Tortured For Christ

Read Tortured For Christ, and you will know how you can help the underground church, the church which believes the same gospel you do, but lives in countries where it is against the law to talk of such things. I know, it's overwhelming, because there are so many needs and so many people. Go here to see which countries have laws against believing Christianity to be true or teaching Christianity to others:

http://www.persecution.com/public/restrictednations.aspx?clickfrom=bWFpbl9tZW51

"The underground church is like a surgeon who travels by train. The train collided with another train, and hundreds of people lay on the ground, mangled, injured, dying. The surgeon walked among the dying, crying out: 'If only I had my tools! If only I had my tools!' With these surgical instruments he could have saved many lives. He had the willingness, but he did not have the tools. This is where the underground church stands. It is so willing to give all. It is so willing to give its martyrs! It is so willing to risk years in prisons! But all of its willingness is of no value if it does not have the tools with which to work. The plea of the faithful, courageous, underground church to you who are free is: 'Give us the tools- the Gospels, the Bibles, the literature, the help- and we will do the rest.'"

Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured For Christ

When Richard Wurmbrand received Bibles in Romania from American and British Christians, he met two men who had walked from a nearby village to shovel snow all winter to buy a Bible. Wurmbrand gave them a Bible and refused their money, and they took it back to their village and dividing the Bible into thirty sections. Those thirty people received their piece of the Bible with joy!

Voice of the Martyrs send Bibles into restricted nations through the donations of people who love Christians they have never met. Voice of the Martyrs also financially supports the families left behind when a Christian is arrested or killed. Oftentimes, it is made a crime to help the family of a Christian martyr. When Wurmbrand and his wife were arrested, a woman risked her life by taking their son into her house. She was sentenced to eight years in prison. All of her teeth were kicked out. Her bones were broken. She was crippled for life, never able to work again.

"The underground church works under very difficult conditions. Atheism is the state religion in all the Communist countries. They give relative freedom for the elderly to believe, but children and youth must not believe. Everything in these countries and other kinds of captive nations- radio, television, cinema, theater, press, and publishing houses- has the aim of stamping out belief in Jesus Christ. The underground church has very little means of opposing the huge forces of the totalitarian state. The underground ministers in Russia had no theological training. There are Chinese pastors today who have never read the entire Bible."

Tortured For Christ was written in 1967. Today, it is estimated that 171,000 Christians are martyrs every year. The examples of what Christians have been willing to suffer for their faith, then and now, is so far beyond what what most of us will ever experience. Yet our prosperity can be meaningful in so many ways if we so choose. Our prosperity can travel throughout the world for His sake.