"The Crucified Life"
There are those who won't believe until they see a crucified and resurrected body, the very witness provided by true believers in the course of this life.
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My wife is a Romanian Jew. Her parents are Holocaust survivors. They suffered under the Nazis and narrowly escaped with their lives. Most of the family was killed. Then they suffered under the Communists. My wife grew up as a "Refusnik" and immigrated to Israel when she was eleven years old.
Ceausescu was a terrible, evil man, but the church grew in Romania. Revivals happened among Gypsies and people who had previously been unconvertible. Many Jewish people were saved. Richard and Sabena Wurmbrand (Voice of the Martyrs) came out of that Jewish community. So many of the believers we know in Israel were Jews from Romania. What made the church in a country like that grow? What did people see to make them believe? They saw a crucified body that had been resurrected.
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. (Gal. 2:20).
They did not just parrot the words. The revolt in Romania that overthrew Ceausescu began in the place that had the highest concentration of evangelical Christians in Romania.
I have met many Christians who lived in the power of the resurrection. I have met many Messianic Jews who live in the power of the resurrection. I remember about ten years ago in Israel, while the Iron Curtain was still standing and very few Jews were able to get out of Russia to come to Israel. Some did and some of these were believers who were saved in underground Pentecostal and Baptist churches.
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Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation.