Wallace Toronto — Prophetic Foresight of the Czech Saints' Dark Days and Coming Freedom

Even before his death, Wallace F. Toronto prepared the Czechoslovak Saints for what they were going to go through. People regarded him as a visionary man. He seemed to know that persecution was coming, and he did everything he could to fortify the Saints. He 'in a way prophesied that it would get worse' — that the missionaries would eventually be expelled from the country and that the Saints would have to carry on alone. He 'instill[ed] in them that the gospel was the most important thing. If they would stay with the Lord and the gospel, then they could survive anything.' He had a vision of what was coming, and that there would be a day when they would be free again and the Church could prosper there. He told them, 'They have to look forward to that vision. We're going to have dark days now, but there's a vision of what will happen when the Communists are gone.' After his death in 1968, the Saints endured over twenty more years of Communist repression before religious freedom was restored in 1989 — exactly as he had foreseen.