Few instruments of God have taught the Western Church more about persecution than Richard Wurmbrand. He and his wife, Sabina, faithfully served the suffering church for decades. He was born March 24, 1909 to a Jewish family in Romania.
God formed a mighty union when Richard married Sabina Oster on October 26, 1936. They became Christians in 1938 and immediately began evangelizing the lost, particularly Jews. At this time, WW2 was taking place and Sabina lost nearly all her family to Nazi Concentration Camps. They were persecuted as they reached out to German troops and suffering Jews with Christ’s love.
Then, in 1945, one million Red Army Russian soldiers poured into Romania. On December 30, 1947, Romania became a Communist state. A conference organized by the government brought many religious leaders together where they shamelessly gave loyalty to Communism and spoke of what good it would do for the Romanian Church. Before it came time for Wurmbrand to speak, Sabina whispered to him, “Richard, stand up and wash away this shame from the face of Christ.” He whispered back, “If I do so, you’ll lose your husband.” In which she replied, “I do not wish to have a coward as a husband.”
Boldly, Richard approached the podium that was a live radio broadcast to the entire nation and declared the truth of the Gospel. So enraged where the Communists, they cut the chords to the microphones in the middle of his speech!
The Wurmbrand’s knew the price they would pay. He writes in Tortured for Christ, “When Christians in free countries win a soul for Christ; the new believer may become a member of a quietly living church. But when those in captive nations win someone, we know that he may have to go to prison and that his children may become orphans. The joy of having brought someone to Christ is always mixed with this feeling that there is a price that must be paid.”
While walking to his church on February 29, 1948, Communists kidnapped him and arrested him as, “Prisoner Number 1.” Richard would spend a total of 14 years in Romanian prisons. In Tortured for Christ, he goes into great detail about his persecutions. In 1950, Sabina would be imprisoned and forced to work in labor camps. Their son, Mihai who was 11, was left alone. Sabina was released 3 years later and immediately went back to work within the underground church.
Don’t think that Richard and Sabina ever regretted their stand for Christ. Again he writes, “If a poor man is a great lover of music, he gives his last dollar to listen to a concert. He is then without money, but he does not feel frustrated. He has heard beautiful things. I don’t feel frustrated to have lost many years in prison. I have seen many beautiful things. I myself have been among the weak and insignificant ones in prison, but have had the privilege to be in the same jail with great saints, heroes of faith who equaled the Christian of the first centuries. They went gladly to die for Christ.”
Later he writes, “The tortures and brutality continued without interruption. When I lost consciousness or became too dazed to give the tortures any further hopes of confession, I would be returned to my cell. There I would lie, untended and half dead; to regain a little strength so they could work on me again…They broke four vertebrae in my back, and many other bones. They carved me in a dozen places. They burned and cut eighteen holes in my body. When my family and I were ransomed out of Romania and brought to Norway, doctors in Oslo, seeing all this and the scars in my lungs from Tuberculosis, declared that my being alive today is a pure miracle. According to their medical books, I should have been dead for years. I believe God performed this wonder so that you could hear my voice crying out on behalf of the Underground Church in persecuted countries. He allowed one to come out alive and cry aloud the message of your suffering, faithful brethren.”
In 1964, The Norwegian Mission to the Jews and the Hebrew Christian Alliance ransomed him from the Communist Prison for $10,000. The secret police demanded he be silent concerning the persecutions of himself and other Christians. At the urging of the underground church, his family reluctantly moved to the United States to be a voice for them. He appeared before the US Senate’s Internal Security Subcommittee in Washington D.C. in May of 1966 to testify of the plight of Christians.
One year later, he formed the ministry, “Jesus to the Communist World” and now we know it as, “The Voice of the Martyrs.”
Pastor Richard and Sabina have taught the American Church what Christian love is. I hope you buy the book, Tortured for Christ. But let me leave you with one last statement from this great book, “A flower, if you bruise it under your feet, rewards you by giving you its perfume. Likewise Christians, tortured by the Communists, rewarded their torturers by love. We brought many of our jailors to Christ. And we are dominated by one desire: to give Communists who have made us suffer the best we have, the salvation that comes form our Lord Jesus Christ.”
To learn more about Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand, who passed away earlier this decade, visit the Voice of the Martyrs website, www.persecution.com or visit www.rw100.persecution.com.
