Title: 13
Author: Joe G
Last saved by: Auth User
Company: GDC

© 2005 Joe Griffin		05-01-09-B.CC02-389 /

Zionophobia: Purveyors of the Lie: Biblical Warnings about & Weapons against; Korean POWs’ “Mental-Survival Stamina”: Faith, Prayer, & Convictions 

Romans 12:2 -	Do not be conformed to this world [ see Colossians 2:8 ], but be transformed [ inhibit wheel-tracks of wickedness and facilitate wheel-tracks of righteousness ] by the renewing of your mind [ ¢naka…nwsij, anakainōsis: renovation of the soul through spiritual growth ], that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
John 8:44 -		“You Pharisees are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.  He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him.  Whenever he speaks the lie, he speaks from his own nature; for he is a liar, and the father of the lie.”
John 8:31 -		Jesus therefore was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you abide in My word [ Bible doctrine ], then you are truly disciples of Mine;
v. 32 -	and you shall know the truth [ ¢l»qeia, alētheia: the absolute principles of divine viewpoint ], and the truth shall make you free [ ™leuqerÒw, eleutheroō: freedom from the bondage of the lie ].”
Men who are physically enslaved or held captive remain free if they possess truth in their souls.  The Korean POWs were made up of a majority of men who had such a spiritual inventory.  Edward Hunter next discusses what he calls “mental-survival stamina” and topping the list are “faith and convictions”:
Hunter,  Brainwashing, 249-53:
I was given a multitude of answers to my question of what constituted mental-survival stamina by persons of completely different natures and professions.  Their replies varied in detail but were alike on essential points.  This similarity was the most significant point about them.
The elements that gave a man moral strength were just as definable as those which gave him physical strength.  (p. 249)
Faith and Convictions.  The people I interviewed were mostly down-to-earth practical men who could not be swept off their feet by emotionalism … men of the world.  Still, they declared that the most important elements in their survival were faith and prayer.
They credited strong convictions, too, with playing a decisive role in their struggle for stamina.  Those who did not emphasize prayer and faith laid great stress on convictions as an indispensable, strength-bestowing quality.
The convictions that protected a man were contained in his way of life, expressed through a code of conduct in which he could put steadfast faith and to which he could give his fullest loyalty.  Whatever shape convictions took, if they constituted a way of life and were scrupulously followed, they set up roadblocks to mind attack.
Religion frequently was expressed as a way of life rather than as a specific dogma.  Patriotism, simple faith in one’s own country, was one of the basic convictions.  The weakness lay in their lack, not their types.  The secret was in knowing what one believed and why.
Men who relied on form alone, such as the mere repetition of religious passages without thinking of their meaning, only helped defeat themselves by adding to the Red fatigue pressure.  There was no substitute for real awareness when a man was completely on his own.  He had to know what he was doing.
These three words—prayer, faith, and convictions—were closely linked in most minds and were often used interchangeably.  (p. 250)
I asked Robert A. Vogeler one day what qualities had helped him most.  What pulled him through, Vogeler said, was firstly religion and secondly faith.  “What’s the difference?” I asked, for in this realm of attitudes the dictionary is only of limited help.  Each person chooses his preferred connotation and gives it his own special emphasis.  “I mean faith in what I had been brought up to believe in,” he said tersely.  “In the dignity of the individual, the rights of man, and the American way of life generally.”  (pp. 250-51)
“My father was a Protestant, my mother was a Catholic, and I became an Episcopalian as a compromise, I suppose,” he mused.  “I have never been much of a churchgoer.  But while I was suffering in that communist prison, it was religion that was the main source of my strength.”
What do you mean by religion?” I asked.  “The faith that held me up was the philosophy of the Crucifixion, of rebirth.”
He tried, during his long days and nights of incarceration, to recall exactly what the New Testament said about this.  He gave himself the task of bringing back to his mind the verses he had learned as a boy in Sunday school.  He made a practice in prison of saying grace whenever he ate, no matter what sorry pretense of a meal was put before him.  (p. 251)
The element of conviction, which was such a tremendous factor in preserving stamina, requires separate consideration.  Without convictions, a man was soft clay in the hands of the Reds.  I heard of no case where anyone without convictions was able to resist brainwashing in an effective manner once the communists began to apply the heat.  Extra proof came from an entirely different direction, from those who had capitulated miserably.  They had invariably been lacking in strong convictions.  Whether they were well educated, well proportioned, wealthy, or of high position, the result was the same as with anyone else who lack convictions.
Claude Batchelor was a tragic example of this lack.  Indeed, only one phrase was needed to tell the whole dismal story: “A lack of settled convictions and with no depth of feeling given to him by home, church, or school.”  Not once in the many hours I spent with him did Batchelor allude to positive convictions.  The words “I believer …” seemed no part of him.  (p. 253)
50.	 Several principles emerge from these accounts of the Korean POWs:
1)	Under the extreme pressure of captivity and mental torture the things that provided the moral strength for mental-survival stamina was faith and prayer plus strong convictions regarding both.
2)	These elements were regarded as strength-bestowing, a concept found in:
Isaiah 40:29 -	God gives strength to the weary, and to him who lacks might He increases power.
v. 31 -	Those who wait on the Lord [ have patience through faith and prayer ] will gain new strength; they will mount up with wings like eagles, they will run and not get tired, they will march and not grow weary.

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