…the great honor of dying for the Romanian people.
Petre Tutea is famous in Romania for his uncompromising resistance…first to fascism then communism. Near to death in the Pitesti re-education program, he sent a message to the infamous Colonel Draghici. (The Draghici whom Wurmbrand later led to the Lord) “Tell Minister Draghici that the Romanian people give us the great honor of dying for them.” He had great optimism for Romania, loved, most of all, the people. He spoke of “the golden chariot of the history of the Romanian people” and thinking back to the Turkish invasions, and all subsequent repressive regimes who have attempted to destroy Romania’s Christian heritage, speaking prophetically he said, “when these regimes become useless (the Turks, Fascists, Communists) the Romanian people will discard them like water off a duck’s back.”1 They did.
The title of this final chapter are Tutea’s words. Few would have the boldness to suggest that, this side of heaven, any perfection can be found, but Tutea was, if anything, bold. He said that man can, and does, move towards perfection and this perfection appears when Christ preached the Sermon on the Mount. That sermon, he says, is Christ explaining the climbing of a ladder in eight steps towards perfecting this human life…and that at the top of the ladder is the delight of perfect freedom. Father Sofian discovered this freedom shortly after he was arrested. “At the trial we felt the presence of God so strong often I felt I was not in prison, but that I was free.” The Tons, even under the threat of death, never felt they were anything but free. “We knew we were God’s, that we belonged to Him. We lived in Him and through Him so we didn’t feel the terror. This was our freedom.” Pastor Wurmbrand, in that single cell…think of it…IN TOTAL SILENCE FOR THREE YEARS…perhaps climbed the highest towards
perfect freedom:
Alone in my cell I danced for joy every night!
“Alone in my cell, cold, hungry and in rags, I danced for joy every night! Why? I was close to God. Sometimes I was so filled with joy I felt I would burst if I did not give vent to it. Words alone have never been adequate to express what man feels in the nearness of Divinity.”2 Tutea’s words, ‘the delight of perfect freedom’, approach ‘adequate’. Those eight points in Jesus’ sermon, ‘the eight steps up the ladder towards perfect freedom’, climbed by the Romanian faith heroes, provide our format for a final look at the priceless treasures they purchased for us.
Step #1 ‘How blessed are the poor in spirit, those who know they need God, who’ve come to the end of their rope.’3
Step #1 ‘How blessed are the poor in spirit, those who know they need God, who’ve come to the end of their rope.’3
The treatment was so terrible that only with supernatural help could I survive.
Years before he danced for joy every night, Wurmbrand, an atheist, danced and drank most nights without joy. He’d heard of this God of love and wished such a God existed, a wish that grew into a burning need which drove him to discovering truth…that He exists and died for him. Sabina, living alone in Paris, had climbed down the ladder, for it goes both ways. ‘Cursed are those who have no need for God’. Richard’s strategy, after his salvation, was to keep Sabina in yet another drunken party until the empty hilarity caught in her throat…until she saw her need…and was, later that night, blessed with what only can satisfy it.
Prison, for Father Cosmovici, was ‘God taking pity on me’ because the great need in which it immersed him led to him being saved from drowning in his sins. Petre Tutea had a similar testimony: “I was in prison under the Georghe-Dej regime. The treatment was so terrible I realized by my own efforts I could not live. Faith was born in me in Divine omnipotence and God’s kindness, in a supernatural force named God. Many died there who did not realize this.”4 ‘Crazy’ Vasile appeared to be under the curse of compulsive wrath yet, in truth, it was God letting his need magnify till he reached the end of all human solutions. Tudose’s overwhelming need to find what was missing in his life led to overwhelming blessings. If Christ is not yet alive in you, all you’ve read thus far should have, in the very least, birthed in you the blessing of this same need.
Step #2 ‘How blessed are they that mourn…’
Prison, for Father Cosmovici, was ‘God taking pity on me’ because the great need in which it immersed him led to him being saved from drowning in his sins. Petre Tutea had a similar testimony: “I was in prison under the Georghe-Dej regime. The treatment was so terrible I realized by my own efforts I could not live. Faith was born in me in Divine omnipotence and God’s kindness, in a supernatural force named God. Many died there who did not realize this.”4 ‘Crazy’ Vasile appeared to be under the curse of compulsive wrath yet, in truth, it was God letting his need magnify till he reached the end of all human solutions. Tudose’s overwhelming need to find what was missing in his life led to overwhelming blessings. If Christ is not yet alive in you, all you’ve read thus far should have, in the very least, birthed in you the blessing of this same need.
Step #2 ‘How blessed are they that mourn…’
Maria tenderly wiped the tears.
With no discernible heart beat, Mrs. Visky, allowed by God to approach the edge of eternity, was shown her sins of unbelief and pride and mourned over them, confessed them through tears… cried out to the Lord with her entire being. “So it is, so it is. You are right.” Maria was “tenderly wiping the tears…and did not realize what blessed tears they were, for no tears are more precious than those shed when repenting.”5 Then, what bigger blessing could there be than a heart filled with the unspeakable warmth and unending joy of the Living God?
The cry most often heard by Sabina, when her fellow prisoners cried aloud in their sleep, was the word, ‘mother’. “Not a simple appeal for a parent, but deeper, a cry for eternal female tenderness, motherly care, which exists in heaven” but missing in that loveless land. Sabina, returning to Romania after the revolution, to that prison where she’d heard those cries, preaching to several hundred women, many of whom, as the anointing falls, are weeping, tells them: “The gate of tears is always open, so don’t be ashamed of your tears. Tears of repentance are put in a glass in front of God…they are holy tears.”6
The cry most often heard by Sabina, when her fellow prisoners cried aloud in their sleep, was the word, ‘mother’. “Not a simple appeal for a parent, but deeper, a cry for eternal female tenderness, motherly care, which exists in heaven” but missing in that loveless land. Sabina, returning to Romania after the revolution, to that prison where she’d heard those cries, preaching to several hundred women, many of whom, as the anointing falls, are weeping, tells them: “The gate of tears is always open, so don’t be ashamed of your tears. Tears of repentance are put in a glass in front of God…they are holy tears.”6
Tears of repentance are holy tears.
And when Richard testified before the United States congress, and bared his back to show the scars from torture, Sabina, at his side throughout his testimony, sat weeping. “Your tears”, Richard told her, “made a greater impression than all my words. Tears undermine the strongest walls.”7 What mourning, what repentance, how many tears will it take till girls released from the Romanian orphanages are spared the pit of prostitution, till the silent scream of the unborn, as they are ripped apart, pierces our hearts?
Step #3 ‘How blessed are the meek…’
To be meek is to be teachable, to have the capacity to listen, especially to God. After being blinded by the glory of God on the road to Damascus, it was meekness that convinced the Apostle Paul to undergo fourteen years of preparation before beginning to minister. It was meekness that led to Sandor’s determination, already a university graduate, after witnessing the spiritual life of a truly godly family, to begin studying the Bible with all his heart.
He listened, mainly he listened…
Meekness gladly takes the lower position, places itself under…under a Draghici, under the insane man in Father Langa’s cell, under the officer with the stick…and listens to them. That’s what Father Cosmovici did on returning home after eighteen years to find his son, Emmanuel, had become an atheist. What an opportunity for anger! The very evil he’d fought with eighteen years of his life had invaded his family. ‘What technique’, we asked Emmanuel, ‘did your father use to restore your faith?’ “‘He listened, mainly he listened…to all I’d been taught, then told me I was an atheist because of my honesty.’ ‘That’s right,’ Father Cosmovici agreed, ‘his atheism was only an honest response to all the lies he’d been fed.’” In his father’s meekness Emmanuel saw the truth. Only then was he able to hear it.
If Bela hadn’t had ears anointed to listen, to hear that Scripture, ‘Store up your treasures…’ he wouldn’t have received the immense blessing of experiencing it in cell fifty-four. If Father Langa had not had the meekness to receive ‘Lo, I will be with you always, even till the end of the ages’, he’d not have survived that terrible cold. Sandor’s great blessing, the happiest event of his life, began in the punishment cell after the Lord had heard him speak these words: “You want to talk to me, Jesus? Then I’m here listening.” ‘How blessed are the meek….’
Step #4 ‘How blessed are they who hunger and thirst for
righteousness…’
Paganism came to Romania so I didn’t have to leave.
Righteousness is the love of good and the hate of evil. Jesus’ righteousness, his hate for the evil of God’s house being defiled, led Him to drive out the money changers with a whip. It hastened His crucifixion. Taking this step up towards ‘perfect freedom’ in Eastern Europe often led to the loss of physical freedom…few had the courage to take it. Caraman hated the evil of atheism’s invasion and when offered passage out of the country instead of persecution and prison, he chose the latter. “I had told the Lord when I became a Christian that I wanted to bring the Gospel into a pagan country. Paganism came to Romania so I didn’t have to leave.” ‘Those who hunger for righteousness will be filled’. Caraman was…filled by God in prison with ‘a relationship with Divinity’. He told us his greatest experience in prison was that he came to the point where he was actually living Galatians 2:20, that his responses to mistreatment could only be Christ in him responding, that he, the Caraman he knew, was not capable of such forgiveness.
“‘Go erase this shame from the face of Christ!’ Those were Sabina’s words to her husband after they had listened to priest after pastor after priest make compromising statements from the podium at a mass meeting of religious leaders, called by the communists shortly after they took over the country.
‘If I do, you won’t have a husband.’
‘I don’t want a coward for a husband.’ At the podium then, till the microphone was cut, Pastor Wurmbrand proclaimed:
‘Sons of light must never compromise with sons of darkness.’”8
And shortly Sabina lost her husband to the gulag.
What shame on the face of Christ needs erasing today? The overwhelming shame that in Romania, where eight out of ten call themselves Christian, seven out of ten pregnancies end in abortion? What shame in the West? Homosexuals ordained as priests, some denominations condoning abortion, some promoting a gospel of greed?
Step #5, #6 & #7 ‘How blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers…’
Each of the next three steps up the ladder of the Beatitudes adds another character trait of Jesus Christ. ‘Mercy’ is Father Sofian treating those who imprisoned and mistreated him as friends; it’s Father Cosmovici, in his tormentors, seeing only souls crying for help; it’s Bela Balog not for any second having any hate towards those who betrayed him. They gave what wasn’t deserved…that’s mercy. But it wasn’t them doing it, it was Christ, alive and powerful within them, prompting and empowering the behavior. As Bela said, “Humanly speaking it was impossible, but possible in grace’s ministry.” That’s freedom!
The promise to the pure of heart is that they will see God. Many did. His light filled a room; flames of fire and unspeakable warmth entered two hearts; one was taken to another universe; one was shown the New Jerusalem; before one Jesus appeared; one wept for joy on the shoulder of his beloved bridegroom; another heard angels singing; something like lightning entered the legs of one. And in many other ways God was seen… His presence was felt; He provided words that dispelled fear; He lifted some up over pain and death. Many, with the eyes of faith, saw Christ in other believers. Sometimes eyes of faith weren’t needed. “Whom have I seen, Jon Hue Ding or Christ? They are one and the same.”
By thinking on things which are holy and noble and of good report, by putting nothing evil before their eyes, their hearts grew in purity. Mary Magdalena’s love poem, birthed in a sanctified imagination and pure heart, defeated pure evil. In the cell of the dying four words took them to the heart of God. Satan’s plans to destroy the Visky family were defeated by the pure heart of an orphan named Maria.
“‘Go erase this shame from the face of Christ!’ Those were Sabina’s words to her husband after they had listened to priest after pastor after priest make compromising statements from the podium at a mass meeting of religious leaders, called by the communists shortly after they took over the country.
‘If I do, you won’t have a husband.’
‘I don’t want a coward for a husband.’ At the podium then, till the microphone was cut, Pastor Wurmbrand proclaimed:
‘Sons of light must never compromise with sons of darkness.’”8
And shortly Sabina lost her husband to the gulag.
What shame on the face of Christ needs erasing today? The overwhelming shame that in Romania, where eight out of ten call themselves Christian, seven out of ten pregnancies end in abortion? What shame in the West? Homosexuals ordained as priests, some denominations condoning abortion, some promoting a gospel of greed?
Step #5, #6 & #7 ‘How blessed are the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers…’
Each of the next three steps up the ladder of the Beatitudes adds another character trait of Jesus Christ. ‘Mercy’ is Father Sofian treating those who imprisoned and mistreated him as friends; it’s Father Cosmovici, in his tormentors, seeing only souls crying for help; it’s Bela Balog not for any second having any hate towards those who betrayed him. They gave what wasn’t deserved…that’s mercy. But it wasn’t them doing it, it was Christ, alive and powerful within them, prompting and empowering the behavior. As Bela said, “Humanly speaking it was impossible, but possible in grace’s ministry.” That’s freedom!
The promise to the pure of heart is that they will see God. Many did. His light filled a room; flames of fire and unspeakable warmth entered two hearts; one was taken to another universe; one was shown the New Jerusalem; before one Jesus appeared; one wept for joy on the shoulder of his beloved bridegroom; another heard angels singing; something like lightning entered the legs of one. And in many other ways God was seen… His presence was felt; He provided words that dispelled fear; He lifted some up over pain and death. Many, with the eyes of faith, saw Christ in other believers. Sometimes eyes of faith weren’t needed. “Whom have I seen, Jon Hue Ding or Christ? They are one and the same.”
By thinking on things which are holy and noble and of good report, by putting nothing evil before their eyes, their hearts grew in purity. Mary Magdalena’s love poem, birthed in a sanctified imagination and pure heart, defeated pure evil. In the cell of the dying four words took them to the heart of God. Satan’s plans to destroy the Visky family were defeated by the pure heart of an orphan named Maria.
The purest women can inspire mankind and lead humanity higher.
Sabina writes: “To ask, ‘Why purity?’ is as wrong as asking, ‘Why life?’ It is one of the great gifts of nature. I saw the value of purity in prison where the purest women could most deeply help others. Why should a girl keep herself pure? Because in this way she can inspire mankind and lead humanity higher.”9 Six years after we spoke with Mindy, the girl whose high school had become like a war zone, we talked with her again. She had received a Bill Gates Millennial scholarship for all of her higher education, had worked with a congressman, was engaged to a pastor’s son. They’ll arrive at the altar pure. We’ve attended half-a-dozen similar weddings of couples from our church. They are doing it God’s way and are blessed…are seeing God in their marriages. The pure in heart shall see God.
Jesus was the ‘Prince of Peace’, He imparted peace beyond understanding and wants us to do the same. Watching Pastor Visky, with prayer maintaining fellowship with the rude priest, watching Pastor Vadan bring peace into the cell of the incorrigibles, God must have reacted like any proud father…with feelings of, ‘Those are my sons!’. Observing peace fill that cell in which the curses had been worse than physical torture must have caused God that same satisfaction. ‘Those are my daughters!’ ‘How blessed are the peacemakers, they shall be called children of God.’
Step #8 ‘How blessed you are when you are persecuted for
righteousness’ sake…’
Father Sofian had climbed beyond hunger for righteousness, beyond purity of heart, beyond giving mercy and making peace. At the top of the ladder he rejoiced in his persecution for it only pushed him deeper into the Kingdom of God, increased the blessings and grace he received. For Caraman it led to a deeper relationship with Divinity, provided Father Cosmovici his most profitable years, and for Sandor, joy unspeakable.
Jesus was the ‘Prince of Peace’, He imparted peace beyond understanding and wants us to do the same. Watching Pastor Visky, with prayer maintaining fellowship with the rude priest, watching Pastor Vadan bring peace into the cell of the incorrigibles, God must have reacted like any proud father…with feelings of, ‘Those are my sons!’. Observing peace fill that cell in which the curses had been worse than physical torture must have caused God that same satisfaction. ‘Those are my daughters!’ ‘How blessed are the peacemakers, they shall be called children of God.’
Step #8 ‘How blessed you are when you are persecuted for
righteousness’ sake…’
Father Sofian had climbed beyond hunger for righteousness, beyond purity of heart, beyond giving mercy and making peace. At the top of the ladder he rejoiced in his persecution for it only pushed him deeper into the Kingdom of God, increased the blessings and grace he received. For Caraman it led to a deeper relationship with Divinity, provided Father Cosmovici his most profitable years, and for Sandor, joy unspeakable.
I discovered a beauty in Christ I had not known before.
Pastor Wurmbrand, too, had climbed to the top of the ladder. In his single cell he ‘danced for joy every night’. He had remembered the eighth Beatitude as recorded in the Gospel of Luke, “How blessed you are when you’re reviled, spit on, tormented on account of me, for on you rests the spirit of glory and of God. And in that day rejoice and leap for joy”10, so that’s what he did…every night he leapt and danced round and around. “Through it”, he said, “I discovered a beauty in Christ I had not known before. Sometimes I saw visions. It was a manifestation of joy, like David’s dance…a holy sacrifice before the altar of God.”11
Gratefully, knowing the ladder the Romanian faith heroes climbed, knowing that they, as we did, began at the bottom of the ladder with needing God, we don’t have to just be astounded at their near perfect freedom. Each of us can evaluate honestly where on the ladder we stand.
‘Do my own failings and sins bring the gift of repentance?’
‘Do I have the meekness to listen to the Word of God, to the Word preached, to the voice of my conscience…so that they search and instruct me?’
‘For what do I thirst and hunger…for what the world tells me to hunger for…or for righteousness?’
‘Is my imagination sanctified, or do I allow evil to come
before my eyes? How pure is my heart?’
‘Is Christ in me alive and powerful enough to empower me to mercy?’
‘Am I capable of spiritual responses, bringing peace…or limited to natural responses which stir up strife?’
‘When I am mistreated does it push me deeper into the Kingdom God?’
Gratefully, knowing the ladder the Romanian faith heroes climbed, knowing that they, as we did, began at the bottom of the ladder with needing God, we don’t have to just be astounded at their near perfect freedom. Each of us can evaluate honestly where on the ladder we stand.
‘Do my own failings and sins bring the gift of repentance?’
‘Do I have the meekness to listen to the Word of God, to the Word preached, to the voice of my conscience…so that they search and instruct me?’
‘For what do I thirst and hunger…for what the world tells me to hunger for…or for righteousness?’
‘Is my imagination sanctified, or do I allow evil to come
before my eyes? How pure is my heart?’
‘Is Christ in me alive and powerful enough to empower me to mercy?’
‘Am I capable of spiritual responses, bringing peace…or limited to natural responses which stir up strife?’
‘When I am mistreated does it push me deeper into the Kingdom God?’
