Pastor Lazlo Tokés have been called by God to a struggling ministry among despised minorities in Timişoara, Romania.
He lived in the time of the dictator Nicalae Ceauşescu who ruled the country with sadistic cruelty for 25 years.
To hold onto power, Nicalae Ceauşescu created the Securitate with the largest network of spies and informants in Eastern Europe. He declared Romania to be atheistic, but demanded to be worshipped like a god. This brutal dictator and his wife destroyed their nation’s economy and systematically looted billions from the treasury. He ruled the nation with fear and atrocity in such a point where by the dogma was established that no one can compromise or not take into consideration because the stake was extremely high to discredit those principles.
In 1989, the communists authorities and his bishop muzzled his preaching and his ministry but the pastor refused to compromise the gospel, after the authorities cancelled his ration card, his family survived on handouts from members in his congregation.
The secret police were coming to arrest him. Everyone knew that once the dreaded Securitate hauled anyone away, they were never seen again. His parishioners begged him to go into hiding. He responded with the words of Martin Luther: “Here I stand. I can do nothing else. If I die, then I die.”
A goon squad came in the dark of night on December 16, 1989. To their surprise, 300 parishioners surrounded the church with arms locked together in solidarity. Inspired by their pastor’s willingness to die, they were willing to give up their lives too. Word of their standoff with the secret police spread and thousands of people joined them. The bully boys from the Securitate retreated, and a revolution that started with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall six weeks earlier had come to Romania.
The next day a 100,000 people stormed the Communist headquarters in Timişoara, shouting in unison, “God is alive. Jesus is alive.” Word of the
uprising spread to the capital city of Bucharest and almost a million people marched in the streets shouting, “God is alive. Jesus is alive.”
As protestors surged through the streets, the army turned on their dictator. On December 25th a military court tried Nicalae and Elena Ceauşescu on
the charge of genocide. Within two hours they were convicted and executed. A pastor who was willing to die to self changed the world, but the dictator who lived for self was swept into the dustbin of history.
Lazlo Tokés proved the words of Jesus in John 12:24, “…unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” Pastor Tokés took courage from this stanza of Martin Luther’s great hymn, A Mighty Fortress is Our God:
The secret police were coming to arrest him. Everyone knew that once the dreaded Securitate hauled anyone away, they were never seen again. His parishioners begged him to go into hiding. He responded with the words of Martin Luther: “Here I stand. I can do nothing else. If I die, then I die.”
A goon squad came in the dark of night on December 16, 1989. To their surprise, 300 parishioners surrounded the church with arms locked together in solidarity. Inspired by their pastor’s willingness to die, they were willing to give up their lives too. Word of their standoff with the secret police spread and thousands of people joined them. The bully boys from the Securitate retreated, and a revolution that started with the tearing down of the Berlin Wall six weeks earlier had come to Romania.
uprising spread to the capital city of Bucharest and almost a million people marched in the streets shouting, “God is alive. Jesus is alive.”
As protestors surged through the streets, the army turned on their dictator. On December 25th a military court tried Nicalae and Elena Ceauşescu on
the charge of genocide. Within two hours they were convicted and executed. A pastor who was willing to die to self changed the world, but the dictator who lived for self was swept into the dustbin of history.
Lazlo Tokés proved the words of Jesus in John 12:24, “…unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” Pastor Tokés took courage from this stanza of Martin Luther’s great hymn, A Mighty Fortress is Our God:
“…Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also
The body they may kill; his truth abideth still…”
The body they may kill; his truth abideth still…”
