Ten Lessons from the Sufferings of Richard Wurmbrand
Republished with permission from David Clements at the Professor’s Record.
This week’s episode was inspired by two martyrs. Richard Wurmbrand and Tina Peters. Wurmbrand left his mark years ago. Peters remains in prison, innocent, the poster child for suffering because of 2020’s election corruption:
I TOOK A SMALL BREAK. An eight-dollar cigar. A roof-top view of a sunset. For twelve years straight I have battled. From running for the U.S. Senate, dealing with lawfare, staring down murderers, to breaking the propaganda feed concerning our rigged elections, to having my cabin burned to the ground. I’m tapped out.
Where to go for resources, refreshment, perspective?
My mind goes to a prison cell.
The cell is black. Not dark. Black. Richard Wurmbrand sits on a small stool, naked, the cold biting into his bones like a slow wolf. He counted days by the beat of his heart. The guards had taken his name. He had preached in the open once. In Bucharest, before the boots came. He had stood in the pulpit and told the communists that Christ was King and that no man could serve two masters. They laughed at first. Then they took him.
Richard Wurmbrand was born in 1909 in Bucharest to a Jewish family that cared little for God. By thirty he cared for nothing but Christ. He became a Lutheran pastor, married Sabina, and preached in the streets and air-raid shelters of wartime Romania. When the communists took power he stood before four thousand delegates of the new puppet church and declared that a Christian’s duty is to glorify God and Christ alone. That speech bought him fourteen years in hell’s basement. Three of them were spent thirty feet beneath Bucharest in cells where daylight was only a rumor. He emerged in 1964, half-crippled, wholly alive, and spent the rest of his days telling free Christians what it really costs to follow the King who refuses to bow.
They tried to break him in countless ways. Wurmbrand stands as judge of the tepidness of the modern-day church. Churches that preach the Gospel with words alone, but with no action when it could disturb their comfort. A Gospel that preaches that it is wisdom to avoid the political battlefield, implying that the Bible has nothing to say about governance and wielding the sword with wisdom.
Wurmbrand also stands as the example that slaps me awake. No self-pity. You can always give more. You have suffered little compared to what is possible. My cigar is done burning. My four-hour vacation is over. The topic for today is:
Ten Lessons from the Sufferings of Richard Wurmbrand
They locked Wurmbrand in the carceret, an upright box lined with nails that waited for the knees to buckle. When exhaustion bent him, the iron drank. In that suffocating coffin, I imagine that he remembered Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego strolling in the furnace with a fourth man who looked like the Son of God.
He learned to lock his knees and lean his head and shoulders against opposite walls in such a way that the spikes barely touched the skin. The moment his strength began to fail, he would shift his weight millimeter by millimeter to keep the nails from penetrating deeply.
He forced himself to compose and memorize entire sermons in his head—one verse or one thought at a time. This kept his mind from drifting into despair or unconsciousness. He later said he preached more sermons in the carceret than in many years of freedom.
“I felt arms around me that were not human arms. I was held as a mother holds a child. I do not know how long—minutes, hours—but when I came to myself I was still standing and the nails had not entered deeply. I knew then that He would not let me die before my time.”
The lesson is plain: when the culture nails you into a box labeled bigot or insurrectionist, the spikes are not the final word. When you see no way out, the Son will hold you upright. He still walks inside the fire. The Pastors who feel the points coming do not need to slump into silence. The yoke is light because the One who shares it has already been pierced.
They put Wurmbrand barefoot on a block of ice for days, then into scalding steam—freeze, burn, repeat—until the nerves in his feet died. Years later in America, a freezer door at a supermarket could drop him straight back into the cell. He would stand shaking until he breathed the name of Jesus and walked on. Like Joseph in the pit, sold by brothers, waiting in darkness until the throne was ready. Cold betrayal did not destroy Joseph; it prepared him. The church today, frozen by old wounds or new threats, does not need to deny the trembling. It needs the promise set before Christ, that he would make all things new, which carried Him through the cross and will carry His people through every ambush of memory.
They beat the soles of Wurmbrand’s feet with rubber hoses until skin split and bones wept. In the middle of the blows he prayed for the guard swinging the hose. He thought of Stephen kneeling under stones, asking forgiveness for his killers. Pain has a ceiling; love does not. When the state or the mob today swings at patriots and pastors who name the sins written into law—abortion, child mutilation, the worship of power—do not curse back. Bless. That is the one blow no regime has ever learned to block.
And remind yourself, if you are reading this you aren’t in a cell. Count your blessings that nothing but fear prohibits you from going on offense politically to fight against such Satanic treachery.
They kept Wurmbrand three years in total darkness. A cell three paces by three paces—so black he forgot the color of bread. He preached hundreds of sermons to invisible congregations. He thought of Paul and Silas singing at midnight until the prison doors shook.
Light is not required for worship; only a heart is. When the culture cancels and drives biblical voices underground, the church does not need bigger platforms. It needs deeper darkness, where sermons are born and prisoners become preachers. Have you been cancelled on social media? If digital doors are closed, seek out real people and build alliances in person.
They put Wurmbrand in solitary, forbidding him to speak aloud. Could you imagine being separated from your child and bride for 14 years? He tapped on pipes until someone tapped back and a hidden orchestra began. He thought of Elijah hearing the still small voice after the earthquake and fire. No matter how alone you feel. Whether in real chains, or just the space between your ears, the Spirit still connects the scattered. Pastors and patriots who feel alone in their stand need only tap. Somewhere another trembling shepherd will answer.
They injected Wurmbrand with drugs meant to scramble the mind. He recited Scripture until the Word outran the poison. Oh, the jabs and pills “We the People” have willingly put into our bodies. Not to mention the things we can’t avoid. Chemicals in the air, the water, our food. Wurmbrand thought of Jesus in the wilderness meeting every lie with “It is written.” Have you prayed to combat the poison, real or spiritual, running through your veins? The Great Physician awaits. When the culture pumps its venom into schools, laws, and even pulpits, the antidote is not clever argument. It is the spoken Word, louder than the needle.
They finally let Wurmbrand look into a mirror after years of darkness and disfigurement. The handsome young pastor was gone. A skull stared back, teeth broken, face collapsed, eyes sunken in a mask of ruin. He wept—not for vanity, but for the glory of it. He thought of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, marred beyond human likeness, of Jesus on the cross, battered until unrecognizable. The lesson burned: the body of Christ is most beautiful when it is most broken, because every bruise purchased a soul. Pastors and patriots who fear looking ugly in the public square—fear the sneer, the meme, the late-night host’s joke—have forgotten that the gospel advances by scarred flesh, not polished image.
One day in Wurmbrand’s labor camp, an old abbot lay dying beside the very interrogator who had tortured him for years, Captain Vasilescu, now himself imprisoned by the next wave of purges. The abbot reached out a skeletal hand, forgave the man who had crushed his fingers one by one, and led him to Christ. That night both men died and, Wurmbrand believed, entered heaven together. He thought of Jesus praying from the cross, “Father, forgive them.”
Forgiveness is the ultimate act of war against hell. The church that withholds it has already lost the battle. Can you defeat the rigged election usurpers—bureaucrats and blue-check inquisitors by righteously wielding the government’s sword—and then brandish a heart soft enough to share the Gospel after they are caught?
Wurmbrand’s hell had loudspeakers that blared the same messages over and over again: “Christianity is dead. The church is finished. Nobody loves you. You are forgotten.” Wurmbrand laughed until the guards beat him for laughing. I think of the bots today, the black-pill accounts on every platform, the endless chorus that nothing changes, no one is coming, it’s all over. Same loudspeakers, newer wires. Every time I submit an article, I wince in preparation of the slander, hatred, and demoralized sneers to come.
The answer is the same: the tomb is empty, the church is alive, and the One who loves you has scars in His hands to prove it. Do more than play at being Christian. Earn some scars along the way.
Finally, in 1964, Wurmbrand’s communist torturers shoved him across the U.S. border with the warning: one public word and your family dies. He found the nearest microphone and used it until his voice gave out. Like Esther walking uninvited to the throne and of the apostles filling Jerusalem with teaching the moment the prison doors opened. Silence after deliverance is betrayal.
Richard Wurmbrand is dead. His scars sleep in a grave outside Los Angeles, California. But the lessons still walk. They limp into our carpeted sanctuaries and ask the question the communists never managed to beat out of him:
Are you afraid of the world, or of God?
The phrase “separation of church and state” is not in the founding documents any more than it was in the founding documents of Babylon, Persia, or Rome. Joseph, Daniel, Nehemiah, and Esther never found it there either. They found only one command: obey God rather than men when the two collide.
The yoke is still easy.
The burden is still light.
The joy of the Lord is still strength.
The cell door may wait.
But to live is Christ and to die is gain.
My mind wanders to one more cell, occupied by prisoner Tina Peters. Seventy years old. Defamed. Slandered. Abused. Threatened. Imprisoned for exposing the truth. A living martyr.
That one honest election clerk demonstrates greater sacrifice than any pastor in America shows you how far we have fallen.
Oh church, when will you wake up and drive out the election slavers? When will you unplug from the matrix? When will you risk flipping over a table?
To President Trump, I recognize that war brings about collateral damage. That state charges prohibit a federal pardon being given. But please don’t forget about Tina. She is a prisoner of the information war you chose to prosecute on behalf of the American people.
The DOJ continues to think small in how to free her. She is as deserving as any political hostage needing liberation. You told her tormentors to release her “or else.” We are at the “or else” stage.
To Tina, every day you are locked away your legend grows. I pray that angels visit you. That Richard Wurmbrand is part of the cloud of witnesses giving you comfort each night. We love you. We miss you.
So, we keep your memory front and center.
David K. Clements is a seasoned attorney, former law professor, filmmaker and dedicated advocate for election integrity and constitutional rights. If you think he’s on to something, consider being a monthly sponsor of his independent journalism at:
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