Prison Is the Best Commentary on the Bible

“My flesh and my heart faileth: but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever.” — Psalm 73:26

Ferenc Visky—affectionately known as Feri bácsi, or “Uncle Feri”—was a Hungarian Reformed minister in Romania.

Born in 1918, he became involved while still a theological student with the Bethany Christian Endeavour revival movement.

Years later, the Communist government would regard his Christian activities as a threat.

In 1958, Ferenc Visky was arrested.

He was sentenced to 22 years of forced labour.

His property was confiscated.

His wife was taken away.

His seven children were deported.

And Visky disappeared behind prison walls.

Yet years later he could look back upon those terrible years and testify that the Communist prison had become his “university.”

One of his unforgettable conclusions was:

“Prison is the best commentary to the Bible.”

The Fiery Furnace of Communism

Visky compared Communist persecution to the fiery furnace into which Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown in Daniel 3.

He survived that furnace, he said, not because of the strength of his own will, but because God was there with him.

His conviction was simple:

If our faith cannot endure when it is challenged, what kind of faith is it?

Christ Himself was persecuted.

The prophets were persecuted.

The apostles suffered.

Why should Christians expect that faithfulness to Christ will always be comfortable?

Visky did not teach Christians to seek suffering.

Rather, he said:

“Don’t look for it, but accept it when it happens.”

And when suffering comes, do not attempt to endure it merely in your own strength.

Suffer in the strength of the Lord.

Twenty-Two Years

On May 27, 1958, Ferenc Visky was arrested by the Communist authorities.

On September 6, he was sentenced by a military tribunal to 22 years of forced labour for what the regime described as activity against the socialist order.

The authorities had tried to silence a preacher.

Instead, they gave him a prison congregation.

Visky would spend a little more than six years imprisoned before the Romanian government released political prisoners under the general amnesty of 1964.

But when his sentence was originally pronounced, neither Visky nor his wife knew that release would come.

They heard only:

Twenty-two years.

“I Don’t Cry Because All Is in God’s Hands”

Visky’s wife, Júlia, sat in the courtroom when her husband received his sentence.

She had seven children.

Her husband had just been condemned to 22 years.

Their future appeared destroyed.

Yet she refused to collapse in despair.

When someone asked why she was not crying, she answered:

“I don’t cry because all is in God’s hands.”

Soon she would need that faith in a way she could scarcely have imagined.

The Communist authorities deported Júlia and their seven children to the Bărăgan region.

Their oldest child was about twelve.

Their youngest was only about two.

Ferenc was in prison.

His wife and children were in exile.

Their property was gone.

Humanly speaking, the family had been destroyed.

But God had not abandoned them.

The Prisoner Envied His Family

At first, Ferenc imagined that perhaps his children would think of their imprisoned father as a hero.

Then he learned what had happened to them.

His wife and children had been deported.

Suddenly, he no longer thought of himself as the great sufferer.

He was in awe of them.

He received some food in prison.

His family had almost nothing.

It was then that he began to understand more deeply that suffering could not simply be separated from the Christian life.

Yet neither could suffering separate the Christian from Christ.

The Dogs Brought Bread

The family’s situation was desperate.

They had been removed from their home and taken into a desolate region.

But Visky later told an extraordinary story.

In the Old Testament, God commanded ravens to feed Elijah.

For the Visky family, help sometimes came in an equally unexpected way.

The soldiers’ dogs brought them bread.

The animals would carry pieces of bread to the hungry family.

Visky loved to tell such stories.

But he warned Christians not to become so fascinated by miracles that they forget the God who performs them.

His wonderful conclusion was:

“The One who does wonders is greater than the wonders themselves.”

The Eleven Parcels

Years later, Visky encountered a woman in Los Angeles who had lived in Romania during those years.

She told him something extraordinary.

She had sent eleven care packages to the area where his family had been deported.

But she did not know their proper address.

So she simply wrapped the parcels, tied them with string, and addressed them:

“To a pastor’s wife with seven children.”

That was all.

No modern tracking number.

No precise street address.

No telephone number.

Just:

“To a pastor’s wife with seven children.”

And according to Visky’s testimony, his wife received all eleven parcels.

They came through the hands of strangers.

To Visky, they were another reminder:

Even when a Communist government knew where his family was and he did not, God knew exactly where they were.

A Chamber Pot Became a Gift From God

Prison life was deliberately humiliating.

The prisoners wore chains made for animals and riveted so that they could not be removed.

They slept on concrete.

When they were finally convicted and sentenced, their ordinary clothing was taken from them and replaced with striped prison uniforms.

Visky felt that the authorities were trying to strip away not merely their clothes but their individuality.

Yet in that brutal place, he learned to recognize the smallest evidences of God’s care.

Visky suffered from a kidney problem and needed to use the toilet frequently.

Prison regulations had made this extremely difficult.

Then he entered a new cell.

And there stood something very ordinary:

a chamber pot.

His cellmate must have thought he had lost his mind.

Visky laughed for joy.

Only the previous day, an order had apparently been given that each cell should receive one.

To everybody else, it was a chamber pot.

To Ferenc Visky, it was evidence that God knew about his kidneys.

Even in a Communist prison cell, the love of God could be, as he described it, delicate and attentive.

Cabbage Soup, Cornbread—and Mice

The food was terrible.

They ate cabbage soup and cornbread.

Sometimes, according to Visky, pieces of mice were found in the cornbread.

But if you refused to eat, you died.

At times he lost consciousness because of hunger.

They were also given soup made from potato peelings that irritated their throats and made prisoners ill.

Visky lost a great deal of weight.

But his testimony was:

“We ate whatever they gave us. We ate and we praised God.”

Communism could control what went into the bowl.

It could not control the thanksgiving that came out of the prisoner’s heart.

No Bible for Six Years

Perhaps one of the hardest things for a Christian minister was that he could not have a Bible.

For approximately six years, Visky said, the prisoners had no access to one.

So what did they do?

They searched their memories.

Scriptures memorized years earlier suddenly became treasures.

Passages learned in freedom became food in captivity.

Visky said:

“During that time we had only our memories. This was our manna.”

What a lesson for Christians who possess several Bibles but hide very little of Scripture in their hearts.

The Communists could take away the book.

They could not take away the Word that had already been hidden within them.

“Prayer Was Forbidden”

Prayer was forbidden.

But Visky found some humour even in that.

Jesus had said:

“But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet…” — Matthew 6:6

Visky joked that the Secret Police had kindly supplied the Christians with some very special prayer closets:

their prison cells.

Prayer did not require an open church.

It did not require a pulpit.

It did not require a prayer book.

It did not even require the lips to move.

A prisoner could be locked in a cell and still have an audience with the King of kings.

Richard Wurmbrand

Among the Christians whom Ferenc Visky met in Communist imprisonment was the Romanian Christian pastor Richard Wurmbrand.

The two men became friends.

Wurmbrand had already suffered terribly for Christ, and Visky himself later wrote about their prison experiences and friendship.

Years afterward, accounts associated with Wurmbrand described Visky as one of the outstanding Christian men he had encountered.

Communism had intended to isolate Christian leaders.

Instead, prison sometimes put extraordinary Christians into the same cells.

Men who might otherwise never have met found one another behind bars.

And iron sharpened iron.

The “University”

Visky often called prison his “university.”

There were no comfortable classrooms.

There were concrete beds.

There were no libraries.

For years, there was not even a Bible.

There were no degrees.

There were chains.

There were interrogations.

There was hunger.

There was solitary confinement.

Yet there were lessons about Christ that he believed could never have been learned in quite the same way anywhere else.

Thus his extraordinary statement:

“Prison is the best commentary to the Bible.”

Talking Through Walls

Prisoners were not supposed to communicate.

So they improvised.

They knocked messages through the walls.

Sometimes they placed their metal drinking cups against the walls and spoke through them.

Even the walls became instruments of fellowship.

Visky once fashioned a tiny needle from a sliver of wood.

When it was discovered on his prison uniform, he was sentenced to seven days in solitary confinement.

There was no pillow.

No blanket.

Only darkness.

For two days he would receive no food.

On the third day he would eat.

Then the cycle continued.

It sounded like punishment.

But God had an appointment waiting for him in the darkness.

A Soul on the Other Side of the Wall

While Visky was in solitary confinement, he heard knocking from the neighbouring cell.

At first, he hesitated.

Sometimes guards deliberately knocked on walls to trick prisoners into responding.

Eventually, he answered.

The man in the next cell asked where Visky had come from.

Visky answered:

“The cell of the ministers.”

The prisoner became excited.

He had been waiting for someone to whom he could confess his sins.

Visky explained that formal confession was not his practice as a Reformed minister, but he agreed to listen.

The man poured out his heart.

When he finished, he asked:

“What penance must I do to be forgiven?”

Visky gave him a different answer.

He needed to come to God and ask Him for forgiveness.

The prisoner said that he did not know how to pray.

So through a Communist prison wall, in solitary confinement, Ferenc Visky taught him how to pray.

And there in prison, the man accepted Christ as his Saviour.

“Don’t Be Such a Good Christian!”

The new believer wanted to learn more.

“How long will you be here?” he asked.

“Seven days,” Visky answered.

The man was disappointed.

He was due to be released from solitary the next day.

So he devised a plan.

When the guards came to release him, he would deliberately do something wrong so that they would punish him with more solitary confinement.

Then he could remain beside Visky’s cell and continue his Bible lessons!

Visky answered with wonderful humour:

“Don’t be such a good Christian!”

The Communists had placed Visky in solitary confinement as punishment.

God had turned the punishment into an evangelistic meeting.

The Dog Named Chess

Visky also retained a wonderful sense of humour outside prison.

There was once a powerful man in his village who persecuted Christians and would not permit Visky, as the local minister, to enter his house.

Then the man became seriously ill.

Visky and his wife decided to visit him.

As they approached the house, the man’s dog rushed toward them barking furiously.

Visky began reasoning with the dog.

He told the animal that it was a good dog because it obeyed its master.

Then he explained that he too had a Master, and he had to obey Him.

The dog quieted.

They proceeded farther.

Then it began barking furiously again.

This time Visky started talking in terms drawn from the game of chess.

Again the dog quieted down.

Eventually, Visky entered the house and spoke with the sick man.

Only afterward did he discover the reason the dog had apparently responded so well to his little sermon on chess.

The dog’s name was Chess!

Visky had not known it.

How His Faith Became Personal

But Visky himself had not always possessed this living faith.

He was the son of a minister.

Christianity surrounded him.

Religious tradition surrounded him.

Then, while he was a student, he was travelling on a train.

A group of young people were singing about Jesus.

Something troubled him.

How could Jesus be so personal to them?

They were not merely singing religious words.

Christ seemed real to them.

Visky compared their faith with his own and reached a painful conclusion:

Theirs was alive. His was dead.

He wanted what they possessed.

He joined those students.

And, as he later simply put it:

“I met the Saviour.”

The Christ of his father’s religion became his Christ.

Years later, when chains were placed upon him, that distinction mattered.

Tradition alone would never have carried him through Communist imprisonment.

He needed a living Saviour.

His Wife and Seven Children Survived

While Visky was in prison, his wife and seven children endured deportation in the Bărăgan.

Yet all survived.

His youngest son, András Visky, who had been only a small child during the ordeal, later became a noted Hungarian-Romanian writer and playwright and wrote about his family’s deportation.

The family was finally reunited after the 1964 amnesty.

Visky continued serving as a Reformed minister after his release, although Communist surveillance and pressure continued. He served at Paleu until 1983, when he was forced into retirement.

He died in 2005.

The government that had tried to silence him had long since fallen.

But his testimony remained.

“Even When We Are Lonely, We Are Never Alone”

Looking back over those years, Visky did not glorify suffering.

He glorified Christ.

He warned Christians never to make an idol even of persecution.

The point was not:

Look what I endured.

The point was:

Look Who was with me.

He said:

“Even when we are lonely, we are never alone. God is with us.”

He had been chained.

But Christ was there.

He had been hungry.

But Christ was there.

His Bible had been taken away.

But the Word hidden in his heart remained.

His family had been deported.

But God knew their address.

He was put into solitary confinement.

And God put a searching sinner on the other side of the wall.

His enemies tried to make prison a place of despair.

Instead, Ferenc Visky called it his “university.”

And after everything he endured, he could still say:

“When you suffer in the strength of the Lord, He sustains you.”

Perhaps his greatest lesson can be summed up in the sentence with which he described those terrible prison years:

“Prison is the best commentary to the Bible.”

Because there, when almost everything else had been stripped away, Ferenc Visky discovered again and again that Christ was enough.

—Ferenc Visky