But well i've planned out a new battle plan by today morning. :) I won't announce it here though, it's a rather big plan, but if it's successful you'd definetly hear about it cos i'd probably share my testimony sometime. Haha. My life's going to be quite exciting in the days to come i think.
Well with ignite yesterday night, whenever i come across the verse about having a sea of witnesses surrounding us, i'd never think about the same things again...
- In AD230, there was a girl named something like Cecelia? :) The church was still young at that time and christians were still being killed. Cecelia probably knew what was going to happen to her then when she started spreading the gospel. She did get martyred at the tender age of 16... but by then, she had already shared the gospel with 400 other people.
- In AD304, there was a girl named erm, dunno how to spell this, Lutchya? She got saved at 8 and she felt shortly after her salvation that God wanted her to remain single so that she can serve God wholeheartedly. But sadly, her mum had already promised her to someone else in marriage. Fortunately, she shared the gospel with her mum and her mum finally got saved and agreed to not making her marry. However, the prospective groom's family wasnt too happy and brought them to the authorities. She refused to marry nor renounce Christ... so she got sentenced, not really to death, but to lifetime prostitution. She was so sad she prayed to die. But when the soldiers tried to get here, she was immovable, even by the cart. They then tried to sentence her to death. Guess what, when she was on the stake, the fire couldnt burn... She finally got martyred only when a soldier used his sword to pierce her neck.
- In AD1597, there was a young man in Phillipines who got saved at 15. At the age of 16, he felt that God had led him to Japan to become a missionary. So he went, with his other friends. They shared the gospel and got caught by the police when they were 22 years old. They were cruxified on 22 crosses outside the city... And you know what? They never gave up preaching the gospel... they were still preaching and telling the people who were looking at them about God's love right at the time they were on the stake... until they gave up their last breath. Someone got saved then, and even told the soldiers to cruxify him as well. That probably formed that foundation for christianity in Japan.
- In 1685, in Scotland, a revival was happening amongst the young people. But soldiers were commanded to go around to the villages and pose to people the question "are you christian?" following which if they said they were, they'd be killed. Many of the young people fled to the hills and formed villages filled with young people. One of these people were Magaret Wilson and her sister. One year later they were told that the persecution was dwindling so they wanted to go down to see their businessman father. Unfortunately on the way down, they got caught and were handed over to the authorities. Their businessman father sold everything he had but could only redeem the younger daughter... so Magaret had to die. They pinned her to a stake at the beach at low tide, hoping that she would have the time to actually renounce her faith when high tide slowly came. She never did, although many of her fellow townspeople and her father were begging her to. She eventually drowned... slowly, as the water level began to rise.
- In 1914, there was a ship called "Empress of Ireland. That was 2 years after Titanic, and although people were fearful of ships, they never expected Empress of Ireland to sink cos they thought bad things dont happen twice in a row. Of course they were wrong... the ship eventually collided and it went down, in a mere 40min. Almost everyone on the ship couldnt survive unless they had a lifevest on them. Survivor accounts eventually gave witness to a group of young people from salvation army, who actually threw their life vest to other survivors on board. A 40 year old man recieved such a life vest as well, and at first he thought he was 40 and the girl who threw him the life vest was still young, so he threw the life vest back. The girl got angry, threw the life vest back at him and said "i know i'd die better than you". She eventually died, alongside the whole group of salvation army youths who were there.
Crazy stories huh. I almost wanted to go home after the 2-4 service. Glad i didnt, cos i would have missed such powerful stories. Thing is, they are not just fictional. They were real people in real events (pardon me if i got any names wronggg or something). They were youths some even younger than me. They probably had no maturity much higher than mine... but they did have a faith bigger than mine. Just that, their "suffering" was really to get martyred. Ours now, is to live our life to the max and reach out to the maximum number of souls as possible.
As an ending i'm going to make a really anti-climax statement... i shall whine no more. :)
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