"This book is written not so much with ink, as with the blood of bleeding hearts." Tortured For Christ Tortured For Christ

"The language of love and the language of seduction are the same. The one who wishes a girl for a wife and the one who wishes her for only a night both say the words, “I love you.” Jesus has told us to discern between the language of seduction and the language of love, and to know the wolves clad in sheepskin from the real sheep." Tortured For Christ

"When Chris­tians in free countries win a soul for Christ, the new believer may become a member of a quietly living church. But when those in captive nations win someone, we know that he may have to go to prison and that his children may become or­phans. The joy of having brought someone to Christ is always mixed with this feeling that there is a price that must be paid." Tortured For Christ

"As there are many who believe they are Christians and in reality are not, we found that among the Russians there are many who believe they are atheists, but in reality they are not." Tortured For Christ

"We should never stop at having won a soul for Christ. By this, we have done only half the work. Every soul won for Christ must be made to be a soul-winner." Tortured For Christ

"Men asked, 'How is it that a God of love permits the triumph of evil?'... The Christian faith has an answer to such questions. For instance, Jesus told us about Lazarus, a poor beggar, oppressed as we were oppressed—dying, hungry, his wounds being licked by dogs—but in the end, angels took him to Abraham’s bosom." Tortured For Christ

"When a man has no faith in the reward of good or the punishment of evil, there is no reason to be human. There is no restraint from the depths of evil that is in man." Tortured For Christ

"I am very sorry if a crocodile eats a man, but I can’t re­proach the crocodile. He is not a moral being. So no reproaches can be made to the Communists. Communism has destroyed any moral sense in them. They boasted that they had no pity in their hearts. I learned from them. As they allowed no place for Jesus in their hearts, I decided I would leave not the smallest place for Satan in mine." Tortured For Christ

"If the heart is cleansed by the love of Jesus Christ, and if the heart loves Him, one can resist all tortures." Tortured For Christ

"God will judge us not according to how much we endured, but how much we could love." Tortured For Christ

"The tortures and brutality continued without interruption. When I lost consciousness or be­came too dazed to give the torturers any further hopes of confession, I would be returned to my cell. There I would lie, untended and half dead, to regain a little strength so they could work on me again. Many died at this stage, but somehow my strength always managed to return. 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. When my family and I were ransomed out of Romania and brought to Norway, doctors in Oslo, seeing all this and the scars in my lungs from tuberculosis, declared that my being alive today is a pure miracle! Accord­ing to their medical books, I should have been dead for years. I know myself that it is a miracle. God is a God of miracles. I believe God performed this wonder so that you could hear my voice crying out on behalf of the Underground Church in persecuted countries. He allowed one to come out alive and cry aloud the message of your suffering, faithful brethren." Tortured For Christ

"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." Tortured For Christ

"The following scene happened more times than I can remember. A brother was preaching to the other prisoners when the guards suddenly burst in, surprising him halfway through a phrase. They hauled him down the corridor to their beating room. After what seemed an endless beating, they brought him back and threw him—bloody and bruised—on the prison floor. Slowly, he picked up his battered body, painfully straightened his clothing and said, 'Now, brethren, where did I leave off when I was interrupted?' He continued his gospel message! I have seen beautiful things!" Tortured For Christ

"One great lesson arose from all the beatings, tortures, and butchery of the Communists: that the spirit is master of the body. We felt the torture, but it often seemed as something distant and far removed from the spirit which was lost in the glory of Christ and His presence with us. When we were given one slice of bread a week and dirty soup every day, we decided we would faithfully “tithe” even then. Every tenth week we took the slice of bread and gave it to weaker brethren as our “tithe” to the Master." Tortured For Christ

"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 have seen Christians in Communist prisons with fifty pounds of chains on their feet, tortured with red-hot iron pokers, in whose throats spoonfuls of salt had been forced, being kept afterward without water, starving, whipped, suffering from cold—and praying with fervor for the Com­­munists. This is humanly in­explicable! It is the love of Christ, which was poured out in our hearts." Tortured For Christ

"In the first days after my conversion, I felt that I would not be able to live any longer. Walking on the street, I felt a physical pain for every man and woman who passed by. It was like a knife in my heart, so burning was the question of whether or not he or she was saved. If a member of the congregation sinned, I would weep for hours." Tortured For Christ

"In solitary confinement, we could not pray as before. We were unimaginably hungry; we had been drugged until we acted like idiots. We were as weak as skeletons. The Lord’s Prayer was much too long for us—we could not concentrate enough to say it. My only prayer repeated again and again was, 'Jesus, I love You.' And then, one glorious day I got the answer from Jesus: 'You love me? Now I will show you how I love you.' At once, I felt a flame in my heart, which burned like the coronal streamers of the sun. The disciples on the way to Emmaus said that their hearts burned when Jesus spoke with them. So it was with me. I knew the love of the One who gave His life on the cross for us all." Tortured For Christ

"Around me were “Jobs”—some much more afflicted than Job had been. But I knew the end of Job’s story, how he re­ceived twice as much as he had before. I had around me men like Lazarus the beggar, hungry and covered with boils. But I knew that angels would take these men to the bosom of Abraham. I saw them as they will be in the future. I saw in the shabby, dirty, weak martyr near me the splendidly crowned saint of tomorrow." Tortured For Christ

"It was in prison that we found the hope of salvation for the Communists. It was there that we developed a sense of responsibility toward them. It was in being tortured by them that we learned to love them. A great part of my family was murdered. It was in my own house that their murderer was converted. It was also the most suitable place. So in Communist prisons the idea of a Chris­tian mission to the Communists was born." Tortured For Christ

"God sees things differently than we see them, just as we see differently than an ant. From the human point of view, to be tied to a cross and smeared with excrement is a horrible thing. Nonetheless, the Bible calls the sufferings of martyrs light afflictions. To be in prison for fourteen years is a long period to us. The Bible calls it 'but for a moment,' and tells us that these things are working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory (2Co 4:17). This gives us the right to suppose that the fierce crimes of the Communists, which are inexcusable to us, are lighter in the eyes of God than they are in our eyes. Their tyranny, which has lasted almost an entire century, may be before God, for whom a thousand years are like one day, only a moment of erring astray. They still have the possibility of being saved." Tortured For Christ

"Until the Communist era, I never understood why so many persons of the New Testament are called by nicknames: Simeon who was called Niger, John called Mark, and so on. We continue to use secret names in our work in captive nations. I never understood before why Jesus, wishing to have the last supper arranged, did not give an address but said, 'Go into the city, and a man will meet you carrying a pitcher of water' (Mar 14:13). Now I understand. We also give such secret signs of recognition in the work of the Underground Church." Tortured For Christ

"A man really believes not what he recites in his creed, but only the things he is ready to die for. The Christians of the Underground Church have proved that they are ready to die for their faith. Our international network of missions continues today with a secret work in captive nations that can mean for them imprisonment, torture, and death if caught in such a country. I believe in the things I write." Tortured For Christ

"There are no human words to express in an adequate manner the mysteries of God and the heights of spiritual life. Likewise, there are no human words that can describe the depths of devilish cruelty." Tortured For Christ

"A flower, if you bruise it under your feet, rewards you by giving you its perfume. Likewise Christians, tortured by the Com­mu­nists, rewarded their torturers by love. We brought many of our jailors to Christ. And we are dominated by one desire: to give Communists who have made us suffer the best we have, the salvation that comes from our Lord Jesus Christ." Tortured For Christ

"Christians in the West have no love for those in captive nations. Proof of it is that they do nothing for their salvation... But it is not enough that they do not love those in captive nations and do nothing to win them for Christ. By their complacency, by their neglect, and sometimes by acting as actual accomplices, some Western church leaders strengthen the infidels in their infidelity... By not loving the Communists and those from other captive nations, and by doing nothing to win them for Christ (under the pretext that they are not allowed to do so, as if the first Christians asked permission from Nero to spread the gospel), Western church leaders do not love their own flocks either, if they do not allow them to participate in this spiritual battle around the world." Tortured For Christ

"The human heart by nature seeks after God. There is a spiritual vacuum in every man until it is filled by Christ." Tortured For Christ

"Those Christian leaders in the West who show friendship to the Communists and other tyrannical regimes justify it by the teaching of Jesus that we must love even our enemies. But never did Jesus teach that we must love only our enemies, forgetting our brethren. They show their "love" by wining and dining those whose hands are full of the blood of Christians, not by giving them the good news of Christ. But those oppressed by tyrants are forgotten. They are not loved." Tortured For Christ

"What encourages us to preach the gospel in captive nations is that there those who become Christians are full of love and zeal. I have never met a single lukewarm Russian Christian. Former young Communists and Muslims become exceptional disciples of Christ." Tortured For Christ

"God is the Truth. The Bible is the truth about the Truth. Theology is the truth about the truth about the Truth." Tortured For Christ

"In our darkest hours of torture, the Son of Man came to us, making the prison walls shine like diamonds and filling the cells with light. Somewhere, far away, were the torturers below us in the sphere of the body. But the spirit rejoiced in the Lord. We would not have given up this joy for that of kingly palaces." Tortured For Christ

"Writers around the world protested when two Communist writers, Siniavski and Daniel, were sentenced to prison by their own comrades. But not even churches protest when Christians are put in prison for their faith." Tortured For Christ

"The names of the martyrs are not on their prayer lists. While they were being tortured and sentenced, the Russian Baptist and Orthodox official leaders who had denounced and betrayed them were received with great honor at New Delhi, at Geneva, and at other conferences. There they assured everyone that in Russia there is full religious liberty. A leader of the World Council of Churches kissed the Bolshevik archbishop Nikodim when he gave this assurance. Then they banqueted together in the imposing name of the World Council of Churches, while the saints in prison ate cabbage with unwashed intestines, just as I had eaten in the name of Jesus Christ." Tortured For Christ

"Sin must be called by its name." Tortured For Christ

"In prison they have daily asked this almighty Father for bread and have received instead cabbage with unmentionable filth. Nevertheless, they believe God to be the loving Father. They are like Job who said that he would believe in God even if He would slay him. They are like Jesus who called God "Father," even when He was seemingly forsaken on the cross." Tortured For Christ

"We Christians are often half-heartedly on the side of the whole truth. They are wholeheartedly on the side of the lie." Tortured For Christ

"I tremble because of the sufferings of those persecuted in different lands. I tremble thinking about the eternal destiny of their torturers. I tremble for Western Christians who don't help their persecuted brethren." Tortured For Christ

"Since being in the West, I have visited many theological seminaries. There I heard lectures about the history of bells and the history of liturgical songs, about canonical laws long since disused or about a church discipline that no longer exists. I have heard that some students of theology learn that the biblical story of creation is not true, nor that of Adam, nor the flood, nor the miracles of Moses. Some are taught that the prophecies were written after their fulfillment; that the virgin birth is a myth; likewise the resurrection of Jesus, that His bones have remained somewhere in a grave; that the Epistles are not genuine; and that Revelation is the book of a madman. Otherwise, the Bible is a holy book! This leaves a holy book in which there are allegedly more lies than in Chinese Communist newspapers." Tortured For Christ

"The highest goal of man is to become Christ-like." Tortured For Christ

"We of the Underground Church have no cathedrals. But is any cathedral more beautiful than the sky of heaven to which we looked when we gathered secretly in forests? The chirping of birds took the place of the organ. The fragrance of flowers was our incense. And the shabby suit of a martyr recently freed from prison was much more impressive than priestly robes. We had the moon and stars as candles. The angels were our acolytes who lit them." Tortured For Christ

"I have found truly joyful Christians only in the Bible, in the Underground Church, and in prison." Tortured For Christ

"Pastors in the West usually assume that those whom they have in church are really convinced about the main truths of Christianity, which they are not. You rarely hear a sermon proving the truth of our faith. But behind the Iron Curtain, men who have never learned to do it gave their converts a very serious foundation." Tortured For Christ

"When an engineer has built a bridge, the fact that a cat can pass over the bridge is no proof that the bridge is good. A train must pass over it to prove its strength." Tortured For Christ

"In the homes of many Western Christians, hours are sometimes spent listening to worldly music. In our homes loud music can also be heard, but it is only to cover the talk about the gospel and the underground work so that neighbors may not overhear it and inform the secret police. How underground Christians rejoice on those rare occasions when they meet a serious Christian from the West!" Tortured For Christ

"Jesus said, "Teach all nations." He never said that we need governmental permission to evangelize. Faithfulness to God and the Great Commission compels us to reach beyond borders to people in restricted nations." Tortured For Christ

"Persecution has always produced a better Christian-a witnessing Christian, a soul-winning Christian. Communist persecution has backfired and produced serious, dedicated Christians such as are rarely seen in free lands. These people cannot understand how anyone can be a Christian and not want to win every soul they meet." Tortured For Christ