Richard Wurmbrand

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Richard Wurmbrand (born March 24, 1909 in Bucharest , † February 17, 2001 in Glendale ) was a Romanian Lutheran pastor and founder of the aid action Märtyrerkirche , which campaigned for persecuted Christians .

Life

Richard Wurmbrand was born the fourth son of a German-Jewish family. In 1918 his father, a dentist , died and the family became impoverished. At 16, Richard Wurmbrand later said, he was an ardent communist and atheist . In the 1930s he became a businessman, achieved prosperity and participated in the exuberant life of the Romanian capital, the "Paris of the Balkans". In 1936 he married Sabine Oster, who was also of Jewish descent. In 1938 their only child, son Michael, was born.

In 1937, according to his autobiography, Wurmbrand came to the Christian faith through an old German carpenter in a small Romanian village. He was then trained and ordained as a pastor at the Anglican Mission for Jews . Jews found refuge and protection from the onset of anti-Semitic persecution in his church and in his private home .

In 1948 he was arrested, interrogated and tortured by the communist regime that came to power after World War II. The imprisonment in Sighet Prison lasted eight years until 1956. He spent three years in strict solitary confinement in underground dungeons, without sunlight or noise from the outside world.

He was given an amnesty on condition that he stopped preaching . He was arrested again three years later and imprisoned until 1964. For 10,000 US dollars were Norwegian Christians ransom him and his family (Norwegian Mission to the Jews and Hebrew-Christian Alliance).

Richard and Sabine Wurmbrand were only allowed to travel to Romania again in 1990 after 25 years of exile. In 2006 he was voted fifth on a list of the 100 most famous Romanians .

plant

In the west, Wurmbrand was the founder of the worldwide mission society Hilfsaktion Märtyrerkirche , which campaigned for the persecuted Christians behind the Iron Curtain . In 1967 he published his experiences in the communist prison in his first book "Tortured for Christ" (German 1968 tortured for Christ ). It has been translated into 65 languages ​​and had a circulation of over four million copies. In a large number of other publications, Wurmbrand campaigned for Christians in communist countries who were discriminated against, persecuted, arrested and tortured because of their beliefs.

In Germany there is the relief campaign Märtyrerkirche eV (also called "Voice of the Martyrs"), which he founded in 1969. After the collapse of the Eastern bloc, it is also active in the Islamic world.

While Wurmbrand's biographical content and reports on the situation of persecuted Christians in Romania are an important source of information on the situation of Christians in the communist sphere of influence, some factually unreliable information can be found in his publications, which somewhat reduces the value of his non-fiction books. In one book he mentions e.g. For example, a misunderstanding that is widespread to this day that the command “Do not be afraid!” Occurs exactly 366 times in the Bible - once for every day of the year (including a leap day), so to speak. In fact, this request is only found about 100 times in the Bible. In another book, Wurmbrand cites the rumor that was widespread at the time, which did not correspond to reality, that Charles Darwin converted to the Christian faith shortly before his death and distanced himself from his theory of evolution . Due to the widespread use of Wurmbrand's books and magazines, errors are also widespread.

Publications

  • In God's underground. With Christ for 14 years in communist prisons. Evangelisationsverlag Berghausen, undated [approx. 1967], ISBN 978-3-9228163-3-1 .
  • Tortured for Christ ; German: Tortured for Christ. An account of the suffering and confession of the Church of Martyrs. 1st edition Aussaat Verlag, 1968; 19th edition, Uhldingen 2004, Hilfsaktion Märtyrerkirche, ISBN 978-3-9810003-0-6 .
  • Soviet saint (1968)
  • Stronger Than Dungeon Walls (1969)
  • Blood and Tears (1967/1970)
  • Wormbright letters (1970/1973)
  • The Blood-Stained Gospel (1973/1974)
  • Answer to Moscow's Bible (1974/1977)
  • Achievable heights. Daily Devotions (1978), ISBN 978-3-9212131-7-9 .
  • Karl Marx and Satan - Was Karl Marx a Satanist? (1978), ISBN 978-0-88840-461-9 .
  • Little notes that like each other (1979/1981)
  • Where Christ Still Suffers (1980/1983)
  • Christ on the Judengasse. (1980ff), ISBN 978-3-9228167-2-0 .
  • A Fire From Fire (1985)
  • Atheism - a way? 35 Evidence of God's Existence (1986)
  • The other face of Karl Marx (7th edition 1987)
  • The Song of Love (1988)
  • Correspondence with Jesus (1990)
  • Sorrow and Victory (1991)
  • From the Mouths of Children (1992)
  • Seven words on the cross (1959/1993)
  • The Overcomers (1994)
  • If Prison Walls Could Talk (1995)
  • Alone With God (1995)
  • Jesus, Friend of Terrorists (1995)
  • Perfect Blessing (1997), ISBN 978-3-9228166-9-0 .
  • The mirror of the soul. Stephanus Edition (1959/2000), ISBN 978-3-922816-94-2 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The 100 most famous Romanians ( Memento of the original from July 16, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: mariromani.ro @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mariromani.ro
  2. ↑ Founder of the Märtyrerkirche relief campaign , traced-christen.org, accessed on March 30, 2018.
  3. ↑ Wurmbrand: In Gottes Untergrund , p. 22. Corrected by Franz Graf-Stuhlhofer in the magazine Bibel und Gemeinde 1990, p. 324f.
  4. ↑ Wormbrand: Achievable Heights. Daily Devotions , 1978, p. 336, under “24. September". Corrected by Franz Graf-Stuhlhofer : Charles Darwin. World trip to agnosticism. 1988, Chapter 8: "Darwin's Religious Attitude"; there pp. 90–92.
  5. ↑ Edward Caudill: Darwinian Myths: The Legends and Misuses of a Theory . Univ. of Tennessee Press, May 30, 2005, ISBN 978-1-57233-452-6 (accessed August 26, 2012).
  6. ↑ A critical examination of several sections of Wurmbrand's non-fiction books can be found in Franz Graf-Stuhlhofer : Christian Books Critically Reading. A textbook and workbook for training your own judgment based on excerpts from conservative Protestant non-fiction books. Publishing House for Culture and Science, Bonn 2008; on Wurmbrand's books pp. 23, 26, 29–34.
personal data
SURNAME Wormbrand, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Romanian Lutheran pastor
DATE OF BIRTH March 24, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Bucharest
DATE OF DEATH February 17, 2001
Place of death Glendale , California