Dreaming of Pearl Necklace

After she woke up, a woman told her husband, "I just dreamed that you gave me a pearl necklace for our anniversary. What do you think it means?"

"You'll know tonight." he said.

That evening, the man came home with a small package and gave it to his wife.

Delighted, she opened it to find a book entitled "The Meaning of Dreams."

A Sign In The Heavens

Ziglar's Cloud

The daughter of Zig Ziglar reminds us that even at the darkest times we are given reason to rejoice.

By Julie Ziglar Norman, Alvord, Texas
I’d turned on the car radio for the long drive home that afternoon last November. My favorite preacher was on, but I wasn't really paying attention. My mind was on my father. I’d just visited him at the nursing facility where he’d been for the past few months, his health failing.

He was 86. His spirit remained strong but the light in his eyes had dimmed and I had to wonder if this was the last time we’d see each other. My dad, the motivational speaker Zig Ziglar, was known the world over for his energy, optimism and faith. The interesting thing is, he came to that faith in his mid-forties.

It was the night of July 4, 1972, not long after he left a successful career as a salesman to pursue public speaking full time. He’d grown up in a church-going family but he had more doubts than belief.

That night he was out in his swimming pool when he was struck by the urge to pray, as his friend Sister Jessie had been encouraging him to do. Was God real? he asked. Was he truly present in our day-to-day lives? Dad lay back in the water and stared up into the heavens.

All at once a shooting star streaked across the sky. He was startled and elated. A warmth filled him, like the light from the star. He knew with the utmost certainty the answers to his questions. And he knew that he needed to share not just his energy and optimism in his speeches but his faith.

Dad often talked about the sign he saw. Maybe that’s why I looked up myself that afternoon, driving home from visiting him. Clouds were skimming across the Texas sky. Then I saw it, a cloud in the unmistakable shape of a Z.

Z for Ziglar.

I pulled over, grabbed my cell phone and took a picture. It wasn't till later that I realized the camera function must have been set to video. I showed the recording to my brother and sister when we were keeping vigil in Dad’s hospital room. He’d been rushed there on Thanksgiving with pneumonia.

“We’re sorry, but there’s no hope,” the doctors told us. Dad would have argued that meeting his savior was more than hope enough. My prayers were for his time on earth to end peacefully. That was how he died six days later, in his sleep.

The family met to plan the funeral. Dad had spelled out exactly what he wanted for the “big church memorial,” as he called it—down to which Bible passages to read and which songs to sing. But for the private graveside service that would come first, he gave free rein to his pastor, Jack Graham.

Someone suggested that we get a better quality image of the Z cloud for the memorial program. I found the video on my phone and pressed “play.” Who was talking in the background? I hadn't noticed it before.

I turned up the volume—it was the preacher from the car radio. He was quoting from I Thessalonians 4:13–18: “Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope...”

Hope. That was what Dad was all about. “Hey, y’all, listen to this,” I said to my family and played the video again. We’d have to tell Pastor Graham about this after the graveside service. He would be as moved as we were.

The next morning we gathered at the cemetery. “Years ago I committed to memory certain Bible verses,” Pastor Graham began. “Verses that I believe God wants me to share with you today.” He started quoting the Scripture.

My brother and I looked at each other, stunned. Then we said quietly along with Pastor Graham, “...that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.”

Dad was in his eternal home, and like Dad, I had looked to the heavens and had seen a sign telling me with the utmost certainty that I would see him again.

Article from Guideposts

http://www.guideposts.org/inspiration/stories-of-hope/a-sign-in-the-heavens?utm_source=Inspirational%20Roundup&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2013-6-29_nl_a-sign-in-the-heavens

The Rich Man And The Penny

Several years ago, a friend of mine and her husband were invited to spend the weekend at the husband’s employer’s home. My friend, Arlene, was nervous about the weekend. The boss was very wealthy, with a fine home on the waterway, and cars costing more than her house.

The first day and evening went well, and Arlene was delighted to have this rare glimpse into how the very wealthy live. The husband’s employer was quite generous as a host, and took them to the finest restaurants. Arlene knew she would never have the opportunity to indulge in this kind of extravagance again, so she as enjoying herself immensely.

As the three of them were about to enter an exclusive restaurant that evening, the boss was walking slightly ahead of Arlene and her husband. He stopped suddenly, looking down on the pavement for a long, silent moment.

Arlene wondered if she was supposed to pass him. There was nothing on the ground except a single darkened penny that someone had dropped, and a few cigarette butts. Still silent, the man reached down and picked up the penny.

He held it up and smiled, then put it in his pocket as if he had found a great treasure. How absurd! What need did this man have for a single penny?

Why would he even take the time to stop and pick it up?

Throughout dinner, the entire scene nagged at her. Finally, she could stand it no longer. She causally mentioned that her daughter once had a coin collection, and asked if the penny he had found had been of some value.

A smile crept across the man’s face as he reached into his pocket for the penny and held it out for her to see. She had seen many pennies before!

What was the point of this?

“Look at it.” He said. “Read what it says” She read the words “United States of America.”

“No, not that; read further.”

“One cent?” “No, keep reading.”

“In God we Trust?” “Yes!” “And?”

“And if I trust in God, the name of God is holy, even on a coin. Whenever I find a coin I see that inscription. It is written on every single United States coin, but we never seem to notice it! God drops a message right in front of me telling me to trust Him? Who am I to pass it by? When I see a coin, I pray, I stop to see if my trust IS in God at that moment. I pick the coin up as a response to God; that I do trust in Him. For a short time, at least, I cherish it as if it were gold. I think it is God’s way of starting a conversation with me. God is patient and pennies are plentiful!

When I was out shopping today, I found a penny on the sidewalk. I stopped and picked it up, and realized that I had been worrying and fretting in my mind about things I cannot change. I read the words, “In God We Trust,” and had to laugh. Yes, God, I get the message.

It seems that I have been finding an inordinate number of pennies in the last few months, but then, pennies are plentiful!

And God is patient...

Author Unknown

Auntie Deborah Wang - Never Alone

Auntie Deborah and her famous husband, Pastor Wang Ming Dao

By Dr. Harold J. Sala.

Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you. Hebrews 13:5

It is said that behind every great man is a great woman. Unquestionably, that was true of Wang Ming Dao. The woman, Deborah Wang, a frail but vibrant saint, endured what no woman should ever have to face. Her husband, Wang Ming Dao, was one of the unofficial architects of the house church movement in China, and when her husband was sentenced to prison for what the Chinese government termed "anti-revolutionary" activities, his wife followed.

For 20 years, this saintly woman was in prison, facing the bitter cold of northern Chinese winters with thin clothes and insufficient food, but she never complained.

In 1989 I met the Wangs for the first time. I'll never forget the afternoon I sat in the humble little apartment in Shanghai and listened to them recount their experiences. While I deeply admired and venerated Wang Ming Dao, I was drawn to the strength of this saintly woman whose smile came from her heart. As she talked about the years of imprisonment, I asked, "Did you ever lose hope?" (After all, 20 years of separation, with very little news and few letters from the one you loved so deeply, is a long time.) Her eyes spoke far more than her answer as she said, "No, never!"

After the Wangs were released from prison, their home became a refuge for those who needed encouragement and counsel. God only knows how many cups of tea Auntie Wang (as her friends called her) served to weary men and women who traipsed up the stairs to their flat for encouragement and help.

What a woman! Two weeks after her husband passed away, at the age of 91, I again visited Auntie Wang. The ashes of her late husband were in an urn on the table near the chair which Brother Wang had used as a pulpit to share the Word. My son-in-law and I sought to comfort her, quoting some of my favorite passages of Scripture. But it was Auntie Wang who really comforted us. She was in her mid-eighties. Successful surgery a few months before had removed one of the cataracts from her eyes, and few details escaped her. When a small piece of paper fell from my lap, it was she who quickly leaned over to pick it up.

"Auntie Wang," I said, "I will pray that you will not be lonely." Pausing for just a moment she spoke with a clear and resolute tone of voice, "I will not be lonely; I was not lonely before." It was what she didn't say that spoke the loudest. On a previous visit, she told me that she had seen her husband but three times during the twenty years of imprisonment. That one word, "before," said so much. I knew what she was thinking.

Those words rang in my ears when a close friend told how Deborah Wang had developed pneumonia and was taken to a Shanghai hospital. With no rooms available, she was given a temporary bed in a hallway, and there in the early hours of the morning on April 18, 1992, she met Him who had been her stay and companion for so many years. As the leaves of the trees were budding, following the cold of a Shanghai winter, Deborah Wang made her entrance into the presence of the Lord, where a faithful and devoted husband awaited her.

The saddest part to me was that she couldn't be surrounded by friends and flowers when the angel sweetly took her hand and escorted her across the threshold of death. But I am sure of one fact: While she was alone, she was not lonely. She had the promise of her Lord who said, "And surely I am with you, always...." (Matthew 28:20). Deborah Wang experienced that, both in life and in death.
Resource reading: Hebrews 13:1-5



Dr. Harold J. Sala, well known speaker, author and Bible teacher, has served as founder and President of Guidelines International, Inc., since 1963. He is the featured speaker on the daily "Guidelines-A Five Minute Commentary on Living" which is broadcast on over 1000 radio stations around the world and translated in over 15 languages. Author of over 40 books published in various languages and hundreds of publications. Residing in Mission Viejo, California, Harold and his wife, Darlene, have three adult children and eight well-loved grandchildren.

Courage To Support

The Brooklyn Dodgers' Pee Wee Reese and Jackie Robinson chatting in dugout at Yankee Stadium in 1947.

Jackie Robinson was the first black person to play major league baseball.

Breaking baseball’s color barrier, he faced jeering crowds in every stadium.

Players would stomp on his feet and kick him.

While playing one day in his home stadium in Brooklyn, he made an error. The fans began to ridicule him. He stood at second base, humiliated, while the fans jeered.

Then, Pee Wee Reese came over and stood next to him.

He put his arm around Jackie Robinson and faced the crowd.

The fans grew quiet.

Robinson later said that arm around his shoulder saved his career.

We are sometimes like Jackie Robinson, full of shame.

Sometimes, like Jackie, our shame is from nothing we've done.

Sometimes our shame is from our own sin and guilt.

And like Pee Wee Reese, Jesus comes and slips his arm around us, and bears our shame for us.

Three Old Men

Have you heard of this funny story?

Three old men went to the doctor for a memory test. The doctor asked the first old man, "What is one plus one?"

"Two hundred seventy-four," he said.

The doctor asked the same question of the second man, "What is one plus one?"

"Tuesday," he said.

The doctor tried the third man, "What's one plus one?"

"Two," said the third man.

"That's great!" said the doctor. "How did you get that?"

"Simple," said the third man. "I subtracted 274 fromTuesday."

End of story.

Ji Zhiwen 計志文(Andrew Gih) - A Fellow Worker of Evangelist John Sung

Andrew and Dorcas Gih

Ji Zhiwen 計志文(Andrew Gih) 1901-1985

Ji Zhiwen (Andrew Gih) was born on January 10th, 1901, in Shanghai, the oldest son in the family. His father, Ji Youren, a Confucian scholar, opened a school in his home and taught students there. From childhood, Ji Zhiwen received a traditional Confucian education from his father. His mother was a Buddhist, a vegetarian, virtuous and open-minded, though she maintained tablets of ancestors in the home, observed religious festivals, and worshiped the ancestors. Ji Zhiwen in his youth was quiet and reticent, and very awkward in relating to people. In his youth, he would go with his mother to the temple to offer incense and listen to the monk chant the scriptures; he even had an opportunity to skim over the books of gospel, but was totally uninterested and cold towards religion.

Zhiwen’s parents had four sons and three daughters, three of whom died in infancy. As he watched his little brothers’ rigid corpses being placed into square coffins and carried out to be buried by adults and saw the grieved expressions and the tears of the mourners, he couldn’t understand the meaning of death, but the questions of why people die and what happens after death were lodged deeply in his mind.

At the age of twelve, his father came down with a serious illness, which proved to be incurable, and he quickly died. After his father’s death, Zhiwen once again followed his mother around as she rose early and retired late, tilled the field and made clothing, upholding the family all by herself. He often helped her work in the field, spread fertilizer, carry water, etc. Seeing his mother working so hard, he resolved that when he grew up he would certainly make enough money to repay his mother as a filial son.

In order to make ends meet, Ji Zhiwen again became an apprentice in a cloth shop. As he became immersed in business circles, he picked up not a few bad habits. At the age of 18, in order to learn English, he entered a middle school run by Western missionaries (the CIM’s Bethel Secondary School). Although he had absolutely no interest in the religious activities of the school or the Bible class, because of school regulations he had to take his Bible along and participate. Unexpectedly, the Bible became for him a textbook for studying English. The words of Jesus as recorded in the Bible made a deep impression upon him, gradually convincing him of the greatness of Jesus.

Ji Zhiwen became a Christian

One day, a CIM missionary came to preach at the school. His topic was, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Ji Zhiwen’s heart was struck by the force of the message and God’s love flooded his heart, convicting him of his sin. That night he kneeled before God for the first time, as he cried with a loud voice, “My God, you are my Savior; have mercy on this sinner!” Immediately, God removed his heavy burden and filled his heart with peace and joy.

He was elected as an officer of the Shanghai post office in 1924, with a handsome salary, a good position in society, and a promising career ahead of him. All this did not satisfy his heart, however. The next year, Wang Zai came to Shanghai for an evangelistic meeting. Hearing him, Ji Zhiwen was moved deeply and requested baptism from Wang Zai. After his baptism Ji was even more hungry for the truth of the Bible, and eagerly took part in every sort of church activity. He gave himself the Bible name, “Andrew,” and resolved to become a man who led others to the Lord. Soon he had led his mother and two younger sisters to believe in Christ. His Buddhist grandmother was a first strongly opposed to the Gospel, but later she joined her family in receiving Christ.

In 1925, at a revival meeting led by the Western missionary John Gu, Ji Zhiwen once again responded to the call of God and made a decision to commit himself to full-time work as a preacher. But how could he explain leaving his well-paying job at the post office? God heard his prayer, however, while he was praying gave him a clear vision, so he finally resigned his position, said “Farewell” to his mother, and entered upon the path of the life as a minister of the Gospel.

In 1931, John Sung (宋尚節) [1st left] and Andrew Gih (計志文) [2nd from right] formed the Bethel Worldwide Evangelistic Band to reach China for Christ.

He began by associating with the evangelist Mary Stone (Shi Meiyu) and pastor Ding Limei as he learned from their experience in evangelism, accompanying Mary Stone often to many places for revival and evangelistic meetings. In 1926, he received ordination from the Rev. Mr. Sontas. From that time, he began traveling to Guangxi, Guangdong, Fujian, Xiamen and other locations conducting evangelistic and revival meetings. The Holy Spirit was with him, enabling him to preaching with great power resulting in hundreds, even thousands of people repenting and deciding to follow the Lord.

Ji Zhiwen returned to Shanghai from his evangelistic tours on October 1st, 1928, for his wedding to Dorcas Zhang, a fellow member of the Bethel organization, at the Bethel Church. Hardly a week later, the new couple went to the Baptist Church at Hangzhou to preach, spending their honeymoon thus in evangelistic ministry.

The Chinese church experienced a great revival in 1927, which lasted into the 1930s. Ji Zhiwen was among the leaders of this revival movement. In February, 1931, he established the “Bethel Evangelistic Band” in Shanghai. This organization was part of the Methodist Church, prominent members of which included Li Daorong, Lin Jingkang, Nie Ziying, John Shi, and Song Shangjie (John Sung). Beginning February 18, over the next four years they traveled 50,000 kilometers, visited 133 cities, conducted 3389 meetings, and preached the Gospel to 500,000 people, of whom 50,000 made professions of faith. Among those who repented and turned to the Lord were Chinese and foreigners; workers, farmers, business people; youth and soldiers; and corrupt officials, bandits, gangsters, and murderers. Their powerful preaching and personal testimonies brought revival wherever they went. In order to meet the increasing needs of the evangelistic work, they established 10 regional teams in every part of the country for evangelism and revival meetings. In 1933, they even formed “battlefield evangelistic teams” especially to preach the Gospel to officers and soldiers fighting the Japanese. Under their inspiration, many local churches also formed evangelistic teams.

Ji Zhiwen and the Bethel Band not only spread the Gospel fire in both urban and rural areas in the south and north China, but also sowed Gospel seeds in the border areas of Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Yunnan, Tibet, and Xinjiang. In the latter part of 1938, Ji and Dr. James Edwin Orr passed through Yunnan to Vietnam, evangelizing in Hanoi and Haiphong; they also conducted a nation-wide evangelistic meeting in Saigon, bringing a great revival to the church in Vietnam. In the process of their preaching, they employed personal testimonies, outdoor meetings, large Gospel meetings, as well as revival and spiritual life methods. Miracles often accompanied their proclamation. Ji Zhiwen always ascribed the accomplishments of the Bethel Bands’ endeavors to the work of the Holy Spirit.

As the war against Japan expanded, Ji Zhiwen took the Bethel co-workers, including Mary Stone and Miss Jennie V. Hughes, along with the seminary students and more than 100 orphans, to Hong Kong. In Kowloon he established a church, an elementary school, and an orphanage. The war had created many homeless orphan children; Ji responded to the call of Song Meiling (Madame Chiang Kai-shek) and established orphanages in Hong Kong and Guizhou for these victims of warfare. He later went to America to preach and to promote the needs of orphans, receiving support from American Christian friends, who sponsored more than a thousand orphans as well as providing support for the orphanages opened by Ji. Mrs. Ji returned to Shanghai from Hong Kong, where she rented a three-story building and opened an orphanage on Da Xi Road, obtaining the very effective assistance of Miss Ou Jialing.

In 1943, after Shanghai fell to the Japanese, Ji again led more than a hundred war orphans, seminary students, faculty, and staff in an exodus to Guizhou. After a long and arduous journey, they finally reached the orphanage in Bijie, Guizhou. As a result of the difficulties of the long journey, his tuberculosis flared up, causing him to vomit blood constantly, and forcing him into the hospital for treatment. At this time, he still managed to make it to churches and universities to preach and teach.

From 1946 to 1949, Ji established the Chinese Evangelization Society in Shanghai, undertaking both evangelistic and orphanage work. By the end of 1949, they had already taking in more than 100 orphans. But the new government would not allow private organizations to operate orphanages, so the institution run by Mr. and Mrs. Ji was closed down not long afterwards.

In February of 1949, Ji Zhiwen traveled to America to serve as speaker at the annual meeting of American Christians held in Chicago. Mrs. Ji went to Hong Kong for treatment for tuberculosis. When the political situation in China changed dramatically, the two moved to Hong Kong. Since he could not return to the mainland of China, Ji began holding evangelistic meetings in the Kuai Le (“Happiness”) Theater. Weekly attendance on Sunday mornings was more than 1200 people. In August, 1951, he formally established a church, along with Paul Shen and others. With increasing numbers coming, they took up and offering to build their own meeting place. The structure was completed in October of 1956 and was given the name, “Canaan Church of the Chinese Evangelization Society.”

In 1950, Cassada College in Oregon, America, conferred upon Ji Zhiwen an honorary Doctorate of Letters (D. Litt.).

The Chinese Evangelization Society began its work in Taiwan in 1948 when Paul Shen was sent by Ji Zhiwen to Taichung to establish a ministry there. Beginning with nothing, by 1952 they had erected a meeting hall with a capacity to seat more than 400 people, with the name, Si En Church. In February of 1952, Ji presided at the dedication ceremony. In the following years, the Society opened work in Taipei, Pingtung, Taidung, Yilin, Yilan, Luodong, Gangshan, Hsinchu and other places, and conducted evangelistic work and opened churches among the aboriginal people as well.

In the early 1950s, Ji extended his evangelistic ministry to South East Asia. In the next decade, he engaged in pioneer evangelism in the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and other countries; built churches; conducted revival and evangelistic meetings. In each place, churches experienced revival, as thousands dedicated themselves to God. Ji Zhiwen’s influence upon Chinese churches in South East Asia was profound. More than that, his journeys took him to more than fifty nations, and he circled the globe more than 15 times.

In the course of his ministry, Ji met the needs of the Chinese churches by establishing theological colleges, including Bethel Seminary in Shanghai, Taichung Bible College, South East Bible College in Indonesia, Hong Kong Bible College, and Bethel Bible College in Thailand, training thousands of preachers as a result. In 1981, in order to honor his work, the South East Bible College in Indonesia dedicated the “Ji Zhiwen Memorial Hall,” a church building with a capacity of more 1,200.

Ji Zhiwen was always a philanthropist, establishing schools, kindergartens, and day care centers for children affected by disasters and for orphans, including “En Ci Orphanage in Macao; Malang Middle School in Indonesia; Holy Word Children’s Home in Taipei; Holy Word Kindergarten in Malaysia, and many more, providing food, clothing, shelter, and education for this homeless young people. He not only saved the lives of thousands, but turned them into people with a sense of responsibility for society.

Ji Zhiwen greatly emphasized Christian literature work, as seen in his establishment of a publishing organization. Already in 1949, he had set up a publications division in the Chinese Evangelization Society; the name was changed to Holy Word Press in June, 1962. It issued “Life Magazine”; Gospel tracts; evangelistic booklets; and Christian books.

Ji Zhiwen went to heaven at age of 85

Ji Zhiwen officially retired at the Los Angeles headquarters of the Chinese Evangelization Society in October, 1978. He had suffered from tuberculosis since youth, often coughing up blood, but God supported him, greatly used him, and accomplished great things through him. On January 30, 1985, he underwent surgery for lung cancer. He died peacefully on February 13th at the age of 85. A memorial service was held for him on February 23rd at Forest Lawn in Glendale, California, at which his co-worker the Rev. Xiao Zhenxiang, presided; Lin Jingkang preached the sermon; Li Qirong sang a solo, “Holy city,” in order to commemorate the life of this faithful and fruitful servant of God.

The Jis had no children. Ji Zhiwen preached mostly in Chinese, though he could preach and teach in English also. Aside from an autobiography, My Wonderful God, he wrote several books in English:Launch Out into the Deep; Twice Born - and Then?; Into God’s Family; and The Fire of Revivalism in Chinese. He was a kind and easy-going person, and usually enjoyed good relationships with his coworkers.

http://www.ecfusa.org/index.html

Of Darkness and Shadows

I would rather walk with God in the dark than go alone in the light.
Mary Gardniner Brainar

When a dark shadow looms large in your life, never fear it. For there is a Great Light behind it.
Albert Kang

The brightest flame casts the darkest shadow.
George R.R. Martin, A Clash of Kings

What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared?
Mikhail Bulgakov

... there are shadows because there are hills.
E.M. Forster, A Room with a View

Just as tall trees are known by their shadows, so are good men known by their enemies. 

Chinese Proverb

Death is but a shadow! We rather be hit by the shadow of the lorry than by the lorry itself. Are we afraid of the speeding shadow of the lorry? Never! Should we then be afraid of death? Should not! Like David, we can all say, "yeah, though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death, I shall fear no evil, for God, you are with me." Psalm 23.
Albert Kang

Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.

Walt Whitman

A Brave Soldier of God

“Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life.” Revelation 2:10

Roy Pontoh, 15 years old, Indonesia, 1999

The teens could tell that the shouts and chanting were getting closer and closer. An older teen nervously looked at his friend. "The Muslims are coming. We’d better hide the kids," he said. Others, following his lead, helped the smaller children find hiding places in the buildings nearby. Then they hid themselves.

It was January and a crowd of mostly Christian children and teenagers had gathered for a Bible camp at the Station Field Complex of Pattimura University on the Island of Ambon, Indonesia. When the camp was over, cars came to take the laughing, rejoicing children back to their homes. But there were not enough cars to hold the young people.

Mecky Sainyakit and three other Christian men had gone to Wakal village to try to ask the military for additional transportation and the provision of security to take the rest home. But they had not yet come back.

What the kids waiting for rides home didn’t know was that on their way to the village, the men were attacked by a Muslim mob, who pulled them from their car and out onto the road. Mecky and one of the other men were stabbed to death, and later their bodies were burned by the mob. The two other men escaped with their lives.

Back at the university crowds of Laskar Jihad fighters and muslim extremists from the surrounding villages started to gather at the gates, so the remaining adults started to hide the youth around the building, then hid themselves and began to pray.

Eventually the mob broke into the buildings armed with machetes, spears, knives and clubs. They found many of the youth and beat them. The girls and women were forced out of the building, but the boys and men were kept inside. Roy Pontoh was singled out and dragged from the group.

He was asked "Who are you?" and replied "I am a soldier (warrior) of Christ" to which he was struck on the arm with a machete. He was asked the same question again and gave the same reply to which he was struck on the other arm. 

A third time he was asked the same question and replied as before. This time Roy was struck on his stomach with the machete and as he died his last words were "Jesus" (some accounts speak of a prior blow to the stomach ripping into Roy's Bible that he was holding).

The mob dragged Roy’s body out and threw it in a ditch. Four days later, his family found it. Even though they were wracked with grief, Roy’s parents stand proud of their son, who stood strong in his faith to the end.

~~
Whoever declares openly – speaking our freely - and confess that he is My worshipper and acknowledge Me before men, the Son of man also will declare and confess and acknowledge him before the angels of God. -Jesus (Luke 12:8 AMP)