[Comment #5 suggests that Corrie didn’t write this letter. We do know for sure that Corrie did write portions of this elsewhere (including the quote I start this post with), and it does seem to be consistent with her thought. If anyone has further insight, please let me know.]
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When I was a little girl…, I went to my father and said, “Daddy, I am afraid that I will never be strong enough to be a martyr for Jesus Christ.” “Tell me,” said Father, “When you take a train trip to Amsterdam, when do I give you the money for the ticket? Three weeks before?”
“No, Daddy, you give me the money for the ticket just before we get on the train.” “That is right,” my father said, “and so it is with God’s strength. Our Father in Heaven knows when you will need the strength to be a martyr for Jesus Christ. He will supply all you need – just in time.“
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From: Revival School (Andrew Strom)
ESCAPE TRIBULATION? -WRONG! -Corrie Ten Boom.
Miss Corrie Ten Boom was a Dutch survivor of the Nazi Concentration Camps, and a lifelong missionary. Corrie was a believer in facing tribulation. She was one of the many people who were persecuted in concentration camps during the World War II. Her family was murdered before her eyes, but though her life was threatened, God led her through that terrible time. She lived to testify all over the world of how God brought her out of that time of trouble. In the worst days in the concentration camp she and her sister Betsy discovered that “there is no pit so deep that the Presence of God is not there with us”. In an interview titled “Prepared for the Coming Tribulation”, Miss Corrie Ten Boom held very definite view concerning the rapture. In the following message she shared a plea for the saints to prepare themselves for the possibility that at some point their faith may be tested. It serves today as a timely warning to us in the comfortable and complacent western church as we approach the threshold of the end-time drama.
Here is her exhortation to us from a letter she wrote in 1974:
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“The world is deathly ill. It is dying. The Great Physician has already signed the death certificate. Yet there is still a great work for Christians to do. They are to be streams of living water, channels of mercy to those who are still in the world. It is possible for them to do this because they are overcomers.
Christians are ambassadors for Christ. They are representatives from Heaven to this dying world. And because of our presence here, things will change.
My sister, Betsy, and I were in the Nazi concentration camp at Ravensbruck because we committed the crime of loving Jews. Seven hundred of us from Holland, France, Russia, Poland and Belgium were herded into a room built for two hundred. As far as I knew, Betsy and I were the only two representatives of Heaven in that room.
We may have been the Lord’s only representatives in that place of hatred, yet because of our presence there, things changed. Jesus said, “In the world you shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” We too, are to be overcomers – bringing the light of Jesus into a world filled with darkness and hate.
Sometimes I get frightened as I read the Bible, and as I look in this world and see all of the tribulation and persecution promised by the Bible coming true. Now I can tell you, though, if you too are afraid, that I have just read the last pages. I can now come to shouting “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” for I have found where it is written that Jesus said, “He that overcometh shall inherit all things: and I will be His God, and he shall be My son.” This is the future and hope of this world. Not that the world will survive – but that we shall be overcomers in the midst of a dying world.