Two Godly Men for Our Season

Saturday, December 19, 2009, 20:50

This news item was posted in Editor's Message category.

Edwin Elliott (l) and László Tökés (r) in August 1990

Two Godly Men for Our Season

“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.” – Martin Luther

Christian Observer Publisher the Rev. Dr. Edwin Elliott, who died 11 October 2009, practiced and preached what he described as “Full Bible Theology,” in essence that the entire Bible is to be preached and applied to every aspect of one’s existence. One practical outward manifestation of Full Bible Theology is exegetically storming the cultural gates of hell of the moment being most promulgated and defended by the world system.

In late 1989 in the city of Timisoara, Romania, a friend of Edwin Elliott’s and like minded minister by the name of László Tökés pastored the Hungarian Reformed Church in that city, faithfully preaching the whole and relevent counsel of God in the midst of the brutal communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu and his secret police agency, the Securitate.

The whole and relevant counsel of God and all of its implications proved too much a threat to the Ceausescu regime and the quisling Bishop of Transylvania, László Papp, who ordered Tökés to cease preaching and officially closed the Timisoara Hungarian Reformed Church. The congregation kept attending church and Tökés kept on preaching. The Ceausescu regime upped the ante by having the Securitate murder some of the faithful church members, and Tökés’ salary was cut off and his ration card taken, leaving Tökés and his then-pregnant wife unable to buy food. The congregation kept attending church and Tökés kept on preaching.

Tökés was then ordered to vacate his home by 15 December 1989, and on that day Tökés’ congregants gathered in front of Tökés’ residence to prevent the police from evicting the pastor.

The escalation resulting from this initial act of defying the Ceausescu regime and the Securitate led to the 20 December 1989 overthrow of the communist Ceausescu government, and to Ceausescu’s and his wife’s subsequent trial and execution by firing squad for the genocide of 60,000 Romanians.

Several bloggers and other journalists have marked this 20th anniversary of freedom in Romania sparked by the courageousness and faithfulness of the Rev. László Tökés and his congregation. Links to some of these resources are provided at the end of this article, and I urge you to study these accounts of true Christian bravery and faithfulness in the face of brutal tyranny and almost certain death.

God has called for us to do no less – to wield the Shield of Faith and the Sword of the Spirit against the cultural gates of hell of this moment being promulgated and defended in our own perverse and crooked nation where souls are bought and sold for anything from a mess of pottage to hundreds of million of dollars in fiat money.

Let us too remember the brave and faithful Hungarian Reformed and other Hungarians who in 1956 unsuccessfully attempted to free themselves from Soviet tyranny, and suffered another thirty-three years of oppression before they too won their freedom.