For those of you for whom persecution loomed in our future as a sure thing when we heard the outcome of the election, has that sense of clarity and urgency faded? Do you now feel those presentiments were irrational, exaggerated, even nonsense? Please think through the following decisions anyway and keep this in case the need for it ever seem imminent.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
In considering the suggestions which follow, ask God what HE wants you to do.
How can we prepare for persecution practically? We wrote about starting with a First Aid kit, a cell phone and charger, a radio with plenty of batteries, money, an escape plan. There are good ready-made emergency kits which include meals, cooking pans, canned heart, waterproof matches, water in plastic bags, can opener, Polarshield emergency blanket, flashlights, etc. Keep anything perishable in the First Air kit up-to-date. Include prescriptions, an out-of-state contact, a change of clothes including shoes and warm jacket. And a Bible. If you have to clear out fast, have the kit handy so you can grab it and go. Keep one in your car and one in the house. When the Khmer Rouge took over the capital of Cambodia on April 17, 1975, the entire population of the city had only 24 hours to evacuate. Vek Huong Taing, his wife and 2-month old son had to leave their home forever with only the belongings they could fit in their car.
Assess your valuables--jewelery, art, information about accounts, savings, etc. When the communists invaded European countries during World War 2, people's homes were seized and burned and they were left with nothing. Dorothy Sun's family in China had government agents break into and ransack their home again and again, until they had nothing left of value. What would you want to keep with you? What would you want to hide or to entrust to someone whose home may be safer than yours? (A sympathetic non-believer might be safer than another Christian.) What would you want to give away? What do you want to sell so you can use the money in some redemptive way?
Family keepsakes, pictures. Of course soldiers and rioting mobs don't care about personal possessions they can't sell but they may confiscate or destroy them anyway. Even a hole in the ground might be safer than keeping them in the house.
How about Bibles? If it becomes illegal to possess one, where will you hide yours? Is there some place you could store lots of them? How about a box of bilingual Bibles if you live near the Mexican border, so they could be given out to people in need if others are confiscated?
Journals and personal letters. A warning to those who keep journals (I am one of them!) as well as those who write personal letters or keep those written by others. If you want to take risks yourself, that's one thing. But be careful of putting fellow believers in jeopardy. Incendiary comments about the government, for instance, can be used against you later. Brother Yun referred to China once in his diary once as the "harlot" of the book of Revelation. He served considerable prison time for that indiscretion.
But journals and letters can also be a primary source of information about clandestine meetings, other Christians, etc. Yun vowed he would never be a Judas and he never was--but his journals implicated others and were used to send some of
them to prison. Be careful to avoid specifics, like names and addresses. If the church really ends up going underground (and at least one network of workers is already being developed in case this happens) your journal could betray friends. Remember the Word War 2 motto, "Loose lips sink ships" and edit yourself accordingly.
It is good to know as little as possible about names and addresses of people who come to underground meetings, so you cannot give them away, even under pressure. Use nicknames. Be careful what you keep, including emails like these. Eliminate identifying information. That includes mailing lists. If you have a mailing list of Christian friends, keep it on a floppy you can grab and take with you or destroy if necessary.
The news we Americans get from just about any secular source--TV, newspapers, public schools--is biased and bound to become more so. Avoid it. Personally, I recommend you throw your TV out the window and get your news selectively from the internet or from the radio. Saves time, saves exposure to the world system God tells us not to love. That way YOU get to choose the news you want to know about rather than having people with other agendas choose what to offer you. You don't have to tolerate insipid talk shows waiting for a crumb of substance or wave through commercials and previews which inflame lust for things you don't need, people you can't have and values God condemns.
Jerry and I never watch anything live unless it's continuous coverage of the recent fires, for instance, a rare sports event or something on BBC. If we watch any show (currently, just one per week) we record it first so we can fast-forward through commercials. We don't have cable, by choice. You may strongly disagree with me but it's the lobster-in-the-pot thing again. It's "riding the culture to the bottom." I watched a half-hour sitcom the other day with a friend who was in the hospital and I was disgusted at how far down TV has gone in the four years we've been having a life instead of watching other people's fake lives. This change probably isn't as obvious to those of you who watch more frequently.
We have also canceled our newspaper. It is so biased the "news" articles read like opinion pieces. Also, reading it is time-consuming. We don't need to know every negative thing happening in the world. I don't think it's good for us. In Romans 12:2, Paul tells us not to be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. I John 3:4 speaks of purifying ourselves as He is pure. I believe we are better off spending our time reading our Bibles for the news!
In fact, since my "paradigm shift" of November 4th, I am no longer going to involve myself in trying to change legislation or write letters of protest to editors. You may be called to do that, but I no longer feel called to improve this world--or at least not by appealing to anyone less than the Almighty for change! I feel called to pray for and help prepare His people for what's coming.
Spiritual and practical: Do you tithe your income? Try tithing your time. Give God 10% of your money and 10% (2.4 hours) of your day! You'll be blessed!
Think through possible scenarios, the "what-ifs," and make practical decisions.
If persecution comes, will you stay or run? It's okay to run away (Matthew 10:23a). Paul was lowered through a window in the city wall in a large basket to avoid those who were plotting to kill him (Acts 9:25 and 2 Cor. 11:33). The two spies sent to scout out Jericho had made a similar escape hundreds of years before. Jesus himself slipped through the fingers of his enemies more than once. If persecution builds gradually, at what point will you leave? When you hear on the radio there will be a crackdown on "intolerance" and those churches, Christian daycare centers and private businesses which refuse to hire, say, homosexuals, will be fined or their leaders jailed? Or not until Gestapo-types are breaking down doors in your neighborhood at the dead of night and hauling off your Christian or Jewish neighbors in trucks?
Where would you go? Who would take you in? You may want a place that's off the beaten track, with someone who is under the radar. Do you know of one?
Who could you trust? Maybe the person you trust to provide shelter for you would not be the same one you could trust to keep a secret about house churches or the location of other hiding places.
Who would make a good out-of-state contact?
If your church agrees to be registered by the government, will you stay and be registered, too? Or look to
fellowship underground? Brother Yun wrote, "The government (in communist China) . . .allowed 'open, legal' churches in a bid to control Christians and to promote their own political agenda inside the churches
. We
see the (registered church) believers as caged birds. Yes, they are able to sing to the Lord, but their environment is controlled and their wings are clipped. They are free to sing only within the restrictions imposed on them. In the house churches we enjoy the freedom to fly around wherever God leads us and to sing from the depths of our hearts. We have been released from the cage and we never intend to return!"
If you stay, will you help hide others? If you don't, will anyone? In
The Heavenly Man, Brother Yun became the most wanted man in China because he had helped form the underground church movement and knew everyone in it. Despite imprisonment, torture, isolation, threats against his family, the government couldn't break him. They didn't want to kill him because he had so much information about so many others. One day, though running for his life, he was able to sneak back home to check on his elderly parents, who were long-time, well-respected community leaders. They had just been kicked out of their house and were sitting on the curb with what was left of their worldly goods. Everyone knew and respected them, had been helped by them. But not one neighbor had the courage to risk his own safety by taking in Yun's parents, even for a night!
If so, how? Where will you hide them? Diet Eman helped hide hundreds of people in Holland during World War 2. (Remember
The Diary of Anne Frank and
The Hiding Place?) her book
Things We Couldn't Say, is full of wisdom she gained by experience from hiding people. Some apartments had walls so thin it wasn't safe for refugees to talk out louse. Some good-hearted people insisted on taking in so many refugees that they were all endangered just by the amount of mail being delivered to that address or by the number of times passersby heard the toilet being flushed.
What if you need to communicate "danger" or "safety" to those in your house without others understanding? Choose select code phrases or gestures to communicate certain situations to friends. Dorothy Sun's family stood a broom on the balcony whenever soldiers were in their house, to mean "Danger!" and warn other family members not to come home yet. Prisoners communicate with each other somehow. Do you know Morse code?
If you are interrogated, will you lie? Corrie and Bettie ten Boom said
no. When officers came into their kitchen demanding, "Where are the Jews you are hiding?" one of them said, trembling, "Under the table." The officers were furious. They could see the table and no one was under it! They thought the women were mocking them. They left in disgust. But the truth was, under the table was a hole covered by a rug, leading into a cellar where Jews were curled up, frozen with fear. God protected them, even though the owners of the house told the truth.
On the other hand, Brother Yun said
yes. He used a friend's passport to escape into Thailand. They changed the information inside but they could not change the photo. At the airport, God told Yun not to say a word until He told him to--and God never told him to. So Yun kept silent, just showing the passport to one security guard after another. Each one looked at the picture in the passport, then looked at him and protested, "This isn't you!" Yet each time, they let him through--until he was on the plane and out of the country! God protected him even though he used forged papers. Years later, a friend who had worked at that airport told Yun, "When you went through the airport, we had just installed a voice recognition device. If you had said a word, because your voice was known and police all over the country had records of it, you would have been arrested." God protected him even though he deceived the guards.
Diet Eman survived by deception, too. She spent years in a prison camp for helping Dutch Jews escape Holland. As a matter of fact, the ten Boom sisters were in the same camp for awhile and Diet saw them sharing their Bible with inmates and telling them about Jesus. From the beginning Diet determined she would just try to survive (not minister), that she would pretend she was dull-witted and that she would never let the German guards know she understood their language. She knew so much about underground churches, pastors and attendees that she would have been a mine of information for the Germans and could have inadvertently betrayed many. So she made up for herself a name, a family, and a "back story," involving a birthplace and home on a remote island so hr "facts" could not be checked out. She reviewed her lies daily to anticipate any questions prison guards might have, so she would not contradict herself or blurt out the truth under interrogation. She succeeded in convincing them of her story and they dismissed her as feeble-minded. She spent her years in prison scrubbing floors and toilets and was eventually released without having betrayed anyone.
Revoke any ungodly vows you have made because of fear. (God will bring these to your mind if you ask Him to.) I could never___________. I could bear anything but ____________. if I were ever tortured, I'd (tell them everything they'd want to know.)
Make godly vows aloud before God and the enemy that, by God's grace, you will not love your life until death (i.e., even when faced with death, Rev. 12:11).
What if you are tortured or threatened with torture unless you betray others?
Determine now to be faithful to Christ and his body. Vow not to be a Judas, not to betray Christ or each other. Brother Yun vowed he would never betray a brother or sister and he never did. Of course we can't know what might happen, what the process to force betrayal might entail or how well we might handle it. But if we start now with a determination, like Brother Yun's, "never to be a Judas," I believe it will make loyalty more likely. When pressure comes is no time to struggled with or work through that decision.
The hardest theoretical question for me is,
What if my loved ones' lives were at stake, especially those dependent on me or too young to understand and make their own stand for Christ? What if the choice were between them or Jesus? One woman, in her children's presence, was told they would be tortured if she didn't renounce Christ. She cried out, "No children would replace Christ!" The guard immediately turned to the children and said, "See, your mother has abandoned you! Your mother doesn't love you!" She made the right choice but her children never forgave her. No torture they could have experiences would have been as painful to them as the way she expressed God's priority over them. Mother and children survived and years later, she was able to track down her son. He wanted nothing to do with her. She had broken his heart; now he broke hers. When I told Jerry this, he suggested when confronted with this choice, the mother could have cried out something like, "Jesus, protect my children!" and thus express her allegiance to the Lord without their feeling rejected. That was comforting to me.
Settle these things now.
The Bible talks about stripping down to essentials, like a soldier does. Be ready to move out. Hold everything you own in an open hand, not a clenched fist. In order to stay focused and fit, what do you need to strip away? Gluttony? Gossip? Grudges? Laziness? If you're tied down to possessions, cut the fat. Get rid of anything weighing you down or holding you back. Keep your eyes on him and let what doesn't matter fall away.
Know that:
1. Some whom you trust will let you down. Just as lately I was grieved to hear about Franky Schaeffer's repudiation of his faith, you may someday grieve because believers you trusted and looked up to will sell out as persecution comes. Someone will lie to save his or her own skin, someone will abandon the faith, someone may betray you. We have to keep our eyes on the Lord and remind ourselves that for a Christian,
everything works together for good. Brother Yun saw every beating he was given as coming from the hand of a loving Father to draw him closer and teach him something precious. We NEVER have to be prisoners of any human agency or government. If we are taken prisoner we can choose to consider ourselves, like Paul,
prisoners of the Lord. Not one thing can be done to us that he does not allow for our good and his own righteous, loving and glorious purposes. To suffer for him is a privilege. We can serve him in prison as well as at home, maybe better. Like Diet Eman and Dorothy Sun, we can launder our family's clothes or launder uniforms for prison guards, scrub toilets for Jesus in our home or in a labor camp. It makes no difference, as long as we do it for him. Our bodies may be incarcerated but our spirits can still be free.
One things I learned from these books is that the body doesn't matter. It is expendable. But the soul is not. The body is going to decay anyway. You'll get a new one. The soul which never dies is more important than our mortal lives. It is one of Jesus' many paradoxes that in order to live, we have to die to self; in order to produce fruit, we have to first be planted. We're going to die anyway, unless the Lord comes--why not have our death count for him?
Brother Yun was beaten unconscious many times and committed his spirit to God at least three times, thinking he was dying. But the spark of life within him was stronger than his body and they could not put it out. He survived 74 days, by his own choice, without food or water. You and I know--and he knew--that no one can survive that long without water, but he did! His weight dwindled to 66 pounds. He had to be carried by another prisoner to the room where he was given a daily beating. He didn't care what they did to his body as long as he did not give in to them.
2. God will not let you down. He will not abandon you. Yet do not be surprised if at some point, it feels like he has. Expect darkness. He will still be there but expect times when it doesn't feel like it. Yun went through a couple of really low periods, despite his amazing faith and resilience. At some point he (and each of the others I read about) cried out to God, "Why are you doing this? Have you forgotten me? Do you care?"
Who is sufficient for these things? But our sufficiency is of Christ. Millions of Christians throughout history have been faithful to Christ until the end of their lives despite all kinds of suffering. Read Acts 11.
We can do it too. We can do this! Pray for each other. Pray for yourself. We have a host of witnesses cheering us on.
Greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.
Your reward in heaven will be great.
"Our screen saver is filled with a series of photos that (my husband) and our son took as they hiked the Grand Canyon, about two years ago. I sit and watch it as the photos scroll by, relishing in the Majesty of our great God. And then my spirit cries for all that is about to be lost. And then I can hear Him say, 'But I will make all things news again.' And I know that what He will do on the earth will be better than the former." CF, wife, mother, grandmother, Southern California.
Next time: Provision in Persecution
