Tortured for Christ.
The title of this book alone can tell you that you’re in for a read that’s not all feel-good and flowery.
This book was written by a man named Richard Wurmbrand, a pastor from Romania who lived under the cruelty and injustice of the USSR. Amazingly, even though he was brutally tortured, and saw many of his friends die because of the atrocious conditions in the jail they were in, he emerged from jail not with a hatred for communists, but with a hatred for communism, not with a hatred of the sinner, but of the sin. Although in his book he repeatedly denounces the evils of communism, he never once even hints that he has the slightest feeling of hatred towards the ones who tortured and imprisoned him. He thought of communism as a disease that destroyed a man’s senses of right and wrong, and said, “I am very sorry if a crocodile eats a man, but I can’t reproach the crocodile. He is not a moral being. So no reproaches can be made to the Communists. Communism has destroyed any moral sense in them. They boasted that they had no pity in their hearts. I learned from them. As they allowed no place for Jesus in their hearts, I decided I would leave not the smallest place for Satan in mine.”
That quote alone is amazing and humbling, but so are many, many other portions of the book, as Mr. Wurmbrand talks about the state of religion in Russia. He said that, “A man really believes not what he recites in his creed, but only the things he is ready to die for”, and repeatedly asked if we “westerners” would be willing to do as the Christians in the had done- lay down their lives for the gospel.
He told of how there was once a young man who served as a captain in the Russian military, who barged into a room where a pastor of the Underground church was praying. He asked him if he was a Christian, and when the pastor said he was, the officer said that if he didn’t denounce his faith and turn to communism, he would shoot him. The pastor, with a pistol against his head, said that he would never denounce his Lord, and the officer dropped his pistol and embraced him, saying that he wanted to be sure that Christianity was true, and the pastor, by not denouncing his faith, had shown him that it was truly a faith that was worth dying for.
Mr Wurmbrand asked if we would consider our faith worth dying for.
Although I wouldn’t recommend this book for younger readers, due to the graphic violence it depicts, for older readers I would give Tortured for Christ 5 out of 5 stars, and would highly recommend that you get it.
