Quotes from Richard Wurmbrand

People are so inoculated in childhood with small doses of Christianity that they seldom catch the real thing.

The tyrant of Syracuse once went to the slavephilosopher Epictetus and told him, "I'll pay the ransom for you and you will be liberated " Epictetus replied, "Why do you care about me? Free yourself." "But I am a king," said the amazed tyrant. "This I contest," was the answer of the philosopher. "He who masters his passions is a king even while in chains. He who is ruled by his passions is a slave even while sitting on a throne.

Abbot Miron had sat sewing a patch on his trousers as we talked. He raised his intense luminous eyes to Gaston and said, "Years ago I had a postcard from my brother in New York, who had been to the top of the Empire State Building. He didn't investigate the foundations first, Pastor Gaston. The fact that it had been there forty years is proof that the foundations are good. The same with the Church, which has rested two thousand years on the truth.

So at last when I believed Christianity was dead, I said, "Even so, I will believe in it, and I will weep at its tomb until it rises again, as it surely will.

Finally, we should note that in the Song, the Bridegroom is sometimes called a king and the bride a queen. Sometimes he is a shepherd; sometimes they are workers in the vineyard. Sometimes they are in a palace; sometimes in the field. This teaches that people of all social classes are called to participate in spiritual life at the highest level.

Worms, fire, or the sea might consume my body. But my spirit will live in a world with no more wanderings and trials. I do not have to pass through many painful incarnations. Beyond death lies paradise.

We will respond, even in the face of irony and slander, with the sweetness of love. We can afford to take this attitude because good anvils do not fear the blows of many hammers.

difficulty is not lack of knowledge, but moral weakness. If you love Jesus with a pure heart, you will know where He feeds His flock as surely as every man who loves drugs or alcohol knows where to find them (Matthew 5:8). "Who is the man that fears the Lord? Him shall He teach in the way He chooses" (Psalm 25:12).

reminded him of the great scientists who have been Christians—from Newton and Kepler to Pavlov and the discoverer of anaesthetics, Sir James Simpson. Luca said, "They conformed to the conventions of the time." I said, "Do you know the declaration of Louis Pasteur, who discovered microbes and vaccination? 'Je crois comme une charbonnière le plus que je progresse en science.

Where there is love, it is Jesus that will surely triumph.

In spiritual matters, the only real glory is in the renunciation of glorifying self.

Materialists do not love matter. They have no sense of its "earnest expectation" (Romans 8:19), and do not sympathize with its "bondage of corruption" (Romans 8:21).

These are the last words of Iuliu Maniu, a Christian and the former Prime Minister of Romania, who died in prison: "If the Communists are overthrown in our country, it will be the most holy duty of every Christian to go into the streets and at the risk of his own life defend the Communists from the righteous fury of the multitudes whom they have tyrannized.

We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and powers of evil. We saw that communism is not from men but from the devil. It is a spiritual force—a force of evil—and can only be countered by a greater spiritual force, the Spirit of God.

I hate the Communist system but I love the men. I hate the sin but I love the sinner.

Kirgizskaia Pravda of 17 January 1966 quoted an underground Christian leaflet to mothers: 'Let us join our efforts and prayers to dedicate to God the lives of our children from the time they are in the cradle! Let us save our children from the influence of the world.

In the ensuing years, in several different prisons, they broke four vertebrae in my back, and many other bones. They carved me in a dozen places. They burned and cut eighteen holes in my body.

churches for their purposes, Richard

Christians who believed what they said in church knew that to die was not the end of life but its fulfillment; not extinction, but the promise of eternity.

Most of your statues in churches do not correspond to the picture I have of you. In the statues you are shown very much like a nun, with a rosary in your hand. You are smiling serenely. But nuns have no children. You have. Your true likeness has yet to be depicted.

The Bible he gave me was written not so much in words but in flames of love, fired by his prayers.

Men are responsible before God, not only for their personal sins but also for their national sins. The tragedy of all the captive nations is a responsibility on the hearts of American and British Christians. Americans must know that they have at times unwittingly assisted the Russians in imposing on us a regime murder of and terror.

Every soul won for Christ must be made to be a soul winner.

Ask yourself if it is not also your sin that such tragedies occur, that such Christian families are alone and not helped by you who are free.