The Weapon of Love — Otto Koning

I just want to point out again where these stories took place here in Irian Jaya, in this jungle swampland here where these cannibals and headhunters live, in that tropical island there above Australia.

Love as a Spiritual Weapon

Now this morning we are on the weapon, the spiritual weapon, love. Can you imagine using love or calling it one of the spiritual weapons of our warfare that are used? In 2 Corinthians 10 .4 the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but spiritual, and we've done some of the others, and this morning we look at this one here.

Look at the scripture there in Matthew. I want to read a few verses in Matthew here, Matthew 5, starting with 38. You have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you that ye resist not evil.

But whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.

Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would pour of thee, turn thou away. Ye have heard that it had been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.

And that last verse is the one we have on the chart here, on the weapon of love. Now I want to share not only that verse with you, which is more of that powerful verse which helps us in reaching people in evangelism, but also the one that more deals with our relationship with each other, and that's of course John 13, 34 and 35, a new commandment I've given to you, that you love one another.

And that verse goes on to say, By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another, and that's a fantastic verse, because for all people around us, the whole town, to know that we are his disciples is the testimony that we're really all after.

And when we can capture that in a town and in a church, we have a weapon at our hands that is unreal. So it works in two ways, loving our enemies, those that despitefully use us, and then to love one to another.

Nottoway Learns to Love His Enemies

We were walking along there in the jungle, Nottoway and myself, Nottoway, that old chief, that former headhunter chief who had not been converted to Christ, he was the one that said in my testimony message to one, Why didn't your father come to tell my father about Jesus?

He would have believed him. Unreal what he said. And he was the same one. He was the man that said in yesterday's message that prayed on the trail for the rain not to fall on the missionary so he wouldn't get wet.

And his faith was much greater than mine was. He was the man that had this ugly nose, just a loose-hanging nose. He apparently had a nose bone. He must have won the record in having the biggest nose bone because he had ripped the bottom part of his nose out and he could lift that nose of his right up like this.

Ugly fellow. I told you the other day how afraid I was of him that first trip when he grabbed me by the arm and took me to his village. I was looking for the big pot where it was going to get cooked. I was scared to death of this guy.

But he turned out to be my first Christian in that village. The other day I told you about how they think rubbing their nose. This fellow had a real problem with this loose-hanging nose. He'd have to hold it with one hand and then rub it with the other.

It's unreal. I've got to share this one. I was in a candidate school one time where I was teaching these things to new missionary candidates and telling them about them rubbing their nose. That time up in the balcony there was a great commotion and I wondered what I'd said wrong.

And later one came up and said, Mr. Koenig, nothing you said was wrong. It's just when you were telling them about them rubbing their nose, one guy in the back row let out a loud sneeze, and somebody else said he blew his mind, and that caused a commotion back there.

But you never know how people are going to react. But this was the Nottoway that now said to me, or I said to him first of all, Nottoway seed is the village of Haibu that we're coming through now. Will you help me pray that these people will be converted, that I can reach these people?

There's a few older men starting to listen to my message, but other than that, nothing. I said, will you pray that they too might accept the gospel? He says, no, Tuan, I can't do that. He says, Tuan, let them all go to the fire.

What he was really saying, let them go to hell. Let them, they're not worth saying, Tuan, I'll pray for all the other villages but not for Haibu. I said, Nottoway, you've got to pray for them too. You've got to love your enemies.

He says, Tuan, they kill. He says, Tuan, before you came, you should have seen the fighting here. They killed my people, they killed my forefathers. And he says, Tuan, we ate some of them, they ate some of our people.

And he says, Tuan, never. I'll pray for Amahatsu and Yahatsu and Sohebe and those villages down towards the south, but not Haibu. I said, Nottoway, you'll never be a good Christian. You'll never really amount to anything for God until you also learn to love your enemies.

And he says, Tuan, is that part of it? I said, yeah, that's part of the gospel. That's what Jesus said in his book. I said, and I quoted the verse, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.

I said, that's what Jesus said. He says, Tuan, then your gospel is too hard for us. I can't do that. And he was saddened. And I said, Nottoway, that's Christianity. And he left me then. And when we came to the village of Haibu, he went back home, and he let me walk the rest of the way home to my village alone.

My heart was heavy. That was one of my choice people, that man of prayer. And I wondered what to do. But a few weeks later, he stood at my house, he had come. And he said, Tuan, I did what you told me to do.

And I had forgotten. I said, what? He says, I prayed for Haibu village that they also would become Christians. And I couldn't believe the words I heard. Can you believe it here, an hardened headhunter who had the scars on him from the fighting and the warfare, and now converted, he had prayed for his enemies.

Hey, that's real Christianity. You know, what do you think God does now? If you were God, what would you do if you saw that fellow praying for his bitter enemies? Isn't that about time for a miracle? Isn't that about time for God to do something big and say, man, that's more than I can take?

Watch, I'm going to answer that one. And that's exactly what he did. Oh, there was room for a miracle. I was going to this village in Haibu and sat with these old men in the house. They listened to me.

But all those younger men that were now appointed to chiefs, how bitter they were, how they hated me, how they cursed me, how they threatened me time after time in those homes. And see, the government appointed the younger men that knew a bit of Indonesian to be the new chiefs.

And the older chiefs were put down while they were kind of family chiefs and still heads of the village. But these young men that knew their Indonesian became the chiefs. Hardened guys. The government in our area was stirred up by another religious group, and they controlled the government.

The religious group even brought in supplies for the government. So they controlled these policemen. They would always beat our Protestant people as they came through. And all these guys were turned against us in a way, possessed fellows.

And I sat one day in the home trying to teach and preach, and these guys, two of them came in. One was Soho, he was the chief of the Haibu village. The other was Katoho, he was the assistant chief. And they come in and yell at me, you know, tell me to get out, threaten me.

The Katoho, he'd hold that large machete right to my neck, you know, and he says, Tuana, if you don't get out of here, do you want to get cut? You know, I didn't know whether you were serious or not. I mean, you don't want to take chances, and yet you don't want to cower out.

They said, that religious teacher with them, they said, we're going to smash your boat. You'll never be able to come back here again. And this kind of thing. I was there with my young son one time. He was about ten years old, young Otto.

And he had gone with me to Ashima. We had preached there, and we were coming back through and had a service at Haibu with these people, a few people that wanted us. And that was a day when they were unterribly hostile in front of my little son.

And my little son sat there in tears and said, Daddy, let's go home, don't ever go back there again. They're going to kill you. That impressed on that young mind of that boy, I maybe shouldn't have taken him there.

I never expected it would be that bad. He still remembers that. And that's the boy that is now nineteen, finished his first year of Bible college and going back to be a missionary. He can't get away from it, the need.

And I'm just thrilled. But you know, that day he got a drum, that chief, and banged the drum and stood dancing in that house and the whole floor would shake. And I was trying to speak to those people, just making it impossible.

They'd curse, they'd yell, oh, a very, very ugly talk. And finally I said to him, Soho, quit beating that drum. I said, you know something, you remember what happened to Membu in the village of Aboin?

I told you about that in the other message yesterday. Remember what happened to Membu? God just cut him off like that. I said, God can't take much more of this. I said, you're going to die one of these days, God's going to cut you off.

And he kept on drumming. He says, Tuana, I'm not afraid of the big fire, I'm not afraid of the big fire, I'm not afraid of God. And I said, oh, brother, you know, when you talk like that, there isn't much hope.

And it wasn't long after this, God did exactly that. Ah, there was a runner came over the trail, I was fixing a power mower, which I'd gotten. And it was late at night, about quarter after five, five-thirty, it's getting almost, going on to dark.

And a runner came, a fellow named Bernard, he came, he'd been one of our boys that I sent to Bible school. He says, Tuana, guess what, they've had a big fight over at Haibu, the two clans have fought.

Your two enemies, Ketoho and Soho, are dying, they've been shot so bad, they're hurt so bad, they're going to die, isn't that great? And I felt, yeah, hey, I can't say that's great, those guys are going straight to hell, they're lost.

No, I remember. But I almost felt like praising the Lord, man, he's removing my enemies out of the way, isn't that neat? But should we praise the Lord over the death of people like that? I got convicted about that.

I thought, well, God's removing them, like he did with Permanis and Hashim, and remember what, at Aboi, he's taking these two guys out of the road, so I'll have free course in preaching the gospel. But you know, I didn't want to help them, but the Holy Spirit seemed to impress us on that.

He said, love your enemies, go help them, give them penicillin, bind up their sores, see if you can save them. I thought, man, it's nighttime, you know, I can't go on that river at night, all those stumps in that river, and I'd never taken a boat out at night.

And I thought, you know, I'll go first thing in the morning, Lord. I thought by the morning they'll be dead anyway, you know, it'd be neat to have them out of the way. I thought, God's doing it again, he knows what he's doing, he's taking care of me, removing these guys.

But the more I thought of going in the morning, the more convicted I got, the Lord says, hey, love your enemies, get out there and do something for them. And then I thought, yeah, God, you can even let them die even though I give them penicillin and medicine.

I mean, if God wants to let them die, he can let them die. So I thought, okay, and I told my wife to get the penicillin ready and the medicine, and I got new flashlight batteries and a couple of my flashlights, and I said, Bernard, let's go, let's help them.

He says, you are going to help those guys? Go on, let them die. I said, well, that's what I feel like doing, but I don't think God would be happy that way. So I said, all right, come on, let's go. So we walked out through the trail.

By the time we got to the river, the village of Menda, it was dark. There we picked up a literacy teacher, and I said, hey, can you come? He says, yes, I want to come. And those two guys sat in front of my boat, and we got the motor on, and we got things, and we went down this river at night, and they held the flashlights, and we got to that village, all right.

And I stood in front of the home of that chief, both of them. I said, where are they? They were both in this home of the main chief. Further down the village on the other end was another fellow, E .K., badly wounded.

And so I went to these guys first, and there stood that religious guru. These gurus are half religion and half demon-controlled. They're a combination of awkward guys. I said to this fellow, I said, do they want my help in here?

I said, go in there and see if they want my help. I've come to bring medicine. I've come to help them. If they want it, I'm ready. If they don't, I'll go home. He went in, and he says to them, go on in.

They're calling for you. And there in the darkness of this hut, they stoked the fire and got a bit more light in there. And I saw Soho lay in there by the fire. And I talked to him. His eyes were turned back, only widened their eyes.

I said, Soho, can you hear me? He says, yeah, Atuan. I said, Soho, do you want my help? And there he was, shot through the neck, shot through the arm, right through the outset of his arm and into his chest.

I mean, he had shots. He had been riddled with all kinds of shot wounds in his legs, arms, and so on. I said, Soho, do you want my help? He says, yeah, Atuan, help me, help me. He's getting scared, afraid of these demons.

I felt like saying to him, I thought you weren't afraid of the fire, Soho, but I didn't say it. I don't think that was necessary. And I started to help him, and I put bandage around his neck. I didn't know how to bind up these different things, but I gave him penicillin, a good amount of it, and gave him aspirin to kill the pain a bit, and whatever I could do, bandage them up and put salve on, drawing out salve on his wounds and so on.

I said, Soho, do you want me to pray to God for you? He said, yeah, Atuan. All of a sudden, hey, when you're at the end of your rope, you need God, don't you? Then I went over to Ketoho, and there he laid on his stomach with his back cut open with this machete wound, a long, ugly wound where somebody just slashed him with a machete.

I said, Oh, goodness. Now, I had this tape with me, and we don't sew them up anymore. I quit doing that. We use butterfly bandages. I don't know if any of you nurses know what I'm talking about there.

You tie that thing together and tape his back together, and I put the salve on and gave him penicillin for infections, and oh, what bad shame. I talked to him a while, and then down the village, I went to Ike.

Ike was the man that liked us. He had worked on our airstrip. He was not hostile towards us. That clan was a little bit more friendly, and here was Ike, the guy that I really thought a lot more of than these other two rascals, and they had stabbed him.

They had beat him or something, and they told me he was sitting on his knees, and they took a spear, a big spear. They wanted to just drive it right through his skull, and they hit him right in the shoulder, and they had cut this main blood artery, whatever, that had gone into his head here, and he was bleeding profusely, and it had stopped.

Now, they had pushed it together, and I tied him so that he couldn't move it. I tied him with bandages and gave him penicillin, and I said, Ike, you can't move. That thing's got to heal. It's going to take days.

You're going to have to sit still, lay still, and not walk or anything to get that thing to stop bleeding now, but that thing could open right up again. I prayed with him and went home. Next morning we went back again and gave him more penicillin and did what we could, and then I trained that teacher so he could do it.

You know what happened? Those guys pulled through. I thought, Lord, you missed it. You should have let them die. I mean, the work of Haibu was at stake, the whole village, all those souls of those people, and those rascals both lived.

And then the government called them and they said, Come to KP, to the government post, in two days' walk they have to go. These guys are going to be imprisoned for fighting, especially the chiefs when they fight.

And so they called this Ike, and I sat with him, and I said, Ike, you can't go. I said, I can write a letter for you and tell the government this man cannot come, because that exertion of two days' walk through that swamp will break that thing open, he'll die for sure.

I said, I will write a letter. You can't go, you stay here, and if they're down on you for not coming, I will explain to them. But he went anyway. And on that trail he broke that thing back open and died on the trail, just bled to death.

And I lost my man. And I said, Lord, what are you doing? You know, the guy that was friendly towards me, and here the other rascals are still alive. But because he died, they had four years in jail. In jail they had to lay hard labor.

They taught them to cut wood and so on, with their long pit saws. I don't know if you people know, you possibly have seen the long pit saws, one guy stands under the log in a hole, the log's here, another guy stands on top, the long pit saws.

And they do that, and they learned that by hand there. And two years later I met those guys. They had a parole. They could be free for a week to see their families and their people, and then they had to come back to prison.

And I came through that village, and these two guys, they both had shirts on now and army shorts, and they had been in prison, and they had learned to cut wood and so on. And I said, So, Keto, you're back again, amazing to see you.

And they stood there and looked at me, and they stood there and looked at me more. They said, Tuan, what made you do it? Why did you save our lives? And I said, Honestly, they have no word for thank you in their language, but they had the Indonesian word, and they used it.

And they said, Tuan, we can't understand. I said, Well, look, don't thank me. You thank Jesus, my God, because I didn't want to come that night and save your lives. I wanted you to die. I didn't hate you, but the way you've been treating me around here and the gospel, I figured that God was going to let you die like Membu and Abo and Permanis and Hashima.

All that brought thoughts to them. And he says, Tuan, what made you come? I said, God compelled me. I couldn't have slept that night. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God in my heart delved in me, says, Go, love your enemies because the book says, my Bible says, love your enemies, bless them that hate you, do good to them that curse you, and pray for them that despitefully use you.

And I said, You thank Jesus because I had no desire to help you at all. I must confess. He said, We can understand that. That's the way we would be. And I said, Hey, I want to take your shirt off, Kato.

I want to see how that thing healed. He took his shirt off, and there was that thing, and it was all pulled together the way I'd pull it together, a big scar right across his back. I said, Amazing. I can't believe it.

And Soho showed me, Brother Scaladon showed me the hole in his neck, and the scars had healed. And I said, It's amazing that you're alive. He says, Tuan, when we get out of jail, our children will all attend your school.

We will see to it that this whole village will attend your school and your Christian teachers. We're through with the other religion. We're through with that. And then we will start listening to you, Church.

I thought, Unreal! I thought, You know, God removed Membu and one Abwe, and now he's, he didn't remove these guys, but we're still going to get the village. God can do it any way he pleases, can't he?

Ah, it was unreal. I think God's teaching me lessons in all these different ways of doing things. So I would learn, because he can reach any village he wants, any way he wants. And that's what happened.

Two years later, they came back out. They were such strong-leadered guys that they became heads of the village again, even though they weren't the chief now, yet they had the influence of the place. And they said, kick that teacher out, and they finally, you know, did, and brought our teacher in, started our school, and now we were free to preach there and to teach there in the open in that school.

And I thought, it's unreal. God turned my enemies into my servants. You know, it was then that we moved our mission station. Don Richardson was coming over and his wife and family. They were going to do the translating of the language.

We needed more room. We built a new airstrip. We built a house for Don Richardson, then a house for myself. We moved it, and then a large clinic and office building. All this building had to be done, and there had to be storage sheds and national worker houses.

And I had all this. I needed so much wood. Boy, do you think I got the wood? These two guys taught my people how to pit saw. They said, Tuan, you buy us, get us some of those pit saws. I went to the Chinese merchants, got the pit saws.

They taught my people to cut wood. They were the only village in the jungle that knew how to cut wood well, because I got them the saws. They taught my people, and all this building to be done. These guys had had experience, and they became my carpenters.

I had four young men that I trained to be carpenters. They could drive a nail. They could use the square and cut a board straight. Whenever I had something to do, and all this didn't want to work, I'd say, Soho, I need some wood.

I need some posts. I need this kind of wood. I need that kind of wood. And they would get it for me. They became my slaves. If nobody else wanted to work, they couldn't say no. They owed their life to me.

God can turn your bitterest enemies into your servants, literally. That's what happens. That's how powerful the weapon of love is. It's unreal. The Bible says love never fails, doesn't it? I tell you.

Love That Overcomes Violence and Persecution

And then, you know what else happened? We were going to make Richardson's house out of the fancy mahogany wood which was cut by our sawmill at another mission station. I had the other wood for the clinic for the other buildings.

And the sawmill broke down and we had to wait for a year or so to get a new diesel engine for the sawmill. So the whole building program, the whole mission, had come to a halt. Now they had some real professional carpenters, native fellas from the coast that the mission had hired for all the building of the hospital and all the big jobs, you know.

But these guys had nothing to do. And they didn't know what to do with them. So I said, Hey, do you suppose these fellas of yours can come to my station and help me? Yeah, it would be great if we could use them somewhere.

We had wood because we had men to cut wood locally. And we could build and we had the professional carpenter to help us. And I didn't even have to do it after a while. And we were building and everything was going because of the two men.

I'm glad they didn't die. And I said, God, you made a mistake. You took the wrong one. You should have knocked him out of here so we could preach the village. We got the village anyway, but we got workers.

Oh, I tell you, you know, you kick yourself. You say, man, if God had listened to my prayer in that one, I would have lost out so big. Love works in somebody. So we had this at a text text on the wall.

Love works in ways that are wondrous and strange, and there's nothing in life that love cannot change. What a statement. Love is a powerful weapon. Another quote that I once heard. Love in your heart was not put there to stay.

Love is not love till you give it away. That's something. Love is not something that remains with you. It only works when you give it away. I'm reminded of that soldier in the Scottish Army. I heard this once, read it once, how he was a man of prayer, and he knelt down beside his bunk in those barracks, and how they would laugh and jeer at him, and how this big burly soldier in his cabin couldn't stand it any longer.

He says, if you don't quit your praying around here, I'm going to beat the tar out of you. And he would every night, as the others were getting ready for bed, he would be there kneeling by his bed and praying.

And one time, this fellow, just so angry, took his big muddy army boot and just threw it at him, hit him on the face on one side with it. And the guy didn't stop praying. He just went on praying. So he took his other boot and beat him on the head with the other muddy boot.

And he says, that will teach you to pray. But the guy didn't pray, he just went on praying, though he was hurting, he was praying. And the lights went out and they all went to bed. And the next morning, that rough burly soldier that had hit the man with his boots got out of his bed.

And what was standing beside his bed but his own army boots, cleaned and polished, beautifully shined up. You know what happened? It broke the guy down. That big fellow went into tears and said, hey, what makes you do a thing like that?

I want what you got. And that soldier let that big fellow to Christ, because he loved him after he got beat by the same boots. And that night he was up cleaning them and polishing them for him, sitting there.

Love is a powerful thing. You know, it was worth him getting hurt a little bit there, to have that man, the biggest fellow in the cabin, on his side. And now the two of them praying. And the same thing happened down in Virginia coal mine, where a miner was always living for God, serving God, praying before he ate his lunch, down there in the mines, singing the gospel songs, a beautiful Christian.

And how another miner just couldn't stand it, and after a while he got so sick and tired of it, he said, one of these days I'm just going to hit you right in the mouth, I'm just going to beat you up. He says, well, if it makes you feel good, why don't you just get it over with and do it right now?

And the guy couldn't take that, and he beat him in the mouth, and he beat him again, and hit him until the guy fell to the ground. And he stood over him and laughed, but the guy, wiping the blood off his face, the best he could talk with his sore mouth and face, said, but I still love you and I'm still going to pray for you.

And the guy walked away, couldn't get away from that, all night it haunted him, and the next morning, the next day he was back, and he says, I can't sleep. What is it? And he led him to Christ down there in that mine.

Hey, sometimes we get hurt, but sometimes it makes our lives easier. Love works in a powerful way. Love is contagious. Love is irresistible. Love is reciprocal. That means it demands a response. In Romans 5, 8, it says, God commended his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, he died for us.

God loved us when we were ugly. And now us understanding that demands a response from us. What do we do now in return? A preacher I once heard, Paul Valentine, from Akron, Ohio, said this, and it's such a unique statement.

If husbands loved their wives the way they should, the wives wouldn't go out and buy all the things they don't need. They would be content by pleasing him. Now this is a very true statement. A lot of men work their heads out trying to make enough money to get a go, only to see their wives going back and forth to the store for more curtains or more rugs or more dresses.

And they wonder, the wives have to be satisfied, they have to have satisfaction. And if the men don't love their wives the way they should, then the wives have to find satisfaction somewhere else. And they're thinking about things and not pleasing their husbands.

So men, we can save ourselves maybe quite a bit of money if we did what God told us. You know, you can never do what God tells you to do and lose. You found that out. You can't be obedient and come out on the short end anywhere.

And then that statement in the Bible, perfect love casts out fear. We can actually overcome fear problems, even fear of spiders, by perfect love casts out fear. There was a book I once read, probably the most stirring story I've ever read.

It was, maybe some of you have read about the war stories on the River Quay. You know the River Quay? Have any of you heard it? I read on the books there, there's a book, Bridges on the River Quay, but the miracles on the River Quay, that river there in Thailand, I believe it is, up there somewhere, where the Japanese were making bridges across this river and a highway to take over India and more of the Far East there.

And how they had these captured English soldiers in that place there, prisoners of war, who were working there to install those bridges and those paths along that river, a very difficult country. And these people were on very poor rations, starving to death.

They were very cruel to them, many of them starved, they were very sickly, they didn't have proper medicine, didn't have proper nourishment for that heavy physical labor. The story goes how this one English soldier was a Christian, and how he talked to his men in the cabins at night, men, why don't you turn to Christ, there's nothing else.

As long as you're bitter and curse these Japanese and hate them, it'll destroy you even faster. And he says, look, we're dying. And because they were having funerals every day, people started to think, where are you going when we bury you one of these days, why don't you receive God, it's the only way you can have joy, you can have happiness, even in these miserable circumstances.

This guy learned the secret of rejoicing in the midst of tribulation, that's why he was growing. Remember the message on Tuesday morning, the weapon of rejoicing? The more tribulation, the more he rejoiced, the stronger he got, the more his faith grew, and he became a giant and prayed for them, and it's contagious, we just said, and he loved this man, and he would, this sick man among them, he would take his rations, though meager they were, give them to the guy that was sicker, that needed it more, giving his lunch, his food away about every other day, and God sustaining him, he just, his love is contagious, and those men by just one after the other turned to the Lord, started praying with him, started rejoicing with him.

Can you imagine how the whole platoon getting up early in the morning, Japanese with their whips and guns, and there they go off singing together, rejoicing in the Lord, and that would make the Japanese all the more angry, and they'd make them work harder and all this, and they'd go on, they'd start to minister one to another, to share with each other.

They were always giving their food away to the other guys, everybody did it, and they were doing, helping each other, and just became a beautiful example of how Christianity really should be working, but it works best under persecution in a situation like that.

And finally, the day came up when the guards suspected that somebody had stolen one of their shovels, or had run off with them, and they had them all lined up in the main place there, and they said, now one of you guys has been running off with shovels, or you've stolen one, because the count wasn't right last night, and whoever did it, whoever is guilty, step out here, and we're going to shoot him as an example.

Well, they said, and nobody stepped out, and they're all realizing that the whole rest of them are going to die. Now this Christian was there among them, and he thought, some of these men aren't saved yet, if they die, they'll be lost forever, and he stepped out of line, and he stepped forward, and he says, no, I didn't steal the shovel, but blame me, I take the guilt, shoot me, and they shot him, right there, this Christian man.

And the others stood in awe and amazement, but you know what the others do now? He gives his life for them, he died in their place, and that brought about the conversion of the rest of them, and later those guards found the shovel that was lost.