Lesson six unfolded in it’s own way.  The class went a little differently than what was planned due to computer technicalities.  We weren’t able to share all the videos we intended to, but we still had a great discussion.

We tried to open with videos, but the computer would not connect to the internet.  My mom tried to get it to connect, a couple of the students in the class tried, and then I tried while my mom read from the foreword of Tortured for Christ, by Richard Wurmbrand.  We selected it because we were going to watch videos of Richard Wurmbrand and discuss his life.

You can get a free copy of Tortured for Christ by Richard Wurmbrand from the Voice of the Martyr’s.

https://secure.persecution.com/referafriend/default.aspx?source=WEBTFC

We finally got the computer connected to the internet, but it would not play the videos.  When we got the computer to play the videos, the volume did not work, then the computer timed out.  It was not our computer so we did not have the password.  The assistant in the class went to get one of the directors of the co-op, because it was her computer.

She tried to fix the volume but wasn’t able to, she asked if we wanted her to go get a speaker to plug into the computer, but the class decided it would take too much time.

We had already lost half the class time.

While we were trying to figure out the computer problems, the assistant in the class suggested that it was spiritual warfare and that we should pray.  My mom agreed with her and asked her to pray.  After we finished praying, the director of the co-op came back in the room and said she had just told someone she felt bad because she is always having to come fix the computer.  The person she was talking with asked her what class it was.  She told her it was the class about persecution, the woman replied by saying it was probably spiritual warfare.  The director came back to our room to tell us that we can make a difference and the enemy doesn’t want us to think we can.

After we prayed, the computer worked.

With the remaining class time we read from Romans 5:1-5:

“Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.  Because of our faith, Christ has brought us in to this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory.  We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance.  And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation.  And this hope will not lead to disappointment.”

My mom read from Mark Hall’s book, Lifestories Finding God’s “Voice of Truth” Through Everyday Life.  https://www.castingcrowns.com/store/lifestories-book-1225

Mark Hall is the lead singer of the group Casting Crowns and a youth pastor.

In his book, Mark Hall writes about a Romanian who escaped the Romanian Revolution. He met him when he was attending college at Florida Baptist Theological College.

Here is the excerpt:

“I’ll never forget one of my first encounters with Lucian Brisc, the guy we would come to know fondly as Lucci (LOO-chee). It was the early 1990s at Florida Baptist Theological College, and Lucci was beginning a new life as a student in America after surviving the Romanian Revolution of 1989. He had helped spark the resistance that eventually overthrew the oppressive and violent dictator Nicolae Ceausescu (Chow-CHES-cu), whose brutal 24-year reign collapsed in 11 bloody days.

On Christmas day 1989, the bodies of Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, were shown on Romanian television following their execution by a firing squad. That Ceausescu was executed on Christmas Day was ironic, considering the revolution began when Lucci was among a small crowed that camped outside the home of a Christian pastor to defend him from arrest.

At 16 years old, Lucci had helped change the world. He literally had dodged bullets to somehow live while so many of his friends and countrymen bled to death around him. He had stood for Christ while communism fell.

Imagine how he must have felt to arrive in Florida and hear these “Bless God” boys embroiled in the King James debate.

I call them the “Bless God” boys because many of them could be so dogmatic in their philosophies and language – “Bless God, I’ll tell you what…” – that they actually took God’s name in vain and left no room for Him to work. Lucci looked at them with a loving yet incredulous eye and informed them, in effect: Thy God is bigger than Thy box.

It was one of the first days of school. We were in Bible class when a comment from one side of the room drew a short reply from the other side, which drew an even more curt answer from the middle. And the fire erupted.

Lucci raised his hand amid the clamor. In the sweetest spirit and the best broken English, he could manage, he provided a taste of his background. “I’ve seen God do amazing things in my country. I’ve seen the Church come together and overthrow Communism. There is great revival going on all over the place over there,” Lucci said, “And you’re telling me that, because my people in Romania cannot read English, they will never read the true Word of God because they can’t read the King James Bible?”

Silence.

Blessed silence.

In a rare instance for some of them, those preacher boys sat quietly with absolutely no response. Let’s just say our class conversations were never quite the same after that statement. Lucci was right. Under some of the arguments being proffered, unless a person speaks English and is able to read and absorb King James English, he cannot read the true Word of God. If it’s not the 1611 King James English translation, then he’s reading garbage. So if he can’t read English, then somehow he’s simply toast. Never mind that Jesus didn’t say “thee,” “thou,” and “thy.” He spoke Aramaic, which was translated mostly into Greek, which then was translated into English and other languages.

Don’t those other languages have the inerrant Word of God as well? Isn’t God big enough to protect His Word, whatever the language?

I would soon learn why Lucci was so equipped to boldly handle classroom confrontations. In his first one he had starred into the smirking faces of gum-toting Communist police.”

That led to a discussion about the different translations of the Bible and why we thought there was division between Christians about this issue.

We watched  videos of balloons carrying Bibles launched into North Korea and then Casting Crowns share about going to North Korea.

Here are the videos:

North Korea: Balloons Spread the Message of Salvation (Voice of the Martyr’s)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4V0xTPq80I

The Flying Gospel (Voice of the Martyr’s)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAICsppmf_g

Here is the story of how Casting Crowns ended up performing in North Korea.

K-LOVE Casting Crowns – North Korea

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WzxKL8MM3U

We finished with watching Casting Crowns’ song  White Dove. This song is a hidden track on their album The Altar and the Door. This video is from their tour to North Korea in April 2007.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERT6Cm7fu-A