Recently our Sunday morning exposition focused on Elisha.
It was the incident in which the prophet was protected by chariots of fire when Israel’s enemies sent soldiers to take him. The following mid-week fellowship group was based on the same passage, taking up the question of what the Bible teaches about angels. As we talked about this, one of the members of our group, brought up in Poland, related a story from her family.
Siberian camp
A few months before the end of World War II, her (future) grandfather was taken to Siberia. Stalin’s Russian army was passing through Poland and men were scooped from the streets and sent to internment camps.
He had become a Christian while studying structural engineering at university. Now he began telling his co-prisoners about salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. There were about 2,000 men in the camp. God began to work and many believed. Night after night he preached from memory. But hard labour, very poor nutrition, rough treatment from the guards and then illness brought on profound weakness. His memory began to fail, so the new Christians began praying with him for a Bible.
The re-emergence of heavy shepherds
What would you think if you received a letter from your church leaders that read like this? ‘Are church members …