It was good to be re-united with these accounts of the underground church in Romania and the witness until death of Christians in prison.
This is the complete story of Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand. It was a pleasure to read how they became Christians and a joy to see how God blessed their marriage and ministry.
As a teenager I read a couple of Richard Wurmbrand’s books and it was familiar in part in this account but troubling also to see the depth of cruelty a human can bring to bear on another person.
It is also humbling to read how they both endured captivity, isolation, torture and near starvation in a Communist regime that wanted to extinguish Christian faith. Yet both remained full of humility and never lost their faith or a sense of God’s purpose.
In their own ways they ministered for Christ among their fellow prisons. Witnessed to God’s forgiveness through their lack of fear and love for their enemies.
This book is a tough read but it will uplift anyone reading about true saints in Romanian; teaching, preaching and meeting for worship in groups that were forced underground to avoid arrest and imprisonment. That many were denounced and condemned by other Christians, even the priests themselves is an indication of the scope and fear engendered by the communist machine.
Richard was a pastor who accepted his suffering as nothing compared to the Son of God’s own treatment, he learned that his spirit could not be compromised even if his body was broken. When placed in a wing of the hospital with tuberculosis where patients went with no hope of recovery. He saw it has a chance to minister to the sick and dying he would not otherwise have an opportunity to give peace to in their last hours and preach the saving grace of the gospel.
Lives like those of the Wurmbrands are rare but they perhaps give a glimpse of God at work in his church especially when the body of Christ suffers in his name. Those whose lives are barely touched by such terrors and have freedom to worship perhaps should also see our freedom to pray for others.
Compelling, heart-searching and refreshing where other books can’t reach. Mind, body and soul.