In this sermon, the speaker shares his experiences of preaching in communist countries and the persecution he faced. He emphasizes the importance of not hating the communists but instead loving them. The speaker talks about the hardships endured by Christians in communist countries, including torture and hunger. He also highlights the power of faith and the ability to find peace and serenity even in the midst of suffering. The sermon references the Bible, particularly Psalm 23, to encourage listeners to trust in God and not fear, even in the face of death.

I was introduced as a disturbing pastor, which is not so bad. I have a Korean friend. His English is very poor. He had to preach in America. And he was introduced as a model of a warm pastor. So I went home and looked up in the dictionary what these words mean. Model is a small reproduction of the real thing. And warm, well, is somebody who is not very hot. So I understood he was introduced as a small reproduction of what a pastor should be. And not a very hot pastor. So I fare well with disturbing pastors. When our Lord Jesus Christ chased the merchants from the temple, people put him as a Christian, a legitimate Christian. With what authority do you do these things? What is the sign that you have the right to do things otherwise than everybody else? And men are in right to ask us. You, the church, say you speak in the name of God. You individual Christians, when you witness about Christ, you do the same thing. You ask us to change all our ways, to revolutionize our lives. With what right do you speak so? What is your sign? Our Lord gave a sign. He said, you will destroy this temple, my body. It will be resurrected. What is the sign which we give? Nietzsche, a German philosopher, said, Christians should look much more saved if they wish we should believe in their Savior. We have to be somehow else. In America, not long ago, a very renowned Catholic bishop died, Fulton Sheen. And he tells the story that once he had to speak in Philadelphia in the town hall. He walked, he lost somehow his way. He saw some boys play, and he asked them for the way to the town hall. They showed him. And he said, boys, why don't you come with me? I will speak there about the way to heaven. And the boys laughed. One of them said, how can you show us the way to heaven when you don't know even the way to the town hall? And Christians wish to show to other people the way to heaven. We show, first of all, that your life is not like our lives. That it is a better, a more beautiful, a holier life. That you know to solve your problems in an entirely other manner than we do it. If not, you can't be believed. You can't be believed. Now, we Christians have our experiences with Jesus. We can tell everybody we have been saved by Jesus. Saved from what? Saved from our sins. Yes, but every Sunday morning we gather again in churches. And we say, forgive our sins which we have made by words, deeds, and thoughts. And the next Sunday we say it again, and in our homes we say it. So, it seems that we have not been fully saved by Jesus. From our sins. He has healed from sicknesses. I have been healed from many sicknesses. My beautiful wife has been healed. We have had such experiences. But after having been healed from one sickness, after a time we had another sickness. Our Lord Jesus Christ has resurrected people from the dead. A young girl, and the son of the widow of Nain, and Lazarus. But after a time, these again died. He has helped us in our business. We have had a bad time in our employment. Somehow these bad times passed. We had it better. But then another wave came. And we again lost money, or we lost our employment, or I don't know what. Does not exist another salvation. A salvation higher than this. A salvation which should put me much above the ups and downs of human life. Can't Jesus give us something much better than this? If I would ask you, are you God? I wonder how many of you would dare to say, yes, I am a God. Well, if you don't dare to say you are a God, you don't believe in Jesus. Because Jesus says you are God. I don't feel at all like a God. If I look in a mirror, I see a human being. I am not a God. I don't think about myself as a God. Well, your thoughts are not right. And your feelings are not right. And your mirror lies to you. Jesus knows better. And he says you are God. I will not tell you in what chapter, in what verse, because then you will look up that verse. Read the whole Bible and you will find the verse which I tell you. Jesus says to those who belong to his people, you are God. You are far above the ups and downs of this life. In this life you are helped to get rid of a sin and to get rid of a sickness and to get rid of different problems. But there is something much higher. You pass to another species. The difference between being human or being a child of God is much bigger than the difference between a monkey and a man. Because monkey and man are creatures. But we belong to the family of God. It is written somewhere in the Bible, read the whole Bible and you will find it, that we have the divine nature. We have the nature of the creator. If we belong through Christ to God. It is again written that we have the seed of God in us. Where there is the seed of a lily, a lily will arise from it. Where there is the seed of a carnation, there will be a carnation. And there are such strange verses in the Bible. You would not dare to pronounce them if they were not written clearly there. Jesus promised that if you will defeat the devil and the world and your own flesh, I will give you, he says, what will he give me? Many of us hope that we will stand once before the throne of God received. Who wishes to stand, let him stand. I don't wish to stand before the throne of God. Because the Bible says, I will give him to sit. Not to stand. To sit. Where to sit? On my throne, says Jesus. I will give them to sit on my throne as I have conquered. And sit on the throne of the Father. There is somewhere a throne from which universes are created and ruled. And we are called not to stand only in adoration before this throne. Now we stand in adoration. But we are called to develop and to sit on such a throne, co-creators and co-rulers. That is what is written clearly in the Bible. It is very rarely mentioned in churches and in sermons. It is written that when he will appear, we will be, how? Somehow. We will be something. We will be like him. If you see somebody, you will be like the king. You will be like the president of the United States. You will be a genius like Einstein. It is a very big word. It is not said, well, you will also have a little bit of intelligence. Einstein has a little bit more, you will have less. It is not said, well, the queen is the queen and you will be somewhere a policeman in the city. It is not at all. It says, Jesus is the king of kings and you will be like him. You can be like him only because we have also the seed of Jesusness in us. As an embryo, we will be a full man once. We will be such a high being. Jesus saves us from the spiritual and bodily problems of our life here on earth. Really, we get salvation from our sins. We get also daily salvation in the sorrows and troubles which we have. But there exists something entirely more. We can be saved from the misery, from the ups and downs of human life and become partakers of the divine nature. Really fulfilled. These three words which Jesus has said. Ye are God. Now, after this small introduction, I wish to tell you, this would be philosophy. I wish to tell you how this was fulfilled in the lives of Christians in communist countries. When the communists took over, first of all I must tell you something. I preached in this church 18 years ago. I had just come out from Romania. And I asked a gentleman who had been here 18 years ago. What did I preach? And to my great amazement, he knew. He said, 18 years ago you told us that a communist officer had come to torture you. With his implements of torture. They had rubber truncheons, they had red hot irons to burn, they had knives. And you looked into his eyes. You admired his eyes and you told him what beautiful eyes you had. I never hated the communists. I loved them. And my speech will not be an anti-communist speech. I love them from all my heart. And I wish they should be saved. This should be clear. But when they came to power in my country, they did what they would do in Britain if they would come to power. They put thousands of Christians of all denominations in jail. And some of us, who were considered more dangerous, we were put everyone alone in a cell. During 3 years I was alone in a cell. 30 feet beneath the earth. Never seeing sun, moon, snow, flowers, stars. With the time I forgot that these things exist. We never saw a color. We only saw the gray walls of the cell and our gray uniforms. With the time I forgot that blue and yellow and violet and pink exist. Our world was gray. We never had a Bible, nor any other book. We were very, very hungry. I will not describe you our menu because you would lose your appetite for a fortnight. We were very, very hungry. There were beatings, there were tortures. I will not describe the tortures. But you would not sleep a fortnight if you would know what tortures your brothers and sisters in communist countries endured. We never had a Bible, nor any other book. 14 years I have never had a pen in my hand, never paper, nothing. There was no intellectual activity of any kind. And in these years of solitary confinement, we never heard a voice, we never heard a whisper. Everyone of us was alone. We were so alone, so alone under the earth. Cows grazed over our jail. Those who passed near the jail did not know it was a jail. It was under the earth. Cows grazed over it. And we were alone, alone. And we remembered the words of Jesus. Ye are God's. God has been alone. Before he created the world, the world of angels and the world of men, he has been alone, alone, alone. And we were like God, alone. We lived in timelessness. There was a time we did not know anymore. Is it March? Is it October? Is it Tuesday? Is it Saturday? We did not know. If it is Christmas, if it is Easter, if it is eight o'clock in the morning, if it is three o'clock during the night, we did not know this difference. We guessed somehow, something, but we never knew the time. We lived in timelessness, in eternity, before time started. Eternity has been hacked by us in pieces. There was a mission conference in Germany. And they brought a convert from New Guinea, a savage. They brought him to show, look here, how he had worked. And this man from New Guinea went back. They asked him, how is life there in Europe, where you have been? He said, it would be all right, only they are stupid. And he said, why are they stupid? They have something here at their wrist, which makes continually tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. And it cuts time in pieces. And they are always so unhappy. Now I have lost an hour, now I have lost three hours, I have lost ten minutes. If they would not cut it in pieces themselves, why do they? And we had, it was some fifty years ago, I was a missionary, I had to wait for a bus. He explained to them somehow what a bus is. And the bus had just passed. And the missionary told me, let us run after the bus. So we ran, we ran, and we caught it. And when we entered, he said, now we have won ten minutes. And they asked the missionary, what will we do with these ten minutes? He did not know what it was about. We have cut time in pieces. There we lived in timelessness. There was no time. As God has been in timelessness. I am Jewish, my beautiful wife is Jewish too. I am sorry you could not see how beautiful she is, because she is small. Standing did not help her. She was asked to stand. You will see her at the bookstore. And we both are Jewish. Some of you might be Jewish too. You might know that in the Hebrew language, our tenses don't exist. I am, I was, I have been, I have been, I would have been, and all these things don't exist. They have only the transitive and intransitive. Because all these things don't correspond to reality. There exists the one reality which we cut in pieces. We were in timelessness. We were alone, as God has been. We were outside of time, as God has been. We had nothing, nothing. If you can imagine, we had nothing. We had no family anymore, no children, no mother, no church, no books, no, nothing, nothing. Everything had been taken away from us. Our clothing, everything. Our name had been taken away from us. When we were put in jail, we were told, you are not allowed to pronounce your name. Not even the guards should know whom they guard. They fear that if they take a glass of wine with a friend, they might betray the secret, who is in jail. So we were given a number, prisoner number 1, prisoner number 823, 6500, I don't know how much. Our number, everything had been taken away from us. We had nothing. God had nothing. We were alone like God. We were in timelessness like God. We had nothing like God. And God, out of nothing, because he is God, he is a creator. Out of nothing, he made the world. Out of nothing, he made the world. In all initiations, in mystery religions, there is a habit. When the disciple asks the master who initiated him, what is the world? The master would take a rock. On the rock, there was a thread. And at the end of the thread, a coal burning, red hot. And the master would turn the burning coal around, and then it made a red circle. The red circle, you could see it. You could photograph it, but it did not exist. There was only one little bit of coal. And if he turned it around, quicker and quicker, he could make ten circles out of it. He could make a sphere out of it. He could make a world out of it. And you could see the world, but the world did not exist. That is exactly what modern science tells us. This world, where there are some little electrons and some little protons and some little neutrons, the distance from an electron to a proton is in comparison with their size, as big as the distance from the earth to the sun. And in the midst, there is nothing. Now they found that the atom is also composed of smaller particles, bisons and leptons, and I don't know how they are called, which also are at a distance from one another, as big as that from the earth to the sun. And these are smaller particles, which are called quarks, and really the world is a nothing, plus a God, who has made that out of this nothing there should be a world. He has created out of nothing. And then we asked ourselves, different Christians at different levels, surely have experienced in different manner, but we said to ourselves, like God we are alone. Like God we are outside of time. Like God we have nothing. And we are Gods. Then let us act like God. Let us create a world. And in this dark sector in me and present self, I myself and others, we created for ourselves a beautiful world. It was so beautiful. A world which we created because we are creators and we are children of God. It started with this, that I spoke to Jesus. I did not see him. I did not experience him. I believed. And I spoke to him. We had no writing material, but we always wrote with a piece of wood, taken from the bed, a piece of wood. We greased our shoes with soap, and we wrote on the soles of our feet, whole books I have written. You will find when you come out, I have written not only Torture for Christ, don't read all my books because I have published already 15, but I published one of the books, of this my correspondence with Jesus. You will find it under the name Servant in Solitary Confinement. I corresponded with Jesus. I spoke with God. But when you speak that much with Jesus, when you speak much with God, and you speak really in faith, something happens. You all know what erotic obsessions are. How terrible they are, especially in prison. I have not seen a girl 14 years. I have not seen a woman 14 years. And women did not hear. It can obsess you. You lie down a little bit, and then you see before you girls and women, and you never see your wife. You see somebody else's wife. And I imagine that girls have the same temptation. But as our mind can evoke erotic things, our minds can evoke also spiritual things. You can evoke the presence of Jesus. I can close my eyes now. I can see my son. I can see my daughter-in-law. I can see my grandchildren. Every one of us can, no? We can evoke the presence of somebody. And we evoked the presence of Jesus. We evoked the presence of angels. We evoked the presence of saints. And with the time, we orientated ourselves in this entirely other world. We evoked beautiful forests, and lakes, and seashores, and so many beautiful places, a beautiful sky. We never saw the sky with the stars. But we could evoke all these things, and we lived in this world which we have created. We lived in a world with so many good men. With so many saintly men. It was a pleasure to be with them. To discuss with them. Years passed. We did not observe the passing of time. There was no time for us. We have created for ourselves a beautiful world. And out of this, our experience. I plead with you. I know we had our suffering there. You have yours. Many of you are very, very much alone. You are married, and you are still alone because your spouse does not understand you. You have children, but they break your heart. They don't understand you. You have parents who are brutal. They don't understand you. In your church, you are misunderstood. Pastors get misunderstood, and parishioners get misunderstood. There is so much loneliness, so much loneliness. Hallelujah. God was alone. God was alone. I have nothing. I am unemployed. My business went bankrupt. I have nothing. I have no money. God had nothing. And out of nothing, He created a world. Why don't you create a beautiful world for yourself? St. Paul was in a jail, in a subterranean jail in Rome. I have seen it. I have been there. It was like, exactly like the cell in which I have been, under the earth. He sat on the concrete. He had no bed. He sat on the concrete. And there on the concrete, beaten, hungry, he wrote to the Ephesians, we, he meant himself and the other disciples, we are seated, he says, in heavenly places. Go away, you liar. In what heavenly places are you seated? You are seated in a subterranean jail in Rome. He said, well, that is a material world in which I am detained somehow against my will. I am chained to this material world. But I am a God. I am also a creator. I am a son of God. I can create a world of mine. And I can see myself and my dear brethren seated in heavenly places. And St. John deported on the island of Patmos also under pressure. He saw so many beautiful things in heaven. He saw God. He saw the word of angels. He saw angels. Angelic beings. And I would recommend to every one of you, I have not come to tell you how much the Christians suffer in communist countries and how many beatings they get and how much you should help them. I have come to tell you that they have had spiritual experiences as a part which could be the common treasure of Christians also in the free world. You don't have their sadness, but you have yours. You have your grievances. You have your sorrows. You have your all kind of things. Or your pain. You must not live in your pain. You can live outside of them. Not above them. You can be released by God from this pain or from this pain. You can be saved from this. You can be saved from others. But you can be also above all these things. Seated in heavenly places in a world which thy spirit has created. Christ. Can't he create Christ? But who is this Christ? Where is this Christ? Christ, where does he live? He lives on this pulpit now because he lives on me. And if he is a creator, then I can create. And we have received the Holy Spirit. Where the Holy Spirit is the third person in Godhead. He is also creator. I can create. Why should I live in this ugly world which is called reality and not live in the beautiful world which I can create for myself. I can't free myself entirely from this reality. Somehow it chains me. It draws me back. I have to eat. I have to seek a job. I have to do something. I have to solve some family relations or I don't know what. But at the same time I have the spirit cleansed by Jesus appertaining to him which can create entirely new realities. And I've come to plead with you. Learn from the underground church. I must say I'm sorry I'm not a painter. I would like to have been, to be a painter. And to paint the beautiful shining faces of Christians in communist jails. Their faces shone. And it was quite an achievement even for the glory of God to shine on the face of a Christian in communist jails. Because we did not wash. I have not washed three years. Some of your children would enjoy it. We did not wash. But the glory of God can shine from behind a crust of dirt. And they had a triumphant smile on their face. And I knew about Christians who had come out from communist prisons. I knew that one who was stopped several times on the street by a hostile fire. And I asked him, sir, what is it with you? You look such a happy man. What is the source of your happiness? And he told me that I come from many years in communist jails. Because they have not lived in their spirit in the difficulties of material life. But through the spirit they create for themselves a beautiful world as you can create, every one of you. You can live very beautiful lives. We say beautiful lives. If only you would know what life I have. Some have such a bad marital life. A bad marital life can be much worse than prison. Terrible. You have a wife who knocks, or a husband who bathes her. Children who break your heart. There exist so many things. And there exist grave sicknesses and terminal sicknesses and bereavements. And there exist so many material difficulties. Your head breaks. You don't know how to pay and how to do. There exist so many difficulties. Tempest in your soul. I know these difficulties exist. But your difficulties are in any case less than those of our brother Mihai Horev. Mihai Horev is a Russian Christian. He is in jail, I believe, since 15 years. His father died in the same jail in which he is now. And he tells in a letter which he recently smuggled out from prison that he was put in a cell with common criminals. They put the Christians. Who can imagine when we speak about tortures of communists, there is just nothing in comparison with being with common criminals and tortured by them. The communists, you know, he has 8 hours of work. After 8 hours he goes home. But the criminals with you, 24 hours in the same cell. And what they do to Christians, unimaginable. Now he was in a cell with common criminals. They had beaten him so that he fell unconscious. When he came somehow to himself, he heard them speaking among themselves, we should grease some rope and we should hang him tonight. And another said, no, that's too complicated. We will better cut his throat and then we will put the bleeding knife, we will put it in his hand so it will look that he has committed suicide. And that was the talk among them. And you could believe because they did these things. And then he created a world for himself. And he said, how beautiful will it be after they have cut my throat. He evoked heavenly Jerusalem. He saw the angels receiving him, taking him in their arms to bring him to the bosom of Abraham. And so many beautiful things he saw. He saw himself encountering the martyrs of old. He had never thought that he will be with a polycarp or ignis or these holy martyrs. And now I, a little fellow, may I have arrived to be in their ranks. And he enjoyed these things and enjoyed them. He slept the whole night very quiet. The next day again meeting, again in the evening they talked about killing him. And he said, but my father has died in this place. He was also killed by a criminal. He did not know how he had died. And what an honor for me and what a joy for my father that I was not afraid and that I walked in his footsteps. And I will see Jesus in thinking about this world which he created for himself. He fell asleep again and again quietly. 18 days it went like this. On the 18th day he was moved from that jail. And now I have to read to you. It is so beautiful that I have to read to you exactly. I will have to read quietly because I translate from another language. When he had to leave the cell, the criminal who had intended to cut my throat came to me, shook my hand and said, truly there is something supernatural in you. What in the world does a criminal know about supernatural? Horace was a page of the Bible. He knew from Horace not from the Bible that Horace belongs to another species. He has a divine nature. He says something supernatural is in you. There must be a God. Every time when we spoke about you, do you think we did not know that you heard us? Though you kept your eyes closed. Why did you not jump at us? Why did you not panic? Why were you not sad? Why could you sleep quietly and peacefully? This only one can do who really believes in eternal life. When you were taken out for a walk in the prison yard, you could have reported to a guard, these men wish to kill me. Please put me in another prison cell. That is what is usually done. But you never did it. Why? Why did you come back? Why did you not seek help with any man except with your God? And why did you pray on your knees every morning and every evening? You knew that we could kill you. We have killed so many. Why did you give yourself quietly every day in our hands? This is incomprehensible for us. Really you have something supernatural in you? Once again he shook my hands and that is how we parted. Horef has not lived in this world. We all expect that Jesus will come once and will rapture us to heaven. Nobody will be raptured, I can assure you, if he is not raptured already now. And nobody will be in heaven if he is not in heaven already now. If he does not live here in an entirely other world than the material world which surrounds us. So whatever your circumstances, they might be terrible with some of you. I am in so many houses and I hear so many stories. I know what is happening in different houses in the lives of men. Don't live this life. Live the new life, the eternal life, the timeless life to which we are called by Jesus. I read recently a happening. A man was such a Christian. He was known as a big Christian. He told others about Christ and then he fell very, very sick. And then he had to inquire with everyone, but how is it with eternal life and how is it with resurrection? He should have known this years ago. We were in prison cells with men sentenced to death. As often as the door was unlocked, he did not know if he will be taken to a bath, if he will be taken to an interrogation, or if he is taken to be shot. And there was such a quiet. There was no difference for him because he knew he has the eternal life. I am God. What can be done to a God? I belong to the family of God. I have the nature of God. If I have the nature of a fly, I know I will live 24 hours and then I will die. If I have the nature of a man, I know I can live 60, 70, 80 years. If I am an elephant, well an elephant can live 200 or 300 years. If I am a God, who in the world can kill me? He can change only my outward shape. I believe in other circumstances. And we saw this quiet of those who understood the Godly nature. And I plead with you for this. You have your difficulties, you have your crosses. What cross did Jesus have? He knew that on that evening he had been sold for 30 pieces of silver by the beloved disciple. Another disciple to whom he had said, you will be the rock on which I will build my church. This disciple will deny and will say, Jesus, never heard about him. And the others will flee. He will be deserted. He will be stripped. He will be beaten to the pulp. He will bleed all over. He will have a crown of thorns. They will drive nails into his hands and into his feet. He will see his holy and very blessed mother. We will speak about her a little bit later. He will see his holy mother weeping at the foot of the cross. He knew all this. And then he said to his disciples, if the situation is so bad, let us sing a song. And he went to the garden of Gethsemane singing. Because he did not live only this material life which imposes itself upon us, what is called the real life. He was the son of God and lived in a life created by him himself. May I attract your attention just about one verse, which all of you probably know from childhood, from Sunday school, Psalm 23. It's so easy for the psalmist. He says, even if I pass through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear nothing. It's not easy. You pass through the valley of death and you should fear nothing. When there was a blitz here, all the people here in London will remember. There were the great bombings here in Britain and death all around. You feared the bomb might fall just upon your house. If you pass through the valley of death, you fear. But David does not say he passes through the valley of death. He says, when I will pass through the valley of the shadow of death, then I don't fear. The shadow of a snake can't bite me. The shadow of a dog can do me no harm. The shadow of a man with a big stick where he wishes to beat me can do me no harm. Shadows can do no harm. And we know only the shadows of death. We are outside of it. Death exists for those who don't belong to God. They are mortal creatures. But we we are immortal. Christ has given us eternal life. And that makes the difference in our lives. And therefore Christians could be quiet and happy. I must say about myself and about all the others who are in jail and who were in jail. There are thousands in jail now. I have been a lucky fellow. I was only 14 years in jail. Brother Alexei Kotov in Russia is in jail since 45 years. And he is still there. And if he would be here, he would tell you the same thing. We sing in jail. When I came to Britain, I found out that there exist birds about which nothing is written in ornithology. Ornithology is a science about birds. And they say there in this false science of ornithology, that birds sing every day. Larks, nightingales sing every day. There exist no birds which don't sing every day. But there exist the British Christians. They sing once a week on Sunday. And on Sunday they sing what we have today over a thousand tongues to sing. You liar! If you sing once a week, one tongue is more than enough. Why do you need a thousand tongues? We in communist jails, we sing every day. And we sing being accompanied by musical instruments. The communists have been very nice to us. Every Christian when he entered in jail, got a musical instrument. Not an organ, not a piano, not a guitar, but chains at our hands and at our feet. And we discovered that chains are splendid musical instruments. We could sing, Onward Christian soldiers, cling, clang, cling, clang. Marching as to war, cling, clang, cling, clang. And there was this joy of the heart. Dear Brethren, I tell you about things through which I have passed myself, and through which so many passed now. Guyen Van Diem in Vietnam, who is in jail, and Francis Hsien Shu Day in China, just recently died after 24 years in jail. And in Russia there is Yakunin and Minyakov, and there are so many. And in every country, Cuba, Nicaragua, wherever the communists are at power, the British leftists don't say what socialism really is about. But wherever the communists are at power, they jail Christians and they jail Jews. I was Jewish and Christian. I always had to get two beatings. One for being a Jew, one for being a Christian. Until I learned the lesson. As often as they shouted, all the Jews out for beating, I did not go. I am a Christian. When they shouted all the Christians out for beating, I did not go. I am a Jew. And they speak to you from experience. Live in this new spiritual world which is granted to you by God. The fellowship with angels. The love of God. And the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. And the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. And it is written in Hebrews 12, 1. This great crowd of witnesses. All these saints which are enumerated in Hebrews 11. All these big saints of our olden times. Where are they? Ah, they are somewhere higher up, higher up. Not true. They are here. They are around us. And you can have the fellowship with them and live amidst troubles in very great joy. And I plead to you. Believe me, I don't speak easily to you. It's not so that I was 14 years in jail and that was it. Almost my whole life has been a life of very, very deep suffering. I have been a very poor orphan child. I have been hungry as a child. I have been a hungry student. Since I was a child I was persecuted because I am a Jew in Eastern Europe. Since I was a little child I heard dirty Jew. I was beaten for the crime of being Jewish. I have been in Nazi jails. I will not tell you how many we lost to the Holocaust because you would not be able to hear who in what circumstances and how many we lost to the Holocaust. I have been in communist jails and I can tell you that now I suffer much more than I ever suffered in a communist jail. I am a man who has no suffering and no suffering even now. It is not easy to simply say you live in another world and pass over all these sufferings. I tell you because I have tasted it. I have seen it can be done. God has helped me to do it. He can help every one of you. Your lives can be beautiful. Your lives can be beautiful. They can be lives of joy. They can be lives of fullness because you realize that you belong to the family of God. You have the divine nature. You are something entirely else than the world around you. You are not submitted in your spirit to all these ups and downs which are unavoidable in life. You will be healed from sickness and something else will happen. You will avoid those accidents and something else. And not always something happens. And you can be helped in these but then something else will happen. And there exists this other world. Peace. The world of peace of God which passes all understanding and all misunderstandings. That everything is quiet. That everything is beautiful. Everything is serene. I call you to come to this world. I have not come to thunder here against communism. People expect very often from me, deliver an anti-communist speech. I have not come to recruit you. You should become from now on donors to the mission into the communist world. From our side it is alright if you give to any other missionary organization or to the church. God has one jacket with many pockets. It makes no difference to whom you give as long as you give. I don't plead for a mission. I plead for your own souls. For the happiness and for the beauty of your souls. We all have to suffer. Voters here in England don't go there. They go too fast. When I came to England I was told never preach more than twenty minutes. And I stick exactly to this. I never preach more than twenty minutes, but only my minutes are a little bit longer, you know. Don't mind. Since eighteen years I have not spoken in this church, so don't mind if I tell you just one or two things more. If you have the divine nature, if you are a child of God, learn to suffer in a noble manner. You are not like the others. Murmuring, complaining, shouting. You belong to the divine nature. What is the divine nature? God is a being which suffers. God is a being which suffers. In Ezekiel 6-9 it is written, you have crushed me by your sins. In Ezekiel 16- 43 God says, you have crushed me by your sins. In 16-43 it is written, you have thwarted me by your sins. Or in another translation, you have agitated me by your sins. In the book of Malachi it is written, you have wearied me out by your sins. They have to do with a God who knows suffering himself. He is agitated by our sins. He is wearied out. He is crushed. And when he sent his son to represent him here on earth, he told him, the only way in which you can represent me is if you become a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. When God came on earth, he came as a little babe, and the first thing which I had to encounter was a hero who wished to kill him. And all his life he has had to suffer poverty and oppression and then in the end this shameful death. And we represent this God. But God knows to suffer in a noble manner. And let us also learn we have everyone our sufferings. We can bear them in a noble manner. First of all, forgive. Forgive is wrong. May I tell you that Englishmen spell wrongly the word forgive. Forgive is not F-O-R-G-I-V-E That's a wrong spelling. May I teach you? I know. You see my English, how good it is. I can tell you how to spell it. Forgive is spelled F-O-R-E dash give. Give forgiveness before something happens to you. Every man whom you know before you know anything, he wishes to kill me, he wishes to wrong me, he wishes to steal from me, he wishes to embrace me, he wishes to make me happy, he wishes to crush my heart. For give. 5,000 prisoners had to stand at attention and Nazi officers passed through the rows and picked out this one, this one, this one who should be gassed on that day and they picked out a young lady a Jewish communist and she began to weep and to implore, I have a little child what did a Nazi officer care about a little child of a Jewish communist? No, you must go. It was a good friend. And Mary Skopceva asked herself, what would Jesus have done if he would have been here? Would he have volunteered to die in her place? In her place? But she's a communist and the communists are as bad as the Nazis and if the Nazis will be overthrown and the communists will take Germany, it will be the same thing as the Nazis, eventually for somebody else, but for a communist I could give myself. But then she remembered Christ died for sinners, he died for murderers, he died for criminals, he made no difference he makes no difference among you you might have committed who knows what sins what crimes I have too much experience as a preacher I've had so many times, I preached and then somebody came recently in America when I finished preaching one came and said, I'm on the list of most wanted criminals so there are all kinds of men in a congregation whatever, Christ makes no difference he has given himself for every one of us and she stepped forward and said Captain, may I give my life in the place of this one? They began to laugh you're so stupid, all right we take you her turn will come a little bit later and they took her when the British and the Americans freed the concentration camps, they arrested these former Nazi officers and they declared that while they took Mary Skoczewa to the gas chamber or to the burning oven she spoke to them and said when the people of God were taken out of Egyptian slavery God walked before them in a column of fire and my desire is that my burning body should be a column of fire which would show you the way to God and then the Jewish communist, she escaped and now she was converted and she began to pray but she did not know how to pray, she has never been in a church she has never read the Bible and the Christians who had remained behind heard her saying, God make me like Mary Skoczewa and they tried to tell her, that's not a prayer you can pray, God make me Christlike, not God make me like Mary Skoczewa and the Jewish communist asked what is the difference what is the difference between Mary Skoczewa and Jesus, if Jesus would have been here, would he have done more than Mary Skoczewa did now Mary Skoczewa, surely Jesus does more, but Mary Skoczewa represented so faithfully Jesus Christ that he was one among many brethren, she is a little sister of Jesus Christ, she belongs to the same family to the family of God she is of the same nature, of the same spirit she has this godly thing in her, and this was seen we all claim, that people should listen to us and the church, and you have to listen to us, and people ask us, but what is the sign why should we listen to you, there are so many voices in this world, so many denominations and so many sects and so many political parties why should I listen just to you what do we have special we have this one special thing I am above I belong to this world of Godhead I belong to those who can create a beautiful life, in misery in poverty, unemployed my business broken, my family destroyed, my life work destroyed and believe me, I speak as a man who has suffered all these things and we can overcome all these, because we have the seed of Godhead in us, that is a great gift with this I finish but there are certain things, one thing which I must tell you I have a duty to tell you this one thing recently a bishop in this country declared that he can't believe in the virgin birth of Mary now a bishop as far as I know is meant to say what he believes, not what he disbelieves what would you say about a shopkeeper who would put in the shop window a poster, these are the goods which we don't have in the shop a bishop would not be accepted as salesman in our shop, he says what he does not believe, instead of saying what he believes saying that he is a scientist too, and as a scientist he can't believe in the virgin birth he is not meant to believe as a scientist, he is meant to believe as a Christian when Romeo fell in love with Juliet, he did not make any scientific investigation what bacteria does she have in her intestines what is her basal metabolism what is her blood pressure none of these things, what has science to do with falling in love and Christian faith is falling in love with God, falling in love with Christ, and if you fall in love with Christ you fall in love surely also with the mother who has given you birth, and with this whole world of things, and with the whole world of God it is a shame that such things appeared and I felt it my duty to say that such things should not happen, and that Christians should stand up and say that there exists another world than the world of human science first of all, what he says is not science there exists two possibilities either Mary was a virgin as the miracle has happened if she was not a virgin, she was a loose woman, because she was engaged to somebody, and went to bed with somebody else, no? he has no proof that he was a virgin, he has no scientific proof but what scientific proof says he that Mary has been a harlot what does he dare a bishop to say such stupid things and I felt it my duty, because I read this just yesterday in the newspaper I love Mary dearly, as every Christian loves her, she is called blessed by all the nations and I felt it my duty to say these words a bishop and every one of us can do much better things than this we are called to something so high, so beautiful it is now 38 years since I became a Christian I have never regretted it I have passed through so many deep waves I have passed through so many, this one thing that I became a Christian I have never regretted it I have been lifted up to belong to the divine nature not to be only a creature but to belong to the family of the creator now, just one word about our mission I am not going to preach for a mission because I never mentioned the mission in my sermons but a few words still I have to say the Christian mission to the communist world spreads across the entire country we smuggle in Bibles and Christian literature into communist countries I will not tell you how we smuggle because millions of pieces of literature into Russia, China, into Cuba, into Nicaragua planes fly over guerrilla war camps in Latin America and drop there over the guerrillas we are the only mission which doesn't mean another mission there are other very beautiful things we are the only mission which works in Tibet Tibet was a country which had no Christians and it has now 25,000 Christians we have 25,000 Christians of whom not one has ever seen a gospel the preachers have never seen a gospel they heard something and they gave further what they heard and now there is a new testament in Tibet we are the only mission who spreads the gospel among the Russian occupation army in Afghanistan and among the Afghani corporation we do all kinds of such things we write and we don't mention any of these things but many such things are done we broadcast the gospel in different languages we give it to ships who come from British harbors Russian ships and Polish ships and so on to the sailors and we help families of Christians who are in jail there are at this moment thousands and thousands of Christians in jail what do they eat? they spend in a meal they spend in Ethiopia if in Ethiopia they spend what is in Ethiopia in jail? for the tombs are there since 40 years those who are free can find a little bit of rice or a little bit of flour what do they have to eat? what can they eat in their jails? what do their families eat? how many times did you eat today? how many times did the families of Christian martyrs eat? it is our duty to help them they must get from us a piece of bread they must get a little toy you can't give to a child only a piece of bread you have to give a doll or a ball and our mission helps these in one Polish country just last month or two months ago we brought in most families for 1500 families we bought 14 houses for them don't imagine a fancy English home they can put their heads without paying mortgage or without paying rent these are the things which we do and you will all be an offering will be taken you will be all asked to help you can help with a few coins you can help with a few pounds you can help with chicks of hundreds or thousands of pounds the chicks should be made out of Jesus to the communist world sorry, Christian missions to the communist world in America it says Jesus to the communist world there is no need we don't put any you can give as much as you like I said once in a in a gathering like this we are smuggling not only bags we are smuggling printing machines you will ask me how in the world can you smuggle in a printing machine well you don't smuggle in a machine you smuggle in a wheel and then another wheel and then another table and then something else and then an engineer goes there and puts everything together and I said in such a meeting that such a machine costs 25,000 pounds and I found this offering a chick of 25,000 pounds and I was so sorry that I have said it because people believe that you can't give more than 25,000 pounds you give for the sake of the Lord you give it that He should be magnified He has given us this big gift not here you are and here I give you a gift I am the big Rockefeller or I don't know who rich man and here I give you a few pounds. No! I am son of God and I make you son of God and daughter of God I will make you to be like me every throne you will not only stand before the throne you will sit with me on the throne there is nothing which you will not get blessed are the poor in spirit because theirs is the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of this realm belongs to Queen Elizabeth so the kingdom of heaven is mine if I am a poor in spirit if I belong to him if such is the calling and how should we love him and make him to be a door Amen