I am very connected to the German brothers.
I am a Jew.
My wife, who just came in, is also
a Jew.
So, we are both Jews.
And in the Hitler time, when there was
such a gap between the Germans and the
Jews, there was a German carpenter in Romania,
in Saxony.
He prayed for months, God, I have served
you on earth, and I want to receive
my reward on earth.
And my reward shall be that I do
not die before I bring a Jew to
faith.
But I am poor, old, sick.
There are no Jews in my village.
I cannot go around looking for a Jew.
Bring a Jew to my village, and I
will do my best to bring him to
heaven.
Now be comforted for what I will say
to you, that no priest has ever told
you.
I am a priest who is firmly convinced
that God never hears prayers.
I repeat.
I am firmly convinced that God never hears
a prayer.
He asked for one Jew, he got two.
God always gives more and better than you
ask for.
He never gives what you ask for.
It would be very bad for us if
he only gave us what we ask for,
because we do not know what we ask
for.
My wife and I came to the village,
and he did not get one Jew as
he asked for, but two.
And he gave us the New Testament to
read, and he brought us to Christ.
And God helped us to bring others to
Christ.
And these others, and these others.
And then a Jewish-Christian community emerged in
Romania.
They all came from this German carpenter in
the Hitler era.
And then after our arrest, my wife was
also arrested, she was in another prison.
I have not seen her for 14 years.
But during our arrest, the Jewish Christians from
Romania emigrated to Israel.
And now there are Jewish-Christian communities in
Israel, and they are all from this German
carpenter from the Hitler era.
So we think, how connected we are to
the German brothers.
In the time of the great persecution of
Jews in our country, the German brothers held
on to us.
They hid Jews, they sheltered Jews.
They also took their defense openly.
There was a German Baptist priest in Romania,
Johannes Fleischer.
There were six Jews and a Romanian in
front of the court.
And a Jew in front of the court,
that was certain condemnation.
There was no possibility of ever becoming free.
And suddenly a German Baptist priest comes and
greets with Heil Hitler and with the raised
hand and says, I take responsibility for these
Jews.
They belong to God.
And he spoke with such power that during
the Hitler era, the judge convinced us to
speak freely.
It was unimaginable, it was a miracle of
God.
And then it got worse in our country
for the Germans.
The Russians invaded our country and deported the
Germans to the Soviet Union.
Many died there.
And then the Jewish Christians hid Germans in
their homes.
In Christ there is no such thing.
In the world you hate each other.
Races, classes, nations, religions.
In Christ there is no such thing.
We are very connected to the German people.
And I am grateful that the Germans opened
the kingdom of heaven to me.
And now with this introduction, the text I
will speak about.
It is from the book of Joshua, chapter
5, verse 10.
In the German translation it says in the
evening.
The corresponding Hebrew word means in the twilight.
The Easter festival, the Passover festival as it
is called among the Jews, is held in
the twilight.
What does this mean?
There is always something twilight at every festival.
It is only partly a joy.
At Jewish weddings, when everyone is happy, a
glass is broken to remember that not everywhere
is only joy.
Even in marriage, not everything is always joy.
Remember that suffering can also come.
The Jews have been celebrating the Passover festival
for about 4,000 years.
As a small child, I experienced it with
my parents.
Every year our parents told us, God has
done a miracle for us and has led
us out of the Egyptian slavery.
This is what the Jews have always prayed
for on this day.
But then came the Babylonian slavery.
And the Jews in Babylon, like the slaves,
thanked God that he took them out of
the Egyptian slavery.
And then came the Roman slavery.
Jews were sold as slaves.
Countless were slaughtered.
The Jews did not ask themselves the question,
why are we suffering now?
They said, we thank God that 2,000
years ago, you freed us from the Egyptian
slavery.
And then came the times of the Inquisition,
when the Jews were burned at the Sheterhofen.
And the Jews said, thank God that you
freed us from the Egyptian slavery 3,000
years ago.
And then came the Hitler time.
You know what the Jews suffered here.
In concentration camps, religious Jews held the Easter
fire and said in this prayer, we thank
God that you freed us from the Egyptian
slavery.
But there was a doubt.
God did such a miracle.
He freed his people from the Egyptian slavery.
But then came so many other slavery and
some of them were much worse than the
Egyptians.
In the Egyptian slavery they had meat pots.
I have not seen any meat pots in
prison.
And they were together with their families and
had children.
There were much worse things.
There was light.
But there is a bit of darkness in
every light.
I will tell you something from my early
childhood.
When I was six or seven years old,
we lived next to a synagogue.
And the children played in the courtyard of
the synagogue.
In the synagogue, every day, the following prayer
is said three times.
This is said three times a day.
And one day we played in the courtyard
of the synagogue.
And a man came in tears and prayed
to the rabbi, please, please urgently a special
prayer for my daughter, a small child and
for her to die.
Please, please, God, heal the sick.
Please a prayer.
And the rabbi immediately gathered the Jews who
were still there.
And they said a prayer that God should
heal this child.
I was also there.
I was a sick child myself.
And I was very impressed.
I was already in hospital at the age
of six.
And the next day, when we played again,
the same man came and prayed to the
rabbi to see that this child would be
buried.
I had a nervous attack.
I shouted to the rabbi, what kind of
God is that?
We prayed to him so that he should
heal this child.
And this child is dead.
This man is now unhappy.
How is this possible?
The rabbi answered, you fool, what kind of
stupid questions do you ask?
Get out of here.
And I went out.
And since then I have been out of
the synagogue.
But whether you call a person a fool
for such questions or not, this question is
naked in the heart of every person.
How is it that we sing, as this
beautiful choir has sung, God is love, God
is joy, God is goodness.
And the whole Bible is full of such
statements.
In every sermon it is said, God is
good.
And then such terrible things happen.
In Russia, the brother Burda, a young man
in the army, 20 or 22 years old,
was not simply killed.
To be killed in Russia is a favor.
His tongue was cut off, his eyes were
pierced, and the fingernails, you can see, they
were crushed.
He died under such suffering.
And the mother of Burda, probably also a
believer, she sings, God is love, and all
that, and she reads it in the Bible,
and God is good.
But she is a human being, she is
excluded.
This is not a question in her heart.
Yes, but this God who has done such
miracles, he took the three in the book
of Daniel, he took them out of the
fire.
Another out of a lion's den.
And my child had to die under such
terrible suffering.
That was Burda.
There are many other such names.
A Popov was found blind.
Then there was the famous Khmara of Kolunda,
we have his photograph.
Also a Baptist from Russia, his tongue was
cut off.
Bogdan and Klipa in Romania were hanged by
the communists.
Theodosius was electrified.
And everywhere such things occur.
And you have the Passover festival, we all
have Christian festivals.
We come on Sundays and praise the love
of God.
But we all somehow praise it in the
twilight.
Each of us has his own suffering.
So many suffer from their children.
It is sometimes terrible suffering for your children.
For your grandchildren.
Some physical illness, or some spiritual experiences of
these children that are terrible that you experience
them.
Others suffer from their parents, who do not
understand them.
Others suffer from their in-laws.
You loved a girl, the girl cheated you,
the boy cheated you.
There are so many types of suffering.
And God governs this world.
And God is love.
And God can do great miracles.
And he has done it so many times.
The whole Bible is full of miracles of
God.
And if I need a miracle, then it
does not come.
It was often suggested to our mission, the
Mercer Church and me, that the Wormland exaggerates.
Such terrible things.
They can not exist.
The communist atrocities can not be exaggerated.
Yesterday I read Monde, this is the most
important newspaper in France, as well as the
Frankfurter Allgemeine in Germany.
A world newspaper.
And it describes the socialist Africa, the country
Guinea, where the dictator Sicou Touré was overthrown
a month ago.
So his regime was overthrown.
And now we learn what happened in the
prisons.
Prisoners were forced to swallow living mice.
To swallow living mice.
How they were tortured there, can not be
said where girls and children are present.
Can not be said.
Terrible things.
They had cells three meters by four.
You can imagine what three meters by four
are.
Up to 30 prisoners were thrown in.
And they simply suffocated.
Others starved.
They talked about when the guards ate bananas
there.
So here banana is a delicious bit in
Germany, but there the bananas grow.
When the guard ate a banana, then the
prisoners ate, when they found the peel of
the banana.
When I read that, I remember when I
was in prison, when the guards ate sausage
and threw away the skin, we considered it
as a delicious bit to have this skin.
And when the guard ate melon, we ate
the peel of this melon, and that was
a good day for us.
Such things now occur in communist Africa.
In Mozambique, another communist state.
If you want to have documentation from us,
in our books, in our magazines, you can
find the documentation about it in Mozambique.
This is in the southeast of Africa.
There is a terrible persecution of Christians there.
And a Christian couple was arrested with five
or six children.
The five or six children were tied to
a chain.
Then the mother was given an axe in
her hand.
And they said to her, if you yourself
cut off the head of your husband, then
you would save your life and the lives
of your children.
If you don't do that, we will cut
off his head and all your children.
What would you have done?
Would you have killed your husband to save
the children?
Or would you have let them all die
so that you would not be guilty?
In such circumstances, one cannot think well.
Nobody has anything to judge.
She stabbed her husband in the head with
an axe.
She did not kill him.
She wounded him.
She went crazy.
And the children were killed by the communists.
The Religious News Service of America on April
4 this year reported from Zimbabwe, another communist
country.
It used to be called Rhodesia.
With the help of the West German government
and with the help of the Evangelical Church
of Germany, the communist government was brought to
power.
There in Zimbabwe.
They called themselves Free Fighters.
They supported them with a lot of money.
The church supported them, and the West German
government supported them.
And now in Zimbabwe, I am just coming
from South Africa, in Zimbabwe there is a
big drought.
You can't find any water to drink.
But there is a government that has great
precautions.
It has reserved some water.
This water is boiled, and the babies are
thrown into this boiling water, because they belong
to the debile tribe, which is not communist.
When the Shona tribe was somehow won by
this government.
And babies are thrown into boiling water.
People, Christians and non-Christians, are buried up
to the neck, and then shot.
We have the image of such an execution
in Africa.
And I could go on and on, tell
you about such cruel acts.
And you ask yourself the question, yes, God
is love, and God is good, and such
terrible things happen, such things happen to his
children, and such terrible things happen in my
life.
I have suffered a lot in my life,
since childhood, and I suffer even more now,
than I have ever suffered in prison.
And people ask themselves the question, how does
it come?
They have their religious celebrations, Passover for the
Jews, Easter for the Christians, and all kinds
of celebrations.
We have our celebrations.
But all our celebrations are in doubt.
Somehow in the depths of the heart, everyone
is naked.
How does it come with the suffering?
So these damn communists, say some who spread
atheism and persecute Christians.
Yes, but how did it come that he
became a communist?
Why is he an atheist?
He now forces atheism on the youth in
Russia.
But before he forced atheism, how did he
become an atheist?
How did the other atheists become?
How did Lenin become an atheist, and Marx,
and all the others?
It is this big problem of suffering, which
is a problem not only in communism, but
also here.
Here, too, a lot of suffering is suffered.
There is probably not a single person in
this room who has not yet known and
still knows a great suffering.
And who cannot reconcile this with the thought
of a loving God.
On Carthage, when the son of God, the
loving son of God, who performed such miracles,
turned the water into wine, and he was
at the cross, and he could not get
a drop of water.
He was full of blood all over his
body.
He was whipped.
Nails in his hands and feet.
The whole body was in pain.
At the foot of the cross, his holy
mother saw him crying.
So much pain.
The best who has ever lived on earth.
But why all this pain?
These are the questions that are asked.
From whom are they asked?
From the living.
I know a category of people who never
ask these questions.
Those who are in the cemeteries.
Dead people do not ask questions.
Dead people have no problems.
Dead people have no headaches.
Nothing frightens them.
Nothing creates difficulties for them.
They lie quietly in their tombs.
The problems only exist as long as you
are alive.
Do you want to get rid of the
problems?
Why are you alive?
It is such a sin to be alive.
The Bible says we should die with Jesus.
Did you die with Jesus when Jesus was
a corpse in the grave?
When Jesus was human?
Did he ask the question, my God, my
God, why did you leave me?
In the grave he did not ask any
more questions.
And the Bible tells us we should die
with Jesus in Romans chapter 16.
The dead do not ask questions.
The Bible knows two kinds of dead.
Some are dead in sin and others are
dead for sin The dead are so calm.
I have seen so many dead people around
me.
So many died next to me.
They had so many problems, so many questions,
so many doubts.
And all of a sudden they were all
gone.
They were dead.
Why do you wait for physical death to
get rid of the plague of questions?
Die with Jesus of this world and these
problems.
Yes, as long as I am, I feel.
Be not.
In chapter 2, verse 16 it is written,
My beloved is mine and I am his.
In Hebrew Dodili Vani Lo Lo means be
and does not mean.
You can translate this verse My beloved is
mine and I am not.
Only he is.
Apostle Paul says, I do not live.
He had no more problems.
He said, I do not live.
Christ lives in me.
And Christ is God.
Now he is no longer human.
He is the glorified God.
He decides everything.
He does everything.
He does not ask questions.
And when he lives in me, then all
this confusion of thoughts is heard.
All this perplexity.
The whole world is now facing problems for
which it has no answer.
President Reagan has no answer.
Your president is also called Richard Wieg.
Your president and your chancellor.
Nobody has answers to the problems of this
world.
Living and existing need answers.
The Bible teaches us, die for this world
and its problems.
Die for sin.
Be as a non-existent.
My beloved is mine and I am not.
I do not live.
I have given up mine.
Christ lives in me.
Jesus says, do you want to follow me?
Deceive yourself.
Deceive.
Give up.
Give up this I.
That always makes life so hard.
There are not only the plagues.
Each of us has plagues in life.
But apart from the plagues in life, we
have the questions about the plagues.
There was a man who lived in Auschwitz.
And then he came out of Auschwitz.
Things were over and he was in a
synagogue.
And a rabbi explained why there were all
these pains in Auschwitz.
And this poor Jew stood up and said,
Rabbi, wasn't it enough that I was there
in the concentration camp for three years?
I had so much to bear there.
Now I also have to bear your sermon.
Leave me alone.
The one who denies himself, who gives up
himself, whose life becomes Christ, who is dead
to this world, he is free from all
this evil and all this ambiguity and all
this confusion and he can celebrate his festivities
without the plagues of doubt.
He can celebrate them in the light.
The twilight has disappeared.
There is a story that once a man
came to a preacher and complained that so
many people speak bad things about me and
others.
And the preacher said to him, Go to
the cemetery.
Go from one grave to another and insult
every dead person.
I can't do that.
It's my responsibility.
I sent you.
If God asks you why you insulted the
dead, you should say, My preacher told me
so.
He went there and insulted the dead.
He came back.
Did you insult them?
Yes.
Now go again and stand in front of
every grave and praise the dead.
And come back and tell me what happened.
What happened?
Nothing happened.
So the dead let themselves be insulted.
It doesn't concern them.
They let themselves be praised.
Die for this world.
Die for your appearance.
Die for sin.
Be dead.
Stop being.
My beloved is mine.
I am not.
Not I live, says the apostle Paul.
Christ lives.
I can't be insulted anymore.
I can't be tortured anymore.
The I has stopped.
This is the deepest teaching of the Bible.
It doesn't give you an answer to the
question why all this suffering.
It says, don't ask questions.
Stop being.
Christ should live in you.
He is the answer to all questions.
I remember when we were in prison.
I was alone in the cell for years.
10 meters underground.
For years I never saw the sun, the
moon, stars.
I forgot that these things exist.
And I was only in prison for 14
years, which is not much according to the
communist standard.
Brother Krapow died not long ago, after 28
years in prison.
And there is a Lithuanian brother Petkus who
has been in prison for 35 years.
And an orthodox monk, Basil Shipilov, has been
in communist prison for 40 years.
And in China, Fang Xinyuan was in prison
for 26 years.
He was released and the underground work started
again.
Now he is sentenced to 10 years again
at the age of 76 years.
And in Cuba, the brother Gomez has been
in prison for 24 years.
And we never saw the sun, the moon,
stars, snow, rain.
We never saw a color.
For 14 years I have not seen a
color.
Only the gray walls of the cell and
our gray uniform.
I had forgotten that there is yellow and
purple and blue and green.
Our world was gray.
We never had the Bible or any other
book.
We never had a pencil in our hand
and never a piece of paper.
There were beatings, there was torture, which I
will not tell you.
You would not sleep at night if you
knew how to torture the brothers and sisters
there.
And there was something else.
I have not seen a child for 14
years.
I have not seen a girl for 14
years.
And there was something else in this prison
block in which we were held.
There was complete silence.
For years I never heard a sound.
I never heard the voice of a person.
I never heard a whisper.
And there were all kinds of questions.
How is it with my family?
Is my mother still alive?
Is my wife still alive?
Is she still in prison?
What happened to my children?
Did they become bandits?
Did they become young communists?
What happened to them?
Did they die?
And then in the evening I went to
a corner of the cell and said the
old, old word.
God, is it your world or mine?
Is it your church or mine?
Do I have to worry or do you?
If it is your world and your church,
please worry for them.
I am tired, I go to sleep.
Good night, my God.
We will see each other again tomorrow morning.
It is over.
It is no longer me who lives.
It is Christ who lives.
And Christ has no questions to ask.
He decides everything.
For him, nothing is a problem.
The HMK, our charity, consists of about 40
countries of the free world.
We also have our organization in America.
We had a meeting of the board of
our mission.
We sat together and discussed the various problems
of this mission.
A mission has many problems.
And my granddaughter, maybe six years old, was
playing with toys on the carpet.
And suddenly she interrupted us and asked, Oh,
dad, what does the word problem mean?
I hear her say, problem, problem, what is
a problem?
Then I told her what a problem is.
She said, not that, I understand roughly what
the word problem means.
But where does the word problem appear in
the Bible?
I said, the word problem does not appear
in the Bible.
You are all preachers, and I see you
so angry and so sad about something that
is not in the Bible.
There are no problems in the Bible.
There is a God in the Bible.
There is a God, there is a salvation.
And there is no salvation anywhere.
The salvation is in heaven, and I am
here on earth.
And he has it good and he is
joyful and he knows everything.
And I am here on earth and I
know nothing.
And I have my doubts and I have
my worries.
But I do not live, and the salvation
lives in me.
And the salvation is today in Gummelsbach and
sits here on the platform.
He lives here and he can also sit
there in the second row and in the
fifth row.
He is the one who leads the real
life in us.
If you have understood that from the Bible,
then comes the real peace, then comes the
joy, then comes the Passover festival, the Easter
festival, in the light instead of in the
twilight.
Otherwise it is always the mixture of light
and darkness.
Then I refer to the word that the
prophet Elias once said to the Jews.
How long will you hang on both sides?
We want to be faithful, but not to
give up our reason.
We also want to keep this and that.
You can't keep both.
You can't live on your own and have
Christ.
You have to give up yourself so that
Christ can live in you.
There is no combination between Christ and me.
There are hybrids, you can mix different plants,
but you can't mix herbs with a rhinoceros.
That does not exist.
Jesus is God and I am me.
And as long as I exist, Jesus cannot
give me an answer.
I have to give up the I.
And then I don't get the answer, but
the question stops.
There comes this peace.
Christ lives.
He knows best how it is.
When someone comes to Jesus, while Jesus was
human, and says to him, good teacher, he
answers, only one is good.
Only the number one is good.
There must be no questioner and no interrogator.
There is one God.
In 1 Corinthians 6, verse 17 it is
written, whoever hangs on to the Lord is
one spirit with him.
Now if I am one spirit with God,
who asks questions to whom?
And who has whom to answer?
I am one spirit with the Creator, with
the one who governs everything, who determines everything,
who is love, who is wisdom, who knows
everything.
And there is no questioner.
And this is the peace of God, which
transcends all understanding.
We had a brother in Romania.
I will tell you about a Romanian brother,
and one about a Soviet brother.
We had a brother, who was in prison.
And in prison, when the rules of the
prison were not respected, they could judge him,
that he should get 25 lashes.
But it was not a lash, it was
a lash to the blood.
And this brother was also judged, that he
should get 25 lashes.
And in such a big hall, there were
narrow tables, like this one.
You had to take off your clothes and
bend over this table.
The hands were chained to the feet under
the table.
And then there were two communists above you
with rubber buttons or sticks.
They wanted to have fun, the communists.
And they said to the Christians, if you
sing us a song, then you will get
only 10 lashes instead of 25 lashes.
They asked the Catholics to sing a song
in honor of the Virgin Mary.
A song from the Gospels.
Usually the brothers said, we don't sing for
your pleasure.
We don't do that.
But when this brother was told that he
should sing, not out of fear, he answered,
well, I will sing for you.
Psalm 121.
I raise my eyes to the mountains.
Forget that you are in a hall in
Gummelsbach.
You are in a prison hall.
Naked and chained Christians are bent over you,
the communists with sticks.
And suddenly someone starts singing.
I raise my eyes to the mountains.
Where will help come to me?
How can you sing something like that?
You raise your eyes to the mountains.
You can't raise your eyes.
You are so tied up that you can
only look down.
He doesn't let himself be touched.
And he continues to sing.
My help comes from the Lord who made
heaven and earth.
Heaven and earth may have been made or
not, we don't know that.
But that help comes from him, that is
certainly not true.
We have beaten a lot of people and
no help has come to anyone.
No help will come to you either.
And he doesn't let himself be touched.
He can't let your foot slide.
His foot slipped.
Where is the truth of this word that
he sang?
And this brother was calm.
And his soul is still calm.
And because he knew something, a secret that
his torturers didn't know.
In the first letter of Peter, chapter 3,
it is written about a man that almost
no one knows.
The hidden man of the heart.
People live 70, 80 years in this world
and know countless friends and acquaintances and relatives.
They have a big list on which they
send Christmas greetings and don't know one good
friend.
A friend who lives in their heart.
The hidden man of the heart.
How few know him.
Do you know the hidden man of your
heart?
There are such toys.
Maybe you have seen them.
A big egg.
You can take it apart.
In the big egg is a small egg.
In the small egg is an even smaller
egg.
In this small egg is an even smaller
egg.
This is especially a funny toy.
Psychologists tell us that we have complexes, psychosis
and neurosis.
The Bible doesn't say that.
The Bible says that we have a man
in us.
There is this outer man and in this
outer man there is an inner man, a
real human being, the hidden man of the
heart, a whole human being with will, with
thoughts, with love, with hate, with everything you
want, with feelings, with everything you want.
A whole man is in me.
And this whole man in me, this outer
man, dies.
Nobody has seen this inner man die.
The communists can't reach this inner man.
The Nazis can't reach him.
The inquisitors can't reach him.
The Romans can't reach him.
He won't get sick.
He can't be beaten.
He can't be tortured.
He can't be starved.
He can't be harmed.
This is the pearl of great price.
Jesus says, sell everything for this pearl.
This is the treasure buried in the earth.
This is Christ in us, the hope of
glory.
And if you know him, if you have
identified with him, and if you see him,
if you ask him, I am this inner
man, the hidden man of the heart, not
the outer man, then you can sing with
peace of mind while you are lying naked
on a table and others start to beat
you.
I have seen Christians laughing under terrible torture.
I have a letter from a Soviet-German
who is in prison.
His name is well known, Rudolf Klassen.
I have his letter with me.
This is not the original, but I have
the original with me.
He writes in this letter, which he smuggled
out.
His brother, David Klassen, was in prison for
10 years.
Now he is in prison.
He broke his chin bone.
In Russia, homosexuality is punished in prisons.
In every prison, they have cells for homosexuals.
And they put young Christians in cells for
homosexuals.
And they tell them, you can do whatever
you want.
Imagine what kind of torture that is.
And Rudolf Klassen, who experienced this, writes, Prison
taught me to keep God's commandments.
I was here like in hell.
I was put in a cell with homosexuals.
I was beaten hard.
But I found that the yoke of Jesus
is light and his burden good.
How heavy is our yoke?
How much do we have to complain in
Germany?
You have to strike.
You only have a few thousand marks a
year.
You still have to strike.
And he writes, I think the yoke of
Jesus is very light.
His burden is very good.
And from Psalm 16, I thank God.
Nobody can take my joy from me.
The joy of being put in a cell
with homosexuals.
Nobody can take this joy from me.
I became an invalid for my whole life.
My lungs are attacked by tuberculosis.
But my beloved is mine.
And I am his.
As long as you have an I, you
have questions.
Why do we suffer?
Rudolf Klassen has no doubt.
He is loved.
He has a light yoke.
He is with Jesus.
He is fine.
Is that crazy?
Here I have a letter from a woman.
Aniela Zalewski.
She was in prison in Russia.
She is with Klassen.
Zalewski was in prison during Stalin's time.
But Stalin's time is the same as now.
A little different.
The Christians suffered a lot.
Especially women suffered.
One day the communists became very nice to
the believers.
They said, everything will change.
Everything will change.
Now you will be treated well.
Soon it will be Christmas.
We will make a Christmas tree for you.
And each of you will see, you will
receive gifts for Christmas.
The Christians, both the evangelicals and the orthodox
and the Catholics, were surprised.
And on Christmas Eve, they were taken out
of the yard.
And it was really a big Christmas tree,
decorated and burning with candles.
And under the Christmas tree was the big
gift of corpses of murdered brothers and sisters.
And from there, Aniela Zalewski writes.
She was in prison for a year.
Life is interesting and beautiful.
Life is beautiful.
How is your life?
We have so much to complain about in
our life.
And she writes from this prison, my life
is beautiful.
It is so good to live life in
its different forms.
I do not regret the past that brought
me here to prison, its Christian activity.
I would not give this last year of
my life, the year of prison, for all
the peaceful years before.
I regret only one thing, that I suffered
so little.
I do not want that.
How is it possible?
There were such great miracles.
And now the miracle does not happen to
me.
And I have to suffer.
What is the answer to that?
Do you renounce the I?
Only the I has the suffering.
Only the I has the problems.
Do you renounce the I and make out
of Christ your I?
Christ in glory, in peace, He knows what
He is doing.
He does not ask questions, because He is
the answer to all questions.
And there comes into your soul the peace
that transcends everything.
Who wants to be pure before God, must
be pure of the I.
Being less pure than this does not mean
being pure before God.
I just want to tell you about one
Russian.
His name is Nikolai Moiseev.
Unfortunately, he is not well known in Germany.
Nikolai Moiseev.
Not to be confused with Vanya Moiseev.
Vanya Moiseev was one who was killed.
His brother Roman Moiseev is also in prison.
But one of a completely different family.
His name is Nikolai Moiseev.
He is not in prison.
Believers who were in prison were very, very
happy people.
There are others who are in a madhouse.
Many are in a madhouse.
Khailo has been in a madhouse for years.
You will find several of my books out
there.
Gefolter für Christus, my last book, Wo Christus
noch immer leidet, and other books.
You will find the documentation there.
A book by my wife, Mit und ohne
Richard.
You will find the documentation there about all
these prisoners.
You write.
We have it from the Soviet press.
They put 82 Christians in a psychiatric asylum
because they prayed for a long time.
Praying for a long time is a proof
of madness.
If the communists take over West Germany, I
pray that God will protect you, but it
can happen.
If the communists take over West Germany, the
West German Christians will not come to the
madhouse because they did not pray for a
long time.
They look at the clock when they pray,
instead of looking at God when they pray.
But in Russia they pray and they come
to the madhouse.
I have never seen a bride who, when
the groom visits her, should tell the groom,
look, you have exactly 20 minutes for your
visit, you can kiss me for 5 minutes.
There is no such thing.
Prayer is a conversation between a bride and
her groom.
And you don't look at the clock.
And for that, Nikolai Moiseev has been in
a psychiatric asylum for 16 years.
Do you know what it is to be
in a forced jacket?
You are in a forced jacket.
It tickles you, you can't scratch yourself.
Have you ever thanked God that you can
scratch yourself?
We have Russian brothers who can't scratch themselves.
They are in a forced jacket.
Do you thank God that you can wipe
your nose?
You can't wipe your nose.
You have your hands in a forced jacket.
You get food and have to lick it
like a dog because you don't have a
free hand to use a spoon.
And if you put mentally healthy people in
a madhouse, there is a great danger that
they will become mad themselves.
And they get all kinds of injections.
I don't know what these injections are.
All kinds of chemicals to spoil their mind.
We had a last report.
His family went to visit Nikolai Moiseev in
the madhouse.
He no longer recognized his mother and his
wife.
His eyes were empty.
He didn't know who these people were.
They called him Nikolai.
He didn't know anymore that he was Nikolai.
And now prepare yourselves for the most difficult
thing I have ever known in my life.
I have known a lot of suffering.
Nikolai Moiseev, who for 16 years suffered the
most difficult thing for Christ, no longer knows
who Christ is.
He sacrificed faith and love for Christ.
I know no precedent in history for what
happened to Nikolai Moiseev.
And if I know it here, I know
it from a report from Russia, then Russian
people also know it.
And they know about Burda, that his eyes
were shot out and his tongue was torn
out.
Yes, then why do people become Christians?
Why do these young girls become Christians?
Do you know what happens to your brothers
there?
Is it crazy?
Why did they become Christians?
Why did people become Christians when Paul preached
in Rome?
Everyone knew, if I accept Paul's sermon, I
can be thrown in front of lions and
tigers.
And people became Christians.
Would you have become a Christian if it
would have cost so much to become a
Christian?
Nikolai Moiseev and the Russian Christians and the
Chinese and the Romanian and the others who
are in these circumstances, they know something.
There is not only this Nikolai Moiseev and
not only this Richard Wurmrand and not only
this one, there is the hidden man of
the heart, to whom all the drugs of
the psychiatrist have not reached, to whom no
madness has reached.
He has never forgotten anything.
The communists have never done anything to him.
I am one who can play the violin
well.
If you take the violin away from me,
I can no longer play, but I am
still a violinist.
His brain, his material brain, has lost the
violin.
But here is the hidden man of the
heart, who has remained, who has become more
beautiful.
And once he will show himself what kind
of splendor has developed in him.
There is this other life, the hidden man.
There is Christ in you.
You do not ask yourself questions in faith,
but you renounce the I who has questions.
I read again, and I end with this.
Whoever follows the Lord is one spirit with
him.
And who asks whom?
And who complains to whom?
And who has so many things to demand?
We are one spirit with him and we
enter into his peace and tranquility.
And then you can look at your enemies
with love.
Nothing against you.
This evening it was announced through a piece
of paper, that Christians should fight against communism.
Should we fight?
What we do, I cannot decide.
I can only decide about myself.
Should I fight against communism?
Which me?
I have renounced the I for a long
time.
Should Christ also fight?
He is the winner.
He knows what he is doing.
And Christians can go to prison, to psychiatric
institutions, and even more in German houses, where
there is suffering.
There is suffering in your houses, there is
suffering in mine.
We can keep peace and tranquility, if I
no longer live, but Christ lives in me.
This is what I had to tell you.
I hope you understood me.
And if your I did not understand, then
renounce your I.
Then you don't even need to understand it.
Christ lives in you, he understands everything.
This is what I had to tell you.
And now just one more practical word.
I speak on behalf of the help section
of the Martyrs' Church.
We help the persecuted Christians in China, Vietnam,
Cambodia, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, in Cuba,
in Nicaragua.
Everywhere there are these persecutions.
We smuggle in Bible and Christian literature.
Don't ask how we smuggle.
A smuggler who says how he smuggles is
a bad smuggler.
The communists have always scolded against it.
You should not smuggle in the Bible.
And we love our enemies too.
And if they asked us not to smuggle
in the Bible, then we should do it
out of love for our enemies.
And now we smuggle in printing machines.
They should print them themselves.
Today I had the report that in China
alone 23 printing machines were smuggled in.
How do you smuggle in a whole machine?
Even the communists want to know.
But they are smuggled in.
They get Christian literature.
By the way, the brothers who came from
Russia.
There are a lot of them here.
They can all testify that 10-15 years
ago there were hardly any Bibles in Russia.
Now the situation is no longer like that.
There are still not enough Bibles.
But many have come in.
And it is different than it used to
be.
And we do something else.
We help families of Christian martyrs.
There are thousands in prison.
We know one prison in China.
Only one.
There are 400 prisoners.
But they do not only arrest the prisoners.
And they have not only one prison in
China.
Nobody knows how many are in China.
Nobody knows how many are in Russia.
We know about 150 or 200.
I do not know the exact number of
Baptists in prison.
But there are also Pentecostals and Adventists and
Orthodox and Catholics.
There are a lot of them in prison
for their faith.
And also the Baptists.
Some may be locked up.
In Nicaragua there are many in prison.
And we help families of Christian martyrs in
one country.
I will not name the country.
That was one of the greatest joys of
my life.
Two months ago we bought 14 houses for
families of Christian martyrs.
That was the greatest joy of my life.
Imagine a luxurious German house.
But it is a house where they can
live.
How many times have you eaten today?
How many times have children of martyrs and
children of prisoners eaten today?
There are children who suffer a lot.
And they should get a piece of bread.
And it is wrong to give them only
a piece of bread.
They should also have a little chocolate and
a toy.
That is also necessary.
And we try to help as much as
possible.
Each of you can help.
Some with a lot.
Someone gave us 100,000 marks for a
printer.
Not everyone can give 100,000 marks.
Someone can give 200,000 marks.
But someone can only give 2 marks, or
5 marks, or 10, or 100, or 1
,000.
If you collect it, it will be 100
,000 again.
We are not hunters for your money.
You will be asked to help in this
work.
I hope you will do it wholeheartedly.
But not only you can help this underground
church.
This underground church can help you much more
than you can help it.
It can help you through an example of
selflessness, of giving up the self, of peace.
I think all the works of Goethe, and
Schiller, and Lessing, or whatever you have in
Germany, are not worth like this letter from
Rudolf Klassen.
A man in such a terrible plight, who
speaks about his joy, and how good it
is, and what a beautiful fate, and you
can't take the joy, and my beloved is
mine, as if he were somewhere in a
royal palace.
This is what Jesus can give.
And this gift you can get from Jesus
through the example of the persecuted Christians.
That's all I had to tell you.
God bless you.