Radical Faith
Aug 30, 2026 · 41 min · 10 segments
- Speakers
Rob FurlongHost
Aug 30, 2026 · 41 min · 10 segments
Rob FurlongHost
the book by Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured for Christ, it's his testimony as a Romanian pastor and how he served 14 years in prison, two stints, I think there was an eight-year stint and a six-year stint and it was punctuated in between by just a small area of freedom but Basically, from the end of 1949 for 14 years, he was in prison because he was a Christian and because he was a pastor and refused... to come under the heel of the communist regime that had been installed in Romania and in his book, Tortured for Christ, it's not an easy read because, and not that he goes into a lot of detail, he actually says in the book that he spares us the details of a lot of what went on because there were hundreds and hundreds of Christians who were imprisoned by the communists for their faith in Jesus Christ.
He tells the story of Pastor Florescu who was tortured with hot iron pokers and knives and then had other unspeakable evil things done to him.
He talks about the fact that many, if not all of the prisoners who were in those prisons were relentlessly drugged and brainwashed by their communist captors.
He tells the story of how many of them were hung upside down by their feet and then they would be beaten so savagely that they would swing backwards and forwards just because they were Christians.
He also tells the story of how, and he experienced this himself, they would take the prisoners and plunge them into an icebox, cover the lid.
And then the doctors would monitor it carefully and when the person was at the point of beginning to freeze to death, they would take them out, warm them up and just as they were getting warm, they would throw them back in again into the icebox.
But those were the things that our brothers and sisters in Christ were suffering at that time under that awful regime.
The question becomes this and this is what we've been looking at over the past few weeks as we've looked at Matthew chapter 10 and we've talked about rugged faith, we've talked about real faith and today we're talking about radical faith.
You will remember when we kicked this series off we talked about the calling of the 12 disciples and the mission that the Lord Jesus sent them on, but also how when you get to verse 16, there's a definite shift in Matthew 10 and it moves just from instructions to those disciples... to instructions for all of us as Christians and we've been, as I said, looking at what it means to have a rugged faith.
Pastor Sam looked last week at what it means to have a real faith and we conclude this morning with a radical faith.
And so my question is, when you hear stories like Richard Wurmbrand's and when you understand that some 388 million of our brothers and sisters who are in other lands at this moment are suffering extreme and devastating forms of persecution, how do you respond? What is the response? And I'm absolutely convinced that the only response to that kind of experience and that kind of suffering is radical faith and in the song that we just sang, and let me preface what I'm about to say this morning, when I talk about radical faith is the only answer that you can have to that kind of suffering...
it comes out in the words of the song that we just sang before we came into this time around God's Word, yet not I but Christ through me.
It is only Jesus Christ who can give us the strength to live the Christian life in good circumstances and in extreme circumstances.
So let me begin by saying that this morning because we're going to listen to some challenging things here that come out of this passage and We can only do it, folks, through the strength of Jesus.
How do you respond? I'm going to share a little bit later in the message about how the Romanian Christians responded to their torturers.
What is radical faith? When you hear the word radical, what do you think? If you go to a modern dictionary, you'll read this.
It means to believe or express the belief that there should be greater extreme change.
See, most of the time when we hear the word radical these days, we think that somebody is promoting extreme change, that we've got to do something really extreme, something really radical to bring about the change that we desire.
But if you go to an older dictionary, and might I say, a correct dictionary, you'll discover that the word radical actually means what is at the root of something.
What is its core or its source or its essential or its fundamental beliefs? That's what radical means.
the book by Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured for Christ, it's his testimony as a Romanian pastor and how he served 14 years in prison, two stints, I think there was an eight-year stint and a six-year stint and it was punctuated in between by just a small area of freedom but Basically, from the end of 1949 for 14 years, he was in prison because he was a Christian and because he was a pastor and refused... to come under the heel of the communist regime that had been installed in Romania and in his book, Tortured for Christ, it's not an easy read because, and not that he goes into a lot of detail, he actually says in the book that he spares us the details of a lot of what went on because there were hundreds and hundreds of Christians who were imprisoned by the communists for their faith in Jesus Christ.
He tells the story of Pastor Florescu who was tortured with hot iron pokers and knives and then had other unspeakable evil things done to him.
He talks about the fact that many, if not all of the prisoners who were in those prisons were relentlessly drugged and brainwashed by their communist captors.
He tells the story of how many of them were hung upside down by their feet and then they would be beaten so savagely that they would swing backwards and forwards just because they were Christians.
He also tells the story of how, and he experienced this himself, they would take the prisoners and plunge them into an icebox, cover the lid.
And then the doctors would monitor it carefully and when the person was at the point of beginning to freeze to death, they would take them out, warm them up and just as they were getting warm, they would throw them back in again into the icebox.
But those were the things that our brothers and sisters in Christ were suffering at that time under that awful regime.
The question becomes this and this is what we've been looking at over the past few weeks as we've looked at Matthew chapter 10 and we've talked about rugged faith, we've talked about real faith and today we're talking about radical faith.
You will remember when we kicked this series off we talked about the calling of the 12 disciples and the mission that the Lord Jesus sent them on, but also how when you get to verse 16, there's a definite shift in Matthew 10 and it moves just from instructions to those disciples... to instructions for all of us as Christians and we've been, as I said, looking at what it means to have a rugged faith.
Pastor Sam looked last week at what it means to have a real faith and we conclude this morning with a radical faith.
And so my question is, when you hear stories like Richard Wurmbrand's and when you understand that some 388 million of our brothers and sisters who are in other lands at this moment are suffering extreme and devastating forms of persecution, how do you respond? What is the response? And I'm absolutely convinced that the only response to that kind of experience and that kind of suffering is radical faith and in the song that we just sang, and let me preface what I'm about to say this morning, when I talk about radical faith is the only answer that you can have to that kind of suffering...
it comes out in the words of the song that we just sang before we came into this time around God's Word, yet not I but Christ through me.
It is only Jesus Christ who can give us the strength to live the Christian life in good circumstances and in extreme circumstances.
So let me begin by saying that this morning because we're going to listen to some challenging things here that come out of this passage and We can only do it, folks, through the strength of Jesus.
How do you respond? I'm going to share a little bit later in the message about how the Romanian Christians responded to their torturers.
What is radical faith? When you hear the word radical, what do you think? If you go to a modern dictionary, you'll read this.
It means to believe or express the belief that there should be greater extreme change.
See, most of the time when we hear the word radical these days, we think that somebody is promoting extreme change, that we've got to do something really extreme, something really radical to bring about the change that we desire.
But if you go to an older dictionary, and might I say, a correct dictionary, you'll discover that the word radical actually means what is at the root of something.
What is its core or its source or its essential or its fundamental beliefs? That's what radical means.
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