PERSPECTIVE

Don Atkin

FACING DEATH – Part 1

More than twenty-five years ago, prior to my first trip to India, C. L. Moore was praying for me.  He prophesied,

“The time is short for India.  There is coming a blood bath.  The streets will flow with the blood of martyrs.”

The atrocities in Orissa State and other places in India seem to fulfill this word.

History is laced with similar seasons in other nations.  We grieve at such reports, even as did our predecessors.  We pray, even as did those who came before us.  We try to understand, but cannot.

Just yesterday, here in the United States of America, a denominational minister who is close to some of our family members attempted suicide.  I don’t know what he has been going through.  But, I know what some of you are going through, and I cannot imagine how his situation could be more difficult than yours.

Why do some people kill?  Why are others killed?  Why do some despair to the point of taking their own lives?  How should we live?

We found the believers whom we met in China to be filled with the joy of the Lord and preoccupied with praise and worship ~ not in a religious, go-to-meeting sense, but ~ as a lifestyle.  All of them suffer persecution.  All of them are subject to arrest and torture, even death, at any moment. 

They live life moment-to-moment in the Spirit, and manifest the fruit of the Spirit.  The church is strategically  “underground,” but growing daily through the bold, fearless and faithful witness of those who have found the joy of the Lord to be their strength.

Please pray that our brethren in India (African nations and other places) who are faced with persecution will be strengthened in faith and filled with the Holy Spirit.  Pray that those who face death will look into open heavens and see Jesus, so that they may ask forgiveness for those who oppress them.

Please also pray for ministers in free countries to constantly be filled with and walk in the Spirit, that we may endure to the end ~ and be saved.  We have the promise of eternal life in the kingdom of God, a promise worth dying for.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

Why did the Holy Spirit inspire Paul to write these words?