Who Said That...

On December 28, 1944, after ten months of incarceration in concentration camps, Corrie Ten Boom was free. She had lost her father and beloved sister to the horrors of Nazi death camps. Gaunt, filthy, and weak, Corrie made her way to the railway station and boarded a train for a three-day journey home to Holland.

She later found out that an order had been given at the end of that very week to kill all women her age and older. An error in prison paperwork was the catalyst God used to release her.

The Ten Booms, all devout Christians, had provided a hiding place in their home for persecuted Jews during World War II. Corrie, who was fifty-nine at the time of her arrest, was placed in an isolation cell for the first few weeks of her imprisonment. Depression and the struggle to maintain a sense of hope consumed her.

Corrie vowed if God allowed her to live, she would tell as many people as possible about the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ. She also promised to go wherever He led. She miraculously obtained a small New Testament from a prison worker and smuggled it past guards.

For Corrie, the concentration camp was the fieriest place of all, becoming her classroom where she lived and learned the faithfulness of God. It was there she learned the faithfulness of God. It was there she learned to hide her life under the shadow of His wings while He trained her for a much higher calling.

God gave her a promise, telling her that she would reach far more people than she could imagine with the gospel message. For the next four decades following her release from prison, Corrie traveled extensively, speaking in more than sixty countries, captivating audiences with her inspiring faith and love for God. She is the author of nine books, one of which is The Hiding Place, a personal account of her arrest and time spent in prison. She also produced five films.

"Looking back across the years of my life, I can see the working of a divine pattern which is the way of God with His children. When I was in a prison camp in Holland during the war, I often prayed, 'Lord, never let the enemy put me in a German concentration camp.' God answered no to that prayer. Yet in the German camp, with all its horror, I found many prisoners who had never heard of Jesus Christ.

"If God had not used my sister Betsie and me to bring them to Him, they would never have heard of Him. Many died, or were killed, but many died with the name of Jesus on their lips. They were well worth all our suffering. Faith is like radar which sees through the fog—the reality of things at a distance that the human eye cannot see."