In this sermon, Reverend Richard Wembrand shares stories of persecution and suffering endured by Christians under communist rule in Romania. He tells the story of a Christian woman who, despite losing her son to the communists, chooses to forgive and pray for her son's killers. Another story involves a little boy who believes that his father, the captain of a ship, can change its course just by waving at it. Reverend Wembrand uses these stories to illustrate the power of forgiveness and the belief that God can change the course of events. He encourages his audience to trust in God's provision and not to worry about material needs.

The following message was given in Brisbane by the Reverend Richard Wembrand, a Romanian pastor imprisoned by the communists for 14 years for his faith. Three of these years were spent in solitary confinement. Reverend Wembrand has been tortured and his body is badly marked and scarred. His wife spent three years in a slave labour camp. He is the author of three books, Tortured for Christ, In God's Underground, and The Soviet Saints, all of which tell of the sufferings of the church under communism. Our brother, Richard Wembrand. Dear brethren, dear sisters and very dear children, our Lord said, take no thought saying, what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be closed? For after all these things, for your heavenly Father, knoweth that ye have need of all these things. A God, a heavenly Father, who knows all things which we need. When we are born in this world, we need milk. Milk. And before we are born, only very thin milk we can serve. Only very thin milk. And the breast of thin milk changes according to our needs. Now who has arranged this? We need food of vegetables and meat. And we are born in a world in which there are vegetables and meat. Sometimes we would like to swim, and there exists water for swimming. Meats are provided for. How is it that he has provided men also with suffering and with the cross? You have your sufferings. I, in a free country, have also their sufferings. Children have their sufferings. It is not pleasant to get a spanking. And the adult ones have their sufferings. You can be betrayed by your boyfriend, by your girlfriend. Somebody dear to you might be very sick or die before the time. You may have losses in business. You may have pains. Now if there is such a good Father who has made so many good things to exist, and we believe in him, how is it that he who is Almighty has provided for men also crosses, not only joys? I just recently received the news from Soviet Russia about the arrest of Olga Pukhova, Maria Samarina, Anastasia Igolkina, Claudia Lissina, and an Orthodox priest, Pletnev. The charge against them was that they transcribed by hand their secret, very primitive printing press has been discovered. They were jailed. The last words of the priest Pletnev before going to jail was addressed to his sisters, don't fear the threat of Satan, I bless you. Now why did they risk their liberty to transcribe Bibles? What is the value of the Bible? You know the value of the Bible only when you don't have it. Everyone values only the things which he misses. You, in the morning, you would wash yourself and you would not say, I did not wash myself, neither the other prisoners, during three years. I had not one drop of water on my hands or on my face. Some of your children would like it. Wash ourselves three years. Let us thank God how good he is, he has given us water, we can wash ourselves. You take it as granted that in the morning you should have served with us. When the communists came to power, they put in prison tens of thousands of Christians, Catholics and Protestants and so on. In the first years we were kept, everyone alone in a cell, 30 feet below the earth. We never saw sun, moon, snow, flowers, stars. For 10 years I have never seen a fresh vegetable or a fruit. We didn't see the sun. Now I, in the morning, would go to the window and say, good morning brother's son, how bright you are, how happy I am that I can see you. We enjoy things only when we have missed them. Then we know how valuable they have been. You here have so many Bibles, every year you have some revised version, of a former revision, of an older revision, of an unauthorized version, of the authorized version. And you have every year some new theology, the last theology which I have heard is that God is dead. I have spoken with him half an hour ago, he was not even sick. And you having so many theologies among which you can choose, and so many Bibles, you don't value them. They, Pletnev and Igoltina and Samarina, they have risked their liberty and their life transcribing Bibles by hand in order to give to somebody else not a Bible, a few pages of the Bible. I had before me hundreds of Soviet soldiers begging at least for one page of the Bible. I met a Russian soldier in whose hands had fallen a page of Jeremiah, the contents of this page was Nebuchadnezzar, Assyria, Babylon, and he was an illiterate farmer who understood just nothing about these things. And when he saw me, he said, would you please give me another page of this wonderful book. So I asked him, but what have you found? He must not have been an important man because in our communist newspapers I never heard any mention about him. He writes about all kinds of things which I don't understand, but three times on this page are written four words which changed my life. I read in this page, God spoke to this Jeremiah, I don't know who he is, so you are a God who speaks. My name is Stepan, would you not speak also to me? And since then I hear him speaking and I would like to have more of this book. Who of us would have stopped at these words God spoke to Jeremiah? It is enough to bring indescribable joy to a soul. And the priests Pletnev and Igoltina and Samarina, they risk their liberty and their lives to give the unspeakable joy to a man to know that there is a God who speaks. Not a God who spoke, a God who speaks, who speaks to John, to Mary, to Helen, to Steve. He speaks to everyone. I had a secret missionary work among the Russians. I speak Russian as well as English. You will say as bad as English, but in any case I speak it. And to be very fair, I wish to tell you that your opinion about my English is exactly the same as the opinion which I have about your English. And in any case, I speak Russian. And now I had a Russian lieutenant in my home. He loved God, but he had never seen a Bible, he had not been in a church, he had not had religious instruction. I read to him the sermon of Jesus. He danced around in the room crying, what fairy beauty, what fairy beauty, how could I live without having known these things? And I looked at him. I had had these fairy beauties in my hand since years. I had preached these fairy beauties. I had not known what a fairy beauty it is. Here in the free world, a great mischief happens. You know what vaccination is? You get a small doses of a microbe. And this makes you immune. When you are attacked massively by this microbe, you don't fall sick. And here in the free world, we all get very small doses of Christianity in Sunday school and in our religious teaching. And this makes us immune towards Christianity when it comes with its full claims. When Christ tells you, surrender to me your heart, give your body as a living holy sacrifice for me. You say, oh yes, this I have heard sung at a youth rally. And there exists not the response to it. Him I have seen dancing out of the joy of the passion of Christ. He had not expected this. When he heard that Christ has been scorched, crowned with a crown of thorns, nailed to a cross, he didn't know what will happen further. The Jews at the foot of the cross said, if you are the son of God, descend. And he himself, the Russian lieutenant, expected that Jesus will descend from the cross. And when he heard that Christ had died on the cross, he fell in an armchair and began to weep bitterly. He had not expected this. He had found a Savior, and now the Savior was dead. Looking at his crying, I had the impression that I see again before me Saint Mary Magdalene weeping at the foot of the cross or near the tomb in which her Savior was now a corpse. He didn't know that the story of her resurrection will follow. He bent his knee and swore a very dirty, but I think a very holy swear. That was his manner to express his joy. That was his language. And again he danced around. I have him. I have him. He is alive. I said to him, let us pray. I knelt. He knelt too. He had never attended any liturgy. He didn't know the Lord's prayer. He didn't know all our holy phrases. He began his prayer with the words, Oh God, what a fine chap you are. If I would be you and you would be I, I would not have forgiven you such gross things, but you are really a very nice chap and I love you from all my heart. Which I have ever heard in my life because it comes out. It is worthwhile to risk prison and to risk death as this priest and the others have done. To give to those around you the pages of the Bible which gives in my youth. I know what it meant for me when I discovered in the Bible that I have a father. I had been an orphan child. When she said, I had not known a father. And now it was once on a small island, a little boy near him, a grown up man. And this little boy waved to a steamer who passed by on the sea, which passed by on the sea. And the grown up man said to the little boy, don't be silly. A steamer will not change its course to come to this island to pick you up because you waved to it. And the steamer changed its course, picked the boy up. And when the boy was on the deck, he shouted to the man below, sir, I am not silly. The captain of this ship is my father. And when I waved to him, he changed the course of the steamer. And now at once I had discovered and my father being the captain of this cosmos, if I wave, the course of events will change. They transcribed the Bible by hand, risking their lives to tell people about the Father, to tell people about the Savior, Jesus Christ, who surely exists. And surely brings joy, they can bring joy in subterranean cells. One of the ministers of the underground church, of the secret church of Romania, he was beaten, he was tortured to betray, he did not. Then exhausted already, the communist officer said, listen, we will deport you and your whole family. We have a desert place in Romania where they used to deport Christians. But Christians with us give the same answers which the first Christians gave to their persecutors. And when this Christian minister was told, you will be deported, smiling he answered, Captain, where can you deport me? The whole earth belongs to my father. Wherever you will send me, I will be on my father's earth. The communist in rage, we will confiscate all your property. And the Christian minister said, that is perfectly okay for me, but I pity you, because I have gathered my treasures in heaven. You will need a very high ladder to go to confiscate my property. If you can climb so far, you are seeing that he is mocked. If you take away my life in this world, my real life, my life of bliss only begins. Oh, you stupid Christians, we will keep you everyone alone in a cell behind locked doors and iron bars, and will allow no Christian confident answering. I have one friend, 14 years of communist prison, out of the experience of hundreds of thousands of Christians who have passed and passed through prison in the communist countries, that Christ has been with us, the angels of God have been with us. I wonder how many of you have fellowship with their angels. Don't believe that there are only, let me say, a thousand people here. A thousand guardian angels are also here. Every one of you has a guardian angel, and how bright and how beautiful he is. And he is here with you, and now he bends over you to make you to receive the word of God. You will just open your spiritual eyes, and you will see him. There exists the spiritual reality, the glorified saints compass around us, and we can have communion with them, and the Bible opens for us the sight of the spiritual world. Therefore, Platonists and holy names I have mentioned risk their liberty and their life to give keys for us. He knows all our needs. He provides for them. And what about the cross? He provides also for a cross. And with over a hundred thousand Christians who are today in communist prisons in Red China, in Soviet Russia, in Albania, in Romania, Bulgaria, and in so many other communist countries. They will be terribly hungry. When I remember the 14 years of prison, I remember hunger. There are times when we had one slice of bread a week, and cabbage with unwashed intestines. Now I am eating well, but hunger has entered so much in my memory that after what happened, and I would wake up my wife, and I would tell her I am hungry. It is not a physical hunger, which is according to doctors the portion needed for a child of four or five, and they are men of 30 or 40 who make hard slave labor. So they will hunger, they will shiver for cold in Siberia. Don't take thought of what you will eat. And you have no motive to take thought of what you will eat. Perhaps you will eat a roast beef, perhaps you will eat fish, perhaps you will eat some sandwich and some fruits, but in Romanian prisons, during two years, Christians have been compelled to eat their own excrements and to drink urine. Don't take thought of what you will eat. There are the excrements, and don't think that it was simply so, to eat your excrements and to drink urine. First, they were consecrated in a holy mass, said by a Catholic priest, who was already half mad because of tortures. He didn't know what he does, and he had consented to say the holy mass over excrements and urine, giving them as holy communion. When I asked him afterwards, Father, but you are a man who believes in God and in eternal life, he rested his very head upon my shoulder and said, Brother, don't judge me. I have suffered more than Christ. Why do such things happen? In Red China today, Christians are tied to crosses, pelted with stones, burned with red-hot iron pokers. Why is a cross necessary? Why is such terrible suffering necessary? Your suffering, which might also be heartbreaking? I know that I can't have an audience of thousand people before me, without having before me also many grieved hearts. Why is your suffering necessary, and why was our and is our suffering necessary? Why was the suffering of Christ necessary? Well, we look at it from our own perspective. We say, what a fragrance and what a beauty these lilies have. But the lilies have their fragrance and their beauty not for us. That is for them a means to attract bees and wasps and other insects, which would make them multiply. We say about, how is the name of this beautiful peacock, no? Peacock, yes. We say how beautiful this peacock or another bird is. Its beauty is not for us. Its beauty is to attract the male peacock or the male bird. We profit of this beauty. Why had Christ to die? The profit for us if he died, is that we are saved. But why did he die? From the perspective of God and why did this happen? I have been in prison with many judges of the former pre-communist regime. They had sentenced many to prisons, but they had never been in prison. And now they were in prison. And all of them said, we regret the prison sentences which we have given. We have not known how prison looks like. We gave easily 5 years of prison, 10 years of prison. We sit every day apart. And every hour apart. Every hour apart. You are raised in the morning at 5 o'clock and begin to long after your children and come beatings and comes their anger. And the day never finishes. And day after day we have been wrong. We have given sentences without knowing how prison looks like. Before the coming of Jesus Christ in the world, he has been a righteous judge. He judged men righteously as they looked, if you look upon them from heaven. If you are a God and you sit on a throne in heaven and you judge men, then things look like this. But God has decided, I will not judge as judges do on earth. I wish that one of the persons of the Holy Trinity should live himself a human life. He should see how it is to be a poor child. How it is to hunger. How it is to be mocked. How it is to be tempted by all things as Jesus has been tempted. How it is to be beaten. How it is to earn your daily living. How it is to suffer. And then I will judge. Men, after I have known myself what suffering is. God has been enriched by the sufferings of Christ. Christ who has had all the crowns of glory from eternity has received from his Holy Mother one crown more. The crown to be a God-man. A man who knows all your temptations and mine. Only without having seen in them. Who has known all our sufferings. And even more, there exists 2.19, a very curious verse about an increase of God. Or in another translation it is said, a growth of God. We could say that God has grown, has increased in experience by the fact that the Son of God came and suffered among us. Now we have in him a high priest who understands us and forgives us. And why do we need the cross? Because we have a very high calling. Jesus said that those whom he put as stewards and who give the right meat to his servants, he says, I will put the one in five cities. And in the first epistle of Saint John it is written, as he is, so shall he be. We shall also be sons of God. There exists such a promise in the Bible, it would look like madness if Christ would not have said it himself. Just seek it in the book of Revelation. There it is written that those who will conquer in the Christian fight will sit together with me on my throne as I have conquered and sit on the throne of the Father. Somewhere in this huge universe there exists the throne of God from where universes are created and ruled and I am called to sit once on that throne. And in order to be a good ruler, experience, you know what a caterpillar does, which creeps. And before becoming a butterfly he has to build for himself a prison. He has to enter in a cocoon and after he has passed through this experience then he can rejoice children and youth with the beauty of his colors and with the beauty of his plight. The cross is necessary. God has provided for it. For us behind the iron curtain we have our heavy crosses. You have other crosses. Love them. Love your cross. Value your cross. Thank God that you have a cross. Thank God that your boyfriend has betrayed you. Thank God that your girlfriend has betrayed you. Thank God for your losses in business. Thank God for your sick child. Thank God because you have been bereaved of your child. Thank God for the sufferings through which you have passed. If the sculptor would not use the hammer and the scythe, I think it is called, and the other tools, never would out of the marble a beautiful statue come out. Suffering is the means of God to make us beautiful, to make us Christ-like. Christians with us are in prisons, beaten, tortured, tied to crosses, compelled to eat excrements. God is my witness. I can tell you that in these 14 years of prison not one minute I doubted about the existence of God and about the fact that He is a loving Father. The cross was given to us out of love. The cross is a beauty shop of God. A beauty shop called the cross. And I would recommend many of you to visit sometimes this beauty shop. It will make you much more beautiful than these other shops on which they put on your head. A beauty shop of God. The Christians had decided to feast the Christmas Eve, but they had no church. There are some sure churches in Moscow, Leningrad, Odessa, the big towns where foreigners come. But when you go to Ural, to Siberia, you can travel thousands of miles square in which you will never see a church. They had no church in their village. They had no church in the villages around. So the Christians decided to feast Christmas Eve in a stable which I came to the stable disguised as a woman because the communists were after him. They talked to him and to be very sure he put a scarf around his head and a blouse and some skirt and so he could come to the religious service. The Christians sneaked in one by one to figure out that nobody follows after them. And an elderly lady, a Christian, was asked to watch at a few yards from the stable. A piece of iron was given into her hand and she was told if you see something suspicious just throw this piece of iron towards the gate of the stable. This will be the signal and then everyone will flee as best he can. And now this Christian lady stood in the snow and prayed. She had a story apart. Her only son had been hanged by the communists. With the corpse of her son full with bruises, signs of tortures had been brought back to her. She heard a voice in her heart but there was another voice, a whisper, which said forgive them they have not known what they... You have been forgiven, you forgive and you love. And as she was an elderly lady and did not need to work anymore she decided to pass her whole life praying for those who have killed and tortured her son. She didn't know them by name but she prayed for them. And as she stood in the snow praying at once from the back somebody kicked her into the snow. When she bent around, when she turned around she saw bent over her a communist officer from the secret police who asked her what are you doing here? The communists suspected that the Christians are gathering somewhere but they had no traitor among them and they didn't know where they gathered. When she was asked what are you doing here she answered quietly I prayed for you. He began to laugh but you are a Christian and you Christians consider us communists as monsters. Why should you pray for me? That Jesus came into the world. It was for monsters that he died. It was for monsters that he prepared a paradise. You only repent. Heaven is wide open even for monsters. And in that moment God gave her the grace. She was illuminated and she saw and she said it is you. It is you. You have killed and tortured my son. Tell me we're not his last words. If you would know how much I love you. Peace of my son whom you have killed. Except my son I have never loved somebody so much as I love you. You only repent. If I a woman can love you like this how much does Christ love you and forgive you? Tears ran down the cheek of this communist officer. He was a monster. But he was a monster because he did not know that such a love of God exists. And he didn't know that this love of God but exists in the hearts of every faithful Christian. That it can be this love of God in the heart. When she saw the tears in his eyes she said now I can tell you what I was doing here. Come with me. And she took him to the stable. When they entered the Christians were all afraid. An officer of the communist secret police with his epaulets with his uniform. She said don't be afraid. The uniform is that of a communist officer. The heart is that of a repenting sinner. Receive him as your brother. This Christian lady has had a very heavy cross. I know what it means to lose your children. I know what it means to lose children under terrible circumstances. She has had a very heavy cross. But how beautiful she came out from the school of the cross. Forgiving, loving, capable to win souls for eternity. We don't grudge behind the iron curtain about the heavy cross we bear. Friends will betray you. But sister cross will never betray you. She will be faithful to you. She will be near to you. She will cherish you. She will make you every day more beautiful. More like the one who redeemed us by dying on the cross for us. Instead of grudging or suffering Christians help others who suffer. Christians with us. Give tight. They will give some every 10th week. Thank God for them. Honor this beautiful gift which God has made to you and helping others. It has its international headquarters in Great Britain. The mission exists in America, in Scandinavia, in Holland, France, Germany, Switzerland and so many other countries. I think some 16. And now it has been organized in Australia too. What does the mission wishes to do? Tell me, dear children. There is an excrement. Christian martyrs. We wish to give them a piece of apple pie. Are we wrong? Our mission helps Christian martyrs and their families. That is our most honorable task. To help Christian martyrs and their families. They there transcribe Bibles by hand. You can't transcribe very much very much like this. The more so when the police is around and arrests you. We smuggle in Bibles and other Christian literature to them. We broadcast the gospel in some 25 languages of communist countries. We wish the farmer and the slaves of Kosygin and of Ceausescu and of the other communist rulers who are so oppressed should know God spoke to Jeremiah. And God can speak to Chum Bamboo, I don't know these Chinese names, or to some Ivan, or to some Romanian John. He can speak to him. He can fill his life with joy. We can make a man to believe that he will win. And the captain of the steamer will change the course of the ship. We wish to open to those in the communist world who are oppressed and where the Bible is banned. We wish to open to them the gates of paradise. Our mission works secretly in all these communist countries, smuggling in Bibles and Christian literature, and help for families of Christian martyrs. You can help them, but they can help you too by discovering a new kind of Christianity. A Christianity which is not lukewarm, not shallow, does not consist only in an outward worship, but a Christianity which is a meeting in deep reverence and makes out of earthly caterpillars. Questions asked of the Reverend Richard Wurmbrand and answered by him at the close of his meetings in Brisbane. Our brother Richard Wurmbrand. The Christian congregations did not deny Christ when the communist persecution began. I would say in the congregation which I led, I don't know one single man who denied Christ. And generally, I can speak well informed about Romania, Poland, Russia, Bulgaria. There have been very rare denials of Christ. Such a thing has not been. I thank God that I have had myself very good teachers in Christianity, and we have been taught that the very first thing which I have been told when I became a Christian is that Christianity means to take every day the cross. The cross was not something new for us. Jesus says, whosoever wishes to follow me, I hope that most of you wish, should deny himself and take daily his cross. You all know it. What cross have you taken today? Jesus says that we have to take daily a cross. What cross did you take today? Yesterday. Well, today you might have forgotten. What cross did you take yesterday? What cross did you take two days before? You wash yourself every day because this belongs to civilized life. You are a civilized man and you wash yourself. To Christianity it belongs to take every day a cross. We were told to take every day a cross. If we did not have our own, then we were told to share the cross of others, to shed the tears for others. There have been very rare denials of Christ. I am asked how many died for their faith. It is very difficult to give statistics. In Russia it is considered that some 30 millions were killed by the communists. How many of them were killed for their religious convictions, nobody can make an exact statistic. But with us I can tell you so much. All the Catholic bishops except one died under tortures and did not deny. Innumerable monks, nuns, priests, Lutheran pastors, innumerable died. And not only clergy but laymen, young boys, young girls, as those who have sung here in the choir. When the choir sang I remembered that before the communists came to power we had such a choir in our church. And we laughed with them and we enjoyed life with them. And then these young girls have been arrested and beaten and all this for Christ's sake. But the exact figures only God knows. But millions of Christians have been killed. Only in Red China in the recent archival of the Red Guards 20,000 Christians have been killed. I received a letter from the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches just last month in which he told me that everything which you say is perfectly true. But this was under Stalin. Things have changed since Stalin's time. Now there is quite another communist regime. Nice, polite. Ask Dubček how nice and polite it is. They have put manacles on the hand of Dubček and Dubček has put manacles on the hands of thousands of Christians. Dubček has been in the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Party together with Novotny. When Cardinal Beran, 10,000 Catholics, nobody knows how many thousands of Protestants were jailed and tortured in Czechoslovakia. Dubček was also there. He belonged also to the leadership. And now I will answer directly to the question. Usually it is said that all these atrocities belong to Stalin's time. There is an article in Pravda Vostoka, a Soviet newspaper, of the 9th of May 1969. Eight Christians have been sentenced under the charge that they have wickedly plotted to spread diseases in the population by three means. One, the holy kiss. With those Christians, as often they meet, they would kiss each other. Unholy kisses don't spread diseases. Only holy kisses spread diseases. They spread diseases by taking holy communion from the same cup and by being baptized in the same baptistry. If you go together with others to the swimming pool, you don't spread diseases. If you go to the baptistry, you spread diseases. Not under Stalin, under Kosygin, two months ago Christians were sentenced to five years hard labor under such charges. These are things happening today in communist countries. They are happening today in Romania. Monsignor Hosu and Alexandru and Bojan and others are in prison. Communism has not changed in regard to its atrocities. The second question which has been asked is that communism has jailed not only Christians, it has jailed communists too, which is true. It is a religion of hatred. They jail everybody. They jail each other. Khrushchev has kept his own wife in prison eight years. Probably he didn't like her soup. I would say for a bad soup, two or three years of prison would be enough. He has given her eight years of prison. Well, in any case, they jailed also communists. I have been in prison with many communists and many communists died in prison. But only I can give you the good news, not one of them died as a communist. They died as Christians. In prison they were converted. They have seen that atheism, they have seen that once you leave God, you leave also humanity and mankind. The proof of this is I come from America and I have traveled through whole America and I have seen written Jewish hospital, Catholic hospital, Lutheran house for crippled, Methodist house for aged one and all kind of such philanthropic institutions maintained by different religions. And I have looked and looked to see one hospital which it should be written atheistic hospital. I have never seen, did you ever see such an institution? Did you ever see an agnostic hospital? Once they have left God, they have left mankind. I could not hear very well. Oh yes, if the Bibles which are smuggled in are passed from one to another. Now, fairy tales can't be told. There are one billion of men behind the Iron Curtain. To smuggle in Bibles for one billion of men, you can't smuggle in. So the Bibles which we smuggle in are then transcribed by hand or by typewriters. We smuggle in typewriters too. They would tie Bibles to pieces and they would barter them. And if you would see only the Russians, how they barter the Bibles. One would keep a page of St. John like this and he would ask the other one, what do you have? The other one would say, I have a page of Jeremiah or of Nehemiah. And this one would tell him, I will not be stupid to give you a page of St. John for a page of Nehemiah. You give me two pages of Nehemiah for one of St. John. And so the Bible circulates a lot sometimes. If one church has a Bible and it goes around, it circulates the whole week. Before I left Romania, I was told by the Communist secret police, I was ransomed for $10,000. Christian organizations have paid for me $10,000. I wonder if you have ever had such a dear guest at your rallies. I wonder if the chairman of the Youth for Christ is worth $10,000. Do you have $10,000? I am worth $10,000. And when the sum has been paid, I was called to the secret police and they told me, now you are allowed to leave the country, preach about Christ as much as you like. But don't attack us. If you attack us for $500 in America, we can find a gangster who will kill you. We can kidnap you and bring you back. You know in Australia the case with Mrs. Petrov. No? Petrov was her name. Or we can destroy you morally, inventing some story of I don't know what with a girl or with money or I don't know what. Now in the last six months, the Communists, very interesting, not Stalin. Tito, the fine Communist, the liberal Communist, he has killed six men in the West. Four in Munich in Germany, one in Valencia in Spain, one in Italy, men who did approximately my work, preaching Christ and telling to their own fatherland and helping their own fatherland to arrive to a better regime, they were killed in the West. And there exists always this danger, but it is a bigger danger not to do the will of God than to do it. I don't fear the Communists. I believe that the Communists fear me. I had in New Zealand, just the last evening when I left, a public debate on the TV with the First Secretary of the Soviet Embassy. Poor man did not know. And he came and I asked him, is there religious liberty in Russia? He said, yes. He didn't know what I have in my bag. And then I show him the picture of the Baptist, Pastor Hmarov Kolunda. Please give your name to the address of the mission, you can get this picture. The picture of the Baptist, Hmarov Kolunda, whose tongue has been cut out under the rock, not under Stalin. We have the picture, his corpse has been given back to his family. We have the picture of the Archbishop Velitskovich, who has probably been also already killed in prison. And I presented to him one article of the Soviet press after the other, in which they say about jailing Christians, putting them in houses for madmen, taking away children from their parents. Poor man was dumped and lost. I pitied him in the end. And my last words to him was, if you wish to defect, just appeal to me. I will help you and don't go back.