Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Monday December 8, 2008

A letter smuggled out of a maximum security prison illustrates the courage of men and women incarcerated for their faith, often faith that supersedes the imagined omnipotence of maniacal leaders. I will provide more information about this letter, but in part it read:

"There is one thing I want to ask of you all; that we give no place to weariness, to capitulation! There are those who would persuade us that the suffering of our church is a sign that it follows a perverted way. To that we reply confidently that the Apostles have borne witness to the contrary… In their strength let us go forward on the way-in His footsteps-unconcerned with the censure of men, but with the peace of Christ in our hearts and with praise of God on our lips. So help us God."

The above quote is from Martin Niemoller and smuggled out of a "frozen concentration camp" in 1939. I got the statement from an editorial in Time Magazine published December 23, 1940. (I will send this 6 page editorial to you via attachment if you like).

Niemoller had stated to Adolph Hitler, "Not you, Herr Hitler, but God is my Fuher." Hitler responded with imprisonment for Niemoller and these words to the nation: "It is Niemoller or I."

Christmas 1940 portrays the suffering of not only the Jews in Concentration camps, but at that early time, upwards of 800,000 Christians. In 1940 Dr. Henry Leiper asserted: "This is one of the most subtle and terrible persecutions in all history."

Our present 2008 world is bearing distant witness to holocausts around the world at least rivaling those of 1940-45 yet the world keeps bustling about our daily affairs as though all is well. The Sudan is but a long grave, China is mentioned in as an aside in articles about all the money for Westerners to be made by developing and getting along with this brutal, persecuting and merciless country. Anyone who dares to mention the brutal and unfeeling murder of 45,000 unborn American children is exiled to the fringe and a very real likelihood at some point in the not too distant future, a cell in a barbed wire, frozen concentration camp.

The last election bore witness to numerous clergypersons changing their tune on several widely held evangelical doctrines, because many in the media found these beliefs offensive, and so apologies proliferated the airwaves and print. When I saw, read and heard these men, cutting the edge off their teaching I was reminded of a statement by Hitler, that is included in the 12/23/40 times article:

"The parsons will be made to dig their own graves. They will betray their God to us. They will betray anything for the sake of their miserable little jobs and incomes. I can guarantee that they will replace the cross with the swastika." Adolph Hitler.

Do I think we are living in recurrent Hitlerian times? I certainly hope not. But God's people must always be alert for the pressure to blend in, to find a message acceptable to the unbelievers, to tone it down here and there. Biblical truth is either just that, truth, or it isn't. If it is, and I believe it is, then said truth must propagated at all times, most especially when that particular truth is under attack, by Hitler or whomsoever.

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2008 Use with credit.

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