Page 205 - Unseen Hands by Nona Freeman

The End Is Not Yet
His horse stumbled and he died on the spot. Crammed in an airless room for a week without a bed, a chair, light, water or food, the ladies suffered from ants that had the right-of-way on the dirt floor and bit them constantly. The saints came with food, and the prisoners felt the assurance of their love, but Erkenesh said that she did not once feel the presence of the Lord in the prison. "I continued to pray and to praise Jesus, though my heart seemed dry and cold and I could not feel Him." Guards moved the ladies to a roofless verandah where they shivered under their wet blankets and were repeated
ly doused by the cold rain.
"If you had a sheep out in the rain, would you not
take it to shelter?" Erkenesh asked one of them. "Are we not more valuable than sheep?"
He snarled his answer. "You Pentesl You are destroy ing our country."
Erkenesh discerned that like Felix with Paul, he wanted money. The guards came to the ladies frequent ly with evil designs, but they could not break through the power of the name of Jesus.
The police, encouraged by church leaders, did every thing possible to discredit and harass the church. To tor ment them, they brought a mutilated body to the ladies, saying, "Look at this poor man! The Apostolics killed him!"
One guard went to a pastor and said, "We are going to kill all of the religious people except your folks. Give us their names and addresses so they will be spared." They took the addresses and those they got from Erken esh's notebook and planned a diabolical scheme to wipe out the church.
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