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The Peoples Church, Toronto Pm
Richard Wurmbrand

Richard Wurmbrand (1909–2001). Born on March 24, 1909, in Bucharest, Romania, to a Jewish family, Richard Wurmbrand converted to Christianity in 1938 after meeting a German carpenter, Christian Wolfkes, in a remote village. Initially an atheist and businessman, he became an ordained Lutheran pastor, ministering in Romania’s underground church under Nazi and Communist regimes. Arrested in 1948 by the Communist government for his faith, he spent 14 years in prison, including three in solitary confinement, enduring torture for preaching Christ. Released in 1964 after a $10,000 ransom paid by Norwegian Christians, he and his wife, Sabina, who was also imprisoned, emigrated to the U.S. in 1966. In 1967, they founded Voice of the Martyrs (originally Jesus to the Communist World), advocating for persecuted Christians worldwide. Wurmbrand authored 18 books, including Tortured for Christ (1967), In God’s Underground (1968), and The Overcomers (1998), detailing his experiences and faith. A powerful speaker, he testified before the U.S. Senate, baring scars to highlight persecution. Married to Sabina from 1936 until her death in 2000, they had one son, Mihai, and he died on February 17, 2001, in Torrance, California. Wurmbrand said, “It was strictly forbidden to preach to other prisoners, so it was understood that whoever was caught doing it got beaten—but we preached anyway.”
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Sermon Summary
In this video, the speaker shares about various ministries in the Hong Kong field that are supported by the audience. One of the ministries mentioned is the Tell Evangelism Ministry, where workers use cassette tapes to share three-minute Bible stories. Another ministry mentioned is the Bible Correspondence Course, which has over three thousand students. The speaker also emphasizes the importance of knowing and remembering the name of Jesus above all else, and shares a Bible verse from Numbers 19:14 about cleanliness after death in a tent.
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Sermon Transcription
Father, we are not going to ask for your presence because we sense it already. You are here and so many times we ask for your presence in our midst and you're already here. Father, I pray that you will bless this service that thou would minister to us in a wonderful way. In Jesus' wonderful name we pray. Amen. I wonder if you... Dear brethren, dear sisters, very, very dear children. I always say very, very dear children because during my 14 years in Communion I have never seen a child. It is for me a great privilege to see children too. We have sung that the Africans should be brought in and the Latins and the Slavic and the Chinese. Surely not all could be enumerated. God loves all. There's somebody else who has to be brought in. Israel. The Jews should be brought. The people whom God loved first and elected first. I am Jewish myself. My beautiful wife, she is Jewish too. You will see her at the table with books outside. A carpenter had pity on our souls. We had not the slightest knowledge of Christ. It was in Nazi times and he was a German. And in those times Germans thought about everything except about bringing Jews to Christ. But he did it. He gave us a New Testament to read. I really could not read it. I only could weep over it comparing continually my life with the life of Jesus. He was always pure and unpure. He was always truthful and untruthful. He was always honest and dishonest. I regretted my past life. I asked forgiveness. I got it. He is so glad to forgive. He runs after us with his forgiveness. And somebody must be a very fast runner to run away from his blessings. And he accepted me as a child of God. And if I speak now on behalf of missionary work in communist countries, which are by the way one half of the population of the world, but the man who brought one Jew to Christ created now an international missionary work to the Chinese, to the Russians, to the Romanians, to the Cubans and so on. May God help us to bring Jews to Christ too. And now I read from the Gospel according to St. Luke, chapter 9, verse 23. Luke 9, verse 23. Jesus said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself. Let him deny his self and take up his cross daily and follow me. The spoken language obviously existed before the written language. God spoke to Adam. God spoke to Noah. God spoke to many people. And then with the time they learned to put in writing what they have heard. Now in written language you can make distinctions which don't exist in spoken language. One and the same word in written language can mean very many things according to the letters which you use. To the, I forgot Noah, according to the letters which you use. But when God created Adam and Eve first, she was very beautiful, she loved him, he loved her. And they must have said to each other many words of love. The basic word which they said to each other is according to me the central verse of the Bible. It is written in the Song of Solomon, chapter 2, verse 16. She will have been in his embraces and will have said to him, My beloved is mine and I am his. And they will have extended this, not only Adam, my beloved is mine, but also the one who created Adam. And the one who when we sinned and chased us from paradise, he promised that a seed of the woman will come and will deliver our race. And we love him also, he is our beloved, and I am his. Now in order to say this word in Hebrew, she had to say, Dodili ve'anilo. Now Dodili ve'anilo in spoken language means two things. The biblical Hebrew is a very poor language, I told you already this morning. There are very few words, and one word has many senses. She has said, Dodili ve'anilo. If you hear these words, they can be translated in two manners. My beloved is mine and I am his. Lo means his. But it means also, my beloved is mine and I am not. Because Lo means also not. When my beloved is mine, I am his. But I am also not anymore. He is everything and I forget myself in his embraces. The biblical faith is an embrace. It is a desire of a kiss. In the Song of Solomon, the bride says about the Savior, Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. She is not satisfied with anything less than that, his kiss. And when he enters in the house of Simon the Pharisee, there was very much food. A nice meal was prepared with whatever you would like. And he looked at all this and said to Simon, I have entered in your house and you gave me no kiss. That is what he had desired. And Mary Magdalene, the sinful woman, she kissed his feet. And there was such a delight in kissing him that even Judas Iscariot, on the last evening, desired nothing else than once more to be able to kiss the one whom he betrayed. There exists a kiss of betrayal, after which you remain the traitor. But there exists another kind of kiss. Do di li, ve ani lo, my beloved is mine, and I am no more, I don't count anymore. Whosoever wishes to come after me, says Jesus, let him deny his self, his I, his me. Most of you probably, give me a glass of water, probably most of you have been brought up with the English language. With us, thank you. Put it down. Thank you very much. Very good fellow. Very good fellow. Who will give a glass of water will not lose his reward. No? That's even better. Whosoever comes after me should deny his self. You, those who brought up in English, you are used to it. We who have learned English as grown up people, we wonder very much that we learned. The word you is written with a small y. The word he, with a small h. The word she, with a very small s. But I is always written with a capital letter. What can be more important than I? And Jesus teaches us, whosoever wishes to come after me, should deny his I, my beloved is mine, and in his embraces, and receiving his ardent kiss, you forget everything, you forget even your existence. When we were in solitary confinement, thirty feet beneath the earth, ten meters as you say now, ten meters beneath the earth, hungry, beaten, tortured, rejected, they put Christians on the floor forcibly, they opened their mouth, and they spat in their mouth. I wish to respect what you can take, and therefore I say they spat in their mouth. Worse things than this happened. When Christians suffered terribly, sometimes we felt his nearness, he was always near, but we did not always feel his nearness. And when we felt his nearness, the grave walls of the cell shone like diamond. There was light in the darkness. Flames were burning. And there was such a delight, such a jubilation in the heart, that if such an experience would have lasted more than a fraction of a minute, our hearts would have rent in pieces so great was the joy of his presence, the joy when the bride of Christ received his kiss. That is what she desired since ages, let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. That is a missionary week. We think about how to do the hard work of propagating the gospel in the whole world. Nobody can do two works well. One who practices many sports will never be a champion in that sport. You have to do one thing. You have to disappear, to deny the self, and only he should count. I can work in my factory, or in my printing shop, or in my office, or in a kitchen, or bring up children, or in a school. But always in my heart there will be this burning desire that the love of Jesus, which I have experienced, others should experience too. And for this, the I has to disappear. I have to put away my own burdens. I know many of you have your own sorrows, your own pains. There are marital problems, and financial problems, and some are sick, and some have been bereft, and some have psychological problems, and some have sins which they have not conquered yet. And so many, so many problems exist. But the I, which is the possessor of all problems, the word problem never occurs in the Bible, we are not meant to have problems. Nowhere does the Bible say, have problems. Then why do we have problems? Never does the Bible say, have a headache. Then why do we have headaches? The Bible says, he is the head. Who is the head, has a monopoly of the headaches. We are the body, we are not meant to have headaches, we are not meant to have problems. But we have them. And we are meant to put all these aside, the burdens aside. Not the I should be, he should be, my beloved is mine, and I am his. We have to put aside even very heavy burdens. I was called once to the deathbed of a Jew. He was aged 80, he had been a judge. He said, I don't believe in God. I asked him why. He said, if there would have been a God, there would not have been Auschwitz. Jews would not have been burned and gassed, six million of them. I asked him, did you believe in God before this happened? Oh, surely, I was a practicing, a religious Jew. Well, and when the Jews were killed, you stopped believing anymore. He said, yes. But before the Jews were killed, have you known that when the whites came to America, many tribes of redskins were killed? Do you know that whole populations in Africa had been killed? Did you know that the Armenians had been killed in Turkey in a few days, one and a half million? Did you know about ten millions who died in World War I, about so many atrocities which have been during the history of mankind? As long as somebody else suffered, when another nation was afflicted, this did not hinder you to have your religion. But when you were touched, then you said there can't be any God anymore. That is wrong. We have this I. As long as the I is all right, I can harmonize the I with a little bit of religion and with the existence of God. And the I is touched, and the me is always touched by something, by a tragedy of my own, by a tragedy of my nation, by a tragedy of my social class, or of my party, or of my family, then these things disappear. My beloved is mine, and I am not. I don't look at things, at my life, from the point of view of the me, but I put to myself an entirely other question. Once a Jewish boy of five with his father drove through a street in Los Angeles. They passed by a church, and the Jewish child said to his father, let us stop and enter in the church. The father wondered and said, why should we enter in the church? And the child said, let us just enter and see how God fares today. Let us enter and see how God fares today. You are preoccupied with what is happening with you and with your circle. How does God fare today? How would you fare if your children would be tortured? That is how God fares today. I will not think only about what is happening in communist countries. In India, fanatic Hindus in the state of Tamil Nadu have killed many Christians. Nepal is Buddhistic. There, in the whole of Nepal, only a few hundred of Christians, fifty are in prison. But now, to come to the communist countries, nobody can say how many tens of thousands of Christians are in prison today. Just two weeks ago, it was published by Associated Press, a secular press agency, that in one small communist country, in North Korea, there are 104,000 in prison, not all Christians. Many of them Buddhists, probably the majority Buddhists. But a Buddhist should also not be in prison for his faith. But among these, surely also many thousands. Nobody knows how many there are in Vietnam, in Red China, in Russia, in my homeland, Romania, in Ethiopia, in Angola, in Mozambique, in Cuba, and now in Nicaragua, which has been taken over by the communists just recently. We have already the names of brethren sentenced to 30 years of prison. I was in jail only 14 years. Brother Khrapov, a Baptist pastor in the Soviet Union, is in jail since 27 years. Don't think that this is too much, because brother Paulitis from Soviet Lithuania is in jail for his faith since 35 years. Don't believe that this is too much, because brother Mikhail Ershov is in jail since 43 years. Most of you were not born yet, when he was already in manacles, and beaten, and hungry, and deprived of son, and deprived of all the amenities of life, because he believed in the Savior. How does God fare? How would you feel if you would know your children in the hands of kidnappers who would do them harm? How would you feel if you would know that your children are beaten? How would you feel if you would pass through this tragedy? How does God fare today? Do di li, ve ani lo. My beloved is mine, and I am his. Nothing counts. Nothing else than what is to my beloved, and my beloved suffers today. He suffers with those who suffer in prison. He suffers also about something else. There are some who are in the outer darkness, in a suffering beyond description, in hell, since thousands of years, without any chance of ever escaping from there. And every day, every day, every second, others enter into this jail, only, not because of their sins, not because of their crimes, but only because they don't know the name of Jesus. I know about a criminal. I've been much with criminals in prison. I know the world of criminals better than the world of gentlemen. There was a criminal who had killed a man. He had strangled him. And then he heard his heartbeat getting softer and softer. Then it stopped. He knew, now he has finished. He buried him under the floor somewhere. Now he had escaped. And then he heard from under the floor, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. And years passed. He never ceased to hear the heartbeat of the man whom he had killed. Conscience spoke to him. And there are in hell, thousands over thousands, who hear continually the weeping of the victims of their lives, and their sighs, and their cries, and their heartbeat, and there exists no escape. And there was a certain John, a fisherman, who lay once on the heart of Jesus, and he heard his heartbeat, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. Come unto me, even if you have committed crimes. Come unto me, even if you are the chief of sinners. I ask you about nothing. Come unto me, and I will give you rest. Just listen. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. How quietly, how softly, a divine heart of love beats. And it makes a whole difference for an eternity, if somebody will have to hear always the heartbeat of his victim, accusing him, or if in the embrace of Jesus, he will forget what has been, even his evil deeds. Saint Paul, after having been converted, says, leaving behind, forgetting what has been, and there have been crimes in his life behind, but these have passed, and for all eternity, to rest at the bosom of Jesus. How does God feel? How does God feel about the fact that so many go to hell today? It is said that when our Lord Jesus returned to heaven, after everything which he experienced on earth, Archangel Michael was the first to see him and asked him, what happened on earth? It is a legend. And so Jesus told him what happened. And what is with these wounds which you have on your hands and on your feet? Well, these wounds were made to me by those whom I loved. And was there nobody to believe in you? Yes, I left behind 11 apostles, and I told them to go into the whole world and to tell them about my salvation. And Michael asked, and what if these 11 will not go? Jesus said, there exists no other possibility than this. How does God feel when he sees that souls remain unsaved? How does God feel when he sees all these atrocities which are happening in communist countries, in Islamic countries, and in so many other places of the world? I told you about Paulides and Krapov and the others who are in jail since so many years. Some are in jail together with their children. Ritikov, one of the Baptist leaders of Russia, he is with his son in prison. I have been together with men who were in the same cell with their own sons, one with four sons of his. This man never ate, I think. He always said, I don't feel well today, I can't eat. In order to give a little bit more bread or a little bit more gruel to Jesus' children, he died because of hunger to make his child live a little bit longer. When we say about our brethren who are in jail there, really we don't communicate saying the word jail because you have in mind a Canadian jail. I've been in a Canadian jail, I visited it. If anyone wishes to have a nice vacation which should cost him no money, he should do something and go to jail. No free Romanian or Russian who works a whole day in the factory could dream to eat what I have seen in Canadian prison being the food of the prisoners. And they have library, and they have color television, and they have vending machines where they push a button and they can have ginger ale, and they can have, I don't know what, root beer. And if they know to push the button very well, then also there is some alcoholic beverage, and there is a vending machine for cigarettes and for whatever they like. I speak to you about jail, about communist jail. We had nothing. We never saw our families. My wife was also in a jail, in another jail. I did not see her all these 14 years. Never seeing your children. Being deprived of everything. Being deprived, I will not begin to tell you much. But we were deprived of air. After the years of solitary confinement, we were in cramped cells. In the cells there were sometimes 100 or even 200 prisoners. The cells were heated. Only in summer. In summer they heated the cells so as to suffocate us. We were naked in these cells. We sweated. We could not have a little bit of air. We breathed like this. And I have seen Christians breathing like this and speaking about Christ to a fellow prisoner of theirs. And fellow prisoners were converted. And we remembered and we said to each other, What? It is too hot for us here? How was it for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? They were right there in the fire. But they knew they were not alone. There is another one with them. And his look is like the look of the Son of God. And if they could bear it, we can bear it. And we can remain faithful to the end. We have prisoners who are now in jails. We have prisoners who are in psychiatric asylums. In straitjackets and gagged. You will find in one of my books, I have written in God's Underground, The Torture for Christ, a new book has just appeared, where Christ is tortured still. Where we give the proofs from the Soviet press. They say that in one single town, on one single day, they have put 82 Christians in an asylum for insane. These have been given proofs of madness by prolonged prayer. Prolonged prayer is a sign of madness. If ever God beware, Canada will be taken over by the Communists. The mainstream denomination of Canada can be absolutely quiet. None of them will ever be put in a psychiatric asylum because they don't know prolonged prayer. Prayer must be very short. In Russia, they pray, they like it, to speak with their beloved. And for speaking with your beloved a long time, no bride would look to the watch, how often she should receive the kisses, and they stop. Five minutes have passed. And for prolonged prayer, we have Christians who are now in psychiatric asylums. That is under European Communism. God beware of Communism in Africa. Today I spoke with an Ethiopian brother. He's right here in town. In Ethiopia, the Christians, when they were beaten and tortured, some of them said to the Communists, we don't mind, we see the glory of the Lord. And the Communists sawed their eyes. In Mozambique, preachers who continued to preach, though it was forbidden to them, some of them had their lips cut off. In Ethiopia, to come back there, many had been shot, and when the families asked for the corpses, they had to pay for the bullets. And somebody examined how many bullets have passed through the body of this Christian, and for as many bullets, you had to pay the respective price. Only now, when there is a little bit of a liberalization in China, now we hear what has happened in the time when Mao Zedong reigned, how Christians had to kneel before a picture of Mao Zedong, and they had to slap themselves. That was demanded from them, they should slap themselves for recognizing anybody else than this great genius, this great benefactor, this great criminal, Mao Zedong. And such things have happened and continue to happen in the Communist world. In Cuba, the brethren Valladares and Gomez and Nobel are in jail since 21 years, and so on, and so on. But I have not come to tell you the story about how much Christians suffered, but about how much they loved. At the last judgment, nobody will be asked how much did you suffer? But did you love? Because even if you gave your body to be burnt on a stake, for Christ's sake, and if you did not love, it is worth just nothing. I will tell you immediately about love. When we were in jail, we were doped, first of all, we were surely very hungry, and then we were doped with drugs which would destroy our minds. And because of this doping and the hunger and the whole, all the circumstances, we forgot more and more. I forgot my whole theology, I don't mind, because much of it was not right. But then I forgot also one evening, one evening, I remembered that I'm a Lutheran pastor. But what in the world does the word Lutheran mean? I had forgotten who Luther has been. What does it mean? I could not know. I did not know who Luther was. That was one of the most beautiful evenings of my life. I made a big discovery that you can be a Christian without knowing who Luther has been. I had not known it before. And you can be a Christian without knowing who Calvin has been, and who the Pope has been, and who the Pope is, and who the author of the patriarch is, and who the Baptist preacher is, as long as you don't forget the one name which is above every name. This name, happily, we never forgot. Just one Bible verse, we forgot. We forgot everything. This is the time we forgot the Bible. We forgot even the Lord's prayer. We forgot. Rarely came out of oblivion just one Bible verse or a fraction of a Bible verse. And I remember that in that time, I remembered a few words from a verse which you will find in Numbers chapter 19, verse 14. Numbers, chapter 19, verse 14. This is the law. When a man dies in a tent, all that come into the tent and all that is in the tent shall be unclean seven days. This I did not remember. I remembered only the first words of this verse, and they were so important for me. The first words were, this is the law. When a man dies, if a man is not ready to die for a law, he does not have this law. Not everyone is called to be a martyr, to die a physical death somewhere in a prison, or shot. But every Christian is meant to die. To die to sin, to die to this world, to die to its habits, and to become an entirely new creature from another species. Instead of being a simple man, you are now a child of God. You belong to the family of the Creator. This is the law. If a man dies, it is not the law that you sin, not what you declare, not what you give for. That is your law. That is your religion. What you are ready to die for. When I came to the United States and to Canada, I saw a habit which we don't have in our country because our church is underground. But there are such big meetings, Billy Graham and I don't know, many others, smaller ones and bigger ones. It's not always those who have the bigger crowd who are the biggest ones. Also those with smaller crowds can be very good pastors. And then at the end, they make what is named an altar call. And pushing each other, some come forward or some slip their hands up and so on, showing that they are converted. Now an altar call is a call to death because on the altar of Jerusalem, every lamb, every lamb, every bullock, every dove which was brought on the altar, that was its last day. And the call to Jesus is a call to death. Not everyone will die a physical death because of it. But every one of us is meant to die to this ugly I, to this ugly self. Do di li ve'ani lo. My beloved is mine. And I, I am not. I am his. I have forgotten about myself. I deny the self. Only one thing counts for me. How does my God feel? Is he happy? How does my Savior feel? I have been asked very often, what has been my preferred verse in the Bible? You will find it. It was in any case my preferred verse when I was in jail. It is in the prophet Zephaniah chapter 3 verse 17. Look here. Zephaniah chapter 3 verse 17. The Lord your God in the midst of you is mighty. He will save. He will rejoice over you with joy. He will rest in his love. He will rejoice over you with singing. Now I like it when congregations sing to God. I like it when such splendid choirs or the Samuel songs, when they sing to God, there exists one thing better. To make God to sing. It is here written that we can make God to rejoice singing. God sits on his throne. He has to create and to rule universes. He has to care about billions of men and not only about men but about trees and flowers and animals and sparrows. Everything is his and about angels. And at a certain moment his face begins to shine and he begins to sing. And the angels say, but what has happened? Why are you singing? What are you so happy about? Just look down to the people's church in Toronto. Really, it makes me to sing. It makes me to rejoice when I see how they forget themselves. The many troubles which they surely have. And they believe they are not alone. Their beloved is theirs and they are no more. They have forgotten the self. The only question which they put to themselves is how do I fare? How does Christ fare? Is my son still tortured? Do my creatures do they still go millions after millions to hell and nobody tells them the one word which can save them for all eternity? As a carpenter told me this word, Jesus, the word which saves from all sins, which cleanses you from everything wrong which you have ever done in your life. God showed himself on earth in the person of his son Jesus Christ. We saw how God is. And Isaiah seeing this Messiah in a vision said, I saw him as a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. That is how God is. His pain is the pain of everyone persecuted innocently as so many of our brethren are. And his pain is every soul which passes into eternity being unsaved. Let us forget our troubles. I know for some of you they are very earnest. I speak to you not from an easy life. I have had a very, very difficult life from childhood on. I have been an orphan child, a hungry orphan child. In my whole childhood I have never eaten chocolate. When others ate chocolate, I licked the paper after them. I have been hungry in my youth. I have passed through many things. We have passed through Nazi persecution. A great part of our family has been killed. We lost both parents, three sisters, a brother of my wife, and so on and so on in the communist years. And I have sufferings even today. Some of you would wonder how much I can suffer even today. But all these things have to be forgotten. Not I live, but he lives. Christ lives in me. My beloved is mine. And one thing counts, that he should be crowned, that he should be happy. A God who has such a burden, he should have one moment of respite. There is a dark part, a dark line in the face of God. His sadness about man's sin. We say in the benediction at the end very often, let God shine his face upon us. Now why do we say let his face shine? Probably it does not shine always when he sees human sin and humans being lost. There is a dark line in his face. And I can make it disappear by his grace. I can make my God to rejoice singing. Splendid this brother who has organized such an orchestra and such a choir. I travel to many countries, I have not heard such choirs and such orchestras. Splendid this Samuelson. Splendid such a congregation which sings. But let it be your aim. I wish to make God to sing and his angels will accompany him. I have a granddaughter of nine. Once she said, when I will be big, I will be a doctor. Now she has a brother of four. He also wished to say what he will be, but he did not know what a doctor means, what an engineer means. He did not know what to say. So when she said, I wish to be a doctor, he was asked, and what do you wish to be? He replied, I wish to be a man who will make my mother happy and very splendid. At the age of four, it is beautiful to wish to make your mother happy. I would like that many of us should have the same, to make their mothers happy. And you can make her happy by a caress, by a good word, just a phone call. What is it? Just nothing. I wish to tell you I love you. You make her happy. But there exists also something more than that. The aim of such missionary conventions is one, to make God happy. To make God rejoice singing. And I wish to this church and to its pastors and I wish to this missionary convention that you should have this result. Make God to rejoice singing. You have your sadnesses. Forget them. This is one great aim. You have been told in Russia there are these secret printing presses. I speak as a representative of a mission, Jesus to the communist world. It exists in Canada, in the United States, in many European countries, in Australia, in Japan, and so on. And from everywhere we smuggle in Bibles and Christian literature into communist countries. We help the families of Christians who are in prison. But now we think that better than to smuggle Bibles is, if you can, to smuggle printing presses. And printing presses have been smuggled into several communist countries. Some of them have been discovered. Every pickpocket is discovered once. Every thief is discovered once. A secret printer is also discovered once. But then others were made, and others. And we are told such a printing press costs $30,000. So you can see about four or five such printing presses. Not about one. There exist these printing presses. And our brethren there, our sisters, if I could describe to you how young these sisters are, how young these brethren. And they renounce everything. Once they enter in the printing press, which is usually somewhere in a cellar, they never leave the cellar. It is jail, taken upon themselves freely, out of love. As I have not seen the sun during years in jail, they never see the sun, they never see the moon. They live there, three girls apart, two or three boys in another room. They have none of the amenities of life. They don't have Russia or China, or I don't know which other such communist countries. They don't have everywhere bathrooms. They don't have none of the things which we consider to be so necessary. They renounce everything because they love Christ. And the eye with its desire has disappeared. They are happy with what is the greatest joy in life. And I would ask you, and with this I finish, seek the foremost joy. I have known not only much trouble and sadness in life, I have known joys too. And the greatest joy which I have ever had and which I wish to share with you, a human soul can receive the kiss of Jesus Christ. The bride prays for this since years. Just sing the song of Solomon. The Jews say all the books of the Bible are holy, but the song of Solomon is the most holy. It contains the most holy prayer. I will never be satisfied with less than let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. When we were engaged, when we courted, my wife used to write to me multitude of nice letters. And I said, when will she finish writing letters? And being my embraces, I am not interested in her letters. I wish to have her, not her letters. And we can have the embrace of Jesus. We can have his kiss. He desires our kisses. He entered into the house of Simon. Why did you not give me a kiss? We should not get this reproach. It is not compulsory to be a shallow Christian, to be a lukewarm Christian. There exists a possibility of being an ardent Christian. A bride in love to paroxysm for her bridegroom, forgetting everything in his embraces. And only one thing should count. How does my beloved fare? Today he still suffers terribly. That is the title of my last book, where Christ is still tortured. He is tortured by what is happening in countries where there is persecution. He is tortured by the whole state of the world in which millions pass into eternity unsaved. Put it as your aim in life, whatever your calling otherwise in the civilian life. Put it as your last aim. I wish to make God to rejoice about me and my family singing. May God help you in this. Amen. Do you do the thing, stand up, that soldiers of Christ arise in Chinese and Mandarin, one of our Chinese dialects. I must say I really appreciate and enjoyed my stay during this past week. And as I leave, I shall be praying for you. And trust that the Lord will help you go above your faith promise target. As I'm here with you this last night, I would like for you to leave with you some prayer requests. I'm here representing the Hong Kong field but we also have a number of workers there whom you also support. And I'd like to share with you some of the things that they are doing. One of our ministry is the Tell Evangelism ministry. One of our workers whom you're supporting gets these cassettes, little Bible stories that last only three minutes. You think it's hard to come here and speak three minutes, try to tell a Bible story in three minutes. But we have that on the telephone and they dial it and they hear the story and after they hear the story, we give them another number that if they have problems they call that other number. And when that other number is called we have a worker there who answers the problems that they are faced with and then we ask them and encourage them to join our Bible correspondence course. On this Tell Evangelism telephone ministry, we have over a thousand calls each month. And in the Bible correspondence course, we have over 3,000 students. Will you remember the worker who's in charge of this ministry? She has to have a new story every other week. Another ministry that we have is the cassette ministry. As we are now trying to, we're finding there in Hong Kong, many of our children are what we call Bible oriented. And they are now going to their homes and asking their parents, how about telling me a Bible story? But many of our parents are not Christians and they don't know any Bible stories. So we feel that the Lord is leading us to have these Bible stories for the parents to play so that their children can hear it. And will you pray that as the children hear these Bible stories, that the tape recorder is loud enough so that the parents can hear it and come to know the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal Savior. We're also taking these Bible stories cassettes into China because that's one of the things that are needed. They need to know more about the Lord Jesus. Also pray for our teaching tapes that we are duplicating and we're going to get them into China and help pray that we may get them into China where there's great need of knowing more about the Word of God. Please pray for our workers there. And pray for me as I will be going back to the field in July. And there to continue on with my ministry there. Thank you very much. ... That's Romans 8.28. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... cannot tell from the outside how much joy that is in the heart of another person. If I were a battle, people would be able to tell when I come to the people's church how much joy each of you add to my heart. For when I'm here at people's church, I feel joy and gladness and happiness and ecstasy and elation and jubilation and exhilaration. I really thank God for the privilege of being here in people's church and for the support that you have given us from time to time. Not only have you given us joy in person but also in purse. From the first three, the first three buildings that were built on the campus of the people's technical school that we are building in the heart of Liberia were given by, were built by the people's church. And since that time, you have given time and again to one project after another to meet the capital needs of the school. The Lord has provided for us a remarkable man who has become the principal of the technical school. In the person of Mr. Robert Branch of Chesapeake, Virginia. Mr. Branch has been in the technical education for more than 20 years. But then technical minded people are not the most successful people in raising funds. And so when I learned that one of the major needs to be met before Bob Branch could go to the technical, go to Liberia, was money to buy a truck for him. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't turn to people's church again. But then as God would have it, have it provided, in his own providence, I met with Dr. Paul Smith in Berkeley, California and we had lunch together. And at that luncheon, God gave me the courage and the freedom to share with him the need. And when I shared the need, and after sharing it, Dr. Paul Smith told me that people's church will buy the truck. Oh, I reached the peak of my joy and elation and I didn't know what to do. And now God has brought us here to express to you our appreciation. For I know you will raise the money. I know people's church. And so, and so I'm thanking you in advance. You know what the Lord said? What things of our desire, when he pray, believe that he receive them and that you shall have them. Believe that you already receive it. And we know we already have the money and we want to thank you for it. I know it will be raised tonight. Now, as I close, I want to say this. Some time ago when I came here, I told you about that in Africa, the women carry a load heavier than they can lift. The lifting of the load is the most difficult chore. And so they need somebody to help them. But once someone help them and put the load on their head and they got it and they balance themselves, they can go on. And we are calling upon you to help us put our load on our head. But you may ask, oh God, how long must we put a load on your head? It hasn't got on your head yet? You may ask, but let me tell you this. Remember it take time for seed that is plenty to grow. And we are engaging in a nation building process, in a life building process. And it takes time for that to take place. And I pray that in the name of the Lord, as the Bible said, do not be weary in well-doing for in due season you shall reap if you think not. God bless you. I'm Edith Dominguez from the Philippines. I think the words I like best in your theme is stand up for Jesus. I know we'll all stand up for him. Thank you.
The Peoples Church, Toronto Pm
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Richard Wurmbrand (1909–2001). Born on March 24, 1909, in Bucharest, Romania, to a Jewish family, Richard Wurmbrand converted to Christianity in 1938 after meeting a German carpenter, Christian Wolfkes, in a remote village. Initially an atheist and businessman, he became an ordained Lutheran pastor, ministering in Romania’s underground church under Nazi and Communist regimes. Arrested in 1948 by the Communist government for his faith, he spent 14 years in prison, including three in solitary confinement, enduring torture for preaching Christ. Released in 1964 after a $10,000 ransom paid by Norwegian Christians, he and his wife, Sabina, who was also imprisoned, emigrated to the U.S. in 1966. In 1967, they founded Voice of the Martyrs (originally Jesus to the Communist World), advocating for persecuted Christians worldwide. Wurmbrand authored 18 books, including Tortured for Christ (1967), In God’s Underground (1968), and The Overcomers (1998), detailing his experiences and faith. A powerful speaker, he testified before the U.S. Senate, baring scars to highlight persecution. Married to Sabina from 1936 until her death in 2000, they had one son, Mihai, and he died on February 17, 2001, in Torrance, California. Wurmbrand said, “It was strictly forbidden to preach to other prisoners, so it was understood that whoever was caught doing it got beaten—but we preached anyway.”