A Son Remembers.. The book Tortured for Christ has been edited its not the same book i read in 73.. fact is quite a bit has been edited out for our "new generation" of believers and unbelievers alike.. Powerful testimonies from Richard and the sufferings he endured have been eliminated.. reminds me of oh never mind that.. A Son Remembers follows..
In December 1965, my father, Rev. Richard Wurmbrand, was invited to speak at the First Baptist Church of Rome, in Italy. It was his first Sunday in the Free World. He was freshly ransomed from communist Romania for $10,000 by Scandinavian Christians after 14 years of torture in prisons there. The pastor of the church was to be absent, so an American missionary who attended the church invited my father to speak. However, the Baptist minister did not leave Rome so he came to the service and listened to my father.
Hardly had my father, who was fluent in Italian, started his sermon when this minister stood up and interrupted him. “In this church you cannot say one word against communism. I am a Communist and a Baptist,” the pastor shouted. My father asked him loudly, “How can you be a Christian Baptist and at the same time a communist when communists are atheists? Communism denies the existence of God?”
To our horror, as fresh refugees from a communist country, the church stood up, chanting again and again, “
Io sono Comunista i Batista, Io sono Comunista i Batista! (I am a Communist and a Baptist!).” We had been happy to arrive into the Free World and here we were meeting the nightmare of communism. This “church” service ended in true bedlam.
Communism is very subtle in its attack on the free world and on Christianity..
http://torturedforchrist.com/remember/
tob
*edit: wrong year