Ladies and gentlemen, dear brethren and sisters, on
a Sunday morning, I walked towards my church
and mused about the sermon which I would
have to deliver.
My text was that the return of our
Savior is nigh, is even at the doors.
And I remember that I said to the
Lord, I can't preach about this text.
It makes no sense to me.
To be at the doors does not mean
to be nigh.
My soul is your bride, and you are
my bridegroom, and you are nigh for me
only if you have passed the threshold, not
if you stand at the door.
And even if in the room you would
still not be nigh to me, I wish
you in my embraces, only when I will
be one with you and you one with
me, then we will be nigh to each
other.
Luther said that a Christian is an alter
Christus, another Christ.
I believe what Saint Gertrude said in her
daily prayer.
Jesus, you are me and I am you.
You are not you, I am not myself,
but we both together are an entirely new
being.
I, you.
For a Christian, Jesus is not nigh when
he is at the doors.
He is nigh only when the Christian ceases
to live himself and Christ lives in him.
And when I was so debating with Jesus
a sermon, which I had to deliver after
half an hour, at once a car of
the secret police stopped near me.
Four men rushed out of the car.
In no time I was in the van
of the secret police.
I was handcuffed.
I was blindfolded.
I had been kidnapped by the communists.
I was taken to a prison cell.
And now let us all live in our
imagination this whole.
Blindfolded, you descend with me some slippery stairs.
I do not know where I am led.
A door opens before me.
This blindfold is taken away.
I am pushed into the cell.
The door is banged after me.
It is locked.
And now Jesus is no more simply at
the door.
He is at a locked door.
A door which I can't unlock.
What would be your first feeling if such
a thing would happen to you?
I can tell you what happened to me
first.
I trembled.
We knew already how the communists behave towards
prisoners.
It is not only beatings, whippings, but refined
tortures, cruelties, doping.
And I feared that under these atrocities my
faith might break.
I might become a traitor to the church
and speak out its secrets.
I was afraid of the tortures, of their
pain.
I did not know if only I was
arrested.
I did not know if at the same
time they had not arrested my wife too,
as well as brethren and sisters from the
church.
But somehow a Christian is another being than
usual man.
I had a frantic fright.
But it was curiously mixed with a quiet
peace.
And while trembling, while being afraid, I could
think about Jesus, that he once trembled.
The gospel tells that when he was in
the garden of Gethsemane, he passed through agony,
that he was sore amazed.
I had often wondered what these words, sore
amazed, meant.
To me they meant at that time that
he was afraid.
He knew that he would be terribly scorched.
He knew his mother would be there while
he would be scorched.
How would his mother bear it?
How would Saint Magdalene bear it, when nails
would be driven into his hands, a spike
into his feet, a crown of thorns would
be put on his head, and then to
hang naked on the cross, reviled by everybody.
And there was also another fear in Jesus.
The fear that having taken upon himself the
sins of the world, having been made sin,
by this he would be separated from the
one who constituted his life, from the one
who was his love, the Heavenly Father.
And so my mind went to that Jesus,
being sore amazed and in agony in the
garden of Gethsemane.
This happened in the first hours of my
arrest.
Then I remembered that in the Epistle to
the Hebrews, it is written that Jesus is
the image of God.
Now if Jesus feared in that moment, does
there exist any fear in God?
Does God ever fear?
I am a Jew.
The Hebrew was current to me.
Flashed through my mind the words known by
all of you.
The fear of God is the beginning of
wisdom.
In Hebrew, Yerat Adonai Reshit Chochmah.
This Yerat Adonai can be translated in two
manners.
It can mean my fear of God, my
sentiments of fear, or it can be translated
the fear which God has.
To understand the fear which God has is
the beginning of wisdom.
Now I wondered what fear can God have?
He surely can have a fear.
It is written in the Bible that the
Pharisees closed the gates of heaven for themselves
and for others.
God can use men whom he wishes to
have in heaven because I locked the door
for them.
By my behavior, by my false teaching, by
my making others to be disgusted of Christianity,
I can lock the door for men whom
God wishes to have in heaven.
God fears this.
So there exists a fearing God.
I would not subscribe now as a dogma
to whatever I tell you, but these were
the thoughts which flashed through my mind in
that time.
And then I understood why I had to
be behind a locked door, why Jesus stands
at a locked door.
God does not wish me to commit sins.
God does not wish me to hinder through
my sins the work of his salvation.
He wishes to purify me for a future
work, and therefore I have to be in
a prison cell.
And with this thought I quietened down.
Surely God had put me in prison for
this purpose, to purify me for a higher,
for a better work.
I was alone in a cell.
We have left this hole.
The cell is 30 feet below the earth.
The only pieces of furniture in it are
four boards which constitute a bed, a straw
mattress on it, and that's all.
You have a cup of water in the
cell, and some butter for other necessities.
The cell is some nine feet by six.
You have place to make only three steps.
You are never taken out from this cell
for a walk.
During years you will never see sun, moon,
snow, flowers, stars.
You will never have neither the Bible nor
any other book.
You will never see a man except the
interrogators who will beat and torture you.
You are alone in a cell.
They meant you to be alone.
But we were not alone.
At that time I slept during the day
as much as I could.
I had decided to pass always the whole
night in prayer and spiritual exercises.
I awoke when everyone went to sleep, and
I was never alone in the cell.
Around me were the victims of my life.
I had committed gross sins in my life.
I did not wish to have children when
I married.
I was not a Christian.
My wife was not a Christian.
Just make an abortion.
And in the cell now I saw these
my children.
And they asked, Father, why did you kill
me?
I have committed nothing wrong.
I have never harmed you.
Why did you take away my life?
And for nothing in the world could I
make these children disappear from my cell.
They just danced around in a mad dance
around me, pointing at me and calling me
murderer.
There were all the men whom I had
slandered, to whom I had lied.
There was Mother, whom I had made so
many times to weep.
Never have I seen her again.
She died while I was in prison, after
12 years of waiting, and her last words
had been, My Richard.
There were all those girls whom I had
defiled.
Everyone to whom I had committed wrong in
my life was there in my cell, dancing
around me, pointing at me, and calling me
with all kinds of bad names which I
knew to be true.
I am a Protestant, and I believe that
man is saved by faith alone, independent of
deeds.
There is one deed which saves, the fact
that Jesus Christ died on the cross for
us.
I knew that if I had committed all
the murders and whoredoms and lies and thefts
which have ever been committed in the whole
world during all history, lo, the Lamb of
God who takes away the sins of the
whole world, so my sins too.
This is what my faith told me.
But the conscience of a man is never
Protestant.
The conscience is always Catholic.
You can be the staunchest Protestant and say
faith and faith alone, and your conscience will
ask you, And what about your deeds?
I had a great struggle which lasted very
much until it broke through.
The blood of Jesus Christ has washed my
sins, and has washed also the sins of
the victims of my life, if they have
believed.
Zacchaeus had stolen from some Jew perhaps 100
dinars.
In any case, the Jew could not have
done much with 100 dinars.
It was a very small sum, but then
Zacchaeus repented, and he gave him back 400
dinars instead of the 100.
And now that Jew could open a little
shop, and I was sure that Jesus would
give to everyone whom I had made to
weep for every tear a pear, and that
he can give eternal life to those from
whom I had taken away this life.
And by the blood of Jesus Christ, I
and others who passed through this experience could
overcome the terrible remorses which we had for
whatever had been wrong in our past lives.
And now the victims of our lives had
disappeared.
The communists meant us to be alone, but
again we were not alone.
God had said it is not good for
man to be alone, and a man, if
he is put in solitary confinement, simply commits
sin if he remains alone.
Why should he?
He can have the company of angels.
He can just evoke them.
In Hebrew, the word davar means at the
same time word and thing, reality.
If a Hebrew reads the prologue to the
Gospel according to St. John, he would read
like this.
In the beginning was the davar, the reality,
and the davar, the reality, was with God,
and God was reality, because word and reality
are one and the same thing in the
language of the Revelation.
So if I say angel, I do not
say only a word.
I say a reality, and the angel is
so happy that I have called him, and
if I believe I can evoke him, I
can evoke his real presence.
Secondly, I believe in the communion of saints.
The Bible says that we have around us
a cloud of witnesses.
It is not said that they are somewhere
in heaven.
They are around us, and we felt their
nearness of the glorified saints.
We had a terrible time.
We were tortured and beaten.
Sometimes they behaved very nicely with us, and
they lured us, just give up your faith
and become our man, and you will be
free, et cetera.
You had to resist this temptation, and during
the night, the devil would be there in
your solitary cell.
It would be as if you could touch
him, and the devil would tell you, don't
you see that Jesus is not the Savior?
Because if he would be the Savior, he
would save you.
If he would be the Savior, he had
said, mine is the whole power on earth
and in heaven.
Well, if he has the whole power and
is so good, why does he not deliver
you?
In times ago, I had written books proving
that Jesus is the Savior, but because of
the terrible hunger, we had times with one
slice of bread a week, because of the
doping, and all the other things through which
we had passed, I had forgotten all the
proofs from the Old Testament that Jesus is
the Savior.
But I believed in the communion of saints,
and there was.
She surely was and is here even now.
There was Saint Mary Magdalene with us.
I wondered then if we understand rightly the
words that we love him because he, Jesus,
loved us first.
We love him because he has given us
forgiveness of sins.
We love him because he brings us to
paradise.
We love him because he has died on
the cross for us.
When Saint Mary Magdalene first loved him, when
she kissed his feet, why did she love
him?
She didn't know if he would forgive her
sins.
She didn't know if he would take her
to paradise.
He had not said a word yet.
She did not know if he would die
on the cross for her, if you would
have asked her, why do you love Jesus?
She would not have understood your question.
She would have asked, but whom else can
you love in this whole world?
Who is more lovable than he?
She loved him for love's sake.
She did not love him for his eternal
gifts.
She loved him and not his gifts.
And when the devil came with his terrible
temptation, look, Jesus does not give you deliverance.
Jesus does not give you any help.
We had the cloud of witnesses around us
who told us just love Jesus for himself
and not for his gifts.
Love him even if he will keep you
your whole life in prison, as Job said.
Love him, believe in him, even if he
slays you.
It is the purpose of the communion of
saints to strengthen you in time of great
temptation.
Another saint about whom I thought very much
in that time is a Britisher, St. Patrick.
I love his story.
He was made a slave in Ireland.
He succeeded to escape, but when he was
free, he had one thought.
What about my slaveholders?
What about this cruel man who had beaten
me and who had trodden me under their
feet?
I am a Christian.
I must bring them salvation.
And he went and brought Ireland to Christ.
I felt that this is also our duty
towards those who keep us in prison, who
jail, who torture us, who kill many of
us.
Just the fact that they hurt the church
so much and that they torture so much
the children of God shows how much they
need Jesus Christ, his salvation.
There, in the years of solitary confinement, came
to me in a very confused manner the
idea that we have to reward the communists
for all the evil which they do by
giving them what we have best, the gospel
of Jesus Christ.
It did not even pass through my mind
at that time that after many years there
will be an American mission to the communists
and a British mission to the communist world
and a French and a German and a
Dutch one, one in Rhodesia and one in
Southern Africa, one in New Zealand, in Canada,
in Australia.
Now we have such missions in Norway, in
Sweden, even in Japan.
I did not know that this will happen.
But we lived in the communion of saints
and they gave us the right thoughts.
But as for Jesus, he was still at
the door.
When I wished him on this side of
the door, when I wished him in my
embraces, when I wished him to be me
and I should be he, I was very
much tormented and dissatisfied with the words that
he is nigh, that he is at the
door.
I remember Bible verses very vaguely.
I remember that it is also written, Jesus
says, I am the door.
And then I would go to the door,
which was obscene, my mind was perhaps already
confused, and I would caress this door and
I would put my face towards this door
and I would say, you have come one
step nearer, you are no more at the
door, you are the door yourself.
And then came the great moment when he
was no more the door.
He was with me and the others, he
was with us in the same cell, he
has passed through locked doors, the bride of
Christ received his holy kiss, and in his
embraces we simply forgot that we were in
a prison cell.
The doping continued and destroyed our memory, we
forgot more and more.
One of the most dramatic moments in my
prison life was when I discovered one evening
that I had forgotten the Lord's prayer.
I tried to say it and I could
not.
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be
thy name, I did not know any more
what comes after thy.
And then for a long time I would
pray only so much, Jesus, I love you,
and after a few moments again, Jesus, I
love you, and Jesus, I love you, until
with the time even this became too difficult
for me, I could not concentrate my mind.
It was the effect of the doping and
of the hunger and of the other things.
The Bible was wiped out of my memory,
it came back as the effect of the
drugs past.
The last verse which I remembered before night
overcame my mind was one from St. Matthew,
that the Son of Man will come in
the hour when you will not think and
on the day when you will not know.
And my last prayer was, Jesus, now the
hour has come when I know nothing more,
this is the day when I can't think
anymore, now it is for you to come.
And in that moment, the walls of the
cell shone like diamonds, there was light in
the darkness, we had forgotten all the truth
about the truth, we had forgotten the multitude
of theological teachings, and also the multitude of
Bible verses which tell us the truth about
Jesus, and we had Jesus himself with us.
We would not have changed with the Queen
of Britain or with some American millionaire.
Christians danced for joy in these communist cells
when they realized the presence of the Lord
Jesus Christ with them.
Now I have traveled a little bit through
the world, I have seen many beautiful places,
I have never seen such beautiful sights as
God discovered to us in this subterranean prison
cell when he gave us a glimpse of
paradise.
Now I sometimes hear beautiful music, it can't
be compared with the concerts of angels which
we had.
Some might say, well, this might have just
been a visual hallucination, the paradise which we
have seen in the cell.
I would answer, perhaps it is only visual
blindness from your side that you do not
see this paradise.
This paradise exists, we have seen it, and
we have been together with the most beautiful
and with the most lovable being, this Christ
Jesus.
At once, being one with him, being in
his embraces, all his burdens became our burdens.
The Westminster Confession says that man lives with
the purpose to glorify God, and we had
to glorify God.
These years of solitary confinement have not been
only years of personal experience with God.
We could speak with our wardens, we could
speak with the communist officers who interrogated us,
and God helped us to bring several of
them to Christ.
They were with whips in their hands, in
beautiful uniforms, with epaulets.
We were dirty, we had not washed ourselves
for three years, we were in shabby suits
of a prisoner, but Christ was with his
little brethren, the power of his Holy Spirit
was with his church in chains, and they
could not convince us to betray our Christian
faith.
God helped us to bring some communists to
Christ.
And then we would not lose our time
even in the solitary cell.
The cell is only relatively solitary.
Only a wall separates it from another cell
nearby, and there exists, thank God, the Morse
code.
A, B, C, and so on.
All prisoners learn it with the time from
one another.
You begin with a primitive code until you
arrive to find someone who knows this code.
Once you know this code, you can converse
with the people who are at your right
and at your left.
One from nearby told me one night that
he was so depressed and that he wished
to suicide himself.
I asked him if he was not a
Christian.
Oh no, he said, he knew nothing about
it.
By Morse code, the gospel was preached through
the wall to a man whom I had
never seen before, and he accepted Christ from
a man whom he had never seen before.
God made it that after eight years of
prison and a half, when we were already
in common cells, a new bunch of prisoners
were brought in.
One had a shining face, which was quite
an achievement, to have a shining face when
you had not washed yourself for so many
years.
The face was shining from behind a crust
of dirt.
From the very first words he said that
he was a child of God, I asked
him, how did you arrive to faith?
Since when are you a Christian?
He told the story that he had been
in a cell, and from nearby somebody had
tapped through the wall to him the gospel,
and so he was converted.
I asked him, in what cell did this
happen?
In cell number 12, he answered.
I embraced him because I knew who had
been in cell number 11.
I look back now to these prisoners.
At that time, they were sometimes very heavy
to bear.
We were terribly hungry.
We shivered for cold.
The torturers were very often bad.
The longing after children, the longing after your
family, after your brethren.
But these years had also their unspeakable beauty,
the beauty of being with the Lord.
Another very unusual experience.
Until going to prison, I believed that I
believed the whole Bible to be the word
of God.
When I was in the solitary cell, I
discovered that I had never believed the Bible
to be the word of God.
The Bible consists of white sheets of paper
with black letters on it.
I had always believed that only the black
letters were the word of God.
I had never given any importance to the
white sheet.
And now for the first time, the white
sheet spoke to us.
At the age of 12, say the black
letters, Jesus was brought into the temple and
amazed the priests by the answers which he
gave.
I am not interested if the priests were
amazed.
I would like very much to know what
answers he gave to the priests.
This is written in the Bible, but not
in black letters.
It is written on the white sheet.
I would have liked very much to know
what Jesus had done between the age of
12 to 30.
The apostles surely must have asked him about
it.
His development is of highest interest.
It is described in the Bible.
It is not written in the black letters,
but on the white sheets.
St. Luke went to Bethany and spoke before
writing the gospel with Martha and Mary, asking
them details.
How did it happen when Jesus was in
your house?
Martha said, well, I had a little quarrel
with my sister.
And Luke, a conscientious historian, wrote down, well,
this and this quarrel happened.
And what can you, Mary, tell me?
Oh, I sat the whole evening at the
feet of Jesus and just listened to his
talk, and he praised me for this, and
I did not move from near his feet.
And then St. Luke will have asked her,
Now, if you have sat the whole evening
at the feet of Jesus, would you please
tell me, what did Jesus say on that
evening?
You just read in Luke 10, and you
will find what he taught.
It is not in the black letters.
It is on the white sheets.
There exists the mystery of the word of
God, the mysteries which the bridegroom whispers into
the ear of his bride, and there will
remain always mysteries reserved only for her if
this bride opens her heart for him.
Every night I and many other Christians, thousands
of us were in prison, we passed nights
in prayer.
We traveled from one country to another.
Every night we were in the United Kingdom,
in the United States, in Canada, in Australia,
in New Zealand, in Africa.
We have been very much in the United
Kingdom, which has been once a country of
saints and scholars, and about which we had
heard so much.
I knew the story of your revivals, and
of Wesley, and of Spurgeon.
I had this image of Great Britain, and
every night we prayed for you.
We prayed for the other English-speaking countries,
and for all the countries of the world.
We prayed for your churches, for your youth,
for your children.
And God has rewarded this prayer, that now
I can be together with those for whom
I have prayed, as you probably have prayed
for those who are in prison under the
Communists.
I am free now.
I can lead a mission to the Communist
world.
I wish to put on your heart, remember
those who are not free.
Tens of thousands of Christians are in prison
in Red China, Russia, Romania, Albania, Zanzibar, Guinea,
and other countries.
Prisoners have had their eyes gouged out in
Red China, members and tongues cut off.
Let us be united in our hearts with
the heroic underground church from behind the Iron
Curtain, which is privileged and glad to give
every year innumerable martyrs, that the name of
the most lovable being which has ever walked
on this earth, the name of Jesus Christ,
might be glorified.
God bless you all.
Amen.