Mary's Trust and Obedience: "When Mary said 'Yes' to God, she faced the risk of shame, rejection, exclusion -- even death. Normally, pregnancy before marriage was a violation of God's moral code, but hers was not a normal situation. Mary herself didn't know how God would give her this miracle baby -- and then protect her and the child from the likely onslaughts. Yet, she wholeheartedly surrendered to God's will.

Leading Me Back Through the Darkness: "By the time I entered high school, I was a hardcore atheist. I quoted Richard Dawkins in papers of mine, and read religion message boards just so I could get in arguments with Christians. I was entirely certain that I was correct, that the notion of God, or any God, was impossible. At the same time, the message boards exposed me to many other religious traditions.... If there is one thing I’ve learned from my experiences of the past few years, it’s the importance of humility. Pride comes so easily to us..." Victory in Christ

Chilean engineer gives miners sermons, music: "...trapped miners in Chile [were] listening to recordings of sermons, Bible studies and Christian music a half-mile underground, thanks to the efforts of Chilean engineer Igor Bravo. Bravo has been part of the rescue efforts for 33 trapped miners in northern Chile for weeks....

     "I had to help in some Christian way,' Bravo said.... A partial collapse blocked the mine Aug. 5, leaving the miners trapped in a living room-sized chamber for more than two months." See Seeking God

Dietrich Bonhoeffer - Part 1: Nazi Religion versus "Religionless" Faith: "Bonhoeffer has been vilified by conservative pastors while celebrated by liberal church leaders. Why?

     "Both sides of the church spectrum have focused on a phrase Bonhoeffer used in his personal letters: 'religionless Christianity.' Both sides claim that he pushed social action and frowned on 'religion.' Both misunderstood his message!" See Following Jesus and sharing His suffering

Facing the Unexpected: "What will we do if things don't make sense to us? Will we become offended with God and abandon our faith? There was a time when many of Jesus' followers became offended with Him and left Him. The twelve Apostles were troubled, but they were loyal and remained.

     "But 'from that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. Then said Jesus to the twelve, 'Will you also go away?' Then Simon Peter answered him, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.'"

From Pride to Humility to Restoration: "Losses and adversities are frequently the means that the Great Shepherd uses to bring home His wandering sheep."

Worldviews of "Christians": "78% of Americans call themselves Christians. That sounds good until you ask what they mean by 'Christian.' According to a 2009 Barna poll, only nine percent of Americans have a Biblical worldview. Among Americans who call themselves born-again Christians, only 19 percent have a Biblical worldview. Among young American adults (ages 18 to 23) only one-half of one percent have a Biblical worldview....

The School of Joyful Endurance: "Endurance is hardly a popular topic these days. Troubling times sow anxiety, not peace. But that's all the more reason to welcome God's training in victorious faith. For when we smile to Him -- even as we cry out in our deepest struggles -- He will surely provide the strength we need to follow Him....
     "In this time of rapid change, such training in endurance is priceless. America's trusted Constitutional 'rights' and freedoms are fading away, eroded by a corrupting quest for amoral license and unbiblical unity. Missing are the old certainties.... No part of this transformation is more ominous than the shift in faith and values."

The Victory of the Cross: "Few would have guessed that George Muller, a Prussian boy with a bent for trouble, would one day trust God to meet the daily needs of thousands of orphans. His early life showed no signs of such faith. Born in 1805, he made little effort to resist the temptations he faced during his first twenty years. He stole, lied, cheated, used forgery to prosper, and craved immoral thrills. Later he wrote in his diary: 'At the age of sixteen I became an inmate of a prison, dwelling with thieves and murderers.'" See Sharing His suffering

The Pursuit of God by Tozer, Chapter 9: Meekness and Rest: "A fairly accurate description of the human race might be furnished one unacquainted with it by taking the Beatitudes, turning them wrong side out and saying, `Here is your human race.' For the exact opposite of the virtues in the Beatitudes are the very qualities which distinguish human life and conduct....

vInstead of poverty of spirit we find the rankest kind of pride;

Unanticipated Benefits of Sufferings: "If we could choose for ourselves, we would escape trials and tribulations. This is not always God's will for us, however. Despite our best-laid plans for survival and sustenance, God can override us. We may find ourselves in a situation of persecution so fierce and unrelenting that there is no escape. So what could be the possible benefit to us - and to others - should the Lord require this of us?" See Suffering

The Desperate Cry of Robinson Crusoe: "Robinson Crusoe has been shipwrecked. Sick, feverish and miserable, he is left on the desert island alone. He has no one to help him—none even to bring him a drink of cold water. Accustomed to sin, he had all the vices of a sailor; but his troubles now prompt him to seek help from the God he had ignored.... He finds a Bible in a rescued chest, and he sees this passage: 'Call upon Me in the day of trouble: I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.'...
     "Daniel Defoe, who wrote the story, was a Presbyterian minister; and though not overdone with spirituality, he knew enough of religion to be able to describe very vividly the experience of a man who is in despair...."

The song that silenced the cappuccino machine: "After the tune was over, she approached me. 'I apologize for singing along on that song. Did it bother you?' she asked.
'No,' I replied. 'We love it when the audience joins in. Would you like to sing up front on the next selection?'
To my delight, she accepted my invitation. 'You choose,' I said....

      "'Well.... Do you know any hymns?"
      "Hymns? This woman didn't know who she was dealing with. I cut my teeth on hymns....
      "There are so many good ones. You pick one."
      "Okay," I replied. "How about 'His Eye is on the Sparrow'?"....
       "She slowly nodded her head...straightened her jacket and faced the center of the shop. With my two-bar setup, she began to sing. Why should I be discouraged? Why should the shadows come?
       "The audience of coffee drinkers was transfixed..."

Job, Suffering and Spiritual Warfare: "With ropes tied around the children's small necks, the officer again promised freedom if only the parents would deny Christ. None were willing to betray their Lord. The children were hanged. The officer then called for a massive steamroller and forced the adults to lie down in its path. The deadly machine soon arrived, and they were given one last chance: 'Deny this Jesus or you will be crushed.' Again they refused. They had already given up their children; there was no turning back....

Testing the genuineness of our faith: "Untested faith may be true faith, but it is sure to be small faith, and it is likely to remain little as long as it is without trials. Faith never prospers so well as when all things are against her: Tempests are her trainers.... 

     "When a calm reigns on the sea, spread the sails as you will, the ship does not move to its harbor; for on a slumbering ocean the keel sleeps too. Let the winds rush and howl, and let the waters lift themselves, though the vessel may rock and her deck may be washed with waves and her mast may creak under the pressure of the full and swelling sail, it is then that she makes headway toward her desired haven."

 "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ." 1 Peter1:6-7

How blessed we are to know that God reigns in the midst of America's rapid transformation:

The school of suffering: "Most of us need the chastening of affliction. Pain is wonderful revealer. It teaches us many things we never could have known, if we had not been called to endure it. It opens windows through which we see, as we never saw before -- the beautiful things of God's love."

Clothed in Christ, our King. "His armor may or may not protect me against the storms of the world (Matthew 5:45). But it will always protect me against the assaults of Satan, whose arrows use the circumstances of the world to crush and destroy far more than could any storm.

      "In other words, God may not take me out of my circumstances, but He will bring victory in the midst of the trial. He will protect me against discouragement, despair, hopelessness, worthlessness-all the destructive emotions and thought patterns that rise up inside to disturb my peace, deny my resources in Christ, and quench my joy in Him."

Outside the Camp: "Jesus, bearing His cross, went forth to suffer outside the gate. The Christian’s reason for leaving the camp of the world’s sin and religion is not because he loves to be singular, but because Jesus did so; and the disciple must follow his Master. Christ was 'not of the world.' His life and His testimony were a constant protest against conformity with the world. Never was such overflowing affection for men as you find in Him; but still He was separate from sinners. In like manner Christ’s people must 'go out to Him.'”

His Strength in My Weakness: "I know that God is in control, and that nothing takes Him by surprise...

     "...an old friend came by to visit. He had been so impacted by The Shack that he couldn't stop talking about it.... When I mentioned theological problems with the book, he ignored what I said, and kept on talking about how 'wonderful' the book was. I went through a combination of shock, disbelief, and grief... and concern about the spiritual health of the church in America."

Our Never-Ending Citizenship: "Faced with unthinkable changes in our government, schools and churches, it helps to remember that we are first and foremost citizens of Heaven. God's Kingdom is not of this world, and neither is our primary citizenship. People can take our worldly goods, but our most important treasures are the ones in Heaven, and nobody can harm those."

Hard Times Ahead: "It’s time to prepare for hard times, my friends. And, if you’re a bible believing, Christ-following Christian, I believe the coming years will be particularly troublesome. I say 'bible-believing, Christ-following Christian' because our degenerating culture has all but stripped the biblical definition of the word 'Christian' from today’s collective conscience so that it has lost much of it’s scriptural meaning, even among many of today’s attending church members. The enemies of Christ have clearly risen to great power in this country and are, even as I write, busy endeavoring finish off what remains of the church for the purpose of replacing it with a god and religion more suitable for global government....

     "When our Constitution and Bill of Rights are completely discarded for the New World Order, there will be no going back to the way things were. There will only be the Word of God to edify, encourage, inspire and sustain us through the hard times ahead. Those who understand and appreciate the power of that Word know very well what I’m talking about. Those who don’t will ignore it at their own peril because to them, it is foolishness..." See Ban Truth - Reap Tyranny

Be Encouraged! "When all seems lost and hope is gone, don't you believe it! That's the time our Lord shows us some of His greatest work! And when we're close to despair -- throwing up our hands at the magnitude of [freedom-quenching] "change" here in America -- let's remember what God is doing in Iran and Sudan! ... While many pastors and lay people have been arrested, beaten and killed for their faith, His church continues to grow. In the Sudan, there are not enough pastors to keep up with the demand.... Will Americans experience persecution? See The Hand of God in History

Land of Disenchantment: "I had waited prayerfully for nearly nine years to get a message through to the outside world.... [Finally some of the prisoners] had been given permission to write home, one of the small concessions that had emerged after the bloody strikes of the previous year. I sent out an odd postcard indeed: it was signed with another man’s name, addressed to someone I had called 'uncle' as a child, and referred to myself as 'the noble nephew.' But it served its purpose, eventually reaching my father who identified my handwriting and at last had proof to show to the State Department authorities at home." See Abiding in Christ

To Live is Christ: "As he slowly came around, his eyes adjusted to the smoke. He cried out for his pastor, but no one answered. Horrified, he quickly began digging his way out of the pile of flesh and rubble. That morning, he had been among a group of 190 North Korean believers when the police stormed in, rounded them up, and harshly marched them to the town center...."

I Found God in Soviet Russia: The Trial of Unanswered Prayer: "As Easter Day came, in 1954, my situation seemed more desperate than at any time since the day of my arrest. Once again, I could feel my body being destroyed by overwork and malnutrition. Every bone ached with agony. I had served less than four years in Vorkuta and eleven years of my sentence still stretched endlessly before me! My constant prayers had the same tenor as a stanza of that great hymn of George Croly’s, 'Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart':"

 

Teach me to trust that Thou art always nigh,

Teach me the struggle of the soul to bear,

To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh,

Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer.

I Found God in Soviet Russia: An Unexpected Opportunity: "Step by step, God’s plan in sending me to Russia was unfolding.... My own faith had been tested again and again; I had experienced what I had come to accept as miracles; I had found among the slave laborers a vast yearning for God....

    "...I had been at Vorkuta for two and a half years. For the first fourteen months, I had pushed the cars of slate [in the freezing arctic climate]. Then in January, 1952... I was assigned to the mine transportation brigade.... One day I saw a switch break open.... Praying desperately, I reached back and forth, keeping that switch closed while thirty cars passed over it. A slip of a fraction of a second and I would have had my fingers severed or been crushed by a derailed car. After such narrow escapes as that, I felt more certain than ever that the hand of God must be protecting me or I could not have survived unscathed....

     "Anyone who wants to understand the religious situation in Russia today [written in 1959] must try first to realize what happens to people under a government which for more than four decades has denied that God exists, has taught its children that Christianity is an old-fashioned superstition no longer acceptable to progressive scientific minds, and has set up the immediate, expedient objectives of the State as the only standard of morality." See Purging the Memory of our Christian Roots

I Found God in Soviet Russia: Into the Land of the Godless: "'My God, my God GOD, why hast Thou forsaken me?' During that terrible journey into the Soviet Arctic in the sealed and crowded Stolopinskis (railway cars hideously designed for prisoner transportation), those words came often to my mind. There was comfort in them, knowing that Our Lord, too, had undergone complete despair. They are perhaps the most compassionate words He ever said, embracing as they do all men’s agony.

     "Later, even while that journey lasted, I could say those other words which follow: 'Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit.' For me this did not promise death; I was supposed to go on living until this unspeakable ordeal was completed and I could give my witness....

     "It was August when the trip began, October when we finally reached Vorkuta, the slave-labor camp [described in Solzhenitsyn's book, The Gulag Archipelago], which was our destination, a name more to be feared than any other..."

I Found God in Soviet Russia -- 9: Witness for Christ: "Many a missionary would have traveled thousands of into far and unknown lands to find so hungry a flock of lost sheep. But no missionary could have come to this area, the center of a communist concentration camp. There we were by the grace of God and we endeavored to make our witness for Christ as effective as was possible.... During the latter part of 1946 and the part of 1947 we had only one thing in abundance -- time."

I Found God in Soviet Russia Chapter 5: The Miracle of Bread: "The power of prayer is demonstrated most strikingly in the hour of greatest need. ...On the morning of August 2 [1945], when the second period of withdrawal of food began in Dresden Prison, my body was already run down from lack of proper nourishment during the previous month. The hunger pains I suffered were excruciating. ... I would have eaten anything that was brought to me, but at each mealtime my bowl was filled only with water.

    "No sooner had our noon 'meal' of warm water been brought that day than a terrible clatter, an uproar broke out through the prison..... Among the rebellious prisoners was a German communist leader who had already incurred the displeasure of his Russian masters.... All his life this man had worked for the communist revolutions. Now he was already harvesting the fruits of Marxism.... He had denied God for years: he had hated religion.... But the greatest punishment of an atheist is to be cut off from God... he could not seek strength or solace through faith." See Pray for one another

I Found God in Soviet Russia (Introduction): "During the decade I spent in communist prisons and labor camps I saw many terrible things. I also saw some glorious ones.  ...secret worship services were held and converts won for Christ even in Vorkuta itself, one of the slave-labor camps in the Soviet Arctic.

      "...there is deep interest in the Christian religion among both groups. In spite of their forty-year exposure to official atheism, or perhaps because of it, they hunger for the spiritual values they have been denied.

      "This evidence I am able to bring back to the free world, and through it the glorious tidings of a faith that cannot be killed. I have seen Christianity under the most terrible persecution it has suffered since the days of Nero, and I have seen abundant proof that faith in Christ, the Saviour, is still alive in Russia today in the very places where the Communists have tried hardest to stamp it out, the concentration camps." See Endurance with Joy

Elderly woman witnesses to man trying to rob her: Video -- A wonderful story

The Way of the Cross: "Instead of returning in penitence to God, and relying upon Him in the time of their threatened trouble, [ancient Israel] sought to accomplish an expensive and profitless alliance with Egypt... It was not alliance they needed... but reliance; for 'Thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, 'In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength; and ye would not.'...

     "The great sin of man has always been in this direction, a preference of his own will to the will of God; a preference of his own inclinations for God’s obligations. It is the sin of the Church today, and the explanation of her enfeebled and pitiable position in the eyes of the world."

      The author of this precious little book died in 1925! Human nature doesn't change, does it?

In Their Own Words: "We whose names are underwritten, having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony...." (William Bradford) "We have been assured in the Sacred Writings that -- 'except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that built it.' I firmly believe this."  (Benjamin Franklin) "What students would learn in American schools above all is the religion of Jesus Christ." (George Washington)

Searching: My journey through doubt into faith (1959): "...the high soul climbs the high way, and the low soul gropes the low.
And in between, on the misty flats, the rest drift to and fro....

      "I did not know that I had stepped down to The Misty Flats. I was just conscious of a sudden pleasant freedom from old duties. If there was no God, why bother to go to church on Sunday, for instance?... It was a popular thing to be on The Misty Flats: you had plenty of company. And one was respected as being modern and intelligent to question the old faiths. Life drifted along so pleasantly—for a while." See Seeking God

John Owen Quotes: "Without absolutes revealed from without by God Himself, we are left rudderless in a sea of conflicting ideas about manners, justice and right and wrong, issuing from a multitude of self-opinionated thinkers."

      "If we do not abide in prayer, we will abide in temptation. Let this be one aspect of our daily intercession: 'God, preserve my soul, and keep my heart and all its ways so that I will not be entangled.' When this is true in our lives, a passing temptation will not overcome us. We will remain free while others lie in bondage."

 

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Elderly woman witnesses to man trying to rob her: Be encouraged by this special video.

God's Sovereignty: "...if all things are put under Jesus' feet, there cannot be a single circumstance over which He has not supreme control. Everything in providence and everything in grace are alike subject to His disposal. There is not a trial, a temptation, an affliction of body or soul... which is not put under Jesus' feet. He can manage them... and direct them for our good and His own glory."

A Mother's Prayers: "Dhanjoy had grown up among people whose only hope in life was to appease the anger of evil spirits. He was a mischievous boy, and he fought with his father and brother. He would even grab and pull his mother's hair or throw his sandal into the food she was cooking. Meena desperately wanted her son to grow up knowing the love of Jesus, and she prayed for him often.... Now, Dhanjoy is a Bible college graduate serving the Lord full-time in the mountainous Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. He has faced opposition several times from anti-Christian groups, but he continues faithfully. Dhanjoy asks for prayer that many people will receive salvation through his ministry." See Perseverance

"Our task is ... to be light in a dark world where people's natural inclination is to hate Jesus because they don't want God intruding in their lives." (David Brickner, Executive Director of Jews for Jesus, February 2008 newsletter)

An urgent call for prayer -- Gaza Christians: "Worship services at Gaza Baptist Church now includes no more than 10 or 15 believers who are willing to risk publicly attending the only evangelical church in all of the Gaza Strip.  ...there is a tiny group of believers who are living out their faith." See Prayer

 

Lord of the Valleys: "When we are entrenched by the forces of the enemy—people who would cut us down, situations which would destroy us, or tragedy which would shake our faith—victory depends on who is our king. Is it Benhadad [king of Syria, 1 Kings 20:23], who saw only the God of the hills? Or have we enlisted in the army of the King of kings, knowing that in whatever valley we find ourselves, the battle is His! And we are more than conquerors through Christ!" See Victory in Christ

 

God holds the key. "I had gone to China with a heart’s desire to serve Christ to the uttermost. To me there was little or no sacrifice in this. I wanted to do this more than anything else in the world. I felt no possibility of retraction. Others might fail but I would not. Others drop from the ranks but I would be loyal....

    "I become a prisoner of the Communist army. It is now a question of indefinite solitary confinement. After days and days alone I am taken out by a young official and he talks to me seriously about the question of execution.... "'Wilt thou lay down thy life for My sake? Wilt thou...?’"
 

Standing firm: "...you came to a crisis when you made a stand for God and had the witness of the Spirit that all was right, but the weeks have gone by, and the years maybe, and you are slowly coming to the conclusion, ‘Well, after all, was I not a bit too pretentious? Was I not taking a stand a bit too high?’" See Called to Total Commitment

 

William Carey - Cast down but not in despair: "On March 11, 1812, Carey was teaching in Calcutta. While he was gone, a fire started in the printing room.... Despite many hours of exhaustive efforts to fight the fire, the building burned to the ground. Just five pieces of equipment were saved. Carey’s entire library, his completed Sanskrit dictionary, part of his Bengal dictionary, two grammar books, and ten translations of the Bible were lost. Gone also were the type sets for printing fourteen different languages."

 

Encouraging Poems. Don't Quit

 

A Rising Chorus: "Today, inside one of the world's most repressive societies, a growing number are turning to the Man from Galilee.... The men and women at the secret meeting spend the next several hours singing and praying. ...most of the people at the meeting converted to Christianity from Islam. And in a country governed by Islamic law, and whose population is 99-percent Muslim, such conversions carry the death penalty....

     "CBN News: Are you scared? Leila: No. If it was through my own strength, of course I would be scared. But I have the Holy Spirit inside me, and He gives me the strength not to be afraid.... I meet so many students who are hungry to believe in something. My burden is to share Christ with them." See True Stories for Children

 

Fighting Giants on His Knees: "From the moment Gospel for Asia missionary Mitul Harjit stepped into the remote village in Jharkhand, India, the animists who lived there tried to cast spells against him.

     "Mitul prayed, trusting the Lord to protect him from their incantations. He pressed on, sharing the Gospel and interceding daily for the village.

     "The villagers, however, did not like Mitul and pressured his landlord to evict him. Sensing that he might put the landlord in danger, Mitul moved away from the village. On the day Mitul moved, snakes infiltrated many villagers’ homes. The animist villagers believed that the snakes were sent by evil spirits. The problem increased until finally the villagers realized that Mitul’s prayers had been protecting them. “We have done wrong! Please forgive us, and come pray for us,” the villagers begged Mitul.

     "He returned, God answered his prayers, and the snakes left the village." See Victory in Christ

 

Missionaries Go From East to West: "A hundred years ago, American and European Christians streamed into the region to convert the Chinese and Koreans. During the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901) in China, foreign missionaries were targeted and in many cases killed.... The example set by the missionaries (mostly American and British) who came to work in Korea is still a recent memory. Like its neighbors China and Japan, the Korean peninsula was traditionally influenced by Buddhism and Confucianism...." See Missionaries to a lost world

Angela Merkel Calls Christianity the ‘World’s Most Persecuted Faith’: "Merkel's address in ... the German province of Schleswig-Holstein included the passing comment that 'Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world.' ...Human Rights Watch's (HRW) Germany director, Wenzel Michalski, found Merkel's conception totally senseless' given that all religious persecution is equally wrong, irrespective of faith.... The United Nations Human Rights Council's Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Heiner Bielefeldt, echoed Montag in assessing Merkel's qualification of Christianity as 'not especially helpful.'....

      "Yet the German branch of the international aid society for persecuted Christians, Open Doors, supported Merkel. A spokesman for the organization expressed its findings that 80% of all religiously persecuted individuals worldwide were Christian.  ...the two greatest opponents globally of religious freedom in general and Christianity in particular are various followers of Muhammad and Marx....In a time of almost universal political correctness, the Lutheran pastor's daughter Merkel deserves praise for her refreshing honesty." (November 2012)

Video.  Wise words from an "old-fashioned, narrow-minded, fossilized person" (1879AD)

Testing the Genuineness of our Faith: "Untested faith may be true faith, but it is sure to be small faith, and it is likely to remain little as long as it is without trials. Faith never prospers so well as when all things are against her: Tempests are her trainers, and bolts of lightning are her illuminators.

     "When a calm reigns on the sea...the ship does not move to its harbor.... Let the winds rush and howl, and let the waters lift themselves, though the vessel may rock and her deck may be washed with waves and her mast may creak under the pressure of the full and swelling sail, it is then that she makes headway toward her desired haven."  

        "In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

The Hope We Have in Christ: 'To give a reason for the hope that is in you' is not at all the same things as convincing by rational argument why that hope is in us. The work of the Spirit of God in us transcends reason.... And when a Christian says 'the reason I am so-and -so is because I have received the Holy Spirit,' or 'I have received from God something which has made this possible,' it doesn't contradict reason. It transcends it, and is an answer concerning the hope that is in you." See Struck down, but not destroyed

92 Year-Old Woman Stops an Attacker Cold in his Tracks: "A 92 year-old Memphis woman used the powerful words of the Lord to turn back a mugger in a Wal-Mart parking lot. You don’t need guns or weapons when you have the power of the Lord and this brave woman was able to sway the heart of the man." See Faith

The Village that Lived by the Bible: "It was early in 1945 when, as a war correspondent on Okinawa, I first came upon Shimabuku, the strangest and most inspiring community I ever saw. Huddled beneath its groves of banyan and twisted pine trees, this remote village of some 1000 souls was in the path of the 'American' advance and so received a severe shelling. But when an advance patrol swept up to the village compound, the soldiers stopped dead in their tracks. Barring their way were two little old men; they bowed low and began to speak....
      "I don't get it. Seems we're being welcomed as 'fellow Christians.' One says he's the mayor of the village..."

Bibles fall like rain: "Recently a team from South Korea launched 30 balloons carrying New Testaments, Scripture verses and other Gospel messages into North Korea. With a typhoon fast approaching the Korean peninsula, heavy rain and wind carried the balloons directly north into the isolated country. 'The gospel is the good news which will save the dry branches in North Korea like a welcome rain,' one of the missionaries exclaimed during prayer before the launch. ...They successfully sent 1,000 Bibles and 90,000 gospel flyers into North Korea. More than 7,900 New Testaments have been sent to North Korea this year alone...." See Victory in Christ

Be Watchful! "This was the life of the early Christians; they went everywhere with their lives in their hands. We [in America] are not in this day called to pass through the same fearful persecutions. But if we were, the Lord would give us grace to bear the test.... Our danger is lest we grow rich and become proud, lest we give ourselves up to the fashions of this present evil world, and lose our faith. ...may God...display his omnipotence in you, that you may be able to say, in all these softer things, as well as in the rougher, ' We are more than conquerors through him that loved us.' "

The Watchman: "...if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet, and the people are not warned... he is taken away in his iniquity...' ...I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; therefore you shall hear a word from My mouth and warn them for Me." (Ezekiel 33:6-7)

Bright Hope in Dark Days: "Perhaps the Lord allotted you at first a smooth and unclouded path, because you were weak and timid. He tempered the wind to the shorn lamb. But now that you are stronger in the spiritual life, you must enter upon the riper and rougher experience of God's full-grown children. We need winds and tempests to exercise our faith, to tear off the rotten bough of self-dependence, and to root us more firmly in Christ. The day of evil reveals to us the value of our glorious hope. 'Thou art my hope in the day of evil.'" Jeremiah 17:17

When Iron Gates Yield: [Note: Geoffrey Bull, British missionary to Tibet, was imprisoned when Chinese Communists conquered and occupied Tibet in 1950.  The brainwashing strategies used to conform his mind to Communist collective thinking is still used in China today. More sophisticated version of this Marxist-Hegelelian process are now used in schools, corporations and churches around the world.  I thank God for using Bull to show us how to resist mind-dulling indoctrination and reminds us to stand firm in Christ no matter how great the pressure to compromise.]

    "According to Marxism the standard of morality arises from our political standpoint, which in turn is determined by our economic condition. Thus if I have no money to buy bread, I will take the political stand of siding with the oppressed masses. This means that to steal from the landlord becomes right; I am not guilt of theft. I am only taking back what he has exploited from my class." [The same argument is used to justify the slaughter of whites in Zimbabwe and other neo-communist countries]

Enduring Faith. The Village That Lived By The Bible: "It was early in 1945 when, as a war correspondent on Okinawa, I first came upon Shimabuku, the strangest and most inspiring community I ever saw. Huddled beneath its groves of banyan and twisted pine trees, this remote village of some 1000 souls was in the path of the 'American' advance and so received a severe shelling. But when an advance patrol swept up to the village compound, the soldiers stopped dead in their tracks.
     "Barring their way were two little old men; they bowed low and began to speak. The battle-hardened sergeant, wary of tricks, held up his hand, summoned an interpreter. The interpreter shook his head and said,  "I don't get it. Seems we're being welcomed as 'fellow Christians.' One says he's the mayor of the village, the other's the schoolmaster. That's a Bible the older one has in his hand..."

Nearer My God to Thee: This video clip shows a scene from the 1958 movie version of the Titanic: "A Night To Remember"

A marvel of God's care!  An amazing testimony to God's grace!

The world is not my home: [Good reminder in the midst of bad news]

The Way: "Jesus is the Way -- the only way -- to abundant life with God today and forever. Yet, millions of seekers choose spiritual paths that lead to bondage, hopelessness and despair.... At life's most significant crossroads, they pick their pathway for its temporary attractions.... 'Why follow that narrow, old road when fast, new super-highways beckon?' shout the voices of popular culture. 'Why be so divisive?"

Our life in Christ is an adventure: "It seems but yesterday when I first hitchhiked to the jungles. I wonder what would of it been like if I would of said no, left it to another to go? Though it has been hard, many difficulties along the way, the times of loneliness, failures, and the trials and testing of our faith, my greatest regret is, I did not respond sooner. Oh, what a wonderful adventure it has been to trust Him." See His Life in us

Throat slashed, woman reads Bible to her attacker: "...a woman spent at least an hour reading the Bible to her attacker after he slashed her throat Wednesday night. 'She even invited him to her church,' said Shelby Police Capt. Rick Stafford. 'He kept saying he was sorry, and then walked away.'  
      "Lindsay Wood and her son came home from church around 8:30 p.m. The son... heard his mother talking to the man.... Moments later, the man pulled out a knife. He swung the blade and sliced into the right side of Wood's neck. After the attack, Wood started speaking to the man about Bible verses and church.... Wood didn’t call 911 until 10:24 p.m. after the attacker left.... She was listed in stable condition Thursday in the intensive care unit...'"

His Wonderful Word - worth dying for! "In the sixteenth century, Spain's King Philip II took a hard line against those who would try to interpret Scripture for themselves. Anyone found studying the Bible during this time was hanged, burned at the stake, drowned, torn in pieces, or buried alive....

"We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; ...perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken;  struck down, but not destroyed — always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body." (2 Corinthians 4:7-10)

The amazing grace of Christmas morn: "The authentic story of the redeeming power of the Christmas message is illustrated in the incredible life of an English slaver named John Newton....His mother was a godly woman who died when John was 7, and he recalled as the sweetest remembrance of childhood the soft and tender voice of his mother at prayer. His father married again, and John at 11 went to sea with him....

      "The captain of the Harwich traded him to the skipper of a slaving ship, bound for West Africa to take aboard wretched human cargo.... John fell ill, and when the captain sailed he left John in his wife’s care. The ship was barely over the horizon when he was thrown into a pigsty.... Word spread through the district that a black woman was keeping a white slave, and many came to taunt him.... When the captain returned five years later... [he] agreed to take him home to England. 'The voyage quite broke my constitution,' he recalled, “and the effects would always remain with me as a needful memento of the service of wages and sin.” Newton's best loved hymn:

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see!

God's Guidelines for Christian Thinking: "It is because we will not bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ that all the perplexities are produced regarding methods of thinking that look like [but disagree with] Christianity. Strands are taken out of Jesus Christ’s teaching, the Bible is exploited to agree with certain principles, but the Truth, our Lord Jesus Christ is ignored.... If we base our thinking on principles instead of on a Person we shall go wrong.... The one great truth to keep steadfastly before us is the Lord Jesus Christ; He is the Truth."

How shall I serve You, Lord?  "It is not what I do for you but what You do through me. This is how I shall lay my life before You, my Lord and King."

Why They Love - or Hate - Tim Tebow: "I'm not a big football fan, but I will admit to liking Tim Tebow, and you can probably guess why. Anyone who saw what he did in the last 4 minutes of the Denver Broncos' football game with that 95-yard drive against the NY Jets the other night --how he humbly prayed...and the OTHER PLAYERS put their hands on him and prayed with him while the stadium rocked and rolled around them -- could not come away without a profound sense that something unusual had happened." See Spiritual Warfare

You are my Hiding Place: "Jesus, my Lord, is my Hiding Place today and forever. Yet, every day I have a choice to make: Will I rest peacefully in His plan and provision? Or will I try to run from Him as Jonah did. If I would be foolish enough to turn away, I trust that my Shepherd will correct me -- and I had better listen!

      "My heart's desire is to live in total union with my King -- every hour of every day. And since I 'have died with Christ,' my 'life is hidden with Christ in God.' When I rest in Him, I am confident that 'in the time of trouble He shall hide me'..."

       "Thou art my Hiding Place; Thou dost preserve from trouble... and surround me with songs of deliverance."   Psalm 32:7

God's Sovereignty: "...there cannot be a single circumstance over which He has not supreme control. ...There is not: a trial, a temptation, an affliction of body or soul, a loss, a cross, a painful bereavement, a grief, a disappointment... which is not in under His sovereign domain."     

The "God of Hope ": I live in two worlds: an earthly nation and a heavenly kingdom. Earthly circumstances may, at times, dictate my thoughts and emotions; but when I look up, I see my heavenly King who reigns over all. He has prepared a magnificent future for His beloved friends. Like a beacon of light, that vision of eternal fellowship with my Lord beckons me onward in spite of obstacles and opposition. Like Paul, I aim to 'press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."

My High Tower: Seeing the world from His perspective

My Hiding Place: "Outside my kitchen window, four children played hide-and-seek. I had to laugh at some of their funny hiding places.... Into my mind flashed hiding places that felt cozy enough to sleep in. Others were cramped, cold and hard. Like some of the strange places God selects for His children, I thought.

      "My hiding place in God -- the place or circumstance where His love guards me -- may not be comfortable by my finite human standard. But whether pleasant or painful for the moment, it fits His plan for my protection.

      "...as I rest in Him, He will accomplish His purpose." See The School of Joyful Endurance

Video: Street Witnessing with Gang Members: "Ray Comfort witnesses to gang members in south central Los Angeles."

God's Sovereignty: "...if all things are put under Jesus' feet, there cannot be a single circumstance over which He has not supreme control. Everything in providence and everything in grace are alike subject to His disposal."

"...we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.  We are -

     ~ hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed...

     ~ perplexed, but not in despair

     ~ persecuted, but not forsaken;

     ~struck down, but not destroyed
always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body." 2 Corinthians 4:7-10

Bright Hope in Dark Days: "Perhaps the Lord allotted you at first a smooth and unclouded path, because you were weak and timid. He tempered the wind to the shorn lamb. But now that you are stronger in the spiritual life, you must enter upon the riper and rougher experience of God's full-grown children. We need winds and tempests to exercise our faith, to tear off the rotten bough of self-dependence, and to root us more firmly in Christ. The day of evil reveals to us the value of our glorious hope." See Joshua 1:9

(Part 3) A Small Price to Pay - Misha's Choice: "This was during Stalin’s harsh reign over our country. He had designs to have all the houses of prayer closed and, after a time of respite during the war, his iron fist was coming down hard once more on the believers. Not only was he trying to annihilate the church, he was also trying to infiltrate the church by planting his own men in it to control its affairs. These men were not believers.

     "I was at a loss for words. I had used up everything in my vocabulary that I could think of to ask God to come down and visit my soul. I felt completely empty."

(Part 2) A Small Price to Pay: "(Misha is now eleven years old) "I remember being hungry most of the time. All of us were. But we did not often talk about it....During all this time, Mama made sure our spiritual education did not suffer. She not only taught us the truth of God, she lived it. For several months, we lived in Kirghizia with an elderly woman we called Auntie Natasha....I remember something that happened one night while we were there..." The first part of this book would be good for family reading with children.

(Part 1) A Small Price to Pay: "There was a noise at the front door. The officer leapt to his feet...and grabbed Papa by his coat, jerking him into the room.... 'Ivan Khorev, you are under arrest.'...

     "I know God must have prepared my father for this time, because there was no panic, no alarm at all as he looked at the strange scene he had come home to after his long night at work. I am sure he had seen the Black Raven parked in front of our apartment building. Everyone in the city knew that when that vehicle was outside, someone was being arrested and taken to prison. His eyes rested on Mama for a moment, then he looked at us children. As the two soldiers moved toward him again, Papa held up his hand. “Wait! We will pray together before I leave with you.” See The School of Joyful Endurance 

Be Watchful!  "Our danger is lest we grow rich and become proud, lest we give ourselves up to the fashions of this present evil world, and lose our faith.... I fear that the Christian church is far more likely to lose her integrity in these soft and silken days than in those rougher times. We must be awake now, for we traverse the enchanted ground, and are most likely to fall asleep to our own undoing, unless our faith in Jesus be a reality, and our love to Jesus a vehement flame."

Holy Familiarity: “There is a holy familiarity with God which cannot be too much enjoyed, but there is a flippant familiarity with God which cannot be too much abhorred! The Lord is King. His will is not to be questioned!

Mary's Trust and Obedience: "When Mary said 'Yes' to God, she faced the risk of shame, rejection, exclusion -- even death. Normally, pregnancy before marriage was a violation of God's moral code, but hers was not a normal situation. Mary herself didn't know how God would give her this miracle baby -- and then protect her and the child from the likely onslaughts. Yet, she wholeheartedly surrendered to God's will.

Leading Me Back Through the Darkness: "By the time I entered high school, I was a hardcore atheist. I quoted Richard Dawkins in papers of mine, and read religion message boards just so I could get in arguments with Christians. I was entirely certain that I was correct, that the notion of God, or any God, was impossible. At the same time, the message boards exposed me to many other religious traditions.... If there is one thing I’ve learned from my experiences of the past few years, it’s the importance of humility. Pride comes so easily to us..." Victory in Christ

Chilean engineer gives miners sermons, music: "...trapped miners in Chile [were] listening to recordings of sermons, Bible studies and Christian music a half-mile underground, thanks to the efforts of Chilean engineer Igor Bravo. Bravo has been part of the rescue efforts for 33 trapped miners in northern Chile for weeks....

     "I had to help in some Christian way,' Bravo said.... A partial collapse blocked the mine Aug. 5, leaving the miners trapped in a living room-sized chamber for more than two months." See Seeking God

Dietrich Bonhoeffer - Part 1: Nazi Religion versus "Religionless" Faith: "Bonhoeffer has been vilified by conservative pastors while celebrated by liberal church leaders. Why?

     "Both sides of the church spectrum have focused on a phrase Bonhoeffer used in his personal letters: 'religionless Christianity.' Both sides claim that he pushed social action and frowned on 'religion.' Both misunderstood his message!" See Following Jesus and sharing His suffering

Facing the Unexpected: "What will we do if things don't make sense to us? Will we become offended with God and abandon our faith? There was a time when many of Jesus' followers became offended with Him and left Him. The twelve Apostles were troubled, but they were loyal and remained.

     "But 'from that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. Then said Jesus to the twelve, 'Will you also go away?' Then Simon Peter answered him, 'Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.'"

From Pride to Humility to Restoration: "Losses and adversities are frequently the means that the Great Shepherd uses to bring home His wandering sheep."

Worldviews of "Christians": "78% of Americans call themselves Christians. That sounds good until you ask what they mean by 'Christian.' According to a 2009 Barna poll, only nine percent of Americans have a Biblical worldview. Among Americans who call themselves born-again Christians, only 19 percent have a Biblical worldview. Among young American adults (ages 18 to 23) only one-half of one percent have a Biblical worldview....

The School of Joyful Endurance: "Endurance is hardly a popular topic these days. Troubling times sow anxiety, not peace. But that's all the more reason to welcome God's training in victorious faith. For when we smile to Him -- even as we cry out in our deepest struggles -- He will surely provide the strength we need to follow Him....
     "In this time of rapid change, such training in endurance is priceless. America's trusted Constitutional 'rights' and freedoms are fading away, eroded by a corrupting quest for amoral license and unbiblical unity. Missing are the old certainties.... No part of this transformation is more ominous than the shift in faith and values."

The Victory of the Cross: "Few would have guessed that George Muller, a Prussian boy with a bent for trouble, would one day trust God to meet the daily needs of thousands of orphans. His early life showed no signs of such faith. Born in 1805, he made little effort to resist the temptations he faced during his first twenty years. He stole, lied, cheated, used forgery to prosper, and craved immoral thrills. Later he wrote in his diary: 'At the age of sixteen I became an inmate of a prison, dwelling with thieves and murderers.'" See Sharing His suffering

The Pursuit of God by Tozer, Chapter 9: Meekness and Rest: "A fairly accurate description of the human race might be furnished one unacquainted with it by taking the Beatitudes, turning them wrong side out and saying, `Here is your human race.' For the exact opposite of the virtues in the Beatitudes are the very qualities which distinguish human life and conduct....

vInstead of poverty of spirit we find the rankest kind of pride;

Unanticipated Benefits of Sufferings: "If we could choose for ourselves, we would escape trials and tribulations. This is not always God's will for us, however. Despite our best-laid plans for survival and sustenance, God can override us. We may find ourselves in a situation of persecution so fierce and unrelenting that there is no escape. So what could be the possible benefit to us - and to others - should the Lord require this of us?" See Suffering

The Desperate Cry of Robinson Crusoe: "Robinson Crusoe has been shipwrecked. Sick, feverish and miserable, he is left on the desert island alone. He has no one to help him—none even to bring him a drink of cold water. Accustomed to sin, he had all the vices of a sailor; but his troubles now prompt him to seek help from the God he had ignored.... He finds a Bible in a rescued chest, and he sees this passage: 'Call upon Me in the day of trouble: I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.'...
     "Daniel Defoe, who wrote the story, was a Presbyterian minister; and though not overdone with spirituality, he knew enough of religion to be able to describe very vividly the experience of a man who is in despair...."

The song that silenced the cappuccino machine: "After the tune was over, she approached me. 'I apologize for singing along on that song. Did it bother you?' she asked.
'No,' I replied. 'We love it when the audience joins in. Would you like to sing up front on the next selection?'
To my delight, she accepted my invitation. 'You choose,' I said....

      "'Well.... Do you know any hymns?"
      "Hymns? This woman didn't know who she was dealing with. I cut my teeth on hymns....
      "There are so many good ones. You pick one."
      "Okay," I replied. "How about 'His Eye is on the Sparrow'?"....
       "She slowly nodded her head...straightened her jacket and faced the center of the shop. With my two-bar setup, she began to sing. Why should I be discouraged? Why should the shadows come?
       "The audience of coffee drinkers was transfixed..."

Job, Suffering and Spiritual Warfare: "With ropes tied around the children's small necks, the officer again promised freedom if only the parents would deny Christ. None were willing to betray their Lord. The children were hanged. The officer then called for a massive steamroller and forced the adults to lie down in its path. The deadly machine soon arrived, and they were given one last chance: 'Deny this Jesus or you will be crushed.' Again they refused. They had already given up their children; there was no turning back....

Testing the genuineness of our faith: "Untested faith may be true faith, but it is sure to be small faith, and it is likely to remain little as long as it is without trials. Faith never prospers so well as when all things are against her: Tempests are her trainers.... 

     "When a calm reigns on the sea, spread the sails as you will, the ship does not move to its harbor; for on a slumbering ocean the keel sleeps too. Let the winds rush and howl, and let the waters lift themselves, though the vessel may rock and her deck may be washed with waves and her mast may creak under the pressure of the full and swelling sail, it is then that she makes headway toward her desired haven."

 "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ." 1 Peter1:6-7

How blessed we are to know that God reigns in the midst of America's rapid transformation:

The school of suffering: "Most of us need the chastening of affliction. Pain is wonderful revealer. It teaches us many things we never could have known, if we had not been called to endure it. It opens windows through which we see, as we never saw before -- the beautiful things of God's love."

Clothed in Christ, our King. "His armor may or may not protect me against the storms of the world (Matthew 5:45). But it will always protect me against the assaults of Satan, whose arrows use the circumstances of the world to crush and destroy far more than could any storm.

      "In other words, God may not take me out of my circumstances, but He will bring victory in the midst of the trial. He will protect me against discouragement, despair, hopelessness, worthlessness-all the destructive emotions and thought patterns that rise up inside to disturb my peace, deny my resources in Christ, and quench my joy in Him."

Outside the Camp: "Jesus, bearing His cross, went forth to suffer outside the gate. The Christian’s reason for leaving the camp of the world’s sin and religion is not because he loves to be singular, but because Jesus did so; and the disciple must follow his Master. Christ was 'not of the world.' His life and His testimony were a constant protest against conformity with the world. Never was such overflowing affection for men as you find in Him; but still He was separate from sinners. In like manner Christ’s people must 'go out to Him.'”

His Strength in My Weakness: "I know that God is in control, and that nothing takes Him by surprise...

     "...an old friend came by to visit. He had been so impacted by The Shack that he couldn't stop talking about it.... When I mentioned theological problems with the book, he ignored what I said, and kept on talking about how 'wonderful' the book was. I went through a combination of shock, disbelief, and grief... and concern about the spiritual health of the church in America."

Our Never-Ending Citizenship: "Faced with unthinkable changes in our government, schools and churches, it helps to remember that we are first and foremost citizens of Heaven. God's Kingdom is not of this world, and neither is our primary citizenship. People can take our worldly goods, but our most important treasures are the ones in Heaven, and nobody can harm those."

Hard Times Ahead: "It’s time to prepare for hard times, my friends. And, if you’re a bible believing, Christ-following Christian, I believe the coming years will be particularly troublesome. I say 'bible-believing, Christ-following Christian' because our degenerating culture has all but stripped the biblical definition of the word 'Christian' from today’s collective conscience so that it has lost much of it’s scriptural meaning, even among many of today’s attending church members. The enemies of Christ have clearly risen to great power in this country and are, even as I write, busy endeavoring finish off what remains of the church for the purpose of replacing it with a god and religion more suitable for global government....

     "When our Constitution and Bill of Rights are completely discarded for the New World Order, there will be no going back to the way things were. There will only be the Word of God to edify, encourage, inspire and sustain us through the hard times ahead. Those who understand and appreciate the power of that Word know very well what I’m talking about. Those who don’t will ignore it at their own peril because to them, it is foolishness..." See Ban Truth - Reap Tyranny

Be Encouraged! "When all seems lost and hope is gone, don't you believe it! That's the time our Lord shows us some of His greatest work! And when we're close to despair -- throwing up our hands at the magnitude of [freedom-quenching] "change" here in America -- let's remember what God is doing in Iran and Sudan! ... While many pastors and lay people have been arrested, beaten and killed for their faith, His church continues to grow. In the Sudan, there are not enough pastors to keep up with the demand.... Will Americans experience persecution? See The Hand of God in History

Land of Disenchantment: "I had waited prayerfully for nearly nine years to get a message through to the outside world.... [Finally some of the prisoners] had been given permission to write home, one of the small concessions that had emerged after the bloody strikes of the previous year. I sent out an odd postcard indeed: it was signed with another man’s name, addressed to someone I had called 'uncle' as a child, and referred to myself as 'the noble nephew.' But it served its purpose, eventually reaching my father who identified my handwriting and at last had proof to show to the State Department authorities at home." See Abiding in Christ

To Live is Christ: "As he slowly came around, his eyes adjusted to the smoke. He cried out for his pastor, but no one answered. Horrified, he quickly began digging his way out of the pile of flesh and rubble. That morning, he had been among a group of 190 North Korean believers when the police stormed in, rounded them up, and harshly marched them to the town center...."

I Found God in Soviet Russia: The Trial of Unanswered Prayer: "As Easter Day came, in 1954, my situation seemed more desperate than at any time since the day of my arrest. Once again, I could feel my body being destroyed by overwork and malnutrition. Every bone ached with agony. I had served less than four years in Vorkuta and eleven years of my sentence still stretched endlessly before me! My constant prayers had the same tenor as a stanza of that great hymn of George Croly’s, 'Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart':"

 

Teach me to trust that Thou art always nigh,

Teach me the struggle of the soul to bear,

To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh,

Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer.

I Found God in Soviet Russia: An Unexpected Opportunity: "Step by step, God’s plan in sending me to Russia was unfolding.... My own faith had been tested again and again; I had experienced what I had come to accept as miracles; I had found among the slave laborers a vast yearning for God....

    "...I had been at Vorkuta for two and a half years. For the first fourteen months, I had pushed the cars of slate [in the freezing arctic climate]. Then in January, 1952... I was assigned to the mine transportation brigade.... One day I saw a switch break open.... Praying desperately, I reached back and forth, keeping that switch closed while thirty cars passed over it. A slip of a fraction of a second and I would have had my fingers severed or been crushed by a derailed car. After such narrow escapes as that, I felt more certain than ever that the hand of God must be protecting me or I could not have survived unscathed....

     "Anyone who wants to understand the religious situation in Russia today [written in 1959] must try first to realize what happens to people under a government which for more than four decades has denied that God exists, has taught its children that Christianity is an old-fashioned superstition no longer acceptable to progressive scientific minds, and has set up the immediate, expedient objectives of the State as the only standard of morality." See Purging the Memory of our Christian Roots

I Found God in Soviet Russia: Into the Land of the Godless: "'My God, my God GOD, why hast Thou forsaken me?' During that terrible journey into the Soviet Arctic in the sealed and crowded Stolopinskis (railway cars hideously designed for prisoner transportation), those words came often to my mind. There was comfort in them, knowing that Our Lord, too, had undergone complete despair. They are perhaps the most compassionate words He ever said, embracing as they do all men’s agony.

     "Later, even while that journey lasted, I could say those other words which follow: 'Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit.' For me this did not promise death; I was supposed to go on living until this unspeakable ordeal was completed and I could give my witness....

     "It was August when the trip began, October when we finally reached Vorkuta, the slave-labor camp [described in Solzhenitsyn's book, The Gulag Archipelago], which was our destination, a name more to be feared than any other..."

I Found God in Soviet Russia -- 9: Witness for Christ: "Many a missionary would have traveled thousands of into far and unknown lands to find so hungry a flock of lost sheep. But no missionary could have come to this area, the center of a communist concentration camp. There we were by the grace of God and we endeavored to make our witness for Christ as effective as was possible.... During the latter part of 1946 and the part of 1947 we had only one thing in abundance -- time."

I Found God in Soviet Russia Chapter 5: The Miracle of Bread: "The power of prayer is demonstrated most strikingly in the hour of greatest need. ...On the morning of August 2 [1945], when the second period of withdrawal of food began in Dresden Prison, my body was already run down from lack of proper nourishment during the previous month. The hunger pains I suffered were excruciating. ... I would have eaten anything that was brought to me, but at each mealtime my bowl was filled only with water.

    "No sooner had our noon 'meal' of warm water been brought that day than a terrible clatter, an uproar broke out through the prison..... Among the rebellious prisoners was a German communist leader who had already incurred the displeasure of his Russian masters.... All his life this man had worked for the communist revolutions. Now he was already harvesting the fruits of Marxism.... He had denied God for years: he had hated religion.... But the greatest punishment of an atheist is to be cut off from God... he could not seek strength or solace through faith." See Pray for one another

I Found God in Soviet Russia (Introduction): "During the decade I spent in communist prisons and labor camps I saw many terrible things. I also saw some glorious ones.  ...secret worship services were held and converts won for Christ even in Vorkuta itself, one of the slave-labor camps in the Soviet Arctic.

      "...there is deep interest in the Christian religion among both groups. In spite of their forty-year exposure to official atheism, or perhaps because of it, they hunger for the spiritual values they have been denied.

      "This evidence I am able to bring back to the free world, and through it the glorious tidings of a faith that cannot be killed. I have seen Christianity under the most terrible persecution it has suffered since the days of Nero, and I have seen abundant proof that faith in Christ, the Saviour, is still alive in Russia today in the very places where the Communists have tried hardest to stamp it out, the concentration camps." See Endurance with Joy

Elderly woman witnesses to man trying to rob her: Video -- A wonderful story

The Way of the Cross: "Instead of returning in penitence to God, and relying upon Him in the time of their threatened trouble, [ancient Israel] sought to accomplish an expensive and profitless alliance with Egypt... It was not alliance they needed... but reliance; for 'Thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, 'In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength; and ye would not.'...

     "The great sin of man has always been in this direction, a preference of his own will to the will of God; a preference of his own inclinations for God’s obligations. It is the sin of the Church today, and the explanation of her enfeebled and pitiable position in the eyes of the world."

      The author of this precious little book died in 1925! Human nature doesn't change, does it?

In Their Own Words: "We whose names are underwritten, having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony...." (William Bradford) "We have been assured in the Sacred Writings that -- 'except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that built it.' I firmly believe this."  (Benjamin Franklin) "What students would learn in American schools above all is the religion of Jesus Christ." (George Washington)

Searching: My journey through doubt into faith (1959): "...the high soul climbs the high way, and the low soul gropes the low.
And in between, on the misty flats, the rest drift to and fro....

      "I did not know that I had stepped down to The Misty Flats. I was just conscious of a sudden pleasant freedom from old duties. If there was no God, why bother to go to church on Sunday, for instance?... It was a popular thing to be on The Misty Flats: you had plenty of company. And one was respected as being modern and intelligent to question the old faiths. Life drifted along so pleasantly—for a while." See Seeking God

John Owen Quotes: "Without absolutes revealed from without by God Himself, we are left rudderless in a sea of conflicting ideas about manners, justice and right and wrong, issuing from a multitude of self-opinionated thinkers."

      "If we do not abide in prayer, we will abide in temptation. Let this be one aspect of our daily intercession: 'God, preserve my soul, and keep my heart and all its ways so that I will not be entangled.' When this is true in our lives, a passing temptation will not overcome us. We will remain free while others lie in bondage."

 

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Elderly woman witnesses to man trying to rob her: Be encouraged by this special video.

God's Sovereignty: "...if all things are put under Jesus' feet, there cannot be a single circumstance over which He has not supreme control. Everything in providence and everything in grace are alike subject to His disposal. There is not a trial, a temptation, an affliction of body or soul... which is not put under Jesus' feet. He can manage them... and direct them for our good and His own glory."

A Mother's Prayers: "Dhanjoy had grown up among people whose only hope in life was to appease the anger of evil spirits. He was a mischievous boy, and he fought with his father and brother. He would even grab and pull his mother's hair or throw his sandal into the food she was cooking. Meena desperately wanted her son to grow up knowing the love of Jesus, and she prayed for him often.... Now, Dhanjoy is a Bible college graduate serving the Lord full-time in the mountainous Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. He has faced opposition several times from anti-Christian groups, but he continues faithfully. Dhanjoy asks for prayer that many people will receive salvation through his ministry." See Perseverance

"Our task is ... to be light in a dark world where people's natural inclination is to hate Jesus because they don't want God intruding in their lives." (David Brickner, Executive Director of Jews for Jesus, February 2008 newsletter)

An urgent call for prayer -- Gaza Christians: "Worship services at Gaza Baptist Church now includes no more than 10 or 15 believers who are willing to risk publicly attending the only evangelical church in all of the Gaza Strip.  ...there is a tiny group of believers who are living out their faith." See Prayer

 

Lord of the Valleys: "When we are entrenched by the forces of the enemy—people who would cut us down, situations which would destroy us, or tragedy which would shake our faith—victory depends on who is our king. Is it Benhadad [king of Syria, 1 Kings 20:23], who saw only the God of the hills? Or have we enlisted in the army of the King of kings, knowing that in whatever valley we find ourselves, the battle is His! And we are more than conquerors through Christ!" See Victory in Christ

 

God holds the key. "I had gone to China with a heart’s desire to serve Christ to the uttermost. To me there was little or no sacrifice in this. I wanted to do this more than anything else in the world. I felt no possibility of retraction. Others might fail but I would not. Others drop from the ranks but I would be loyal....

    "I become a prisoner of the Communist army. It is now a question of indefinite solitary confinement. After days and days alone I am taken out by a young official and he talks to me seriously about the question of execution.... "'Wilt thou lay down thy life for My sake? Wilt thou...?’"
 

Standing firm: "...you came to a crisis when you made a stand for God and had the witness of the Spirit that all was right, but the weeks have gone by, and the years maybe, and you are slowly coming to the conclusion, ‘Well, after all, was I not a bit too pretentious? Was I not taking a stand a bit too high?’" See Called to Total Commitment

 

William Carey - Cast down but not in despair: "On March 11, 1812, Carey was teaching in Calcutta. While he was gone, a fire started in the printing room.... Despite many hours of exhaustive efforts to fight the fire, the building burned to the ground. Just five pieces of equipment were saved. Carey’s entire library, his completed Sanskrit dictionary, part of his Bengal dictionary, two grammar books, and ten translations of the Bible were lost. Gone also were the type sets for printing fourteen different languages."

 

Encouraging Poems. Don't Quit

 

A Rising Chorus: "Today, inside one of the world's most repressive societies, a growing number are turning to the Man from Galilee.... The men and women at the secret meeting spend the next several hours singing and praying. ...most of the people at the meeting converted to Christianity from Islam. And in a country governed by Islamic law, and whose population is 99-percent Muslim, such conversions carry the death penalty....

     "CBN News: Are you scared? Leila: No. If it was through my own strength, of course I would be scared. But I have the Holy Spirit inside me, and He gives me the strength not to be afraid.... I meet so many students who are hungry to believe in something. My burden is to share Christ with them." See True Stories for Children

 

Fighting Giants on His Knees: "From the moment Gospel for Asia missionary Mitul Harjit stepped into the remote village in Jharkhand, India, the animists who lived there tried to cast spells against him.

     "Mitul prayed, trusting the Lord to protect him from their incantations. He pressed on, sharing the Gospel and interceding daily for the village.

     "The villagers, however, did not like Mitul and pressured his landlord to evict him. Sensing that he might put the landlord in danger, Mitul moved away from the village. On the day Mitul moved, snakes infiltrated many villagers’ homes. The animist villagers believed that the snakes were sent by evil spirits. The problem increased until finally the villagers realized that Mitul’s prayers had been protecting them. “We have done wrong! Please forgive us, and come pray for us,” the villagers begged Mitul.

     "He returned, God answered his prayers, and the snakes left the village." See Victory in Christ

 

Missionaries Go From East to West: "A hundred years ago, American and European Christians streamed into the region to convert the Chinese and Koreans. During the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901) in China, foreign missionaries were targeted and in many cases killed.... The example set by the missionaries (mostly American and British) who came to work in Korea is still a recent memory. Like its neighbors China and Japan, the Korean peninsula was traditionally influenced by Buddhism and Confucianism...." See Missionaries to a lost world

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Our Never-Ending Citizenship: "Faced with unthinkable changes in our government, schools and churches, it helps to remember that we are first and foremost citizens of Heaven. God's Kingdom is not of this world, and neither is our primary citizenship. People can take our worldly goods, but our most important treasures are the ones in Heaven, and nobody can harm those."

Hard Times Ahead: "It’s time to prepare for hard times, my friends. And, if you’re a bible believing, Christ-following Christian, I believe the coming years will be particularly troublesome. I say 'bible-believing, Christ-following Christian' because our degenerating culture has all but stripped the biblical definition of the word 'Christian' from today’s collective conscience so that it has lost much of it’s scriptural meaning, even among many of today’s attending church members. The enemies of Christ have clearly risen to great power in this country and are, even as I write, busy endeavoring finish off what remains of the church for the purpose of replacing it with a god and religion more suitable for global government....

     "When our Constitution and Bill of Rights are completely discarded for the New World Order, there will be no going back to the way things were. There will only be the Word of God to edify, encourage, inspire and sustain us through the hard times ahead. Those who understand and appreciate the power of that Word know very well what I’m talking about. Those who don’t will ignore it at their own peril because to them, it is foolishness..." See Ban Truth - Reap Tyranny

Be Encouraged! "When all seems lost and hope is gone, don't you believe it! That's the time our Lord shows us some of His greatest work! And when we're close to despair -- throwing up our hands at the magnitude of [freedom-quenching] "change" here in America -- let's remember what God is doing in Iran and Sudan! ... While many pastors and lay people have been arrested, beaten and killed for their faith, His church continues to grow. In the Sudan, there are not enough pastors to keep up with the demand.... Will Americans experience persecution? See The Hand of God in History

Land of Disenchantment: "I had waited prayerfully for nearly nine years to get a message through to the outside world.... [Finally some of the prisoners] had been given permission to write home, one of the small concessions that had emerged after the bloody strikes of the previous year. I sent out an odd postcard indeed: it was signed with another man’s name, addressed to someone I had called 'uncle' as a child, and referred to myself as 'the noble nephew.' But it served its purpose, eventually reaching my father who identified my handwriting and at last had proof to show to the State Department authorities at home." See Abiding in Christ

To Live is Christ: "As he slowly came around, his eyes adjusted to the smoke. He cried out for his pastor, but no one answered. Horrified, he quickly began digging his way out of the pile of flesh and rubble. That morning, he had been among a group of 190 North Korean believers when the police stormed in, rounded them up, and harshly marched them to the town center...." Following Jesus and sharing His suffering

I Found God in Soviet Russia: The Trial of Unanswered Prayer: "As Easter Day came, in 1954, my situation seemed more desperate than at any time since the day of my arrest. Once again, I could feel my body being destroyed by overwork and malnutrition. Every bone ached with agony. I had served less than four years in Vorkuta and eleven years of my sentence still stretched endlessly before me! My constant prayers had the same tenor as a stanza of that great hymn of George Croly’s, 'Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart':"

 

Teach me to trust that Thou art always nigh,

Teach me the struggle of the soul to bear,

To check the rising doubt, the rebel sigh,

Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer.

Elderly woman witnesses to man trying to rob her: Video -- A wonderful story

I Found God in Soviet Russia: An Unexpected Opportunity: "Step by step, God’s plan in sending me to Russia was unfolding.... My own faith had been tested again and again; I had experienced what I had come to accept as miracles; I had found among the slave laborers a vast yearning for God....

    "...I had been at Vorkuta for two and a half years. For the first fourteen months, I had pushed the cars of slate [in the freezing arctic climate]. Then in January, 1952... I was assigned to the mine transportation brigade.... One day I saw a switch break open.... Praying desperately, I reached back and forth, keeping that switch closed while thirty cars passed over it. A slip of a fraction of a second and I would have had my fingers severed or been crushed by a derailed car. After such narrow escapes as that, I felt more certain than ever that the hand of God must be protecting me or I could not have survived unscathed....

     "Anyone who wants to understand the religious situation in Russia today [written in 1959] must try first to realize what happens to people under a government which for more than four decades has denied that God exists, has taught its children that Christianity is an old-fashioned superstition no longer acceptable to progressive scientific minds, and has set up the immediate, expedient objectives of the State as the only standard of morality." See Purging the Memory of our Christian Roots

I Found God in Soviet Russia: Into the Land of the Godless: "'My God, my God GOD, why hast Thou forsaken me?' During that terrible journey into the Soviet Arctic in the sealed and crowded Stolopinskis (railway cars hideously designed for prisoner transportation), those words came often to my mind. There was comfort in them, knowing that Our Lord, too, had undergone complete despair. They are perhaps the most compassionate words He ever said, embracing as they do all men’s agony.

     "Later, even while that journey lasted, I could say those other words which follow: 'Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit.' For me this did not promise death; I was supposed to go on living until this unspeakable ordeal was completed and I could give my witness....

     "It was August when the trip began, October when we finally reached Vorkuta, the slave-labor camp [described in Solzhenitsyn's book, The Gulag Archipelago], which was our destination, a name more to be feared than any other..."

I Found God in Soviet Russia -- 9: Witness for Christ: "Many a missionary would have traveled thousands of into far and unknown lands to find so hungry a flock of lost sheep. But no missionary could have come to this area, the center of a communist concentration camp. There we were by the grace of God and we endeavored to make our witness for Christ as effective as was possible.... During the latter part of 1946 and the part of 1947 we had only one thing in abundance -- time."

I Found God in Soviet Russia Chapter 5: The Miracle of Bread: "The power of prayer is demonstrated most strikingly in the hour of greatest need. ...On the morning of August 2 [1945], when the second period of withdrawal of food began in Dresden Prison, my body was already run down from lack of proper nourishment during the previous month. The hunger pains I suffered were excruciating. ... I would have eaten anything that was brought to me, but at each mealtime my bowl was filled only with water.

    "No sooner had our noon 'meal' of warm water been brought that day than a terrible clatter, an uproar broke out through the prison..... Among the rebellious prisoners was a German communist leader who had already incurred the displeasure of his Russian masters.... All his life this man had worked for the communist revolutions. Now he was already harvesting the fruits of Marxism.... He had denied God for years: he had hated religion.... But the greatest punishment of an atheist is to be cut off from God... he could not seek strength or solace through faith." See Pray for one another

I Found God in Soviet Russia (Introduction): "During the decade I spent in communist prisons and labor camps I saw many terrible things. I also saw some glorious ones.  ...secret worship services were held and converts won for Christ even in Vorkuta itself, one of the slave-labor camps in the Soviet Arctic.

      "...there is deep interest in the Christian religion among both groups. In spite of their forty-year exposure to official atheism, or perhaps because of it, they hunger for the spiritual values they have been denied.

      "This evidence I am able to bring back to the free world, and through it the glorious tidings of a faith that cannot be killed. I have seen Christianity under the most terrible persecution it has suffered since the days of Nero, and I have seen abundant proof that faith in Christ, the Saviour, is still alive in Russia today in the very places where the Communists have tried hardest to stamp it out, the concentration camps." See Endurance with Joy

The Way of the Cross: "Instead of returning in penitence to God, and relying upon Him in the time of their threatened trouble, [ancient Israel] sought to accomplish an expensive and profitless alliance with Egypt... It was not alliance they needed... but reliance; for 'Thus saith the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, 'In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength; and ye would not.'...

     "The great sin of man has always been in this direction, a preference of his own will to the will of God; a preference of his own inclinations for God’s obligations. It is the sin of the Church today, and the explanation of her enfeebled and pitiable position in the eyes of the world."

      The author of this precious little book died in 1925! Human nature doesn't change, does it?

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In Their Own Words: "We whose names are underwritten, having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony...." (William Bradford) "We have been assured in the Sacred Writings that -- 'except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that built it.' I firmly believe this."  (Benjamin Franklin) "What students would learn in American schools above all is the religion of Jesus Christ." (George Washington)

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Searching: My journey through doubt into faith (1959): "...the high soul climbs the high way, and the low soul gropes the low.
And in between, on the misty flats, the rest drift to and fro...."

"I did not know that I had stepped down to The Misty Flats. I was just conscious of a sudden pleasant freedom from old duties. If there was no God, why bother to go to church on Sunday, for instance?... It was a popular thing to be on The Misty Flats: you had plenty of company. And one was respected as being modern and intelligent to question the old faiths. Life drifted along so pleasantly—for a while." See Seeking God

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John Owen Quotes: "Without absolutes revealed from without by God Himself, we are left rudderless in a sea of conflicting ideas about manners, justice and right and wrong, issuing from a multitude of self-opinionated thinkers."

      "If we do not abide in prayer, we will abide in temptation. Let this be one aspect of our daily intercession: 'God, preserve my soul, and keep my heart and all its ways so that I will not be entangled.' When this is true in our lives, a passing temptation will not overcome us. We will remain free while others lie in bondage."

 

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Elderly woman witnesses to man trying to rob her: Be encouraged by this special video.

God's Sovereignty: "...if all things are put under Jesus' feet, there cannot be a single circumstance over which He has not supreme control. Everything in providence and everything in grace are alike subject to His disposal. There is not a trial, a temptation, an affliction of body or soul... which is not put under Jesus' feet. He can manage them... and direct them for our good and His own glory."

A Mother's Prayers: "Dhanjoy had grown up among people whose only hope in life was to appease the anger of evil spirits. He was a mischievous boy, and he fought with his father and brother. He would even grab and pull his mother's hair or throw his sandal into the food she was cooking. Meena desperately wanted her son to grow up knowing the love of Jesus, and she prayed for him often.... Now, Dhanjoy is a Bible college graduate serving the Lord full-time in the mountainous Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. He has faced opposition several times from anti-Christian groups, but he continues faithfully. Dhanjoy asks for prayer that many people will receive salvation through his ministry." See Perseverance

"Our task is ... to be light in a dark world where people's natural inclination is to hate Jesus because they don't want God intruding in their lives." (David Brickner, Executive Director of Jews for Jesus, February 2008 newsletter)

 

An urgent call for prayer -- Gaza Christians: "Worship services at Gaza Baptist Church now includes no more than 10 or 15 believers who are willing to risk publicly attending the only evangelical church in all of the Gaza Strip.  ...there is a tiny group of believers who are living out their faith." See Prayer

 

Lord of the Valleys: "When we are entrenched by the forces of the enemy—people who would cut us down, situations which would destroy us, or tragedy which would shake our faith—victory depends on who is our king. Is it Benhadad [king of Syria, 1 Kings 20:23], who saw only the God of the hills? Or have we enlisted in the army of the King of kings, knowing that in whatever valley we find ourselves, the battle is His! And we are more than conquerors through Christ!" See Victory in Christ

 

God holds the key. "I had gone to China with a heart’s desire to serve Christ to the uttermost. To me there was little or no sacrifice in this. I wanted to do this more than anything else in the world. I felt no possibility of retraction. Others might fail but I would not. Others drop from the ranks but I would be loyal....

    "I become a prisoner of the Communist army. It is now a question of indefinite solitary confinement. After days and days alone I am taken out by a young official and he talks to me seriously about the question of execution.... "'Wilt thou lay down thy life for My sake? Wilt thou...?’"
 

Standing firm: "...you came to a crisis when you made a stand for God and had the witness of the Spirit that all was right, but the weeks have gone by, and the years maybe, and you are slowly coming to the conclusion, ‘Well, after all, was I not a bit too pretentious? Was I not taking a stand a bit too high?’" See Called to Total Commitment

 

William Carey - Cast down but not in despair: "On March 11, 1812, Carey was teaching in Calcutta. While he was gone, a fire started in the printing room.... Despite many hours of exhaustive efforts to fight the fire, the building burned to the ground. Just five pieces of equipment were saved. Carey’s entire library, his completed Sanskrit dictionary, part of his Bengal dictionary, two grammar books, and ten translations of the Bible were lost. Gone also were the type sets for printing fourteen different languages." See Perseverance

Encouraging Poems. Don't Quit

 

A Rising Chorus: "Today, inside one of the world's most repressive societies, a growing number are turning to the Man from Galilee.... The men and women at the secret meeting spend the next several hours singing and praying. ...most of the people at the meeting converted to Christianity from Islam. And in a country governed by Islamic law, and whose population is 99-percent Muslim, such conversions carry the death penalty....

     "CBN News: Are you scared? Leila: No. If it was through my own strength, of course I would be scared. But I have the Holy Spirit inside me, and He gives me the strength not to be afraid.... I meet so many students who are hungry to believe in something. My burden is to share Christ with them." See True Stories for Children

 

Fighting Giants on His Knees: "From the moment Gospel for Asia missionary Mitul Harjit stepped into the remote village in Jharkhand, India, the animists who lived there tried to cast spells against him.

     "Mitul prayed, trusting the Lord to protect him from their incantations. He pressed on, sharing the Gospel and interceding daily for the village.

     "The villagers, however, did not like Mitul and pressured his landlord to evict him. Sensing that he might put the landlord in danger, Mitul moved away from the village. On the day Mitul moved, snakes infiltrated many villagers’ homes. The animist villagers believed that the snakes were sent by evil spirits. The problem increased until finally the villagers realized that Mitul’s prayers had been protecting them. “We have done wrong! Please forgive us, and come pray for us,” the villagers begged Mitul.

     "He returned, God answered his prayers, and the snakes left the village." See Victory in Christ

 

Missionaries Go From East to West: "A hundred years ago, American and European Christians streamed into the region to convert the Chinese and Koreans. During the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901) in China, foreign missionaries were targeted and in many cases killed.... The example set by the missionaries (mostly American and British) who came to work in Korea is still a recent memory. Like its neighbors China and Japan, the Korean peninsula was traditionally influenced by Buddhism and Confucianism...." See Missionaries to a lost world

Thailand: Cruel death brings new life: "Minka Hanskamp... and Margaret Morgan.... were missionary nurses.... They had worked tirelessly in southern Thailand for sixteen and nine years respectively. They both had a special burden for those with leprosy. Their ministry involved cutting away rotten flesh, treating ulcerated sores that emitted a horrible stench, and washing many leprous feet....

     "One man testified at the funeral that he had been a former bandit killer but had become a Christian after Minka had tenderly placed his ulcerated foot on her lap as she treated it."

 

The Disappearing Doctrine: "The fundamental mark of liberalism is its constant attack against solid biblical teaching. A growing number of people such as Rick Warren, Joel Olsteen, Benny Hinn, and the many, many others in the worldly ecumenical movement are saying, 'Doctrine is not important. God is important. Let's lay aside our petty doctrinal differences and get back to God.'" But apart from the maligned "absolutes" of the Bible, we can't know the true God from today's feel-good counterfeits." See God's holy, unchanging Word

 

The Triumph of Truth: "When a person who believes God is put through harrowing experiences, God waits, as it were, to see whether that person will consider Him worthy of his trust to the bitter end. His glory in that circumstance is linked up with that man's faith. When faith triumphs in the sufficiency of God's grace, then God is glorified in the world." See The Truth

 

The Desolate Wilderness: "So they [pilgrims] left that goodly and pleasant city of Leyden, which had been their resting-place for above eleven years [1608-1620], but they knew that they were pilgrims and strangers here below, and looked not much on these things, but lifted up their eyes to Heaven, their dearest country, where God hath prepared for them a city (Heb. XI, 16), and therein quieted their spirits.

     "...they found the ship and all things ready, and such of their friends as could not come with them followed after them, and sundry came from Amsterdam to see them shipt, and to take their leaves of them. One night was spent with little sleep with the most, but with friendly entertainment and Christian discourse, and other real expressions of true Christian love. The next day they went on board....

     "But the tide (which stays for no man) calling them away, that were thus loath to depart, their Reverend Pastor, falling down on his knees, and they all with him, with watery cheeks commended them with the most fervent prayers unto the Lord and His blessing; and then with mutual embraces and many tears they took their leaves one of another, which proved to be the last leave to many of them....

     "Being now passed the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before them in expectations, they had now no friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain or refresh them, no houses..." See The Pilgrims, the Bible, Persecution and Thanksgiving

 

The Gospel: A Method or a Message? "Dear reader, you have a choice.... The one will make you think you are on the path to heaven when you may not be, the other will put you on the path to heaven by God’s sovereign power. I urge you to embrace the gospel on God’s terms."

 

Grieving Amish raise money for killer's family -- 'This is possible if you have Christ in your heart': "...the Amish community devastated by the cold-blooded murder of five of its schoolgirls is raising money for the killer's family. ... Amish residents of rural Lancaster County, Pa., have started a charity fund to help not only the victims' families – but also the mass-murderer's widow and children.... Roberts' Amish neighbors would probably be very supportive of the killer and his wife, 'because judgment is in God's hands: 'Judge not, that ye be not judged.'" See God's mercy, patience and covenant love

 

Lord of the Sheep: "The study of Psalm 23 is what God has given me to help me through some difficult times.... Thinking of a sheep pen as a place of restoring our souls, two ideas occur to me. One is that the sheep do not make the pen, the shepherd does. Any walls that you and I try to build up around ourselves thinking that we are protecting ourselves from the world are doomed to failure: 'Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain' (Psa 127:1).

     "...the pen is usually open (it has no roof), and does not offer much protection either from the elements or from a large predator such as a lion or a wolf. By separating us off in a pen, the Shepherd is not pulling us out of the world with all its problems. The Shepherd has made the pen in an open way so that we will not forget that our protection comes not so much from being in the pen as from the Shepherd who is guarding the gate....

     "We walk in paths of righteousness because he is with us. If he were not leading us along those paths, they would not be paths of righteousness. He walks out in front of us and we follow his voice." See My Shepherd

The GOSPEL - Planned and Promised from the beginning of time: "God has a plan and the Scriptures assure us that nothing is out of His control.... Everything that He foretold in the Old Testament has been or will be fulfilled in His perfect, planned time:

    "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame... to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved."

Transforming Churches: "What the church needs today is not to be transformed into some seek-sensitive, marketing driven, politically powerful business. It needs to return to its roots. It needs to seek out the old paths. (Jeremiah 6:16)... By definition it is made up of those who are true believers, walking in obedience to the Head of the Church. If that is true then each of those members will be doing what Christ expects of them and will be functioning in the Church according to His will." See His wonderful GRACE

Student Expelled for His Conservative Views Wins Suit, Returns Determined: "Last year Le Moyne College... dismissed Scott McConnell from its masters of education program for writing a paper in which he advocated the use of corporal punishment and criticized multiculturalism....

     "The teacher-in-training says he is not concerned about the future. He contends, 'I base everything on my faith in the Lord, and because of that, it's like the song He's the Rock of my Salvation. Well, that's my rock. I stand upon it, and I have nothing to worry about .'" Suffering

 

The Authority & Sufficiency of Scripture (by Pastor Gary E. Gilley): "One of the battle cries of the Reformation was sola Scriptura—Scripture alone. This simply meant that the ultimate basis of authority and truth was Scripture.... But, for the most part, the evangelical church today does not believe this. The authority and sufficiency of God’s Word is being supplanted at every turn.....

     "Taking a stand for the truth is long since out of vogue. John MacArthur makes the point, 'It is no longer deemed necessary to fight for the truth. In fact, many evangelicals now consider it ill-mannered and uncharitable to argue about any point of doctrine.'... Meanwhile, many in evangelicalism are sitting on the sidelines wanting to be tolerant and attempting to bully and intimidate any who advocate discernment....

     "The church today is more guided by feeling than by convictions. We value enthusiasm more than informed commitment.'

     “...many evangelicals now consider it ill-mannered and uncharitable to argue about any point of doctrine.'  If this is true why are so few noticing it?...

     1. Because the marketers of this approach to Christianity have become adept at giving people what they want. Michael Horton writes, '...the false prophets tell the people what they want to hear, baptize it with God’s name, and serve it up as God’s latest word to His people.'

     2. Because the centrality of the Word of God has been subtly replaced with inferior but pleasing substitutes." God's eternal, unchanging Word

Where is your kingdom?  "If our little speck on the globe, by the grace of God, becomes a little more tolerable for a time through the courageous and benevolent efforts of the brethren, then praise the Lord; but should that be our primary objective? ... Shall we Christianize the old to make it homier for our family, friends and countrymen or point to the new? ...
      "Is there any scriptural directive calling us to renovate the Land of the Lost into a facade of faith so that it will appear to be Christian owned and operated when our Lord returns, even though it is clearly stated four times in scripture that Satan is the 'prince of this world?'" The ways of the world

Whatever happened to the Bible? "The preaching of God's Word today is quickly being replaced by brief self-help messages with a couple of proof texts. The focus is Man and his 'felt needs' rather than Christ and His cross. And the aim is to help people feel good about themselves rather than to declare the Gospel....

     "When talking this over with another pastor, his remark to me was, 'Kirk, there's just not room in our society for a direct spiritual message. It's just not effective anymore.'... 

     "But my question is this: from Genesis to Revelation, when has God ever prescribed anything but a direct spiritual message...? Who are we to change the plan? Who are we to assume responsibility for 'effectiveness' or even determine what that means?

     "For nearly a hundred years Noah was a preacher of righteousness, warning of things to come. During that time not a single person, except for those in his own family, received the message of God through His servant. Yet, in Hebrews 11, Noah is commended for his great faith - not because he was effective, but because he obeyed God." See Creating Community

 

The Master's Sword: "...remember that the Bible is where God had His very thoughts written down so we might be able to learn to think as He does." Titus 2:13 and Eternity

 

Sledge Hammer of Conviction: "Towards the end of the night I started preaching to two men in their twenties. One man in particular was the typical thug, much as I once was not long ago. [See Guilty as Charged]

      "He admitted that if he died he'd go to hell. When I asked the man what was holding him back from giving up his sins and turning to Christ he said nothing.... I approached him and spoke with him and found his heart to be heavy, his eyes to be watery, and conviction so strong upon him that he could hardly talk. ... His name was Jay. We prayed together that God would save him from his sins, and take his sins and his guilt away. It was glorious!" Salvation

Evacuee Family Clings to Christ Amid Uncertain Times: "As they left Louisiana and headed north through Mississippi, the Michels didn’t know where their journey would stop. They ultimately landed in Humboldt, Tenn., where they may be for some time.... They’re simply resting in the Lord and in his promise that he’ll never leave or forsake them. 'That’s the anchor, and it will hold,' Dale said. 'It’s been holding from the beginning of time. Suffering

What is biblical discernment and why is it important? "In its simplest definition, discernment is nothing more than the ability to decide between truth and error, right and wrong. ... the ability to think with discernment is synonymous with an ability to think biblically....

     "'...examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good; abstain from every form of evil.' The apostle John issues a similar warning when he says, 'Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world' (:1)....

      "Discernment... is indispensable to an uncompromising life. It is incumbent upon the Christian to seize upon the discernment that God has provided for in His precious truth! Without it, Christians are at risk of being 'tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine' (Ephesians 4:14)."

 

The Old Cross and The New: "From this new cross has sprung a new philosophy of the Christian life, and from that new philosophy has come a new evangelical technique -- a new type of meeting and a new kind of preaching. This new evangelism employs the same language as the old, but its content is not the same and its emphasis not as before."

 

Was Abigail a Feminist? "The Adams family communicated a vision for multi-generational responsibility; they made the reading of the Bible a staple of life. Both parents were unified and involved in the home education of their children. The Adams children had no time for foolishness because, from their youth, they were in and around adults and adult activities.

    "... writing to her ten-year-old son John Quincy, then traveling with his father, Abigail Adams would comment: 'You are in possession of a natural and good understanding and of spirits unbroken by adversity, and untamed with care. Improve your understanding for acquiring useful knowledge and virtue, such as will render you an ornament to society, an honor to your country, and a blessing to your parents and remember you are accountable to your Maker for all your words and actions."

     Wonder how many ten-year-olds today would receive -- or even understand -- such a letter! It's a reminder of how America has "dumbed down" education and traded wisdom for vanity.

 

God worshiped and honored in Iraq: "THE MARINES’ PRAYER: 'Almighty Father, Whose command is over all and Whose love never fails, make me aware of Thy presence and obedient to Thy will. Keep me true to my best self, guarding me against dishonesty in purpose and deed and helping me to live so that I can face my fellow Marines, my loved ones and Thee without shame or fear. Protect my family. Give me the will to do the work of a Marine and to accept my share of responsibilities with vigor and enthusiasm. Grant me the courage to be proficient in my daily performance. Keep me loyal and faithful.... If I am inclined to doubt, steady my faith; If I am tempted, make me strong to resist.... Guide me with the Light of Truth and grant me wisdom by which I may understand the answer to my prayer. Amen.”

 

A Word of Joy -- William Cowper: "The life of Cowper is a study in the grace of God and his work through the weakness of his own servants.... Among the sixty-eight of Cowper's hymns are the following: 'Oh for a Closer Walk God,' 'There is a Fountain Filled with Blood,' 'God Moves in a Mysterious Ways'... Shortly before his death he wrote Castaway, in which be expressed his spiritual torment." 2 Corinthians 4:16

 

Ex-Muslim Seeks to Transform Iran with Christian Broadcasts: "The head of a California-based ministry aimed at reaching Muslims for Christ says the gospel of Jesus Christ is not the only message he takes to millions of people in Iran. The U.S. evangelist, born in Iran, is also preaching the virtues of democracy to people in his native country at every opportunity. Donald Fareed, a former Muslim himself, came to know Jesus as his Lord and Savior 14 years ago....

     "...spiritual change must take precedence over social or political change. 'Freedom without Christ is going to bring corruption, of course,' he says. 'So the first thing is the gospel and the second thing is democracy.'

     Fareed also founded Persian Ministries International, "an evangelistic non-profit Christian organization with a vision of reaching over 100 million Persian-speaking Muslims for Christ worldwide."

 

The Truth About Alexander the Great in World and Bible History: “'Few modern historians accept Alexander’s greatness upon his military abilities alone, and none, certainly, upon the pomp which he acquired as Lord of Lords of the Persians and as Pharaoh, the god-king of Egypt. More noteworthy to them—as it was to many of his contemporaries—is Alexander’s surprising cosmopolitanism. By his colonization, Alexander spread the Greek language, Greek social institutions, and Greek culture from Athens to India. He seems to have envisioned a new culture rooted in Hellenism but united with the ancient civilizations of the Near East and any other area which might be added to the empire of the future.’…
      “These corresponding narratives from history, one secular, the other Biblical, corroborate Alexander the Great’s critical role of preparing the world for the first coming of Christ. Alexander’s conquering of the East in the fourth century BC cultured its people with the language of the New Testament, Koine (common) Greek, so all the world could understand and translate it the three centuries following Christ.”
     "...as film maker Oliver Stone brings Alexander back to life, he doesn’t touch on Alexander’s divine role in history. Though his script uses the device of flashback, he doesn't revisit history to show how the Persian Empire Alexander conquered was descendant from the Persian king the Old Testament prophet Daniel served and wrote of, King Darius 1." See The Hand of God

 

The song that silenced the cappuccino machine. See the words to that special hymn: His eye is on the sparrow

 

22-Year-Old [Charles] Spurgeon Returned to the Site of His Salvation to Preach: "I was 'in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity,' but had yet, by divine grace, been led to feel the bitterness of that bondage, and to cry out by reason of the soreness of its slavery. Seeking rest, and finding none, I stepped within the house of God, and sat there, afraid to look upward, lest I should be utterly cut off, and lest his fierce wrath should consume me. The minister rose in his pulpit, and, as I have done this morning, read this text, 'Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.' I looked that moment; the grace of faith was vouchsafed to me in the self-same instant; and now I think I can say with truth,

'Ere since by faith I saw the stream

His flowing wounds supply,

Redeeming love has been my theme,

And shall be till I die."

We're like the Marines of the church,' says missionary to remotest tribes: "New Tribes specializes in evangelism among the 3,000 indigenous groups in the world's remotest tracts, places that remain isolated from the outside world and thus untouched by Christianity.... Teams of five or six missionaries leave the modern world and its conveniences behind to spend years living among tribespeople, learning their language and culture in order to translate the New Testament and parts of the Old Testament into tribal languages, most of which have never before been reduced to writing.

     "...many academic anthropologists criticize incursions by missionaries. Survival supports 'tribal peoples' right to choose their own religions' and opposes missionaries 'who force their own beliefs on others.'...

     "The church relations director at New Tribes headquarters, Dave Zelenak, chuckles at accusations about imposing beliefs: 'They must have watched some old Tarzan movie to think somehow you come in and everybody just obeys your word. Not a chance. You have to earn respect.'"

     Those who don't know our Lord, can't understand how people can give up Western comforts to bring Truth to isolated tribes. See Chart: Biblical versus Cultural Christianity

Andy and I read the following book recently. In contrast to today's feeling-based spirituality and entertainment, it shows what it means to walk with Jesus and follow the Shepherd: we will share both in His suffering and in His amazing triumphs! (See the next 3 links)

The Heavenly Man - The Remarkable True Story of Chinese Christian Brother Yun: (Scroll down to book) "Brother Yun is one of the key leaders of the Back to Jerusalem movement. This is the story of how God took a young, half-starved boy from a poor village in Henan Province and used him mightily to preach the gospel despite intense persecution. Yun shares about how the BTJ [Back to Jerusalem] vision has impacted his life and ministry. Instead of focusing on the many miracles or experiences of suffering, Yun prefers to emphasize the character and beauty of Jesus. This astonishing book will form a watershed in your spiritual life." It truly is a wonderful book! See Phil 1:20-21 and the next two links:

God's Call to the Chinese Church: "The aim of this site is to inform and challenge Christians around the world to prayer and involvement with the Chinese Church as they reach out with the Gospel to the Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu nations of the world." Mission to a lost world

Back to Jerusalem - History: “The following words of Mark Ma ring true for the present generation of Chinese believers who are now pressing forward with consecrated hearts to fulfill this great call: “My hope is that our Chinese Church will with determination and courage hold fast this great responsibility and, depending upon our all victorious Saviour, complete this mighty task, and taking possession of our glorious inheritance, take the Gospel back to Jerusalem.”  The goal is not simply to go to Jerusalem, but to share the gospel with the Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim people along the way.

The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer: "The doctrine of justification by faith -- a Biblical truth, and a blessed relief from sterile legalism and unavailing self-effort -- has in our time fallen into evil company and been interpreted by many in such manner as actually to bar men from the knowledge of God. The whole transaction of religious conversion has been made mechanical and spiritless. Faith may now be exercised without a jar to the moral life and without embarrassment to the Adamic ego. Christ may be 'received' without creating any special love for Him in the soul of the receiver....

      "The modern scientist has lost God amid the wonders of His world....

      "The man who has God for his treasure has all things in One. Many ordinary treasures may be denied him, or if he is allowed to have them, the enjoyment of them will be so tempered that they will never be necessary to his happiness." My Friend and My Hope

 

Why the Church Lacks Discernment: "And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in real knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve the things that are excellent, in order to be sincere and blameless until the day of Christ" (Philippians 1:9,10) 

     "Paul's concern for first century Christians was that they would have the discernment to distinguish good from evil. Our need now is as critical as theirs. Because of the information revolution we are bombarded with religious and philosophical ideas at a pace unknown to previous generations - and this at a time when traditional sources of authority that once gave stability and guidance have been laid aside or considered irrelevant....

     "We must be able to differentiate truth from error, righteousness from wickedness, the holy from the profane, and the will of God from the enticements of the world. Recent evangelical history is not very encouraging about the ability of most Christians to make these distinctions." Colossians 2:8

 

Is Jesus Enough? "If Jesus was all you had, would Jesus be enough for you? ... If you are dissatisfied and disappointed with your Christian walk today, it is only because of one thing: Jesus is not enough for you. Somewhere along the line, something else became more important than Jesus. Maybe you have become focused on the things ABOUT Jesus that are NOT Jesus. There is only one solution. You do not need more of the Lord, because He has already given Himself completely to you already. You just need less of everything else." Mark 12:30

 

Faith in the depths of Hell: "In the lowest depths of the Nazi hell, in a place of terror and savagery that most of us cannot fathom, here were human beings who refused to relinquish their faith -- who refused even to violate a religious precept without first asking if it was allowed. Violence, humiliation, and hunger will reduce some people to animals willing to do anything to survive. The Jews who sought out Rabbi Oshry -- like Jews in so many other corners of Nazi Europe -- were not reduced but elevated, reinforced in their belief, determined against crushing odds to walk in the ways of their fathers." (Jeff Jacoby, April 19, 2004)  2 Cor 4:7

 

God’s Way of Renewal: "There are human schemes and methods for bringing spiritual renewal. But for it to be genuine, God must work according to His mighty power. Anything less will be a cheap, superficial substitute...

     "If we want spiritual renewal, whether personally or for God’s church, we must humble ourselves before God and entreat Him for it. If we’re content in Babylon, with no longing for worship in God’s temple in Jerusalem, we won’t cry out to Him for anything different....

     "Every true spiritual renewal is founded on and sustained by God’s Word. The Reformation was a renewal of the Word. Luther, Calvin, and the other Reformers began systematically teaching and applying God’s Word.... The Puritan movement also was centered on God’s Word, as pastors would explain and apply the great doctrines of Scripture.... British scholar T. H. L. Parker ... says, 'What wonder that a Church which picks and chooses what it wants out of the Bible should become confused in its theology, flabby in its morals, and with little to state but the worldly obvious—the day after worldly liberals have stated it more convincingly?'

      ”If we want renewal, we must put a renewed emphasis on God’s Word of truth. ....But if God is going to renew your life, you’ve got to get out of your rut and make some changes. You’ve got to be willing to give up the comfortable life in Babylon and embrace the hardships of seeing His Temple rebuilt in Jerusalem."  

 

Some of you may remember this precious old book by A.W. Tozer. Here it is online: 

The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer: "Into a world like this the sound of Jesus' words comes wonderful and strange, a visitation from above. It is well that He spoke, for no one else could have done it as well; and it is good that we listen. His words are the essence of truth. He is not offering an opinion; Jesus never uttered opinions. He never guessed; He knew, and He knows. His words are not as Solomon's were, the sum of sound wisdom or the results of keen observation. He spoke out of the fulness of His Godhead, and His words are very Truth itself. He is the only one who could say `blessed' with complete authority, for He is the Blessed One come from the world above to confer blessedness upon mankind. And His words were supported by deeds mightier than any performed on this earth by any other man. It is wisdom for us to listen." Jesus

     Tozer also wrote the next article. It is interesting to compare his values with those of today's culture and churches:

 

Investing in Eternity: "J.H. Jowett once said, 'The real measure of our wealth is how much we would be worth if we lost all our money." He was right. Earthly riches or the lack of them has nothing to do with real wealth. The only treasure that matters is the treasure you lay up in heaven. Jesus taught, 'Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also' (Matt. 6:19-21). That is a mandate, not a recommendation. Invest in eternity!" Romans 8:37

 

John Bunyan: "To go free, all John Bunyan had to do was make one promise. He must agree not to preach publicly anymore. Bunyan's reply: 'If I was out of prison today, I would preach the gospel again tomorrow by the help of God.'

     Older folk must have shaken their heads in wonder. 'John Bunyan of all people! Why, we remember when he was a filthy mouthed ringleader in every sort of mischief.'"  Philippians 1:20-21

 

The Nature of Saving Faith: "...the erosion of the gospel in our day has given that particular verse and hymn [Just as I am] a rather insidious twist. The language of the modern message sounds vaguely similar to 'Just as I am,' but the difference in meaning is quite profound. Sinners today, you see, are hearing not only that Christ will receive them just as they are, but also that He will let them stay that way. Many erroneously believe that they can come to Christ, receive absolution from their sins or forgiveness, be granted the gift of immortality, or heaven, and then walk away to continue living life anyway they please....

    "...true faith begins in humility and in brokenness and in sorrow and in repentance and in poverty in spirit and it ends in obedience and endurance....  It's humble, obedient, permanent and it's a gift from God. You didn't stir it up, God gave it to you and He sustains it." John 14:6

Are you criticizing God? (by R. A Torrey) "'O man, who art thou that repliest against God?' (Romans 9:20).... The most exceedingly foolish thing any man can do, the most desperately wicked thing that any man can do, is to reply against God, to enter into controversy with God, to criticize God, to condemn God. Yet that is what many people are doing...." See  The Lord

Are You Criticizing God? (I was): "What was my problem? What was I doing that constitutes criticizing God? I was replying against His providential dealings in my life. I wanted to know NOW why the fiery trial I've been undergoing (for years) has not ceased.... I know why the process of refining has not ceased yet. Because there is still more He has to do to make me fit for the work He has to do through me...." The Way

 

Drawing Near - Daily Devotions . This page changes each day. A couple of days ago, it offered the following message titled "God's Transforming Word": "Many today doubt the power of Scripture in dealing with the deeper aspects of the human heart and mind. The Bible may be helpful for certain superficial or 'spiritual' problems, they say, but it's too simplistic and inadequate for the more complex psychological issues of modern man. The truth is, however, the best psychology can do is modify external behavior. It cannot redeem and transform the soul. Only God can do that through the power of His Word. ...Don't look to impotent human alternatives when God's Word stands ready to minister to your every need."