Welcome to the prison pulpit on the China Compass podcast. I'm your China travel guide in exile missionary. And finally back home with my family in Malaysia flu all night last night. Really wasn't all night. It was just a few hours four hours or so from Calcutta back here to Kuwala Dumpur left Calcutta. I guess it would have been two thirty or no three or four in the morning. Malaysia time and arrived at 7 30 or eight in the morning here. So really just half a night. So the couple hours on the plane. But I'm back home after two weeks in India. It's weird doing these intros again. The last couple weeks I've been recording the podcast the main content. But I had pre-recorded the kind of the intro and the outro. So here we go again. You can follow me on Twitter ex at China adventures where I share a new Chinese city to pray for every single day. Feel free to email as well anytime China Compass at privacy port dot com and everything else. Pray give go dot us has links to our Patreon page. Substack which I'm going to I'm going to post today's content on substack a little bit later. As well as the books that I've helped to publish over the last couple of years the memoirs of William Millen the first missionary to Malaysia. The autobiography of John G. Payton is another one. There's links out here in the here in the show notes as well as at praygivego.us. John G. Payton was the missionary to the cannibals in the South seas Lord willing. I've got plans to go back to the islands here in about two months and with my daughter and we're going to do kind of a follow up. This is part one. We're going to do part two later this year. But we'll visit the islands in May again Lord willing. Gordon of Yale the millionaire missionaries and other one that I did and it's available as well and speaks for itself the millionaire missionary board of Yale. It's a fascinating story about sacrifice of course no reserve no retreat no regrets that's where that phrase comes from comes from his story not from his lips but from his story his testimony and then finally unbeaten which is my own my own memoir of the month that I was arrested interrogated and then deported from China back in 2018. I can't believe it's been almost eight years. I'll probably take some time in the podcast next month around the anniversary to kind of go back over that time and tell the story once again in my own words here on the podcast. We'll see it'll be eight years on April 30th. Now yesterday in Calcutta as I'm talking about books and whatnot I had the privilege of talking with a William Kerry scholar he's been there for a number of years working there and again I can't say too much the fact that I can't even really mention his name or details that would identify him should remind us to pray for those who continue working in difficult places like India. India is not getting easier for a missionary is getting much harder it's very difficult to get in and out as a missionary almost impossible you have to get it going as a tourist going under business maybe as a student so even I had as I left yesterday from Calcutta I sort of got mildly interrogated by the customs or immigration officer as I was leaving I was surprised actually leaving he said wherever you been and he want to know every where I'd stayed and everywhere I'd been and he was looking for something out of the ordinary something not touristy because I guess they would be they would want to ask more about that so I didn't mention the friends I met you know I mentioned the hotels I'd stayed in and some of the places I'd been but they were it felt a lot like China except for even in China they rarely would ask us at immigration those direct questions they would generally just stamp you on through anyway so India is not easy but I talked and met Lieshade with this William Kerry scholar really knowledgeable guy I ought to I ought to post some of the books in the show notes that he has worked on and so he showed me some yesterday in person that they worked on some really fascinating books from 200 years ago memoirs of one missionary lady American girl who was there for seven years and and really kept an amazing diary of her experiences that book is available again I think I could find it and put the link in the show notes I'll see if I can do that if not this week it'll be sometime in the future but check that out so I really enjoy talking to him and then from there I was able to head to the airport and fly home if you ever wanted to visit Serimpur Serimpur is the part of Calcutta where William Kerry primarily lived and worked you can go there is a bit of a little museum there of sorts if you wanted to contact me I can give you information or if you just look it up you'll be able to find information online if you really want to Serimpur is the place William Kerry museum is the specific museum on the campus of the university there in Serimpur but I do recommend that if you're interested in missions if you're ever in India it's recommended to go and visit that place and there's really cool stuff happening there now speaking of prison speaking of difficulty speaking of persecution that's what this particular midweek podcast is always about and why do I call it the prison pulpit the reason is to remind people remind us to pray for persecuted believers as Hebrews 13 3 teaches us to do in a way that we don't often think of doing remember those who are in prison as bound with them as if you were with them as if you were tied up with them chain with them in the prison cell with them that's the part that we don't often put into practice we've looked in the past at pastor Wang Yi from early rain church in China and the church's writings as well about the their arrest and their attack on their church back in 2018 I've also turned regularly to other persecuted ministers especially Richard Wormbrand to give us a voice from literally within prison walls Richard Wormbrand wrote and wrote a lot of amazing stories from his time in isolation in prison back in the 1950s and 60s and today actually we're going to look at his story again it is his birthday it was his birthday yesterday March 24th was Richard Wormbrand's birthday he let's see he would have been 117 years old this year he died back in 2001 I believe at the age of 91 he was born in 1909 March 24th 1909 Richard Wormbrand and I decided to look up a couple of references to birthdays from his books from his memoirs one of the books was sermons and solitary confinement which we've gone through not the whole book but a lot of it on the podcast in the past year or so and the other one is his book really detailed book Christ in the communist prisons in God's underground and he talks he tells all kinds of stories about his years in prison there and that book as well and so I wanted to see did he did he mentioned birthdays at all I knew he did at some point I wasn't sure what I would find but pretty quickly I found a couple of references there were some fun little stories I say fun little stories that's probably not the right way to phrase it very you know he was talking about prison and persecution and and beatings and all this stuff it's fun little stories but it is fascinating stories and helpful stories helpful thoughts from him on his birthday in prison before I move onto that and read that two other things real quick first it's also my eldest daughters birthday tomorrow Thursday March 26th I just want to say happy birthday to her here on the podcast I won't see her I'll see her in about a month I'll be in the States on a brief trip there so really proud of her she'll be at NSA this fall there in Idaho so if you're a student at NSA or if you're somebody who's connected to there you she'll be around campus starting in the fall and so again I don't want to say her her name publicly here just for my security sake and for her sake as well but if you really want to know if you're there you can feel free to write me again privacy kind of compass at privacyport.com we can we can definitely share some details off the the public line here but I wanted to mention that so happy birthday to my daughter there and really proud of her her and I almost died together two years ago and we were in a bad car accident I thought about mentioning this two weeks ago when it happened I just forgot got busy on that particular podcast whatever it was and never mentioned it but we almost died we we rolled a couple times in a pickup truck on March 14th two years ago and we both sustained pretty major injuries I had a bad concussion and staples in my head and and shattered my wrist and we both broke our collarbones and we broke it both had slight issues with our with our back as well and then she also broke her hand both hands wrist left arm completely broken in two different bones were broken straight through and then her heel and her left ankle so really really badly she's doing much much better she's able to you wouldn't even notice if you just watched her walk down the street or if you met her in in the school or what not you would never notice unless you could see some of the scars that are there on her arm if she pulls her sleeve up or whatnot so but we're very thankful to be alive both of us and and God has brought us through that and and we've we've learned so much and we both of us said the same thing simultaneously out in different places around the same time last year on the one-year anniversary we both were saying to our own kind of friends and people that if we could go back and change it we wouldn't change a thing because we learned so much and grown so much through that experience and and it was not easy it was very difficult but we did grow through that and I think that's how persecution works you know we weren't persecuted always is a very different thing we suffered but not persecution persecution also if we suffer God in a godly way we will look back and say yeah I don't know if I would change anything I think God was pruning me through that he was building me he was growing me through that into more into more the character of Christ himself so I want to mention those two things before oh that was one thing there's a second thing I want to mention again whenever I mention Wormbrand whenever I mention that people think immediately a voice of the martyrs and voice of the martyrs honestly they're the ones their Facebook post or whatever is what reminded me that it was actually his birthday today so they've done some good work in the past but I have to say this because I know Michael Wormbrand personally Michael is the the only son of Richard and Sabina Wormbrand the the mother and father he is 85 years old this year 85 years old and he is no longer recommending or involved with voice of the martyrs for a number of reasons I've shared in the past on the podcast a little bit about that and I wanted to share something slightly different this time I just asked Grock earlier I just said is Michael Wormbrand still involved in ministry I didn't I didn't kind of feed any information about the the issues that he's had with voice of the martyrs and his his concerns with that I just asked if he was still involved in ministry and I want to read you the short summary that Grock gave me for Michael Wormbrand because it does kind of put the controversy in a helpful way and then you can decide for yourself or research it more if you'd like so the answer from Grock is yes Michael Meehai is with his name and parentheses Wormbrand is still involved in Christian ministry though not with voice of the martyrs the organization his parents founded he serves as president of the Richard Wormbrand foundation also referred to as help for refugees and that's it kind of goes by both names I've I've shared that in the past on the podcast this is a separate nonprofit he established to continue aspects of his parents legacy helping persecuted and suffering Christians especially refugees and those impacted by persecution while distancing himself from Vom voice of the martyrs and here's some key details it says Michael has publicly criticized Vom voice of the martyrs from particularly since around 2014 over issues like governance use of his parents names and likeness without permission financial decisions and past scandals there was some major scandals in the past some issues of sexual abuse and different things with one of the leaders of Vom he has urged donors not to support VOM and has shared open letters explaining his concerns his foundation maintains a website richewormbrand foundation dot com by the way you can get all almost all of Richard's books for free downloads ebooks there at richewormbrand foundation dot com and contact details are there as well it offers free access to his parents books and materials and he has given interviews about his family's experience under communism there's there's videos and interviews on the website as well as of the most recent publicly available information including foundation updates he remains active in this capacity no reports indicate he has retired or passed away I can confirm that I talked him not too long ago in the last year so we we've communicated back and forth he's in southern California michael's involvement reflects a desire to honor his parents work I wanted to make sure and read this on his own terms focusing on direct aid and the original vision without affiliation to the larger vom network so he's trying to do what his parents really really intended to do support people directly on the ground primarily Romania those who suffer and and provide resources for free whereas vom has grown into this really major major and on profit with lots and lots of income that he did not agree on how they were spending it if you're interested in supporting your contact ministry there's information here as well and I'll post the link to Richard Warren brand foundation again I wanted to mention that again as well because it's important to him if you ever talk to michael Warren brand mihae Warren brand it's very important to him and from what I can see he has some valid concerns I haven't researched it to be able to say independently that I understand everything going on but I do trust him and I know he's a very sharp man he's been through it he's been through it all all the things his parents went through he was there he was he was the one without a father for all those years growing up in Romania he went through the persecution as well along with his family there with all that out of the way let me read to you and share with you these couple of stories from Richard Warren brand's books so I'm going to start here with this the tiktok of the pendulum in the prison corridor makes me conscious that time passes here as it passes for those who are free soon I will have to give an account of every second of my life this is from sermons and solitary confinement this particular story so he's he's sharing this as if he's teaching us something here he's a sermon that he composed while he was in solitary confinement soon I will have to give an account of every second of my life today is my 40th birthday so this would have been when he was in prison back in um 1949 march 24th 1949 is when he would have composed this prison sermon I have to account for 1,200,000, 261,440,000 seconds he says while I was making this calculation other seconds have passed I have a duty to fulfill every second the fact that I'm in solitary confinement does not release me from this duty as a rule prisoners pass their time in trifles I know this from my time in the Nazi prison if they are if they are not compelled to do slave labor they tell each other stories and joke sometimes they quarrel they waste their time just as some millionaires do millionaires use a lot prisoners very little of nature's wealth without always feeling it their duty to give something to the world in prison there's a feeling of being released from duty especially when you are in solitary confinement who has the right to ask anything from you when you are in such terrible circumstances but the imperative of life knows no excuses duty is a categorical demand whether you are in happiness or unhappiness mocked hungry jailed sick falsely charged tortured alone you have to serve the highest capital H highest the one above right I know my duty it does not consist so much in doing things prison conditions hinder me from accomplishing deeds and then I did a little bit of editing here just for the sake of time and we're going to skip down a little bit here the Romans had a proverb I can't speak Latin quote agi sagi do what you do or in other words do just one thing most of us when we are praying think of the pancake on the fire which might burn while making pancakes we then think about how nice it would be to pass our time in prayer while speaking with one man we think how useful it would be to pass our time with another we never do anything well only one thing can be done well at a time those who participate in too many sports never become champions our earthly life is short let us not be like the ass in the story who having two heaps of hay before him died of hunger not knowing which to choose to eat from but let us concentrate upon our single aim to develop a heavenly character which by contagion will fill gods heaven with men and then he continues and what if I am tortured remember he wrote the book torture for Christ and what if I am tortured Christ saved a robber while he was on the cross my brethren to my right and left have sometimes brought their torturers to Christ a communist officer beating a Christian prisoner with a rubber truncheon put his stick aside and asked what is it about you how is it that your face is shining you have something like a halo round your head how can you look at me so lovingly I would never love a man who jailed and beat me how is it that you can obey the foolish commandment of your Christ to love your enemy the Christian answered I am not obeying a commandment it is not that I love you only because Jesus orders me to Jesus has given me a new heart and a new character if I wanted to hate you I would no longer be able to do so a night and gale cannot sound like a crow because it is a night and gale and not a crow so a Christian can only love and then this last line just leaves it it leaves it like a mic drop he says that rubber truncheon has remained put aside forever translation the man came to Christ and was probably put in prison almost immediately after himself wormbrand talks about that kind of thing happening many times in his writing now again that lightly edited excerpt was from which are wormbrand's sermons and solitary confinement which he composed during his first 10 year imprisonment what comes next now is the story of his rear rest a few years later just before his 50th birthday and so this is not really about his birthday per se but he does mention birthdays in this particular story of his rear rest after he had been released for a couple years and rear rest that you'll understand when we get to that particular spot the revocation of my license as a pastor did not stop me from preaching but now I had to work as secretly as I did among Soviet soldiers after the war were were two a new danger appeared in the form of visits from old prison friends asking advice and help some tried to provoke me into speaking against communism they had turned in former they were in for months now these unhappy men had expected too much from their release on finding their domestic world in chaos they had turned to the pursuit of sexual pleasure in a vain attempt at recapturing lost youth this usually cost more than they could afford and the shortcut to a new start with the regime and quick profits lay in providing the party with information their freedom ultimately proved more tragic than their confinement he's telling in a few words here the story of men who were released from prison went back into the world and then became informants and they pretended to be true believers coming to the pastor for help to be trying to get him to say something that they could turn him in and then get paid by the party for being that successful informant just evil stuff our best safeguard against informers lay in the warnings we receive from friends in the secret police many of our followers you know church members held party jobs one young couple who spent their days in the propaganda department past their evenings praying with us and more than once we met in the home of a leading secret police officer away on vacation whose maid was one of us this is awesome stuff this reminds me of Paul in in prison right talking about there's in the palace guard there's believers there in the palace guard everyone here's heard of Christ they're meeting in the home of a secret police officer while he's away on vacation because the maid had access and she was a believer there this is cool stuff he says or we gathered in basements addicts flats or country houses our services were as simple and beautiful as those of the first Christians 1900 years ago we sang aloud should the neighbors ask questions it was a birthday celebration so there we go birthday celebration was their cover Christian families with three or four members had 35 birthdays a year sometimes we met in the open country I got to stop there that's just a funny line Christian families with three or four members had 35 birthdays a year and that's how they would meet with one another there sometimes we met in the open country the sky was archithedral the birds supplied our music the flowers are incense the stars are candles the angels were the acolytes who lit them and the shabby suit of a martyr just freed from prison meant far more to us than the most precious priestly robes I knew of course that sooner or later I would be re-arrested after the revolution and hungry the situation grew more difficult every month christjev announced a new seven year plan to eradicate the vestiges of superstition very much like china with the last ten or fifteen years they've been trying their best to eradicate religion and superstition from china with the with sheeding ping there churches were closed or converted for use as communist clubs museums grain stores those whom the party newspapers reviled as swindlers in black casics priests in other words were rounded up by the thousand I prayed quote god if you know men in prison whom I can help whose souls I can save sin me back that's that's wild sin me back remember this is during his first release from prison he'd been released he's already been there ten years already suffered immensely for ten years he says if I can help save soul send me back and I'll bear it willingly subbina his wife sometimes hesitated then said amen you can you can imagine her hesitating not just jumping in with a quick amen she also was in prison three years during his first tenure in prison she also spent time suffering in the labor camp at this time there was an inner joy about her that came from knowing we would soon serve christ more fully i'm not sure what he means by that last line there that particular line did they think they would be released or they were talking about being in heaven together i'm not sure what he's referring to there specifically almost done here it was one a.m. on january 15th 1959 this is just two months shy of his 50th birthday when they finally came our home was turned inside out in a search that lasted until five a.m. so one a.m. to five a.m. four hours i was blessed in china never to have my my stuff gone through like that they didn't go through our home they could have they didn't they didn't for whatever reason my son found a lost belt of his behind a dislodged cupboard and and he quote and yet people say the secret police are useless he remarked that's awesome he's made the comment and people say you guys are useless you help me find my belt i've been looking everywhere for that he said the next day he was barred from night school for insolence so they kicked him out of school for the day for his insolent attitude when the police came to search through his house when they had taken me away where rank continues subena picked up my bible on a scrap of paper she found a sentence i had noted down from the epistle to the Hebrews 1135 Hebrews 1135 through faith women received back their dead raised to life i had written below it in my own handwriting i have such a woman for my wife so he left a note of encouragement for his wife when he was arrested he knew it was coming he felt it was coming and there and he began another second lengthy imprisonment four five more years in prison in the mid 60s if you don't know the story him and his wife and family were ransomed out of Romania ten thousand dollars at that time to be able to escape and even then it was a miracle they made it out it was it was they tried to get the money and still put them in prison but they were able to escape from Romania and he became the primary voice for the martyrs you know voice of the martyrs was a ministry he did start again no longer the family is no longer involved directly in the ministry even the son who still alive but he became the voice of the martyrs who were still suffering under communism many years later and again i recommend checking out his books i'll put links in the show notes here to the books to the Richard Wembran Foundation where all the books are located as well thank you for listening to the podcast today i just hope this helps you to think and pray for those who are still in prison suffering around the world in different ways we can learn from Wembran so much and i'm really doing and challenge read these books check them out they're so helpful so encouraging to read the testimonies from those prisons so long ago and to know that many things like that are still happening today thank you again for listening subscribe leave a review whatever wherever you listen and don't forget pray give go has access to the books and everything else sub stack everything else remember those in prison as bound with them talk to you again in a few days god bless me would you in our scene as if you were bound with me pastor taught us what is right the snacks to weigh in the dead of night how will we care for his family or answer the question where's my daddy oh remember me oh remember me would you in our scene as if you were bound with me me when it's a crime to share of a god who cares a crime to shine light and to despair the church will find it's hard to be anything other than guilty oh remember me oh remember me would you in our scene as if you were bound with me remember me when will i walk free oh remember me where's my daddy remember me do we need to flee remember me the season of suffering the child pass then i'll see my savior's face at last pray that i'll walk faithfully bear my cross patiently oh remember me oh remember me would you in our scene as if you were bound with me you