The Berlin Wall: Tyranny Laid Waste

(I update and republish this story annually to honor the victims of Communism and the brave souls that fought and died for freedom. This year I particularly want to celebrate the new attention that our government and others (like Bill Maher) have brought to persecuted Christians. We have to be both diligent and in constant prayer for the victims of jihad, anti-Semitism, and Caliphate-building, and the victims of Communist regimes and rising Marxism.)

As we celebrate the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we continue to implore the God of the universe to give His Body grace and courage to tear down ALL walls of tyranny, despotism, demonic globalism, and injustice in every corner of the globe. We thank Him for giving us in America more days to work for spiritual revival and nationwide reformation.

We pray that the Lord will bring healing to our nation and fan the flames of Revival Fires that are burning across American and across the world. May He open the eyes of those who have fallen under the spell of socialism, identity politics, and wokeism, in order to prevent new walls of tyranny from being built.

After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, bits of that oppressive construction were transformed into thousands and thousands of icons of freedom (and, one could say, icons of free market capitalism since they were sold widely as souvenirs!). One of my favorite pieces of the Wall is in Portland, Maine on the pier at Old Port. I think of it as a Triptych of Freedom, since it is three hinged sections. Some freedom fighter wrote powerful words on one segment:

Forget not the tyranny of this wall,
Horrid place,
Nor the love of freedom
that made it fall,
LAID WASTE!

It is no coincidence that Portland’s piece of the Wall stands proudly next to another shrine to freedom, The Heroes Wall – a memorial to all of Maine’s own warriors, past and present, that fought for freedom. Freedom always comes with a price to pay.

Another one of my favorite remembrances of the tyranny of Communism laid waste is the piece of the Wall that belongs to my own parish, Church of the Apostles, Anglican. It was given to us by our friends from Leipzig’s Nikolaikirche (St. Nicholas’ Church) where years of weekly prayer services helped to usher in East Germany’s Peaceful Revolution.

In 1990, these friends from Leipzig and other friends of a now free European continent, from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania, visited our church for a week-long “Eastern European Festival.” They shared amazing stories of how the hand of God gave strength and courage to those that helped to bring about liberation behind the Iron Curtain.

Christophe and Ronald were lay leaders from Nikolaikirche, the church that became famous for Monday night prayer services followed by candlelight protests. Thousands of East Germans asked God for His help, and then demanded such rights as the ability to travel to foreign countries and to elect a democratic government. Peacefully, every Monday, people confronted the armed security forces of the East German Government, proclaiming, Wir sind das Volk! (We are the people!)

Two Catholic Dominicans, priests from Czechoslovakia, told us about the Velvet Revolution. In their own fight for freedom, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in Prague’s Wenceslas Square. Father Vojtech, who was ordained in the Catholic underground, came to us in jeans and a leather jacket. He served at the monastery of the 14^th century Church of St. Giles (Kostel svatého Jiljí), just scant of two miles from Wenceslas Square. Father Filip, newly ordained from seminary in Olomouc, preferred traditional full-length, woolen habit. Priests were now free to wear these once again. But both had stood against Soviet Socialist forces that controlled their country.

Vojtech and Filip told us of the jingling of keys that filled the square during protests, symbolizing unlocking doors. It was an appropriately poetic gesture for a revolution led by Vaclav Havel and members of the Czech art, literary, and theater communities, as well as factory workers, priests, scientists, and others.

Our Hungarian friends, the Nemeths, were from the Community of Reconciliation. They told of how they were ministering to marginalized

Roma people in a newly-free Hungary. The brave people of Hungary fought against Communist occupation in 1956 and their revolution was crushed. But in 1989, the Communist government of Hungary actually helped usher in the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the fall of the Berlin Wall. In June of that year the foreign ministers of Hungary and Austria symbolically cut through the barbed wire on their borders. A few months later Hungary allowed tens of thousands of East Germans to cross its border to flee to the West.

And Hungary continues that reverence for freedom today, as well as a passion to help persecuted Christians across the globe. Hungary is a true Sheep Nation, according to Matthew 25, with a state-level organization, Hungary Helps, that provides aid, education, and other resources to the least of Christ’s brothers and sisters.

Romania’s revolution was not peaceful like the others, but our friends Valentine and Mikhail explained how it started with a protest by church members in the western city of Timisoara. The Romanian government was attempting to evict Pastor Laszlo Tokes, assistant pastor of the Romanian Reformed Church. He was targeted because routinely he gave sermons condemning the government’s oppression of religious freedom and other human rights. A human chain of church members was joined by university students and others, both Romanian and Hungarian. Soon the protest became a more general anti-government demonstration that spread across Romania to bring down Communist dictator Nicolai Ceausescu in Bucharest.

These Eastern European friends were witnesses to the Church’s stand against evil and Communist oppression. Listening to their stories, we appreciated the blessing of our own freedom in the United States as never before. We thanked God for the role that America played in bringing freedom to other nations. We understood that with great blessing came great responsibility. And we honored those who would rather die than live under Communist tyranny.

Germany also remembers and honors those who were lost in the fight for freedom. Peter Fechter was only 18 years old when he became one of the first victims of Berlin Wall border guards, shot trying to climb over the wall on August 17, 1962. He fell back onto the east side of the wall and bled to death. The boy’s agonizing, hours-long death was witnessed by people on both sides of the wall, but his screams for help went unaided, with both sides afraid to intervene.

The memorial to young Peter Fechter constructed on the Zimmerstrasse at the spot where he died reads, “he just wanted Freedom.” In recent years it seems that many Americans, as well as others around the world, have forgotten — or never knew — the value of freedom that this young German boy sought. So many people have seemed to be shockingly ambivalent towards, or even more shockingly favorable to, Communism, as demonstrated by New York City in this month’s elections. It seems as if the light of Revival, hunger for God, and desire to reform culture and the darkness of evil, deception, and the desire for a globalist system that hates God are growing up together in these days. We know that in the end, Light will win, because light dispels darkness. But in the meantime, it is our role in the Body of Christ to spread Christ’s light and share His love.

A few photos from faithful freedom fighters from Eastern/Central Europe and one from North Korea.