Richard Wurmbrand's Testimony before US Senate Judiciary Committe-1966.See his Scars.Hear Him.

COMMUNIST EXPLOITATION OF RELIGION

HEARING

Before the

SUBCOMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE INTERNAL SECURITY ACT AND OTHER INTERNAL SECURITY LAWS

of the

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

UNITED STATES SENATE

EIGHTY-NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

TESTIMONY OF REV. RICHARD WURMBRAND

COMMUNIST EXPLOITATION OF RELIGION

Friday, May 6, 1966

U.S. Senate, Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws, of the Committee on the Judiciary,

Washington, D.C.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:20 a.m., in room 18, Old Senate Office Building, Senator Thomas J. Dodd presiding. Also present: Jay G. Sourwine, chief counsel; Benjamin Mandel, director of research; Frank W. Schroeder, chief investigator; and Robert C. McManus, investigations analyst.

Senator Dodd. I will call this hearing to order. We have as our witness today Pastor Richard Wurmbrand, who is a refugee from Rumania. Mr. Sourwine will introduce and read a copy of Dr. Wurmbrand's credentials.

I must say, before you do so, that we are grateful for your appearing here. I am familiar with the nature of your testimony-I think I am-to an extent. I feel that you are rendering a real service to the cause of the free world.

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Reverend Wurmbrand. There were different cells. In solitary confinement I was the first 2 , nearly 3 years. It was in the most beautiful building of Bucharest in the building of the Secretariat of State for Internal Affairs. It is a building before which all foreigners stand and admire it. I can tell you that your White House is a very little building in comparison with ours. And there beneath the earth 10 meters beneath the earth are the cells. There are no windows in the cells. Air enters through a tube. And there were a few desks with a mattress, with a straw mattress. You had but three steps for to walk. Never were we taken out from these cells except for interrogations when prisoners were beaten and tortured.

For years I have never seen sun, moon, flowers, snow, stars, no man except the interrogator who beat, but I can say I have seen heaven open, I have seen Jesus Christ, I have seen the angles and we were very happy there.

But the treatment was very bad. The purpose was to make us mad. You didn't hear a noise. A whisper you didn't hear in this cell. The guard had felt shoes. For years, not to hear anything. In all these years of prison we never had a book, we never had a but of paper, we never had a newspaper, nothing to distract our mind except that from time to time tape recorders were put on the corridor. I didn't know what a tape recorder is. I had not seen such a thing. But at once we heard beautiful Rumanian music, and then we enjoyed it. We didn't know what has happened with the Communists that they make us enjoy, and after 10 or 15 minutes at once you heard, "Ha, ha, ha don't beat," the torturing of a woman. This lasted for half an hour the torturing of a woman. And of 100 prisoners who had been in that cell, in that corridor, everybody recognized that it is his wife or that it is his girl. I myself thought also that it is my wife.

Never will a Westerner understand, if I would not have the mark on my body, which are my credentials.

Senator Dodd. Excuse me, never will who understand?

Reverend Wurmbrand. A Westerner can't understand.

Senator Dodd. A Westerner?

Reverend Wurmbrand. A Westerner can't understand God is here and knows that I will not tell you the while truth because if I will tell you the while truth, you will faint and rush out of this room, not bearing to hear what things have happened. But I will tell you that in a prison they crucified a cat before ourselves. They beat nails in the feet of the cat and the cat was hanging with the head down, and can you imagine how this cat screamed and the prisoners, mad, bead on the door, "Free the cat, free the cat, free the cat," and the Communists very polite, "Oh, surely we will free the cat, but give the statements which we ask from you and then the cat will be freed," and I have known men who have given statements against their wives, against their children, against their parents to free the cat. They did it out of madness, and then the parents and the wives have been tortured like the cat. Such things have happened with us.

Senator Dodd. Did you have any fellow Christians like you imprisoned?

Reverend Wurmbrand. We had hundreds of bishops, priests, monks in prisons; my wife who is near me, she has been with Catholic nuns. My wife tells that they were angels; such have been put in prisons. Nearly all Catholic bishops died in prison. Innumerable Orthodox and Protestants have been in prison, too.

Senator Dodd. The point I was getting at - and I guess I did not make it clear - where the Christians treated any differently or mistreated any differently?

Reverend Wurmbrand. Everybody in prison was very badly treated. And I cannot be contradicted on this question, because I have been with physicians, I have much more broken bones than anybody, so either I broke my bones or somebody else broke them. And if I would not have been a clergyman but a murderer - it is a crime to torture a murderer, too. The Christian prisoners were tortured in a form which should mock their religion. I tell you again in the prison of Pitesti one scene I will describe you about torturing and mocking Christians, and believe me I would renounce to eternal life to paradise after which I long, if I tell you one word of exaggeration. God is here and knows that I do not say everything. It cannot be said. There are ladies here. There are other people hearing it.

One Sunday morning in the prison of Pitesti a young Christian was already the fourth day, day and night, tied to the cross. Twice a day the cross was put on the floor and 100 other cell inmates by beating, by tortures, were obliged to fulfill their necessities upon his face and upon his body. Then the cross was erected again and the Communists swearing and mocking "Look your Christ, look your Christ, how beautiful he is, adore him, kneel before him, how fine he smells, your Christ." And then the Sunday morning came and a Catholic priest, an acquaintance of mine, has been put to the belt, in the dirt of a cell with 100 prisoners, a plate with excrements, and one with urine was given to him and he was obliged to say the holy mass upon these elements, and he did it. And I asked him afterward, "Father, but how could you make this?" He was half mad. He answered to me: "Brother, I have suffered more than Christ. Don't reproach to me what I have done." And the other prisoners beaten to take holy communion in this form, and the Communists around, "Look, your sacraments, look, your church, what a holy church you have, what fine is your church, what holy ordinance God has given you."

I am very insignificant and a very little man. I have been in prison among the weak ones and the little ones, but I speak for a suffering country and for a suffering church and for the heroes and the saints of the 20th century; we have had such saints in our prison to which I did not dare to lift my eyes.

I am a Protestant, but we have had near us Catholic bishops and monks and nuns about whom we felt that the touching of their garments heals. We were not worthy to untie their shoelaces. Such men have been mocked and tortured in our country. And even if it would mean to go back to a Rumanian prison, to be kidnaped by the Communists and going back and tortured again, I cannot be quiet. I owe it to those who have suffered there.

Senator Dodd. Now, did the Rumanian secret police employ brainwashing techniques?

Reverend Wurmbrand. The worst thing has been the brainwashing. All the tortures of times before were nothing in comparison with brainwashing.

To describe very shortly brainwashing: First of all we were doped. The dope was put in our food. I did not know about this dope. But we saw only the results, a dope which gave two results. First of all, what the physician calls aleulia which means lack of power of will. The power of will was completely broken. If we were told, "Lift your hand," I lifted it. If I was not told to let the hand down, I would never have left it down. We were at the same time very much undernourished. We had times when we received 100 grams, one slice of bread, a week. It was told to us, "We give you as many calories as you need to be able to breathe only," and so our power of will has been broken.

Second, this drug or perhaps it is another drug, produces the delirium of self-accusation. I have seen prisoners knocking during the night on the door and saying, "Take me to the interrogator, I have new things to say against me." Prisoners quarreled with their interrogators to say against themselves more than the interrogators asked from them. And then we have had in prisons the curious phenomenon that we as priests received confessions from other prisoners. Now everybody is a sinner, but not everybody is a criminal. Men who have never murdered confessed that they have murdered, that they have committed adultery, that they have stolen. They felt they had to accuse themselves. This has also been the result of doping. And after we were doped like that - that is the secret of all the Soviet show trials, in which the prisoners accuse themselves - then the time of brainwashing came. For 17 hours a day from 5 in the morning to 10 in the evening we had to sit like this. We were not allowed to lean. We were not allowed to rest a little bit our weary heads upon our hands. To close your eyes was a crime. Seventeen hours a day we had to sit like that and hear from the morning to the evening: "Communism is good, communism is good, communism is good, communism is good," until you heard one who was already 20 years in prison under the Communists shouting, "Communism is good, communism is good, communism is good, I give my life for communism."

It was after the technique of Professor Pavlov, a scientific suggestion.

In prison there were not only priests and pastors. We have had hundreds of peasants and young boys and girls who were put in prison for their Christian faith. These were separated and for them there was a special brainwashing, not only that "communism is good," but "Christianity is dead, Christianity is dead, Christianity is dead. Nobody more believes in Christ, nobody more believes in Christ, you are the only fools."

And so on. And I must tell you that you may know how far this brainwashing went. I do not like to pose here like a hero. I believed that Christianity is dead under this influence. I believed -

Senator Dodd I did not hear that.

Reverend Wurmbrand. I believed that Christianity is dead under this suggestion. Nobody goes more to church. They gave us post cards. I have not seen my wife for 10 years. They gave me post cards, they gave to all of us post cards: "Write to your children and wife; they may come and on that day see you and bring your parcels," so on that day we were shaved; we expected and expected until the evening and nobody came. They had not sent the post cards, but we did not know. Then came the brainwashings. "Your wives are laying in bed with men," obscene words, "Your children hate you. You have nobody to love in the world. You are the only fools. Give up faith. Nobody is more Christians. Christianity is dead."

I believed also that nobody is more a Christian. I had read in the Bible that there will be in the last time the great apostasy, that people will leave the faith and I believed that I lived now this time. But I said to myself if Christianity is dead, I will sit at its tomb and will weep until it arises again, just as Mary Magdalene sat at the tomb of Jesus and wept until Jesus showed Himself. Then when I came out of prison I saw Christianity is not dead. The number of practicing Christians in Rumania according to the figures given by the Communists themselves in 20 years of Communist dictatorship has grown 300 percent.

Senator Dodd. How do the Communists use religion for their own purposes if they do?

Reverend Wurmbrand. That is a very tragic side. The worse thing in Rumania has not been the persecution of Christians. The persecution has make the Christians to be of steel. The worst thing has been the corruption of religion. They have put as religious leaders their man. A bishop, a pastor, a preacher, just a man like other man and can commit sins. Now if they found a preacher or somebody else in adultery or in some money irregularity or I do not know what sin, they called him and blackmailed him and said, "Now you must become our man. Otherwise we publish what we have found." Or they found others who were weak ones, whom they promised I do not know what. They never keep their promises. And these men, they put at the leadership of religion everywhere.

They have their bishops, their bishop vicar, their professors of theology, their presidents of the Baptists and Pentecostals and so on. I could give names. I know this from firsthand. Because many of these, when we came out of prison, out of remorse confessed to us what they have done. And now they use these men. With us in Rumania religion is a very great thing. You do not find much religious difference in Rumania. By these weak Christians, the Communists used religion for their propaganda. When the Communists came to power in Rumania, they convoked in the building of our parliament a congress of all the cults. There were 4,000 priests; pastors, rabbis of all religions were there. Our Prime Minister Gorza, said the same things which you hear now in the West. This was in 1945 when they came to power with us. "You know Rumanian communism will not be like Russian communism. We are a democratic communism. We will not persecute the church. We are on the side of monarchy. We will never collectivate agriculture. We are something entirely else and you should be on our side and then we will protect religion and we will give salaries to the priests."

And the priests, good men, simply believed him and cheered him. Priests and bishops one after the other stood up and said, "Well, if your communism is otherwise than the Russian communism, if it will be a good communism, we do not object against communism in principle." And one after the other stood up and praised this form of communism. There was only one in that congress who protested and said that communism can never change, that terror is an essential part of communism, because communism is contrary to human nature.

What would you say if I would take the purse out of your pocket? Everyone wishes to have something. A dog wishes to have a bone, and communism is against human nature because it does not allow you to have anything of yours and so communism must use terror. At that congress there was only one who said these things. This one is now before you.

But what has happened? I went to prison, this was one of the charges against me. I met in prison all those who had praised communism, all those who have collaborated with communism, and they were treated just like me. They had been the fools. There was only one difference that I was in prison with a good conscience and they were with a bad conscience. In prison they had remorse. Religion was used for Communist propaganda in our country.

Just to give you one example: To the Orthodox Church of Rumania foreigners come and see the liturgy and see everything so beautiful. The church is open. They do not understand the language, they do not know what is preached. I will give you the test of the sermon. It was a sermon about an epistle of St. Paul where it was written that Chris is our peace , and so the priest explained, "Christ is our peace. Who is against peace? American imperialists. And who is on the side of the peace? We, the Socialist countries."

So you see that Christ identifies Himself with socialism and so on. Such sermons they have. They have used the religion for their own purposes in the country. Then they have used the religion for getting political positions in the West. They are not fools to send in the West representatives of the Communist Party. They send bishops with great beards and beards are always very impressive here in the West, and through these beards they influence the West.

Senator Dodd. I have many more questions, but would you show your wounds and scars, if you have some?

Reverend Wurmbrand. I apologize here before the ladies.

Senator Dodd. Take your time. If ever a man was entitled to time, I think you are.

Reverend Wurmbrand. Look here, look here, look here. Look here, look here. And so the whole body.

Senator Dodd. What is the scar behind your ear?

Reverend Wurmbrand. Here they put the knife and said, "Give accusatory statement against your bishops and against the other pastors. Do you give or not? And they cut. It is true that they did not cut very deeply.

Senator Dodd. These are all knife wounds?

Reverend Wurmbrand. They tortured by all means. They beat until they broke the bones. They used red-hot irons, they used knives, they used everything. And what was the firs thing is not they beat, not what they did, but how they did it. They interrogated you very politely, and if you did not wish to say what they asked they said, "Well, we have the first. On the 15th you will be beaten and tortured at 10 o'clock in the evening."

Imagine what 14 days were after this. We have had prisoners who during this time, which has been given to them, knocked at the door, "I can't bear it. I will say everything," before they have been tortured.

Senator Dodd. I wish you would turn around before you put your shirt on.

Reverend Wurmbrand. And that it may be very clear, it is not that I boast with these marks. I show to you the tortured body of my country, of my fatherland, and of my church, and they appeal to the American Christians and to all freemen of America to think about our tortured body, and we do not ask you to help us. We ask you only one thing. Do not help our oppressors and do not praise them. You cannot be a Christian and praise the inquisitors of Christians. That is what I have to say.

Senator Dodd. All right. You may put on your clothes. That scar on your right breast, do you remember how that was inflicted?

Reverend Wurmbrand. Yes; by knife.

Senator Dodd. By knife?

Reverend Wurmbrand. By knife. I have been in Oslo. I went to a hospital. There were several physicians. I can give their names. I spoke with them about religion. In the beginning they said, "We are atheists," and then they saw my body and I asked them what treatment do I need. They said: "About treatment, do not ask us. Ask only the one in whom we don't believe, but who has kept you alive, because according to our medical books, you are dead. A man who has what you have, with four vertebras broken, cannot live. According to our medical books, you are dead. If you are alive, then the one in whom we don't believe has kept you alive."

Senator Dodd. I think it is important for our purposes to understand this completely. As I take it, they cut you, but they must have been asking you questions.

Reverend Wurmbrand. Surely, surely. I had worked in the representation of the World Council of Churches in Rumania, and after the war this World Council of Churches made a great relief work and I myself had relationship with the Rumanian patriarchs and with the bishops and with the Baptists and with the Pentecostals and Lutherans and so on, and we worked with all these. And now they wish to make with us in Rumania a great show process, a great show trial as they have made in Hungary with Cardinal Mindszenty and so on, and they wished from me accusatory statements against all these with whom I have had connections, and because I did not wish to give these accusatory statements, I and others have been tortured. This has been the usual thing. Nobody enters in the Rumanian secret police without being beaten, without being tortured. I have been not the worst tortured. The proof is that I am alive. So many died. Nearly all our Catholic bishops have been so handled that they have died, and in that time the Russians were in our country, they decided that the Catholic bishops should be killed. One of the members of the Government has been Gromyko, one of the murderers of Christians. Perhaps you will understand why I call his name.

Senator Dodd. Yes; I do.

Reverend Wurmbrand. I have seen Catholic priests, heroes, dying not only for Christ and confessing Christ to the end, but dying for the Pope.

I have heard the word of a Catholic priest, I will not tell his name. He was asked, "Do you still believe in the Pope?" and he said, "Since St. Peter there has always been a Pope, and until Christ will come again there will always be a Pope. And the actual Pope, Pius the 12th has not made peace with you and never will a Pope shake hands with you." He was trampled under the feet and tortured to death. Under our eyes he was killed. At that time a member of the government who killed this Catholic priest has been Gromyko, and the priest died with the hope that never will a Pope shake hands with his murderers.

Senator Dodd. You saw and heard this yourself.

Reverend Wurmbrand. Yes, surely; and it is not only one case. I could never finish if I would tell you what I have seen. I must just pour out before you my heart. I speak for a country and I speak for a church. We are very, very sad there about all these compromises. I must tell you I have been in England before I came to the States, and I have spoken with high Christian officials from England. The Archbishop of Canterbury and many canons and so on have been in our country recently, last year. So I asked Christian leaders - I will not tell names - "Why have you sat at banquets with our inquisitors? I am a little pastor, I cannot interrogate you, but I speak for the others who cannot speak for themselves. "Why have you sat at banquets with our inquisitors?"

I was answered, "We are Christians and must have friendship and fellowship with everybody, with the Communists, too. Don't you agree?"

I said, "I can't polemicize with you. I have not read the Bible for 14 years. You must know Christianity better than I. Faintly I remember in the Bible it is written that friendship with the world is hatred toward God. But supposing you must have friendship and fellowship with everybody. How is it that you have had friendship and fellowship only with our inquisitors, and with us never?"

Never have these great men of the West been in the houses of Christian martyrs. I have an only son and I love him. I cannot look to him. He looks like a skeleton. He has hungered. He will never be healthy. And so many of our children died. All these great relates from the West are great men. I am very little in comparison with them. But I always asked myself, "Well, all right, make friendship with the Communists. But only with the Communists?" They never inquired about us.

I asked them, "Why did you go to see the Pope, who is all right, who does not need your visit?" "When you have been in Rumania why have you not visited the tombs of the Catholic bishops killed in tortures? Why have you not shed there a tear? Why have you not put there a flower? That is what we expected. Why have you not left 10 pounds? Ten pounds would have been the salvation of a Catholic family there. You go to see the Pope. The Pope is all right. He has to eat and to drink." But I must say we are very sad there about these compromises with communism. We do not understand. I am a man who does not understand politics. I have not read newspapers for 14 years.

It may be right for a state to have peaceful existence with communism. I do not know. That is a question for Johnson and Goldwater to decide. But the church can never have peaceful coexistence with atheism. Everybody would laugh if I would say that health can peacefully exist with the microbe of tuberculosis, that the FBI can coexist peacefully with gangsters, that the church can peacefully exist with drunkenness, but communism and atheism is much worse than drug addiction and drunkenness. You drink a little wine and the next day it passes, but communism poisons youth and our children since 50 years. How can there be peaceful existence with this on the side of churchmen and the church leadership I cannot understand.

I must say I have been very sad. I have read in your periodicals that, I do not know why, church bodies here ask the admission of Red China in the organization of allied nations. It may be right. I do not know politics. I do not know what this organization of allied nations is, but I ask myself, "You, a church periodical, why don't you write about the tortures inflicted to Chinese Christians by the communists? That is your business and leave the business of politics to the Senate and like this."

(....Thank God, no longer the Iron Curtain exists and the brave people of these countries are experiencing freedom in some form or another....but think of the people in the nations who are still enslaved and of those in this country who THINK THESE COMMUNISTS ARE THEIR ROLE MODELS!!! AND WHAT THEY WANT TO BRING TO FULL POWER IN AMERICA !!!)

"The Rumanian people, as well as the other peoples behind the Iron Curtain, are desperate. They have abandoned hope that they will ever be released. For years we have heard a broadcast station: "Rebel against communism, rebel against communism," and when we rebelled we were abandoned.

And we see how our oppressors are helped. I will tell you a scene. Believe me, God is here. I tell you the scene just as it happened. It was in the years of brainwashing, the 14th year of prison. We are gathered to a meeting, and Major Alexandrescu, the commandant of the prison of Gherla, delivered us a speech and said:

You fools, you set for 15 or 20 years in prison and expected the Americans to come. You expected the Americans will come and release you. Now I will give you the news. The Americans come but not to release you. They come to help us, to help us, to make business with us, to make trade with us. You fools have not known. The Americans if you beg them, they give you nothing.. If you insult them, if you mock them, they give you money. We have been more clever than you.

These are words which I have heard myself. Such things have happened in our country.

....

Reverend Wurmbrand. They don't wish to be troubled in their quietness. They close their eyes before this menace. I have met men who simply close their eyes when I told them about these things. They know that they are true. But they have a certain policy of friendly relationship with the communist countries, and they are very honest men, but they are duped exactly as we were duped in Rumania.

Wherever the communists came in the beginning, they said the same thing which I read here in newspapers and in periodicals. "You know Stalin's communism has been very bad, but Yugoslavian communism or another kind of communism, this is very good."

A little lion in its first days you can play with him just like with a puppy. When he becomes great, only then he is a lion. Yugoslavian communism is this little communism. And American communism a very little one and English communism is a very little one. When they grow, when they can do whatever they will to do, then only we can see them With us, in the beginning, we also had a very nice communism. I have seen in Rumanian Communist demonstrations signs with the slogan, "God save the King." I have seen the communist Secretaries of State making great crosses, showing themselves as being on the side of religion and making compliments to religion and bowing to religion and saying they are Democrats. In the beginning, they have put in prison party members who said that the agriculture must be collectivized. And they have gone together with the bourgeois party, with the Liberal Party of Tatorescu and with other Democrats.

I have seen in the West Social Democrats collaborate with them. In Rumania, I have seen dying Social Democrats in the same cell with me; they died. Communists in Rumania, too, were nice until they had the whole power in hand. When they had the whole power in hand, they have done things exactly as in Russia, and so they will do everywhere. There is no difference.

(note link between Communist China and Communist Cuba - way back almost 40 years ago!!!) I present to the Senate also a very interesting document, the most interesting I have ever known in this matter, the document, "Li Wei Man." It is a letter of the Central Committee of the Communist party of China addressed to the Central Committee of the Communist party of Cuba. Now recently they have quarreled but this letter is an older one in which they teach how to win the leadership of the churches for communism, how to make that the communists should be leaders of the churches. It is an unequaled document of Machiavelianism.

Please follow the link to read the entire testimony

Yes, this was almost 40 years ago - but it is relevant to today. If Richard Wurmbrand were here today - wouldn't he ask our nation: Why are you doing business with those who are torturing and killing Christians every day? Why are you, Democrats and all Americans, not standing up with full applause for your country setting the people of Iraq free????? Thank God for this!

But you must act now to assist the Cuban people to be free, and you must do whatever is necessary to NOT sit down and dine with our torturers and you must do everything necessary to get rid of the power of the Socialists in America today who are only lion cub communists. When they become full grown lions in power, they will devour you, and others who are now tolerating and participating in their rise to power! YOU MUST SPEAK OUT, WORK, PRAY AGAINST THEM - NOW - WHILE YOU STILL CAN!!! And, at the same time, prepare your churches for what is to come should you fail to stop the socialists/communists in their unceasing quest for power!

to read later

SPOTREP

Apologies for not being able to post this as nicely as it deserves. Visit the many sites about the Wurmbrand's suffering and lives. They have stories to tell to warn us. But also to lead us to Jesus...who makes faces of the martyrs in the pit of hell shine like the angels in heaven!

Perhaps a ping to your respective lists would be appropriate. The people enduring suffering are both Protestants and Catholics. It does not matter when the Communists come to full power.

The poster has added content in the middle of this "quotation". Read the original if you want to read what Reverand Wurmbrand actually said. Note the statement that the Iron curtain no longer exists!?!

BTW: I worked for Richard Wurmbrand's son in a restaurant in Glendale, California over 40 years ago. I was never privileged to meet the father. His son was very nice.

I apologize for any difference from what he said - I did put in a few comments. Please forgive. Pastor Wurmbrand has long been one of my most admired people in all of the 20th century. I was trying to make comments re: the relevancy of this almost 40 year old Senate Testimony. The Iron Curtain down meaning Eastern Europe is no longer as it was. Meaning the USSR is no longer as it was. Surely there remains oppression and imprisonments, but not as it was. And the bamboo curtain is still very much in place. And if you have read any of my posts, surely you know that I am one of the few here who still believe Communism is very much alive and just as deadly as when it was in full power in Romania!!! Praise GOD it is NOT in full power in Romania now!!!

And, many would never associate Iraq with Communism. I did not until the full tale of the torture and oppression has been revealed (or much more of it) after we have done this wonderful work of liberation of these people!!! Yet, we know, with the help of the old Soviet Communists (who are part of the "new" Russia in a big way) - that the Iraqi Secret Police and system of torture, imprisonment, and murder was part of the SAME SYSTEM as what gave Pastor Wurmbrand his scars and his testimony.

AND MANY PEOPLE WILL NOT GO TO THE LINKED STORY TO READ IT ALL - so I tried to highlight the part about the coddling of Communist tormentors by Americans (especially, but not solely, the Democrats in this country).

He asked not for their suffering to end but for our country to no longer deal with the Communists if we refuse to acknowledge or try to connect with those who are suffering!!!

Again, apologies. Did this in the time I had.

Here is a link to a Biography of Pastor Wurmbrand, and of his wife, Sabina

Read about the Wurmbrand's - now in glory with Jesus.

Here is a link to Sabina Wurmbrand's story.

IT IS NOT TO BE MISSED. I may post it separately. I hope anyone who is concerned about the persecuted church and the glory and anyone who doubts reality of Jesus Christ will come here and read.

But moreso - even - see the beauty of what God can do even in the pit of hell.

In God's Beauty Parlor

If anyone wants to read something to give you hope but also warning, read this. Jesus is the Light of the world! Even in the darkest darkness! Don't miss also the link to "God's Beauty Parlor" and please ping anybody else you think might want to read the unvarnished truth about communism and the persecuted under it...and the hope in all things given us by Jesus Christ.

Great post! BTTT.

In "Was Karl Marx a Satanist?", Richard Wurmbrand makes a convincing case that Marx wasn't an atheist at all--he believed in God but rebelled against him. Oulanem, a play Marx wrote in his youth, lays it out pretty well. In his book, Wurmbrant quotes the Soviet paper Vechernaa Moskva:

"We do not fight against believers and not even against clergymen. We fight against God to snatch believers from Him."

Beautiful sermon. If ever we need to be reminded of what we are fighting against......

Pastor Richard Wurmbrandt's testimony before Chris Dodd - yes, who back then, CARED about communism's deadly dealings . .

The testimony is before Thomas Dodd--Chris' father.

Except for pushing gun control, father and son had little in common politically.

thank you. I have many of his books...

bumpus

Thomas Dodd was scandaled out of office, yet his son, Chris, can go to Nicaragua and negotiate a separate peace with a COMMIE dictator in 1984 with Bianca Jagger and that is ok....

many would never associate Iraq with Communism

I'm sure many would not. But the name of the party headed by Saddam (in Iraq, in Syria it's headed by Assad) is the "Baath Socialist Party". They both took their inspiration from the Soviet Socialists and the National Socialists of Germany, although in practice were more like Uncle Joe Stalin's minons than Herr Hitler's.

This is the same Senator Dodd that got portions of the Nazi (National Socialist) Weapons Laws put into the 1968 Gun Control Act. His son inherited his Senate seat and is still squatting there today.

Thank you for clearing that up. (re: which Sen. Dodd).