The Bible Among Other Books III: Vietnam
(The Bible Among Other Books Part I)
(The Bible Among Other Books Part II)
Instead of giving some long-winded essay or speech, I’m going to give 2 different illustrations and a conclusion.
Howard Rutledge
During a combat mission in November of 1965, Commander Howard Rutledge was shot down over Thanh Hao Province, North Vietnam. After his aircraft had been severely damaged, he parachuted out and landed in a nearby village. Even though he killed one of his captors, he was soon overpowered. He was stripped, beaten, and put into prison. Over the next 7 1/2 years, he was moved from one POW camp to another (even “staying” at the infamous Hanoi Hilton).
During his captivity, he went through unimaginable suffering. His main meal: rotting soup and animal fat. His company: “rats the size of cats, spiders the size of a human hand, and insects that feasted on his open sores”. His comfort: Either chained up in “agonizing positions” or left to sit in his own waste.
The Bible would now come into play. He writes:
My hunger for spiritual food soon outdid my hunger for a steak…It took prison to show me how empty life is without God, and so I had to go back in my memory to those Sunday-school days in Tulsa, Oklahoma. If I couldn’t have a Bible and hymnbook, I would try to rebuild them in my mind…Most of my fellow prisoners were struggling like me to rediscover faith, to reconstruct workable value systems. The enemy knew that the best way to break a man’s resistance was to crush his spirit in a lonely cell. In other words, some of our POWs after solitary confinement lay down in a fetal position and died. All this talk of Scripture and hymns may seem boring to some, but it was the way we conquered our enemy and overcame the power of death around us.”(1)
(Rutledge was finally released in 1973 but died 11 years later.)
More than Just Christians
(Thanks go out to Air Force Major Scott Arcuri and his research report)
Navy Chaplain Alex Aronis served as a chaplain during an operation that helped free many prisoners in Northern Vietnam. It was this unique position that allowed him to get first-hand testimonies of what happened in the brutal POW camps of Vietnam….
What’s interesting is that, “most of the prisoners told him they owed their survival and their mental and emotional health to a deep, abiding and growing relationship with God.” (2)
One prisoner, on the day of being shot down, converted when he realized that only God could help him. Still another prisoner believed that he would “one day…be released and would see his parents again, and once that was settled he never worried again.”
Upon being interviewed, another former prisoner said:
“We passed around to each other every Bible verse any of us could remember. We wrote them down when we could. We wrote them on the floors of our cells with rocks…on that sandpaper-like stuff that passed for toilet paper. Our ink in those early days was made from brick dust or soup, in later days from coffee or whitewash. Sometimes we used our lead toothpaste tubes, which made a pretty good black mark.”
A (now retired) Colonel remembered the importance of the Bible.
“[He] recalled how the prisoners, many of whom were in solitary confinement, would recite the Lord’s Prayer when one would pound on the wall at the appointed time on Sunday morning, cueing all to say the Prayer softly or silently, but always in unison. Also, whether it was grass soup or rat, He always gave thanks to the Lord by saying grace before eating any meal.”
Trust and faith in God also had a significant affect on non-Christians. “I’m not an overly religious person. In fact, I don’t practice going to church regularly…but I found that…it was very important, very strengthening.”
One POW later confessed:
“You know chaplain, I wouldn’t consider myself an unusually religious man…but…without God, I would not have been able to survive…God didn’t merely help me. I simply could not have made it without God.”
Conclusion
It’s interesting how the POWs in these stories all reached for the Bible. After being shot down, Rutledge realized his spiritual emptiness. And how did prisoners cope with the destruction of the will? Were they trying to recite the works of some famous Agnostic or Humanist writer? No-The Bible.
The Bible alone offers us hope and meaning. Unfortunately, it often takes dier situations to wipe away the fiction that IS our lives. Don’t let it take some tragedy for you to realize where you truly stand without God.
If you want to know the power that only God via the Bible can bring, please, don’t wait another minute. Honestly seek God and then ask him for help. He will be with you and guide you to the truth.
——–References
(1) Howard and Phyllis Rutledge and Mel and Lyla White, In the Presence of Mine Enemies (Flemming H. Revell, 1973)
(2) Chaplain Alex B. Aronis, “The Religious Experiences of the POWs,” (Subic Bay Chapel, Naval Station Subic Bay, Republic of the Philippines, 1973)
apologetiks 