Sunday, June 18, 2017

CROSS – the Symbol of Hope



Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a prisoner in a Soviet prison in Siberia. He became so weak & discouraged that he wished he would die.

The guards would beat & usually kill anyone that stopped working. He decided to stop working so that the guards would kill him.

As soon as he did so, another Christian drew a cross where Alexander could see it.

Alexander said that he was encouraged by remembering that God gives hope & courage. He decided to continue working because of a Christian who cared too much to let him give up.

Source: McHenry’s Quips, Quotes, & Other Notes, Raymond McHenry (ministry127.com)

2 Thes 2:16-17 (GNT): “May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and in his grace gave us unfailing courage and a firm hope, encourage you and strengthen you to always do and say what is good.

(Alexander was born in Russia in 1918, was brainwashed by the state education system which taught him that religion was the enemy of the people. Like most of his school friends, he enslaved himself to become an atheist. He was diagnosed with a malignant cancer in its advanced stages & was not expected to live. In the face of what appeared to be impending death, he believed in Christ & was astonished by what he considered to be a miraculous recovery. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature.)

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