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How to Get Rid of Your Enemies

CONNIE: OK, it's true confession time: Who's the one person you'd most like to pop in the nose right now? Would you like to know how to get rid of all your enemies? Stay tuned!

Giving God's trumpet a Certain Sound for more than 70 years, this is the Voice of Prophecy.

CONNIE: Hello, I'm Connie Jeffery,

LONNIE: and I'm Lonnie Melashenko, and we're glad you've joined us today on Voice of Prophecy. The title of our program today is "How to Get Rid of Your Enemies."

CONNIE: Well, Lonnie, I can't wait to hear what you have to say. Are you going to give tips for hiring a hit-man, or recipes for poisoning people's punch?

LONNIE: Actually, I've got some better ideas for getting rid of your enemies. They're actually Jesus' ideas, found in the Sermon on the Mount. And of course He didn't recommend bumping off our enemies.

CONNIE: Of course not. His whole life was about reconciliation. But sometimes it's very difficult to be reconciled with someone who's done us wrong--some things seem just plain too bad to be forgiven.

LONNIE: I've felt that way myself sometimes. But then I consider the lives of men like Jacob DeShazer--who we're going to hear from in just a moment. And I realize that there's really nothing that anyone can do to me that's too grievous a sin to be forgiven.

CONNIE: Ken Wade spoke with Jacob, who incidentally will celebrate his 90th birthday this year, and Jacob shared one of the most amazing stories we've ever aired on Voice of Prophecy. Let's listen.

KEN: I'm just so pleased today, to welcome Mr. Jacob DeShazer to our program. Welcome Mr. DeShazer!

JACOB: Well thank you I'm glad to be here.

KEN: Jacob I was just so thrilled as I was reading to discover a bit of your history, and in particular how well it fit with our program today which is called, "How to get rid of your enemies." Now December 7, 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Where were you and how did you feel about what had happened?

JACOB: I was in Pendelton Organ and I had been out practicing dropping the bombs.

KEN: So you were actually in the Army/Air Force at the time?

JACOB: Yes.

KEN: When you heard the news of what had happened in Pearl Harbor, how did you feel about the Japanese?

JACOB: Well, I thought it was a terrible thing to do. I thought they'll get paid back for dropping bombs on Pearl Harbor.

KEN: You were given the opportunity than to join Colonel Jimmy Doolittle in practicing for something.

JACOB: I was there in Pendelton Oregon and Doolittle came out there and told me look on the fuel cell on the airplane to see if there were some bolts sticking out in a certain place. I went and looked and came back and told him that they were there, and he said, "O all right", but he said my name and that puzzled me, how did he know my name?

KEN: So then you joined up with him and in April of 1942, where did you find yourself?

JACOB: Well, what happened was the sergeant came and told me to go down to see the captain. So I went down and there were about twenty-five fellows lined up against the wall, and so I went to one end of the line, and the captain started talking. He said, we're going to form a dangerous mission and some of you fellows are going to get killed. How many of you will volunteer? All of the fellows volunteered, and I volunteered.

KEN: So you then in April, sailed out of San Francisco on the USS Hornet, the aircraft carrier with your B-25 right?

JACOB: Yes, we left San Francisco and went under the Golden Gate Bridge on April Fool's day I thought it was.

KEN: And about seventeen, eighteen days later you flew over Nagoya Japan, and dropped bombs on Japan didn't you?

JACOB: We had to take off on the eighteenth of April and we were out in the ocean, and Doolittle was in position for take off, he was the first one, and our plane was number sixteen, it was the last one to go.

KEN: You then after dropping the bombs flew over China, but your plane ran out of gas, and you had to bail out, right?

JACOB: It was ten thirty at night when the pilot said that we're going to have too jump. We're out of gas.

KEN: That must have been frightening.

JACOB: Yeah! I'll say, and I was the first one to jump. So I got out of that airplane and I was told to pull the ripcord after counting to ten, and I counted pretty fast, and the parachute opened up all right and I landed on a high point.

KEN: Now you spent the next 42 months in a Japanese prisoners of war camp, didn't you?

JACOB: Yeah. I was captured the next day. I was in occupied China. The Japanese were all around us, and they caught all five of us.

KEN: Now when you were in prison, you were suffering greatly under the persecution of your captors, but they're was one book that came into your life that changed that. What was that?

JACOB: Well we were in prison for 3 years and 4 months. We were captured in China, but we were taken back to Tokyo and they questioned us and treated officers real mean and I got some real rough treatment too. But after 60 days they brought us back to China, and one fellow starved to death, and after he died the Emperor of Japan sent a letter to those prison officials in Naianking China, he told them that he was ashamed in the way they had been treating us. Well, here came the Bible, and I asked them why they were giving the Bible to us. They said that religion was good. When I got the Bible, I wanted to find out why do Christians think that the Bible is the word of God? So I read the Bible clear through it and I got so intrigued with the prophecy, and how God answered those prophets. I began to believe that the Bible really is God's word, and I don't understand it all, but I could understand that Jesus was a wonderful, supernatural person the way he did miracles and even died on the cross.

KEN: And that changed your attitude.

JACOB: That made a big influence on me.

KEN: It changed your attitude towards your captors, didn't it?

JACOB: Yeah, it did change my attitude, because God says we should live for him who died and rose again, live for Jesus. What was the purpose of Jesus? It was to come and save all that would be saved, and the Lord showed me that I should go and tell those poor people that I got the leading from the Lord to go back to Japan. So the Lord worked everything out, so we could go to Japan and work as missionaries for 30 years.

KEN: 30 years taking the gospel to the very people who had imprisoned you.

JACOB: Yes.

KEN: Jacob DeShazer, I just thank you for sharing testimony and how love moved into your heart.

JACOB: I think God did a marvelous thing. God does wonderful things for us if we just give Him a chance.

KEN: Jacob, I just thank you for being willing to come on to our broadcast and sharing your story with us today.

CONNIE: What an amazing story of the power of God to transform lives. And that's not the end of the story. Be sure to stay tuned for Lonnie's message today, when he'll share one more miracle that God worked in and through Jacob.

LONNIE: Connie, it's been said that the greatest miracle of God is a transformed life. It's something we ought to pray for daily, and it's the prayer that's expressed in our first song today, from the Good News Singers.

CONNIE: "Change My Heart O God," brought to us by the Good News Singers. If you'd like more information about the music you hear on our broadcast, it's always available at our website, at VOP.COM.

LONNIE: You know, Connie, I can't count the number of times that I've started feeling angry at someone, and I've just bowed my head and said Lord, please remove this from me, please just take away the frustration, the malice, the hatred that's building up in my heart. And you know, it doesn't always happen right away, but if we'll keep praying that prayer, God will answer.

CONNIE: If you could use a little help up that line, you might want to call our toll-free number and order a copy of a brand new Voice of Prophecy book called Rising Above Anger, written by the producer of our daily broadcast, David B. Smith.

LONNIE: I might just mention that this book would cost $11 in a bookstore, but we'll be glad to send you a copy for a minimum donation of just $10, when you call us at 1-800-872-0055 and ask for Rising Above Anger. And your $10 donation takes care of the postage within the US or Canada, so please, give us a call today.

CONNIE: We'll also share our mailing address a bit later, so have a pencil ready in case you'd like to write it down. But right now, let's listen to Lonnie's message, "How to Get Rid of Your Enemies."

How to Get Rid of Your Enemies

On the morning of December 7, 1941, US Army Corporal Jacob DeShazer was mad. I mean really, really mad!

And it wasn't just because he'd pulled KP duty at his army base.
News spread through the base that morning like fog rolling in off the Columbia River. Soon everyone's ears were tuned to the radio for the latest reports from Pearl Harbor. Could it really be that the Japanese had pulled a sneak attack on the US fleet? Could it really be that the whole world was being changed at that very moment, that the peaceful days when peeling potatoes and sharpening bayonets were the most dangerous things a U. S. G. I. had to do had suddenly come to an end?

How could anyone be so treacherous as to attack without a declaration of war? As the anger rose in Jacob's heart, he balled a potato up in his fist and threw it at the wall. "Jap, just wait and see what we'll do to you!" he shouted.
These were not idle words for Jacob. He knew now who his enemy was, and what his life would be dedicated to: Revenge against the Japanese!

It wasn't long before he got his chance. As we heard in our interview with him earlier in today's program, Jacob soon had an opportunity to volunteer for a top-secret mission whose main purpose was to avenge what had happened at Pearl Harbor. He spent the month of March, 1942 training for duties as a bombardier with the group that would come to be known as Doolittle's Raiders. Then at the beginning of April, he was on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet as it sailed out of San Francisco Harbor. As soon as the ship was out of port, the captain announced that the bombers on board were headed for Tokyo, and the crew members cheered wildly.

Well, if you heard our interview with Jacob DeShazer, you already know the rest of the story--or at least part of it. You know that after successfully bombing an oil storage depot in Nagoya, Japan, his plane flew on across the Sea of Japan. Then two hours inside Japanese-occupied China, they ran out of fuel and had to bail out. All five of the crewmembers were captured and imprisoned by the Japanese. Pilot William Farrow, and engineer/gunner Harold Spatz were executed in Shanghai six months later. Jacob and four others were sentenced to life in prison, and it was while he was a prisoner of war that hatred for his captors became so much a part of his life that Jacob nearly went insane.

Then he had the chance to read the Bible. For just three weeks. Three life-transforming weeks.

Suffering from dysentery, his body covered with boils, his limbs swollen with beriberi, he got down on his knees and prayed. Prayed that somehow Jesus' teachings about forgiveness could begin to be lived out in his life.

And it happened. The Holy Spirit began to work deep down in Jacob's angry heart where the need for revenge festered more painfully than any of the boils that erupted from his skin.

Forgiveness moved in, where vengeance had once reigned supreme. And finally, as Jacob made his peace with God, his mind became calm, and he began to love those whom he had once hated. Instead of wanting to drop bombs on his enemies, he began to want to share his love for Jesus with them, to teach them to love rather than hate.

But there's more to the story than that. In a moment, we're going to fast-forward to the rest of the story--the part that Jacob didn't tell in our interview. It's an amazing story of the power of God to transform lives, but before we get to that, let me ask you: Where did Jacob get the idea that he ought to forgive his enemies rather than hate them and try to get even with them?

In our programs recently, we've been looking at Jesus' teachings found in the

Sermon on the Mount. Last time, we considered the fact that Jesus calls upon us to live even more righteous lives than the Pharisees lived--even though these men focused their whole lives on obeying God's law.

After challenging us to live even more righteously than the Pharisees, Jesus illustrated what He meant in these words:

"You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not murder,' and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgment. But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, 'Raca!' shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, 'You fool!' shall be in danger of hell fire" (Matthew 5:21, 22, NKJV).

Do you see what Jesus is doing here?

He's upping the ante, so to speak. He's moving righteous living to a level higher than even the Pharisees thought it needed to be. They might be careful not to kill anyone and think that by doing that they had fulfilled the commandment.

But Jesus digs right down to the spirit of the law. He says that not killing someone isn't enough. Because if you're sitting around stewing, wishing you could kill someone--if you're harboring the kind of hatred, frustration, anger in your heart that makes you want to kill someone, well, that's against the law, too. You can be hauled into court in heaven and condemned just for wishing you could commit a crime!

Wow! That's steep! That makes the path to true righteousness ten times harder to trod. How in the world are you ever supposed to get to the point in your life where you never even speak an angry word?

Do you see what Jesus is talking about here? Do you see what He's saying we need? He's saying I need something more than just a stiff, strong, pharisaic determination to not break the law.

A Pharisee may refrain from killing people, but if he's going around angry, always wishing he could knock someone's block off, then the righteous behavior isn't good enough. And the resentment harbored in the soul is likely to come out in angry words.

So Jesus calls us to a higher form of righteousness. One that not only eschews bad behavior, but one that doesn't harbor the desire to do evil in the heart.
He says,

"Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift" (Matthew 5:23-24, NKJV).

Once again, He's calling us to a higher standard than the Pharisees wanted to meet. In their system of righteousness, the way to deal with sins that strained relationships was to go to the temple, offer a sacrifice, and consider the matter forgiven. All they had to do was ask God to forgive them, and they figured their record book was clean. No need to consider the feelings or needs of the person they had offended.

Jesus says No! That's not good enough. In fact, before you even go to the temple. Before you even seek reconciliation with God for the bad blood between you and your brother, you need to go to your brother (or sister--as the case may be), and get things straightened out there!

This is a more difficult, more strenuous kind of righteousness than even the Pharisees could invent for themselves. Because it's a kind of righteousness that digs right down into the center of our hearts and looks at the kinds of thoughts and feelings that we harbor there, and demands that we get those things straightened out.

It's not enough to look good on the outside. It's not enough to struggle and strain with our natural tendencies and keep our hands from reaching out and strangling that person that irritates us. We need to deal with the stuff in our hearts that makes us want to strangle them.

And that's not easy. In fact, it's impossible.

Did you hear me right? Did I say that Jesus was asking us to do something impossible?

Yes, that's what I said. Jesus asks us to do the impossible. He asks us to change our hearts. And we just can't do that!
At least not on our own. Not in our own power.

That's what Jacob DeShazer discovered in a filthy, freezing, vermin-infested prison cell in Nanking, China, as he read a borrowed Bible, and as he knelt in prayer, asking God to remove from him the simmering hatred for the Japanese that had festered into a boil on his heart. He couldn't do it on his own. But God could do it for him.

The kind of righteousness that Jesus demanded--that would bring about reconciliation even with people who had killed his friends, tortured him, deprived him, nearly starved him to death--that kind of righteousness doesn't spring from anywhere within the human soul. It must be planted there by God Himself.

And that's the kind of righteousness Jesus pointed us to in the Sermon on the Mount. The kind of righteousness that exceeds even what the Pharisees could achieve.

That's the kind of righteousness the Holy Spirit planted in Jacob DeShazer's heart. The kind of righteousness that enabled him to get rid of his enemies. Because he learned to love them instead of hate them. And after the war was over, as soon he had recovered and was strong enough, he enrolled in a Bible college and prepared to go back to Japan as a missionary, to teach the people there about the love and forgiveness of Jesus.

And now, for the most amazing part of the story. Fasten your seatbelts. It involves a miracle almost too fantastic to believe. But it's absolutely true.

When Jacob returned to Japan as a missionary, he wrote a little tract called "I Was a Prisoner of the Japanese." Jacob's number one enemy on December 7, 1941 was probably a man named Mitsuo Fuchida--the commander of the bomber squadron that struck Pearl Harbor at eight o'clock that morning.

In 1949, Commander Fuchida read that tract. And it set him to thinking. As he looked around him, he saw American Christian missionaries coming to Japan, ministering to those who so recently had been their mortal enemies. He heard stories of how Christians had helped Japanese soldiers who had been in POW camps in America. He began to read the Bible, and his heart too was transformed!

The man who had led the attack on Pearl Harbor became a Christian, as a direct result of the tract written by the American soldier who had helped carry out the first American bombing raid on Japan. And while Jacob DeShazer ministered to the Japanese, Mitsuo Fuchida went as a missionary to Jacob's country, to tell Americans how the love of God had transformed him.

These two men--warriors of the highest caliber--who had vowed revenge on each other's countries, both were humbled, changed, transformed by the love of God, until neither had an enemy left in the world.
That's Jesus' way to get rid of your enemies.

Won't you try it today, my friend? Let the transforming power of God's love, through His word, minister to your heart and replace any anger, bitterness, vengeance it finds there, with His love, and His peace.