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Author
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Topic: Tortured for Christ
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Eduardo Grequi
Advanced Member
Member # 3984
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posted
Thank You very much for this! I am going construct a multilanguaged letter to this Embassy! We need to stand up and be counted!
Believe Jesus has forwarned us that living for Him will be treadding treasurous waters. WE WILL BE PERSECUTED FOR HIS NAME SAKE!
WHEN ONE IS PERSECUTED AND BECOME A MAYTRED, MORE COME IN ITS' PLACE! THE TRUTH SHALL BE NOT SILENT!
Shalom, Toda me'ha'vit
Eduardo
Posts: 771 | From: Belvidere, IL | Registered: Oct 2004
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helpforhomeschoolers
Advanced Member
Member # 15
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posted
Tortured for Christ is a great book and you can get for just $6.00 from VOM.
https://www.vombooks.com/qry/qe_store.taf?_function=detail&_peid=458&_id=A726364698&_code=P&_nc=e78b4d0f7bb1d1a158e84ad88cf0b091
You can also help the persecuted church, by praying for this pastor and writing to the Goverment of China calling for his release:
Chinese Pastor Put on Trial
July 7, 2005
Chinese Pastor Put on Trial in Beijing Court Room
The Voice of the Martyrs
Pastor Cai Zhuohua, the leader of six Beijing-area house churches, was put on trial Thursday morning in a Beijing courtroom for alleged “illegal business practices.”
The trial lasted about four-and-a-half hours, longer than expected according to Chinese VOM sources. The verdict was not announced.
Cai was on trial along with his wife, Xiao Yunfei; her brother, Xiao Gaowen; and his wife, Hu Jinyun.
Nine lawyers had volunteered to represent the accused Christians, but the judge allowed only five of them into the courtroom.
Pastor Cai’s mother was also not allowed to be in the room for the trial. The family had been told that they would be allowed 10 seats for family members in the room. When they arrived at the court, though, they were told they would have only five seats. But then guards allowed only three family members inside, and Cai’s mother was prohibited from entering. Two members of the church were allowed to enter, as was Xiao Yunfei’s father. Even though there weren’t enough seats for family members, the judge invited more than 20 law school students as his guests to observe the trial.
The U.S. Embassy sent an observer to be present at the trial, which had been announced for hearing room #3 at the People’s Court of Haidian District in Beijing City. However, when he arrived at that room, the embassy staffer was told that the hearing had been moved to hearing room #6, then forced to leave the premises.
Once the hearing began, Pastor Cai revoked his written testimony, which was composed from the interrogation records of the police. He said he was not aware what the interrogator had written down on the interrogation record, and that he was forced to sign the record of the interview under torture. He denied that he had anything to do with the record.
All three of the other accused Christians also revoked their testimony, saying they had been forced under threat of torture to sign.
The lawyers tried to present evidence that the case had to do with Cai’s unregistered church activities, but the judge would not allow any arguments about religious issues. “This has nothing to do with religion. This is an economic crime,” presiding Judge You Tao said from the bench.
Police witnesses read their prosecution/accusation papers, as well as records from the interrogation. Only one witness for the defense was allowed to testify: an old Christian lady that said she had received Christian literature from Pastor Cai without being asked to pay anything.
This witness led into the defense’s core argument: that because the Christian literature was being given away, it was not a for-profit activity and therefore could not have been “illegal business practice.”
Cai was arrested last September 11, 2004 at a bus stop, where he was dragged into a van by state security officers. The prosecution of his case was reportedly arranged directly by the Department of State Security. Authorities had been shocked to find more than 200,000 pieces of printed Christian literature in a storage room managed by Cai.
The pastor has registered a business with the Chinese government, but the business does not have license to print religious material. Only one printer is legally able to print Bibles in China, and those Bibles can only be sold through registered churches.
The verdict in the case will be announced later. VOM sources say it could be a week, or it could be a year. It is believed that the Chinese government will try to find a time when political fallout from the decision will be less. One of Cai’s lawyers told Agency France Presse that, “It is impossible for them to be found innocent, but I have confidence to strive for lighter sentences.”
“This is a clear violation of the religious freedom for this pastor and his family members,” said Todd Nettleton, News Services Director for The Voice of the Martyrs. “This case is not about economics at all; it is simply another case of the Chinese government persecuting people of faith. We urge Christians around the world to pray and protest on behalf of these faithful Christians.”
Letters of protest can be sent to the Chinese Embassy in Washington DC at the following address:
Ambassador Yang Jiechi
Embassy of the People’s Republic of China
2300 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington DC 20008
Tel:(202) 328-2500 Fax:(202) 588-0032
Director of Religious Affairs: (202) 328-2512
Posts: 4684 | From: Southern Black Hills of South Dakota | Registered: Jun 2002
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SoftTouch
Advanced Member
Member # 2316
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posted
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45245
Tortured for Christ
The extraordinary story of 1 man's victory over Communism
He was an outspoken anti-communist with the scars to prove it, a former Jew who embraced Christianity with uncommon devotion, and a visionary whose life was dedicated to helping believers who suffer for their faith.
He was Richard Wurmbrand, founder of leading Christian-persecution organization The Voice of the Martyrs.
As WorldNetDaily reported, Wurmbrand began Voice of the Martyrs in 1967 after enduring years of imprisonment and torture at the hands of Communists in his native Romania.
As a young married man in 1937, Wurmbrand and his wife, then Jewish, traveled to a small village in Romania where Christian Wolfkes, an old carpenter who had been praying that he migth share the Gospel with a Jew, gave them a copy of the New Testament. Wurmbrand and wife Sabina eventually converted to Christianity.
As a pastor in Romania during World War II, Wurmbrand sought to reach out to occupying soldiers with the Gospel. He and Sabina, however, suffered repeated beatings and arrest by the Nazis. Jewish family members perished in Germany's concentration camps.
A decision in 1945 would shape the rest of Wurmbrand's life. A bio on the Voice of the Martyrs' website states:
1945: Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand attend the "Congress of Cults" arranged by the Romanian Communist government. As many religious leaders come forward to swear loyalty to the new regime, Sabina Wurmbrand tells her husband to "wipe the shame from the face of Jesus." Richard, knowing the outcome of such an act, steps forward. The delegates believe he too will praise the new leadership, but, to their surprise, Richard tells the 4,000 delegates that their duty as a Christian is to glorify God and Christ alone.
That act of obedience to his God caused Wurmbrand's eventual designation as "Prisoner No. 1" by the Romanian government. He was arrested by police in 1948 on his way to church on a Sunday morning. Three years were spent in solitary confinement.
In 1950, the communists arrested Sabina for helping with the underground church she and Richard had begun and forced her to work on the Danube Canal. Her 9-year-old son, Mihai, was left behind and forced to live on the streets.
After three years, Sabina was released and told her husband had died in prison. In 1956, however, after serving eight and a half years in prison, Richard was released, having withstood horrific torture. Despite warnings not to do so, Richard again began working in the underground church in Romania.
After being turned in by an associate, Wurmbrand, in 1959, against was arrested. He served in prison for another five years.
In his book "In God's Underground," Wurmbrand describes the various horrors he suffered in prison: sleep deprivation; starvation diet; forced to race around his tiny cell for hours until he collapsed; beatings with truncheons and boots; water funneled down his throat until it filled his stomach, which was then violently kicked; the soles of his feet flogged Inquisition-style; guards urinating and spitting into his open mouth; drugged into delirium; and terrorized by dogs kept inches from his throat.
In 1965, the Wurmbrands were "ransomed" out of Romania for $10,000. They traveled to Scandinavia, England and eventually to the U.S. The pastor's captors warned him upon leaving Romania that he was not to speak against communism, a warning he did not heed.
The next year, just one month after arriving in the U.S., Wurmbrand testified before the U.S. Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, where he stripped to the waist to reveal 18 wounds on his neck, back and chest – evidence of the torture he had suffered at the hands of the Communists.
Talking about his time in solitary confinement, Wurmbrand told the senators: "For years I … never [saw] sun, moon, flowers, snow, stars, no man except the interrogator who beat [me], but I can say I have seen heaven open, I have seen Jesus Christ, I have seen the angels and we were very happy there."
Speaking requests poured into Wurmbrand after his Senate appearance, and he became committed to sharing about the atrocities Christians were subject to in Communist countries. Wurmbrand became known as "The Voice of the Underground Church" and "The Iron Curtain St. Paul." At the same time the Romanian secret police was plotting to kill the pastor.
In 1967, the Wurmbrands began Jesus to the Communist World, which later became The Voice of the Martyrs. The ministry's first monthly newsletter was published later that year. Richard also released "Tortured for Christ," the story of his persecution by his Communist captors.
In the ensuing years, Wurmbrand expanded his work of helping persecuted Christians and educating the West about abuses, with activity eventually in 80 nations.
In 1989, Wurmbrand's home country, Romania, gained its freedom after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the ousting of the oppressive regime of Elena and Nicolae Ceausescu.
After 25 years of exile, in 1990 Richard and Sabina returned to Romania and helped set up a Christian printing facility. In fact, the city of Bucharest offered one of the very cells Wurmbrand had been held to store Christian books.
In the early '90s, Wurmbrand worked to get the Gospel and Christian literature to former Communist countries, including Albania, Romania, Moldavia, Russia, Ukraine and Bulgaria. At the same time, Wurmbrand led new efforts to help Christians in Asia and Africa.
Sabina died in 2000, and less than a year later, Richard succumbed, at the age of 91.
Besides "Tortured for Christ," Wurmbrand wrote several other books, including "From Suffering to Triumph," "If Prison Walls Could Speak, "Marx and Satan" and "The Church in Chains."
Wurmbrand's Voice of the Martyrs ministry was a way to help suffering Christians as he had been helped in his time of need. When asked how he survived as an illegal pastor in Romania, Wurmbrand told the Senate panel:
"The Christians sustained me everywhere. I had no salary. I had no regular salary, but the Christians everywhere sustained me. In Romania the first question asked of a pastor or a priest of any denomination is: Has he been in prison? If he has been in prison he is all right. All the Christians sustain him."
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Psalm 119:104Through thy precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way. 105Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
Posts: 3465 | Registered: Nov 2003
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