If a Christian really believed that his neighbor will be tortured in all eternity in Hell, he should try day and night to persuade him to repent and believe. How sad that this doesn't happen.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the moral obligation to act on one's beliefs about salvation and the consequences of not believing.
Richard Wurmbrand's quote highlights the urgency and responsibility that one should feel if they truly believe that their neighbor is in danger of eternal suffering. It reflects on the ethical imperative to guide others towards repentance and faith, suggesting that failure to do so is a grave moral oversight, indicating a lack of compassion or conviction.
In practice
During a sermon at church discussing the importance of evangelism.
There was once a fiddler who played so beauitully that everybody danced. A deaf man who could not hear the music considered them all insane. Those who are with Jesus in suffering hear this music to which other men are deaf. They dance and do not care if they are considered insane.
Some tell me Preach the pure gospel! This reminds me that the Communist secret police also told me to preach Christ, but not to mention communism. Is it really so, that those who are for what is called a pure gospel are inspired by the same spirit as those of the Communist secret police?
Christians are meant to have the same vocation as their King, that of cross-bearers. It is this conscience of a high calling and of partnership with Jesus which brings gladness in tribulations, which makes Christians enter prisons for their faith with the joy of a bridegroom entering the bridal room.
It was strictly forbidden to preach to other prisoners. It was understood that whoever was caught doing this received a severe beating. A number of us decided to pay the price for the privilege of preaching, so we accepted their [the communists' ] terms. It was a deal; we preached and they beat us. We were happy preaching. They were happy beating us, so everyone was happy.
God will judge us not according to how much we endured, but how much we could love
A faith that can be destroyed by suffering is not faith.
Experience demands that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the general prey of the rich on the poor.
Shall I faint, now that I have poured out the spirit of my mind to the world, and treated many subjects with truth, with freedom, with power, because I have been followed with one cry of abuse ever since for not being a Government tool?
No doubt many people have the feeling that to talk about death at all is, in effect, to conjure it up mentally, to bring it closer in such a way that one has to face up to the inevitability of one's own eventual demise. So, to spare ourselves this psychological trauma, we decide just to try to avoid the topic as much as possible.
To hold an idea and convince ourselves we arrived at it rationally, we go in search of evidence to support our view.
What, then is law [government]? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
It is the Spirit alone that can mortify sin; he is promised to do it, and all other means without him are empty and vain. How shall he, then, mortify sin that has not the Spirit? A man may easier see without eyes, speak without a tongue, than truly mortify one sin without the Spirit.
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