"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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Richard Wurmbrand is a Jewish believer. He is a friend of my wife; they speak to each other in Romanian. He tells about a Romanian peasant who had been saved and imprisoned and tortured by the Communists for his faith.
There was also a scientist from the Academy of Science in Bucharest, who was not a Communist. He did not believe in God, he was just a scientist who was not a Communist, so they put him in prison and they tortured him. There was a small room with maybe forty people living in it, teetering on the brink of starvation, everyone of them having been beaten repeatedly. The Romanian peasant, who was not an educated man, was going around witnessing to the other people who were dying with him. Wurmbrand was there. The scientist, who had been a prominent intellectual, began mocking the peasant. He said to him, "How can you be happy? How can you say you have joy when this is happening to you? You don't even know if they have killed your family." Every day they carried out two or three dead bodies, and each of them wondered whether they would be next. "Why are you happy?" The peasant said, "I've told you many times, I am happy because of Jesus."
Remember Jeremiah? Jeremiah had a delight. He could not sit in the circle of merrymakers, but he still had joy. The scientist said, "Jesus! You are happy because of Jesus! Do you see Jesus?" "Oh, yes, I see him every day," replied the peasant.
"Do you talk to Jesus?"
"Oh, yes, I talk to Jesus every day."
"Does Jesus talk back to you?"
"Oh, yes, He talks to me every day."
"What does Jesus do? Does He ever smile at you?"
"Oh yes, Jesus smiles at me."
"Show me how He looks when He smiles."
And the peasant said, "Like this." And the Shekinah glory came over the face of this peasant. The scientist fell down on the floor and began pounding his fists on the floor and said, "You have seen Jesus Christ." And he became a believer.
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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.