1992 Missions Conference Talk - Part 4 — Richard Wurmbrand

Christ’s Participation in Human Affliction

How about this Jesus Christ when we read Ephesus? What does he think? Well in Hebrews 10 and in Hebrews 6 you will see Jesus speaks about son who clung to him under their feet. It is written in Hebrews 10.

The son clung to the son of God under their feet. And in Hebrews 6 it is written about son who crucified him again. And what it is written right there is that he is afflicted in all our afflictions. You can't be afflicted without God participating in your afflictions.

And he is afflicted, we have seen what is done to a child. Didn't he have such a child? There was such a child. Even Joseph wished to leave her. Even he in a certain way suspected her. They remembered Joseph's name.

Herod’s Threat and the Horror of Abortion

And he was a king. And you could say now, the high court or the congress or the senate. He was a king and they decided to kill him. In many years it was not so much the act of abortion but the torture which was before him and the child's needs which was not his own.

It was to get rid of him, it was to kill him. When the child hears this plot and I would recommend to all of you see the last issue of Life magazine. The issue is that you write there is a conversation with a certain Mrs. Daniel Brown who committed abortion.

And she says, whenever my baby at the moment of the abortion Alright, thank you. Thank you. When I brought my baby I felt the child inside to be so hard it rolled like a magnet. It did not wish that it should take me and it tried to hide itself, the child.

Listening to God, the Child, and Jesus

So the child knew that abortion comes. She tells it. A very interesting article in Life magazine. So we don't listen to God. We don't listen to the child. We don't listen to Jesus. We don't listen. We talk about abortion.

Instead of listening we learn to be silent in his voices and pray in the words of the nearest and son of Jesus. Then we learn to listen. Then we learn to listen to many maybe a number of different types don't mind if I cross a little bit.

I've learned to be joyous in my circumstances. In Romania we had a problem. As long as we have no cross, no priest in the region.

So I noticed that in my heart.

I know right what I am doing. Sometimes my heart is such a jealous world but I remain it is always so great. We have to learn to listen. To listen to God. To listen to nature. To listen to Jesus. And to listen, to listen.

Moral Decisions and the Voices We Ignore

And we, we suddenly come to the university. The children learn about us. If we would ask the child of three or four do you wish to remain without money or without family? We take decisions which involve them too.

And they say come here to the church. And so we take the decision without thinking about it. But we have to remember also in the world inside, the state it is not the only chemical field which goes on in the world now.

Persecution and Suffering in China

We have heard that communism has changed but it is not the only thing that has changed. Every fifth person in the world is under consciousness. There are five billion men in the world. One billion are in China.

And in China there is no terrible communism, terrible, terrible already. There was a man who was there since 40 years he was living. And what a terrible person he was. He was there a month, there was a joke meeting.

A Chinese with me 22 years. In Tibetan language. He went to Tibetan speech, there was a coffee. He was there a man who was a saint. A pastor. And he talked of the tight his hands behind his back so that he could not move, he could not defend himself.

And then they shook over his head, Lucas, Lucas, this human race and this human being. They shook it over his head. So they gave him food. They could not give it to him, he says, because he says to reflect on the fact they see the food on the floor as a human corpse.

And yet to bow down to the earth and to lick this food but his lips were full with human waste and all this. Things like this are happening in China now. The names of those are in jail. But the interesting thing as I began to tell you about abortion, that it is a crime.

Abortion, Death, and the Hope of Heaven

But it has also a worse part. This creation of the world, everything has a worse part. Death. It must not be only a tragedy, it is the end of human life. And physics says that it is abortion for children who are completely innocent.

It is a terrible crime. But they are in heaven now. They are safe. So suffering in communist days, in Chinese days, was such a terrible thing like this. This is the worst part. You tell me about the new country in Greece and about so many tortures.

Bearing Affliction Through Faith and Singing

And then they asked my brother how could you bear all these things? And he began to sin. To sin. In America I found a kind of words which don't exist in my country. In my country, that's sin every day.

That's the thing, sin every day in America too. But there is one kind of words which sin only once a week. The American Christians. They sin every Sunday. Even if it is right to sin to God, they sin every day.

It is not right to sin even on Sunday. In Greece, we sin every day. And we sin being accompanied by many Christians. They did not give us mandolins or violins because they were too expensive for the communists.

But they gave us instruments we could change our hands and our feet. And we discovered that change was mainly with the instruments we could sing. The day, clink clank, clink clank. The day, clink clank, clink clank.

The world is made, clink clank, clink clank. The world is made, clink clank, clink clank. Let us rejoice, clink clank, clink clank, and be glad in it. And then when I asked this brother, how could you bear 32 years of such treatment and did not tell me anything, did she, before the rest of the churches?

He began to sing. He began singing. All that man is perishing, yet the human being is being cremated day by day. That is from the same Corinthians 4. Same thing. For our life's affliction, which is but for a moment, is but with some hours, a far more exceeding indeterminate weight of glory.

The Momentary Nature of Earthly Affliction

22 years in Chinese jails, a life's affliction, which is but for a moment. How do you think I have an affliction? How do you think I have an affliction? That is how it took 22 years to have a terrible moment, a life's moment, a life's affliction.

One told me, and this he was, I can't bear it anymore, I've been in medicine 60 years,.

And I'm fed up. She talks and talks and talks and talks.

And nags and nags and nags, the whole time day and night she nags me. It doesn't matter your occupation, I work in a factory, so how many hours a day do you work? 8 hours a day you work, 2 hours it takes you to the lab, to the job and back, to shop, sell things, so tell me how some of them, 8 hours a day you sleep,.