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Richard Wurmbrand was a Christian pastor in Romania in the middle of the communist era. In 1945 there was great conference run by the communists where one by one the church leaders of Romania got up and pledged allegiance to Stalin and the communist system. Although the Soviet state was by definition atheistic, these pastors all got up and claimed that there was no contradiction between Christianity and communism.

It was Richard’s turn to speak. His wife encouraged him to speak the truth. He got up and preached the gospel. The government officials immediately said he no longer had the right to speak and they cut off the microphone. But in the loudest voice he could muster he kept preaching.

From then on he was a marked man. He kept on preaching truthfully and publicly because he knew that that was what his church needed. In 1948 when he was on his way to church, he was kidnapped by the secret police. For years he was kept in solitary confinement, subjected to brainwashing and torture with red hot irons, whipping and other things unimaginable. In 1956 he was released and immediately went back to pastoring the underground church, to looking after his flock and to preaching to the communists. He was again arrested in 1959 and imprisoned for another five years. When he was released in 1964 he was impressed upon by other Romanian pastors to escape to the USA and in 1967 he established a mission organization to the communist world, now known as Voice of the Martyrs.

He considered it his duty before God as a servant of the gospel and a servant of the body of Christ to suffer in his flesh for the cause of Jesus.

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