This excerpt of Richard Wurmbrand is from a larger article on Preparing for the Underground Church, it is a must read:
Torture has a moment of explosion, and the torturer waits for this critical moment. Learn how to conquer doubt and to think thoroughly. There is always one moment of crisis when you are ready to write or pronounce the name of your accomplice in the underground work, or to say where the secret printing shop is, or something of that kind. You have been tortured so much nothing counts any more; the fact that I should not have pain also does not count. Draw this last conclusion at the stage at which you have arrived and you will see that you will overcome this one moment of crisis; it gives you an intense inner joy. You feel that Christ has been with you in that decisive moment. Jailers today are now trained and refined, aware that there is a moment of crisis. If they cannot get anything from you in that moment, then they abandon torturing; they know its continuation to be useless.
I have been told since I was a very young Christian to read every day; and so I did also with my son, Mihai, since he was three or four, reading a page of the Bible and of the life of a saint or martyr. I read Foxe’s Book of Martyrs; read it to your children. Teach them how martyrs overcame the moment of crisis.
There are a few more points in connection with torture. It is very important to understand what Jesus said: “Take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for itself.” I have had fourteen years of prison. Brother Hrapov had twenty-six, Wong Ming-Dao had twenty-eight. It seems impossible to bear long years of prison. You are not asked to bear it all at once. Do not bear even one day at a time — bear an hour at a time. One hour of pain everybody can bear. We have had a terrible toothache, a car accident — passing, perhaps, through untold anguish. You are not meant to bear pain more than this one present minute.
What amplifies pain is the memory that I have been beaten and tortured so many times and that tomorrow they will take me again, and the day after tomorrow. Tomorrow, I might not be alive or they might not be alive. Tomorrow, there can be an overthrow, as in Romania. Yesterday’s beating has passed: tomorrow’s torture has not come yet.
Another thing which an underground worker must know, not with his head only, but in his fingertips: he should know that he belongs to the body of Christ. He belongs to a body which has been flogged for nearly 2,000 years. It has always been flogged, not only on Golgotha, but under the Roman emperors and by so many persecutions. It had been flogged under the Nazis and had been flogged in Russia for over seventy years. When converted I have consciously become part of a body that is a flogged body; a mocked body; a body spat upon; and one crowned with a crown of thorns, with nails driven into hands and into the feet. I accept this as my possible future fate. I will never think upon Jesus Christ as only having been crucified 2,000 years ago. The sufferings of Jesus in His mystical body must become a reality for me.
Be the first to react on this!
Gospel Fellowships ( - )
“Christianity was birthed in the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and will only continue as we have this empowering from above. God is always looking for the willing vessels that will trust Him afresh for the impossible.” from: Principles for the gathering of Believers under the Headship of Jesus Christ.Since 2012, a growing group of believers in North America started to warn of coming persecution to western countries. This message was shared in a variety of ways. One of the responses to this was to compile a book taking principles from underground Churches around the world of how they thrived under pressure and persecution. The volume, Principles for the Gathering of Believers, had in a short time over 50,000 downloads in ebook format and much interest was shown. Some new house churches started through this and other existing groups were encouraged.