The day before yesterday I gave my testimony in an old Lutheran “mission house” in a neighbor town.  My good little audience was primarily old women and a few men sitting at various nice coffee tables.

Later, after the meeting, I went to bed discouraged, crushed.

This so called mission house had its time of awakening in the beginning of last century as an original awakening movement linked to our Lutheran state church and had zealous lay preachers burdened for the salvation of souls.

I saw no Bibles at all at that meeting. Not one.  My fellow believers there were obviously not used to bring their Bibles along.  I couldn´t help feeling an apathy of lifeless tradition.

However I was, strange as it sounds, thankful that none of my unconverted friends cared to come and hear my testimony.  I felt what I believe the apostle Paul felt when he expressed a sensitive attitude to unbelievers coming to an assembly with an unnatural behavior (1 Cor. 14:23) though his problem in Corinth was different to mine.

I trust the Lord kept me from self-righteousness because I was the only one who had a Bible with me.  I rather felt ashamed.  After all these believers are my people whose spiritual condition I´m identified with as Daniel was with the need of his people (Dan.9), and that crushes my soul.

This early morning another report on martyrdom arrived in my e-mail box:  “In June, North Korean's beastly communist dictatorship executed a 33 year old Christian woman for distributing Bibles, while also imprisoning her 3 little children, husband and parents, in conditions undoubtedly ghastly.”

So I had to put this humiliating question to myself:  Am I, too, prepared to die for the Bible? That blessed Book that led me to my Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, nay that very Book I so highly praised at that Lutheran mission house!

-jn-

P.S.  I want to emphasize that of course not all mission houses have ruled