As wonderfully revealed in the Prisoners of Hope documentary, the prisoners also fought back spiritually.  Using the tap code, they shared their faith, prayed together, studied scripture, and learned the Word.  When the POW conditions eventually began to improve in 1970, Colonel Bud Day obtained permission to conduct a Prayer Service in a common area with other prisoners at the “Hanoi Hilton” prison camp.  As he began to pray, the guards reneged and dragged him off to be tortured. The rest of the prisoners continued praying in defiance and the guards relented.  Eventually the POW’s were allowed to have weekly church services.

This week we take a slight, though time-relevant detour, about specific behavior that would keep someone out of the Kingdom, even if they wanted in.  I had a major revelation during our church’s weekly Bible Study, which added great insight to the “missed Kingdom Opp” posts about the murmuring/complaining Hebrews in the wilderness.

Our bible study teacher was discussing what it would have taken to provide food and water for 3 million Hebrews, etc. in the desert—hundreds of railway cars full of meat and 20,000 gallons of water every day.  So when the Hebrews, in triple digit heat, hadn’t had a drop of water in three days—and there was absolutely no drop in sight—death was actually imminent, and it was easy to become hopeless. Therefore, I uncharacteristically chose to cut the Hebrews some slack, as this really was a super-sized trial.  At this juncture, I concluded that the rebellion/disobedience/restored-trust/obedience thing wasn’t totally their fault.  But I walked away with a revelation about what was causing it, and why they kept falling into the same doubt and unbelief each time a trial hit.

I made reference to it in Kingdom Post #3, when I was discussing 5 reasons why the Hebrews had missed their Kingdom Opp.  The thought occurred to me during the Bible Study that it was the Hebrews’ Slave Mentality that got them into this rebel/repent cycle.  Also, we discussed that even today, in the midst of much smaller trials, good Christians tend to fall into the same trap too.  In our case in 2021, today’s slave master is the enemy—who keeps sending those fiery darts our way…many times in the form of, “You deserve to be punished/God’s punishing you.”  Here’s what I wrote about the slave mentality in Post #3: 

“I’ve heard several pastors preach that the Hebrews couldn’t kick their slave mentality after 400 years in Egypt, i.e., God got the Hebrews out of Egypt, but He couldn’t get the Egypt out of the Hebrews.  What if their memories of a non-responsive, absentee God were actually enslaving them and keeping them out of the Kingdom.  They perceived it as abandonment and kept waiting for a repeat!!  So their image of God was of Someone Who wasn’t 100% trustworthy…Perhaps in the wilderness they spent a lot of time waiting for the other shoe to drop, as a result.”

Bottom line, when someone is a slave, they expect to be punished—whether they do something wrong or not. However, I also believe that a specific slave’s behavior could vary depending on the level of evil/brutality that he might experience from his master.  In the case of the Hebrew slaves, life was extremely hard.  But it could not have been horrifically brutal, or they would never have considered going back, no matter how bad the wilderness got.  Exodus 16:3 was one of several instances in which the Hebrews referred to Egypt as a fairly tolerable place:   “There we sat around pots filled with meat and ate all the bread we wanted. But now you have brought us into this wilderness to starve us all to death.”

Ironically, I was watching Veggie Tales’ Moe and the Big Exit last week.  (I get so much revelation from that cartoon series!!)  This cartoon is all about God’s deliverance of the Hebrew slaves through Moses—but with a wild west theme 😊—and appropriately tamed down for the target audience.  For example, the Hebrew babies aren’t drowned in the river—they are “sent up the river”—a western term which is sufficiently euphemistic for pint-size viewers (and moi).  “The Hebrew slaves” (Little Joe’s descendants)—as they dig the Grand Canyon, and paint the desert—have a major attitude going on.  Not only do they ridicule authority secretly, but they are also overt/in-yer-face about it.   So they would have different behavior than slaves who were beaten, starved, and had death staring them in the face every day. 

Ironically again, I recently watched a powerful documentary, called Prisoners Of Hope, about American POW’s in Vietnam.  I was led to use it for future post topics, because it’s an incredible testimony of God’s glory and redemption—and how people could experience the Kingdom of Heaven in the supernatural, while being in a veritable pit-of-hell in the natural.  I then started looking for similar experiences in WW2 and the Korean War.  Incredibly – as horrifically brutal and terrorizing as these experiences were, I actually did read about POWs who had the same “attitude” as the slaves in the Veggie Tales movie. 

The American POW’s in Japanese Prison Camps were probably the closest to having slave status—as more than 25,000 of them were forced to work as laborers for the war effort (in some cases, for Japanese Companies!).  There’s one account of the Sendai Mine Labor Camp in which the prisoners had to dig tunnels in the mines.  This was in addition to enduring torture, starvation, disease, and exposure.  In spite of such oppression, the prisoners sabotaged the work effort by – trying to do as little as possible; getting their “last leg” buddies into sick bay by carefully inflicting non-lethal injuries; pulling axle pins out of the mine carts so they rolled down the hill and dumped their loads.  In the shipyards, (while working for Mitsubishi Company) the POW’s threw their welding rods in the bay and purposely created defective welds when installing bow plates.  At one prison camp, they sabotaged the cement mix when building a landing strip.  The Japanese camp commander’s plane tore a hole in the cement on take-off—while camp personnel, who had lined the runway to provide a big send-off, looked on.   

In the case of the POW’s imprisoned by the North Vietnamese—although the prisoners were severely punished for speaking to each other, the POW’s devised a way to keep full communication channels open—with a tap code.  Using metal cups or other hard objects, they would tap every bit of camp news—as well as their deepest emotional and psychological experiences—out in code on the shared walls.  They did this with such stealth that the tap code was never decoded by the enemy.  The torture sessions lost all element of terror because the details of each session were immediately broadcast all over the camp.  People knew what to expect, and how much pain they were going to have to endure, in advance.  The POWs had derisive nicknames for each one of their tormenters, like Louie the Rat, Fats, Dumdum, and Greasy.  They taught inappropriate language to any VN guard who was trying to learn English (e.g., a VN guard might unknowingly introduce himself as a “lady of the night” to other American prisoners).  On the rare occasions when they were allowed out for prison-cell-reorg (in one case to swap accommodations with the resident pigs), they coughed and spat the tap code to keep the communication going.  “Ahem, ahem, pause, ahem, ah, pause, guttural throat clear, expectorate” meant God bless you. :’-(

As wonderfully revealed in the Prisoners of Hope documentary, the prisoners also fought back spiritually.  Using the tap code, they shared their faith, prayed together, studied scripture, and learned the Word.  When the POW conditions eventually began to improve in 1970, Colonel Bud Day obtained permission to conduct a Prayer Service in a common area with other prisoners at the “Hanoi Hilton” prison camp.  As he began to pray, the guards reneged and dragged him off to be tortured. The rest of the prisoners continued praying in defiance and the guards relented.  Eventually the POW’s were allowed to have weekly church services.

Back on track, what behavior might be exhibited by someone who was trapped in slavery?  #1, of course would be, feeling continually oppressed and trapped in a terrible existence; with #2 being, longing for freedom;  #3 would be reacting negatively to someone who exerts control of every aspect of their lives. But, other behavior might include #4 subterranean resistance; #5 derisively regarding their perceived masters as fools—or in general, having absolutely no respect for the authority figures; #6 demonstrating insincere behavior for pain avoidance purposes—or due to brutal brainwashing; #7 feeling utterly helpless to help themselves which eventually leads to losing the ability to help themselves.  Which behaviors are applicable to the Hebrew ex-slaves?  How about today—what about a Christian who has a slave mentality in 2021?  What would that look like?  To be continued….