Richard Wurmbrand, a Romanian Jew, has been called "the voice of the underground church." In the 1940s, he was jailed and tortured by communist officials in his home country. While imprisoned, he spoke boldly of the gospel to his atheistic captors.

About one experience in the 14 years he spent in prison, he wrote, "The political officer asked me harshly, 'How long will you continue to keep your stupid religion?'

"I said to him, 'I have seen innumerable atheists regretting on their deathbeds that they have been godless; they called on Christ. Can you imagine that a Christian could regret when death is near that he has been a Christian and call on Marx or Lenin to rescue him from his faith?'

"The atheist began to laugh, 'A clever answer.'

"I continued, 'When an engineer has built a bridge, the fact that a cat can pass over the bridge is no proof that the bridge is good. A train must pass over it to prove its strength. The fact that you can be an atheist when everything goes well does not prove the truth of atheism. It does not hold up in moments of great crisis.'

"I used Lenin's books to prove to him that, even after becoming prime minister of the Soviet Union, Lenin himself prayed when things went wrong."