“These that have turned the world upside down have come here also.” Acts 17:6b We have entered a time when lives lived for Christ are increasingly seen by the drifting, foundation-less culture around us as harmful to mental health and societal order. The murder of the innocent unborn is now celebrated, replacing the wonder of procreation. Our refusal to accept as normal what is debauched has become hate. Skepticism regarding evolution and climate change is seen as anti-scientific. Belief in…..

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I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day In 1864, during the dark days of America’s terrible Civil War, 19-year-old Union Lieutenant Charles Longfellow, son of America’s great poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, was nearly killed by a bullet during the Mine Run Campaign in Virginia. His famous father had lost his beloved wife Fanny in a house fire in 1861. He himself was badly burned while trying to save her. Until recent times it could be said that the American Civil…..

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            In his six-volume memoir of World War II Sir Winston Churchill delineated a number of instances in which World War Two could easily have swung in favor of the axis powers. But in every case, it seems that Divine Providence somehow intervened. One such story begins on Sunday evening, December 7, 1941. Churchill was at Chequers, the country retreat for British prime ministers, like Camp David is for American presidents. His butler informed him that the Japanese had just…..

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But after a couple of months in Vught there they were sent to the Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp in Germany. There the Nazi guards made cruelty an artform and worked people to death before replacing them with new arrivals. All personal belongings were confiscated at the outset and the prisoners were issued numbers, by which they were henceforth known. Corrie became prisoner 66730. In her possession she had a Bible and the davitamin bottle she had received from the Red…..

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The first forty-eight years of Corrie ten Boom’s life might be considered boring to some. She was born on April 15, 1892 in Amsterdam, Holland, the youngest child of Casper and Cornelia ten Boom. Her older siblings were Betsie, Willem, and Nollie. Casper ten Boom was a jeweler and watchmaker, who owned a shop in the city of Haarlem. His business was on the bottom floor, while his family lived above. Casper often became so engrossed in his watchmaking work…..

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When I was a young man in the air force, a mentor of mine suggested that I read a book called “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” I had heard of the book. I’d read somewhere that early American school children were brought up on the Bible and on “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” I thought it must be a book about the progress the pilgrims made who landed at Plymouth Rock and gave us our first Thanksgiving. I found the book at my base…..

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With the way our cops are being so disparaged right now, I thought a story from my early childhood might be appropriate. In the early 1950s, when I was four years old, my family lived in North Park, San Diego, just across the street from Morley Field. My mother was in the hospital, having suffered a devastating miscarriage. I vividly remember hearing her moaning in agony through the bathroom door a few days before. A while later I watched men…..

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Christianity 101 “He who waters will himself be watered.” Proverbs 11:25 In Crown Heights, there was a Jew, Yankel, who owned a bakery, who survived the Nazi death camps. He once said, “You know why it is that I’m alive today? I was a kid, just a teenager at the time. We were on the train, in a boxcar, being taken to Auschwitz. Night came and it was freezing, deathly cold, in that boxcar. The Germans would leave the cars…..

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            As the Bertha Mae passed the breakwater into the open sea, the placid waters of the harbor turned turbulent. But for twelve-year old Ryan Crabtree, who clung to the rail at the bow of the fishing boat, the heavy seas only added to the thrill. He had never been deep sea fishing before and looked forward to reeling in a large Bonita or Yellow Tail.              “All passengers below,” bellowed the captain of the boat.             His father came…..

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Even their thick woolen clothing failed to warm them against the dry chill of the night. Why were we doing this? thought one of the men. The four entered the garden. “Sit here while I pray,” said the leader. They were used to seeing him go off to pray. But weren’t there supposed to be limits to everything? Didn’t he understand how cold and weary they were? He had been acting so strange lately. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow…..

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