P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

ONE PRISONER AGAINST A HUNDRED GUARDS

Is it realistic to ever allow for the reality that some temptations are simply too overpowering to resist? In our frail humanity – one lonely sinner going up against Satan and his entire galactic band of demonic troops? Yesterday we took a chilling line from that king of all courtroom dramas, a deadly Friday morning, where all of the people of Israel, seemingly, are shouting in unison: “Crucify Him! Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” And even though Pilate knows this pale, bleeding, beaten Prisoner standing in front of him is innocent, not guilty of any crime, not deserving of death . . . he just can’t stand up to the cries of the mob. The Bible cryptically records the moment of surrender:

“And their shouts prevailed.”

Does it still happen that way today? Maybe you’ve found yourself locked in an inappropriate sexual relationship. Perhaps you’ve even been living with someone for two or three years, and now as you come to Christ, and begin to want to follow Him as your Lord – be obedient to His commandments – it sounds almost impossible. Back UP from this level of intimacy? Go from sex back to just dating? So many life patterns lead right into the bedroom. The pathways to fornication are well smoothed by hundreds of past experiences. How could it be possible to do a U-turn at this late stage?

It might be that discouragement is your daily enemy. And the devil doesn’t just send one of his fallen angels to your condo; you sense the presence of twenty of them, as the news from your kids is bad. Things with your spouse: bad. Dynamics at the company where you work: bad. Politics at church: bad. Who could blame you for hoisting the white flag and giving in?

It’s not appropriate for me to sit here in a nice suit and comfortable radio studio and simply tell you that “With Christ, all things are possible.” I mean, in Christ all things ARE possible; the book of Philippians says that, and I believe every single word in the book of Philippians. But instead of preaching at you from my sofa of ease and spiritual tranquility, let me take you to a place where the white flags were real.

The year was 1967, and the bullets and bombs were flying in a country called Vietnam. A young naval aviator named John had been serving aboard a Navy vessel, the Oriskany, and one day as he was participating in an “Alpha Strike” over Hanoi, a Soviet-made SAM – surface-to-air missile – got him. He tried “jinking,” all the evasive maneuvers they’d taught him in flight school, but no good. With the right wing blown off his A-4, he had to bail out at 550 miles an hour over enemy territory.

And for the next five-and-a-half years, young John McCain – now a United States Senator and one-time candidate for the Presidency – was held captive in a Vietcong P.O.W. camp. And in his autobiography, Faith of My Fathers, he describes the horrors and the persecution. There were times his captors flogged the inmates with fan belts. They were starved, beaten, tortured. One of the most devastating forms of abuse was simple: solitary confinement. No human contact, no visiting, no talking, nothing.

“It’s an awful thing, solitary,” he writes. “The first few weeks are the hardest. The onset of despair is immediate, and it is a formidable foe.”

The American GIs devised a clever tapping system that divided up the English alphabet into five sectors: A through E, then F through J, and so on. A first tap would indicate which “sector,” then the second tap would reveal a letter in that row of five. John quickly learned to notice if someone out there was tapping out his name: 3-2, 1-3, 1-3, 1-1, 2-4, and 3-3. M-C-C-A-I-N. But the guards were very vigilant about breaking the will of these captives, and found many brutal ways of doing so. Every evening, they were forced to hear a broadcast of “Hanoi Hannah, the ‘Voice of Vietnam,’” with something the Senator now calls “a half hour of witless propaganda.”

But the main thing these captors with their AK-47s wanted was to force confessions out of the prisoners. With McCain, of course, they had a juicy target. He was the son of a four-star admiral, and that’s a lot of gold braid on someone’s sleeve, so they tantalizingly dangled an “early release” in front of him. But the Code of Conduct for American Prisoners of War, Article III, read:

“I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.”

So the interrogations began. At first, still somewhat strong and healthy, McCain managed to make a joke out of it. The first time they asked him for information about his unit, he recited the names of the offensive line of the Green Bay Packers, “and said they were members of [his] squadron.” But very soon, the humor of the situation faded. As in our opening illustration, it wasn’t just one-on-one. The Vietcong persecutors came at him in droves. The psychological torture was unbearable. It was relentless. And McCain writes later:

“Despairing of any relief from pain and future torture, and fearing the close approach of my moment of dishonor, I tried to take my life.”

Looking back now, he honestly can’t say if it was a full-fledged suicide attempt, and thank God it didn’t succeed, but the moment was that perilous. And finally, just as in Pilate’s hall, “the shouts prevailed.” Weakened beyond description and battered in his spirit, this courageous flyer finally capitulated. “I am a black criminal,” the clumsy pre-drafted document read, “and I have performed the deeds of an air pirate. I almost died and the Vietnamese people saved my life. The doctors gave me an operation that I did not deserve.” With a trembling hand, and his heart breaking, John McCain signed the coerced confession.

“The next two weeks . . . were the worst . . . of my life,” he admits now. “I couldn’t rationalize away my confession. I was ashamed. I felt faithless, and couldn’t control my despair. I shook, as if my disgrace were a fever.”

A page or so later, this broken pilot relates that many men there at the “Hanoi Hilton” were broken in a similar way. And the reason was simple: the relentless torture, the bruising psychological tactics employed by the enemy were simply more than mortals could bear. It couldn’t be done. It was a miracle if a single guy got through the war years without capitulating in some form.

Well, friend, what can we say but this: we live in a cruel world, and Jesus is a merciful, kind Savior. Who of us could have done better? I think how a brash disciple named Peter was so sure he had the stamina to face down Satan’s armies. “I’ll never betray You, Lord,” he vowed, putting his hand on a stack of scrolls. “No way, never, not a chance. Money in the bank.” Just hours later, he acted like he had never once heard of a man named Jesus. Looking at even that ragtag army of temple guards and a couple of silvery swords, he was quickly overcome. And yet, when he later looked at Jesus, there was nothing but forgiveness and continuing friendship written on His face.

Now let’s backtrack a bit. Because the inspired Word of God does tell us this: we’re supposed to win! Defeat is not heaven’s plan! Notice from James 4:7:

“Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

We’ve been talking about Pilate facing an entire army of shouting zealots, and McCain looking into the hardened faces of many captors. A hundred to one. And thank God for His presence and His merciful forgiveness at those moments. But how often do you and I put ourselves in a place where we know the devil is . . . and truly, we wouldn’t have to be there. We don’t really have to be in that hotel room where there’s pay-per-view, but there we are. We don’t have to pick up that mental diary that makes us fondle our grudges and past resentments, but there it is in our hand.

And let’s add this. Is it possible that when we indulge a favorite sin repeatedly, until it almost wears a groove in our brain and lifestyle, one demon kind of turns into a hundred? Someone once observed that silvery threads soon turn into steel cables, and some of what might feel like a marching battalion is a bad habit of our own creation. How much better, friend, to “resist the devil” when it is only one devil, and not the entire cavalry from below!

I’m thankful that even when we’re overcome, we can know the presence of Jesus. One Christmas Day, there in the POW camp, McCain and his fellow inmates were actually given a halfway decent meal and the bonus of five extra minutes standing outside in the sun. There was a Vietcong “gun guard” – just a kid with a rifle over his shoulder. Once before, without speaking, he had loosened the ropes in the interrogation room where John was being held overnight. Now, on the day honoring the birth of Jesus, this same kid slowly walked over. Not a word. Not a glint of recognition. But the young enemy warrior, using his sandaled foot, carefully drew a Christian cross in the dirt. The two men stood there, looking at the symbol of forgiveness and renewal. For just a moment, the presence of Jesus was real in that place . . . and then the prison guard rubbed it out and walked away.