Dear brothers and sisters, Whoever believes in the
Son has eternal life.
Whoever does not believe in the Son will
not see life, but the wrath of God
will remain upon him.
The redemption of a person depends on his
faith in Jesus Christ.
Jesus wanted to redeem people and called them
up, believe in God and believe in me.
Now something wonderful happens.
People declare themselves ready to believe in him,
to fulfill his highest desire.
His adversaries stand at the foot of the
cross.
There were significant personalities, high priests, scribes and
elders.
They speak of the crucified Jesus Hortus.
If he is the king of Israel, he
will now ascend from the cross, so we
will believe in him.
Nevertheless, Jesus does not descend from the cross,
although he had the power to do miracles.
And he leaves them in disbelief.
He leaves them under the wrath of God.
The redeemer leaves them unredeemed.
He does not fulfill the condition set by
them.
He does not accept conditions.
A rich man in hell assures Abraham that
if one of the dead would go to
his unbelieving brothers, they would do this blasphemy.
Jesus stands up from the dead, but does
not show himself to his unbelieving adversaries.
He does not go to the high priests
and scribes who might have done blasphemy under
these circumstances.
He only shows himself to his disciples.
He wants us to do blasphemy.
He wants us to believe in him, but
unconditionally.
Only this is true blasphemy, true faith.
Everything else is self-deception.
Why should we not believe in him?
He has fulfilled so many of my prayers.
But Bishop Walsh, the famous evangelical writer Wotschmenny,
Wang Mingdao, have been in the prisons of
Red China for more than 15 years.
Khrapov, Prokofiev, Aida Skrypnikova and thousands of others
were tortured in the prisons of Soviet Russia.
They pray in difficult moments for liberation or
at least for the relief of their loss.
But their prayers are not heard.
They starve, freeze and are beaten.
But their faith is independent of what happens
to them.
They love the Son of God, the fullness
of all beauty and wisdom, who sometimes shows
his love in an incomprehensible way for us
and sometimes, through sharing, conceals his heavy suffering.
They love him without any if.
They love him with nevertheless and nevertheless, as
all the heroes of faith did.
This is the victory of faith and love.
Children and nannies should not be shown half
-finished things.
Sit down next to a painter while he
paints a picture.
In the beginning there are only dots of
all colors, then incomprehensible lines and dots.
It is supposed to be a painting, but
it is very dissimilar to the person who
painted it.
A caricature.
This is how the child and the nanny
judge.
The sensible person waits, sometimes for many years.
Leonardo da Vinci painted Gioconda for 40 years.
Only when it is finished can you see
the masterpiece.
Joseph was sold by his brothers.
He did not even have peace as a
slave.
Because he did not want to have a
marriage, he was imprisoned under the charge of
rape and marriage.
What kind of God would allow such a
thing?
Nannies and children ask themselves.
But wait!
Joseph becomes Chancellor of Egypt, savior of the
Egyptian people of Hungary and savior of his
brothers.
He becomes a symbol of redemption.
He had loved God all the time, hoped
and trusted.
He had faith unconditionally and in the end
he won.
He saw the reward, not the temporary suffering.
So do our brothers and sisters who suffer
under persecution.
So does sister Malozemlova, whose seven children were
taken away because she taught them in Soviet
Russia in Christian faith.
So does the Sloboda family, whose children were
deported under the same accusation.
So do the children in the atheistic orphanage.
It all depends on what you look at
and how you look at it.
I was surrounded by family in my lovely
house.
Through the window I saw beautiful flowers in
the garden.
Now I sit in a prison cell and
there are gray walls around me.
Should I lose my faith in it?
The external circumstances have changed.
But I look at the gray cell walls
with the same eyes with which I looked
at the flowers.
They still exist, my eyes, from millions of
wonderfully constructed and working cells, from which invisible
thin telephone lines to the 120 million fibers
go to the brain and tell it what
it sees.
I can distinguish the different shades of gray
as I used to distinguish the different shades
of pink of the flowers.
The exterior changed, the eye remained.
With time I can become blind in the
dark cell.
The eye is also part of the past.
But it remains the consciousness, the spirit that
made it inventive, of how many millions of
cells the eye consists.
There is something indestructible in me.
No, faith and lies are not dependent on
external circumstances.
During the war I spoke to a German
Jew.
He was a judge.
He said to me, I used to believe
in God, but I can no longer believe
since such terrible things have happened to the
Jews.
Why did God allow them?
I asked him.
Before Hitler committed all these atrocities, did you
know that in the course of history many
other nations and groups of people were exterminated
in a merciless way?
You are an intellectual, and you must know
how entire populations in South America from the
Spaniards, how the Albigensians and Valdensians were exterminated.
You knew about the pogroms against the Armenians
at the beginning of this century in Turkey.
You knew all this and still believed in
God.
You can believe in a good God, although
you know about much suffering in the world.
But when I or my people come into
the category of the suffering, then everything stops.
Is this intellectually justified?
They are noble, and since then countless other
just people have been slain in an innocent
way.
And children of God still believed in God.
They do not need Jesus to descend from
the cross so that they believe.
Only a few hundred have seen the risen
Jesus.
Hundreds of millions believe in him without having
seen him.
Faith does not need miracles, because he himself
is a miracle.
In a world full of suffering, you still
believe and despite all this.
And you go to prison for it, and
you are burned to ashes, and you believe
in the loving and almighty Father.
Yes, what a miracle he did that I
should believe in him.
He did the greatest miracle that I believe
and do good without every miracle and say
to the only visible world, this is the
miracle.
Like 2000 years ago on Golgotha, the world
calls us today.
Modernize your theology, then we will believe.
It gives us conditions.
Get off of the theology of the cross,
then we will do booze.
Introduce jazz and pop music into the church.
Hold high-profile philosophical speeches instead of the
former simple preachings about Jesus.
Then we will believe.
And we want people to believe.
To lead them to believe is the whole
purpose of the existence of the church.
Conditions after conditions are set for us and
promises are given.
We will immediately believe if you leave the
old-fashioned gospel and replace it with a
social one.
Jesus did not even answer the proposal of
a cow trade.
Get off the cross, and then we will
believe.
He stayed on the cross and showed nothing
to his opponents The community of Christians still
considers it under their dignity to answer the
calls of the world.
If you want to have the redeeming faith,
you still have to believe, even though so
much seems old-fashioned to you.
The community of Christians keeps up with the
old fashion, with the fashion of Abel, with
the fashion of Noah, who built a little
ship when there was no sign of a
rainbow, with the fashion of Magdalene, whom the
Redeemer loved when he called out at the
cross, My God, my God, why did you
leave me?
We keep up with the old fashion of
Magdalene to believe and to love, even if
the Redeemer is a corpse in the grave.
The condition that I believe in is a
miracle enough for me.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, believed in the
resurrection without having seen the risen one.
Her faith was at such a high level
that Jesus was sure that she did not
need any apparitions.
We keep up with the old fashion and
take the mini skirts of modern theology, mini
skirts that get shorter and shorter until they
finally become the naked shame of the unbelief
called Christianity.
Do not wear them!
Keep these mini skirts!
Aida Skrypnikova, the heroine of the Russian underground
church, freezes and starves in the Toma camp
in Siberia.
At the age of 26, she is already
in prison for the fourth time.
And the German 23-year-old girl, Maria
Braun, suffers for her faith in Soviet prisons
and Rabin Shuk is locked up with all
his five sons.
They do not desire miracles.
Not even the miracle that German brothers should
show a sign of their solidarity with them.
They remain firm in their faith, even if
German Christians leave it to pray for them
and to help them tactfully.
They experience the greatest miracle.
Christ in them is the hope of glory.
This is the miracle world in which all
Christians live.
Amen.