# Tortured for Christ.



## LifeInReturn (Mar 24, 2007)

I am reading this GREAT book courtesy of *Voice of the Martyrs* called *Tortured for Christ* (only $6). For those that have *ESword*, it's also available as a *free add-on*.

I had my computer shut down last night and was sitting up in bed reading when this part jumped out at me. We have it so good here in America w/our 'Westernized Christianity'. I think that we lose sight of our goal, what our lives should be. When you examine Isaiah 53, what do you see ?

_Who has believed what they heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, *and we esteemed him not*. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; *yet we esteemed him stricken*, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for *our* transgressions; he was crushed for *our* iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on *him* the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for sin, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors. 
*Isaiah 53:1-12 ESV*_


This Christ who was sinless was treated as though He wasn't. His life was filled with suffering, grief, and sorrow, yet He saw fit to be nailed onto a wooden cross to pay for our sins. I ask myself this question as well - How are we showing our thanks ?

You have cats going all out for Christ in other countries. Even though it will get them killed, AND THEY KNOW IT, they still present the Gospel and live as a bold representative of Christ. They don't care. I thought I'd share this part of the book because it struck me. I pray that we can think on these things and that the Lord would renew our hearts to serve Him, to be bold for Him, to give up our lives for Him! Because truthfully, many of us have NOT laid down everything at the foot of the Cross. Many of us are still holding on to things yet we're saying, "Lord, my life is Yours." Oh, may our words be not empty. May our hearts be wholly turned unto Him. May we love Him in word and deed. May people look at us and see Him. May we truly be on the frontline for Christ. May we lay down our lives and all that we deem important.

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*Unspeakable Tortures*
A pastor by the name of Florescu was *tortured with red-hot iron pokers and with knives*. He was beaten very badly. Then starving rats were driven into his cell through a large pipe. He could not sleep because he had to defend himself all the time. If he rested a moment, the rats would attack him.

He was forced to stand for two weeks, day and night. The Communists wished to compel him to betray his brethren, but he resisted steadfastly. Eventually, they brought his fourteen-year-old son to the prison and began to whip the boy in front of his father, saying that they would continue to beat him until the pastor said what they wished him to say. The poor man was half mad. He bore it as long as he could, then he cried to his son, “Alexander, I must say what they want! I can’t bear your beating anymore!” The son answered, “Father, don’t do me the injustice of having a traitor as a parent. Withstand! If they kill me, I will die with the words, ‘Jesus and my fatherland.’” *The Communists, enraged, fell upon the child and beat him to death, with blood spattered over the walls of the cell. He died praising God.* Our dear brother Florescu was never the same after seeing this.

*Handcuffs with sharp nails on the insides were placed on our wrists. If we were totally still, they didn’t cut us. But in the bitterly cold cells, when we shook with cold, our wrists would be torn by the nails.*

Christians were hung upside-down on ropes and beaten so severely that their bodies swung back and forth under the blows. Christians were also placed in ice-box “refrigerator cells,” which were so cold that frost and ice covered the inside. I was thrown into one while I had very little clothing on. Prison doctors would watch through an opening until they saw symptoms of freezing to death, then they would give a signal and guards would rush in to take us out and make us warm. When we were finally warmed, we would immediately be put back into the ice-box cells to freeze. Thawing out, then freezing to within minutes of death, then being thawed out—over and over again! Even today there are times when I can’t bear to open a refrigerator.

*We Christians were sometimes forced to stand in wooden boxes only slightly larger than we were. This left no room to move. Dozens of sharp nails were driven into every side of the box, with their razor-sharp points sticking through the wood. While we stood perfectly still, it was all right. But we were forced to stand in these boxes for endless hours; when we became fatigued and swayed with tiredness, the nails would pierce our bodies. If we moved or twitched a muscle—there were the horrible nails.*

What the Communists have done to Christians surpasses any possibility of human understanding. I have seen Communists whose faces while torturing believers shone with rapturous joy. They cried out while torturing the Christians, “We are the devil!”

We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and powers of evil. We saw that communism is not from men but from the devil. It is a spiritual force—a force of evil—and can only be countered by a greater spiritual force, the Spirit of God.

I often asked the torturers, “Don’t you have pity in your hearts?” They usually answered with quotations from Lenin: “You cannot make omelets without breaking the shells of eggs,” and “You cannot cut wood without making chips fly.” I said again, “I know these quotations from Lenin. But there is a difference. When you cut a piece of wood it feels nothing. But here you are dealing with human beings. Every beating produces pain and there are mothers who weep.” It was in vain. They are materialists. For them nothing besides matter exists and to them a man is like wood, like an eggshell. With this belief they sink to unthinkable depths of cruelty.

The cruelty of atheism is hard to believe. When a man has no faith in the reward of good or the punishment of evil, there is no reason to be human. There is no restraint from the depths of evil that is in man. The Communist torturers often said, “There is no God, no hereafter, no punishment for evil. We can do what we wish.” I heard one torturer say, “I thank God, in whom I don’t believe, that I have lived to this hour when I can express all the evil in my heart.” He expressed it in unbelievable brutality and torture inflicted on prisoners.​


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## LifeInReturn (Mar 24, 2007)

I have testified before the Internal Security Subcommittee of the U.S. Senate. There I described awful things, such as Christians tied to crosses for four days and nights. *The crosses were placed on the floor and hundreds of prisoners had to fulfill their bodily necessities over the faces and bodies of the crucified ones.* Then the crosses were erected again and the Communists jeered and mocked: “Look at your Christ! How beautiful he is! What fragrance he brings from heaven!” I described how, after being driven nearly insane with tortures, *a priest was forced to consecrate human excrement and urine and give Holy Communion to Christians in this form*. This happened in the Romanian prison of Pitesti. I asked the priest afterward why he did not prefer to die rather than participate in this mockery. He answered, “Don’t judge me, please! I have suffered more than Christ!” All the biblical descriptions of hell and the pains of Dante’s Inferno are nothing in comparison with the tortures in Communist prisons.

This is only a very small part of what happened on one Sunday and on many other Sundays in the prison of Pitesti. Other things simply cannot be told. My heart would fail if I should tell them again and again. They are too terrible and obscene to put in writing. *That is what your brothers in Christ went through and go through now!*

If I were to continue to tell all the horrors of Communist tortures and all the self-sacrifices of Christians, I would never finish. Not only were the tortures known, but the heroic deeds were known also. The heroic examples of those in prison greatly inspired the brethren who were still free.

One of the really great heroes of the faith was Pastor Milan Haimovici.
The prisons were overcrowded and the guards did not know us by name. They called out for those who had been sentenced to get twenty-five lashes with a whip for having broken some prison rule. *Innumerable times, Pastor Haimovici went to get the beating in the place of someone else.* By this he won the respect of other prisoners not only for himself, but also for Christ whom he represented.

One of our workers in the Underground Church was a young girl. The Communist police discovered that she secretly spread Gospels and taught children about Christ. They decided to arrest her. But to make the arrest as agonizing and painful as they could, they decided to delay her arrest a few weeks, until the day she was to be married. On her wedding day, the girl was dressed as a bride—the most wonderful, joyous day in a girl’s life! Suddenly, the door burst open and the secret police rushed in.

When the bride saw the secret police, she held out her arms toward them to be handcuffed. They roughly put the manacles on her wrists. She looked toward her beloved, then kissed the chains and said, “I thank my heavenly Bridegroom for this jewel He has presented to me on my marriage day. I thank Him that I am worthy to suffer for Him.” She was dragged off, with weeping Christians and a weeping bridegroom left behind. They knew what happens to young Christian girls in the hands of Communist guards. Her bridegroom faithfully waited for her. After five years she was released—a destroyed, broken woman, looking thirty years older. She said it was the least she could do for her Christ. Such beautiful Christians are in the Underground Church.​


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## LifeInReturn (Mar 24, 2007)

The tortures and brutality continued without interruption. When I lost consciousness or became too dazed to give the torturers any further hopes of confession, I would be returned to my cell. There I would lie, untended and half dead, to regain a little strength so they could work on me again. Many died at this stage, but somehow my strength always managed to return. In the ensuing years, in several different prisons, *they broke four vertebrae in my back, and many other bones. They carved me in a dozen places. They burned and cut eighteen holes in my body*.

When my family and I were ransomed out of Romania and brought to Norway, doctors in Oslo, seeing all this and the scars in my lungs from tuberculosis, declared that my being alive today is a pure miracle! According to their medical books, I should have been dead for years. I know myself that it is a miracle. God is a God of miracles.

I believe God performed this wonder so that you could hear my voice crying out on behalf of the Underground Church in persecuted countries. He allowed one to come out alive and cry aloud the message of your suffering, faithful brethren. ​


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## LifeInReturn (Mar 24, 2007)

I am still working through the book, but I'd recommend that everyone get their hands on a copy either through Voice of the Martyrs or electronically through E Sword.

Grace and Peace.


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## No Longer A Libertine (Mar 24, 2007)

Braver souls than I, I would likely have mimiced Peter so I could merit mercy by them.


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## LifeInReturn (Mar 24, 2007)

During the years I was imprisoned, God had moved wonderfully. The Underground Church was no longer abandoned and forgotten. *Americans and other Christians had begun to help us and pray for us.*

One afternoon as I rested in the house of a brother in a provincial town, he awoke me and said, “Brethren from abroad have come.” In the West there were Christians who had not forgotten or abandoned us. Rank-and-file Christians had organized a secret work of relief for families of Christian martyrs, and were smuggling in Christian literature and help.

In the other room I found six brethren who had come to do this work. After speaking with me at length, they told me that they had heard that at this address there was someone who had spent fourteen years in prison, and they would like to see him. I told them that I was the man. They said, “We expected to see someone melancholic. You cannot be this person because you are full of joy.” I assured them that I was the imprisoned one and my joy was in knowing that they had come and that we were no longer forgotten. Steady, regular help began to come to the Underground Church. By secret channels we got many Bibles and other Christian literature, as well as relief for families of Christian martyrs. Now, with their help, we of the Underground Church could work much better.

It was not only that they gave us the Word of God, but we saw that we were beloved. They brought us a word of comfort. During the years of brainwashing, we had heard, “Nobody loves you anymore, nobody loves you anymore, nobody loves you anymore.” *Now we saw American and English Christians who risked their lives to show us that they loved us.* We later helped them develop a technique of secret work, so they could creep undetected into houses surrounded by the secret police.

*The value of the Bibles smuggled in by these means cannot be understood by an American or an English Christian who “swims” in Bibles.*

My family and I would not have survived without the material help I received from praying Christians abroad. The same is true with many other underground pastors and martyrs in Communist countries. I can testify out of my own experience about the material and even greater moral help that has been given to us by special missions formed for this purpose in the free world. For us, these believers were like angels sent by God!

Because of the renewed work of the Underground Church, I was in very great danger of still another arrest. *At this time, two Christian organizations, the Norwegian Mission to the Jews and the Hebrew Christian Alliance, paid the Communist government a ransom of $10,000 for me—over five times the standard price for a political prisoner. I could now leave Romania.*​


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## kvanlaan (Mar 24, 2007)

While we ''suffer'' ''persecution'' because we wear a t-shirt! Or perhaps someone laughs at the icthos on our bumper - we hold up well _most of the time_ under such 'persecution'...


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## Dieter Schneider (Mar 24, 2007)

I was deeply moved as a child when reading about the early Christian martyrs. All Christians face varying kinds and degrees of persecution. One would not wish to minimize Wurmbrand's experience, but our LORD suffered more than we ever will. Hell is infinitely worse – both in its extent and duration! At Calvary all hell broke lose and all the demons were there. Against that backdrop it behooves us not to exaggerate our sufferings which must never eclipse the passion and death of our LORD. Notwithstanding, we need grace to stand in the hour of trial! May God be pleased to spare us. 
We also ought to be humble in our condemnation of Atheistic regimes who persecute the Church. The established Church in Europe has much blood on her hands, as can be seen from a cursory study of history. Readers may wish to peruse http://www.homecomers.org/mirror/ and http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/. The Magisterial Reformers were not opposed to torture, although one must grant that they were men of their own age. The very best of men were but men at best.


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## Chris (Apr 4, 2007)

Thanks for posting that link. I'll have to check this one out. 

Sort of makes you feel silly living in America, doesn't it?


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## Blueridge Believer (Apr 4, 2007)

Chris said:


> Thanks for posting that link. I'll have to check this one out.
> 
> Sort of makes you feel silly living in America, doesn't it?



Haven't you heard? We're supposed to get "raptured" before this kind of thing happens to us.


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## Chris (Apr 4, 2007)

Blueridge reformer said:


> Haven't you heard? We're supposed to get "raptured" before this kind of thing happens to us.



I more-or-less abandoned that belief when I read Foxe's book of Martyrs. 



The question is, how long does America have left before church persecution becomes the norm? 10 years? 20?


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## MrMerlin777 (Apr 4, 2007)

May the Lord spare us. But if not, may He be glorified in our persecution. I can only pray that I'll wax as bold in the face of such persecution. 

Grace and Peace
Don.


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## CDM (Apr 4, 2007)

I *do not *seek to limit the torture of the saints. 

With that said, nails, starvation, rats, rape, burning pokers......A pleasant vacation compared to the fire that is never quenched and where the worm never dies. 

Is it unchristian to be content with knowing there is a hell reserved for people such as these?


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## Blueridge Believer (Apr 4, 2007)

Chris said:


> I more-or-less abandoned that belief when I read Foxe's book of Martyrs.
> 
> 
> 
> The question is, how long does America have left before church persecution becomes the norm? 10 years? 20?




I'm for anything it takes to purify the church and bring a revival of true religion in this country. I realize that it may hurt, but I'd rather have God and his blessing than anything this world has to offer right now. With that said, it's in the Hands of God. His will be done.


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## Dieter Schneider (Apr 4, 2007)

Tertullian claimed that 'the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church'. The Church may grow again - but are we willing to pay the price? 
The early Church was persecuted and for 300 years she kept growing! 
Do we want revival? What if God were to answer our prayers for revival?


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