It's Not Our Tribulation And We Want It Now

[simplejeff]

Just now, Unfailing Presence said:

Which is what ?

Can you specify ?

"pre-trib"

[Unfailing Presence]

2 minutes ago, simplejeff said:

3 minutes ago, Unfailing Presence said:

Which is what ?

Can you specify ?

"pre-trib"

I've never heard a "pre-trib "  "preach "  anything other than Christians hated in this world .

You said "pre-trib "  were preaching something else ? 

You said they are "preaching" something other than Christians will be hated in this world ?

What is that ?

Can you specify ?

[simplejeff]

Preface: Corrie ten Boom's life, testimony of Jesus.

  http://www.vancechristie.com/2017/07/26/corrie-ten-booms-early-years-of-fruitful-service-for-christ/

Corrie ten Boom’s Early Years of Fruitful Service for Christ
by Vance Christie
Corrie ten Boom

Corrie ten Boom

Corrie ten Boom (1892-1983) is best known through the book and movie The Hiding Place for the courage, faith and love she and her family members manifested by harboring Jews from Nazis during World War 2 and while being imprisoned in a German concentration camp. But most people know little or nothing about the first half century of Corrie’s life – formative decades filled with active, fruitful service of the Lord and others.

Corrie’s parents, Casper and Cor ten Boom, were devout Dutch Reformed Christians with hearts of warm devotion for the Lord and compassionate concern for the people around them. In addition to raising their four children, Casper and Cor invited three of Cor’s sisters, two spinsters and a widow, to live in their modest home in Haarlem, Holland. Casper struggled to support so many people on his limited income as a watchmaker, but the family was rich in many other ways.
Corrie ten Boom (standing) with her family

Corrie ten Boom (standing) with her family

Every morning and evening without fail, regardless of whatever else was on the family schedule, Casper gathered the entire household for the reading of a chapter of Scripture and prayer. Casper and Cor saw to it that their three daughters received a secondary education while their son achieved both university and seminary degrees. The children were also taught an appreciation for hymns and classical music, with each child learning to sing and play one or more musical instruments. Guests were frequently at the family dinner table, and Mrs. ten Boom was constantly baking a loaf of bread or cooking a pot of porridge to be delivered to some pale young mother or lonesome old man.

In addition to graduating from secondary school, Corrie completed a course of studies at a Bible school in Haarlem. She played a major role in helping to care for family members at home and in assisting her father with his watchmaking business. In an era and a country where young women were not involved in the business world, she went to school in Basel, Switzerland, for two years to learn the watchmaking trade. She eventually became the first licensed woman watchmaker in Holland.
Ten Boom Home and Watchshop in Haarlem, Holland

Ten Boom Home and Watchshop in Haarlem, Holland

As the years passed, Corrie’s mother and three maternal aunts passed away. Corrie’s brother Willem and sister Nollie were both married and established households of their own, while Corrie continued to live in her girlhood home with her father Casper and her sister Betsie. For several months following World War 1, Casper, Corrie and Betsie took into their home a small group of frightened and undernourished German boys and girls. In 1925 the ten Booms took in the son and two daughters of a missionary couple serving in Indonesia. In the years that followed, eleven different foster children stayed in their home, with as many as seven living there at the same time.

Besides working at the watch shop and helping care for the children, Corrie taught Sunday school and Bible classes in the public schools. At the encouragement of a friend, she started a ministry to teen girls. Corrie’s exceptional organizational and leadership abilities were soon manifested. In a short time she recruited forty leaders to work with the large numbers of girls who flocked to her youth club. Club meetings consisted of games, music and a Bible study, while training activities included instrumental music, singing, sewing, handcrafts, folk dancing and gymnastics.

Corrie organized a number of such clubs. Before long a club meeting was being held every night. Girls who desired to learn more about spiritual matters were encouraged to join a confirmation class in one of the local Dutch Reformed congregations.
Corrie Ten Boom as a young lady

Corrie Ten Boom as a young lady

Another ministry that Corrie started up was a Sunday afternoon ‘church’ service for individuals with learning difficulties. If a disabled boy or girl wanted to join one of her clubs, or if a pastor approached her about such a person who was disrupting the normal Sunday service, she invited those individuals to her ‘special’ church. Corrie was burdened to share the Gospel with these people who could not understand a sermon but needed the Savior. She carried out this compassionate ministry for two decades.

A summer camp ministry for members of her various girls’ clubs was another of Corrie’s ventures. Early outings were done with tents while later ones were held at a plain log cabin that had room for about sixty girls. The highlight of each day was the evening campfire when the girls sat around the fire, wrapped in blankets, to sing and listen to Corrie’s meditation. They enjoyed her great sense of humor and her wonderful stories that always had a significant spiritual point.

Corrie’s girls clubs paved the way for the founding of the Girl Guide clubs of Holland, a European equivalent of the Girl Scouts of America. Corrie promoted a definite spiritual emphasis in the Girl Guide organization, believing that girls needed to be won to Christ rather than merely taught to be good citizens.

All too soon the events of World War 2 swirled down upon Holland, and the girls’ clubs were forced to close. The last time Corrie met with her club members, the girls struggled to sing the national anthem through their tears. “Girls, don’t cry,” she encouraged them. “We have had great fun in our clubs, but that wasn’t why we came together. Jesus makes us strong, even in times of war and disaster.”

#          #          #

Women of Faith and Courage by Vance Christie

A fuller account of Corrie ten Boom’s upbringing, early years of ministry, heroic endeavors during World War 2 and fruitful worldwide ministry in the closing decades of her life is provided in my book Women of Faith and Courage (Christian Focus, 2011). Corrie’s inimitable telling of the events of her life is found in her autobiographical works such as The Hiding Place, Tramp for the Lord, and Jesus Is Victor. Carole Carlson’s Corrie ten Boom: Her Life, Her Faith is an excellent one-volume account of Corrie’s life and ministry.

Copyright 2017 by Vance E. Christie

This work by Vance Christie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-

You are free to:

• Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format

[simplejeff]

5 hours ago, Unfailing Presence said:

is their comprehensively  purposed  obsession with self .

See otherwise in truth:

Preface continued:  Corrie ten Boom's testimony/ life in Jesus : 

http://www.vancechristie.com/2017/08/29/corrie-ten-booms-cure-self-pity/

29Aug 2017
Corrie ten Boom’s Cure for Self-pity
by Vance Christie

Shortly after her release from a German concentration camp Corrie ten Boom started traveling throughout her home country of Holland and then to other countries of the world, sharing her hope-filled message of God’s love, forgiveness, healing and joy even in life’s darkest, most desperate circumstances. For more than three decades she crisscrossed the globe, sharing the Gospel of Christ and her Christian testimony in over sixty countries.

Corrie had a remarkable ability to communicate effectively with all different kinds of people in all varieties of settings. She shared the message of God’s love and salvation with royalty in palaces, government officials in embassies, celebrities at posh social gatherings, intellectuals and students in universities and schools, illiterate local people in their villages, upstanding citizens in service clubs, criminals in prisons, patients in hospitals and beggars on the street. Corrie seemed at ease and effective whether ministering to thousands in a large crusade or church meeting or to a single individual in an airport or restaurant.

While it was rewarding to minister around the world, it certainly was not an easy life. She normally soldiered through the challenges and hardships of itinerant ministry with remarkable willingness and selflessness. But occasionally the difficulties and sacrifices took a toll on her, and she was tempted to give in to self-pity or to give up altogether. Invariably at those times, the Lord brought circumstances into her life that helped her through the discouragements and renewed her determination to carry on in the ministry He had for her.

Once while ministering in Japan Corrie arrived at an evening church service feeling thoroughly sorry for herself. She was very tired and her stomach was upset from the unusual food she had been eating. Corrie longed for a good European meal back in Holland, a table where she would not have to sit cross-legged on the floor and a soft bed rather than the hard mats on which the Japanese slept.

At the church service that night Corrie spotted a bent little man in a wheelchair. His face bore the happiest expression she could imagine. After the service Corrie’s interpreter introduced her to the man. He smiled broadly when she inquired about several small packets wrapped in brown paper and tied with string on his lap.

Carefully unwrapping one of the packages to show Corrie its contents, he explained, “This is the Gospel of John, written in Braille. I have just finished it.” He went on to share that this was the fifteenth time he had written the Gospel of John in Braille. He had also written other Gospels as well as many shorter portions of the Bible for the blind.

“How did you come to do this?” she asked.

The man proceeded to tell Corrie about the Bible women in Japan who travel from village to village, taking copies of the Bible along with Christian books and pamphlets to those who are hungry for God. “Our Bible woman is very ill with tuberculosis,” he said, “but she travels every week to sixteen villages, even though she will soon die.”

“When I heard about it,” he continued, “I asked the Lord what I could do to help her. Although my legs are paralyzed, and I cannot get out of the wheelchair, in many ways I am healthier than she. God showed me that though her hands are shaky and my legs paralyzed, I could be the hands, and she the legs. I punch out the pages of Braille, and she takes the Bible around to the villages and gives them to the blind people, who miss so much because they cannot see.”

Corrie left the church that evening filled with shame. “Here was I,” she later divulged, “with two good legs for traveling all over the world, two good lungs and two good eyes, complaining because I didn’t like the food!”

She also related the valuable lesson she learned through that incident: “These precious people had discovered a sure cure for self-pity – service to others. … The best antidote I know for self-pity is to help someone else who is worse off than you.”

[frienduff thaylorde]

34 minutes ago, Unfailing Presence said:

Being saved from hell , what could man do to you ?

Nothing that I fear .   sure he can kill the body , but no need to fear that .

So let us be prepared to lose all for his name sake .  

I do have a question for you.    You have heard of the mark of the beast .

Regardless for now of what you believe concering the timing of the rapture .

What will you do if its offered to you to take rfid chip or tattoe in the skin .    Would you take it . 

[simplejeff]

re the rapture,  pre-trib, etc .....  from Corrie ten Boom's testimony.....

Corrie Ten Boom on
the Rapture of the Church.

 

---

INTRODUCTION TO CORRIE'S LETTER

Corrie Ten Boom's letter of 1974 is shown below and in THIS YOUTUBE VIDEO. She comments on the Pre-Tribulation Rapture view which is popular today. She relays a word of warning to us in the West from the Suffering Church in China. She exhorts us to prepare ourselves spiritually in Christ, in His Holy Word, and by His Holy Spirit for the coming trials of our faith. She tells of the Chinese Church in a former time being misinformed, unwarned, and ill-prepared for he persecutions that began in 1949 under Mao Tse Tung's Red Guards. In this letter Corrie warns that Christians in the West today are in danger of falling into a similar disaster born of ecclesiastical neglect and the resultant spiritual unpreparedness. Corrie, in classic Dutch directness plainly states that those who teach a Pre-Tribulation Rapture are among the false teachers Jesus warned us about. See Mat.24:4-5).

Jesus went on to say that towards the end of this age His followers would be called upon to take the stand for Him. They would testify before kings and rulers. See Luke 21:12-19. However today's indulged Western Christians don't seem to have considered that the people Jesus was referring to might be them.

So Corrie's message here is "a word to the wise". It should be regarded by all serious Christians as crucially important information. Without this "heads-up" Christians in the West will be left unprepared. They are unwittingly being set up for a fall, even a Great Falling Away or a Great Apostasy.

This is most unfortunate. We serve a loving God who has promised to keep His covenant people from the wrath to come. But He does tell them that 'in this world you will have tribulation' which is entirely different.

Christian believers in China and elsewhere know and understand these things implicitly. They understand and accept blood covenant Christianity. These dear saints have entered into a serendipity. It is something which we in the Western Laodicean Church know little about right now. But our brothers and sisters in the Suffering Church over in places abroad are traveling up on that higher pathway, that Highway of Holiness. (Isa. 35) Theses dear saints are not trying to avoid the Way of the cross. So, why should we be angry at this message or offended by this High Calling?

The wonderful testimony of Corrie Ten Boom and her sister Betsy was this.

"There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still."
and
"God will give us the love to be able to forgive our enemies".

Like King David Corrie testifies of the wonderful presence of God in times of trial and testing. He prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies. The bread and the wine of the Eternal Covenant is presented there on the table before us. A true bride is more than just a passive purchased concubine. She is vitally involved in the covenant issues of her Family, the Covenant People of the God of Israel. A true bride will not balk at the bridal witness. She will sign on with her Bridegroom and stand as witness to Him, come what may.

This is a devotional matter of the heart first and foremost. It is not just a matter of the intellect. The true Bride of the Lamb will take the cup and drink it with thr One she loves. The Bride co-signs the marriage document along with her Bridegroom. Then she goes on to seal it in the devotion to which she may be called. She does not know what her future may hold from that point on. This is the ultimate reality of the Christian faith, the high adventure, and the true romance of the high calling. This happens before she is snatched away in the harpazo to arrive at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. And so she enters the mansions of glory in the New Jerusalem with her Bridegroom. Our God is faithful. And the lovingkindness He extends towards His covenant people is from everlasting to everlasting.

Here is Corrie's letter.
Her message has been entitled,
"PREPARED FOR THE COMING TRIBULATION".
We might also entitle it,

 

---

'CORRIE TEN BOOM AND THE RAPTURE'. - (This is from a letter Corrie wrote in 1974)

"The world is deathly ill.  It is dying.  The Great Physician has already signed the death certificate.  Yet there is still a great work for Christians to do.  They are to be streams of living water, channels of mercy to those who are still in the world.  It is possible for them to do this because they are overcomers.

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

 

---

I got this letter from the Jesus is Lord website who in turn got it from the Liberty To The Captives Website who got it from a post on the Hiding Place discussion forum. Part of the letter appears in the book "When Jesus Returns" by British evangelist and Bible teacher David Pawson. It is the highlighted section on page 199 copied from the book in the image below.

Edited February 25, 2018 by Steve_S
Removed youtube link. Please post youtube videos in the appropriate video forum.

[Unfailing Presence]

5 hours ago, simplejeff said:

re the rapture,  pre-trib, etc .....  from Corrie ten Boom's testimony.....

Corrie Ten Boom on
the Rapture of the Church.

 

---

INTRODUCTION TO CORRIE'S LETTER

Corrie Ten Boom's letter of 1974 is shown below and in THIS YOUTUBE VIDEO. She comments on the Pre-Tribulation Rapture view which is popular today. She relays a word of warning to us in the West from the Suffering Church in China. She exhorts us to prepare ourselves spiritually in Christ, in His Holy Word, and by His Holy Spirit for the coming trials of our faith. She tells of the Chinese Church in a former time being misinformed, unwarned, and ill-prepared for he persecutions that began in 1949 under Mao Tse Tung's Red Guards. In this letter Corrie warns that Christians in the West today are in danger of falling into a similar disaster born of ecclesiastical neglect and the resultant spiritual unpreparedness. Corrie, in classic Dutch directness plainly states that those who teach a Pre-Tribulation Rapture are among the false teachers Jesus warned us about. See Mat.24:4-5).

Jesus went on to say that towards the end of this age His followers would be called upon to take the stand for Him. They would testify before kings and rulers. See Luke 21:12-19. However today's indulged Western Christians don't seem to have considered that the people Jesus was referring to might be them.

So Corrie's message here is "a word to the wise". It should be regarded by all serious Christians as crucially important information. Without this "heads-up" Christians in the West will be left unprepared. They are unwittingly being set up for a fall, even a Great Falling Away or a Great Apostasy.

This is most unfortunate. We serve a loving God who has promised to keep His covenant people from the wrath to come. But He does tell them that 'in this world you will have tribulation' which is entirely different.

Christian believers in China and elsewhere know and understand these things implicitly. They understand and accept blood covenant Christianity. These dear saints have entered into a serendipity. It is something which we in the Western Laodicean Church know little about right now. But our brothers and sisters in the Suffering Church over in places abroad are traveling up on that higher pathway, that Highway of Holiness. (Isa. 35) Theses dear saints are not trying to avoid the Way of the cross. So, why should we be angry at this message or offended by this High Calling?

The wonderful testimony of Corrie Ten Boom and her sister Betsy was this.

"There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still."
and
"God will give us the love to be able to forgive our enemies".

Like King David Corrie testifies of the wonderful presence of God in times of trial and testing. He prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies. The bread and the wine of the Eternal Covenant is presented there on the table before us. A true bride is more than just a passive purchased concubine. She is vitally involved in the covenant issues of her Family, the Covenant People of the God of Israel. A true bride will not balk at the bridal witness. She will sign on with her Bridegroom and stand as witness to Him, come what may.

This is a devotional matter of the heart first and foremost. It is not just a matter of the intellect. The true Bride of the Lamb will take the cup and drink it with thr One she loves. The Bride co-signs the marriage document along with her Bridegroom. Then she goes on to seal it in the devotion to which she may be called. She does not know what her future may hold from that point on. This is the ultimate reality of the Christian faith, the high adventure, and the true romance of the high calling. This happens before she is snatched away in the harpazo to arrive at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. And so she enters the mansions of glory in the New Jerusalem with her Bridegroom. Our God is faithful. And the lovingkindness He extends towards His covenant people is from everlasting to everlasting.

Here is Corrie's letter.
Her message has been entitled,
"PREPARED FOR THE COMING TRIBULATION".
We might also entitle it,

 

---

'CORRIE TEN BOOM AND THE RAPTURE'. - (This is from a letter Corrie wrote in 1974)

"The world is deathly ill.  It is dying.  The Great Physician has already signed the death certificate.  Yet there is still a great work for Christians to do.  They are to be streams of living water, channels of mercy to those who are still in the world.  It is possible for them to do this because they are overcomers.

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

 

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I got this letter from the Jesus is Lord website who in turn got it from the Liberty To The Captives Website who got it from a post on the Hiding Place discussion forum. Part of the letter appears in the book "When Jesus Returns" by British evangelist and Bible teacher David Pawson. It is the highlighted section on page 199 copied from the book in the image below.

I truly do not understand the concept of our decaying , rotting bodies currently marching in unison to the graveyard  " escaping the tribulation " ?

Escaping for the purpose of WHAT ? 

Dying a few months , days , hours down the road anyway ? 

NEWS FLASH - This is the land of the dead already .

The carnal obsession with saving / preserving our decaying flesh is as disturbing a theology as I have ever heard pitched .

Edited February 25, 2018 by Steve_S
Removed quoted link.

[Unfailing Presence]

5 hours ago, frienduff thaylorde said:

6 hours ago, Unfailing Presence said:

Being saved from hell , what could man do to you ?

Nothing that I fear .   sure he can kill the body , but no need to fear that .

So let us be prepared to lose all for his name sake .  

I do have a question for you.    You have heard of the mark of the beast .

Regardless for now of what you believe concering the timing of the rapture .

What will you do if its offered to you to take rfid chip or tattoe in the skin .    Would you take it . 

I have no man made mark on my body now , and my choice is that my dead body be laid in my grave that way .

You do bring up an interesting point though .

It is quite amazing to me how commonplace & popular body tattooing has become .

I have even seen where people are having  young children or babies tattooed .

I believe this will certainly play into the concept of having and " official mark "   that may even be offered in the concept  designer license plates being offered for your car .

People will actually take pride in the personalized  government  " Mark "    they choose for themselves , not knowing perhaps that no matter how personalized they believe it to be they all contain one common characteristic .

Satan will always use our egos to achieve his means . 

 

[Unfailing Presence]

5 minutes ago, Sojourner414 said:

The thing is, post and mid-trib rapture viewpoints fail to answer several important questions; until those questions are addressed (such as the post trib rapture not accounting for the countless number of rebels in revelation chapter 20 (led by Satan) that emerge near the end of the millennial reign), it cannot have any credence. And every time I have posted these questions, all I have gotten are "replies" that either accuse me of attacking someone, or immediately switching to a different point and attempting to dissect that.

The stance of this board against the pre-trib rapture is very well known; if only its' stance against teaching that goes clearly against Scripture (replacement theology, SDA-adherence, etc) were as vehement.

So, Unfailing Presence: I agree with you on this, but I'm afraid any discussion on the pre-trib rapture is not going to be able to be addressed here due to pre-existing prejudice against it. And until it can be discussed evenly and openly without such, then any point made against the pre-trib rapture also has to be disqualified.

Either Worthy discusses it in full with all the points addressed, or not at all.

-Sojo414 out.

I agree Sojourner .

In 25 years I have  never had a cross word with someone saying they think Christ will only come once . 

Never .

And I have met many cordial believers who hold to that .

That is until seeing the repeated accusations of self -preservation / escape  motivations  hurled continually at pre tribbers on this site .

It has been an education however .

It reveals what these accusers truely value in their hearts above Christ .

The preservation of the decaying flesh .

[Steve_S]

Just for the record. There is no official position of Worthy that I know of vis-a-vis pre-trib v post-trib. I suspect that the ministry team runs the gamut in eschatological viewpoints.