The first persecution of the Church took place in the year 67, under Nero, the sixth emperor of Rome.

A sheep in the midst of wolves is safe compared with the Christian in the midst of ungodly men.

No catalogue of horrors ever kept men from war. Before the war you always think that it's not you that dies. But you will die, brother, if you go to it long enough.

Let us pray for the many Christians in the world who still suffer persecution and violence. May God grant them the courage of fidelity.

There has been a banking crisis, a financial crisis, an economic crisis, a social crisis, a geostrategic crisis and an environmental crisis. That's considerable in a country that's used to being protected.

We were masters of nature, masters of the world. We had forgotten everything--death, fatigue, our natural needs. Stronger than cold or hunger, stronger than the shots and the desire to die, condemned and wandering, mere numbers, we were the only men on earth.

We marched. Gates opened and closed. We continued to march between the barbed wire. At every step, white signs with black skulls looked down on us. The inscription: WARNING! DANGER OF DEATH. What irony. Was there here a single place where one was not in danger of death?

That was when I began to hate them, and my hatred remains our only link today. They were our first oppressors. They were the first faces of hell and death.

For God's sake, where is God?" And from within me, I heard a voice answer: "Where He is? This is where — hanging here from this gallows.

We were not afraid. And yet, if a bomb had fallen on the blocks, it alone would have claimed hundreds of victims on the spot. But we were no longer afraid of death; at any rate, not of that death. Every bomb that exploded filled us with joy and gave us new confidence in life.

The value of the Bibles smuggled in by these means cannot be understood by an American or an English Christian who "swims" in Bibles.

The early church worked secretly and illegally, and it triumphed. We must learn again to work in the same manner. Until the Communist era, I never understood why so many persons in the New Testament are called by nicknames...We continue to use secret names in our work in captive nations.