Paul Negrut: "Only become a missionary if you're willing to die"



Christians should become missionaries only if they're willing to suffer and
die for the gospel, an Eastern European Baptist pastor told college and
seminary students at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary's annual
"Beyond" missions conference Feb. 18-20. "If you're not ready to suffer,
you better stay home because missions has a lot to do with suffering," said
Paul Negrut, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church, Oradea, Romania, one of the
largest Baptist churches in Europe. "Do not play with God, fool yourself or
deceive others in saying otherwise."

EXPECTATION IN PRAYER
When Jesus asked the disciples to pray while they were in the Garden of
Gethsemane, they fell asleep, Negrut continued, noting, "We should keep
watch and expect great things from God, but men and women with no
expectations cannot stay awake." During Romania's 45 years as a communist
country, Christians were under great persecution and given no hope or
future in the country, but they still had expectations that God would work,
Negrut said. "The government and press portrayed Christians as the most
uneducated and stupid people in Romania, so there was no place for us in
higher education or good jobs. We couldn't elect our own pastors or
deacons, and for a while we couldn't meet in churches more than once a
week. We couldn't buy one piece of furniture without permission. Yet the
church grew, and we prayed that radio, television, sports halls, military
barracks, schools, prisons and those on the streets would be places where
people would hear the gospel. God has made all that happen. We had
expectation in prayer."

WILLING TO PAY THE PRICE
For God's will to be done, believers must be willing to pay the price,
Negrut said. He visited a gifted Romanian hymn writer who was put in prison
for 17 years and tortured daily for refusing to write songs glorifying
communism. Each day, after being thrown into sewage and kicked by other
prisoners, he wrote another hymn. Romanian churches sing from this
collection of hymns today. "I went and visited him after he was released to
get some encouragement," Negrut said. "When I arrived, he was bleeding
because minutes before I got there communist police had come and tortured
him. I got angry, but he said we aren't on earth to complain, but to praise
the name of our Lord Jesus. He praised God for the beauty of suffering and
prayed for his torturers." This hymn writer had even told the torturers he
loved them, and in 1988 a Secret Police officer had become a Christian
through his witness.

PERSECUTION A BLESSING
Negrut also used Matthew 5:10-11 to show that persecution is a blessing.
"When people bless you, do they ask for someone to come beat you up and
torture you?" he asked. "Somehow, in our mindset, we associate blessing
with a time of peace, prosperity and abundance. But if we're broke, ill or
suffering, or if we're arrested or someone is murdered for being a
Christian, we believe that God has abandoned us." But Jesus linked the
kingdom of heaven with persecution, Negrut said. "There are blessings that
only come with persecution. Suffering and persecution are essential parts
of the Christian life. It's not something strange, and when you suffer,
you'll experience the presence of the kingdom of God." Suffering shows what
a Christian is made of, and that is almost why the communists persecuted
them, he said. "When something around us is strange and unusual, we want to
see what is inside to see if it's real. Would it last?"

GOD'S PROVISION
One believer was put in prison for not denying Christ and wasn't given any
food, Negrut recounted. He knelt and prayed for God's provision and will.
From the very first day, he said, in a small hole in the wall, a chicken
laid a fresh egg every day for this man. "After several weeks, the guards
wondered why he wasn't dead," Negrut continued. "It's because Jesus is Lord
and he can feed him there. Some police in the jail accepted Christ because
they learned that blessed are those who are persecuted."

THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIAN LOVE
Another blessing that comes with persecution is that Christian love reaches
its essence, Negrut said. Officials put a group of pastors in jail and said
they would only feed one of them after a few days. They hoped that national
television would broadcast any resulting fights to put down the idea of
Christian love. "Days later, the pastor who got the food didn't touch it.
He said he was unworthy to eat it because all the others had greater
ministries. He said if he died, it wouldn't be a great loss to the church.
None of them actually touched the food, and the communists couldn't believe
it."

PERSECUTION GIVES STRENGTH
Persecution also gives strength, Negrut said, telling of a stroke he
suffered after a very difficult time in his ministry in 1988, and for
months his left arm and foot were paralysed. He couldn't go to the
government hospital because nurses there probably would've given him a shot
that would kill him. His family nursed him in the mountains, and he played
with the idea of leaving Romania for good. "I prayed with a friend of mine
about it, and he left and came back with a prayer of a Christian man who
had died in prison that had been sent to families to encourage them. It
said that he was looking forward to seeing Jesus face to face and seeing
the whole Christian family together. He asked that during the parade of the
martyrs if he could wear the uniform of a Romanian prisoner for he wanted
to be a prisoner of Christ. It was because of that letter that I decided to
stay."

LETTER TO CEAUCESCU
Still, times weren't easy. His wife suffered a stroke after the family
suffered a police attack, and he had a second stroke the following year in
1989. He was arrested and nearly executed in November of that year.
Thirty-six Baptist pastors, including Negrut, wrote a letter to the
dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu Dec. 13, telling them that they honour Christ and
that he should stop telling the people to worship the leader when he needed
to humble himself. "We were all ready to be arrested and probably
executed," Negrut said. "Even the Romanian Orthodox patriarch praised
Ceaucescu."

GOD TURNS HIS FACE TO ROMANIA!
But things began to happen quickly. On Dec. 17, Negrut got a phone call to
preach at a crusade in Timisoara. When the communist police were about to
arrest a pastor there, a group gathered around his house. In two days, the
crowd grew to 10,000, and they moved to the headquarters of the communist
party to pray there. Ceaucescu sent troops, Negrut said, and opened fire on
those up front, killing them. "What I saw in those next few moments is hard
to put into words," he said. "We all knelt down for a moment and then stood
up and shouted, 'God exists! God exists! God turns his face to Romania!'
over and over until past midnight." The government in Bucharest called the
people in Timisoara hooligans influenced by the FBI and the CIA, Negrut
said, but people began protesting in Bucharest. On Dec. 24, the army
arrested Ceaucescu and executed him Christmas Day. He quoted one newspaper
headline saying, "Christ is born; the Antichrist is dead."

"If you serve the kingdom of the world, it'll be gone soon," Negrut said.
"But the King of Kings is my king, and his kingdom lasts forever. Suffering
is normal, but with it comes the glory. Life doesn't end here, but begins
here."

Source: IMB News

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