Ten Lessons from the Sufferings of Richard Wurmbrand
Republished with permission from David Clements at the Professor’s Record.
This week’s episode was inspired by two martyrs. Richard Wurmbrand and Tina Peters. Wurmbrand left his mark years ago. Peters remains in prison, innocent, the poster child for suffering because of 2020’s election corruption:
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I TOOK A SMALL BREAK. An eight-dollar cigar. A roof-top view of a sunset. For twelve years straight I have battled. From running for the U.S. Senate, dealing with lawfare, staring down murderers, to breaking the propaganda feed concerning our rigged elections, to having my cabin burned to the ground. I’m tapped out.
Where to go for resources, refreshment, perspective?
My mind goes to a prison cell.
The cell is black. Not dark. Black. Richard Wurmbrand sits on a small stool, naked, the cold biting into his bones like a slow wolf. He counted days by the beat of his heart. The guards had taken his name. He had preached in the open once. In Bucharest, before the boots came. He had stood in the pulpit and told the communists that Christ was King and that no man could serve two masters. They laughed at first. Then they took him.
Richard Wurmbrand was born in 1909 in Bucharest to a Jewish family that cared little for God. By thirty he cared for nothing but Christ. He became a Lutheran pastor, married Sabina, and preached in the streets and air-raid shelters of wartime Romania. When the communists took power he stood before four thousand delegates of the new puppet church and declared that a Christian’s duty is to glorify God and Christ alone. That speech bought him fourteen years in hell’s basement. Three of them were spent thirty feet beneath Bucharest in cells where daylight was only a rumor. He emerged in 1964, half-crippled, wholly alive, and spent the rest of his days telling free Christians what it really costs to follow the King who refuses to bow.
They tried to break him in countless ways. Wurmbrand stands as judge of the tepidness of the modern-day church. Churches that preach the Gospel with words alone, but with no action when it could disturb their comfort. A Gospel that preaches that it is wisdom to avoid the political battlefield, implying that the Bible has nothing to say about governance and wielding the sword with wisdom.
Wurmbrand also stands as the example that slaps me awake. No self-pity. You can always give more. You have suffered little compared to what is possible. My cigar is done burning. My four-hour vacation is over. The topic for today is:
Ten Lessons from the Sufferings of Richard Wurmbrand
They locked Wurmbrand in the carceret, an upright box lined with nails that waited for the knees to buckle. When exhaustion bent him, the iron drank. In that suffocating coffin, I imagine that he remembered Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego strolling in the furnace with a fourth man who looked like the Son of God.
He learned to lock his knees and lean his head and shoulders against opposite walls in such a way that the spikes barely touched the skin. The moment his strength began to fail, he would shift his weight millimeter by millimeter to keep the nails from penetrating deeply.
He forced himself to compose and memorize entire sermons in his head—one verse or one thought at a time. This kept his mind from drifting into despair or unconsciousness. He later said he preached more sermons in the carceret than in many years of freedom.
“I felt arms around me that were not human arms. I was held as a mother holds a child. I do not know how long—minutes, hours—but when I came to myself I was still standing and the nails had not entered deeply. I knew then that He would not let me die before my time.”
The lesson is plain: when the culture nails you into a box labeled bigot or insurrectionist, the spikes are not the final word. When you see no way out, the Son will hold you upright. He still walks inside the fire. The Pastors who feel the points coming do not need to slump into silence. The yoke is light because the One who shares it has already been pierced.
They put Wurmbrand barefoot on a block of ice for days, then into scalding steam—freeze, burn, repeat—until the nerves in his feet died. Years later in America, a freezer door at a supermarket could drop him straight back into the cell. He would stand shaking until he breathed the name of Jesus and walked on. Like Joseph in the pit, sold by brothers, waiting in darkness until the throne was ready. Cold betrayal did not destroy Joseph; it prepared him. The church today, frozen by old wounds or new threats, does not need to deny the trembling. It needs the promise set before Christ, that he would make all things new, which carried Him through the cross and will carry His people through every ambush of memory.
They beat the soles of Wurmbrand’s feet with rubber hoses until skin split and bones wept. In the middle of the blows he prayed for the guard swinging the hose. He thought of Stephen kneeling under stones, asking forgiveness for his killers. Pain has a ceiling; love does not. When the state or the mob today swings at patriots and pastors who name the sins written into law—abortion, child mutilation, the worship of power—do not curse back. Bless. That is the one blow no regime has ever learned to block.
And remind yourself, if you are reading this you aren’t in a cell. Count your blessings that nothing but fear prohibits you from going on offense politically to fight against such Satanic treachery.
They kept Wurmbrand three years in total darkness. A cell three paces by three paces—so black he forgot the color of bread. He preached hundreds of sermons to invisible congregations. He thought of Paul and Silas singing at midnight until the prison doors shook.
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Light is not required for worship; only a heart is. When the culture cancels and drives biblical voices underground, the church does not need bigger platforms. It needs deeper darkness, where sermons are born and prisoners become preachers. Have you been cancelled on social media? If digital doors are closed, seek out real people and build alliances in person.
They put Wurmbrand in solitary, forbidding him to speak aloud. Could you imagine being separated from your child and bride for 14 years? He tapped on pipes until someone tapped back and a hidden orchestra began. He thought of Elijah hearing the still small voice after the earthquake and fire. No matter how alone you feel. Whether in real chains, or just the space between your ears, the Spirit still connects the scattered. Pastors and patriots who feel alone in their stand need only tap. Somewhere another trembling shepherd will answer.
They injected Wurmbrand with drugs meant to scramble the mind. He recited Scripture until the Word outran the poison. Oh, the jabs and pills “We the People” have willingly put into our bodies. Not to mention the things we can’t avoid. Chemicals in the air, the water, our food. Wurmbrand thought of Jesus in the wilderness meeting every lie with “It is written.” Have you prayed to combat the poison, real or spiritual, running through your veins? The Great Physician awaits. When the culture pumps its venom into schools, laws, and even pulpits, the antidote is not clever argument. It is the spoken Word, louder than the needle.
They finally let Wurmbrand look into a mirror after years of darkness and disfigurement. The handsome young pastor was gone. A skull stared back, teeth broken, face collapsed, eyes sunken in a mask of ruin. He wept—not for vanity, but for the glory of it. He thought of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, marred beyond human likeness, of Jesus on the cross, battered until unrecognizable. The lesson burned: the body of Christ is most beautiful when it is most broken, because every bruise purchased a soul. Pastors and patriots who fear looking ugly in the public square—fear the sneer, the meme, the late-night host’s joke—have forgotten that the gospel advances by scarred flesh, not polished image.
One day in Wurmbrand’s labor camp, an old abbot lay dying beside the very interrogator who had tortured him for years, Captain Vasilescu, now himself imprisoned by the next wave of purges. The abbot reached out a skeletal hand, forgave the man who had crushed his fingers one by one, and led him to Christ. That night both men died and, Wurmbrand believed, entered heaven together. He thought of Jesus praying from the cross, “Father, forgive them.”
Forgiveness is the ultimate act of war against hell. The church that withholds it has already lost the battle. Can you defeat the rigged election usurpers—bureaucrats and blue-check inquisitors by righteously wielding the government’s sword—and then brandish a heart soft enough to share the Gospel after they are caught?
Wurmbrand’s hell had loudspeakers that blared the same messages over and over again: “Christianity is dead. The church is finished. Nobody loves you. You are forgotten.” Wurmbrand laughed until the guards beat him for laughing. I think of the bots today, the black-pill accounts on every platform, the endless chorus that nothing changes, no one is coming, it’s all over. Same loudspeakers, newer wires. Every time I submit an article, I wince in preparation of the slander, hatred, and demoralized sneers to come.
The answer is the same: the tomb is empty, the church is alive, and the One who loves you has scars in His hands to prove it. Do more than play at being Christian. Earn some scars along the way.
Finally, in 1964, Wurmbrand’s communist torturers shoved him across the U.S. border with the warning: one public word and your family dies. He found the nearest microphone and used it until his voice gave out. Like Esther walking uninvited to the throne and of the apostles filling Jerusalem with teaching the moment the prison doors opened. Silence after deliverance is betrayal.
Richard Wurmbrand is dead. His scars sleep in a grave outside Los Angeles, California. But the lessons still walk. They limp into our carpeted sanctuaries and ask the question the communists never managed to beat out of him:
Are you afraid of the world, or of God?
The phrase “separation of church and state” is not in the founding documents any more than it was in the founding documents of Babylon, Persia, or Rome. Joseph, Daniel, Nehemiah, and Esther never found it there either. They found only one command: obey God rather than men when the two collide.
The yoke is still easy.
The burden is still light.
The joy of the Lord is still strength.
The cell door may wait.
But to live is Christ and to die is gain.
My mind wanders to one more cell, occupied by prisoner Tina Peters. Seventy years old. Defamed. Slandered. Abused. Threatened. Imprisoned for exposing the truth. A living martyr.
That one honest election clerk demonstrates greater sacrifice than any pastor in America shows you how far we have fallen.
Oh church, when will you wake up and drive out the election slavers? When will you unplug from the matrix? When will you risk flipping over a table?
To President Trump, I recognize that war brings about collateral damage. That state charges prohibit a federal pardon being given. But please don’t forget about Tina. She is a prisoner of the information war you chose to prosecute on behalf of the American people.
The DOJ continues to think small in how to free her. She is as deserving as any political hostage needing liberation. You told her tormentors to release her “or else.” We are at the “or else” stage.
To Tina, every day you are locked away your legend grows. I pray that angels visit you. That Richard Wurmbrand is part of the cloud of witnesses giving you comfort each night. We love you. We miss you.
So, we keep your memory front and center.
David K. Clements is a seasoned attorney, former law professor, filmmaker and dedicated advocate for election integrity and constitutional rights. If you think he’s on to something, consider being a monthly sponsor of his independent journalism at:
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Thank you for all of your work to prove the elections have been rigged via ballot and machine /software fraud, professor.
"... yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, thou art with me ..."
Tina Peters is in that valley, and GOD is with her, — but are WE also with her?
Grateful for this article on R. Wurmbrand. His book written, in his mind, when imprisoned is remarkable. Horribly treated but his faith in God sustained him. Back in the early 90’s he came to Mobile, AL where I was living and had the opportunity to hear him speak at our church. Incredible story. Incredible man.
Reading this made me cry. It's so easy to have faith when we are comfortable.
thank you for reminding us of Wurmbrand, who continues to be the example
Jesus Wept.
Joe Hoft, this is your greatest article written. It is stunning and glorifies God. Indeed He still walks in the furnace. Always with us in our own depths of despair. We are never alone who are obedient to Him and His word.
Mr. Hoft, please know. There are very simple regular folks like myself who pray daily for foot soldiers like Tina and yourself. Many in number. Because we are led to pray. We are sustained to prayer. As God gives strength to those in the thick of this battle He also has called many to prayer. Fervently. Be assured. We must all keep the faith to the very end like Richard Wurmbrand did and the many before him and after. God is in control. He has already won this.
Agree – a very inspirational story of enormous faith in times of despair.
And prayers for Tina Peters!
Absolutely she needs our daily prayers.
FREE TINA PETERS
not written by Joe, but by David Clements
Yes, you’re right. Clements is a phenomenal writer. I should have worded it better. I am grateful to Mr. Hoft for posting it. You just don’t see articles like this very often.
I don’t know about the rest of you but it’s heartbreaking going back over what happened to Wurmbrand. And how he was sustained through it. It hurts.
Such a lovely story coming from the writer's mouth, an unbeliever.
I read the tiny story 'Tortured for Christ' of Dear Pastor Richards upbringing and plight with Atheist Romania some fifty years ago as a young Pentecostal. If you have been filled with the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in 'Tongues', as Pastor Wurmbrand too had received, then reading dear Pastor Richard Wurmbrands life story will leap out to you weeping along the way in joy as a journey only could have properly been told as by the Holy Ghost. Too, resounding fully in the deepest of Christian Love. The writer fails to understand God has the greatest of adventures for those dedicated, Holy, obedient, perfectly living the ten commands, Holy Ghost filled believers ever and not just believers who give their bodies to be burned 1 Corinthians 13:3! The True Love of God burning thru the veins of Strong Christians among other things will cause them to do exploits, as told in the O.T. book of Daniel: 11:32, the same things I wrote in this thread. Again, sad that an unbeliever in Christ has written a treaties on the God of all Glory, as told by one of the Greatest Christians in modern history re. Rich Wrumbrand. Hence making mother Teresa life of none effect, again as told in 1 Corinthians 13!
Why the criticism of the writer? God uses whom he wills. Shame on you!
You haven't followed David Clements, otherwise you wouldn't say such nasty things about him not believing in Jesus! You can quote your bible verses until doomsday and it won't get your butt thru them gates.
Put away your computer and go outside. You are mumbling incoherently.
You should read Prof. Clemens writings before you declare him an unbeliever.
This is what I dislike about Pentecostals, they think they can speak in tongues, but it never occurs to them that all they are doing is blabbering nonsense. Clean up your act.
The relentless attacks on Christianity, and by extension, western civilization, which is simply a euphemism for Christian Culture, is what has gotten America and Europe into this mess. Most people too dumb to even realize that in espousing their false ideology they are the being the useful idiot, Lenin spoke of.
For example:
Yuri Bezmenov (former KGB operative) predicted this 30+ years ago.
He warned that once you de-Christianize the west in a cultural sense, they will be ripe for the picking, at that point they will no longer defend their way of life.
To illustrate his point he wrote on a chalkboard:
2+2=4
GOD/JESUS CHRIST
First he pointed at 2+2=4 and said this is the truth, but I never met anyone who would die for it. I never met anyone who would stand in front of 2+2=4, with a gun pointed at his head, and declare this is the truth and I'm willing to die for it, you can go ahead and pull the trigger.
Then he said MILLIONS of Soviet dissidents went to their deaths defending God and Jesus Christ, defending their Christianity, they didn't even blink.
He concluded, 2+2=4 is objectively true and God you cannot prove, but the moment your society makes 2+2=4 its guiding principle, your society dies.
That's why the Marxists ALWAYS attack Christianity.
Christianity is more than just a religion, its a worldview, and its a worldview that is antithetical to Classical and Cultural Marxism, secular humanism, and yes, Islamism too. But the Marxists correctly surmised that you cannot penetrate the west until you first de-Christianize the west.
It was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who observed back in 1983 that, “Within the philosophical system of Marx and Lenin, and at the heart of their psychology, hatred of God is the principal driving force, more fundamental than all their political and economic pretensions.”
Though the far left never tires of brandishing the slogan of “social justice,” at bottom, their goal is to usurp God. They hate God. If there is any hope of accomplishing their goal, they must undermine reason. Reason is a gift from God, and they want to send it back.
I have a slightly different take on this. Wurmbrand obviously suffered mightlly. However, knowing the suffering to be undertaken, let's start killing those that would torment the righteous. Just straight up double tap to the cranium. How mant Jews would have been saved if every Nazi who came for them was wounded or killed? Yes it would be a bloodbath, but how many millions would have been spared? You can kill sheep but warriors are a different matter. Never trust government and be prepared to violently resist them.
I understand your distrust.
I have twice posted, once with a word left out, the title of an excellent film 2023, "Sabina . . . . " on Wurmband and his wife and had both labled as spam despite nothing offensive or nothing inaccurate.
Wow, a powerful article on an incredible man that I had never heard of before. It seems impossible for a human to have survived so much. Similar to Job… Thank you David for remembering Richard Wurmbrand.
Frightening what one human can do to another one. I can sort of understand killing in war, but torture for years is beyond me.
JIMMY LAI…Same story. Media silence is the same too.
Richard Wurmbrand started Voice of the Martyrs. Look them up. A ministry to the persecuted church around the world and worthy of financial support. I give to them monthly and would encourage others to do the same. I know, Ken and Creflo need new jets (couldn't resist the dig). This was a great article and certainly speaks to the heart.
Where was the merciful God when such horrors were so unmercifully unleashed on Mr. Wurmbrand? Where is the merciful God when such horror is unleashed on Patriot Tina Peters? Where is the merciful God that does not obliterate that which does such unspeakable harm to his children? Is it not The Father of love and mercy that we are taught to embrace by example?
Examine well important choices.