“Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations” (Psalm 145, 146, 145:13).

“Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth throughout all generations.” Christian life when it is fully developed comes to this state of praising God always. One feels in his heart that this is an everlasting kingdom. He feels that freedom in his heart. No sin rules over him. He feels so secure in God. He feels he is following eternal principles and they give him the security he needs. Psalm 30:4: “Sing unto the Lord, O ye saints of His, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness.”

Hosea 7:14: “And they have not cried unto me with their heart, when they howled upon their beds: they assemble themselves for corn and wine, and they rebel against me.” Psalm 145:18: “The Lord is nigh unto all them that call upon Him, to all that call upon Him in truth.” We have to cry to God with all our heart. There is forgiveness with God always. As you search yourself, you see you are in need of prayer. It is not others’ sins that matter. If you get right with God, all around you will become right. As you study the Word and dig deep into your nature and allow the divine nature to come into you, you will be free. You belong to an eternal kingdom. The destinies of the kingdom are eternally established by the death and resurrection of Jesus. Joseph was a slave but he was free in his heart. Soon he was the highest man in Egypt.

God will be with you and turn your defeats into victories. Be conscious that you belong to a fallen race. Let His words abide in you. His words will abide in you to the degree [that] you obey them. We are imprisoned in our self. Our self must die at the cross. Then you will be free. Then wherever you go, the powers of darkness will recognise you and say: “Here is a man who has the mark of God on his forehead! He cannot be opposed.” People may lord it over you but you are the real master. A clear conscience before God gives you a strong position of confidence in Him. Do not lose this. This confidence does not create pride. It is meek. The Master’s nature is seen in your humility. You are the greatest when you are the humblest. You are following the principles of that eternal kingdom. You must build your life in such a way that you are never defeated. Do not swerve in your principles of purity. Don’t yield an inch of ground in this area. For a while there may be battles. Fill your heart with heavenly ambition. Proverbs 22:17, 18: “Bow down thine ear, and hear the words of the wise, and apply thine heart unto my knowledge. For it is a pleasant thing if thou keep them within thee; they shall withal be fitted in thy lips.” The Word of God is the counsel of God. It is full of authority. Proverbs 30:5: “Every Word of God is pure: He is a shield unto them that put their trust in Him.” When you are constantly filling yourself with the Word of God, there will be harmony in the emotional life within you. True religion will bring harmony within and perfect balance in your emotional life. Do not give up even if it looks as if defeat is imminent. Claim victory. You will get it. You will feel the victory in you. No doubt our nature is sinful. But we bring it before God. When we discover more of it, we still continue to put it before God. When you obtain God's righteousness, you will feel free. When it spontaneously flows out of your life and even through your very eyes, you will enjoy beautiful freedom. When the Spirit takes hold of your tongue, you will speak absolutely wonderful things.

We are passing through days of much gloom and darkness. The newspapers are full of dark tidings, which move us to pain and sorrow. The recent weather-related calamities, which carried away thousands to their deaths, have left the survivors with scarcely a wish to live. Loved ones were destroyed before their eyes.

Yes, indeed, in many countries days of awful gloom are upon people. Yet in the midst of it all, when you know Jesus as your Saviour, Lord, and friend, an unbounded hope characterises your thoughts and actions.

Thus we come across a strange and startling phrase in scripture: “ye prisoners of hope” (Zechariah 9:12). A prison cell inspires little hope. But this is a different sort of confinement. Here you are shut in with hope. You are surrounded by the promises of God.

There must be a time of discipline and even chastening in every person’s life but all the time it must be remembered that it is only a season of preparation for great things. You are held in check for a season to inherit great blessings.

Great hopes and plans for God’s work do not just fall upon us. Personal ambitions of a selfish nature and longings for fame and money evolve out of our natural mind. So many men spend the greater part of their lives chasing shadows. At last they turn sour and get peevish or disgruntled. By then life and youth would be gone and the disabilities of old age limit their usefulness greatly.

But true repentance for sin and genuine turning to the Saviour opens new horizons, such as one can hardly imagine.

John Bunyan, who has found an enduring niche in English literature as the author of “Pilgrim’s Progress”, was once profoundly shocked when one of the vilest characters in Bedford suddenly looked at him and rebuked him for his foul language. It came as a great surprise to John Bunyan that a character known to be ungodly deemed [herself to be] better than him.

Yes, John Bunyan was very poor, scarcely making a miserable living from his trade as a tinker, patching pots and pans. But when he got converted, although he was an uneducated man, his life was projected into a great usefulness.

His twelve years in Bedford prison for having preached at unauthorised meetings, or “conventicles” as the British Government of that day called them, were turned to good account. The book he wrote in prison has found its place in history as the book which has sold more copies than [other] books, save the Bible. His lucid and expressive language of small native English words is looked upon as a work of art.

Then also his prison warders gave him freedom to go in and out as he pleased so the prison was hardly a prison to him.

His life was so transformed after his conversion that his fame spread to many places.

God says: “Ye prisoners of hope, I will give you double of what you had before.” A sick mind, which is preoccupied with material things, is [such a] mind. You can simply grow sick by brooding over your bankbook. But God helps us to pile up riches which last for … many generations, the riches of faith and inexhaustible riches of love.

Now, God blesses our labours and the produce of our fields when we trust Him and obey Him. It is simply tragic that thousands of farmers have lost their harvest and their seed grain. Oh that they would turn to the Saviour who can make them possess double and give them the glorious hope of sure admittance to heaven by cleansing through His blood. “My hope is in thee,” cries the psalmist. Now we must take stock of our prospects and our position before God. What are our hopes and expectations? There are several who are so beaten up that hopes and expectations have left them. They have fears and worries only. Continual fears of failure, loss, and death dog them.

When our hope is in the Living God, then there is quite a possibility that faith increases in our hearts; our hope will grow as big as our knowledge of God. It is quite staggering to think that our hope can grow as wide and vast as our great God. A positive frame of mind then begins to dominate us. New hopes surge in our souls, such as we never had before. The longing to be a part in some concrete way [of] bringing millions of souls to Jesus grips us.

We look too much on the situation and not on God, who can upturn tables in the twinkling of an eye and change completely circumstances that offer no hope. The assessment of the political commentator and the journalist weigh much more with men than the word of God. The word of God makes us … hope. The journalist paints a stark and striking picture. “There is little hope,” he says. “Take it easy for our worst fears will be upon us shortly.” What bleak predictions proceed from the press? But the man who makes Jesus his Lord can cry from the depths of the darkest valley: “Thou art my hope, O Lord God: thou art my trust from my youth” (Psalm 71:5).

Christ gives us hope even in death. A converted man can tell his children even as the cold hand of death is enfeebling his voice: “Children, be sure to turn to Jesus from your sins and meet me in heaven.” Thus even in death the hope of a converted man soars.

I went out to pray one evening on a hill, which overlooked a large residential suburb of a communist city in Europe. As I prayed, looking over the lights of the city, suddenly it struck me that there were dying patients in the hospitals of that city to whom Christ cannot be presented. As the atheistic authorities do not permit such activity, it moved me much to think that even when these patients are poised on the brink of Eternity, they were denied the great comfort and hope which Christ brings. The faces of the citizens wore a weary, tired, hard look. Hope had gone out of them. Their sullen, unsmiling countenances were a torture to watch. There were “Prisoners without hope”. One man there sadly said to me: “I may be only permitted to visit outside this country when my mother dies in the West. Even then I may be refused permission to attend her funeral. It is many years now since I have seen her.” No hope! What a crushing weight that is!

The Bible speaks of Abraham as one who “against hope believed in hope”. Yes, what a victory he saw when he trusted in God.

… “More holiness give me, more strength to overcome, more patience in suffering, more sorrow for sin, more faith in my Saviour, more sense of His care, more joy in His service, more purpose in prayer.” Is this our hope? I shall be like Jesus. “More and more like Jesus till I see Him face to face.” Then great things can be expected.

Let none of my readers say: “No, it is impossible, I cannot be lifted from my gloom and my resentment. No, I am a prisoner to my passion and pride, to my unbridled tongue and hasty temper.” The Lord Jesus died to release you and make you a prisoner of hope, an inheritor of a twofold blessing.

Let the light that streams from the Cross flood you and banish your gloom. There is no hope like the hope that fills the heart of a repenting sinner when he looks at the Saviour’s bleeding side and outstretched arms. Come now, dear reader, and let your darkness be turned into light, your heaviness into singing.

Jesus has brought us hope, which only increases as the days go by.

“My hope is built on nothing less.”

Witness of a city’s fall

On 4 July 2014, a young Iraqi, Medo, wedged himself into the crowd that had gathered inside the Great Mosque of Mosul to listen to the leader of ISIS, a radical Islamic terrorist group desiring power in the Middle East.

Some three weeks before, the so-called Islamic State had occupied Mosul. Now the city was nearly unrecognisable. Students had to register for service in the ISIS military. Girls were forced into “marriage” with ISIS soldiers. Dozens of churches had been burned to the ground. Islam that did not comply with ISIS ideology was forbidden. Mosul had “fallen”.

Inside the mosque, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, ascended the minbar (platform). His words were shocking, pointing to horrors in store—the killing of “Allah’s” “enemies”.

Medo, who would act as an ISIS soldier, had once possessed hopes about what it could bring to Iraq. Yet since the occupation of Mosul, he had witnessed crushing brutality. A day after the speech in the mosque, atrocities were perpetrated against Christians, Yazidis, and other Muslims who disrespected the new leadership. Medo began to plot how to escape.

On 18 July 2014, the so-called Islamic State announced that Christians had twenty-four hours to make their final decision: convert to Islam, pay the jizya tax, leave, or die. ISIS crews throughout the city painted the Arabic letter “N”—“of the Nazarene [Jesus]”—on Christian homes.

Forced evacuations began on the following morning. More than 100,000 left Mosul. Medo whispered to a Christian contact: “Please go while you can. I will never forget you and your family. And … pray for me.” He witnessed too the miraculous, prayer-answering deliverance of a two-year-old boy when a man barked at his weeping mother: “Will you let your son join Islamic State now, or shall I blow his head off?” Young girls were dragged away, prey for lusting jihadists. The knots in Medo’s stomach became chronic.

Witnesses on crosses

Not long after the first evacuation, Medo went for a walk. He turned onto a main thoroughfare and what he saw made him retch. Four young men hung on crosses about fifty yards away, nails driven through their arms and legs. Two ISIS soldiers stood nearby.

Medo wanted to help these suffering Christian men. He was strangely drawn to them and walked in their direction. They seemed to have been there for several hours already, hanging in the scorching heat.

About thirty feet away, Medo stopped and stared at the bloody men; they were praying and singing. One asked God to forgive the ISIS soldiers and their praise was still audible: “Zeedo el-Maseeh tasbeeh… Praise Jesus Christ more and more.” When one man raised his head to take a breath, he smiled at Medo. Peace ruled in their hearts. But Medo felt like killing himself.

Something changed in Medo as he stood in front of the crosses. Overwhelmed by despair, he observed the men. Listening to the last gasps of the one who had smiled at him, a jolt of courage ignited his own heart and he knew he would abandon ISIS and Mosul at the first chance he got. How great was his shame.

Some months later, Medo escaped north. The help of a kind man got him to Istanbul, Turkey, where he faced horrific flashbacks. ISIS had destroyed his life. And at night, Medo would wonder why the Christians had behaved with such honour while losing everything … and he would picture the Christian men on crosses, praying for their killers, singing, and smiling.

Witness as a light

A week into his stay, Medo met a fellow Iraqi, Sameer, who brought him to a church. “I’m a Muslim, Sameer,” he informed him. “Well, in this place, bro, it doesn’t matter. Christians and Muslims are both welcome. Please stay for at least ten minutes …” As Medo stepped inside, he stopped—and he stared. And then he began to sob. “Why are you crying, my friend?” asked Sameer. “I know this song they are singing. I’ve heard it before.” Zeedo el-Maseeh tasbeeh … Praise Jesus Christ more and more.

Medo’s heart melted when he heard that song. The Christian believers were so alive, singing with the same deep-seated joy as the crucified men in Mosul, their peace independent of their circumstances. After two weeks in Istanbul, Mosul gave his life to Jesus. The lives he saw convinced him that Jesus is the way to God. He devoured the New Testament that Sameer gave him and the words of God cleansed his mind. Images of life and hope replaced the images of death and misery in his mind.

Medo’s family disowned him when he became a Christian. He could see that the Islamic State is a tool of the devil, used by enemies of the cross, and Medo returned to Iraq, to Erbil in the Kurdistan region. “Jesus gives me life,” he notes, “and I want nothing more than to tell others of how He saved me—a former member of ISIS, the most feared terrorist group in the world.” Many thought he was foolish to return to Iraq. “But I know that I am called to be a light in the darkness that covers my country.” he states. “Let me ask you this: Where is Jesus calling you to be a light for Him?”

Medo asked many Christians from Mosul for forgiveness. “Jesus is everyone’s answer to the ethnic and religious hatred in the world,” he notes. In Erbil, many Christian refugees in UN tents had spray-painted “N” on their tents. Humbled and with tears in his eyes, Medo marked his new home in Iraq with an “N”, now “of the Nazarene” and a witness for Jesus too.

—See Tom Doyle, Standing in the fire (2017), in which names, locations, and identifying details have been changed