1.5.2 Inner Freedom – Protection Against External Bondage
Those who are free inside cannot be broken, even if they are tortured or imprisoned. This is the common experience of the saints of God who have suffered in communist prisons. And these people, if they are not martyred, have come out of prison more mature and sanctified then when they went in.
At the same time, many people in communist countries, who were never imprisoned but did not experience the inner freedom brought about by a strong faith in God, lived as ‘prisoners’ of their own fear and guilt because of their compromises and of their silent acquiescence in the oppression perpetrated by communist authorities.
Personal story – My own father, who lived through the worst period of the Stalinist persecution but endured it in silence, as did many other Christians around him, was regularly harassed by secret police officers and lived under constant fear, especially when I started to become active as a Christian student and became the object of the attentions of the secret police.
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