"A Good Confession"
There was a brigade in Romania which was only for priests, bishops, pastors, rabbis, and laymen—whoever was in prison for his faith. One day a political officer came to inspect that brigade. Everybody stood at attention, and at random he called out a young man (whose name was Coceanga) and asked him, “What have you been in your civilian life?”
And he replied, “Sir, what I have been in my civilian life, I will be forever. I am a priest of God.”
“Aha, a priest! And do you still love Christ?”
The priest was silent for a few seconds—seconds as long as eternity, because he knew that his eternal destiny would be decided in those seconds. The Lord said, “Whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 10:32, 33).
And then after a little meditation, his face began to shine—I have seen so many shining faces—and with a very humble but very decided voice he said, “Captain, when I became a priest, I knew that during Church history thousands had been killed for their faith. And as often as I ascended to the altar dressed in those beautiful, ornate robes, surrounded by the respect and love of the congregation, I promised to God that if ever I had to suffer, if ever I wore the uniform of the prisoner, I would still love Christ."
“Captain,” he went on to say, “I so pity you. We have the truth, and you have whips. We have love, and you have iron bars on prison cells. Violence and hatred is a very poor argument against truth and love. If you were to hang all the professors of mathematics, if all the mathematicians were hanged, how much would four plus four be then? It would still be eight. And eight plus eight would still be sixteen.
“You can’t change the truth by hanging those who speak the truth. If all the Christians were hanged, it would still remain so that there is a God, and He is love. And there is a Savior; His name is Jesus Christ, and by confessing Him a man can be saved. And there exists a Holy Spirit, and a host of angels around the earth. And there exists a beautiful paradise—you can’t change the truth.”
I wish there was a way to convey the tone with which he said those words. We, the others, were ashamed because we believed in Christ, we hoped in Christ, but this man loved Christ as Juliet loved Romeo and as the bride loves the bridegroom.
- Richard Wurmbrand
