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In 1937, the Romanian Jew Richard Wurmbrand was passing through a little village where an elderly German carpenter was spending his last days. He gave Richard a Bible and urged him to read it. Wurmbrand told the kindly man that as a Jew he saw nothing in it for himself. But the unusual love the German showed him made an impression, and he read with an open mind and spirit.
In reading the New Testament, Wurmbrand saw a different Jesus from the one "demonstrated" to him and other Jews by the Romanian Orthodox and Roman Catholics. He saw Jesus, the Jew, the one who made sense of the portraits in the Hebrew Prophets and filled full the Torah of Moses.
Mostly, he saw a Jesus who loved people—including Jews. Eventually, Richard chose to become a Jesus-believing Jew and began to serve him as spiritual leader and pastor in his own town in Romania.
When the Nazis invaded the country, he was imprisoned for two reasons: his outspoken pulpit messages against German cruelty and his being a Jew. When the Russian Communists took over in 1945, his message changed only slightly: now he addressed godless Communist cruelty. He was imprisoned again. In total, he spent 14 years in Nazi and Communist prisons.
Upon release, he finally went to America and began a spiritual mission to help prisoners behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains. Though Richard Wurmbrand died February 17, 2001, his work continues—now as "The Voice of the Martrys" (persecution.com).
The following quotations are from Richard Wurmbrand's book Christ on the Jewish Road (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1970).
Jews & the Churches
As time went on, all the great Christian confessions seemed to me to be a Babel. They bore no resemblance to the Church that Jesus left behind, as described in the Acts of the Apostles.... The great confessions are not the historical successors of the first Church.... The great Church congregations cannot prove effective instruments for the salvation of Israel. Israel will never come to Christ through them. (page 46)
[S]piritual energy is wasted when a Jew becomes a Protestant, because no one Protestant speaks with sufficient authority, and you cannot therefore simply follow in his footsteps. From the pulpit and in their writings Protestants fight against other Protestants. What one says is contradicted by others. Thus a Jew inevitably wastes a great deal of his spiritual energy before the discovers the truth. (page 58)
Jewish Christians
I am convinced that the humble position of the Christian Jews is ordained by God. Through many tribulations they are prepared, not only to enter into God’s kingdom, but also to play a leading role in the work of establishing it. The Apostle Paul tells us that the receiving of the Jews, their conversion to Jesus [not to Christianity], will be life from the dead (Rom. 11.15). If carrying a heavy cross today did not mean preparation for future glory, our good Lord would not allow us to endure so much suffering.
Might it not be true that many Christians in the western world are no longer persecuted because they no longer frighten Satan, because they are unfaithful to Jesus? The Christian Jews should be grateful to God for persecution and for the martyrs they have fostered in so many parts of the world. (pages 94–95)
Christian Theology
There is a great deal of vanity in [theological books], as in other profane books. Theologians quote one another, instead of purging their spirits of all that is unessential in this qualified history which has accumulated in the courses of the centuries, and going back to the original source of power.
I got the impression that this Christian theology at best stops at Jesus. But Jesus Himself said: “No man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14.6). He declares that it is not He Himself, but the Father, who is the goal. If we have come to the Father, whom the Mosaic Jews also seek, we should be able to give them a helping hand. We should be able to prove to them that Jesus is the way they must follow to reach their desired goal. If we get no further than Jesus, whom they contest, then our witness is of little interest to them. (p. 112)
Jewish Christians Aren’t Superior
Merely because of the fact that Jesus was born a Jew, some Christian Jews assume that they are closer to Him than their Gentile brethren, and tend to look down on other Christians and patronise them. The belief in the Jew Jesus becomes just another kind of Jewish chauvanism, which is as intolerable as all chauvanism. This often results in conflicts, hidden or open, between the Gentile missionary and certain Christian Jews. A carpenter is not nearer to Jesus than a tailor because Jesus was a carpenter, nor is a man nearer to Him than a woman because He was a male. Neither has Jewish Christian any superiority over a Gentile, though he often claims it. (page 134)
Israel & the World
We are at one with the Zionists in one thing. We are in favour of Israel. The rights of the Jews to Palestine are unchallenable. God, the creator of the universe, gave them this country.
As for the Arabs, it is simply nonsense for them to be afraid of the Jews. What can three million Jews do the three hundred Arabs? The Arabs should rather profit and learn from the intellectual and financial superiority of their new neighbours. I should also expect the Vatican and the World Council of Churches to take a clear stand on the side of Israel. [Written in 1970]
The House Shem Built
The House of Christianity was built by Shem, by the Jews. In primitive Christianity, everything was derived from the Jews. It was from the Jews that “Christ came as concerning the flesh, who is over all God, blessed for ever,” wrote the apostle Paul (Rom. 9.5). The Bible is Jewish.
Luther denied the validity of the ecumenical councils, using as his argument the fact that they were not constituted by Jews. “God’s word was entrusted only to them,” he said. The apostles were Jews. The psalms which are sung in the churches were written by David.
For many centuries the whole of Europe has lived in the tent of Shem. The dominant influence exercised by the Christian civilisation embraces the entire world in its sphere. Only the Jews remain outside the dwelling which they themselves erected.
All races have rejoiced at the good grapes which the vine of Jesus has borne; the Jews alone have not tasted them. (p. 211)
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