Come to Jesus: Cap Kaylor says there’s a forgotten engine to Quaker spirituality
‘Early Friends were convinced that they were connecting with something more than an abstraction.’
In his book, With My Own Eyes, the Lutheran pastor Richard Wurmbrand recounts his fourteen years of imprisonment and torture in a Romanian prison, for the crime of preaching the gospel: ‘I was in jail and I fell very ill. I had intestinal tuberculosis, diabetes, heart failure… I was near death. On my right was a priest by the name of Iscue. He was the abbot of a monastery. This man, perhaps in his forties, had been so tortured that he was near to death. But his face was serene as he spoke of his hope for heaven, and about his love for Christ, and his faith. He radiated joy. In a grim irony, the priest’s torturer somehow ran afoul of his comrades, and was himself arrested, tortured, and thrown into the same cell as his victims. He was near me and dying in agony. During the night he would awaken me, crying out, “Pastor, please pray for me. I can’t die, I have committed such terrible crimes”. Then one night I saw a miracle. The dying priest called two other prisoners to help him and, leaning on their shoulders, slowly, slowly, walked past my bed, sat down on the bedside of this murderer, and caressed his head – I will never forget this gesture. I watched a murdered man caressing his murderer. Fr. Iscu said, “You are young, you didn’t know what you were doing. I love you with all my heart. If I who am a sinner can love you so much imagine how much Christ loves you. He forgives you. You only need to turn to Him.” In this prison in which there was no possibility of privacy I overheard the confession of this murderer to the man he murdered. They prayed together, and the priest went back to his cot. Both men died that night. It was Christmas Eve.’
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