Christians are ambassadors for Christ.  They are representatives from Heaven to this dying world.  And because of our presence here, things will change.

My sister, Betsy, and I were in the Nazi concentration camp at Ravensbruck because we committed the crime of loving Jews.  Seven hundred of us from Holland, France, Russia, Poland and Belgium were herded into a room built for two hundred.  As far as I knew, Betsy and I were the only two representatives of Heaven in that room.

We may have been the Lord’s only representatives in that place of hatred, yet because of our presence there, things changed.  Jesus said, “In the world you shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”  We too, are to be overcomers – bringing the light of Jesus into a world filled with darkness and hate.

Sometimes I get frightened as I read the Bible, and as I look in this world and see all of the tribulation and persecution promised by the Bible coming true.  Now I can tell you, though, if you too are afraid, that I have just read the last pages.  I can now come to shouting “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” for I have found where it is written that Jesus said,

“He that overcometh shall inherit all things:
and I will be His God,
and he shall be My son.”

This is the future and hope of this world. Not that the world will survive – but that we shall be overcomers in the midst of a dying world.

Betsy and I, in the concentration camp, prayed that God would heal Betsy who was so weak and sick.
“Yes, the Lord will heal me,”, Betsy said with confidence.
She died the next day and I could not understand it. They laid her thin body on the concrete floor along with all the other corpses of the women who died that day.

It was hard for me to understand, to believe that God had a purpose for all that.  Yet because of Betsy’s death, today I am traveling all over the world telling people about Jesus.

There are some among us teaching there will be no tribulation, that the Christians will be able to escape all this. These are the false teachers that Jesus was warning us to expect in the latter days. Most of them have little knowledge of what is already going on across the world. I have been in countries where the saints are already suffering terrible persecution.

In China, the Christians were told, “Don’t worry, before the tribulation comes you will be translated – raptured.” Then came a terrible persecution.  Millions of Christians were tortured to death. Later I heard a Bishop from China say, sadly,

“We have failed.
We should have made the people strong for persecution,
rather than telling them Jesus would come first.
Tell the people how to be strong in times of persecution,
how to stand when the tribulation comes,
– to stand and not faint.”

I feel I have a divine mandate to go and tell the people of this world that it is possible to be strong in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are in training for the tribulation, but more than sixty percent of the Body of Christ across the world has already entered into the tribulation. There is no way to escape it.
We are next.

Since I have already gone through prison for Jesus’ sake, and since I met the Bishop in China, now every time I read a good Bible text I think, “Hey, I can use that in the time of tribulation.”  Then I write it down and learn it by heart.

When I was in the concentration camp, a camp where only twenty percent of the women came out alive, we tried to cheer each other up by saying, “Nothing could be any worse than today.” But we would find the next day was even worse.  During this time a Bible verse that I had committed to memory gave me great hope and joy.

“If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye;
for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you;
on their part evil is spoken of,
but on your part He is glorified.”
(I Peter 3:14)

I found myself saying, “Hallelujah!
Because I am suffering, Jesus is glorified!”

In America, the churches sing, “Let the congregation escape tribulation”, but in China and Africa the tribulation has already arrived. This last year alone more than two hundred thousand Christians were martyred in Africa. Now things like that never get into the newspapers because they cause bad political relations. But I know. I have been there. We need to think about that when we sit down in our nice houses with our nice clothes to eat our steak dinners. Many, many members of the Body of Christ are being tortured to death at this very moment, yet we continue right on as though we are all going to escape the tribulation.

Several years ago I was in Africa in a nation where a new government had come into power. The first night I was there some of the Christians were commanded to come to the police station to register. When they arrived they were arrested and that same night they were executed. The next day the same thing happened with other Christians. The third day it was the same. All the Christians in the district were being systematically murdered.

The fourth day  I was to speak in a little church. The people came, but they were filled with fear and tension. All during the service they were looking at each other, their eyes asking, “Will this one I am sitting beside be the next one killed? Will I be the next one?”

The room was hot and stuffy with insects that came through the screenless windows and swirled around the naked bulbs over the bare wooden benches. I told them a story out of my childhood.

“When I was a little girl, ” I said, “I went to my father and said,
“Daddy, I am afraid that I will never be strong enough to be a martyr for Jesus Christ.”
“Tell me,” said Father,
“When you take a train trip to Amsterdam,
when do I give you the money for the ticket?
Three weeks before?”

“No, Daddy, you give me the money for the ticket just before we get on the train.”

“That is right,” my father said, “and so it is with God’s strength.
Our Father in Heaven knows when you will need the strength to be a martyr for Jesus Christ.
He will supply all you need – just in time…”

My African friends were nodding and smiling.
Suddenly a spirit of joy descended upon that church and the people began singing,

” In the sweet, by and by,
we shall meet on that beautiful shore.”

Later that week, half the congregation of that church was executed.
I heard later that the other half was killed some months ago.

But I must tell you something. I was so happy that the Lord used me to encourage these people, for unlike many of their leaders, I had the word of God. I had been to the Bible and discovered that Jesus said He had not only overcome the world, but to all those who remained faithful to the end, He would give a crown of life.

How can we get ready for the persecution?

First we need to feed on the Word of God, digest it, make it a part of our being. This will mean disciplined Bible study each day as we not only memorize long passages of scripture, but put the principles to work in our lives.

Next we need to develop a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Not just the Jesus of yesterday, the Jesus of History,
but the life-changing Jesus of today who is still alive
and sitting at the right hand of God.

We must be filled with the Holy Spirit. This is no optional command of the Bible, it is absolutely necessary. Those earthly disciples could never have stood up under the persecution of the Jews and Romans had they not waited for Pentecost. Each of us needs our own personal Pentecost, the baptism of the Holy Spirit. We will never be able to stand in the tribulation without it.

In the coming persecution we must be ready to help each other and encourage each other.
But we must not wait until the tribulation comes before starting.
The fruit of the Spirit should be the dominant force of every Christian’s life.

Many are fearful of the coming tribulation, they want to run. I, too, am a little bit afraid when I think that after all my eighty years, including the horrible Nazi concentration camp, that I might have to go through the tribulation also.
But then I read the Bible and I am glad.

When I am weak, then I shall be strong, the Bible says. Betsy and I were prisoners for the Lord, we were so weak, but we got power because the Holy Spirit was on us. That mighty inner strengthening of the Holy Spirit helped us through. No, you will not be strong in yourself when the tribulation comes. Rather, you will be strong in the power of Him who will not forsake you. For seventy-six years I have known the Lord Jesus and not once has He ever left me, or let me down.

“Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him”, (Job 13:15)

for I know that to all who overcome,
He shall give the crown of life.
Hallelujah!”

- Corrie Ten Boom - 1974

Are you afraid to:  play with snakes?   spiders?   touch a hot burner?

Fear of doing foolish things can be a healthy thing. Yet spiders and snakes don’t have the power to determine where you spend eternity.

It seems that many people in our society do not fear the LORD as our forefathers did. Many teenagers (and adults too for that matter), even some who “believe” they are “Christians” are not afraid to sin.

Our LORD, Jesus did not come to give us an excuse to live a sinful life! Read the words of Jesus and you will find that He preached the law to the proud and gave grace and mercy to the humble. He warned that unless you are more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees, “you shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven”.
Matthew 5:20

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. -
Hebrews 10:31
Examine yourselves, whether you be in the faith 2 Corinthians 13:5
Jesus said “And whoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.”.
Matthew 23:12

Jesus said “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
He that believes on him is not condemned: but he that believes not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
For every one that does evil hates the light, neither comes to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.
But he that does truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are worked in God.”
John 3:16-21
(American King James Version)

Jesus said “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life;” (John 10:27-28)
AND “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.”
(Matthew 7:21)
Are you in God’s will? Do you follow Jesus? Make sure your beliefs are based on the Word & not just an isolated verse or two & not just the word of any man. Read, pray and learn for yourself.

Jesus tells us in Matthew 6:15 “if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive you your sins.” Over & over, Jesus taught us to look inward (at ourselves), rather than pointing out the failures of others. When the scribes and Pharisees brought the adulterous woman to Jesus, hoping He would condemn her, Jesus said “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone”.

Do you condemn or hate those who have done you wrong?… those who have stolen from you?… those who have hurt or killed someone you love?
Or do you forgive them?

John 14:23-24 (Holman Christian Standard Bible)
Jesus answered, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word. My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. The one who doesn’t love Me will not keep My words. The word that you hear is not Mine but is from the Father who sent Me.”

The Old Testament

The word “Bible” is derived from the Greek word biblia, meaning “books.” The Bible is actually a collection of books dating back to about 1440 BC. That’s when most historians believe Moses wrote the first five books of the Christian Bible, which is also the Jewish Torah or (Instructions).

Other books of the “Old Testament” were written between 1440 BC. and 450 BC. (approx)… Since the book of Malachi (around 450 BC.), The Old Testament has remained essentially unchanged except that it has been translated from Hebrew to English and other languages. The Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew except for a few books which may have been written in Aramaic.

The New Testament

No Scriptures were added to the Bible for about 500 years. What is now The New Testament is a collection of books written between 45 AD and 95 AD. Although Hebrew was the language spoken by Jesus and his disciples, the books were originally written in Greek.

^GS[ 315 AD, Athenasius, the Bishop of Alexandria, identified the 27 Books which we recognize today as the canon of New Testament scripture.

In 382 AD, the early church father Jerome translated the New Testament from its original Greek into Latin. This translation became known as the “Latin Vulgate”, (“Vulgate” meaning “vulgar” or “common”). He put a note next to the Apocrypha Books, stating that he did not know whether or not they were inspired scripture, or just Jewish historical writings which accompanied the Old Testament.

The Apocrypha was kept as part of virtually every Bible scribed or printed from these early days until just 120 years ago, in the mid-1880’s, when it was removed from Protestant Bibles. Up until the 1880’s, however, every Christian… Protestant or otherwise… embraced the Apocrypha as part of the Bible, though debate continued as to whether or not the Apocrypha was inspired. There is no truth to the popular myth that there is something “Roman Catholic” about the Apocrypha, which stemmed from the fact that the Roman Catholics kept 12 of the 14 Apocrypha Books in their Bible, as the Protestants removed all of them.

By 500 AD the Bible had been translated into over 500 languages. Just one century later, by 600 AD, it has been restricted to only one language: the Latin Vulgate! The only organized and recognized church at that time in history was the Catholic Church of Rome, and they refused to allow the scripture to be available in any language other than Latin. Those in possession of non-Latin scriptures would be executed!  ]*

And so, it would remain illegal to print the Bible in English or any other language for the next 1000 years. However, in 1516, Erasmus did print a Greek-Latin Parallel New Testament. Unfortunately, Erasmus’ parallel Bible was plagued with corrupt readings.
(see bibletexts.com/kjv-tr.htm)

About that same time, Martin Luther began to protest some 95 issues of heretical theology and crimes of the Roman Catholic Church, and the Protestant movement was born. In 1526, William Tyndale became the first person to print the New Testament in the English language, followed by Coverdale’s Bible, Matthew’s Bible, Geneva Bible (the Bible of the Pilgrims), Bishop’s Bible, several others and finally the King James Version in 1611.

^GS[ The Anglican Church’s King James Bible took decades to overcome the more popular Protestant Church’s Geneva Bible. One of the greatest ironies of history, is that many Protestant Christian churches today embrace the King James Bible exclusively as the “only” legitimate English language translation… yet it is not even a Protestant translation! It was printed to compete with the Protestant Geneva Bible, by authorities who throughout most of history were hostile to Protestants… and killed them.

While many Protestants are quick to assign the full blame of persecution to the Roman Catholic Church, it should be noted that even after England broke from Roman Catholicism in the 1500’s, the Church of England (The Anglican Church) continued to persecute Protestants throughout the 1600’s.

One famous example of this is John Bunyan, who while in prison for the crime of preaching the Gospel, wrote one of Christian history’s greatest books, Pilgrim’s Progress. Throughout the 1600’s, as the Puritans and the Pilgrims fled the religious persecution of England to cross the Atlantic and start a new free nation in America, they took with them their precious Geneva Bible, and rejected the King’s Bible. America was founded upon the Geneva Bible, not the King James Bible.

While Noah Webster, just a few years after producing his famous Dictionary of the English Language, would produce his own modern translation of the English Bible in 1833; the public remained too loyal to the King James Version for Webster’s version to have much impact. It was not really until the 1880’s that England’s own planned replacement for their King James Bible, the English Revised Version(E.R.V.) would become the first English language Bible to gain popular acceptance as a post-King James Version modern-English Bible. The widespread popularity of this modern-English translation brought with it another curious characteristic: the absence of the 14 Apocryphal books.

Up until the 1880’s every Protestant Bible (not just Catholic Bibles) had 80 books, not 66! The inter-testamental books written hundreds of years before Christ called “The Apocrypha” were part of virtually every printing of the Tyndale-Matthews Bible, the Great Bible, the Bishops Bible, the Protestant Geneva Bible, and the King James Bible until their removal in the 1880’s! The original 1611 King James contained the Apocrypha, and King James threatened anyone who dared to print the Bible without the Apocrypha with heavy fines and a year in jail. Only for the last 120 years has the Protestant Church rejected these books, and removed them from their Bibles.

This has left most modern-day Christians believing the popular myth that there is something “Roman Catholic” about the Apocrypha. There is, however, no truth in that myth, and no widely-accepted reason for the removal of the Apocrypha in the 1880’s has ever been officially issued by a mainline Protestant denomination.

The Americans responded to England’s E.R.V. Bible by publishing the nearly-identical American Standard Version (A.S.V.) in 1901. It was also widely-accepted and embraced by churches throughout America for many decades as the leading modern-English version of the Bible. In the 1971, it was again revised and called New American Standard Version Bible (often referred to as the N.A.S.V. or N.A.S.B. or N.A.S.). This New American Standard Bible is considered by nearly all evangelical Christian scholars and translators today, to be the most accurate, word-for-word translation of the original Greek and Hebrew scriptures into the modern English language that has ever been produced. It remains the most popular version among theologians, professors, scholars, and seminary students today.

In 2002, a major attempt was made to bridge the gap between the simple readability of the N.I.V., and the extremely precise accuracy of the N.A.S.B. This translation is called the English Standard Version (E.S.V.) and is rapidly gaining popularity for its readability and accuracy. The 21st Century will certainly continue to bring new translations of God’s Word in the modern English language.

As Christians, we must be very careful to make intelligent and informed decisions about what translations of the Bible we choose to read. On the liberal extreme, we have people who would give us heretical new translations that attempt to change God’s Word to make it politically correct. One example of this, which has made headlines recently is the Today’s New International Version (T.N.I.V.) which seeks to remove all gender-specific references in the Bible whenever possible! Not all new translations are good… and some are very bad.

But equally dangerous, is the other extreme… of blindly rejecting ANY English translation that was produced in the four centuries that have come after the 1611 King James. We must remember that the main purpose of the Protestant Reformation was to get the Bible out of the chains of being trapped in an ancient language that few could understand, and into the modern, spoken, conversational language of the present day. William Tyndale fought and died for the right to print the Bible in the common, spoken, modern English tongue of his day… as he boldly told one official who criticized his efforts, “If God spare my life, I will see to it that the boy who drives the plowshare knows more of the scripture than you, Sir!”

Will we now go backwards, and seek to imprison God’s Word once again exclusively in ancient translations? Clearly it is not God’s will that we over-react to SOME of the bad modern translations, by rejecting ALL new translations and “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”. The Word of God is unchanging from generation to generation, but language is a dynamic and ever-changing form of communication.

We therefore have a responsibility before God as Christians to make sure that each generation has a modern translation that they can easily understand, yet that does not sacrifice accuracy in any way. Let’s be ever mindful that we are not called to worship the Bible. That is called idolatry. We are called to worship the God who gave us the Bible, and who preserved it through the centuries of people who sought to destroy it. ]
Sections beginning with ^GS[ and ending with ] are quotes from www.GreatSite.com

Be careful little eyes, what you see.
Be careful little eyes, what you see.
For the Lord up above, He is looking down in love,
So be careful little eyes, what you see.

Be careful little ears what you hear.
Be careful little ears what you hear.
For the Lord up above, He is looking down in love,
So be careful little eyes, what you see.

Be careful little mouth what you say.
Be careful little mouth what you say.
For the Lord up above, He is looking down in love,
So be careful little eyes, what you see.

Be careful little hands, what you touch.
Be careful little hands, what you touch.
For the Lord up above, He is looking down in love,
So be careful little eyes, what you see.

Be careful little feet, where you go.
Be careful little feet, where you go.
For the Lord up above, He is looking down in love,
So be careful little eyes, what you see.

When we hear this phrase, we tend to think of what we can tell about a person by looking into his or her eyes… as if looking through a window into his or her soul. The truth, however, is that a window allows things in. The phrase should read “MY eyes are the window to MY soul”. I get to decide which things I allow in through MY windows (eyes) and from which things I turn MY eyes away.

In Matthew 6:22-23, Jesus said “The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is unclouded, your whole body will be full of light.
But if your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness. If the light in you is darkness, how dark it will be!” God’s Word Translation

“The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” King James Translation

Another popular phrase reads “You are what you eat”… That is to say that your mouth is a portal to your body. If you take in that which is healthy, your body will be healthy. If you take in that which is rancid, your body will become infected. Well, your eyes are portals to your body also (and to your soul). If you take in (through your eyes) that which is healthy, your soul will be healthy. If you take in that which is… you get the point.

“Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” Matthew 7:17-21 King James Translation

I remember seeing raw sewage flowing from a mobile home in a rural place several years ago. In the middle of the sewer grew a few tomato plants with big beautiful tomatoes hanging on them. Would you eat such fruit if you saw it? I didn’t! I knew that whatever was going into that tomato plant would be evident in the tomatoes produced by it. The same is true in our lives. Whatever we take in is evident in the fruits we produce.

"A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh." Luke 6:45 King James Translation

Our society today is plagued with, for lack of a better word, “Freedom”… The world tells us we should be “free” to look at, eat, drink, and partake in anything we desire, including pornography, immoral sexual behavior, alcohol, drugs, foul language, and on and on. We, especially our young people, are literally overwhelmed with corruption to the point that we begin to view sinful behavior as “normal” and “acceptable”. All the things we take in become a part of us. They corrupt our souls and cause us to become obsessed or addicted to them.

Ours is not the first society to embrace such corrupt behavior. Off the top of my head, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Roman Empire are a couple that come to mind. And, our society didn’t start out embracing the rampant sinful culture of today. Our laws, our constitution, our very country was founded on strong, moral, Christian values.

What happened? Even 30 or 40 years ago, it would have been unimaginable to hear the “F” word on normal television. Until 40 or 50 years ago, abortion was looked upon as murder (and rightfully so).

But I digress.

The focus (MY focus) should be on improving MY relationship with GOD. I should work out MY OWN salvation with “fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12). My focus should be on reading and learning the scriptures and on being obedient to GOD. “For GOD loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16 Holman Christian Standard Version

Only I can decide what I take into myself. I can not unsee or unhear or unsay that which I have seen and heard and said.

I will add to this as The Holy Spirit leads me. If any of you should find errors in these words or concepts, please bring them to my attention.

God Bless,

James

P.S. Another good blog about this is located at http://curlee.wordpress.com/2008/09/25/careful-little-eyes-what-you-see-in-order-to-gain-the-whole-world-and-lose-my-soul/ (opens in new window)

And another at http://hubpages.com/hub/Oh-Be-Careful-Little-Eyes-What-You-See