Richard Wurmbrand, founder of Voice of the Martyrs, once speculated it might be well to have university level courses in what the Bible says about Christian suffering. He jokingly called it "Sufferology Studies."
The current VOM staff decided to give wings to this concept, and now you can enroll in Persecution Studies, at http://www.vomclassroom.com.
The purpose of the online courses is to help students increase their understanding of Christian truth which will help them stand against heresy, become better witnesses, and draw nearer to Christ.
Here is a little about Pastor Wurmbrand from the http://torturedforchrist.com website:
We have written about his courage as he stood alone among more than 1,000 leaders to denounce the control of Romanian communism. The communists had closed Sunday schools and oppressed the church. Pastor Wurmbrand resisted the communists’ control of the church and went underground. He held services for youth attending his church in front of the lion’s den at the Bucharest Zoo to prepare them for battle with the world. Pastor Wurmbrand led his little Lutheran congregation, composed of many Jewish converts, to the Bucharest train station to toss Russian Gospels into the windows of passing trains filled with invading Russian soldiers. The soldiers kept the Gospels. For many such acts of aggressive love, he and his wife both went to prison.
Recently in Romania a poll was taken to ask the population who they felt were Romania's top ten most influential citizens. Pastor Wurmbrand was on the list. (I cannot cite the source of this information, but learned it at the VOM conference— See related post.)
His books are wonderful and many are currently being used in outreach to South American village Indians and guerrilla troops (see next post) as well as all over the world. They are provided to missionaries by VOM.
My favorite book by Pastor Wurmbrand is: Mark and Satan which presents many convincing proofs that Karl Marx was a Satanist. As a youth, Wurmbrand had studied Marxism in Moscow.