Speak

The persecuted church and the issue of abortion have been on my heart lately.  Maybe they seem unrelated to you, but they are linked as issues on which the church must stand, even in this dark and fallen world, to lift up the downtrodden and relieve the oppressed. If you haven't seen the documentary 180, a film by Living Waters that compares abortion with the holocaust, I'd highly recommend watching it. As I've been studying the holocaust lately, I'm horrified by the atrocities that were sanctioned by society. True, the holocaust happened 60 years ago, but it is sobering to realize that my grandparents were alive at the time, and likely knew little about it. The parallels between the age we now live in, and the world around the time of Hitler are seen in almost every way - socially, religiously, morally. The church in Germany had become merely a social institution, rather than the body of Christ. And I can't help but wonder, what has become of the church today? Still, there were some then, and there are some now, who shine even brighter in the midst of this darkness. The international day of prayer for the persecuted church was this past Sunday - let's remember to keep these brothers and sisters continually lifted in prayer.

I want to share a few quotes with you today - may the Holy Spirit use His Word and the words of these wise men to awaken our hearts and minds to action - to care for the widow, the orphan, the unborn child, and our persecuted brothers and sisters, in the name and power of Christ. God is alive! May we prove this by our lives.

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"Where the world despises other members of the Christian family, Christians will love and serve them. If the world does violence to them, Christians will help them and provide them relief. Where the world subjects them to dishonor and insult, Christians will sacrifice their own honor in exchange for their disgrace. Where the world seeks gain, Christianity will renounce it; where it exploits, they will let go; where it oppresses, they will stoop down and lift up the oppressed. Where the world denies justice, Christians will practice compassion; where it hides behind lies, they will speak out for those who cannot speak, and testify for the truth." - Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"I am concerned that there is no outcry. I can well understand that there are people who are led to starve children to death because they think that they are doing something right for society or are following a principle of Hegel that is utilitarian for society. But I cannot understand why the other people, and I know that there are many, don't cry out. I am concerned about this because when the first 273,000 German aged, infirm, and retarded were killed in gas chambers there was no outcry from that medical profession either, and it was not far from there to Auschwitz." - C. Everett Koop, M.D.

“Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life, to raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue.  The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life and that is nothing but murder.” - Ethics by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one and in some the other." - Malcolm Muggeridge

"Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute." (Prov. 31:8)

"We forget that man stands alone before the ultimate authority and that anyone who lays violent hands on man here is infringing eternal laws and taking upon himself superhuman authority which will eventually crush him; the eternal law that the individual stands alone before God takes fearful vengeance where it is attacked and distorted.... Leaders or offices which set themselves up as gods mock God." - The Fuhrer Principle by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Remember the prisoners, as though in prison with them, and those who are ill-treated, since you yourselves also are in the body." (Hebrews 13:3)

I'm making friends with dead people....

This has nothing to do with Halloween or necromancing, in case you're worried. ;)

It all started in the frozen food section at Costco this summer. Amongst the herds of people gathered around the sample stations, my eye randomly fell upon a girl who was holding a book in her arms. In a glance I took in the front cover. It was nothing extraordinary - just a black and white photo of a bespectacled man. Something about the title seemed familiar though. Bonhoeffer... hmm, where have I seen that name before?

Suffice it to say that my steps soon led me to the book section, where I picked up a biography on a man of whom I had barely heard. Not one to make hasty purchases on anything over $5, I nonetheless was enticed to purchase the book, lured on by my current obsession with WWII. Anyhow, $9.99 could be easily justified if it turned out to be half-decent.

It did.

I just started reading Eric Metaxas' biography of Bonhoeffer last week, and it has been incredibly fascinating.  I've really been getting into biographies/journals lately, which isn't really typical for me, but I've been so encouraged by them.  As Brett and Alex Harris say, I've been "making friends with dead people".  These accounts remind me of the "great cloud of witnesses" that Hebrews 12:1 speaks of, and the hall of faith in Hebrews 11, which lists many examples of faithful men and women who lived their lives in obedience to God.

This is the same type of life I discovered as I began to research the legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a man who searched for truth and was found by God, and ultimately paid the ultimate price for his obedience when he was hanged by the gestapo.  I won't go into the details of his life here, but you can watch a 1/2 hour summary by Eric Metaxas here. (It starts slowly - if you want to skip the intro, go to 8:00) One of the things I have been most struck by so far is just how similar the world of Bonhoeffer's time was to the world of today, especially in terms of culture, philosophy, religion, and the church. I want to share a few quotes that really hit me. I pray that this generation of believers would be inspired by these words from the past, and empowered by the Spirit to seek and live the truth of God's Word.

  

"The religion of Christ is not a tidbit after one's bread, on the contrary, it is the bread or it is nothing. People should at least understand and concede this if they call themselves Christian."

"Humanism and mysticism, the seemingly most beautiful blossoms put forth by the Christian religion, extolled today as the highest ideals of the human spirit; indeed often as the crown itself of the Christian idea - [but] it is precisely the Christian idea itself that must reject them as an apotheosis of the creature and as such a challenge to the honor belonging to God alone."

"In New York they preach about virtually everything; only one thing is not addressed, or is addressed so rarely that I have as yet been unable to hear it, namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross, sin and forgiveness, death and life."

"Do not try to make the Bible relevant. Its relevance is axiomatic... Do not defend God's Word, but testify to it... Trust to the Word."

Remember Those...

Yesterday I was doing some Law homework, and the assignment asked me to research a Christian who lived true to faith in Christ but suffered at the hands of a humanly appointed justice system. My thoughts immediately flew to Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand, who founded the organization, The Voice of the Martyrs.  Richard and Sabina experienced a combined 17 years of torture and imprisonment for their obedience to God under the oppression of communism.  Although I was quite familiar with their story, I was deeply moved as I read again of the trials they endured for the sake of the gospel, and saw again the depth and vibrancy of their faith.

I won't tell the full story in this post, but feel free to read a more detailed biography here.

Richard Wurmbrand spent 14 years in Romanian prisons under communism, three of which were in solitary confinement.  He was beaten, tortured, starved, and brainwashed, but God sustained him to witness to hundreds of souls, and ultimately to bring the plight of the persecuted church to the attention of complacent Christians in free countries.  Through his three years of solitary confinement he experienced the grace of God as he composed and preached to himself hundreds of sermons, and later was able to overflow with the richness and reality of the love of Christ in the company of his fellow prisoners.  In his book, Tortured for Christ, he writes,  "It was strictly forbidden to preach to other prisoners, as it is in captive nations today. It was understood that whoever was caught doing this received a severe beating. A number of us decided to pay the price for the privilege of preaching, so we accepted their terms. It was a deal: we preached and they beat us. We were happy preaching; they were happy beating us—so everyone was happy."

Sabina tells of similar experiences while she was in prison in a message entitled "In God's Beauty Parlor".  She says, "Sometimes I am asked, 'But were you allowed in Communists prisons to read the bible and pray?'  We surely were allowed.  We made a deal with our Communists guards.  We allowed them to beat us so they allowed to read the bible and to pray together."

Sabina spoke of faces that shone, "like the face of an angel," while covered with the blood and tears of a brutal beating.  How could the Wurmbrands say that prison was beautiful?  These words of Richard Wurmbrand say it all:

"If a poor man is a great lover of music, he gives his last dollar to listen to a concert. He is then without money, but he does not feel frustrated. He has heard beautiful things. I don’t feel frustrated to have lost many years in prison. I have seen beautiful things. I myself have been among the weak and insignificant ones in prison, but have had the privilege to be in the same jail with great saints, heroes of faith who equaled the Christians of the first centuries. They went gladly to die for Christ. The spiritual beauty of such saints and heroes of faith can never be described. The things that I say here are not exceptional. The supernatural things have become natural to Christians in the Under­ground Church who have returned to their first love." (Tortured For Christ)

I can't help but almost wish that Christians in our nation faced such persecution.  Tonight, just singing in the car about His grace... oh how amazing.  Thinking about how I have so much, but all I really need is Him.  Looking around at a world that comfortably lives as if this is all there is - oh what sorrow!  There's so much on my heart tonight.  I'm so convicted of my lack of love for my brothers and sisters in Christ, for how I take the Word of God for granted, and for how much I complain about the most inconsequential things. 

Oh that we may have an eternal perspective, a heart that remembers those who are persecuted, as though we were in prison with them. (Hebrews 13:2) That is where our heart should be - where the crushed and the afflicted are - where true light and peace are found.  May we turn to our God, the one who brings love out of hatred, joy out of sorrow, and makes sinners into saints, and for Him forsake all else.