1 John 3:16 - By this we know what love is: Jesus laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.
Throughout the ages, Christianity has had a target on its back. Make no mistake, Hitler and Stalin sought the annihilation of the Christian Church. What evidence is there of these systematic genocides? There was a separate section at the Dachau concentration camp for imprisoned clergy where the guards were employed, based solely upon their exceptionally cruel demeanour. Stalin had camps dotted throughout the vast Soviet empire but look at what he did in the Ukraine alone! They used different means, but the results were the same - death. This reference book is a project I had longed to work on, ever since I first heard of the story of Saint Maximilian Kolbe. Father Max was a man who defied Nazi tyranny by voluntarily taking the place of a Jewish father who had been randomly selected to die as punishment for an infringement of Auschwitz camp rules. For this inexplicable act of love, he was made an example of, in the most barbaric fashion possible. A later example, and this from the Soviet perspective, is the case of Blessed Jerzy Popieluszko. He was a man who was fearlessly active in the struggle for Polish independence from Soviet Russia. His reward was the constant monitoring by the secret police, who eventually beat him to death and dumped his body in a quarry. The myth that the Christian Church somehow supported Hitler is beyond absurd. Research “Hitler’s Table Talk” or read Reichsleiter Martin Bormann’s views to discover what was in store for Christians if Germany had somehow won the war. The Nazis viewed Christianity as a disease and a threat, much the same as the Soviets. Besides the martyrs of the Nazi and Communist periods, I have added twelve martyrs from bygone eras, at the end of each monthly segment, to illustrate how the church has survived since Saint Peter’s own martyrdom. All of the people you are going to read about were real people. They had names and vocations and suffered dreadfully before their deaths. Adolf Hitler had visions of a “Thousand Year Reich” and Josef Stalin entertained similar nonsensical notions, but what both of them failed to understand was what they had tried to impose by force could never last. The Christian Church, unlike National Socialism and Communism, is still here, two thousand years later. The reason? Love of Christ would be my best guess.Genre: Historical
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