord-
ing to need, a society without millionaires on one
side and homeless on the other, is to be preferred to

From Suffering to Triumph	113
the capitalist society in which profit is the main-
spring for action.
Is there any Christian who loves Jesus' teachings
who does not see that they have a point? It might not
be practical, but many impractical things have
spiritual value. We should all feel some uneasiness
in our conscience when we read the Master's
words: "Sell all you have and give to the poor, if you
wish to be perfect." Is there anyone among us who
does not have a longing for perfection?
Our God is modest and looks at our modest, sin-
cere desires as if they were accomplished facts. It is
not easy to go back two thousand years and fulfill all
commands literally just as they were given. But I
feel a bond uniting me with every sincere
Communist and can extend to him wholehearted
love. The fact that I suffered under Communism is
not sufficient motive to reject it totally.
Communists no longer kill wholesale in Russia or
Romania, but they continue to kill retail wherever
they have guerrillas, as in India, the Philippines, and
Latin America. Though they are killers, they are also
ready to die for their beliefs. Therefore, they should
not be simply discarded as worthless junk.
Communism is the old dream of mankind for a king-
dom of justice and happiness. Whence did this ideal
arise if not from a reminiscence of paradise? Many
anthropologists maintain that Communism is the
first primitive social order. Communism as practiced
by Marxism has been and still is horrible. Today,
even the Communist press in Russia admits this.
Distinguish Ideals from Their Supporters
Some will be shocked that I, a man who has suf-

114	From Suffering to Triumph
fered so much, can still say a good word about
Communism as a principle. Intellectual and spiritual
progress is impossible if we do not make a clear-cut
distinction between an ideal that can be sublime and
the gruesome deeds of those who proclaim them-
selves its adherents.
If we were to take into account the very base
deeds committed at a certain stage of their lives by
David, Solomon, and Paul, we would have to dis-
card their writings as unacceptable.
Great crimes have been committed over the
centuries against Jews and fellow Christians of other
persuasions as well. Because of this, should we
forego Christian teaching altogether? Christians
love their enemies—all their enemies. They have a
loving understanding for what makes a man an
enemy. Communists, on the other hand, are pas-
sionate in evil. They have learned Communism from
Marx, who had connections with Satanism, as I
proved in my book Marx—Prophet of Darkness.
Christians can teach what the first Christians
learned directly from Jesus: to have all things in
common; not to claim anything for oneself; to
share with the brethren. After two thousand years,
living as we do under entirely different circum-
stances, we may not be able to follow this command
explicitly. But the great principle remains: Christians
have to deny themselves, deny their ego, their
selfishness. Not one of us lives or dies to himself.
Let us show that the spirit of primitive Christianity
has not been extinguished.
I believe there is no greater and more effective
Communism ever propagated in the world than the
loving, giving Communism practiced by the first

From Suffering to Triumph	115
Christians and continued by many groups since. It is
the only solution for the economic and social ills of
the world Mankind will have to ascend a steep road
toward this ideal. For the time being, however, cap-
italism is surely better than Communism as we have
seen it.
Dancing in Prison
Once when I was especially hungry in the Jilava
jail, Lieutenant Franco from the Securitate came to
investigate me. Angry about such an untimely
visit, I decided I would investigate him. I asked him
about his soul, with the result that he was converted
and gave me the lunch he had brought for himself:
sandwiches with fine, white bread and the most
expensive sausage. I even had dessert—luscious
chocolate candies. He now lives in Israel.
Another time, in the solitary cell under what later
became the headquarters of the Central Committee
of the Communist Party, I remembered Jesus'
words: "When men hate you and revile you, rejoice
and leap for joy" (Luke 6:23). It occurred to me that
I had neglected a duty. I had rejoiced but not
leaped for joy, as Jesus had taught us to do. So I
began to dance around the cell. The warden, who
kept an eye on me through the peephole in the door,
was sure I had gone mad. Guards had orders to
behave well towards madmen so they would not dis-
turb the silence of the prison. To quieten me down,
he brought a large loaf of bread, cheese, and two
pieces of sugar.
Romania should do what all believers are intend-
ed to do when in distress. Do nothing practical to
remedy a situation that is irremediable. Just praise

116	From Suffering to Triumph
the Lord, sing and dance in His honor. Angels can
take care of the rest, not only for individuals but also
for whole nations. Isaiah recommended just "quiet-
ness and confidence" (Isa. 30:15). Some will discard
such advice as foolishness. But surely it is more
practical to be a fool in Christ than to be a "wise"
man foolishly angry about what he cannot change.
Why No Apology?
In spontaneous actions, western evangelical and
Catholic groups have done much to help the
Romanian people in need since the revolution.
Great quantities of Bibles and good Christian books
have also been sent in.
But this is not enough to establish right relations
between East and West.
After the War, the churches of Germany,
acknowledging that Nazism killed millions of Jews,
made public statements of apology for having sup-
ported the Nazis or at least for allowing mass
slaughter to take place without protesting and help-
ing the persecuted to escape. The German democ-
ratic government itself recognized their national guilt
and gave great sums of money in restitution to the
surviving victims.
Romania and other Eastern European states
were given into the hands of Communist butchers—
already known as such—by Britain and the USA at
Yalta. In his memoirs, Churchill says that he passed
a slip of paper to Stalin, whom he had characterized
previously as a bloody criminal, with the following
proposal: "You give me Greece and Romania will be
yours." He disposed of Romania as if it were his pri-
vate possession. Roosevelt went along with him as

From Suffering to Triumph	117
they committed their nations to handing over whole
countries to God-hating rulers. Hundreds of thou-
sands of innocents died as a result. My country has
been ruined.
Until Vatican 2, the papacy was the only large
religious body that took an anti-Communist stance
and defended the persecuted. After Vatican 2, they
gave up their crusade. Meanwhile, the World
Council of Churches for thirty years has harshly crit-
icized the western world while covering up the
atrocities taking place in the East. It has vigorously
supported liberation theology, which means libera-
tion from capitalism but never from the injustices of
Communism. The great Protestant bodies, such as
Lutheran and Reformed World Federation, fol-
lowed suit. During the worst years of terror,
Romania was visited by bishops, pastors and
renowned evangelists. Not one said a word in
defense of the sufferers.
I was reminded of the fact that in 1935, when
Hitler ruled Germany, the Baptist World Alliance
chose Berlin as the location for its world congress.
Hitler's program to exterminate the Jews was
known. While the delegates quoted Bible verses
written by Jews about the Jew Jesus and spoke about
His sufferings, not one word of compassion or sol-
idarity was spoken on behalf of the German Jews
threatened with mass murder. There was only one
American Jewish Christian among the delegates, a
Mr. Gartenhaus, but he was not allowed to speak
from the rostrum.
On one occasion, I read the report of an Anglican
bishop in his diocesan bulletin about his visit to
Romania. He wrote glowingly about the many lav-

118	From Suffering to Triumph
ish breakfasts (wrongly so-called, because they
broke no fasts), luncheons, and dinners, but said
nothing about the Christians starving in jail.
Today foreign church leaders are certainly wel-
come in Romania, but it would be appropriate for
them to express some word of repentance. They
might also publicly acknowledge that during the years
of terror not one denomination had budgeted so much
as one pound for the families of Christian martyrs,
who never received one parcel of food from abroad.
On the other hand, through the World Council of
Churches, many denominations have given money to
Communist guerrillas in Africa who, when they came
to power, imprisoned and killed Christians.
Mozambique and Angola are prime examples. Again,
no money ever went to families of prisoners.
Teach, but Also Learn
Something else needs to be said about the rela-
tionship of the West with Romanian churches (and
also for other countries of the former eastern bloc).
Western Christians can afford the luxury of
expensive journeys to teach others. Why then don't
they invite Romanian or Russian Christians to
evangelize in the West? Why, at large evangelistic
congresses, are only well-fed, affluent western
evangelists the key speakers? It was not so in the
early church. There, men like Paul shared the mys-
teries of Christ learned while in chains.
Hands that have worn chains can give blessings
and should be awarded this privilege. In the first
centuries, the church in Rome was heeded by others
because it had given the most martyrs.
One more detail: in Romanian evangelical

From Suffering to Triumph	119
churches women use no makeup and wear no jew-
elry. Believers who do so are not accepted as
church members. Smoking and drinking are strictly
forbidden. American evangelists who wear rings and
whose wives use lipstick are not acceptable.
It is helpful to know this.
The Duty to Howl
Many western preachers have had the advantage
of a theological education, which can be very prof-
itable. Many of the Romanian preachers, as well as
Russian, Bulgarian, etc., have not been in seminar-
ies but in dark cells, hungry, beaten, and suffering
with the cold.
I cannot explain why, but in certain cells in utter
cold and darkness, prisoners could not refrain from
howling. God says, "I will howl for Moab" (Jer.
48:31). Before being in such a cell, I had never
imagined how terrible is God's pain for sinners. It
makes Him howl. I now knew another aspect of
God: a God who howls. This is also a revelation
about Him.
It can be learned best from those who have been
through this school. They have fulfilled an amazing
commandment from God: "Howl for Babylon."
Howl for the worst enemy of your people. We
howled in these cells for our Communist torturers,
knowing that if we did so, "they may be healed"
(Jer. 51:8). We consider it important that a minister
should be trained in homiletics, dogmatics, Greek,
Hebrew, and church history. The West can give us
teachers for these. But ministers must also be pre-
pared for howling, for being men who feel they will
die if souls are not saved.

120	From Suffering to Triumph
The prophet Joel says, "Howl, all you who min-
ister before the altar" (Jer. 1:13). Preachers should
imitate Micah, who at a given moment made the
decision, "I will wail and howl" (Micah 1:8), not, "I
will preach according to the rules of rhetoric."
Perhaps eastern preachers can teach the West how
to weep when you have been stabbed with the knife
of treason, how to bear the burden of suffering for
the honor and good of the holy church. They will
add that the great suffering is not produced by lost
battles (no warrior can win them all) or by physical
wounds, but by brothers and sisters who do not take
up a cross and fight the good fight, who renounce
the holy dream. They will teach us to smile not only
when comforted by friends, with lilies strewn in their
path, but also when surrounded by enemies, with
nails driven into their bodies.
A Heavenly Smile
Speaking of smiles, let me write about one fel-
low-prisoner whom I did not meet again on
Romanian soil because he is now in a better land.
We usually imagine the saints as being in a heav-
en far away. The Bible tells us in Hebrews 12:1 that
they surround us. They continue to be interested in
all they left behind and participate in the fight. They
inspire us in the very strict sense of the word.
It is said about a disciple of John Chrysostom, the
greatest preacher Christianity has ever had, that he
peered into the room where his master was prepar-
ing a sermon and saw two unknown beings whis-
pering something in his ears. Curious, he asked
about them and received this reply: "It was wrong of
you to peek, but since you did, I will tell you. These

From Suffering to Triumph	121
were the apostles Paul and John, who sometimes
suggest what I should preach about."
This story might be legend, but the fact remains
that we are in the communion of the saints of all
times. It is good for those who visit Romania not
only to look around to see living saints, but also to
look up and through the spirit get a glimpse of those
in glory who surround them.
I remembered Milan Haimovici, a Hebrew
Christian pastor who spent seven years in jail.
Even enemies of both Jews and the gospel admired
his courage. He would protest against any injustice
on the part of the wardens though he knew that for
this he would be savagely beaten.
Once I was in a large cell holding perhaps a hun-
dred prisoners. We were crammed together in utter
misery with no room to walk even a few steps. We
were over come with the dirt and the stench. At
night it was impossible to sleep because there
were always three or four who snored, each on a dif-
ferent melody. When they stopped others started.
Some coughed, some sneezed, some quarreled.
In these close quarters were Christians of many
denominations, Jews, atheists, men of all political
parties and social categories. Among them was
Milan, who witnessed for Jesus. He had no Bible
and had seen no book for many years. He could
advance no intellectual arguments. He could only
say repeatedly, "I know Jesus. Walk and talk with
Him."
A professor, member of the Royal Academy of
Sciences, scoffed: "Jesus has been dead for two
thousand years. How can you talk with Him? Even
admitting that He was resurrected, as you Christians

122	From Suffering to Triumph
believe, and went to heaven, this heaven is millions
of miles away. Don't tell us any more lies. No one
can walk and talk with Him."
Milan simply repeated, "I wonder myself how it
can happen and have no real explanation, but it is a
fact. He walks and talks with me." A great circle of
prisoners listened to the discussion. Continuing,
Milan asserted, "I even see Him sometimes."
This was too much for a man of science. "What
you say is the greatest lie I have heard in all my life.
Since you claim you see Him, can you please tell us
how He looks at you: angry, wrathful, bored, indif-
ferent, polite, interested, loving? Does He perhaps
also smile at you?"
Milan replied, "How did you guess that? Really,
He sometimes smiles at me."
"Well, well," said the professor. "You are lucky I
am not a psychiatrist, or I would diagnose you as
having religious mania. Perhaps you can show us
how Jesus smiles."
"I will gladly try," said Milan.
The scene that followed was the most beautiful in
the eighty-one years of my life. Like all the rest of
us, Milan resembled a scarecrow. Shorn, dirty,
with dark circles around his eyes; only skin and
bones, with teeth missing, and in a zebra uniform, he
was anything but attractive. But when he received
this challenge, his face began to shine—the glory of
God can shine through a thick crust of dirt—and a
beautiful smile appeared on his lips. Romeo must
have looked like this when he smiled at Juliet
There was a touch of sadness in the smile
because of the lost condition of his questioner's soul.
But one could read on his lips a passionate love, an

From Suffering to Triumph	123
unquenchable longing, a sure hope and an ardent
desire of a lover to receive the kiss of the beloved.
All the splendor of heaven was in this magnificent
smile. (An ugly thought passed through my mind on
seeing this smile: the definition of the word "kiss" in
a Russian dictionary—"the mutual touch of two
pairs of lips with reciprocal transmission of microbes
and carbon dioxide." Who can avoid such wrong
thoughts at a sublime moment?) The atheist pro-
fessor bowed his head and said, "Sir, you have seen
Jesus."
When I became a Christian, I was advised to read
every day a page from the Bible and the life of a
saint, a martyr, or a renowned missionary, which I
do. But before I was in jail, I read the lives of saints
with skepticism. The writers always seemed to exag-
gerate. I knew the story of the charming and con-
vincing smile of Bernadette de Soubiroux of
Lourdes. I had known several Christians on earth
who had heavenly smiles (one of whom is my wife
Sabina). But now I saw such smiles in conditions of
utter suffering.
I have seen them many times, in many jails.
Sometimes I have difficulty remembering the cir-
cumstances. All the great smilers became one for
me, fusing into the smile of Jesus. Saints bring the
smile of heaven into the deepest valleys of the shad-
ow of death. Men with such a smile do not die. They
surround us after death as well, encouraging and
helping us. Romania has just such a cloud of wit-
nesses above it. This too is a Romanian reality. A
Christian who goes to such a place must look for it.
A renowned church leader told me that he had
visited Lenin's tomb in Moscow and had seen his

124	From Suffering to Triumph
mummy. I asked him if he had perceived the pres-
ence of some other dead person in Russia. He had
not. But Paul says in Hebrews 13:1 that he had seen
a cloud of God's witnesses from thousands of
years before.
Killed for Distributing Bibles
Milan Haimovici is one of many martyrs who
beautify the sky over Romania. I am very much
attached to some of them because in a certain
sense I played a role in their dying under tragic cir-
cumstances.
We know the names of four Romanian Christians
who had to die for the crime of distributing Bibles
they had received from us through underground
channels. Clipa was caught and badly tortured to
reveal how he obtained and distributed the Bibles.
Then he was found hanged. No one really knows
how he died. Did the Communists hang him? Did he
commit suicide, like many others in Communist
China, fearing he might weaken and betray when
subjected to further torture? Another Bible distrib-
utor, Bogdam, was also found hanged. Tudose was
found electrocuted. Pastor Radu Cruceru died of a
staged automobile accident, a method of killing
much practiced by the Communists.
If we and others from abroad had not smuggled in
Bibles, these persons would have lived. We bear a
responsibility that their wives are widows and their
children orphans. Every Christian who contributes to
such a work should know that someone at the
receiving end might give blood in the cause for
which we in the free world give money.
Some do this underground work in Communist

From Suffering to Triumph	125
and Muslim countries without pangs of conscience.
But I know directors, personnel, and supporters of
our mission who are very conscious of the risks and
suffer because of it. They feel it is not enough to
give money and send Bibles; we must share with
those in Communist countries the pain, the tears, and
the sorrows of the distributors and their families.
Some dear saints in the West have broken down
mentally under this burden. It gives me many
sleepless nights. Couriers of our mission have been
killed in China, too. And some were imprisoned for
many years under the appalling conditions of
Communist jails, among them the translator of my
book Tortured for Christ into the Amharic language
of Ethiopia.
Don't Give Money Easily
I was scheduled to preach at a large meeting in
Norway that was called for the special purpose of
gathering money for Ukrainian Bibles. The mission
counted on my presence to be an encouragement to
others to give more.
I told the crowd the story of Nikolai Hmara, a
Soviet Christian who had died for Christ after hav-
ing his tongue cut off and his eyes gouged out, and
I ended by saying, "Don't be quick to give. You
might be punished by God for having given money
to print Ukrainian Bibles. Some will believe so
devoutly that the Bible you donate is the word of
God that they will be ready to endure prison, torture
and death for sharing it. Your Bibles will be read in
the Soviet Ukraine, where those who read the
word will follow its command and renounce every-
thing for the sake of the kingdom. Some will prefer

126	From Suffering to Triumph
Jesus to wife, mother, and children, and will fulfill
dangerous tasks in the underground church, such as
working in secret print shops or running forbidden
Sunday schools. If they are caught, their wives might
remain widows and their children orphans, who may
later accuse their father of putting religion above
duty to provide daily bread for the family.
'The Bible you donate might inspire someone
else to become a Nikolai Hmara. You will answer to
God for having given this money if your life does
not show that you yourself obey the Bible as the
word of God, if you do not lead a life of intimacy
with Jesus, following Him on the way of the cross,
of prayer and praise and self-sacrifice.
"If you do not intend to commit yourselves
wholeheartedly to Jesus, it is best for you not to
give. Please forego giving."
It remains for the reader of these lines to guess
whether the offering on that evening was large or
small.
I constantly hear the cries of those suffering in
Communist countries because they desire the
spreading of the gospel and relief for their aban-
doned families. This spurs me on when I feel my
age and feel tempted to give up. But Bishop
Meshkala died in Albania at the age of eighty-four
after forty-three years in jail! He was not too old to
suffer for Christ and never gave up. Should I give
up my fight under entirely different circum-
stances?
Some, after reading this book, might feel like giv-
ing money for the cause of Christians in Communist
countries or in those only recently liberated. Giving
will oblige you to have fellowship with them in their

From Suffering to Triumph	127
heavy tribulations. Think carefully about what you
intend to do.
Loving the Enemy
Every place I visited in Romania brought back
other memories to my mind.
In Bucharest, I preached in the Dragosh Voda
Brethren church. This building had been used
before by my church in its peregrinations from one
place to another under different dictatorships.
It was immediately after the invasion of Romania
by Soviet troops toward the end of the Second
World War. Whole units of the German army that
had occupied our country were taken captive. They
had no illusions. Slavery in Siberia would be their
lot. For many it would mean death. While a large
group of German prisoners of war were being led to
their barracks, two officers succeeded in escaping
from the surveillance of the escort. Still wearing
their Nazi uniforms, they wandered trembling
through the streets of Bucharest. The one thing that
shielded them was the night We were still at war,
and the streets were only very dimly lit.
All at once they spotted a ray of hope: a sign say-
ing "Lutheran Chapel." They knew the Lutherans of
Romania to be of German extraction. Here someone
would help them. What a disappointment awaited
them when they heard that we were Jewish! Jews
had more reason to hate the German soldiers than
even the Soviets did.
I quieted their fears. "We are Jews, but also
Christians and give no one into the hands of their
enemies. There is a story about a lamb led to
slaughter that fled and ran to Moses, asking him to

128	From Suffering to Triumph
protect it. He replied, "I cannot do so. God has
ordained that your meat should serve as food for
men," and he handed the lamb to the butcher. A
Jewish writing says that God hid His face for
shame at what a man who bore His name could
do.
"We have suffered under the German occupation.
But you personally may not be guilty. In any case,
we are not your judges. You are welcome in our
home. We will also give you civilian clothes so that
you can try to make your way to Germany."
We were then under a decree forbidding anyone
to hide a German soldier under pain of death. In
time this developed into a systematic work of
helping persecuted Germans just as, during the war,
we had used our influence in Christian circles to
help persecuted Jews.
The believers in the Brethren church where I was
now asked to preach knew all this. They knew that
I meant it when I spoke about forgiving those who
have abused you, even the God-hating Communists.
So I traveled from one place to another in
Bucharest and then to different cities and towns,
reliving events of the past.
Revisiting Places where I Sinned
I not only saw places that held pleasant or
sacred memories, but also places where I had
gravely sinned.
I saw once again the homes in which my family
had lived when I was young. I had been very evil
towards a mother who had sacrificed herself for her
orphaned children.
Here was the quarter called—I don't know

From Suffering to Triumph	129
why—"The Stone Cross." It was a place of prosti-
tution. "Friends" led me here when I was twelve. No
Christian stood before the ill-famed house warning
youngsters not to enter. The first time I saw the half-
naked women, I fled. Not so the second time. I saw
again the places where I had taken advantage of
other women. I saw gambling houses that I had fre-
quented, places where I had met with other blas-
phemers and mocked God, places where I had failed
and sinned even as a Christian and then a pastor.
I had confessed this whole life of sin and
believed that Christ had forgiven everything. Paul
wrote that he pressed forward, forgetting those
things that were behind him. But he, too, could not
forget his whole past. He tells us about it. Neither
could I forget it all.
In Romania I thought, too, of all the shortcomings
and grave sins committed during the quarter of a
century lived abroad.
How happy I was that "there is a fountain filled
wit blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins" and that
if one plunged into this fountain, a great miracle
takes place. Not only are sins (even crimes) forgiv-
en, but they become white as snow. They become
visible tokens of actual purity. What happens to
them is beyond description. Jesus was made sin. One
of the purposes was to show what beauties can be
made of sins through repentance, as a potter can
make a luxurious vase out of what had been mud.
However, like the pieces of pottery or like metal
that has to be refined, we must pass through the fires
of affliction. This cleansing process lasts until all
impurity has disappeared, which in our case means
until all complaining, all rebellion, all pestering God

130	From Suffering to Triumph
with the question "Why?," all selfishness, pride, and
an unreadiness to forgive have disappeared.
A little girl watched a goldsmith hold the costly
metal in a jar for purifying. Repeatedly he took out
the slack and the metal shone more and more
beautifully. The girl asked, "How long does this go
on?" He said, "Have patience." The goldsmith had
to repeat the words often as he waited for the
moment called "the silver look," when he saw his
image in the metal.
This is how the heavenly Goldsmith works. A
sinner who has passed through His purification has
a beauty he never had before, the beauty of Christ
Himself.
Encounter with a Top Soviet Official
For twenty-five years I have played in the world
the role of Tychicus (Eph. 6:21), who during Paul's
day made known to the brethren how the persecut-
ed were doing. While in Romania, I had the opposite
role: to tell how the church in the free world is far-
ing, as well as how we worked for the persecuted
while they were under the yoke of Communism.
Romanian Christians were aware of the fact
that Bibles and other books entered their country,
along with financial aid and radio broadcasts, but
they did not know about the vast organizations that
were behind all this and about the thousands upon
thousands of fellow believers who gave sacrificial-
ly and prayed for them. They were most interested
in our Christian Mission to the Communist World
and its work in over forty countries. I told them not
only about the relief work for the persecuted but also
about our missionary endeavors among their perse-

From Suffering to Triumph	131
cutors. I will mention here just one of my most inter-
esting experiences in this area.
In Switzerland, another brother and I visited a
world industrial exhibition. The most beautiful sec-
tion was the Soviet department, the only one to add
a fashion show, which attracted thousands, and a reli-
gious exhibit which was very well put together.
At the entrance was a huge picture of Billy
Graham preaching in Moscow, of the Patriarchy, and
of the one single synagogue in Moscow, a city with
200,000 Jews, of a mosque, and so on. The obvious
aim was to reveal the perfect religious freedom that
exists under Communism.
An album was prepared for each visitor to regis-
ter his impressions.
I wrote the following: "I congratulate you for this
unique idea to ornament an industrial exposition with
words and pictures about religion. If there were no
God, there would be no human mind and no industry.
Everything you show is well arranged, but as a friend
of the USSR, I would suggest that you enrich this
exposition with other valorous pictures: that of
Nikolai Hmara, a Baptist who, because of his faith,
had his tongue cut off and his eyes gouged out I can
provide you with the picture of his corpse. The pic-
ture of Nikolai Hrapov would fit well, too. He spent
thirty-four years in jail for his faith. Also that of
Vania Moiseev, stabbed seven times in the region of
his heart and then drowned," and so on and on.
A gentleman I believed to be from the Soviet staff
read what I wrote and said, "There is a wicked man
by the name of Wurmbrand who spreads such
slander about us." After I told him I was that very
same Wurmbrand, we spoke with each other for four

132	From Suffering to Triumph
hours. He was the head of the Foreign Department
of their Ministry of Cults, a top man of the Soviet
government on religious matters. He spoke fluent
English and German. He had read all my books as
well as other publications of our mission.
He started in a bellicose manner by saying there
is no persecution. I answered, "It would be useless
to contradict you, because you are obliged to speak
thus. Let us rather pass to something much more
important.
"A day will come when you will no longer be a
man in high position in the Communist Party and
government, and I will no longer be a pastor. We
will both die. For a short time someone who loves us
will weep at our grave. Then those who knew us
will die too, and we will lie in a forgotten grave.
"What happens after that? If at this point every-
thing is ended, then it is stupid to be a Christian pas-
tor and just as stupid to be an atheist opponent of
religion. The best course is to eat, drink, and have
some amusement; nothing more. In my homeland of
Romania, there was a custom in the olden days to
give a person sentenced to death a good meal with
all his favorite dishes before his execution. The
accused ate and drank well, and then he was shot. If
everything ends with death, the most beautiful life
that Communism or capitalism can provide is no
more than a henchman's meal. It would not be worth
while to fight for any cause."
He listened without interrupting.
I told him that in my youth I was meditative and
inclined to melancholy. I had had a bitter childhood,
without any such childish pleasures as toys or
chocolate. When other children in school ate choco-

From Suffering to Triumph	133
late, I would lick the wrapping paper because it
smelled good.
"I was sure that a God could not exist. If he did,
he would have given me a nicer childhood. But for
some reason I liked to take lonely walks through
cemeteries and read the inscriptions on grave-
stones. I do so even now. It makes for highly
interesting reading. This person had been a general,
and he died. Another was a renowned poet, and he
died. Another was a banker, another a beggar. But
the end of life was death.
"On every gravestone there were two figures, the
year of birth and the year of death, with a stroke in
between. This is the sign that nature draws over
every life: a stroke. Thus life is annulled. Without
knowing a thing about any religion, I said to
myself at that time, 'I wish to find Someone who
can give youth without old age and life without
death.' It took me a long time, but I finally found
this Someone."
He continued to absorb my words without inter-
ruption. He had a soul hungry for God. I told him
how I had prayed the prayer of an atheist: "God, I
know for sure you don't exist But if you exist—and
this I contest—it is not my duty to believe in you. It
is your duty to reveal yourself to me. I regret that
you do not exist. I could have wished that some-
where in this universe there should beat a heart of
love. I speak as a madman to the nonexistent.
Well, that is all."
I went on: "This prayer was accepted. God sent a
carpenter my way, who told my wife and me the
story of the Carpenter of Nazareth who lived and
died for us and was resurrected."

134	From Suffering to Triumph
He asked question after question. At the end of
four hours, he said, "I must admit there are two
problems to which we Marxists have no answers.
First, how is it that something exists? We explain
everything by evolution, but how come evolution
exists and that the first living cell existed from which
all animals, the monkey, and man came into being?
Secondly, what happens to man after death? We
have no answers; you have. Therefore you are strong
and we are weak."
Later he played a role in liberalizing the Soviet
policy towards religion, which in turn had an effect
on Romania and the other Eastern European coun-
tries.
Our mission sees to it that specific Christian lit-
erature for Communists, such as my books Answer
to Moscow's Bible and Marx—Prophet of Darkness,
gets into their hands and those of their leaders, with
amazing results. These books have been translated
into many languages and distributed in Romania,
Russia, China, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ethiopia,
Mozambique, and Angola, among others. The pro-
fessor of atheism at the highest school of the
Romanian Communist Party was converted through
their ministry, along with many others in a number
of Communist countries.
A Country Reduced to Poverty
Back in Bucharest I was driven around and I also
walked the streets, but it was no more the same city.
In times past it had been called "the Paris of the
East" because of its beauty, but it had long since
foregone its proud boast. The impression was one of
hopelessness.

From Suffering to Triumph	135
Grand avenues such as grace the largest western
cities lie unfinished; they end in nothing. Ceaushescu
had the sickness of gigantomania. All his enterprises
were to be unsurpassed in greatness, but he could
never finish what he began. Most houses are
decayed. They were in ruins before the windows
were put in. You can see the results of the ravaging
earthquakes of the recent past, but also of the
bloody unrest Facades are blackened by fire, and in
the walls are bullet holes.
The shops are empty. Long lines of people wait
for hours in the hope, often vain, that there will be
something to buy. The queues for bread begin at four
in the morning. By seven there is no more bread. The
black market flourishes. There you can buy straw-
berries, furs and shirts, or suspect alcoholic beverages
made with chemicals that have killed many people.
Small children beg. Crime is rampant. Tourists
are advised not to walk at night carrying money. The
economy is in a coma and the populace lacks even
basic necessities. Skyrocketing unemployment
seems unavoidable. The USA and the European
community have stopped giving aid because
Communists are still in power. The present regime
is unhappy, but the rulers continue to live well. In
fact, Ceaushescu would be pleased with his suc-
cessor, who has also killed innocents, just like his
predecessor.
Although Communists are still in power in
Romania, they are politically bankrupt, reduced to
the level of a theatrical prop, just as in Russia.
The Danger of Commentaries
God declared "I am what I am, not what men

136	From Suffering to Triumph
believe me to be." He is the entirely Other. We can-
not fathom His ways.
Innumerable books have been written explaining
how biblical prophecies correspond to current
events. Many books were full of predictions about
how the Communist colossus in the north, Russia,
would attack Israel. Then the much-dreaded Battle
of Armageddon would ensue, along with the reign of
the Antichrist.
Some said that Kissinger was the Antichrist.
Before these, others had offered biblical proof that
Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini were the Antichrist.
Now a book denounces Gorbachev as this enigmatic
person, especially since he is marked with an indis-
putable sign: a red spot on his forehead.
To one such writer I said, "Every book on
prophecy written till now has proved to be false after
twenty years." He did not mind.
When my twelve-year-old grandson Alex was
with me at a Christian booksellers" convention
recently, he saw à great deal of advertising for Bible
commentaries. "What's a commentary?" he asked.
I responded that there are many things in the Bible
that are difficult to understand, for example, pre-
dictions of doom and great suffering that will arise
in the latter days. These are explained in the com-
mentaries.
His reply was, "Such predictions should not be
explained but contradicted. Abraham did not write
a commentary on God's prediction that Sodom
would be destroyed, nor did Moses on the predic-
tion that God would destroy the Jewish people.
Instead, they pleaded with God that it should not
take place, and they changed His mind. Why

From Suffering to Triumph	137
shouldn't we do the same instead of writing com-
mentaries?"
The Power to Overturn Communism
God is not bound by what men say who are not
commissioned to write or speak in His name. He has
destroyed a great deal of the power of Communism
and will destroy the rest, not through political
events, but through the prayers of the saints and the
power of the Word distributed under duress.
He altered the mind of Gorbachev and many of
his comrades. They in turn destroyed the power of
Communism as no bombs or political action could
have done. No plagues from above were needed.
Men can forestall tribulations even if predicted in the
Bible. God foretold Nineveh's destruction but then
relented from this decision. His love is more reliable
than any word spoken or written in His name.
When God has shed His love in our hearts, we
have enormous power. We can affect God.
Zephaniah 3:17 says that we can make God rejoice
with singing. Our burning love can change men, too.
They can be consciously won by it. Others will be
confused by the rays of our spirit and will lose the
capacity to oppose us. The sun shines on some and
gives them life; it burns others. So love is always
effective regardless of whom it touches. Humans do
not realize what enormous power they possess. It
extends not only to the whole earth but also to the
cosmos.
Daniel 8 tells about a king who cast down some
of the host of heaven, exalted himself as high as the
Prince of hosts, and cast truth down to the earth. A
very great power of evil can exist in a man. But at

138	From Suffering to Triumph
least this much power exists in good and saintly men
and women.
The church of Christ can finish with
Communism, with fanatical Islam, with the darkness
of heathenism, with a Judaism without the King of
the Jews.
I have many more things to say about my visits to
Romania after twenty-five years of enforced exile.
But I will permit myself to imitate Paul when he
said, 'Time would fail me to tell of Gideon and
Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and
Samuel and the prophets" (Heb. 11:32).
Strange Communion Services
Pastor Vasile Vadan's church in Bistritza was
destroyed with bulldozers. Treacherous official
Baptist leaders connived in this act. In a heavy frost,
he gave Communion to his flock on the ruins. The
surface of the wine was frozen. After preaching in
the open, he fell gravely ill of pneumonia, but that
did not prevent the Communists from putting him in
jail.
Many Communion services in Romania have
been strange. In home churches there would be
bread and wine on the table, but also a pot of tea and
biscuits in reserve. When a guest appeared unex-
pectedly, a person known as a Christian but sus-
pected as an informer, the wine would disappear
from the table in a second. The pot of tea and bis-
cuits gave the impression that the meeting was just
a social gathering.
In jail there were times when we had no bread
and certainly no wine. We took Communion with
nothing, remembering how precious a thing "noth-

From Suffering to Triumph	139
ing" was. The world was created out of nothing. The
earth is suspended on nothing. Paul wrote that he
was nothing. We learned to appreciate the value of
nothing.
To write about all the beautiful things that can be
said about Romania today and its church would fill
a large volume. But I would like to say a few words
about what our Christian Mission to the Communist
World is doing in other parts of the world.
A Great Communist Strategem
When I left Romania, I thought that I would
work only for my own country, but then the Rev.
Stuart Harris, director of the European Mission,
offered me a larger sphere: the whole of Europe.
However, Communism stretches to all continents.
And so we enlarged our vision to include the
whole Communist world, though I never forgot
Romania. [When I say "we," I mean all the co-
founders of our international mission: the Rev.
Stuart Harris (UK); Myrus Knutson and Casus
Styrdy (USA); J. Mans (Holland); Hans Braun
(Germany); H. Zürcher and Hedi Fluri
(Switzerland); Pat Henegan (S. Africa); Laiso
(Italy); Colette Grarsu (France); Reg Werry
(Australia); and many, many others.]
We confront Communism as a whole, of which
Romania is only a small part. The whole is affected
by any one of the parts. What is happening in
Communism today? We have seen great changes.
Are they for real?
The changes in the USSR and Eastern Europe are
real enough and concern politics, economics, even
religion, all institutions that can be controlled. But

140	From Suffering to Triumph
there is no change in the attitude towards God or in
the basic outlook on life. In his speech on the
Seventieth Anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution,
Gorbachev said, "We are moving towards a new
world, the world of Communism. We shall never
turn off that road." He repeated, with the same vigor,
that he remains an atheist. If there is one thing we
can learn from the Communists, it is consistency.
They abide by their teachings.
At the end of the Second World War, the
Communists were granted dominion over all of
Eastern Europe, without firing a shot Roosevelt and
Churchill ceded them this hegemony at the Yalta
conference because they promised free elections,
which of course never occurred. They had won
through deceit.
The bloody dictator Stalin, whom the Soviet press
now accuses of having killed fifty million innocents,
had made a tremendous impression on western
rulers. After meeting him, an American diplomat
commented, "His brown eyes are exceedingly wise
and gentle. A child would like to sit on his lap and a
dog would sidle up to him." Nothing has changed.
After meeting Gorbachev, even a world-renowned
evangelist praised his charm and his "warm eyes."
But Gromyko, former president of the USSR, had
recommended Gorbachev as successor with the
words, "He can smile beautifully, but he also has
steel teeth for biting."
Marx said, "Religion is the opiate of the people,"
which means it must be countered as resolutely as
drugs. Lenin wrote, 'Thousands of epidemics and
natural catastrophes are to be preferred to the
slightest notion of a god." Marx wrote in his poem

From Suffering to Triumph	141
'The Player" that "hellish vapors" filled his brain
and that he "bought a sword from the Prince of
Darkness." (Elements of satanic rituals.)
Communism continues to brandish this sword
against religion.
God-haters are also haters of mankind. In a letter
to Engels on the 18th of June, 1882, Marx called
mankind "a bunch of rascals" who can "kiss my
[obscenity]." But miracle of miracles, the party he
created, which never renounced its militant atheism,
has now reopened hundreds of churches and closes
its eyes to intense religious activity. Today there is
mass evangelism, Sunday school for children, and
charitable work—all totally proscribed a short time
ago. There are even processions on the street in
which these words are sung: "For the Czar [title of
Russian emperors], for our country and faith."
Bibles and other Christian literature continue to enter
freely. We have 100,000 letters from the USSR
alone, thanking us for the literature individually
received.
Communism is far from being defeated, but it has
received mortal wounds. The Berlin Wall and the
Iron Curtain crumble!
Communists have killed millions of believers, and
they were sure religion was dying. Now the church
triumphs. It is Communism that straggles for sur-
vival in Eastern Europe. There is no human expla-
nation for these events. Thanks be to God for
working this miracle!
When we began our mission twenty-four years
ago, anti-Communists thought that Communism
could be defeated only through war. They said,
"Only a dead Communist is a good Communist."

142	From Suffering to Triumph
We came with a new message: just as Communists
subvert the free world with their poisonous doctrine,
let us subvert them with the Gospel. Let us work
secretly to make Christ known. Let us help the
underground churches. Though the Communists hate
us, let us win them with love. Let us pray for them
and bring them to Christ.
I ended my book Answer to Moscow's Bible by
calling upon the Reds to repent and confess their
crimes openly. The Soviet press now acknowl-
edges that their Party has killed tens of millions of
innocents, and Gorbachev has apologized to the
Patriarch. Articles by atheist lecturers and officers of
their Secret Police appear, acknowledging that they
have lied to the people and shed innocent blood. Yet
many Communists still stick to their ideology,
modified by what they call "glasnost" and "pere-
stroika."
Glasnost and Perestroika
What is the secret behind these words? We fear it
is another example of Communist deceit, a maneu-
ver intended to lull the West to sleep. Terror could
not uproot religion—the blood of the martyrs has
always been the seed of the church—so the
Communists are trying another approach.
In an article in Kommunist, Lunacharsky, author
of Socialism and Religion, is quoted as predicting
that persecution of religion would be counterpro-
ductive. (After seventy years of terror, 70% of adults
are still believers.) He advocated that Communists
create a "religion without God," a "religious athe-
ism."
"Let the Christians believe," the argument runs.

From Suffering to Triumph	143
"Communists will infiltrate Christian ranks, will
befriend them, disguising themselves as having sim-
ilar ideals on many points. They will attract
Christians to common social actions and will influ-
ence them to keep only an external form of religion,
while becoming basically as godless as ourselves."
The same situation took place in the Roman
Empire during the fourth century, under Constantine
the Great. Ten emperors had slaughtered Christians.
Constantine did an about-face, gave them full liberty,
and made Christianity a state religion. Under him
every baby was baptized and declared a Christian.
Thus Christianity seemed to triumph—but it ceased
to be truly Christian. The church leadership increas-
ingly became a tool of the emperors.
In the USSR, the Orthodox patriarch Pimen
cabled to Gorbachev, "We express deep thankfulness
for your attention to the needs of believers and for
all you do to reestablish the Leninist norms."
(Lenin's norms included the killing of millions of
Christians and the destruction of churches.)
Kharchev, then head of the Religious Council of the
Soviet government, declared, "Religion is pene-
trating socialism, not on foot but on wheels. And
since power belongs to the Party, it is up to us to
steer those wheels in one direction or another,
according to our interests."
Few Soviet Christians are aware that Gorbachev
and his kin follow the same Constantinian road. He
wants to give liberty to the church, but to a church
that will not be really Christian. It will be an out-
reach of Communism just as it had been of the Czar.
Yeltsin asserts he is converted, but in his government
he has hard core Communists.

144	Front Suffering to Triumph
The media have created the impression that
Communism has been overthrown and a Communist
world no longer exists. If this is true, there is no need
for our mission. On the contrary, Communism has
full power over a third of mankind, including
China (1.1 billion), the USSR (280 million),
Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, Ethiopia, Angola, and
Zimbabwe. In Eastern Europe, Communist gov-
ernments have been overthrown, but not Communist
domination over the minds of men. Marxism has
filled the whole populace with fear. People feared to
say what they thought, whether by phone, in the
marketplace, or even in the privacy of their own
homes. Everyone was forced to inform on everyone
else, even on members of their own family. Priests
had to report privileged confessions to the police.
Letters were censored. It was dangerous to meet a
foreigner. Spies of the Secret Police were every-
where.
Publicly, everyone was on the side of the
Communists, who always got 99% of the vote
because no one dared to vote on his convictions. But
in reality everyone hated the government. Millions
have passed through jail. Many died before gaining
freedom. Their relatives well knew what took place
in prison. Torture has been used throughout the
whole history of mankind. It would seem that all
methods of torture were already known.
But Communists are innovators. Knowing that
few men volunteer to do the work of torturing and
those they victimize are many, thus allowing much
respite between torture sessions, they forced others
into torturing. Not satisfied with squeezing out of the
victims a denial of their convictions and a betrayal

From Suffering to Triumph	145
of the secrets of their organization, the Communists
tortured them to the extreme until they consented to
become torturers of their brethren in faith. The result
was that a new prisoner, thinking he was in a cell
with fellow-believers, was subjected to the worst
ignominies, not by officers of the Secret Police, but
by those he had trusted and worshiped with. He was
together with them day and night, tortured without
pause, until he too consented to become a torturer.
Some became sadists for life, others went mad.
AU nations under Communism have been trau-
matized, not only those of Eastern Europe, but also
Mozambique, Laos, Mongolia, etc. It will take
decades for them to recover. The best medicine is
the Gospel. The work of our mission in providing
these people with the word of God is needed now
more than ever before. Neglect of our duty angers
God. Fulfilling it will make Him rejoice with
singing. Jesus said, 'Take heed that no one deceives
you" (Matt. 24:4).
The warning is pertinent because Christians in the
free world are in danger of being deceived by
changes in the USSR. Apologists are saying,
"Gorbachev is democratizing the country and
extending liberty, so missions to the Communist
world are no longer necessary." Lenin, founder of
Communism and Gorbachev's avowed mentor,
wrote: "Hundreds of epidemics and natural cata-
strophes are to be preferred to the slightest notion of
God. Even flirting with a god is an unspeakable
abomination." He also wrote: 'The more represen-
tatives of the reactionary clergy are killed, the bet-
ter." In their Communist Manifesto, Marx and
Engels wrote that the aim of Communism is "the

146	From Suffering to Triumph
abolition of all religion and all morals." Gorbachev
calls himself a Communist and remains such even if,
like Yeltsin, he ceases to be a member of the Party.
Let us not forget that Communists seized power
in Russia under the name "Social Democrat Party
(Bolshevik)" and in Romania under the name
"National Democratic Front." A change of name is
not a change of heart. Stressing the point that
Gorbachev is still a Communist and thus a God-
hater, let us remember, too, that Castro, general sec-
retary of the World Council of Churches, wrote in a
letter to Gorbachev, "Christianity and Communism
pursue the same aims."
Why So Much Suffering?
The one pain above all others endured by
Romanians and inhabitants of other Communist
countries is not knowing why they suffer such
pain. The thought paralyzes the mind.
In the USSR, an estimated fifty million innocents
were killed, another fifty million in China. No one
knows how many were killed in Romania and
other lands. One person was in prison for being a
Jew, another for being an anti-Semite. Pastors were
imprisoned for spreading religious propaganda,
atheist lecturers for not having been effective in their
anti-religious propaganda. Anti-Communists suf-
fered next to convinced Communists who had fall-
en foul of their party about the interpretation of some
tenet of Marxist teaching.
Communists used to condemn whole families if
one member had done something amiss. I remember
being imprisoned with a father and his four sons. His
wife and daughters were in other cells.

From Suffering to Triumph	147
Hungry and beaten prisoners renounced some of
the few hours of sleep allotted them to discuss with-
out end such questions as "Why did all this come
upon us and upon the world?" "Is there a God?"
"Where is God in all this? He is supposed to be all-
powerful and loving. He could have kept these
things from happening or could at least end them
now. Why doesn't He?"
A Jewish prisoner went out of his mind. He con-
stantly repeated one Hebrew word: Maduah—
"why?" He said, "I could fill volumes with mah
(what) is happening, but no one can reply to the
question moduah."
I never met even one sufferer who was satisfied
with the explanation that all evil—Auschwitz, the
Gulag, Piteshti, and so on—is due in the last resort
to the fact that Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit
Their sin was inherited by their descendants down
all generations. It even passed into nature. Lambs are
eaten by wolves, little fish by bigger fish, and chil-
dren are beaten to the blood by Communist torturers
in the presence of their parents to make them con-
fess—all because many thousands of years ago a
couple ate some fruit. The original sin is to blame.
It might be because of the sinful nature inherited
from Adam that his descendants in our generation
cannot comprehend this explanation. Other expla-
nations I heard in these marathon discussions over
the years were: 'There is no God and therefore no
sense." "It is punishment for our own personal sins."
"Suffering is not real, it is maya. It belongs to a
world of delusion." None satisfied.
One prisoner who had escaped from Nazi camps,
in which he had lost almost his whole family, and

148	From Suffering to Triumph
now suffered under Communism, shouted in despair
at a certain moment, "Haven't I endured enough
from the Nazis and the Reds? Why must I bear the
torment of listening to your senseless explana-
tions? Suffering is bad enough. Don't make it
worse with explanations." Believers who know
God personally should trust him without asking
questions. Our minds cannot comprehend the ulti-
mate answers.
The Jewish people, generally considered to be
very intelligent, had Jesus in the flesh in their midst
He spoke to them in plain language, but they did not
understand Him even when He spoke in very simple
parables. The disciples themselves understood Him
only in part, but they believed in the unintelligible
Jesus. This is faith. It supplements reason, which can
know only an infinitely small range of things in this
huge universe. We still don't know what an atom is.
The image of an atom provided by science changes
every couple of years. How then can we understand
God?
I learned something in this regard from my
grandson Alex when he was eight. We had guests in
our home who discussed higher mathematics in his
presence. I did not know how to hint to them in a
polite manner that they should change the subject
because it was boring for a child. So I asked him,
"Alex, do you understand what we're talking about?
Do you know what logarithms are?"
He replied, "Yes, I do."
Amazed, I asked, "What are they?"
"Logarithms are things I will learn about when
I'm in high school."
Like children in school, Jesus' disciples advance

From Suffering to Triumph	149
from the merely human to the divine. They are
learners. One cannot learn in elementary school what
is taught in universities. One day "I shall know even
as also I am known" (1 Cor. 13:12).
Of all the explanations in answer to the question,
"Why so much suffering?" the most compelling is
simply, "We don't know." One day God will be ail
in all, which means that He will be all in Richard
Wurmbrand. There will be no questioner, no ques-
tioned, and no question. We will be one spirit It will
be a mini-incarnation.
Jesus said, 'To him who overcomes I will grant to
sit with me on my throne, even as I also overcame
and sat down with my Father on his throne" (Rev.
3:21). Somewhere there is a throne from which uni-
verses are created and ruled. This will be my
throne too. Today I have to learn patiently all I will
need at the moment of enthronement The knowl-
edge of suffering is part of the curriculum. Jesus
himself was made perfect through suffering.
Some theologians adopt a softer tone than the
Bible, claiming that God only permits evil. But
according to Isaiah, God said, "I make the good and
create the evil" (Isa. 45:7, as the original).
A racehorse trainer not only constructs a course
but also obstacles which the horse must overcome.
This comparison may seem inadequate to us because
we have to overcome terrible physical and psycho-
logical torture. When we meet Jesus at last, we will
see that our sufferings were insignificant in com-
parison with what we have attained. Scars will be
ornaments. The wounded will be enriched by what
they lost. Those who were killed will have exuber-
ant life.

150	From Suffering to Triumph
Christians face not the problem of evil, but its
challenge. Problems depress, challenges spur us to
activity. Christians in Romania see no possibility of
solving problems, but they have learned to transcend
them, to view them from heavenly places. For us, it
was enough that the Communists tortured us. We
decided not to add self-inflicted torments, such as
philosophizing about the unknowable. Every torment
was only a challenge to surmount the biggest
obstacle: to win the tormentor through love.
David was our example. He wrote Psalm 9 on the
tragic death of one of his sons, as is indicated in the
title. But he does not complain about God and his
own fate. He says what he would have said at the
birth of a son: "I will praise you, O Lord, with my
whole heart."
The Bible tells us that in the beginning was
Tohuwabohu—dark, formless chaos. God, the Spirit
of love, worked on this, encountering resistance to
create a kingdom of unspeakable beauty and truth. I
adore the audacity of this enterprise, His persistence
in the face of failure, and His readiness to sacrifice
His dearest for the salvation of the children of chaos.
Psalm 121 tells us that from Him comes your
help, not your sorrow.
The Legend of Kishagotami
In my visit to Romania, whenever I was con-
fronted with questions about suffering, which were
very often overwhelming, I told the old legend of
Kishagotami, a young woman whose only baby had
died and who could not bear to bury him. She went
from one person to another asking how she could
have him back alive.

From Suffering to Triumph	151
One man told her, "Your only hope is the Savior.
He has miraculous power like none other."
She brought her baby's body, knelt before the
Lord, and begged "Please resuscitate my child."
He replied, *Xjladly, if only you will bring a little
bit of salt to me."
Now, salt could easily be obtained, so she started
to run. But he shouted after her. "The salt must be
from a house in which no one has died."
"All right, all right!" she shouted back.
At every gate at which she knocked, she was
gladly given salt. But when she asked if there had
been a death in the family, she was always told, 'Tm
sorry, yes. My Father	or my spouse ... or my
child died."
She wept with everyone who gave such a reply,
because now she knew what the sorrow of bereave-
ment was. She comforted them and received comfort
from the consolation she gave to others.
In the end she came to the Savior again and said,
"Thank you for what you taught me. I will give back
the body of my baby to the earth. Praise to you who
give to my child and to all of us eternal life."
I have seen many a sad face illuminated when
they heard Jesus' teaching.
"Why suffering?" is a wrong question. No right
answer exists for wrong questions. Who can tell the
melody of a peach? The question is wrong. Ask
instead, "What good can I do with my sorrow? How
can I use it to become more loving and more
understanding towards others?" Sympathy will
surely do them more good than theological expla-
nations.
As for the rest, accept what Jesus said to Peter:

152	From Suffering to Triumph
"What I am doing you do not understand now, but
you will know after this."
Why Is There Cruelty in the Bible?
One more very troublesome question I often met in
Romania was, "Why does God order so many hor-
rors? He commanded Moses, Joshua, and others to
exterminate whole populations, specifying each time
that children and infants should be slaughtered, ani-
mals hamstrung, and trees felled. Such destruction
surpasses even what Stalin and Ceaushescu have
done."
I had heard these questions in the West, too, but
rarely and not with such insistence as in my home-
land. The many mass murders to which my nation
was subjected made hearts more sensitive to such
passages of Scripture. I am therefore against what is
much practiced in the East nowadays: the indis-
criminate distribution of Bibles to everyone we can
reach. This was not originally God's intention. He
gave to mankind a Bible and a church with wise
teachers to explain it Where there are no such teach-
ers, it is preferable to give at first books explaining
the main biblical messages.
But as I had to answer this difficult question, I
preferred to give the simplest answer possible. In a
sense, criminals decide what weapons the forces of
law and order should use against them. Police
don't use guns against pickpockets, because pick-
pockets have no guns. But they do use guns against
armed robbers. Some methods used in just war
might be considered inhumane if the same results
could have been obtained otherwise. Against Nazi
and Japanese aggressors who had tanks and

From Suffering to Triumph	153
bombers, tanks and bombers had to be used; other-
wise evil would have been victorious.
God can evaluate evil in certain nations and social
structures as we cannot If widespread anti- American
feelings in the West had not impeded the victory of
the US in Vietnam, Cambodia would not have
become Communistic and its leader Pol Pot would
not have killed two million innocents. God alone
knows the whole of a person, including the genes
that will determine a baby's character. Jesus says
about some, "It would have been better if they had
not been born." He calls others devils and has a right
to treat them as devils deserve to be treated. His
decisions and actions are not subject to our judg-
ment. We have to submit to His.
Lenin, founder of Russian Communism, said, "If
Kerensky (prime minister of Russia before the
Communist takeover) had arrested in time two
dozen leaders of our party, we would never have
come to power." And millions of innocents would
not have been killed and mankind would have
been spared a seventy-year bloodbath. No doubt
some crusader for human rights would then have
criticized Kerensky for depriving Communists of
their "right" to prepare evil.
Don't philosophize about the Bible, but enter into
the holy nation of God's children. Flee from those
who deserve God's wrath. But do be attentive. In the
original text of the Bible, there are no punctuation
marks. There is not one single full-stop or comma.
Only in translations is there a full-stop after expres-
sions such as "They killed" or "God killed." In
Hebrew, it is 'The Lord kills and makes alive" (1
Sam. 2:6).

154	From Suffering to Triumph
In heaven, we will meet many of those we
thought were slaughtered. Alive and happy, they are
thankful to God for elevating them from the level of
pagan notions to that of children of God.
It is also good to know what the words "God
said" mean in the Bible.
No one has seen the heavenly Father (except
Moses, in one instance). When biblical authors, like
today's believers, say, "God spoke to me," they
mean an inner voice. We are composed of many
parts. We have the conscious, the unconscious, dif-
ferent inclinations and impulses, even contradicto-
ry ones. All these can take, in our mind, the shape of
voices that counsel and prompt us to action.
Religious people call the voice that calls them to
what they consider the noblest action the "voice of
God." Sometimes they are right. But they can also
be terribly mistaken. Ayatollah Khomeini, the Rev.
Moon, Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism—each
was sure that what he said was "God's word."
Jesus is skeptical about some events in the Old
Testament The prophet Elijah caused fire to fall on the
troop of a wicked king. Elijah was sure that his action
fulfilled God's will. But when Jesus' disciples want-
ed to proceed in such a manner against those who
opposed Him, confident that what Elijah had done was
inspired by God, He chided them: "You don't know
what manner of spirit you are of." The Old Testament
prophets did not always act from the inspiration of
God's spirit, though they believed they were.
Let us cherish Jesus' revelation: God is love.
The Task of Healing Nations
Communism is finished as a political institution

F mm Suffering to Triumph	155
in almost all of the former satellite states of the
USSR. But in Romania and Bulgaria, Communism
still struggles to retain political power. Although it
still does much harm, we can be sure that it is a
rearguard fight; it is the despairing fight of a
defeated enemy, the last writhing of a serpent
before it dies. It will not survive in the Soviet Union
either, except that Communism is more than a polit-
ical institution. A Filipino who heard me speak
twenty years ago in the Military Academy of
Manila and who took part in armed fighting against
Marxist guerrillas, reminded me that I said then
something that made a lasting, because unexpected,
impression on him: 'There is a Communist rebel in
each of us."
Marxist hatred of God is the most powerful
expression of the human heart alienated from the
Creator. It has always existed in fallen mankind in a
latent form, but all societies tried to repress it.
Communism lifted the lid. Marx wrote, "It is the evil
side that makes history." I heard a Communist tor-
turer say, "I thank God, in whose existence I don't
believe, for making me live just at such a time when
I can do all the evil I want without fear of punish-
ment—yes, even with the assurance I'll be reward-
ed for it." This evil spirit has come out of the box
under Communism, and the church will have to fight
for many decades against Communism's poison in
human hearts: hatred, envy, betrayal, lawlessness.
(The Hebrew word Belial means etymologically
"without yoke.")
In Romania, as in Bulgaria and Mongolia, the
1990 elections were free. After forty-five years of
fierce terror, the Communists won great victories.

156	From Suffering to Triumph
There were several serious reasons for this, which I
have already mentioned. The opposition parties
pleaded for friendship with the West Romanians had
been taught for decades that western governments
were oppressors and exploiters and that their people
went hungry. But the principal reason for the success
of Communism lay elsewhere: who dared vote
against the Party?
If Communism had fallen from power and the
volumes of the Secret Police were opened, whole
families would have been split apart because wives
had denounced husbands; brides, bridegrooms;
children, their parents; pastors and priests, members
of their churches and vice versa. Even where the
transition from Communism to a free society has
been greatest, as in East Germany and
Czechoslovakia, the archives of the Secret Police
were not made public. If they were opened up to
public scrutiny in Russia or Romania, these would
cease to exist as nations. People would not be able to
look into each other's eyes.
The pastor of a small Romanian Baptist church of
only forty members confessed to me that he had
been an informer of the Secret Police and that he
knew five members who informed against him. I
was in jail with an atheist who had had a quarrel
with his bride. She told the police that he had
expressed anti-Communist sentiments to her, and he
received twenty years in prison.
Romania feels guilty. (In Nazi-occupied countries,
there were also a significant number of collaborators,
but the numbers were not so high as in Communist
countries as the time-span was shorter.) Romania
fears disclosure. Thousands voted for the

From Suffering to Triumph	157
Communists they hated because they had been
their accomplices. It is estimated that every tenth
adult was an informer for at least a time. Our
Orthodox synod called back Patriarch Theoctist, a
bootlicker of Ceaushescu, when he retired after
Ceaushescu's fall. The guilt had been collective,
involving the priesthood as a whole.
When the final judgment is near, Satan will be
released from his prison of a thousand years. Only
he, restored to power, could cover up—men will
hope—all the satanic deeds they themselves have
done (Rev. 20:7).
All Romanian writers, almost without exception,
had flattered Ceaushescu's pride, calling him "the
greatest genius ever" and other such stupidities. Not
one has admitted guilt. They all keep silent. The
Romanian churches have an enormous task: to
heal the nation.
God's Remnant
God has a remnant in Romania as He has in other
Eastern European countries. Very many Christians
died in the revolution of December 1989. Thanks to
them, Ceaushescu has been overthrown. It was on
Christmas Eve—a sign from God. The celebration
of Christmas had been forbidden. But thousands of
others are alive, and they have an amazing Christian
spirit.
On the 13th of July, 1990, just a few days after
so-called miners (in fact men of the former
Communist Secret Police) had killed five, wounded
hundreds, and arrested over one thousand peaceful
demonstrators in Bucharest, there was another
demonstration. Thousands marched with flowers in

158	From Suffering to Triumph
their hands, chanting a slogan that rhymes in
Romanian: "You came to us with clubs and axes, but
we come to you with flowers." The army sent out to
quell the demonstrators was showered with flowers.
The soldiers were overwhelmed. This time there
were no bloody incidents. This was the first demon-
stration in which flowers were used against ah
oppressor, epitomizing Jesus' teaching: "Respond to
evil with good."
Our mission had taught Romanians this for over
twenty years through the written word and by
radio. It was my message from the first day of my
pastorate, at liberty and in jail, and it was what I
preached in Romania on my return. It was Christ's
triumph, but also the greatest personal satisfaction of
my life.
And it has not remained the only one. The river
Prut separates Romania as it is today from its
province of Bessarabia, stolen by the Soviets and
renamed the Moldavian Republic. On the fortieth
anniversary of this tragic event, Romanians from
both sides of the river turned it into a flowery carpet
in a huge demonstration as people threw blossoms
into the water. A people that has such a remnant will
not perish. God will turn its mourning into feasting.
Marx and Lenin, the deceivers, will be defeated by
Jesus, the Truth.
But the true Romanian church, like that of other
former Communist countries, needs your help.
Give them Bibles and Christian literature. Give them
Christian teaching by radio. Help the impoverished
churches rebuild their prayer houses. Help former
prisoners remake their lives. And help us bring
Communists to Christ If conquerors are not capable

From Suffering to Triumph	159
of converting the conquered, the conquests are not
complete. The Allies conquered Germany in the
First World War but did not convert the Germans to
their ways of thinking. And so the stage was set for
the Second World War.
Communists have lost decisive battles in Eastern
Europe. If they are not won for Christ or at least for
decent human behavior, the devil will be loose again
in a very few years. We have to be on the alert. I cer-
tainly am. Many aged people live only on rehashing
the past, which is nonproductive. I am only eighty-
two. I still have a present as Christ's soldier and a
great future in prospect. Come, fight with me.

About Richard Wurmbrand
In October of 1967, Pastor Richard Wurmbrand,
along with his wife Sabina, founded a non-profit
missionary organization to bring assistance to
persecuted Christians around the world.
Today The Voice of the Martyrs, Inc., directed by
Pastor Wurmbrand, continues to carry out this
work. For more information about the mission
activities or a complete listing of books and tapes by
Richard Wurmbrand, please write to THE VOICE
OF THE MARTYRS at the address below:
USA:	P.O. Box 443
Bartlesville, OK 74005-0443
CANADA:	P.O. Box 117
Port Credit
Mississuaga, Ontario L5G4L5
AUSTRALIA:       P.O. Box 598
Penrith NSW 2751
NEW ZEALAND: P.O. Box 69-158
Glendene, Auckland 8
ENGLAND:	P.O. Box 19
Bromley, Kent, BRI 1DJ

^*	FROM	
Suffering
TRIUMPH!
"/ regret not having been in Romania when
Ceaushescu was judged. I would have volunteered to
defend him."
Richard Wurmbrand spent fourteen years in
Communist prisons. Since then he has endured 25
years of exile. From Suffering to Triumph describes his
return to his beloved homeland, and the astonishing
situation he found there. There are many tragedies and
much heartbreak, but also abundant evidence of God's
transforming power.

For Richard Wurmbrand himself the issue is not
revenge but the proclamation of Christ's love. Why did
Ceaushescu act as he did? Pastor Wurm-
brand's answer is simple: "Ask yourselves
if you have done your utmost to share with
the Communists the teaching of Jesus . . .
may   we   all   learn   the   beautiful   art   of
forgiveness."
ISBN   G-
90000

780825 440618

Biography