Testimony — Richard Wurmbrand

This message is one of the Times Square Church pulpit series. It was recorded in the sanctuary of Times Square Church in Manhattan, New York City. Other tapes are available by writing World Challenge, Post Office Box 260, Lyndale, Texas, 75771, or by calling 903 -963 -8626.

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The Sacrifice of Giving Ourselves to God

Would we sacrifice for the Lord? And there were some believers who brought a sick lamb or a lame lamb which could not be sold, but they had the worst in their flock. And God says that is no good. So some have understood, and instead of bringing a sick lamb or a lame lamb, they brought the best of the flock.

But the best of the flock is also no good. To give the most of the money you can give is also no good. God expects from us an entirely other sacrifice. He expects that we should give ourselves. Jesus had said, Whosoever does not deny himself and takes the cross cannot be my disciple.

He can bring many things. He can bring money. He can give his time. But if he does not give himself, he has not fulfilled the aim. Jesus is our bread groom, and he wishes no less than ourselves. I am Jewish.

My beautiful wife is Jewish, too. And the Jews have had a very great teacher, Rabbi Akaiba. At the time of terrible Roman persecution, 22 ,000 of his disciples had been slaughtered. And then in the end, Rabbi Akaiba was also tortured terribly with iron combs, which had been heated in the fire.

They lacerated his flesh, and he chanted, Listen, Israel, our Lord is the only God. So they asked him, How in the world can you praise God when you are lacerated to the blood? You die here. And he said, All my life I have desired to serve God with all my heart, with all my soul, and I have not succeeded.

Now that I succeeded, should I give it up because of what happens to my body? I am not the body. I am an eternal spirit. And to this eternal spirit, they can do nothing. And I wish to speak to you about the persecuted church today, where they give themselves.

The Persecuted Church Under Communism and Islam

You have heard about what's happened under communism. Now in many countries, the communist regime is no more what it has been before. But every fifth inhabitant of the world is under communism. In China, there are totally five billion men.

One billion live in China. Every fifth person is a Chinese. In China, there is still this communist terror. Christians are in jail since years and years, and they are tortured beyond description. In Vietnam, Christians now get sentenced to death.

And after having been executed, the family gets the bill. The family has to pay for the bullet, for the coffin, the salary of the judge which sentenced them, and the salary of the prosecutors. They say, We will not spend our good communist money for these Christians.

They have to pay themselves. And then there is a terrible persecution under Islam. It is almost unknown here in America. The biggest African country is Sudan. And in Sudan, Christians today, thousands of them, have been deported to a desert place in the south of the country.

And there they have been left to starve without food, without water, together with their elderly and with their children. Nobody knows how many thousands have died there. We have documentation that they cut off the arms of Christians and use these arms as drumsticks as Muslim processions.

And now the last news which we received only a week or two ago, the Muslims went, the fanatic Muslims, went from village to village and crucified all male Christians whom they met there. Such things are happening today.

And I wish to bring to you somehow the atmosphere of Christian life under persecution. I will exemplify it from my life and the life of the Romanian church to which I have belonged. But you will understand that I don't speak about me.

I give an example of how those react to persecution who suffer the persecution today. One day, it was the 29th of February, I went to a church which pastor had there a car. He had to walk. I walked to the church and on the way, a car of the secret police of the communists stopped before me.

Four men pushed me into the car. I was arrested, kidnapped from the street. Nobody knew what happened with me. We were prepared for this. First of all, we knew what Jesus had said, that I send you as lambs among wolves.

When you go as lamb among wolves, you know what will happen to you. We had been before communism under fascism. My wife and I have been in prison under fascism too. So somehow we were prepared for this.

We expected that such a day will come. And under communism, in the underground church, now when a pastor is ordained, other pastors put his hands upon him and the oldest say, I ordain you as shepherds of the flock of Christ and as potential sufferer for Christ under persecution.

At the moment of ordination, you are ordained not only to lead a congregation, but also to suffer together with this persecution. So it did not surprise me that I was arrested. I remembered Rabbi HaKaiba, they lacerated his flesh, they killed him, and he said, but I wished to serve God from all my heart with all my soul.

So why should I be amazed about what is happening? Because I am Jewish. I wish to tell you some secrets of the Hebrew language, which you might not have heard, but which are very important for us. In Hebrew, the word to have does not exist.

You can't say in Hebrew, even in modern Hebrew, which is spoken in Israel, you can't say, I have money, I have a house, I have a car, I have this, I have that. They don't have the word to have. They don't have it.

To have is a four-letter word, and civilized people shun four-letter words. To have does not exist in the language of the people of God. One is a possessor of all possessions, and we are only stewards.

Therefore, we can say the prayer, which Jesus taught us, our Father who art in heaven, and who is the ruler of a huge cosmos with millions of galaxies and stars, and we disturb him about a little thing.

What do you wish from me? I should have my daily bread, but for the daily bread, must you disturb the ruler of the world? Speak with somebody else. Why with me? No, I have something very important. What is the important thing?

You should give me my daily bread, but we have bread as a cupboard, and you have money in your pocket, you can buy bread, but the cupboard, I don't have it. It does not belong to me. It belongs to you.

The bread in the cupboard belongs to you. The money in the pocket also belongs to you, and you can decide today you will fast. It is his bread. It is his money. To have is wrong. It does not exist even in the language of the Hebrew people.

Possessing Nothing and Trusting God's Care

And so they arrested me, 14 years, I have not seen anymore, neither my wife, nor my children, nor my mother. I did not know if they are alive. She was in another jail. She did not know what has happened with me, but they have taken nothing away from me because I had nothing.

Everything belongs to God, and when everything belongs to God, life becomes so beautiful. I have no problems. I never had problems, and when I speak about I, I mean all the Christian prisoners. We never had problems because for having problems, we were saved.

We did not have this mentality of having. The problems belong not to me, belong to God. We did not have worries. We did not have these preoccupations. In the evening, I would go to some corner in my cell and would say, God, are my wife and my children your creatures or my creatures?

Did you create them or did I create them? Is the church which I have passed of mine or is it yours? If my family and my church is yours, you please take care of them. I am tired. I go to bed. Good night, my God.

I will see you again tomorrow morning. It is so splendid not to have. Nobody can take away from you anything. The moment when we entered in jail, they took away from us even our name. We were not allowed to tell anybody, not even the guards who watched us.

We were not allowed to say our names because they had kidnapped us from the street. They did not wish anybody to know where we are and they feared that a guard, if he knows my name, at a glass of wine with a friend, he will see who is in jail.

They gave us fancy names. Afterwards, they took away from us even these fancy names and gave to every prisoner a number. You are prisoner 5 ,936 or 6 ,228 and so on. Some elderly prisoners beaten and tortured had difficulty to remember their number and then they were beaten for this.

I had a privilege. I had a number very easy to be remembered. I was prisoner number one. One God, one faith, one baptism. I could remember this and I could remember that I was prisoner number one. They took away from us everything.

We had nothing. We had no problems. We had no worries because we did not have the mentality of having. It's so nice not to have. We had no sins. All the sins belong to Christ, not to me. Jesus had said, I have come to take all your sins.

And some of us say, no, this sin I keep to myself. I wish to torture myself about what I have done. But the sins don't belong to you. They belong to him. Give up having. And another word which does not exist in Hebrew, you can't say in the language of the people of God, I am.

You can't say. This I am does not exist, does not exist. I, prisoner. I can say, if I wish to say, as you would say in English, I'm a prisoner. You can't say it in Hebrew. You can say, I, prisoner. There's some connection between being a prisoner and me.

But we are not so connected. We can't. When you say, I am a prisoner, then at every minute of my life, I am this prisoner. But this M does not exist in Hebrew. I, prisoner. There's some relation between these two.

But I can break the relations at any moment. Paul, the apostle, was in prison together with other Christians. And he arrives from prison. We, the Christians, we are seated. Don't tell me, Paul, where you are seated.

We know you are seated on the cold concrete of a prison cell. I know. He says, we are seated in heavenly places. He was not a prisoner. He was somehow connected with prison life. He was connected also with missionary life in the whole world, which was known until then.

But his real life was outside of all this M and F and these worldly preoccupations. He was seated in heavenly places. And from there, he looked down to what is happening to his body here on earth. I have seen you dancing here and jubilating.

I'm sorry, my legs don't help me anymore. But we sang in prison. We sang just as this beautiful choir here. Not as beautifully, but we sang. When I came to America, I wondered very much. I found here a special kind of birds.

Larks and nightingales sing every day. Some American Christians, many American Christians sing once a week in church. If it is good to sing to God, why don't you sing every day? If it is wrong to sing to God, don't sing it.

Don't sing on Sunday. We sang there every day. And we sang being accompanied by musical instruments. The Communists had been very, very nice to us. They knew that we liked to praise God with musical instruments.

So they gave to every Christian a musical instrument. Would you believe it? Much better than in America. In America, prisoners don't get musical instruments. We received. Not mandolins, not violins. It would have been too expensive for the Communists.

But they put chains at our hands and at our feet. And we discovered that chains are splendid musical instruments. And we could sing. This is the day, clink, clank, clink, clank. This is the day, clink, clank, clink, clank.

The Lord has made, clink, clank, clink, clank. The Lord has made, clink, clank, clink, clank. And then, I will tell you what happened with me once. I was in that cell. They took away from us our Bibles.

We never had. 14 years, I've never seen a Bible, neither any other book. But we remembered in the beginning quite a lot of the Bible. I knew not everything, but I knew very much by heart. And after, by heart, I read, by heart, I lay on my bed.

And I remembered a verse from Luke, chapter 6, the Sermon on the Mount. And there, Jesus says, at a certain moment, in chapter 6, verse 22, Blessed are ye when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil for the son of man's sake.

That was our situation in prison, rejected, separated from everybody. And then, Jesus says, Rejoice ye in that day. And I said to myself, well, my conscience is clear, I have rejoiced. But he says, Rejoice ye in that day and And to rejoice under persecution is not enough.

Rejoice and, and something else. Jesus says, if you wish to be saved, believe and be baptized. To believe and not to be baptized, it's wrong. To be baptized and not to believe is also wrong. When he says and, he means you should fulfill two things.

And here he says, when you are persecuted, rejoice in that day and live for joy. I felt so guilty, I have not lived. So immediately, I stood up from my bed, and I began to dance around in the prison cell.

I began to, I began to dance around. And I lived for joy. Now, the doors of prison cells have a peephole through which the guards look in. And they saw me dancing in the prison cell. Now the whole world dances in a, in a communist prison cell where they beat and torture.

So they had orders to behave very well with those who got mad. Many got mad. They behaved well with these madmen because they, so banging on the door and shouting, would disturb the quiet of the prison.

So immediately, when he saw me leaping around, he came in, patted me on my shoulder. You will see, everything will be all right. I will bring you something very good. And he came back in a few minutes with a whole loaf of bread, which was my, which was my portion for eight weeks.

Our regular portion was one slice of bread a week. And now I had a whole loaf. Only there was a dainty cheese. Can you imagine? Cheese. And there was something else. Two pieces of sugar. Much time had passed.

I had not seen sugar. And now I had two pieces of sugar. I surely did not eat them yet. I put them all before me. I can rejoice looking at these things. And I will first finish the Sermon on the Mount to recapitulate it from memory.

And yeah, where have I remained? Yeah, I said, when they persecute you, when they beat you, when they reject you and all this, you should rejoice and leap for joy. Here I have remained. Yeah, here I have remained.

I have to go further. Rejoice and leap for joy because great will be your reward. And to the bread and to the cheese and to the sugar, great was the reward. We danced in prison. Christians who are today in prison, they are conquerors.

They're above the communist. The communists could do nothing to them. They do to the body. But usually people believe I am this, but you see, and they have a spirit. No, I am an eternal spirit which has a body.

That is my real life. Bodies. I am 84. I have changed already 12 times my whole body. At seven years, a child at the age of seven does not have one molecule of those which he had at birth. At 14, he doesn't have one molecule of what he had at the age of seven.

Every seven years, all the molecules of our body are changed. So I have changed my body 12 times. Who is this I who has changed the body? I is what is eternal, the spirit. And when this body will pass away, I will get, by his grace, another body.

One of glory and one of goodness and one of beauty. So the Christians, I must say again, it was romantic. It is written in the Bible that we are married to Christ. Married, you know? And there's a girl, she has married him, and now she belongs to him and he belongs to her.

They're really one flesh and one soul and one spirit. They're one. And we were together with Christ. The prison life has been an optional night. It has been the bride and the embraces of the bridegroom.

And the Christians came out from there with shining faces and with a smile on their face. It was two days ago. At 712, they made a program on television with me and with my wife and so on. And there was a great Christian conference, a lawyers, Christian lawyers conference from the whole country in that hotel in where we stayed.

I had nothing to do with this lawyers conference. But on the corridor, one of those lawyers, I had never known him, stopped me and said, Sir, may I ask you some question? Who are you? I have observed you in the corridor.

You smile and your face looks such a happy man. Who are you? I said, well, I am a man who has been 14 years in communist prisons and I would be an idiot if 14 years in prison for Christ would not have taught me to smile.

And he said, come and speak to us, the lawyers, because we don't know the smile. It was joy in communist prisons and we danced as I saw you dancing. I felt, well, I have again the joy which I have seen.

There are some churches in which probably many are rheumatics, rheumatics or they have sciatica and they can't dance. But you don't have rheumatism and you can dance. And I felt again at home, you have the spirit which our brethren and sisters in communist prisons have.

God's Promise Against Fear in Persecution

And now they kidnapped me from the street. They pushed me into a van of the secret police. And the first thought which passed through my mind is that it was the 29th of February. Now, 29th of February is a very important day.

You know it is a day of the leap year, one day more of the year. In the Bible it is written 366 times don't fear. For every day of the year there is a promise, you don't have to fear. And because it is the extra day of the leap year, it is not 365 times but 366 times.

You should know on 29th February also you have a promise of God and you don't have to fear. And probably when I remember this I must have smiled. And so the police officer arrested me, asked me, sir, why do you smile?

I said because it is written 366 times. So they are sure I have gone mad. Many get shocked when they get arrested. What kind of reply is it? What is written 366 times? Just what I need. What do you need?

I need a promise of God. We don't have to fear. We were prepared, the leaders of the underground church, we were prepared for arrest. We had been arrested in Nazi times. We knew what communism is, that it persecutes the religion.

We expected arrests and imprisonments. Many will be killed. We waited for this. And there was no fright. I have not observed fright among our brothers and sisters. Many of us had just the contrary of fright.

You will wonder, everybody shuns pain. Pain is something terrible to bear. Physical pain, psychological pain, and so on. And even more difficult it is to bear somebody else's pain. To have a wife, a husband, a child, a parent who is deadly sick and so on.

Pain is something terrible. But we are not taught this by the scriptures. Jesus says when you have built your house, the house of faith, storms will come, he says. He doesn't say storms might come. He says storms will come.

There is no life in which storms don't come, in the form of sickness, in the form of unemployment, in the form of accidents, in the form of, I don't know what, trouble in the family, and trouble in the employment, and so on and so on.

Storms will come, he says. Storms will come. But if you are founded on the rock, then these storms pass near us and they don't affect us anymore because I am not the body. Paul, the body of Paul was in jail.

And he speaks about himself and says, I am on a nice vacation. I am seated in heavenly places. We are seated in entirely other places than those where are all the human troubles. We don't have the explanation why does this happen, why does that happen.

Now probably not many of you know Hebrew. You don't need Hebrew. You don't need to know Greek to, it's good to know them. But you don't need them to establish something. Just ask from somebody to see once a Hebrew Bible, to see an old Greek New Testament, look through them, peruse page after page.

You must not understand. You will see one thing is missing in the Bible, as it was written in the beginning. There is no question mark. In Hebrew there exists no question mark. Who should question? Why should I question?

He's God. I was in India and there I was very sick, very sick. I went to a doctor and he examined me and I said, what medicine do I need? Sir, you don't need a medicine. You undress yourself now. In 10 minutes you will be operated.

Now he was a man who had studied 20 years medicine. He knew what he does. He knew what he says. I did not ask him any question. If I would have asked him questions, he would have replied in medical terms, which I would not have understood, undressed.

Please do with me as you like. This I told to a doctor. I should not have the same confidence as the creator of all the doctors and of the medicine and all the science and the creator of the world. And if he sends something, he sends it, he's my father.

He sends it for the good. There's something in our English Bibles which is falsely written. In Romans 8, 28, it is written that all things work together for the good. That is not written in the Bible.

You read it there. It's not there. It is not written. You know why in the English Bible it is all things work together for the good? Because it is a translation of the Greek text, the Hebrew text. They did not have the word absolute.

If the authors of the Bible would have been able to write in English, they would have written there, absolutely all things work together for the good. We always think all things work together for the good, except the one which bothers me now.

That is terrible. That does not work for the good. But just that works for the good. It's not written in the Bible that all things work together for the good. It's written all things work together for the good.

Even that which bothers you today most. We don't have the explanation for these things. How can a doctor explain to one who has no schooling all these things which they know? He can't explain. What kind of a god would he be if he could explain to me he would know as much as me?

A professor of mathematics has a little total of four or five. Can he explain to him his mathematics? He can't explain it. He is big and we are small and we have confidence in him. And therefore, this prison life was begun with confidence in him, with quiet.

There was singing in prison. There was singing in prison. Using even prison chains for singing. There was dancing in prison. I was not the only one who danced. I am not a Pentecostal, but I did not read in the Bible that you must be a Pentecostal in order to dance.

David had danced and was not even a Baptist. And Miriam had danced even worse. She was not even a Lutheran. She was a soul who loved God, who loved God and had confidence in him. And there was dance. And therefore, my wife and I, we felt very good when we came in this church.

Sorry I could not dance. Otherwise, I would have joined you in dancing. Now, we were brought before those who questioned us, the implements of torture in their hands. And they asked us to give declarations about others.

There was secret printing. It's not like in America. If you wish to have a Bible, you enter in a shop and you can choose there an authorized version, an unauthorized version, standard version, American Bible, international Bible, living Bible, dead Bible.

We have all kinds of Bible. Only the Bible. We did not know about all these things. We knew the Bible. But it could not be. You could enter in no shop to buy it. So Christian books, when booklets and so on, everything had to be printed secretly.

And when they arrest somebody, they begin to torture him. He should betray the secrets because nobody prints alone. First of all, from where do you have printing machines? From where do you have ink? From where do you have book?

Who arranges that there should be a van to take away what you have printed? How do you distribute it? There's always a whole net of the underground church which works. And then they arrest you and beat you in order you should say what you have, what are the secrets.

But they tortured not me. They tortured not the Christians. They tortured only the transitory bodies. It was not me. And during the first sessions, the spirit could jubilate and be quiet. And we knew that we have something great to fulfill.

Anne Marie's Witness to Her Torturer

I will interrupt and not speak about myself. It would not be good. I will tell you about another prisoner. And you will learn about the prisoners in general. There were such Christian prisoners. Surely not all were at the same spiritual level and so on.

I will tell you about one beautiful example. There was a girl by the name of Anne Marie. She worked in the underground church. They were underground Sunday schools for children. They were not permitted.

Underground youth meetings and so on. All kinds of underground works. And she was arrested. And she was a girl of 18 or 20. And her girls were tortured. Can't be described. My wife has written a book.

The pastor's wife. You will find it outside. I have written several books. Torture for Christ and other books. You will find them outside. I tell you beforehand. We have not said the truth. Because the truth can't be published.

There were such tortures which you can't print in America. No publisher would take them. And it's hard to bear. What has happened to men is just nothing in comparison with what happened to girls and young ladies who were arrested and who were in the hands of these brutes.

But there was this girl, Anne Marie. She's still alive. This girl, Anne Marie. She was young. And now, when they tortured her, the normal reaction of every normal person, when he's thrown under the feet of somebody else, when he's beaten, is the desire to escape.

Not to escape. And she could do that by telling the secrets of the underground church. That is what they wished. If she would have said, I give you 10 names and let me three, they would have agreed with her.

They would have had other things to torture. But her thought was not how to escape. She had one dominant thought. How can I bring the communist torturers to Christ? Is it not amazing? You are tortured.

You are beaten. Some of you might be beaten by your husband. When you are beaten by your husband, do you think, well, that is a challenge for me. God had a bad man and he gave him to me. I can bring him to Christ.

God had a bad youngster and he made him to be my son. Because I, through patience and goodness, should bring him to salvation. Not how I should escape the trouble. But how can I use this trouble for the good of somebody else?

And this girl, Anne Marie, she had one thought. How to bring to Christ the torturer? Torturers are men who don't read the Bible. They don't go to church. They have no Christian surroundings. And if those who are not in their beastly hands don't tell them about Christ, they will not be saved.

They will go to hell. They will live without Christ, without truth, without love, without forgiveness, anything. So that was her dominant desire while they beat her. And she wished to speak to the torturer about Christ.

And there were always possibilities to speak to them. Because torturing is a very difficult task. One of the torturers told us, why do you shout when I torture you? We replied, because it produces pain.

Pain? You don't know what pain is. I beat you half an hour. I can't beat you more than that because I have to beat so many. And after this half hour, you go in your cell and you enjoy yourself. But I have to beat eight hours a day, six days a week, 30 days a month.

Since 10 years, I beat and I beat and I beat. And the only music which I hear is park, park, park, park, park. Then in the evening, I'm maddened and I go to a pub and get drunk. I go home and beat my wife, too, and beat my children, too.

My pain is bigger than yours, which in a certain sense was also true. So they could not torture too much. They had to take coffee breaks. Then a soldier would bring them a cup of coffee. They would smoke a cigarette.

If you were a smoker, they would offer you a cigarette, too. They were jolly fellows for a half an hour. And in this half an hour, you could speak to them. And this girl used this time. And she told him, Sir, in vain you beat me.

You will never beat out from me my love towards God. Is this you want to know? Because I'm a Christian. But I will tell you something else. You will never beat out from me my love towards God and my love towards you because I love you from all my heart.

Go away, you stupid girl. We are not here in the loving business. You better tell her the secrets of the underground church. And she replied, Sir, I will tell you words which normally no girl says to a man.

I don't know why girls and women always expect that men should pay them compliments. They never pay a compliment to a man. I know. We say beautiful wives. They don't say handsome husbands. All right. But here are special circumstances.

I will tell you something which no girl usually says to a man. When you beat me, I look to your hand. Sir, you have beautiful hands. I imagine how your wife enjoyed it when you caressed her first. You enjoyed it.

She enjoyed it. What is more beautiful than caressing? Why then do you take hands which are made by God for caressing and you use them for beating and torturing? Sir, is caressing not better than beating?

It produces you joy. It produces her joy. Then go back from beating to caressing. And I will tell you one other word which no girl ever said to a man. I, being your prisoner, I will tell you, younger than you, Sir, you have very attractive lips.

Your wife must have enjoyed it when you gave her the first kiss. Now, how beautiful is a kiss? You are inebriated. She enjoys it. You enjoy it. And you have given up kissing for swearing and for shouting foul words.

Don't you realize it? It is wrong. It is stupid. Go back from swearing to kissing and from beating to caressing. It's much more beautiful. For this our hands and our lips have been made. She gave her again a few slaps.

Then she said, all right, I see you don't wish to hear from me. So I will tell you just one sentence more and then everything will be finished. I have a boyfriend. Now, every girl praises her boyfriend.

But my boyfriend is something entirely else. Not that he loves me. He is love. He is a fire of love. He is a fire of love. And since I know him, I am like inebriated. He has taught me to love. And if somebody caresses me, I love him.

And if somebody beats me, I also love him. I can do nothing other than loving. He is love. He has given me this new life. He gave her a box here in the temple. She fell on the concrete of the cell, hit herself, and she passed out.

Then after a few minutes, she came to herself. She saw him seated in his armchair. And he said, you stupid girl, who is this your boyfriend? I sit here and think about him. He is smart, your boyfriend.

I never thought about this. To caress is better than to beat. And to kiss is so beautiful. To kiss is better than to swear and to use foul words. Who is this boyfriend who taught you such a thing? Then she told him the name of the boyfriend.

I will not tell you the name of the boyfriend. It is for you to guess who was her boyfriend. And she told him the name of the boyfriend. And he, the communist torturer, asked her, how can I make him to be my friend too?

And she told him, but you can see in five minutes, in the circumstances, you must repent of your sins. You must be born again. But she could explain to him. And she said, and you must be baptized. He, baptism.

What do they know about this? In Romania, 50 years, in the Soviet Union, 75 years, these officers of the communist police, they are brought up in atheism, in God-hate, in communism, since they are toddlers.

What does it mean to be baptized? You enter in a water with somebody else. He dips you in the water and says the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. He dips you in the water. And then your friendship, this is my boyfriend, is sealed.

So he said to her very simply, then you baptize me. She replied, I'm sorry, I can't baptize you, which is not true. Normally, baptism is performed by a pastor. But in such exceptional circumstances, everybody can baptize.