What do you think?
Rate this book
With God in Solitary Confinement
During his 14-year imprisonment in Communist Romania, Richard Wurmbrand spent three years completely alone, with no human contact except for the guards who interrogated and tortured him. Though he had no Bible, pen or paper, Richard composed and memorized hundreds of sermons in rhyme to pass the lonely hours of solitude, clinging to Christ through nightly meditation on God's Word. With God in Solitary Confinement features a collection of these contemplations that he committed to memory. Through Richard's expanded sermons, you are invited to fellowship with your persecuted Christian brothers and sisters. You will discover, through his honest reflections, the depths of despair and heights of faith experienced by those who are imprisoned and tortured for the name of Christ.
- GenresChristianChristianity
182 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
21 people are currently reading
131 people want to read
About the author
Richard Wurmbrand
119 books278 followersEarly life
Richard Wurmbrand, the youngest of four boys, was born in 1909 in Bucharest in a Jewish family. He lived with his family in Istanbul for a short while; his father died when he was 9, and the Wurmbrands returned to Romania when he was 15.
As an adolescent, he became attracted to communism, and, after attending a series of illegal meetings of the Communist Party of Romania (PCdR), he was sent to study Marxism in Moscow, but returned clandestinely the following year. Pursued by Siguranţa Statului (the secret police), he was arrested and held in Doftana prison. Wurmbrand subsequently renounced his political ideals.
He married Sabina Oster on October 26, 1936. Wurmbrand and his wife were converted to Christianity in 1938 through the witness of Christian Wolfkes, a Romanian Christian carpenter; they joined the Anglican Mission to the Jews. Wurmbrand was ordained twice - first as an Anglican, then, after World War II, as a Lutheran pastor.
In 1944, when the Soviet Union occupied Romania as the first step to establishing the communist regime, Wurmbrand began a ministry to his Romanian countrymen and to the Red Army soldiers. When the government attempted to control the churches, he immediately began an "underground" ministry to his people. He was arrested on February 29, 1948, while on his way to church services.
Wurmbrand, who passed through the penal facilities of Craiova, Gherla, the Danube-Black Sea Canal, Văcăreşti, Malmaison, Cluj, and ultimately Jilava, spent three years in solitary confinement. His wife, Sabina, was arrested in 1950 and spent three years of penal labor on the Danube Canal.
Pastor Wurmbrand was released in 1956, after eight and a half years, and, although warned not to preach, resumed his work in the underground church. He was arrested again in 1959, and sentenced to 25 years. During his imprisonment, he was beaten and tortured.
Eventually, he was the recipient of an amnesty in 1964. Concerned with the possibility of further imprisonment, the Norwegian Mission to the Jews and the Hebrew Christian Alliance negotiated with the Communist authorities for his release from Romania for $10,000. He was convinced by underground church leaders to leave and become a voice for the persecuted church.
Wurmbrand traveled to Norway, England, and then the United States. In May 1965, he testified in Washington, D.C. before the US Senate's Internal Security Subcommittee. He became known as the "The Voice of the Underground Church," doing much to publicize the persecution of Christians in Communist countries.
In April 1967, the Wurmbrands formed Jesus To The Communist World (later named The Voice of the Martyrs), an interdenominational organization working initially with and for persecuted Christians in Communist countries, but later expanding its activities to help persecuted believers in other places, especially in the Muslim world. However, when in Namibia, and confronted with the case of Colin Winter, the Anglican Bishop of Namibia, who had supported African strikers and was eventually deported from Namibia by South Africa, Wurmbrand criticized the latter's anti-apartheid activism, and claimed resistance to communism was more important.
In 1990 Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand returned to Romania for the first time in 25 years. The Voice of the Martyrs opened a printing facility and bookstore in Bucharest. He preached about God together with pastor Ioan Panican.
The Wurmbrands had one son, Mihai. Wurmbrand wrote 18 books in English and others in Romanian. His best-known book is entitled Tortured for Christ, released in 1967. His wife, Sabina, died August 11, 2000.
Pastor Wurmbrand died on February 17, 2001 in a hospital in Long Beach, California. In 2006, he came fifth among the greatest Romanians according to a poll conducted by Romanian Television (Televiziunea Română).
Richard Wurmbrand, the youngest of four boys, was born in 1909 in Bucharest in a Jewish family. He lived with his family in Istanbul for a short while; his father died when he was 9, and the Wurmbrands returned to Romania when he was 15.
As an adolescent, he became attracted to communism, and, after attending a series of illegal meetings of the Communist Party of Romania (PCdR), he was sent to study Marxism in Moscow, but returned clandestinely the following year. Pursued by Siguranţa Statului (the secret police), he was arrested and held in Doftana prison. Wurmbrand subsequently renounced his political ideals.
He married Sabina Oster on October 26, 1936. Wurmbrand and his wife were converted to Christianity in 1938 through the witness of Christian Wolfkes, a Romanian Christian carpenter; they joined the Anglican Mission to the Jews. Wurmbrand was ordained twice - first as an Anglican, then, after World War II, as a Lutheran pastor.
In 1944, when the Soviet Union occupied Romania as the first step to establishing the communist regime, Wurmbrand began a ministry to his Romanian countrymen and to the Red Army soldiers. When the government attempted to control the churches, he immediately began an "underground" ministry to his people. He was arrested on February 29, 1948, while on his way to church services.
Wurmbrand, who passed through the penal facilities of Craiova, Gherla, the Danube-Black Sea Canal, Văcăreşti, Malmaison, Cluj, and ultimately Jilava, spent three years in solitary confinement. His wife, Sabina, was arrested in 1950 and spent three years of penal labor on the Danube Canal.
Pastor Wurmbrand was released in 1956, after eight and a half years, and, although warned not to preach, resumed his work in the underground church. He was arrested again in 1959, and sentenced to 25 years. During his imprisonment, he was beaten and tortured.
Eventually, he was the recipient of an amnesty in 1964. Concerned with the possibility of further imprisonment, the Norwegian Mission to the Jews and the Hebrew Christian Alliance negotiated with the Communist authorities for his release from Romania for $10,000. He was convinced by underground church leaders to leave and become a voice for the persecuted church.
Wurmbrand traveled to Norway, England, and then the United States. In May 1965, he testified in Washington, D.C. before the US Senate's Internal Security Subcommittee. He became known as the "The Voice of the Underground Church," doing much to publicize the persecution of Christians in Communist countries.
In April 1967, the Wurmbrands formed Jesus To The Communist World (later named The Voice of the Martyrs), an interdenominational organization working initially with and for persecuted Christians in Communist countries, but later expanding its activities to help persecuted believers in other places, especially in the Muslim world. However, when in Namibia, and confronted with the case of Colin Winter, the Anglican Bishop of Namibia, who had supported African strikers and was eventually deported from Namibia by South Africa, Wurmbrand criticized the latter's anti-apartheid activism, and claimed resistance to communism was more important.
In 1990 Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand returned to Romania for the first time in 25 years. The Voice of the Martyrs opened a printing facility and bookstore in Bucharest. He preached about God together with pastor Ioan Panican.
The Wurmbrands had one son, Mihai. Wurmbrand wrote 18 books in English and others in Romanian. His best-known book is entitled Tortured for Christ, released in 1967. His wife, Sabina, died August 11, 2000.
Pastor Wurmbrand died on February 17, 2001 in a hospital in Long Beach, California. In 2006, he came fifth among the greatest Romanians according to a poll conducted by Romanian Television (Televiziunea Română).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 11, 2022
READ THE PREFACE & EPILOGUE.
Do not read this book unless you do so.
This book is not what I expected and falls into a very rare category of Christian literature. ‘With God in Solitary Confinement’ is essentially a compilation of 22 sermons that Richard Wurmbrand (founder of Voice of the Martyrs) memorized and preached to himself in an effort to stave off insanity during his 3 years of solitary confinement. The preface and epilogue are extremely critical to this book, as it gives context to what might otherwise be considered a confusing, strange, and/or heretical book. As Wurmbrand himself states: “These sermons are not to be judged for their dogmatic content”.
What is special about this book is the authenticity of the author. As a highly respected and iconic member of the persecuted church, he shares his intimate/personal ponderings about God, truth, and the Christian faith during his time in solitary confinement. And Wurmbrand does not hold back. Some parts are confusing. Some parts are insightful. Some parts sound heretical. Some parts sound profound. But every part is genuine. This book is a vivid reflection of the thoughts and feelings of persecuted Christians. Even more so it is a testament of how close a Christian mind can come to madness and apostasy and yet prevail because of Gods power to preserve and redeem in spite of circumstances. It’s a piece of literature reminiscent to the book of Job.
To be honest I wrestled through this, trying to discern what to take from it and what was madness. This book will make you think. It will challenge you. But not to go out and be a missionary or martyr. Not to be an evangelist or ‘radical’ Christian. Not to do more or be better. It will challenge you to approach God with humility.
Do not read this book unless you do so.
This book is not what I expected and falls into a very rare category of Christian literature. ‘With God in Solitary Confinement’ is essentially a compilation of 22 sermons that Richard Wurmbrand (founder of Voice of the Martyrs) memorized and preached to himself in an effort to stave off insanity during his 3 years of solitary confinement. The preface and epilogue are extremely critical to this book, as it gives context to what might otherwise be considered a confusing, strange, and/or heretical book. As Wurmbrand himself states: “These sermons are not to be judged for their dogmatic content”.
What is special about this book is the authenticity of the author. As a highly respected and iconic member of the persecuted church, he shares his intimate/personal ponderings about God, truth, and the Christian faith during his time in solitary confinement. And Wurmbrand does not hold back. Some parts are confusing. Some parts are insightful. Some parts sound heretical. Some parts sound profound. But every part is genuine. This book is a vivid reflection of the thoughts and feelings of persecuted Christians. Even more so it is a testament of how close a Christian mind can come to madness and apostasy and yet prevail because of Gods power to preserve and redeem in spite of circumstances. It’s a piece of literature reminiscent to the book of Job.
To be honest I wrestled through this, trying to discern what to take from it and what was madness. This book will make you think. It will challenge you. But not to go out and be a missionary or martyr. Not to be an evangelist or ‘radical’ Christian. Not to do more or be better. It will challenge you to approach God with humility.
July 14, 2010
I haven't been in solitary confinement. However, I've spent a very significant amount of time alone -- from being punished when I was a kid all the time by being sent to my room, to emotional breakdowns and self mutilation when I got older, going through personal crises without any support --
-- over time, my short term memory has become very poor. My sense of connection with other people has basically vanished; I'm so used to spending so much time alone, and coping with everything alone, and having bizarre thoughts -- it's like my life is just pieces of broken time swirling around the room I'm in, or the world I live in, wherever I am -- sometimes I float away on the pieces, sometimes they cut me, sometimes they take me for a ride that I really enjoy, sometimes it's thrilling, sometimes it's overwhelming, sometimes it makes me panic, sometimes, sometimes -- just broken pieces of time.
The reason I'm telling you this is because I find it especially difficult to get in sync with other people. People talk about relationships or goals in life or directions they're headed in and I can understand the words they're saying, but I feel like I'm in another world when I talk to them. It makes it very difficult to relate to anyone at all. I never feel at home with anyone.
I don't even feel at home with everything Wurmbrand writes in this book. But I can say that it's much, much closer than anything else I've read. He memorized these sermons while in solitary confinement and repeated them from heart in this book, as I understand it.
Like minds think alike. That makes enough sense. In one sermon, Wurmbrand mentions how he was put in a strait jacket and gagged, and he relates being gagged to poetry -- how he felt when he was trying to put things in rhyme and verse and was trying to make everything fit, it was like being gagged. Or something like that. Let me see if I can find it.
"Every night I also compose a poem. I compose it in my mind, not having any paper to write it down.
Poor poems of an ungifted spirit! What are they compared to the works of the great artists? But even so, in my concerns with metre and rhyme, I can feel the difficulty which poets must have in putting love and wisdom and life into poetry. The words, confined in verses, feel as I felt when I was put in a strait-jacket."
Like minds think alike. The pain of isolation is very real, but it goes far beyond pain. Isolation is another world. Pain is only a small part of it. There are bizarre things, and disturbing things, but also enchanting things, and time seems to break wide open -- into pieces that swirl around -- and sense seems to slip away.
Wurmbrand has shared his experience of solitary confinement, of a human mind in isolation. Writings like these are, to my knowledge, very rare. I've never read anything like this before.
I can relate to Richard Wurmbrand. We are our own people, and I can't understand the specifics of everything he went through. But when I read these words, I know I have a friend. I don't think that anyone is watching down from heaven. That is to say, I don't think *about* it. It's very possible, but I don't think about it. I like to think about angels. Lately I've been telling myself, "People aren't fit to help people; angels are fit to help people" -- angels are the only company, and so on and so on.
In this way, I feel like these sermons have planted a seed in me. I have read most of the sermons; but though I can't remember, or don't even care to remember, what he wrote in a lot of them, I don't care to remember them because they've burrowed into my heart. This book has had an influence not on my mind, but my spirit.
It doesn't matter what he wrote. I can't remember most of it anyway. But there is something beautiful here; there is a piece of this man's soul. This book is alive. It is a living book. I wonder if all writing from the heart is alive. This is perhaps something we can tune into -- and sense that there was a presence there then, and there is that presence here now.
Words can encapsulate the spirit, but it's up to the observer to decipher it. A little kid wouldn't know that a diamond is very valuable. He could stumble upon a pile of gold, but if he never learned that this was a valuable thing, he might not even pay any attention to it, and use it as a dirt mound to play in, or come up with a game that has him throwing bricks of gold into the ocean. Gold is still gold, whether we know it or not. This is why I believe in an objective reality, though I can't fathom it. It is what it is, regardless of what I think of it. But my inner world may very well be what I think of it, as in, a dual reality contained within a finite, holistic reality, which itself is infinite, contained in finiteness, and so on and so on in that fashion.
I don't know what I'm talking about! But that's the fun of it. There's little to get snagged on. I'm not quite sure what that means, but that doesn't matter much. Onto the next thing, as always. The next world, the next place to visit with the angels, the next stop to make, the next express to board.
I would highly recommend reading this book. It's a very special book. This is all I have to say about that. As a last note, I find it funny that this is such an obscure and isolated part of the Internet; how many people can read this? I've written much more on many other places and I wonder the same thing.
But one thing this book has shown me is to believe in the spirit manifested through the body: to believe that we do have a purpose, independent of time and location and the status of our health.
He mentions in one sermon something about duty -- and that it would be expected that, being in prison, he should have no responsibilities. He was being routinely tortured and beaten and was in frail, decaying health for a very long time. How can he be expected -- how can ANYONE be expected -- to sustain spiritual responsibility in such times?
But I think it's the retaining of that responsibility that allowed him to take the torture and to share this book with all of us. It isn't about doing the right or wrong thing. It's about belief. It's about faith. When suffering really becomes overwhelming, right and wrong are not viable culprits anymore. Sometimes I believe I've become completely morally depraved. But it somehow resolves itself when I don't think of right and wrong, but belief and faith. And then I write things like this -- things which come from my heart, from who I really feel I am.
It's like being on auto-pilot. So in other words, "who I feel like I am" really is no one at all. I don't feel anything about who I am. And I don't feel anything while writing this. It's just coming out. I felt compelled to write a review of this book because I wanted to share something with other people; this itself is belief, as I believed it would impact someone in some way, even if it's only 1 person, you who are reading this.
I believed, and the action followed naturally. "Put the kingdom of God first in your heart, and the rest will follow" -- those were, and are, very true words. Belief and faith. These make the spirit -- they're the food and water for the soul. Without these, we're just bodies. So belief and faith disembody us to an extent; this may be the dissociative episodes, the detachment -- and even the apparently superhuman abilities to endure things as Wurmbrand did, without even the support of a single person. And quite the opposite, torture and beatings and oppression from other people.
And it IS superhuman: because the soul is the higher part of the body. "The spirit is the master of the body." I believe Wurmbrand wrote this somewhere. Anyway, he was right. I have contemplated suicide for many years and this delving into the spiritual world and seeing images of beautiful things, and having these feelings revived, and having this ghost like world to grab onto, this fantasy, a fairytale world -- this has gotten me through it. The spirit can endure what the body cannot. I believe it can even grow from it. Muscles break down before they get stronger. We are always breaking down and rebuilding.
You can read this book, and I would recommend that. Or you might not. Either way, this world of the spirit is open to you. You aren't denied access here. We are all spirits. You're welcome. We are all welcome. We only have to knock.
-- over time, my short term memory has become very poor. My sense of connection with other people has basically vanished; I'm so used to spending so much time alone, and coping with everything alone, and having bizarre thoughts -- it's like my life is just pieces of broken time swirling around the room I'm in, or the world I live in, wherever I am -- sometimes I float away on the pieces, sometimes they cut me, sometimes they take me for a ride that I really enjoy, sometimes it's thrilling, sometimes it's overwhelming, sometimes it makes me panic, sometimes, sometimes -- just broken pieces of time.
The reason I'm telling you this is because I find it especially difficult to get in sync with other people. People talk about relationships or goals in life or directions they're headed in and I can understand the words they're saying, but I feel like I'm in another world when I talk to them. It makes it very difficult to relate to anyone at all. I never feel at home with anyone.
I don't even feel at home with everything Wurmbrand writes in this book. But I can say that it's much, much closer than anything else I've read. He memorized these sermons while in solitary confinement and repeated them from heart in this book, as I understand it.
Like minds think alike. That makes enough sense. In one sermon, Wurmbrand mentions how he was put in a strait jacket and gagged, and he relates being gagged to poetry -- how he felt when he was trying to put things in rhyme and verse and was trying to make everything fit, it was like being gagged. Or something like that. Let me see if I can find it.
"Every night I also compose a poem. I compose it in my mind, not having any paper to write it down.
Poor poems of an ungifted spirit! What are they compared to the works of the great artists? But even so, in my concerns with metre and rhyme, I can feel the difficulty which poets must have in putting love and wisdom and life into poetry. The words, confined in verses, feel as I felt when I was put in a strait-jacket."
Like minds think alike. The pain of isolation is very real, but it goes far beyond pain. Isolation is another world. Pain is only a small part of it. There are bizarre things, and disturbing things, but also enchanting things, and time seems to break wide open -- into pieces that swirl around -- and sense seems to slip away.
Wurmbrand has shared his experience of solitary confinement, of a human mind in isolation. Writings like these are, to my knowledge, very rare. I've never read anything like this before.
I can relate to Richard Wurmbrand. We are our own people, and I can't understand the specifics of everything he went through. But when I read these words, I know I have a friend. I don't think that anyone is watching down from heaven. That is to say, I don't think *about* it. It's very possible, but I don't think about it. I like to think about angels. Lately I've been telling myself, "People aren't fit to help people; angels are fit to help people" -- angels are the only company, and so on and so on.
In this way, I feel like these sermons have planted a seed in me. I have read most of the sermons; but though I can't remember, or don't even care to remember, what he wrote in a lot of them, I don't care to remember them because they've burrowed into my heart. This book has had an influence not on my mind, but my spirit.
It doesn't matter what he wrote. I can't remember most of it anyway. But there is something beautiful here; there is a piece of this man's soul. This book is alive. It is a living book. I wonder if all writing from the heart is alive. This is perhaps something we can tune into -- and sense that there was a presence there then, and there is that presence here now.
Words can encapsulate the spirit, but it's up to the observer to decipher it. A little kid wouldn't know that a diamond is very valuable. He could stumble upon a pile of gold, but if he never learned that this was a valuable thing, he might not even pay any attention to it, and use it as a dirt mound to play in, or come up with a game that has him throwing bricks of gold into the ocean. Gold is still gold, whether we know it or not. This is why I believe in an objective reality, though I can't fathom it. It is what it is, regardless of what I think of it. But my inner world may very well be what I think of it, as in, a dual reality contained within a finite, holistic reality, which itself is infinite, contained in finiteness, and so on and so on in that fashion.
I don't know what I'm talking about! But that's the fun of it. There's little to get snagged on. I'm not quite sure what that means, but that doesn't matter much. Onto the next thing, as always. The next world, the next place to visit with the angels, the next stop to make, the next express to board.
I would highly recommend reading this book. It's a very special book. This is all I have to say about that. As a last note, I find it funny that this is such an obscure and isolated part of the Internet; how many people can read this? I've written much more on many other places and I wonder the same thing.
But one thing this book has shown me is to believe in the spirit manifested through the body: to believe that we do have a purpose, independent of time and location and the status of our health.
He mentions in one sermon something about duty -- and that it would be expected that, being in prison, he should have no responsibilities. He was being routinely tortured and beaten and was in frail, decaying health for a very long time. How can he be expected -- how can ANYONE be expected -- to sustain spiritual responsibility in such times?
But I think it's the retaining of that responsibility that allowed him to take the torture and to share this book with all of us. It isn't about doing the right or wrong thing. It's about belief. It's about faith. When suffering really becomes overwhelming, right and wrong are not viable culprits anymore. Sometimes I believe I've become completely morally depraved. But it somehow resolves itself when I don't think of right and wrong, but belief and faith. And then I write things like this -- things which come from my heart, from who I really feel I am.
It's like being on auto-pilot. So in other words, "who I feel like I am" really is no one at all. I don't feel anything about who I am. And I don't feel anything while writing this. It's just coming out. I felt compelled to write a review of this book because I wanted to share something with other people; this itself is belief, as I believed it would impact someone in some way, even if it's only 1 person, you who are reading this.
I believed, and the action followed naturally. "Put the kingdom of God first in your heart, and the rest will follow" -- those were, and are, very true words. Belief and faith. These make the spirit -- they're the food and water for the soul. Without these, we're just bodies. So belief and faith disembody us to an extent; this may be the dissociative episodes, the detachment -- and even the apparently superhuman abilities to endure things as Wurmbrand did, without even the support of a single person. And quite the opposite, torture and beatings and oppression from other people.
And it IS superhuman: because the soul is the higher part of the body. "The spirit is the master of the body." I believe Wurmbrand wrote this somewhere. Anyway, he was right. I have contemplated suicide for many years and this delving into the spiritual world and seeing images of beautiful things, and having these feelings revived, and having this ghost like world to grab onto, this fantasy, a fairytale world -- this has gotten me through it. The spirit can endure what the body cannot. I believe it can even grow from it. Muscles break down before they get stronger. We are always breaking down and rebuilding.
You can read this book, and I would recommend that. Or you might not. Either way, this world of the spirit is open to you. You aren't denied access here. We are all spirits. You're welcome. We are all welcome. We only have to knock.
January 20, 2018
Amazing insight into the depths of faith. Richard draws you into the communist prison cell, along for the journey of torture, next to him as he processes life and faith from the darkest of places. He does not make himself out to be a hero of faith, and completely lays bare his doubts and struggles showing off humanity, depression and even mental instability. In doing so, you're left with a real picture of real faith tested to the limits, one that encourages a deeper walk with the Lord, deeper love & grace for those struggling, and a broader view of the needs of the worldwide church.
September 20, 2018
Couldn’t put this one down. Richard Wurmbrand is a poet and despite how dark and heavy the story is - he’s a funny guy. He’s one of the people I’d like to meet.
Alert-he’s controversial. Like the idea of comforting JEsus Christ because He seems always depressed. I was..I don’t know about that..no doubt JEsus Messiah grieves with all those who are in pain afflicted in lack, in distressing circumstances. But it’s hard to believe the Creator of the heaven and the earth goes about mourning and low spirited? I don’t know
Lakini the homeruns are 100 to 1. Plus he was in solitary confinement. Until you’ve been gagged beaten starved isolated - you can’t say anything
While we think of him as a hero of the faith for NTP cowering in the face of communism for risking his life and his family for his faith. The ‘martyr’ thinks they’re being punished for sins. What is it with human beings -we are conditioned to associate suffering with punishment for sin or evil. We don’t seem to see JEsus, the apostles, Job, Paul as clear examples of good people suffering
The idea that God is in us and that when people pray for deliverance they’re praying to us essentially. God doesn’t come down and fight, he uses people. Is eye opening and scary because you can’t unlearn that.
So don’t pick up this book because you will surely be held to account
What about the idea of we modern day ordinary girls being the ‘mother of God’-sounds ludicrous till he backs it up - fascinating
It’s the first book of Richard wurmbrand I have read. He’s genuinely respectful of other people’s faith in a way modern day Christians would disapprove. Very powerful. Inspirational.
Alert-he’s controversial. Like the idea of comforting JEsus Christ because He seems always depressed. I was..I don’t know about that..no doubt JEsus Messiah grieves with all those who are in pain afflicted in lack, in distressing circumstances. But it’s hard to believe the Creator of the heaven and the earth goes about mourning and low spirited? I don’t know
Lakini the homeruns are 100 to 1. Plus he was in solitary confinement. Until you’ve been gagged beaten starved isolated - you can’t say anything
While we think of him as a hero of the faith for NTP cowering in the face of communism for risking his life and his family for his faith. The ‘martyr’ thinks they’re being punished for sins. What is it with human beings -we are conditioned to associate suffering with punishment for sin or evil. We don’t seem to see JEsus, the apostles, Job, Paul as clear examples of good people suffering
The idea that God is in us and that when people pray for deliverance they’re praying to us essentially. God doesn’t come down and fight, he uses people. Is eye opening and scary because you can’t unlearn that.
So don’t pick up this book because you will surely be held to account
What about the idea of we modern day ordinary girls being the ‘mother of God’-sounds ludicrous till he backs it up - fascinating
It’s the first book of Richard wurmbrand I have read. He’s genuinely respectful of other people’s faith in a way modern day Christians would disapprove. Very powerful. Inspirational.
October 20, 2024
Very difficult to rate as it was so perplexing. Some chapters were excellent. Others I could not quite grasp. Wurmbrand makes many statements that sound unbiblical. I say sound because I want to believe I merely misunderstood him. Honestly, I’m not quite sure what to make of this.
October 22, 2019
A Great Man
Amazing. It is difficult to grasp how one lives through something so horrific. Many did not. I want to read all his writings.
Amazing. It is difficult to grasp how one lives through something so horrific. Many did not. I want to read all his writings.
December 18, 2024
This book is amongst the strangest I have ever read. Epic insight into the persecution of believers and made me think about so many things wow. Beautifully confusing
June 19, 2016
I recommend this to everyone trying to be encouraged in the Faith of Christ. This is a must read from Wurmbrand.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews