100 Prison Meditations: Cries of Truth from Behind the Iron Curtain by Richard Wurmbrand Page A
Authors: Richard Wurmbrand
Tags: Philosophy
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to the Creator.
In Greek the word
echo
is used for “to have,” but it has several other meanings as well: “to be able,” “to be possessed with,” “to count,” “to do,” etc.
The idea of “having” is a false notion. l was born without my consent—I did not choose the time or place, my bodily shape, or my inherited character. My life developed in circumstances that were largely not of my own forming. I do not “have” my life. It proceeds according to laws established beyond myself. Nor do I have the things pertaining to life.
The renowned tenor Caruso was obliged to sing in the opera on the day of his mother’s death, in order not to disappoint the thousands of fans who had come especially to hear him. After the performance he exclaimed, “I believed in the beginning that I had a voice; now I realize the voice has me.”
Even joys and sorrows are given or withheld by others, and in the last analysis, by one other Being.
Not only is the infinitive “to have” absent from the Hebrew vocabulary, but even the genitive case is little in use. In Hebrew one does not normally say “the house of a man,” perhaps because nobody is meant to own one. In everyday Hebrew speech the genitive is replaced by the so-called “construct case,” which consists in shortening the word for the thing possessed. Thus any person or object reduced to being a possession loses value.
In the Lord’s Prayer the word “I” is missing completely, although it is one of the most frequently spoken words in the prayers of men.
There is one thing worse than praying before an idol: praying before one’s own image and bowing to it.
Christians should not be I-centered, but God-centered. The “I” should completely disappear in prayer, even as a reminder of the identity of the person who prays. True prayer is an outstreaming of love so pure that all that matters is the good of the whole and the will of God.
Another word that is completely absent from the Bible is the word “history.” History is the record of events as they succeed each other in time. In history an event is assumed to be the effect of preceding events which are its cause. All this is illusion. What I see in a cinema also seems to be a succession of events, but the projectionist could have run the film backwards, showing the events in reverse sequence, or the film could have been spliced to put the events in a different order. Everything is predetermined by God. The pen with which God has written all things that will happen until the end of the world has long since dried, and will not again be dipped in ink to write an alternative version.
23
Interesting Biographies Missing in the Bible
The New Testament recounts repeatedly and in great detail the life history and conversion of the persecutor Saul of Tarsus to Paul the future apostle, although there must have been other biographies which, at the time Acts of the Apostles was written, seemed more interesting than that of the persecutor.
Paul said, “Many of the saints I shut up in prison…and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them. And I punished them often in every synagogue and compelled them to blaspheme” (Acts 26:10,11). Not only had he killed Christians, he broke their resistance and made some of them become apostates.
These were the first renegades and martyrs of Christianity, but the Bible does not report their names or even tell the story of their suffering, betrayal, or heroic death.
Perhaps the biblical authors wished to prevent future abuses in the veneration of saints. In later centuries, stories of martyrs were told in minute detail and often embellished with fantasy.
The Bible says about the fellow prisoners of Old Testament Joseph, who was put in charge of them, “Whatever they did there, it was his doing” (Genesis 39:22). Likewise, the lives of martyrs are Christ’s doing. It would not have been biblical to make a great fuss over them; they themselves would
In Greek the word
echo
is used for “to have,” but it has several other meanings as well: “to be able,” “to be possessed with,” “to count,” “to do,” etc.
The idea of “having” is a false notion. l was born without my consent—I did not choose the time or place, my bodily shape, or my inherited character. My life developed in circumstances that were largely not of my own forming. I do not “have” my life. It proceeds according to laws established beyond myself. Nor do I have the things pertaining to life.
The renowned tenor Caruso was obliged to sing in the opera on the day of his mother’s death, in order not to disappoint the thousands of fans who had come especially to hear him. After the performance he exclaimed, “I believed in the beginning that I had a voice; now I realize the voice has me.”
Even joys and sorrows are given or withheld by others, and in the last analysis, by one other Being.
Not only is the infinitive “to have” absent from the Hebrew vocabulary, but even the genitive case is little in use. In Hebrew one does not normally say “the house of a man,” perhaps because nobody is meant to own one. In everyday Hebrew speech the genitive is replaced by the so-called “construct case,” which consists in shortening the word for the thing possessed. Thus any person or object reduced to being a possession loses value.
In the Lord’s Prayer the word “I” is missing completely, although it is one of the most frequently spoken words in the prayers of men.
There is one thing worse than praying before an idol: praying before one’s own image and bowing to it.
Christians should not be I-centered, but God-centered. The “I” should completely disappear in prayer, even as a reminder of the identity of the person who prays. True prayer is an outstreaming of love so pure that all that matters is the good of the whole and the will of God.
Another word that is completely absent from the Bible is the word “history.” History is the record of events as they succeed each other in time. In history an event is assumed to be the effect of preceding events which are its cause. All this is illusion. What I see in a cinema also seems to be a succession of events, but the projectionist could have run the film backwards, showing the events in reverse sequence, or the film could have been spliced to put the events in a different order. Everything is predetermined by God. The pen with which God has written all things that will happen until the end of the world has long since dried, and will not again be dipped in ink to write an alternative version.
23
Interesting Biographies Missing in the Bible
The New Testament recounts repeatedly and in great detail the life history and conversion of the persecutor Saul of Tarsus to Paul the future apostle, although there must have been other biographies which, at the time Acts of the Apostles was written, seemed more interesting than that of the persecutor.
Paul said, “Many of the saints I shut up in prison…and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them. And I punished them often in every synagogue and compelled them to blaspheme” (Acts 26:10,11). Not only had he killed Christians, he broke their resistance and made some of them become apostates.
These were the first renegades and martyrs of Christianity, but the Bible does not report their names or even tell the story of their suffering, betrayal, or heroic death.
Perhaps the biblical authors wished to prevent future abuses in the veneration of saints. In later centuries, stories of martyrs were told in minute detail and often embellished with fantasy.
The Bible says about the fellow prisoners of Old Testament Joseph, who was put in charge of them, “Whatever they did there, it was his doing” (Genesis 39:22). Likewise, the lives of martyrs are Christ’s doing. It would not have been biblical to make a great fuss over them; they themselves would
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