Corrie Ten Boom

 According to Christian History Institute:

February 28, 1944:

"Nazi soldiers arrest Corrie Ten Boom and her family in Harlaam for harboring Jews. Her father and a sister will die in concentration camps, but Corrie will be released because of a clerical error and become an international speaker for Christianity, author of The Hiding Place, and subject of a movie by the same name."

https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/today

Corrie Ten Boom grew up in the Netherlands in a tall, narrow house with a large family, including some of her aunts. Even after most of the family was gone and it was only Corrie, her sister Betsie, and her father at home, there were always others who needed a place and stayed with them.

She became the first woman to be licensed as a watchmaker in the Netherlands.

She loved a man once, deeply, and believed that he loved her as well, but he married someone else. Corrie remained single, serving her family, working in the watch shop with her father, working with youth and the mentally challenged, serving her God in all that she did.

When World War II came, Corrie and her family risked their freedom to help the Jews survive. They were eventually betrayed and arrested. Her father died in prison; her sister Betsie in a concentration camp. Only Corrie survived.

After she returned home, Corrie founded a home for those who were returning from the camps and needed a place to live and heal. She later included, in a separate house, the Dutch who had collaborated with the Germans and now had no jobs, no homes, no friends. She recognized that both groups needed help and healing.

She later traveled around the world, speaking of God's forgiveness, hope, and love, and the salvation found in Christ alone.

She wrote many other books as well, including In My Father's House; Tramp for the Lord; God is My Hiding Place; and Father Ten Boom.

In 1967, Corrie ten Boom was honored by Yad Vashem as “Righteous Among the Nations.” Her father, Casper, and sister, Betsie were likewise honoured in 2007.

Corrie Ten Boom died on April 15, 1983, her 91st birthday.

Some quotes from her books:

“Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hatred. It is a power that breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness.”

“When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.”

“There is no pit so deep, that God's love is not deeper still.”

“There is no panic in Heaven! God has no problems, only plans.”

After her young man became engaged to someone else:

“...suddenly I was afraid of what Father would say. Afraid he would say, "There'll be someone else soon," and that forever afterward this untruth would lie between us. For in some deep part of me I knew already that there would not--soon or ever--be anyone else.

The sweet cigar-smell came into the room with Father. And of course he did not say the false, idle words.

"Corrie," he began instead, "do you know what hurts so very much? It's love. Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain.

"There are two things we can do when this happens. We can kill the love so that it stops hurting. But then of course part of us dies, too. Or, Corrie, we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel.

"God loves Karel--even more than you do--and if you ask Him, He will give you His love for this man, a love nothing can prevent, nothing destroy. Whenever we cannot love in the old, human way, Corrie, God can give us his perfect way."

I did not know, as I listened to Father's footsteps winding back down the stairs, that he had given me more than the key to this hard moment. I did not know that he had put into my hands the secret that would open far darker rooms than this--places where there was not, on a human level, anything to love at all.”

Pandita Ramabai, Bible Translator

Rama Dongre, later known as Pandita Ramabai, was born in India in 1858 into a Marathi-speaking family, belonging to the priestly Brahmin caste. There were no schools for girls, but her parents gave her a thorough education in the Sanskrit language. They were, however, very poor. During the great famine of 1876–78, both her parents died from starvation. Pandita went to live with her older brother and became well known for her intellectual abilities and teaching skill, to the point that the University of Calcutta gave her the title Pandita, meaning ‘wise teacher’, the first woman to be so honoured. In 1880 her brother also died and she married a friend of her brother; however, because he was from a lower caste, she was thought to have polluted herself. They had a daughter, and then her husband died too. At 24, she found herself destitute: an impoverished, orphaned widow.

In 1883, Pandita travelled to England for her studies and was invited to stay at an Anglican community. In the community’s London Rescue Home, she saw first-hand how women who had fallen on hard times were helped. This experience moved her enormously. In particular, the story of the Samaritan woman in John 4 impacted her. Back in India, she came to know Christ. She wrote: ‘The Holy Spirit made it clear from the Word of God that the salvation which God gives through Christ is present and not something future. I received, I believed and I was filled with joy.’

Her new goal was to translate the Bible into her own language. A translation into Marathi had already been completed in the early 19th century, as well as subsequent revisions too. But Pandita thought that these translations relied too heavily on Sanskrit words and phrases and did not speak to women of lower castes. Her translation had a specific audience: uneducated women of lower castes. She learnt Greek and Hebrew in order to translate the Scriptures into Marathi, and completed her translation just before her death in 1922.

For more information, check out Wycliffe Bible Translators' article about Pandita Ramabai her life and work.

Dwight Moody

 As taken from my history class, here is Dwight Moody's “Greatest Mistake”; something to think about as we bring the gospel to people:

Moody was preaching the evening of October 8, 1871. He concluded his gospel message that night by asking the question, “What will you do with Jesus?” Then Moody added, “I wish you would seriously consider this subject, for next Sunday we will speak about the cross, and at that time I’ll ask again, ‘What will YOU do with Jesus?”

That evening someone knocked over a lantern in the O’Leary’s barn and started the Great Chicago Fire. Although it is often blamed on a cow, people actually thought that it was done be a robber; later, a man named Louis M. Cohn confessed that he was running away from an illegal card game in the O’Leary’s barn and accidentally knocked over a lantern. It had been an unusually dry summer and fall, and a strong wind spread the fire quickly, destroying 17,500 buildings and 73 miles of street. Ninety thousand people were left homeless, and it is believed that 300 people died in the blaze. After 24 hours, the rains came and helped quench the fire.

Moody’s church and home were both destroyed, as well as the YMCA, but what felt more keenly was the possibility that among the dead were people who had been in church that evening and whom he had sent away to think about their answer. He viewed that as his greatest mistake. “Now, whenever I preach,” Moody said later, “I press for a definite decision. I would rather lose my right hand than give people even a day to decide for Christ, for I don’t know if I’ll ever see them again. The Gospel invitation is a ‘today only’ offer!”

Rowland Bingham

I'm still reading a lot of missionary biographies (primarily from the "Christian Heroes Then and Now" series, which I highly recommend). The one I just finished was about Rowland Bingham. I had never heard of him, so I was curious about what he had done.

When Rowland Bingham was 20, he wanted to go to the Sudan to be a missionary. He joined another young man who was in England, looking for a mission board to sponsor him; they were joined by a third young man. No one would send them to the Sudan. Africa was "the white man's graveyard" even for those who stayed on the coast; anyone who went inland was going to die. Anyone who had tried had either died or been brought home seriously ill.

The young men were determined to go anyway. They formed their own mission organization, Sudan Interior Missions (SIM) and went to Africa. Rowland became ill and stayed near the coast to send supplies as needed and the other two men went into the interior. Both of the young men died before reaching their destination. Rowland went back to England and then home to Canada.

So it seemed that everyone was right: there was no way to evangelize the interior of Africa, no way to get to the Sudan, and trying would result in certain death. But Rowland Bingham did not give up. He raised money, he recruited people to go, and he tried again. This time he stayed in Canada to oversee things and other men went. They eventually turned back because it seemed impossible. Rowland didn't give up. More men volunteered and were sent to learn the language and the culture and then go to the Sudan. This time they made it. Still, many people died bringing the gospel to the Sudan and the interior of Africa. And yet still more people volunteered.

By the time SIM reached its 50th anniversary, there were 350 missionaries from around the world serving with them in Africa. There were thousands of believers in the Sudan, in Nigeria and Ethiopia, who would not have heard the gospel if Rowland and the later missionaries had given up because it was too hard.

Today, more than 100 years later, SIM has changed some. Different groups joined together under the name SIM (and in fact the name has changed a couple times although they kept the acronym) as the mission spread; there are now more than 1600 missionaries serving in more than 50 countries, evangelizing, ministering, equipping, and discipling.

Secret Believers

Here it is: the first book review of 2012. I just finished Secret Believers: What Happens When Muslims Believe in Christ by Brother Andrew and Al Janssen.

Secret Believers is essentially biography; it tells about several believers in a predominantly Muslim country who are believers, some from Christian families but primarily Muslim converts. The people are not given their real names and are generally (but not always) composites of different people; this way, the reader gets a clear picture of what is happening without putting the lives of the believers at risk. For this reason, the country is also never named.

Most of the book is a story about what happens to these believers: how they come to know Christ and how that changes their lives. It shows the persecution they face from family, their community, and often the governing officials. While never graphic, the violence against believers is described as some of the men are arrested and beaten, threats are made against the churches and pastors, and violence against believers and their businesses become more frequent.

The second part of the book talks about how to respond, both for those living under persecution and those of us in the free world. The authors encourage love for Muslims, leading to prayer for them and their leaders, and to forgiveness for the atrocities done. We need to be willing to pray for both the persecuted Christians and the Muslims. It is Christ and Christ alone who can change people's lives.

I enjoyed reading Secret Believers; it was interesting and well-written, and it made me think a lot. We have it very easy here in Canada, and I think we forget how bad things are for many believers in the world. We need to remember because "when one member suffers, all the members suffer with it" (1 Corinthians 12:26; you should really read the whole chapter). We are all part of one body.

One of the believers in the book asked that we in the west pray "that [they] remain strong and not fall back...[and] for the second generation of Christians. [Their] children are really suffering" (249). Another asks, "Please pray with us. Many times I've told the church outside 'Don't pray for us. Pray with us.' Can you see the difference? If you pray for me, you will pray for my safety and my prosperity. No, just pray with me for the Muslims to know Christ" (251, emphasis in the original).

And so I challenge you: will you join with me in praying with the persecuted church? And in praying for the salvation of the Muslims?

For more information, check out secretbelievers.org. There you can read about specific believers and countries.