When Faith Overcomes Fear
No matter the season or reason, the truth of God will be spread and heard across the globe! Many Christians submerge their voices in fear of cancellation, but we are called by Christ to speak up and stand out, not to cower and tremble with fright!
God has a special purpose and plan for each and every one of our lives. When we allow fear to cripple us, we deny the gifts that God has given us to serve others. God doesn’t want us to horde them like gold and silver coins in a treasure chest; He wants us to share them with the whole world so that they may be saved!
In Joakim Lundqvist’s new book, Shine Your Light, he shares a remarkable story of a young woman who stepped out in faith even when fear was all anyone knew: “Sophie and her brother Hans moved into a small student flat on Franz Joseph Street in Munich, and what happened there was nothing short of history. The two siblings and two of their friends formed the White Rose, a resistance group based on faith in Jesus, to wake the German people up and call for resistance against Hitler. They bought a typewriter and an old mimeograph machine and started writing pamphlets that they copied by the thousands. These pamphlets were then secretly mailed out to thousands of decision-makers and influencers across Germany. Sophie and her friends also secretly placed stacks of the pamphlets in public spaces all over Munich, including restaurants, schools, and restrooms, so that as many as possible could grab a copy and read their message.
The six pamphlets of the White Rose are legendary examples of civil, Christian resistance against an ungodly government. To quote some of the pamphlet essays of Sophie Scholl:
Nothing is more dishonorable for a civilized people than to let itself be “governed” without resistance by an irresponsible clique of rulers devoted to dark instincts.
Every word that comes from Hitler’s mouth is a lie. When he says peace, he means war, and when he blasphemously uses the name of the Almighty, he means the power of evil, the fallen angel, Satan. His mouth is the foul-smelling maw of Hell, and his might is accursed at the bottom.
Since the conquest of Poland, three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial ways. Here we see the most terrifying crime against human dignity, a crime that is unparalleled in the entire history of mankind.
If German people are already so corrupted and spiritually crushed that they do not raise a hand, frivolously trusting in a questionable faith in the lawful order of history; if they surrender man’s highest principle, that which raises him above all other God’s creatures, his free will; if they abandon the determination to take decisive action and turn the wheel of history and thus subject it to their own rational decision; if they are so devoid of all individuality, have already gone so far along the road to turning into a spiritless and cowardly mass—then they clearly deserve their downfall.
Everywhere and at all times of greatest need, men have stood up, prophets and saints who cherished their freedom, who pointed to the One God and urged the people to a reversal of its downward course. Man is surely free, but without the true God, he is defenseless against evil. He is like a rudderless ship, at the mercy of the storm, an infant without its mother, a cloud dissolving into thin air.
I ask you, you as a Christian struggling with the preservation of your greatest treasures, whether you hesitate, whether you incline toward intrigue or procrastination in the hope that someone else will take up arms in your defense? Has God not given you the strength, the courage to fight? We must attack evil where it is strongest, and it is strongest in the power of Hitler.
We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!
The pamphlets of the White Rose spread like wildfire throughout Germany during the summer, fall, and winter of 1942. The Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s secret police, was convinced they had come from a large national underground organization and worked like crazy to try to find and stop it. No one even imagined that these pamphlets, which influenced more and more people and helped them understand that Nazi messages went directly against God and His Word, really came from a handful of Christian university students.
Sophie and the other members of the White Rose knew from the start that it was only a matter of time before they were discovered, arrested, and executed. But they wanted to use the short time they had as well as possible.
On February 18, 1943, Sophie and Hans were walking the university corridors with bags full of their fifth pamphlet of protest against Hitler. With only minutes left before the bell rang, when classes would end and thousands of students would exit the lecture rooms, they placed stacks of pamphlets outside every door so the students could grab a copy as they left.
When the bell sounded, Sophie was standing on the balcony of the university’s main hall, overlooking thousands of students below her. She saw her generation, now faced with the choice of either blindly following a diabolical leader even further into darkness or turning back to God and building a society based on love, peace, and equality. Sophie’s heart was stirred, and she took the remaining pamphlets of the White Rose and threw them out over the students.
Surely, she must have known, when she saw the pamphlets raining down over the students, that she would be discovered and caught. But I’m sure at that moment her own life and safety were the last things on her mind. If only she could help the young generation of Germany to wake up!
Sophie and Hans were immediately arrested, and the Nazis finally discovered that the White Rose, which had stirred fear throughout all of Nazi Germany, in fact only consisted of a few Christian students. Hitler wanted to get rid of this embarrassment as quickly as possible, and the day after the arrest, at a quick mock trial without any defense, the students were sentenced to execution.
As Sophie and her friends were led to the guillotine to be beheaded, she looked up at the clear sky and said, ‘Such a fine, sunny day, and I have to go. But what does my death matter, if through us, thousands of people are awakened and stirred to action?’ And the very last words of twenty-one-year-old Sophie Scholl, before her head was separated from her body, were, ‘God, You are my refuge into eternity.’
But as an unexpected final chapter in the story of Sophie Scholl and the White Rose, it turned out they had written a sixth pamphlet that they never got to print or distribute. This letter was smuggled out of Germany via Scandinavia to England, where it ended up in the hands of the Allied forces.
To honor the courage, determination, and selflessness of a German Christian girl named Sophie Scholl, the Allies made millions of copies of the White Rose’s sixth pamphlet, loaded them into bomber aircraft, flew over Germany, opened the hatches, and let Sophie’s call to stand up for God and resist evil rain down from the heavens. The pamphlets that she herself saw rain down in the university auditorium now rained down for months over her entire country and her people!
Today, marble copies of the White Rose’s pamphlets are embedded in the streets of Munich as a testament to the courage of a young Christian girl who lived her entire short life according to her motto: ‘Stand up for what you believe in, even if you are standing alone.’”
For more information on Joakim Lundqvist’s latest book, Shine Your Light, visit MyCharismaShop.com