A poor man pushed me into the van.
They put manacles on my hands.
I was in prison.
Everyone who tells you that he does not
fear when he passes through great danger is
a liar.
Courage does not mean absence of fear.
It means the conquest of fear.
Everyone who tells you that he is not
tempted when sin offers itself to him is
a liar.
Everybody is tempted.
But to conquer the temptation, that is real
Christian life.
So I surely had my sentiments of apprehension,
of fear.
But I had also the comfort of God.
I remember the word don't fear occurred 366
times.
There exists this word also for the 29th
of February.
And probably I began to smile.
Now you will wonder why I smile.
I smile first by habit.
I have learned to smile because I have
read in physiology when you smile, eight muscles
of your face enter in action.
When you frown, when you are angry, 48
muscles.
It costs six times as much to be
angry as to smile.
Now everybody who would spend $60 on what
he can buy for $10 is not very
wise.
And everyone who frowns when he could smile
is also not very wise.
Frowning, being angry would not have helped me.
Smiling is much better.
Smile when your husband is sometimes brutal.
Smile when your children are rebellious.
Smile when your parents don't understand you.
Smile when your boyfriend forsakes you.
I will tell you why to smile when
your boyfriend forsakes you.
I stood once on the shore of the
Mississippi River and two drops of water discussed
with each other.
And one drop asked the other drop, Who
are you?
And this drop said, I am the tear
of a girl whose boyfriend has been taken
away by another girl.
And who are you?
And the other drop said, I am a
tear of that other girl who took away
the boyfriend.
So smile when another girl has taken away
your boyfriend.
Smile.
And I began to smile.
And then the communist policeman, he asked me,
Sir, why do you smile?
You are not used to this, that somebody
should smile being put in such a situation.
And I answered, well, they were afraid to
tell the truth because they had to submit
me to an interrogation.
And the smile showed that probably I had
a nervous shock.
I have gone mad.
And if you go mad, they can't interrogate
you anymore.
So they asked me, why do you smile?
I answered, because it is written 366 times.
Now they were very sure that I am
mad.
What can I say?
They asked me, what is written 366 times?
I said, just what I need.
And what did he answer?
And then I had the occasion to tell
them, we have a God on whom to
rely.
We can rely on him even on the
29th of February.
We can rely on him even on the
day when we bring to the cemetery our
most beloved one.
We can rely on him on the day
when somebody very near to us dies of
cancer.
We can rely on him on the day
when the Dow Jones is down.
When I came to America, I heard about
this Dow Jones and everybody being sad when
the Dow Jones is down.
I didn't know what...
And I asked them, why do they not
call him Up Jones?
Why do they not call him Dow Jones?
Well, you can smile the day when the
Dow Jones is down.
You can smile on the day when you
remain unemployed.
And in all the troubles of life, you
can smile.
And then I, exactly as it happens with
other Christians, thousands were put in prison in
my country at that time.
I was put in an isolated cell.
The cell was 30 feet beneath the earth.
We never saw sun, moon, snow, flowers, stars.
For three years, I've never seen a color.
Only the gray walls of the cell and
our gray uniforms.
I had forgotten that red and green and
blue and lilac and violet existed.
We never had a Bible.
We never had any other books.
We never had a bit of paper.
In 14 years, I have not seen a
lady.
I have not seen a child.
Now, I can't restrain myself.
I pass and I hurt every child whom
I meet on the street.
People sometimes wonder about a pastor who stalks
everywhere the children.
I can't restrain myself.
I must kiss the child because I have
not seen children 14 years.
Happily, I can restrain myself and I don't
kiss every lady whom I meet on the
street.
But all these things were gone.
We were alone in a prison cell, isolated
from life.
Within years afterwards, we never heard even the
slightest noise.
The guards had held sold shoes and we
did not hear their reproach.
Now, surely in such a situation, many tempests
pass through your heart, fear and all kinds
of other things.
But there is always also the whisper from
the Lord.
And I remember that on the very first
day of imprisonment, an old legend about Jesus
came to my mind.
I had used it several times in my
sermons.
And now it came to my mind.
It is said that while our Lord was
on earth, I have decided to speak for
an hour, but I did not look through
the watch when I started, so it will
be an hour from henceforth.
Yes?
And it is said that while our Lord
was on earth, a disciple asked Him once,
Lord, what do the words of the Ecclesiastes
mean?
Vanity or vanities?
Everything is vanity.
Jesus looked to him and said, You are
too young to understand these words.
Leave them.
And the young disciple, young society, forgot.
Jesus did not forget.
He allowed three years to pass, and one
day he told the young disciple, Come with
me.
Let us take a walk.
The young disciple was happy to walk with
Jesus.
The flowers gave an aroma never before when
he walked with Jesus.
And the church more beautiful than ever when
he walked with Jesus.
And they walked much together.
Jesus said one parable after the other.
It was very hot in Palestine in summer.
At a certain moment, Jesus stopped under the
shadow of a tree and said, Here I
will rest a little bit.
You are younger.
Turn into that village which is still yonder
and ask a jug of water for me.
The disciple was very happy to be able
to serve Jesus.
He ran into the village to ask a
jug of water for Jesus.
He knocked at the first gate to ask
a jug of water for Jesus.
The gate opened.
How beautiful this girl was.
And when she opened her mouth to ask
him what he wishes, her voice was like
the ringing of little bells.
He remained with this girl until evening.
He could not part from her.
He went after her to sleep somewhere, but
who can sleep?
He thought about this girl.
Next morning he was with the girl.
The third day with the girl.
The fourth day with the girl.
He married the girl.
She was rich.
She brought a big dory, vineyards and orchards
and fields and cattle and sheep.
And they worked.
And they increased their riches.
They lived together thirty years like in paradise.
She gave birth to three children.
Their life was so happy.
And one day a big flood came.
I don't know who of you has ever
seen a flood.
I have seen it.
In a couple of hours everything was destroyed.
Vineyards, orchards, fields, everything destroyed.
The cattle drowned, the sheep drowned.
Then in the end his wife and three
children drowned before his eyes.
And he alone escaped to the shore, poor.
He sat there and wept over his lost
happiness.
And at once he hears a voice calling
him.
He recognized the voice.
The voice asking, My young friend, did you
bring me the drop of water after which
I have sent you?
And he is weeping like from a nightmare.
He said, Lord, but how could I forget?
And the Lord told him, Don't worry.
According to your accounts twelve years have passed.
According to my accounts only a quarter of
an hour.
I wish to teach you what the words
of Ecclesiastes mean, Vanity of vanities.
Everything is vanity.
We all are sent into this world to
satisfy the thirst of Jesus.
He is thirsty after love.
He is so thirsty after love.
I can understand he is thirsty after love.
When we were in prison we were brainwashed.
Now, it's a long story, but the brainwashing
consisted in this, that we had to sit
on a form where there was no place
to lean.
You could not rest your head a little
bit on your hands.
You were not allowed to close your eyes.
And from five in the morning until ten
in the evening you had to hear over
loudspeakers, Communism is good.
Christianity is bad.
Give up, give up, give up.
You are bored already, because I say these
words since two minutes.
We heard them days, weeks, months, and years.
And then there was the most terrible period
of brainwashing.
They did not say anymore that Christianity is
bad and Communism is good.
They had given us postcards to write to
our families.
They said, now we allow you to see
your families.
I had not seen my wife and my
children in ages.
Now you will be allowed to see them,
write to them to come on that and
that day.
And we wrote.
And on that day they arranged us somehow,
our clothes and so we should present ourselves
to our families.
And we waited until late in the night.
And nobody came.
We did not know, they had not sent
these postcards.
That had been a trick of theirs.
But next day the brainwashing began.
It was the most cruel torture that somebody
can imagine.
In the half-dark of the cell, to
hear continually, Nobody loves you anymore.
Nobody loves you anymore.
And I personally have remained a man thirsty
after love.
If I am received in a home or
in a church, and people surround me with
love, that is not enough for me.
Thirsty for me.
Know that I love you.
That I really love you.
I love you with all my heart.
I have remained thirsty after love.
And I can understand that Jesus is a
being thirsty after love.
He meets Peter.
Peter had denied Jesus the scarcest of all
on the night when he was betrayed.
The third day Jesus meets him.
He could have told him, you rascal, how
did you behave on that evening?
And he would have been right to rebuke
Peter.
Instead of this, he asks, Peter, do you
love me?
And you must see sometimes children come to
their father and to their mother, Mother, do
you love me?
And Jesus, a being thirsty after love, He
asks Peter, the coward, He asks him, do
you, the coward, Kings don't love me.
Philosophers don't love me.
Heroes don't love me.
Millionaires don't love me.
But it is you, a coward.
Do you love me?
And the coward says, yes, I love you.
There was such a joy in Jesus.
He said, then I confide to you all
my sheep.
Bring them to green pasture.
He is thirsty after love.
They sent us in this world that we
should bring him a jug of water.
We should give him our love.
And the girls are beautiful in this world.
Men are not as beautiful, but they also
have their hands on it.
And the voices of the world are nice.
And we forget the purpose for which we
are being sent here.
And when the flood comes, for everyone, a
flood comes once.
The moment of awakening, if it does not
come in this life, it comes at death.
But the moment comes.
But there is something higher than all this.
I have been sent into this world by
a Savior thirsty after love.
We wish so much love.
We were very hungry in prison.
There were times when we had one slice
of bread a week.
We had soup of dirty potato peels, cabbage
with unwashed intestines.
We were terribly hungry.
And we were not choosy in matters of
food.
We could have given a stove to eat.
We would have eaten stones.
Rats, cats, birds, insects, whatever you like, have
been eaten in our prison.
My wife was in prison in a concentration
camp.
And when they let the women to work,
they saw one lying near the road the
corpse of a dog with a stone.
They smashed the head of the dog and
they jumped to eat the brain of this
dead dog.
So big was the hunger after protein.
When you are hungry, you are not choosy.
And Jesus is hungry after love.
And therefore he's not choosy.
Therefore he accepts everybody's love.
You might be a murderer.
You might be an adulterer.
You might be a liar.
You might be a crook.
You might be just, just as I am
without a plea.
No, this is what?
He accepts everybody's love.
He is not choosy because he is hungry
after love.
That is why he has sent us into
this world.
If you love him, do you know which
Bible verse, and I have been asked very
often, which Bible verse has sustained you most
in prison?
I will tell you.
Two verses of the Bible which are not
in the Bible.
There exist two Bible verses which are not
in the Bible, and which I believe are
the most beautiful verses.
One verse.
Never, never
has Jesus during his earthly life asked somebody,
what sins have you committed?
Never.
How many sins did you commit?
How often did you repeat them?
In what circumstances did you do them?
He just went from man to man and
told him, Be of good cheer, son.
Be of good cheer, daughter.
Your sins are forgiven without asking what sins.
The verse that he never asked about sins,
which is not in the Bible, that is
one of the most beautiful verses of the
Bible.
You are accepted by Jesus just as you
are.
And one other very beautiful verse in the
Bible, which is not in the Bible, is
that during his whole earthly life, never did
anybody say to Jesus, I ask your forgiveness.
I apologize.
Please forgive me.
Never did anybody tell him.
Not even Peter and the apostles, who have
behaved so badly on the last night when
they met the resurrected Lord, it would have
been so beautiful from their side, to ask
forgiveness.
They did not.
Why?
Who looked in the face of Jesus, saw
this face, so much goodness, so much love,
that they knew, with Jesus, forgiveness is self
-understood.
You don't have to ask.
He wishes me to be forgiven, much more
than I wish to be forgiven.
He wishes me to be saved, much more
than I wish to be saved.
He wishes me to be seen in heaven,
much more than I wish to be seen
in heaven.
He runs after me with blessings, and somebody
must run very fastly to run away from
the blessings of this.
And we have such a savior.
And he is the last truth.
He is the embodiment of love.
And the loyalty to him is much higher
than all the pleasures of this life.
Communists promise an earthly paradise.
They've made an earthly hell.
Christians are in prisons, thousands.
Harassed.
Some are tortured.
In communist prisons, sometimes insects and rats are
eaten.
In Southeast Asia, they are in Laos, in
Cambodia, and so on.
They slash the belly of Christians and eat
their livers.
In Red China, our sisters are undressed.
Their hands are tied behind their backs so
that they can't defend themselves.
And then snakes are slipped into their underwear.
We have sisters who have tonight snakes creeping
upon their bellies, upon their thighs, upon their
breasts, and they can't defend themselves.
In communist Africa, it is even worse than
everywhere else.
They slate Christians.
They're taking away the skin from their breasts
or from I don't know where.
And then they rub hot pepper in the
raw flesh.
You will excuse me, but I have to
tell you things simply as they are.
They've rubbed hot pepper in the private parts
of them.
And there exists such a screaming.
There exists such a suffering.
I wonder why only they scream, and we
don't share the suffering of death.
We are one body.
We should weep with those who weep.
But the beautiful thing is, that in Uganda,
and in Angola, and in Mozambique, and in
Red China, there are these, and in Russia,
and so on, there are these few chosen
souls, like that girl, who know this truth,
there exists something higher than pleasure.
There exists something higher than life in this
world.
Truth and love are higher.
God is higher.
And if Jesus, also young, at the age
of 33, threw away his life for the
glory of the Father, and for the good
of fellow men, this life should rather be
thrown away than to use it for anything
else than for bringing to the thirsty Jesus,
the jug of water, to bring to the
one thirsty of love, my love.
That is what he waits for me.
And I come to you to beg for
love.
Now, I represent here a mission, which is
called Jesus to the communist world.
And missions, usually, for very good purposes, have
to beg for money.
They need money.
And so they beg for it.
And it is good to give to them.
And we try to help families of martyrs,
and to give a Bible where Bibles don't
exist.
And I would also be tempted to ask
you, now take out your wallet, and let
us take an offering, and give, and give
much.
But I don't wish to finish in this
manner.
I remember my first sermon, when I became
a pastor.
And I tried to make, it was my
first sermon.
And I tried to make everything well.
And when I finished, I asked the old
pastor, whose place I had to take, was
everything all right?
And he looked to me sternly and said,
boy, that was his manner of speaking with
me, he said, boy, you are still young.
You have time to study something else, to
become an architect, an engineer, a doctor.
A pastor you will never make.
I was so distressed.
I said, but what was wrong?
He said, what?
You ask me what was wrong?
You preach so much about love, and about
Jesus, and eternal life, and truth, and again
love, and again Jesus, and again God, and
again eternal life, and you mix some angels,
and you forgot to take the offering.
Who does not take an offering will never
be a pastor.
But I believe that we should not finish.
It would be the most stupid finish For
this service, if you would say, they give
their life for the highest.
So let me give five dollars, or five
hundred, or a check of thousands of dollars.
I wish to finish by telling you what
somebody can do without money.
I will tell you I am Jewish.
My wife, you will see her in a
moment, she is also a pretty Jewish.
And I will tell you how we arrived,
Jewish beings, to Christ.
And with this I will finish.
Unless I remember something else to say.
I will take only five minutes more from
you.
I can't guarantee you that every minute will
be only sixty seconds, but it will be.
But just five minutes I wish to say.
I have waited fourteen years to speak with
you, so you give me five minutes more.
Do you give me five minutes more?
To say the truth, you have no choice.
So, all right.
I will tell you only so much how
I arrived to Christ.
In my parents' home, I have never heard
any good word or bad word about Jesus.
They didn't know about Jesus.
They have not heard about Krishna or Buddha.
I did not hear about them.
At the age of eight or nine, I
came from home, from school, with another boy.
He stopped before a church.
At that time I knew no difference between
a Catholic or a Protestant.
I don't know.
He stopped before a church.
He said, wait for me a little bit.
My father asked me to tell the pastor
something.
I said, no, I will come with you.
And that is how I entered the first
time in a Christian church.
I looked around.
I understood nothing.
I saw the wall.
I remembered the Bible verse.
God so loved the world that he gave
his only begotten son.
I did not know who God is.
I did not know who his son is.
I wondered only about the signature.
It was such a clear signature.
These words had been said by a certain
John 316.
Now, I knew many Johns.
One was John Taylor, John Smith.
But John 316 was John 316.
I thought, how can somebody have such a
name?
All right.
And this other boy spoke with the pastor.
And when the pastor came to me, touched
me on my head.
He touched my head.
It meant so much to me.
I have been an uncharised child.
I have been a hungry orphan child.
In my whole childhood, I have eaten one
cake and a half.
One I have stolen.
A half was correct.
I have never had chocolate.
When richer children ate chocolate, I licked the
paper.
I was the worst dressed child in my
school.
And nobody cared.
And now this pastor touched me.
It is written in the Bible they brought
children to Jesus that he might touch them.
We bring children to Sunday school that the
pastor might teach them.
But to Jesus the children were brought that
he might touch them.
He touched them.
There exists such a gentle and loving touch
which you remember.
That is what our dimension is about.
It is much discussed today in America if
a woman should be ordained.
I ask myself if men should be ordained
by somebody who does not have the touch.
He must have the touch which conveys the
Holy Spirit.
If he doesn't have the touch, from my
side he can ordain even dogs.
It has no value what he does.
But, you know.
That man has touched me.
And he asked me, Little boy, what can
I do for you?
I said, just nothing.
This is all about.
He said, but I belong to one who
has taught me never to allow anybody to
pass near me without doing him at least
a little bit of good.
It is summer.
It is hot outside.
May I bring you a cup of cold
water?
And he brought me water.
The Lord changed this water in wine just
like Athena.
I came out from that church inebriated.
For the first time I heard that there
is such a strange link with such a
cruel spirit.
Not to allow a badly dressed, frail, hungry
orphan child to pass near you.
He might not have had money.
But he had a glass of cold water.
And he gave the glass of cold water
with a touch and with a smile.
Now I did not understand much at that
age.
But the seed had remained in me.
And during years I sought this being.
I found him only at the age of
27 when an old carpenter gave me the
New Testament to read.
You rarely find this Jesus embodied in somebody
who would never miss an occasion to give
him a glass of cold water.
Not somebody, give him a glass of cold
water.
And I ask from you tonight.
Give the jug of water to Jesus.
The jug of water after which he has
thanked you on this earth.
Just simply tell him I love you.
So beautiful to tell.
I am married only since 40 years with
a short spouse of 14 years during which
I never saw my wife.
But I tell my wife ten times a
day that I love her.
And she's never bored about it.
She's never annoyed.
She says, eh, that's enough.
You have told me so much.
She likes it.
And tell Jesus I love you.
And it should be a sincere love.
And never allow anybody to pass near you
without showing this love.
And if you love everybody, the coming is
torturous too.
And if you love everybody, then love also
your brethren and sisters in chains.
We are meant to seal their bonds as
if we would be bound together with them.
And show them this love in a practical
way.
And now may God bless every one of
you.
The pastor will take over again.