As anyone could see, the power all belonged to Nicolae Ceausescu, ruthless dictator of communist Romania. The powerless man was Christian pastor and humanitarian activist Petru Dugulescu. His weapons were words–about truth and dignity and freedom. Words written in poems and essays. Words spoken in sermons and conversations. And, so you see, Petru Dugulescu endured years of persecution, including multiple assassination attempts, always under the hostile eye of Securitate, the Romanian secret police. Even in a world of secrets and shadows, these things were plain to see.
But Petru Dugulescu also lived in a world that we cannot see, a world entered by prayer to an invisible God whom the Bible pictures on a heavenly throne. A God whose people regularly close their prayers by acknowledging to Him: “Thine is the power–and the sovereignty (“kingdom”), and the personal splendor so shiny and weighty (“glory”) that radiates from your presence like rays from the sun. And on Christmas Day 1989, millions of television viewers around the world watched as Nicolae Ceausescu, the man with the power, don’t you see, was publicly executed along with his wife Elena for genocide and other murderous crimes. Ceausescu only thought that the kingdom was his. Meanwhile, Petru Dugulescu became an important political leader in his liberated home country. Among many good works Dugulescu founded is Charity Foundation: Jesus the Hope of Romania.
Dugulescu’s wife and daughter also remember him as a faithful husband and loving father, a committed disciple of Jesus Christ. They recounted stories about him this July at the International ROM 2013 Gathering held in Fuzine, Croatia. ROM is sponsored by the Forum for Leadership and Reconciliation, whose founder and director is gracEmail subscriber Tihomir Kukolja. Dugulescu’s daughter and wife gave a (now recorded) tribute titled “Courage to Freefall With Jesus” (16:46 min.). At the end of the recording, while all around them communism in Romania is crumbling and collapsing, thousands of human voices publicly pray aloud in unison for the first time since the iron fist of dictatorial Marxism first came down, when Ceausescu outlawed such anti-state practices and proclaimed atheism to be Romania’s official religion. To listen to the tribute and more, click here or go to http://romjourney.blogspot.com .