Christian Missions to the Communist World International - Pt2 — Richard Wurmbrand

Christian Freedom Through the Prayers and Sacrifice of Persecuted Believers

I would remind you that this dear man and his good wife represent those who, under God, who in a sense have helped to save this generation. You know, people look at a threat and get very worried. Somebody else gets concerned and does something about it, and the threat is removed.

And the casual would say, well, maybe we shouldn't have been worried at all. But men like Pastor Wembrandt have caused people to pray, have caused people to give, have caused many folks who sit in darkness, who love our Lord Jesus Christ, to have hope.

And because of this, I believe we sit in relative freedom tonight. We have many reasons for which to thank God for our brother and the many like him. But this is just one of them. And may we not forget it.

Amen. English-speaking people usually start speeches with the words, ladies and gentlemen, which is surely wrong. The start should be men and gentle ladies. The ladies are much gentler. So I will start like this.

And dear brethren and sisters, first of all, I have to apologize for speaking to you being seated. I did it also yesterday. But perhaps there are some here who were not yesterday. During these 14 years in communist jails, we almost never walked.

We had heavy chains at our feet, sometimes 20 kilograms, 50 pounds. There were beatings with rubber truncheons on the soles of the feet. And now it is difficult for me to stand for a long time. It is difficult even to wear shoes.

That is why, perhaps for the first time in your life, you see a barefoot preacher before you. In the part of scripture which has been read to you, in Nehemiah 4, verse 19, Nehemiah says to the other rulers and nobles of the Jewish people, The work is great and large, and we are separated upon the wall, one far from another.

Christian Unity Amid Denominational Division

How far we are, one from another. If I would ask tonight, lift your hands those who are Catholics, some would lift their hands. And those who are Anglicans, another group. And those who are Baptists, another group.

And those who are Pentecostals, and those who are I don't know what. We are separated from each other. And the names don't say yet the totality of separation, because Anglicans don't agree with each other.

And Baptists don't agree with each other. And there exists dividends of opinions also among the Catholics and among the Pentecostals and so on. We come from different backgrounds. We have had different education.

We have had different circumstances of life. And this has separated us greatly from each other. We all look to things from different viewpoints. And that is how we arrive even to great conflicts among ourselves.

Everyone is sure that he is right. It is very difficult to arrive to be one heart and one soul as the first Christians were. Now, I have been a prisoner for ten years. Thousands are prisoners today. In Vietnam, in Red China, we know about one single prison.

From there we have the very fact that 400 Catholic priests are in that one prison alone. But they persecute the Protestants as much as the Catholics. We don't have the figure of the Protestant pastors who are there.

And then there are not only the priests and the pastors, there are also the laymen. A multitude of Christians are in prison in Red China today. In Russia, nobody can tell the figure how many Christians are in prison.

Others are in Romania, others in Albania. In Albania there are not many, because they shoot them very easily. One Catholic priest, Stephen Curti, was sentenced to death for having baptized one single child.

Christians are in jail in Angola, in Mozambique, in Ethiopia, the African communist countries. In Cuba, the brethren Valladares, Gomez, Noble are in jail since 20 years for their faith, which is not much, because brother Kharapov, a Russian Baptist pastor, is in jail in Russia since 26 years, which is not much, because brother Paulitis, a Catholic layman, is in jail in Russia for his faith since 34 years, which is not much, because the Orthodox monk Mikhail Shov is in jail for his faith in Russia since 43 years.

So, many Christians are prisoners today. How was I treated? How are they treated? How do the communists treat their Christian prisoners? You will wonder about what I tell you today. I don't know one single Christian who should have been or should be the prisoner of the communists.

Prisoners of Jesus Christ and the Purifying Loss of Religious Superfluity

I have not been a prisoner of the communists. In the first verse of the epistle of Paul to Philemon, he writes, I, Paul, prisoner of whom? Not of Nero, not of the Caesar, a prisoner of Jesus Christ. We have been prisoners of Jesus Christ, and I must tell you, our jailer treated us very, very well.

Very, very well. We have known all his comforts and all his meekness and all his goodness all these years. We have no complaint. On the contrary, we can be thankful to him for what he has done for us.

These prison years have served us to cleanse our minds from many things which are superfluous, which are not needed. The communists gave us almost no food. We had times when we got one slice of bread a week.

The usual food was soup of some dirty potato peels, cabbage with unwashed intestines, and other soup in which a few peas swam, but you could number how many peas were in that soup. They were also the worms from these peas, because they were the worst of peas, and so on.

We had no food. We were doped with drugs which would destroy our minds. I have been a drug addict for ten years, without my will, but I have been a drug addict. They put drugs into our soup, into our coffee.

As often as we ate and drank something, we took drugs. And these drugs destroyed our minds. We forgot more and more. I told, yesterday already I will repeat just in a few words, one evening I remembered vaguely that I am a Lutheran pastor.

But I could not remember who Luther is me. I saw jubilated on that evening, because I made a big discovery, you can be a Christian without knowing who Luther is me. I had not known it until then. But many have been Christians for fifteen centuries without knowing about Luther.

And others realized that you can be a Christian without knowing who Calvin is me. And others were Christians without knowing who the Pope is. The old Pope might have died. We had no newspaper. We had no radio.

We did not know who the new Pope is. There was one name which we had not forgotten. First we forgot theology. Then we forgot the whole Bible. Everything which we had ever learned. I forgot the Lord's Prayer.

I tried one evening to say it. I did not remember it anymore. We forgot more and more. And then a very strange thing happened. God is the truth. The Bible is the truth about the truth. Theology, if it is the right one, is the truth about the truth about the truth.

A good sermon, if you hear it, value it. It is very rare. And if you hear it, be thankful to God you have heard the truth about the truth about the truth about the truth. The truth is God alone. And around this sole truth, God, we have built a scaffold of so many theories, of so many doctrines, of so many creeds, of so many books, of so many sermons, of so many all kinds of things.

And people arrive with very great difficulty to the truth itself. Not because of the lies, but because of the many truths which are said about the truth. Our jailer, Jesus Christ, whose prisoners we were, freed us from many truths about the truth.

And when we had forgotten everything, something very strange happened. I could not pray anymore. My mind did not work. When the doping became less and less, then there was such a thaw. Better attitude of the communists.

I began to remember what has happened. And I knew that before the complete blackout, my last prayer had been, Jesus, I remember you have said, The Son of Man will come in the hour when you will not think, and on the day when you will not know.

Well, Lord, that is the hour when I don't think anymore. I can't think. This is the day when I know nothing more. And now you have to keep the promise and to come. And there he was. We had lost all the truth about the truth.

And we had the truth. It was so beautiful, I could not describe it in words. The bride was in the embraces of the bridegroom. The prisoner in the embraces of his divine jailer. It was a palace, that prison.

We received his fiery kiss. Flames of love burned around us. Angels sang. But really, I would have to tell you, human tongue can't say the beauty of this wedding night, of this mystical union between the heavenly bridegroom and the bride, when the truth about the truth disappears.

And you have the truth. Nehemiah says that in building Jerusalem, a holy city, but still an earthly city, it could not be done otherwise than one working in that part of the world, and the other one there, and the other one there.

And Nehemiah himself, afterwards, arrived to quarrel with his co-builders, because he didn't like something. We there had finished building cities. Like Mary Magdalene, we sat quietly at the feet of Jesus.

There were martyrs everywhere to work. We sat quietly and listened to his voice. We could not distinguish very well words. Our mind did not work anymore. But his melodious, heavenly voice was enough for us.

It was enough for us to look at him, and to know he loves us, and we love him. And it was so quiet. It was beautiful in the silence of solitary cells. We were everyone alone in a cell, 30 feet beneath the earth, never seeing sun, moon, snow, flowers, stars, mountains, seas.

I had forgotten that these exist. We never saw a color. For ten years I have seen only the gray walls of the cell and our gray uniforms. I had forgotten that blue and green and yellow and violet and pink exist.

Our outward world was gray. Nothing to hear and nothing to see. This monotony of prison life was disturbed only from time to time. They took you out for a beating or for a torture. With the time, the beatings and the tortures became boring.

They were always the same. And they did not impress us anymore. I wonder how people can go to a football match. I don't criticize anybody for going. But I myself, now the ball is here. Leave it here if they wish it to be here.

Then you toss it to that side, and then they toss it to this side, and then they toss it to that side. And some, I asked them, why don't you go to church? They said to go to church, it is boring. And I said, is any sermon more boring than to throw one in the same ball from one side to the other during three hours?

There, nothing happened outwardly. But inwardly, the bride of Christ had found peace. She didn't work anymore at earthly things. Not even at heavenly earthly things. At noble earthly things. There exists another Jerusalem which we don't have to build.

It comes finished from above. It is not built by human hands. And there, every citizen of that city is one soul. Don't mind if I cough from time to time. That is a reminder of prison times. And with us in Romania, we have a proverb.

As long as a man coughs, he is safe. No priest will bury him. In that heavenly city, all citizens are one soul and one heart. Undisturbed. If I remember, if I look back to these 14 years of prison, and my wife looks back to her prison life, which was much more difficult than mine, because women have suffered much more than men have suffered, we look back to these years as beautiful years.

Beautiful years. In the embraces of a bridegroom, years of spiritual serenity. And if we can be helpful to the Church abroad, to the Church in the free world, you will be asked tonight to help these persecuted Christians.

Providing Bibles, Gospel Broadcasting, and Aid to Martyrs’ Families

You will help that they might have Bibles. There are very few Bibles. That they might have broadcasting of the Gospel. Thousands of Christians are in prison. Their children hunger. A piece of bread is needed for them.

And not only bread. They are children. And they like a doll too. And a ball too. And those children should also have a doll. Not only our children. You will be asked to help. But they can help us by communicating to us a reality which they have discovered in great sufferings when the words about reality have been forgotten.

Only God is God. Every explanation what God is, is an explanation what God is. It is not God. Only God is God. Every doctrine about God is a doctrine about God. It is not God. Only God is God. Even the word God is not God.

In English it is God. In Russian it is Bog. And in Romania it is Dumezu. And in French it is Dieu. And in Hungarian it is Ishten. And in, I don't know what other languages, otherwise. Even the word God is not connected with God.

Only God is God. And around this reality of God, we have created so many other things. So many explanations and so many doctrines. And in prison we have arrived to the simplicity of faith. The more the years of prison accumulated than we were in common cells, the more we forgot the things which we had known before.

The more we became one. It was such a shock for me when I saw a Jesuit priest. Now you know that Protestants, some of them, believe that the Catholics are idolaters. But there exists something worse than the Catholics.

The Jesuits are much worse. Now I had near me a Jesuit priest dying because of tortures endured for his faith in Christ. And his last words, while his face shone in ecstasy, he said, Beloved Jesus, and he gave his ghost.

It was a very great shock for many Protestants. But the Jesuits and the Catholics and the Orthodox too saw Protestants dying for their faith. And also with similar words, Oh my God, oh beloved Jesus, I expect to be saved through his blood, and so on.

And more and more, the words which separate us, as they separated the Jews in the time of Nehemiah, one on this side of the wall, and the other on the other side of the wall, you are right, who is it?

He is right, yeah. These words disappeared, and we lived on this reality. And out of this reality came splendid attitudes of heroism. At a certain moment we had to work at a canal. A canal was built in our country.

In communist countries there exists no unemployment. That is the great benefit of socialism. No unemployment. Every unemployed man is arrested, and put to work for free, as a prisoner for the state. And he works 15 hours a day.

Perhaps you recommend it to Mr. Fraser. I heard you have the problem of unemployment in Australia. No unemployment, neither in Russia nor in Romania. They don't have such thing. They arrested all the unemployed.

We were at this canal 150 ,000 prisoners. There were those really condemned, and then these unemployed. And we had to work 15 -16 hours a day. There was no Christmas, no Easter, no Sunday, nothing. Day after day.

We had very little food. The work was very hard. Cats were eaten at the canal, and dogs, and rats, and snakes, and whatever you could find, and crows, and so on. My wife, at this canal, she has grazed the grass, as cattle do.

And we were happy when we had it. And at this canal, there were many units, thieves, and murderers, and all kinds of political, and so on. And there was a special unit, a unit of extermination, where it was even worse than the other units.

There were all bishops, priests, pastors, Muslim mullahs, and Jewish rabbis, and whosoever you like, and laymen, whosoever was in prison for his religious activity, they formed a unit, a part. And over this unit, murderers have been put as surveyors, they were sentenced to life, and they were promised that if you torture the Christians, then you will be released.

The communists never kept this promise. But these poor criminals, having a hope given to them that they will be released, they competed with each other, who can torture the Christians better. And now one day, the political officer of the canal, a lieutenant, he came to inspect that unit, everyone stood at attention before him, and he, just at random, called out a young man, and asked him, what have you been in your civilian life?

And he said, Lieutenant, what I have been, I will be forever. I am a minister of God. Then the lieutenant smiled sarcastically. What about now? Do you still believe in Jesus? Now the pastor knew that if he says yes, I believe, he will be beaten, he will be tortured.

It might be the last day of his life. Am I well heard in the rear? Please lift your hands if you hear well. He knew it might be the last day of his life. He was silent a few seconds, seconds long as eternity, because eternity was decided in those seconds.

Pastor Kochanga’s Confession of Faith Under Torture

Then his face began to shine. We are very old-fashioned Christians behind the iron curtain. We still believe the Bible, literally, exactly as it is written. We have here every year some new Bible and some new interpretation.

And some believe a half of the Bible and some three quarters and some a quarter. We believe the Bible because for us, if we remember or we read the Bible, it does not seem strange to us if I read that on Mount Tabor the face of Jesus was transfigured.

We have seen such things. Not at the same level, surely. Jesus was Son of God and these were men. But we have seen transfigurations. The face of this pastor, his name was Kochanga. The face began to shine.

He opened his mouth. He did not speak yet. But when he opened his mouth, for the first time understood a Bible verse which had always seemed queer to me. The Lord says to us that we should not repeat vain words.

Well, if he tells me not to say vain words, he also should not say vain words. Why is it written in the Gospel according to Matthew 5 .1 Jesus opened his mouth and spoke. Now that is surely a vain word.

How should one speak with a shut mouth? Why does the evangelist say he opened his mouth and spoke? Only now I understood. The opening of the mouth was a gestural part. He had not spoken yet. But everybody was overtaken by an awe.

Now we knew a pearl will come out of this mouth. And now I understood that probably something like this happened on the mount. Jesus opened his mouth. He had not spoken yet. But everybody with respect waited a divine revelation will come.

And then with a very soft, modest, but very decided voice he said, Lieutenant, when I became a Christian and afterwards a pastor, I knew that thousands of Christians and thousands of pastors have paid with their life for what they believed and for the service which they brought.

Lieutenant, I knew what I became. And as often as I ascended to the altar dressed in these beautiful cassocks, I promised to God, if ever I will wear the uniform of a prisoner, then I will surround by the respect and admiration of the Christians around.

If ever I will be surrounded by haters in jail, I will also serve thee. Lieutenant, I pity you. Prison is such a poor argument against religion. We have the truth and you have a whip. We know the last reality and you wish to destroy it with iron bars and with torches?

If you would hang all mathematicians or torture them to death, two and two would still be four. Truth can't be destroyed by tortures and by prisons and by killings. And our belief is as true as that two and two are four.

I love Christ from all my heart. I am very sorry that I can't convey to you the tune where we see said I love Christ. We all the others, we were ashamed because we, we believed in Christ. We hoped in Christ.

But this man loves Christ as a bride loves a bridegroom as Juliet will have loved Romeo and died for him at the age of fourteen. This man spoke out of a passionate love towards Christ. Then he was taken from among us.

He was beaten, he was tortured. We don't know if he spoke about God. He was and the reality lived in him. Christ lived in him and spoke from him. If a foolish government would give a law every nightingale which will sing henceforth will be tortured to death.

But what would nightingales do? They would sing. They have a song in their heart. And nobody can hinder the song. And we also have a song of love, of gratitude towards the one about whom our brother so beautifully sang.

He could have called ten thousand angels. Would not have had to endure everything which he endured. But he loved you. He loved me. And he did not call angels. But he suffered gladly in order that we might be saved.

And there exist souls for whom these are not vain words repeated once a week in church. But they believe them wholeheartedly and they love Christ with passion. I have had the privilege from God to meet such souls.

And there is such a serenity in them. St. Paul was in prison in Rome. I have visited that prison. It is subterranean. It is an exact reproduction of the prison cell in which I have been. Also under the earth.

Also you sit on the concrete. Everything, just as it has been. It is the same torturer. If he is called communist or nazi or roman emperor or inquisition or all kinds of things. And when I say inquisition, I never say inquisition.

I say inquisitions. Because there have been many inquisitions of many kinds. Not only Catholics have persecuted Protestants. Protestants have persecuted Catholics too in certain places. And everywhere the suffering has been the same.

And when St. Paul sat there on the concrete, a prisoner in chains, you see there the column to which he was tied when he was beaten. And when he was free a little bit, he wrote from there a letter and he says, We are seated in heavenly places.

How in the world are we seated in heavenly places? There can't be a worse place than this. When the body is seated in heavenly places. The body is seated in prison. But I am not only a body, I am a spirit.

And my spirit is seated in heavenly places. And I have known such men. They were taken to tortures from which they came out bleeding and full with bruises and teeth kicked out and bones broken. And they looked upon the torturers as messengers of grace.

Suffering, Christ’s Blood, and the Witness of Martyrs

If you can understand. I try to imagine when I try sometimes to share the passion of Christ. I imagine how will it have been when they had undressed him and for the first time the lash of the whip fell on his back and he had such terrible pain.

Well, he had a body just like mine and he felt the pain he had the same nerves. But in the spirit, that is what he had desired. That is what he had come for. He knew that his blood will save you and me.

And when he saw the first time from his front, from his chest the blood gushing he must have said in his spirit, Hallelujah so men will be saved. And when they put the crown of thorns and other blood ran down from the front, Hallelujah more will be saved.

And another lash more will be saved. And another lash more will be saved. And he was beaten from the top of the head to the feet more and more will be saved. And then they drove nails into his hands, into his feet.

That is what he has come for to save and he knew that only his blood can save. And I believe that his Holy Mother was also of such a high spirituality she knew why he has come. She knew how she has brought him up.

She had given him as a child the prophets to read. And she knew that he is called upon to die for the salvation of men as a mother. She must have wept. She must have felt broken hearted. But there must have been also a voice in her spirit, Rejoice mother of the Lord!

Because he really brings salvation through his death. Well that is how I visualize the scenes when he was first whipped and then when he was crucified. I have seen this on another level repeated it is only his blood which saves.

But the church since ever has this teaching that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. Is that what makes the church to blossom? Is that what makes the church to be heroical? To be ready to fight for the Holy Cause?

And I have known martyrs when they were beaten to the blood. They also felt like this. Hallelujah! That is what I wished to be a Christian. Jesus has said, whosoever wishes to come after me should deny himself.

I send you as lambs among wolves. I have given my life and my disciples can't be higher than the master is. And now I think that every one of you can learn from these persecuted Christians. Everyone can.

Transforming Personal Suffering Into Christlike Character

You have your sufferings. I know that in Australia you don't pass through the things through which Christians pass in communist countries. But you have your sufferings. Some very unhappy marriages. Marriages can be terribly unhappy.

Terribly unhappy. Very bad relationships with children and with parents. Troubling your business. Troubling your employment. You might be very sick. You might have been bereft of somebody beloved one.

Now all these things can be taken with a grudge and with resentment. But they can be taken also as messengers from God. Suffering beautifies us and suffering born with resignation, with patience, with love and with joy serves to strengthen the church people see.

Look what Christ can do to a human heart. How were we treated in prison? In one word, our jailor, Jesus Christ treated us very well. It was when I came to the West, I saw beauty shops. I don't know, do you have them in Australia too?

Do you have such beauty shops there? Ladies, go on. We have them in America very much. Beauty shops. Now I would say that prison has been for Christians a beauty shop. You have seen my wife sitting here.

You have seen her, how beautiful she is, no? She has been in the beauty shop of prison. Girls, ladies who have been there, you could see on their shining faces the things through which they have passed.

Souls have been beautified. A Christian is a hospitable man. He is hospitable not only towards guests, he is hospitable also towards sufferings when they come to him. These are methods of God to beautify our souls, to make us Christ-like.

What we have done in prison times, well, we did not do much. We were seated in heavenly places. There is not much to be done there, but to adore and to love and to be loved and to sing the praises of God.

And we sang. We sang even accompanied by musical instruments. The communists have been very nice to us. There was no cell without musical instruments. Not pianos or organs that would have been too expensive, not even mandolins.

But they put chains on our hands and on our feet, and we discovered that chains are splendid musical instruments. On that Christian soul just clink, clunk, clink, clunk, marching as to war, clink, clunk, clink, clunk.

And then when we were in common cells, everyone had another kind of chain. One was only iron, the other was iron mixed with a bit of brass. With some it was rusted already, with others it was not rusted, it was a new pair of chains.

With others the chain was shorter, with the other one it was longer. And every chain had another tune. And we could have bands, chains can be changed in musical instruments. Every scar can be changed in a star.

Every problem can be changed in an opportunity, and every tragedy can be changed in a triumph. This applies not only to Christian prisoners in communist lands, it applies also to you, because you also get scars in your life, and you have your difficulties.

And now, seated in these heavenly places, from the perspective of these years of suffering, together with very holy men, out of whom many died, I look upon the things of this world, of the free world, and the things happening in your country, too.

It looks to me like children's play. Children's play. I saw today one on the street selling newspapers. He was from the Socialist Party. Fight against Reagan's bomb. I went to him, I said, well, that's very fine.

You fight against Reagan's bomb. Would you put, next time, fight against Reagan's and Brezhnev's bomb? Why should we fight only against the American bomb? Why should we not fight also against the Russian bomb?

It was so new for him that you must not be against the one and for the other. You can be just against hatred, and against killing. Whosoever does it. I've seen the big protests which you had in Australia and in New Zealand, really, about a big, big problem.

To play or not to play football with New Zealand. About this, men were arrested, policemen were injured, about the great question, to play or not to play. And your Prime Minister also said we should not play, because in South Africa, the blacks don't have all the rights.

A few weeks after this, a delegation of the World Council of Churches came and said, wait a little bit, Australia. With you, the aboriginals also don't have any right. I can foretell you, very, very shortly, you will have agitation in the whole world.

Don't play football with Australia. And then there will be no football with New Zealand, because they have a problem with the Maoris. And do you know with whom you will play football? Only with the Russians, who have killed 66 million people.

Only with the Chinese, the Chinese communist government has killed 60 million. You will play with Cambodia, where half of the population has been killed by the communists. With whom will you play? Is this not a children's play, all this discussion?

Why do you play with Germany? The communists in Germany have created apartheid. They have made a wall in the midst of the nation, and they have separated half of the nation from another half of the nation.

And nobody speaks about this. And what about Russia, which persecutes the Jews? Everything is so childish, childish. And you sit in heavenly places, and you look to this. Look what Christians, some of them are Christians, speak about and protest about.

Then I read about the great strikes, which you have in your country, every week other strikes. And it is right, if I would be a worker in America, in Australia, I would also agitate for strikes. You need urgently strikes to diminish your salaries.

They are scandalously high, I tell you very honest. Our mission works in some 50 countries of the free world, it works in India too. I have been to India several times. The average yearly income of an Indian yearly income of an Indian is $200 a year.

Who would not strike? In Australia, if we would have $200 a month. They have $200 a year. You will ask me, but how do they live on $200 a year? They don't live on it. They die on it. I have seen them die.

I have been to Calcutta. I have seen, to Madras. You see hundreds of thousands, living on the street, no sewage, no running water. They are on the street. They live on the street. They mate on the street.

Their children are born and their children die without ever having bitten an apple or having seen a candy or a toy. And Mother Teresa gathers them from the street. And in Mother Teresa's home, 80 die.

It is too late when they come there. But at least 20 are saved. When the others die decently, it is urgently needed that Australian workers and American workers and British workers should make big strides.

We should not have these scandalous salaries. And the employers also should not have these huge profits. We should renounce in order that the others should have. And everything is so wrong and so wrong.

And the World Council of Churches supporting murderous guerrillas in Africa who kill instead of supporting families of Christians who are in prison. If you don't love your own family, how will you love strangers?

And if you don't love the saints? So many children of Christian martyrs are hungry. There are so many wrong, wrong things. Now, this year, in October, we have the commemoration of 400 years since the birth of a man.

I believe you all know his name. 800 years since the birth of a man, St. Francis of Assisi. He is called the man who was the most Christ-like who has ever lived in history. He said we should love brother wolf.

Brother wolf. And there are others who don't love even brother lamb. They think to kill the lamb. And we say to love the wolf. From heavenly places, looking upon the free world, we are revolutionists.

We believe that this world must be revolutionized, but in the sense not of mutual hatred for race motives and class motives and denomination motives, but it must be revolutionized in the spirit of love.

And I wish to give you just one example more. I was told when I came to Australia, here a sermon must be 20 minutes. And I stick exactly at this. I never speak more than 20 minutes, only that my minutes are a little bit longer.

With the inflation, you know, everything goes up. And so, all prices went up, and my minutes also are no more 60 seconds. But I will tell you just one episode more. If I will remember in the meantime a second episode, I will tell the second too, but now only one episode.

Forgiveness and the Triumph of Love in a Prison Cell

When I was in prison, I was very, very sick. At the whole surface of both lungs, tuberculosis. Four vertebras caused by tuberculosis, intestinal tuberculosis, diabetes, jaundice, heart failure, all at the same time, perhaps a few things more.

I don't remember them all. And I was dying. I was in a room for dying prisoners. Around me, people died. I was the only one who escaped alive from that cell. It was a cell reserved for the dying ones.

You were put there after a few days. You died. Others were brought, and others died, and so on and so on. I survived in that cell two years and a half. Now I head to my right. I was laying in bed. I could not move.

To my right was a pastor. His name was Isku. And he was dying. They tortured him to death. He was so serene, so quiet. He knew in whom he had believed. It is written in John 5, 24, the Lord has said, Whosoever hears my word and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life, not will have it.