The Eric Metaxas Show - Stan Guthrie

Episode Date: September 9, 2020

Stan Guthrie of BreakPoint has done extensive research for "Victorious," his new book about the life of Corrie ten Boom and about her own book, "The Hiding Place," and how it impacted the world.

Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. Please keep your arms and legs inside the car at all times. This is your final warning. Now here's your host, Mr. Thrill Ride himself, Eric Mataxis. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. Guess what? Well, you already knew this.

I'm a fan of biography. I have written three biographies myself. And because I don't have time to write more biographies, I've written a number of books of several biographies. I wrote a book called Seven Men with Seven Short Photographies of Heroes. I wrote a book called Seven Women and another book called Seven More Men. In my book, Seven Women, I had to put in a hero named Corey Ten Boom. Now, with a weird name like Corey Ten Boom, you know she's Dutch.

But that's all you know, if you don't know who she is. But what happens when I write books like Seven Men and Seven Women and Seven More Men, invariably people say to me, where can I get more information? Is there a good biography on Hannah Moore? And I say, yes, fierce convictions by Karen Swallow Pryor. Is there a better biography on Bonhoeffer? And I go, yes, my book on Bonhoeffer. But now when people say to me, can you think of a biography of Corrie 10 Boom? I don't have to say the hiding place. I can say read the book, Victorious by Stan Guthrie, who is my guest right now. Stan, welcome to the program.

Thank you, Eric. It's always great to be with you. What led you to write a full-blown, but first of all, I should say that we know each other from Breakpoint and the Colson Center. You've been an editor at large for Christianity today. You've written many other books. So you've been on this program before. But what led you to take on what I consider a daunting task?

of writing a biography of a very important person's life? That is a very good question, Eric. And unlike you, this was my first biography, and it was about a modern Protestant saint. So I approached it with fear and trepidation because I would say Corey has a bigger following now than she even had in her life. I'm constantly getting people who are sharing quotes from her

or just want to know more about her story. It seems like she's always popping up. And so I was just asked by a publisher, a friend of mine, Jerry Rood, a Wheaton College professor, had recommended me. I mean, Jerry's the great connector. And they just asked me if I'd be willing to do it. I put in a proposal about it, how I would approach it. They said, yeah, go for it.

So I was off and running. And I can't remember who your publisher is on this book. It's Paraclete Press. Paracly Press. Is Jerry involved with that? Because I was going to say, I believe he's published a book with them, but he's good friends with one of the editors there. Sure. Well, yes, of course, I've met him. And I think that, listen, I always say this, that people are dying for wonderful biographies because we lack for heroes. And when I wrote my book, Seven Women, there was, you know, people say, who do you put in the book? What do you put in the book? Well, I didn't have any question that Corey Ten Boom is going to be in the book.

That was like one of the first ones I knew that her story had to go in the book. And so I'm glad that anybody who's read my book can now read your book and find out the full story. But for people who don't know anything about her, who was Corey Ten Boom? Give us the nutshell before we get into the weeds. Okay. Well, Corey was about 52 years of age. She lived in Holland in a town called Harlem. She was 52 years old when the Gestapo took her and five other family members to be imprisoned

because they had been hiding Jews from the Nazis. And so she and her sister were in the concentration camp system for about 10 months. Her older sister, Betsy, did not survive that experience. She died in Ravensbrook, where 96,000. other women died. Corey was led out through what's known as a clerical error. Corey called it a miracle, and she was able to return to her home. And within really a year or two, she started a worldwide speaking and encouragement ministry that quickly brought her to the United States. She's written over 30 books, and the most famous of which is the hiding place. And what my book is, it's not only

about Corey, but it's about how that book came to be and the impact it has had on our culture. When did, first of all, I should ask my engineer, are the sound levels okay, James, because I'm not hearing Stan too much, too loudly. I hear him okay. It's okay. It's okay. It'll be all right for the interview. Okay. So let's, Stan, let's go over the basics. I mean, Corey Ten Boom died, I believe, in 1968. No, she actually died in 1983. Who are you to disagree? with me. You just wrote a full-blown biography on her. I meant to say 1983, sorry. She died in 1983, but when was the hiding place published? Like, when did she become famous as a result of writing that book? The book was published in 1971. Okay. And then a movie was made about the book

starring one of my favorite actresses, Julie Harris. When did that movie come out? That came out in 1975, it was done by worldwide pictures, which is an arm of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Right. And that was an amazing thing in itself. Corey had actually written a book in 1945, basically within a year of being released from Ravensbrook. And she had always wanted a movie to be made about that book. If you've actually seen that book, it's very much, you know, more personal and limited in scope than, say, the hiding place because she didn't have any

professional help with it. And so she was never able to garner any interest in getting a movie for that book. But then John and Elizabeth Sherrill, who you may know as really fantastic Christian writers from the 1960s on, maybe even the late 50s, met her and saw the potential in this book and basically rewrote the entire story, really pulled the details out of Corey, and it was, it's, I believe, sold to date about three million copies. Well, when, which is a good number, and when Billy Graham found out about this book, he was very excited and put his backing to get a movie made as well. And that has, I don't know what the numbers are for that,

but is their most popular movie at the BGEA has ever produced, and many, many people have become Christians through viewing it. That really is extraordinary. So she died as recently as 1983. Correct. I know that a big part of her speaking, because she did a lot of appearances around the world, had to do with the issue of forgiveness.

In other words, while she was imprisoned at Ravensbrook, the cruelty she saw and the people who were responsible for her beloved sister's death, really, she knew as a Christian she was obliged to forgive them. The problem, of course, I think for many people is what does that look like? What does that mean? Does it mean that I don't take seriously the horror, the evil that they committed? But that really was a big part of her story, wasn't that? Yeah, I can think of two stories offhand where she's.

had to forgive her persecutors. The first is pretty well known. She was speaking in Germany a couple of years after the war and talking about the need for forgiveness. And then afterwards, a gentleman came up and said, oh, Corey, I'm so happy that you've said this. I'm actually one of the guards at Ravensbrook. And suddenly she remembered who he was. She saw him in her mind's eye. He had been actually leering at the women while they were naked and vulnerable and really sickly, and it was just a disgusting replay of what had happened in her mind. And he said, would you, it's so wonderful that God forgives us. Would you also forgive me, sister? And she found her arm frozen at her side. She could not raise it and shake his hand and forgive him. And she just said,

oh, Jesus helped me. And she felt almost a bolt of lightning in her body. And she was able to lift her hand. And as soon as they clasped hands, she felt a flood of forgiveness flowing through her. So that's the famous story. But there's also another one that I discovered. A man named Jan Vogel had actually turned them into the Gestapo so that they were captured in 1942. And she found out about this. And he was basically about to be executed for his war crimes. I didn't realize we're going to a hard break.

We're going to be right back, folks. We're talking with Stan Guthrie. Don't go away. Hey there, folks. I'm talking to Stan Guthrie, who has a new bookout, a biography of the hero, Corey Ten, boom. I just had to cut you off from the last segment, Stan. You were making a point, and we came to a break there. But what was the point that you were making?

Well, she had found out that there was a man who had turned. turned them into the Gestapo, turned her whole family in, and that ended in the death of her sister. And instead of ignoring him or, you know, saying nasty things to him, she actually sent him a letter explaining the gospel to him and saying that she forgave him. And I don't have a record of what his response was, but, I mean, that's a pretty amazing little vignette and look at her heart. And she's learned to do that. Corey was actually a very ordinary person. who had been molded over decades as a strong Christian through the influence of her family, especially Betsy, who we've mentioned, also her father, Casper, who was just a tremendous loving guy. And so she was prepared for this, not through any kind of extraordinary preparation as it happened,

but through the years of quiet preparation. And I think that's a good thing for us as Christians to keep in mind, that whatever the future holds for us, and I'm concerned about the culture as you are, where things are headed, I would say the best way for us to prepare, other than to be involved and to be actively praying about these things, is just to continue to live our Christian lives in an authentic way, be involved in ministry, learn to trust God to know his presence on a daily basis, and then when you need to have that extra help from the Holy Spirit,

or the triune God, it will be there as it was for Corey. Well, you're right. And one thing in my own much more limited research than yours, but I was astounded to discover that her family in Holland and Amsterdam had for about a hundred years had a special burden for the Jewish people, that they were devout Christians with a special burden to the Jewish people, which is obviously anomalous. I mean, you don't expect that.

And how interesting that this concern for the Jewish people going through the decades would lead to her family hiding Jews during this terrible period of persecution. And then going to this Ravensburg camp, losing her sister and this ministry. But I was just amazed that for some reason, and I assume God had his hand in it, that family, the Ten Boom family, really reached out to Jews going way back into the 19th century. Yeah, it was fascinating as I researched at a gentleman named Isaac DeCosta. He was in Amsterdam. He was a poet. He was sort of a public intellectual.

Maybe he was the Eric Metaxus of his day. I don't know. He was very interested in Jesus. And he started reading the book of Isaiah and some of the prophecies. And he was confronted by the fact that Jesus was real. and he made a commitment to Jesus, but it wasn't a private commitment. It was a very public commitment. He started talking not only about the need for the Netherlands to have a renewed understanding

and grasp of the scriptures as God's word. He started preaching very openly about the need to support the Jewish people. And there was a lot of talk in that era of the Jews needing a homeland. And so I think the year was 1837. Corey's grandfather, Willem, was one of the founders of something called the Society for Israel. And they started praying on a regular basis for the peace of Jerusalem. And so that was actually, you know, about 100 years before they were taken. And so it's amazing how God developed that into Corey's life.

I know her father, Casper, had said that from his earliest years, his father, who was Willem, had basically drilled love of the Jews into his life. So this was no strange thing that they were doing, oh, let's decide to hide the Jewish people. It's just a natural outflow of their faith over generations. It is extraordinary. And then to think that they were hiding Jews and then finally, discovered and sent to Ravensbrook as a result of that. One of my favorite things also is that it's kind of funny because we think of Corey Ten Boom as this great hero of the faith, but Betsy

was more of a hero. I mean, she's the one that dies for her faith. And I remember that passage in my own chapter, and I don't know if you go into this in your book, but where Betsy sort of forces Corey to thank God for, it's either the lice or the bedbugs. I can't remember. The fleas. Or the fleas. Yes. I think I should remember that one.

Yeah, in other words, the idea that they're sleeping on these, you know, straw mattresses or sleeping on straw and they're being bitten by fleas, and it's a real problem. And Betsy is a woman of such faith that she exhorts her sister. we should thank God for everything. That's what the Bible says, including let's thank God for the fleas right now. And Corey is like, are you crazy? But eventually did maybe tell that story if you want.

Well, it turned out that Corey was wondering why in the world they were having freedom to do Bible studies and pray with other women. They basically had an international fellowship and interdenominational fellowship. They had Orthodox and Catholic and Protestant Lutheran. Let's be clear. We're talking at Ravens, Breast, Be clear. Brook concentration care. Corey Ten Boom and her sister are in there, whatever it's called, hardly a dormitory, but they are doing Bible study in there and not being bothered by the guards, which is

itself just crazy. Yeah. It was basically a huge warehouse setting with, you know, multiple bunk beds crammed in there. And the guards were not going in there and accosting them and bothering them. And she didn't know why. And then later on, somebody said, would you come in here and mediate this dispute between two of the prisoners? Because a lot of the prisoners who were not involved in the Bible studies were fighting because of all the stress and strain of everything. And the guard said, I'm not going in there.

There's fleas. And all of a sudden, the light dawn for Corey. Ah, that's why we gave thanks. That's why God gave us the fleas. So they could do all that. yeah that the guards were deliberately avoiding going in there because you want to catch these fleas or whatever i mean it's it but it's so funny because we very rarely get an illustration of how scripture works god tells us to do stuff and we don't understand why but every now and again

he tosses us a bone and says well i'll give you an example of why you should obey me and do the things that don't make sense to you uh thank god for the fleas i mean we're supposed to thank god in circumstances just in general, and we could talk about that all day long. But the fact that it's Betsy who is the one who is saying, like, we need to do this. And Corey, the subject of your book, victorious, and this hero, that she's the one saying, are you kidding me? So she finally goes along with it and then actually gets the reason that, you know, that sometimes God winks at us just to say, hey, you think maybe I know something you don't know, you know. But I just, love that story that as a result of the fleas, they were able to spread the good news of Jesus

in a place of deepest hopelessness. Yeah, and I think that's one of the secrets to the appeal of the book is that Corey comes across as one of us, really. You know, she's still learning throughout the whole process. She's not some super saint who, you know, the water never soaps into her clothing or anything like that. She is, she's learning to trust God just as we are as we're reading with her. So it's very real to us. And why did you name the book, Victorious? You could have named it anything. Why, why victorious? That's, that's an interesting point. I'm glad you asked it.

I told you about how the family's faith had really shaped her over the decades. And the fact is, a plate in their dining room at the Baye, which was the house in Harlem, on this plate was written the words in Jesus the Victor. And she used that term in various ways in her letters to people like Brother Andrew and in other ways. In Jesus the Victor was basically her slogan for life. What am I thinking of? And so I also found it very interesting that her family thought that that was a phrase worth following up because it fit very well with the problems that they were facing. There was a theologian named Gustav Alin. He was a Lutheran theologian, and he at the time was popularizing the Christus Victor theology, which basically talked about Jesus.

defeating the powers of evil, Satan, and death. And that would come in very handy as she's facing down the Nazis who are really a manifestation of satanic evil in her generation. And I think it's something that's stuck with her throughout her entire life. We're out of time in this segment. Folks, I'm talking to Stan Guthrie, the author of this new life of Corey Ten Boom. The title is Victorious.

I have recommended it. I recommend it now, and we'll be right back. But I set my sights on Monday, and I got myself on grass. I ain't ready for the altar, but I do want to... Snow, sea man. Someone call us Babylon, those hungry hunters tracking down the hour. Hey, folks, I'm talking to the author of a biography of the great hero, Corey Ten Boom. That's strange Dutch name, Ten Boom, Cory Ten Boom.

The book is titled Victorious. The author is Stan Guthrie, who's with me. Now, Stan, the title of your book is victorious, but the subtitle says, Corey Ten Boom and The Hiding Place. The hiding place, of course, is the book that she wrote in 1971, was made into a big movie in 1975. five, why do you title the book, victorious Corey Tin Boom and the hiding place? Do you talk about how that book and movie came into being? Well, my book is actually a biography of Corey,

and it's also a description of how the book came about. So it's part of a series that Periclesp Press has started. It's called Stories of Great Books. And so it'll span the gamut of Christian history. And I got to do the first one, and it's of a modern Protestant hero. Well, that's terrific. I think, you know, the hiding place, some people are familiar with it. What is in your book that we wouldn't find in a book like The Hiding Place, for example?

Well, it talks about Corey's 25 years of ministry after the Hiding Place. It talks about how she had a growing platform and was able to speak about the issues that she cared about. It talks about her five years of physical decline where she had a couple of strokes, how she dealt with the loss of control over her own body and how people stepped in to help her. How instead of being the person who's always giving ministry, she learned to receive it. and then it talks about after her death the influence that she's had in many contemporary issues that we're facing today. Corey is still relevant, though the Nazis are gone, a lot of the issues that she faced,

such as anti-Semitism, are still with us, and we can learn a lot from her that way. Well, that's a fact. Obviously, the hiding place doesn't go into, as you said, her own ministry, much of which was as a result of the publication of The Hiding Place in the film, the idea that she had this really flowering of fame where her message, the Christian message, was able to get out really far because she took the trouble to write that book with the Sheryls,

as you mentioned, and because the Bill of Graham Organization helped make a truly fine film called The Hiding Place. So what was her ministry? In other words, was she traveling the world and speaking, how did it come about that suddenly this woman, you know, well before writing her story, should be ministering in the way that she did? Well, she started speaking within really months of the war being over,

but her biggest audiences were happening in North America and in the United States in particular. And I go into some of the reasons for that in the book, But she was far more popular here than she was in her native Netherlands, which, as you know, now is a very secular country. Euthanasia, ironically, is an issue there. And the church is really hanging by a thread there. Versus here, I go into some of the providential reasons why, but we were dealing with Soviet communism. there was a great deal of interest in the Jewish people when she was growing her ministry. And so her story was naturally just compelling to really hundreds of thousands and eventually millions of people.

It seems she was at heart an evangelist. In other words, there's people that know that they've been through what they've been through so that they can lead people to the one who gave them hope in the midst of their own trials. and I don't know, did she get a chance to speak to huge crowds, or was it more smaller crowds? I don't get the impression of her speaking in the way that some of the evangelists like Billy Graham and others had done. You know, just as an aside that in the early 1960s, she went to Chicago and was one of the counselors at a Billy Graham Crusade. So she kind of knew it from both sides. early in her ministry, I think her first speaking engagement was in New York to a small group of

Christian women, you know, probably eight or ten people. But as her fame grew, obviously her crowds grew. And when the book was released, and then especially when that movie was released, she spoke to, I think her biggest crowd was probably 10 or 15,000. And she was, you know, known around the world. And she got television appearances, radio. I mean, I lived in Wheaton for many years, and the Billy Graham Center was there. That's a research arm of Wheaton College and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

And it just had voluminous copies of her tapes, of her videos, of her books. And it's just amazing the reach she had. I mean, for someone who basically, by the time she came into the public eye was an old woman, her output ministry-wise was just prodigious. It was unbelievable. She was working, you know, putting in full days until she was 78, 79 years old. And, you know, there was even one point where she said in one of her letters that she had a heart attack. I think she was overseas, maybe in Israel at the time.

She laid down, and the next day she got up and kept going. I mean, she was just an amazing, indefatigable woman. I mean, she puts us to shame, you know, the kind of person that you just feel like, how could I ever do that? But she was very committed to spreading her message and nothing would stop her. She was far from perfect. She had a temper. She was impatient with people at times.

I want to hear about that when we come back. Okay, we'll be right back. Folks, the author of the book, Victorious is my guest. His name is Stan Guthrie. We'll be right back with Stan. We're going to put me on a chill. Hi folks. These uncertain times can cause uncertain gut slowdown.

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Folks, I got some embarrassing news to share with you, but you know what? This is just the kind of a show where I don't care. I'm willing to lay my heart, you know, on the line. Here's the issue. Mike Lindell with my pillow, you may notice that I have a bobble hell of him near me. He's here to remind all of us that when you go to MyPillow.com, you get whopping discounts. you use the code Eric, okay? Now, there are a lot of people who haven't done that,

and we have your names here. And Chris Heim's Ann Albin pointed out to me that there's like three pages of you whose first name is Eric. You, yourself, I mean, that's humiliating for me that even though your name is Eric, you're still not willing to use the code Eric. I mean, if you don't want to use it because it's my name,

use it because it's your name. But the point is that I see who, who you are. And I just, I just feel humiliated by this. Please go to, go to mypillar.com. It's okay, Mike. It's going to be okay. Go to mypillar.com. Use the code, Eric. You're going to get whopping savings and really high quality products. Did I, did I mention that? Thank you. Hey there, folks. We're talking about Corey Ten Boom, hero of the faith. The new book of her life is called Victorious by Stan Guthrie, who's my guest. Stan, you were just saying that, you know,

she wasn't perfect, she had a temper, whatever. It reminds me a little bit of another hero of the faith, Mother Teresa, who's also in my seven women book, where you just think that these people are so hard charging on a mission from God, literally, that they sometimes don't suffer fools gladly. Correct. She had some of that in her. Oh, yeah. she was very impatient with people at times.

And one of the things that she got really uptight about was money. And maybe that's because when she was helping her father in the watch shop before the Nazi takeover of the Netherlands, she had to keep control of the books. And it was her father had no head for business. And so she turned out to have a very exacting mind. And she was able to get the books in her. order and all that stuff. So she always kind of was a penny pincher, even when the money was pouring

in from her book, which she didn't really keep hardly any of that money. She converted it to ministry. Or when the offers started rolling in when the movie was made, she was very nervous about it. Brother Andrew said, and I quoted him in the book that she often got upset about money, and so you need to have the answers for her. So, you know, she's like all of us. You know, she had feet of clay and God used her. I wouldn't want your listeners and viewers to think that only a hard-charging person could be someone that God could use because, you know, just I profile quite a few of her family members and friends in the book who had very different personalities, such as her father, such as her sister, such as her aunt, who God used greatly. and they were very different in personality. But Corey was definitely a hard charger.

You mentioned Brother Andrew a couple of times. Remind us who he was and what his relationship with Corey Ten Boom was. Well, like Corey, Brother Andrew was also from the Netherlands. He actually, I found out, helped her in her ministry of hiding Jews during the war. But he was not a Christian at that time. But he went off to serve in the military in Indonesia and came back and heard the gospel and decided to become a believer and a ministry leader. And he decided that people behind the Iron Curtain needed God's word because it was illegal to have it at that time in many of the countries. So he started in Poland, eventually went to places like Russia and then even China.

And his book, God Smuggler, was also written with the help of John and Elizabeth Sherry. and it is actually sold 10 million copies, and it's actually one of my favorite books. Oh, my gosh. Well, I know I've heard him speak at Times Square Church here in New York, and I believe he's 92 years old at this point. I don't know if he's doing any ministry at this late date, but how amazing that he's still with us.

Yeah, and one of his associates gave me some vignettes from his experiences with Corey, because he served on the board of her ministry. He was a confidant for many years with her. And so he gave some insights to the book that you won't find anywhere else. Well, that is amazing. You don't know where he's living these days.

I believe it's in the Netherlands, but he's not really up for things like interviews at this point. Right, right. Well, but that's so interesting. Obviously, he was significantly younger than she was. but I remember now his accent when he spoke, and I realize, yes, he was Dutch. But I never put that together. Are you planning on writing other books like this one, other biographies?

Well, that depends how my book does on your program. Ah, I don't know it's on me, is it? Yeah, no pressure. I mean, I say it over and over to people that it is vital, that we have heroes and that we study the lives of heroes because we need it. We really, really need it to look at people because I think it's inevitably inspiring. There's no way around it. When you read a book like Victoria's about a woman like that, you cannot help but have it rub off on you. I just think that's the way it goes. That's the way we're built as people. And so usually, as I said,

when people read my shorter versions of these lives, they want to read a longer one. They're fascinated and they go, okay, that's, you know, 8,000 words, 9,000 words, is there a book? So it's one of the reasons I was so glad that you and Pericles decided to put together a book on her life called Victorious. You've written other books and you've spoken on this program

about other books. I never remember where you are physically. Where do you, what part of the world, Are you hiding in during this weird time? I'm in the Chicago land area. I live in a town called Naperville. Of course. I just moved out a week and less than a year ago.

And I don't know if you heard about that DeRatio that came through recently. About what? The DeRatio, the straight line winds. They knocked out a lot of things in Iowa. They actually knocked the old steeple off a college church in Wheaton. And that was about a week ago. go from the time we're talking for this podcast. But yeah, so we get some interesting weather here in the Midwest. I survived it. We're happy and looking forward to having our two boys back

in college. Yeah, yeah. I think I know what you mean. I would never say that publicly, ever. No. I want you to know that I kind of get that. And I think there are a lot of people listening. You kind of suddenly they get that a little bit. Now, Corey Ten Boom, you said at the end of her life, she was not well and that she had to let people minister to her. When you're a hard-charging person as she was, it seems to me that becomes very difficult for those kinds of people. Yeah, and maybe that's why God immobilized her said that she would learn to receive ministry as well as given.

I mean, she did receive ministry from many people during the war and those kind of things, but she was more used to being the driver's seat. And, you know, when you're basically paralyzed, that is no longer operative. So she was, what shall I say about her? She was still looking for God's glory right to the end. And she was a prayer. She prayed.

She was constantly trying to encourage the people who are encouraging her. But she could do very little the last several years. We have a final segment with Stan Guthrie, author of Victorious. I hope you get a copy. We'll be right back. To Stan Guthrie, author of the book, Victorious, new book about the life of the great hero, Corey Ten Boom. So, you know, at the heart of all of this, Stan, is this issue of anti-Semitism. Obviously, she was hiding Jews.

Her family had a love of the Jews because of their Christian faith. and she and her sister go to Ravensbrook because they've been hiding Jews. And so where do you see anti-Semitism today or where do you see the issue in general? Well, it's interesting. If you just go to Google and Google anti-Semitism, you'll come up with very recent incidents of anti-Semitism, both in the United States and in places like Europe and in parts of the Muslim world. It is very evident that anti-Semitism is alive and well in 21st century America.

You'll see it in movements like Black Lives Matter. And, you know, we need to stand against it because it is just a, it's a boil that refuses to go away from the human experience. And Corey wrestled with it firsthand. Her sister gave her life. fighting it. And I think we Christians need to realize that this is still a real issue. This is not some historical fact that we can kind of file away and forget about. Well, I mean, it goes way back into the Old Testament and obviously all through the last two millennia that hatred of the Jews. It's one of those things that, you know, you can tell when someone hates God because they hate

the people of God, the people chosen by God to give us the scriptures, to give us the Messiah, to lead us to the God of the scriptures. So it's fascinating to me that almost everybody who's full of hate agrees on hating the Jews, people as disparate as it gets from the most radical Muslims who hate Jews to, you know, the most radical Muslims who hate Jews to

you know to black supremacists and white supremacists and they all seem to agree the KKK you know secular liberals it's a very odd

thing and I think you're right to point that out and it's another reason for folks to read your book because we need to know the history of this that the the devil gets at God by attacking the people of God. And many heroes have seen that. And Corey Ten Boom and Dietrich Bonhofer are two of the most famous.

Martin Luther famously failed in that. But I do think that that's another reason to be familiar with the life of this woman. Did you meet anybody or talk to anybody? You've just got a minute left. Who knew her pretty well? Yeah, Pam Moore was one of her helpers for, I'd say, the better part of a decade. I had to look at that. And Corey had a number of helpers who kind of set her schedule and traveled with her, things like that.

And also a couple other people. But, you know, Corey was getting on in years when she died. And a lot of people who were with her have died as well. So Elizabeth Cheryl is in her 90s and she was very close to Corey. And so I was able to interview her several times and got some really great detail from her. Tremendous. Well, I'm sorry we're out of time, but thank you for your time, Stan Guthrie. And thank you for the book, Victorious on the Life of Corey Tin Boom.

I hope God uses it for his purposes. Thanks again. Thank you, Eric. God bless.