I tried in my book, The Pastor's Wife,
to bring the cry of those left behind.
My sisters, my brethren, who are today in
prison, tortured, beaten, mocked by the communists.
The Church's one foundation is Jesus Christ her
Lord.
She is his new creation.
Together with my husband, Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, we
came to the free world, to the West.
We came from Romania, a beautiful country, with
snow, with sunshine, with mountains, with rivers.
But Romania is one of the countries under
communist dominion.
And there, you don't know to laugh.
People don't laugh there.
So when we came from there to the
free world, we told some of the things
happening there.
In communist countries, Christians are in prisons, in
slave labor camps.
But if you have read The Pastor's Wife,
you know that I wrote there not only
about these sad things.
I spoke about having a wonderful God.
I have a very famous God.
The God of Israel, the God of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob is my Heavenly Father, a
very famous God.
Then I have a Lord, the Lord Jesus
Christ, the Savior of Israel, is my Savior,
my Teacher, my Lord and my Friend.
And then I have also a very famous
book, the Bible.
In prison cells where we didn't have any
book, neither the Bible or any bit of
paper, a word which we kept in our
heart, a word from this famous book, from
the Bible, could give new life and new
hope to those in despair.
When my husband came out after 14 years
of communist prison, the very first hours when
we were together, he told me, now I
can understand perhaps much better many things described
in the Bible.
And then once Pilate stood before the people
and asked, who would you like that I
should free?
Should I free Jesus or should I free
Barabbas, the robber who was there?
I, Richard said, now I understand that this
question was not put only to the people
then 2,000 years ago.
Every second of our life is like a
second when you have to choose, who would
you like to set free?
Would you like to set free Jesus, the
Son of God, the famous, the wonderful Savior,
or would you like to set free Barabbas?
Every time when you choose sin, your own
will, the will of this world, then you
have chosen Barabbas and you have set him
free just to go around on the streets
of this world.
Don't forget, choose Christ every second in your
life.
Choose righteousness, goodness.
Whenever you are good, you have set free
Christ and he will be the most famous
in your life and in the hearts of
those who are around you.
You also have a story to tell.
You're a slave labby yourself.
How were you arrested and why did it
happen?
It is only in the free world that
you could put such questions, how you were
arrested.
And the Communist bloc and the Soviet Union
in Red China, you would rather ask how
is it that you are not arrested for
all those who would testify, who would witness
for Christ, all those who are known as
Christians, all those who would speak for God,
they are put in prisons, in slave labor
camps, and today there are one million Christians
put in slave labor camps, in lunatic asylums,
in prisons, only in the Soviet Union.
In Red China, at least 100,000 are
there.
After many, many others, perhaps one million in
Red China have been put to death, and
not only that they were killed, but they
were buried alive.
They pass horrible tortures as we could not
describe it in human words.
Our sisters, our brethren in China, in the
Soviet Union, and the new African Communist countries,
and the satellite Communist countries in the eastern
of Europe are today starving, weeping for hunger.
They are mocked, deprived of their children.
The Communists are fighting against God.
They don't believe.
They would like that everyone should not believe
that there is a God.
There is no God, no Christ, no soul.
Man is only matter.
So they are in a hurry to make
what they like, and they are in a
hurry to torture, and to punish, and to
put to death, and to put in slave
labor camps all those who would speak for
God and for Christ.
If I would try just to say in
a few words what I have seen in
the Communist countries inside the prisons, the slave
labor camp, the prison is a very hard
place, and the days in prison could not
be counted in years as it is usually.
I say my husband has made 14 years
of Communist prison.
Every day has 24 hours, and every hour
has 60 minutes, and you make prison minute
by minute and day by day.
It is a very hard time, and the
human heart is so frail, and we very
quickly lose our vision of God.
We very quickly see the dark prison cell,
the longing, the hunger, the mockery of the
Communists.
But God knows how we are, and He
knows every one of those who are His.
In dark prison cells where no man could
help, where human help could not reach the
Christians, Jesus Himself would make know us that
He is the Lord.
And sometimes when it was very, very heavy,
hungry, beaten, mocked, and forsaken by all men,
Jesus Himself would lift the veil for a
fraction of a second and show us His
beauty, let us hear the beauties of paradise.
And so we got new strength.
And even those who did not know God
saw the glory of God shining over the
faces of the children of God.
And those in despair who didn't know God
got strength from the children of God who
were comforted by their own Savior.
What was the treatment like?
Could you tell us something about what happened
to you?
My dear Christian brethren, my dear, dear mothers,
and dear wives in the free world, there
are no human words that could describe what
I appeal to your heart, and perhaps you
could understand much more than human words could
express.
Can you imagine what it means a mother
deprived of her children behind locked doors and
iron bars?
One day my husband tried to describe his
feeling about the children whom we left behind,
and he said, during cold winter nights, we,
the men, pressed our bare chest to the
icy iron bars of the prison in order
to quench the fire of longing after our
children, and we were only fathers.
But the mothers wept and cried, and often
even when the women in the prison cell
would sleep, you could hear the one and
the other crying the name of their children,
John, Mary, Paul, and tears filled their eyes
even during the sleep, dreaming about their children
and crying after them.
And the communists knew it very well, so
they tried to use this longing after our
children.
One day they called a Christian lady, the
communist officer called a Christian lady in his
office, and from his drawer he took out
a little mirror and threw it to this
Christian lady.
Now you can imagine that when we were
there, we didn't look as the ladies in
the free world look.
We were very thin with dark circles under
our eyes.
We didn't have a comb to comb ourselves.
We were in rags, dirty.
And so he took out the little mirror
and threw it to this Christian lady and
asked her, now do you see how you
look like?
The Christian lady was afraid seeing after many
months the first time how she looks like.
And then the communist officer continued, now look
how you look like.
Your children are in our hands.
They don't believe anymore in God.
We have our children and even our children
look to you as fools.
Don't be anymore so foolish to speak about
God and about your Christ, because even your
children laugh about you.
Now there could not be a greater mockery
and a greater pain than to tell to
a Christian mother that her own child looks
to her like to a fool.
A second the Christian did not know what
to answer, but afterwards she said, God, our
God, has written in his book that there
will be a time when every knee will
bow before him and forever I remain his
and even my children will be together with
me, with my God.
The communist officer was very angry and with
a slap he dismissed this lady.
She went back to her cell, but afterwards,
when after a year she was freed, she
could see that the communist officer was not
right.
He just used this in order to make
us Christians to lose our faith and to
get in despair.
But God, our God, remains forever famous and
wonderful and he kept our children for him.
How did you feel when you were separated
from your son Mihai?
Did you lose your faith in God?
Did it make you doubt?
The names of our children often in prison,
we did not dare to pronounce them.
So big was the pain in our heart
and the longing so great.
And the communists sometimes, when we were in
prison cells one day, they brought some eight
or ten children together in a cell near
us.
We were some five or six mothers altogether
and they started to beat the children and
the children cried and wept.
When we heard them, the first mother said,
Oh, this is my Mary, this is my
Mary, and they beat my Mary.
And she tried to beat, to bang on
the door and to call the warden, but
nobody would come.
The other mothers, everyone was convinced, It is
my, it is my child who cries.
And every one of us, we started to
cry and to weep and to call our
God to help us.
They were not our children whom they have
beaten, but they knew what it means for
a mother, what it means for a mother
to be in communist prisons.
Then we had another concern.
Perhaps, dear mothers who listen to me, you
would understand our concern.
We were together Christians, but not only Christians.
We were together thieves and murderers and political
fighters who would not believe in God.
And when we saw what it means, somebody
without God, without hope, without a savior, somebody
with his sins left alone, without a heavenly
friend, then we thought what will be our
children.
They will become communists.
And one day when we were allowed to
see somebody from our relatives, from our family,
and we thought our children will come and
we will see them.
Every one of us, we thought, what could
we give them?
We are not with them.
They are alone.
What could we give them?
But we were terribly poor.
Everyone, we have been taken from our home
without anything.
We had nothing.
And we were dirty and in rags.
And so we prepared ourselves to arrange.
We were ashamed to appear so before our
children.
We tried to put on a scarf, something
on us, to wash ourselves somehow and to
appear before them.
And during nights and days, we would not
sleep and we would not eat, trying to
compose the words which we would tell our
children, words which should be for them, just
like a friend for the years to come
when we were far from them.
Now the great day arrived when we should
see one of our children, and I was
taken out to see my son Mihai.
When I saw him first time after so
long weeks and months and years, standing in
between the guards of the prison, looking to
me, he was so pale.
I looked to him and at once all
I had composed was forgotten.
I did not remember one word.
I just looked to him and as I
was not allowed to embrace him, I embraced
him with my eyes, with my tears running
down, and the minutes passed without saying one
word, neither did he remember a word to
say to me.
And the minutes passed, the guards were ready
to take my son.
It was finished.
So in a second I cried out, Mihai,
love Jesus from all your heart.
It was the best I could give him.
He was taken out, and two guards took
me with their rifles, brought me back to
the prison cell, and for a long time
I had to remain there in hunger, in
pain, and in longing after my children.
But many years afterwards I could see how
these few words have given to Mihai his
faith and his hope back, and it is
a great joy now to have a son
who is himself a pastor.
He's in California and leads our mission, Jesus
to the communist world, the Christian mission to
the communists, and he's working now, he himself,
to help those who today, like him then,
are on the street without mother and without
father.
Now the Christian mission to the communist world
is smuggling in Bibles and Christian literature and
the communist countries.
We try to arrive with this Christian literature
through the maritime currents who bring these, they
are dropped from a plane in the sea.
Mihai himself has studied the currents in order
that we could bring to the shores of
Red China, of the Soviet Union, the Christian
literature to those who are without Bible and
without gospel.
And then we help those in communist countries
to print the word of God.
They themselves print it there in secret printing
presses where they are entombed, the men who
print the gospel there in order not to
be betrayed, live in the cellars there where
they print.
There they eat, there they sleep, and here
they don't go out in order to be
able to give the word of God to
the hungry souls in communist countries where there
are no Bibles.
Then we try to bring help to the
Christian families, to the martyrs.
The father is in prison, the children are
starving.
Often even mother and father is in prison,
so we try to help the children.
In communist countries, I must tell you also
some of the victories of the children of
God.
The suffering is very great, the hunger is
great, the tortures, the mockery, but also our
famous and wonderful God gives victories to his
children.
He makes the great miracles and he gives
victories to all those who are his, who
stand up for Christ.
I can tell you just one scene.
In a communist school, the professor entered and
told the children, Now, dear children, we are
in the 20th century and our astronauts went
to the moon.
They looked around all over.
They did not find any God.
And here in our school, in the communist
school, you are no more allowed to mention
even the name of God or the name
of Christ.
Not one of the children dared to answer
to this professor because, you know, in a
communist country, in the Soviet Union, if you
as a child speak for God, you are
taken away from your parents and you are
put far away in a communist boarding school
so you could never see your parents again.
But still, one of the children, a Christian
child, stood up and asked, Comrade professor, but
did our astronauts have a pure heart?
Because it is written that blessed are those
pure in heart, they will see God.
And I am here in a communist school,
but my heart has been made pure, has
been washed by the blood of Christ.
And even sitting here, I can see the
glory of God and the glory of my
beloved Savior, Jesus Christ.
The children are punished after this for such
words, but they love their Lord from all
their heart and they know that the famous
Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, is worthwhile
to fight for Him, to love Him from
all your heart, and they do it gladly
and with joy.
And therefore also, our Savior makes great miracles
and shows that He is a mighty Savior.
He knows His own, loves them, and knows
how to make them holy, preparing them for
the everlasting joys in paradise.
May God bless you.