Vietnamese church leaders in the 1970s relied on one book as their “communism survival guide”. This was not the only country in SouthEast Asia to shift to communism, backed by a Chinese agenda to control the area. In 1976 Cambodia witnessed its own communist takeover by Pol Pot resulting in genocide on a massive scale under the new repressive regime.
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When Ho Chi Minh rose to power in Vietnam he instituted agrarian reforms such as restricting private land ownership. He backed up these changes with mass executions to dispel any resistance in the villages.
After the First Indochina war in which French forces against the Chinese-backed Việt Minh, many Christians of South Vietnam fled the country to survive. However for those that stayed they suffered tremendously.
For them to survive they drew upon the wisdom of Romanian pastor Richard Wurmbrand who survived horrific torture at the hands of his communist captors.
Vietnamese house church leaders once
shared with me how they prepared their Christian flocks to survive and grow under the expected
Communist takeover of South Vietnam in the 1970s.They distributed the Vietnamese translation
Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured For Christ.
of Tortured for Christ as a survival guidebook, a testimony of an overcoming faith in incredibly
difficult circumstances.
Rule 1: How To Hide In Plain Sight
The Underground Church in 1940s Romania clashed with the newly formed Romanian Communist Party’s secret police.
In August 1944, one million Russians came with the Soviet Red Army and forced their way into Romania. The Soviets forced the Romanian King to elect communists to their government. Soon after they were in full control.
The secret police greatly persecuted the Underground Church, because they recognized in it the
Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured For Christ.
only effective resistance left. It was just the kind of resistance (a spiritual resistance) that, if left
unhindered, would undermine their atheistic power. They recognized, as only the devil can, an
immediate threat to them. They knew that if a man believed in Christ, he would never be a
mindless, willing subject. They knew they could imprison the physical body, but they couldn’t
imprison a man’s spirit-his faith in God. And so they fought very hard.
However the Underground Church of Romania had its tricks which it used to operate in public view while protecting themselves from immediate danger.
We then went to the Communist demonstrations and distributed these “Communist” booklets.
Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured For Christ.
The Communists, seeing the picture of Marx, competed with each other to buy them. By the time
they reached page ten and discovered that they were all about God and Jesus, we were far away.
Rule 2: Prepare The Church
Shortly after the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d’état Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk, who wasn’t a communist, was found dead. The communists had murdered him, a bleak sign that everything was about to be made much worse by the new leadership of the country.
Father Kolakovic of Czechoslovak had been operating his Underground Church for 5 years already, in this way he prepared his church for communism knowing it would bring suffering to his native country.
In this same way preparation and active response against the communists was vital to the Underground Church of Richard Wurmbrand of Romania in 1945. His organization infiltrated the Secret Police in order to monitor their spying on the church’s activities.
To those that chose to wear the dreaded uniform it was a shameful circumstance, still feeling the sting of seeing their homeland dissolved and made in Stalin’s image of communism.
Many other rules were found in Wurmbrand’s “Tortured For Christ”, these helped South Vietnamese Christians survive the oppression of their communist rulers until they could either escape of go underground with their church in hiding.
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