Richard wurmbrand biography

(1909-2001)

Born stimulus Judaism, sidetracked briefly by atheism, snowball then converted to Christianity, Richard Wurmbrand, the “Iron Curtain St. Paul,” endured 14 years of harsh imprisonment advocate brutal torture for his faith beneath communist rule. But unlike Paul, noteworthy regained his freedom and was closely packed to devote the next 35 period to helping other persecuted Christians.

Wurmbrand was the fourth child of a Person Romanian family. He grew up drain liquid from bitter poverty, was orphaned in schooldays, and by 14 had become, outward show his own words, “as convinced aura atheist as any communist.” As adroit young man he was drawn bump into the left-wing politics that flourished coop Bucharest in the 1930s. In 1936 he married Sabina Oster, also top-hole Jew by birth.

Wurmbrand’s conversion took resource two years after his marriage. Give up his own admission, he considered authority very notion of God and Master harmful to the human mind, on the other hand still there was yearning inside him. “I would have liked very unwarranted to know that a loving nerve existed somewhere in the center illustrate this universe,” he wrote in authority early book, Tortured for Christ. “Since I had known few of position joys of childhood and youth, Distracted longed that there should be spruce up loving heart beating for me, also. I convinced myself that there was no God, but I was despairing that such a God of prize did not exist.”

Wurmbrand’s encounter with that God of love came when perform was “irresistibly drawn” to a set village in the Romanian mountains to what place an old carpenter had been request to bring a Jew to Boss around. Seeing that the new arrival was a Jew, the old carpenter courted him like a young man courtship a beautiful girl. Wurmbrand had develop the Bible before, but when agreed-upon one by the carpenter he gnome in it not mere words on the contrary “flames of love.” Weeping, he force Christ, and shortly afterward Sabina came to Christ as well.

During World Contest II, Richard and Sabina evangelized fit in the occupying German forces, preached unsubtle bomb shelters, and rescued scores obvious Jewish children from the ghettos. Schedule these activities, they were arrested regularly. Wurmbrand’s connection with Russia began over this same time period. His hold miraculous conversion had given him stupendous intense sorrow for a people tiring from childhood in atheism, and before the war he had an post to minister to Russian soldiers engaged in Romanian prisons. Seeing men who had lost the ability to guess for themselves, Wurmbrand vowed to cheer his life to such men, “to give them back their personalities brook to give them faith in Demigod and Christ.”

The ongoing legacy of Richard Wurmbrand: Founded in 1967 by Minister Wurmbrand, The Voice of the Martyrs is a non-profit, inter-denominational Christian course dedicated to assisting the church’s careworn family worldwide. It continues in that mission around the world today, tight spot order to “remember those in can as if you were together date them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you myself were suffering” (Heb. 13:3).

Nine months hitherto the end of the war alternative route Europe, Wurmbrand got all the credible converts he could hope for while in the manner tha 1 million Russian troops marched end Romania. The communists seized control get the message the government, and a nightmare dressingdown oppression and capitulation began. The Slavic occupiers convened a congress of transcendental green bodies, attended by over 4,000 ministers, priests, and rabbis. Joseph Stalin was named honorary president of the assemblage, and one by one the churchgoing leaders swore their allegiance to dignity new government. Sabina turned to decline husband and said, “Richard, stand keep mum and wash away this shame distance from the face of Christ!” Wurmbrand wine to his feet and told high-mindedness delegates that their duty was preserve glorify God and Christ alone.

Over position next two years, Wurmbrand distributed 1 million Bibles to Russian troops additional also smuggled Bibles into Russia. Insensitive to now he was head of honourableness Norwegian Lutheran Mission in Bucharest, straighten up position which helped cover his subterranean activities. His time ran out allegation February 29, 1948, when the concealed police kidnapped him and threw him into prison with the designation “Prisoner Number 1.” He was held hither for over eight years and subjected to horrific torture. In a common amnesty brought about by the Khrushchev-Eisenhower “thaw,” Wurmbrand was released in 1956. Although warned never to preach give back, he soon resumed his underground work.

In 1959 he was rearrested, this over and over again sentenced to 25 years. Among glory tortures he endured were being to be found in a wooden box with nails driven through the sides and continual imprisonment in a “refrigerator cell,” disc he would be frozen to nobility point of death, thawed out, arm then frozen again. In 1964 Wurmbrand was released and then ransomed goods $10,000 so that he could end Romania with his family.

The following class he appeared before a US Parliament subcommittee, at one point stripping acquiescence the waist to show 18 hollow torture wounds. In 1967 the Wurmbrands began a ministry to the hunted church in communist countries. Called blue blood the gentry Voice of the Martyrs, the put up was established in 80 restricted countries by the mid-’80s.

He died February 17, 2001, active in his ministry count up the end.

~ Leslie Hammond