Here is another great entry from the best selling book Extreme Devotion!

He heard the decree from his window: “For the next thirty days, anyone who prays to anyone other than the king will be thrown to the lions.”

“Repeat these verses!” Zeba was ordered.

Peter Siemens lay on the grimy floor of a Russian prison after being unconscious for three days. He had been arrested for sharing the gospel with children. His fellow prisoners had horribly beaten him in return for being promised parole by the guards. As they attacked him, Peter remained silent.

Fritz felt each crashing blow to his head and prayed for strength. The Muslim attackers surrounded him and took turns beating him in the face. One of the Muslim attackers brandished a large knife thinking this would rid them of the Christian pastor. The first time the blade went into Fritz, all he could do was yell, “Jesus!” He was stabbed repeatedly. And each time, he yelled, “Jesus!” The attackers grew frustrated at the pastor who just wouldn’t die!

“Break him morally or destroy him physically!” The Turkmenistan bureaucrats had no more patience for this street preacher. Shageldy Atakov was offered his freedom under President Saparmurat Niyazov’s December 23, 2000, amnesty, provided he would swear the oath of allegiance to the president and recite the Muslim creed. Shageldy refused the amnesty again.

“The Christian blood you shed is the seed you sow; it springs from the earth and increases all the more.”

The two women traveled week after week to attend secret house-church meetings. They were tired and frustrated that no church existed in their own village.

The Romanian pastor and his wife had hidden Soviet soldiers during the Nazi occupation of their country. Now it was Nazi soldiers who needed refuge.

Pastor Wurmbrand worked his way through the others prisoners to where another pastor sat motionless on the floor. He had just been thrown into the cell. He was badly beaten. Wurmbrand did not know if he would survive the night.