The original issue can be found at: http://www.baptistpress.com/issue-03/16/1999 DISCLAIMER: Baptist Press should be credited for any reprinted stories that originate with BP. Suggested credit line: Reprinted from Baptist Press (www.baptistpress.com), news service of the Southern Baptist Convention. Please note that Baptist Press periodically carries stories from other sources by permission. Individuals interested in reprinting non-BP stories should contact the entity where the story originated to seek reprint permission. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Murders prompt neighboring churches to forge new ties in towns' crisis by Debbie Moore Date: March 16, 1999 - Tuesday GONZALES, La. (BP)--Blood-stained pews and flooring, together with the rancid smell of gunpowder and vivid memories of an evening filled with petrifying horror March 10, made the New St. John Baptist Church in Gonzales, La., an unsuitable place for a memorial service. In fact, church leaders said they will never use their building again.
The pastor and members of neighboring First Baptist Church of Gonzales, a Southern Baptist church a mile away, thus opened their doors and hearts to the National Baptist congregation still in trauma from the carnage that occurred during their Wednesday night Bible study.
A young father, 22, known for his violent anger, had burst into the church near the beginning of the 7 p.m. service. He first shot two bullets straight up, then told everyone to get down as he headed deliberately to the front in search of his estranged wife. He found her on the fourth row.
Within minutes, three people were killed and four others were wounded before the gunman, Shon Miller Sr., was shot and apprehended by police after fleeing the scene and hiding in a shed. He was found holding his gun to his head.
"Daddy!" was the last word 2-year-old Shon Miller Jr. spoke before his father reportedly looked him in the eye and shot him dead as he sat with his mother, Carla Vessel Miller, 24. She too was shot and killed where she sat in the previously peaceful sanctuary in Gonzales, a small town about 60 miles west of New Orleans. Just six months before she had met with her pastor, Clarence Stephens, for counseling at the church with her husband.
Besides killing his wife and son, Miller randomly pointed his 9 mm semiautomatic pistol at others in the church, stopping to reload once. He killed one more and injured four others at the church. Also, before arriving at the church, Miller killed a fourth person, his mother-in-law, Mildred Vessel, 53, execution-style in front of her home while she was sitting in her van.
Vessel had just arrived home after finishing her responsibilities at First Baptist Church, where she had been nursery director for more than 25 years, said FBC pastor Jim Law. Vessel’s daughter, who worked with her mother in the nursery, drove directly from First Baptist to New St. John church to attend the Bible study. Miller, who reportedly knew his wife’s schedule well, assumed she would go home with her mother before attending church. After shooting his wife’s mother, he headed for the church, which is near the house.
The massacre will not soon be forgotten by members of the two churches, Law said, nor by residents of the small town of about 7,000.
“An entire generation of children, including my own three children, was introduced to church life in the loving arms of this dear woman,” Law said about Vessel.
More than 1,000 people attended a March 15 memorial service at First Baptist Church, and as many people who could find room to stand attended the dismissal service March 16 before the bodies were buried. No one remembered ever being at such a service with three caskets, holding the bodies of three generations from one family, Law said.
While the event was a monumental tragedy, Law said he saw the memorial service as “a historical event for the community” as “walls have been taken down as we have shared together in this great loss of life. So many people here knew and loved Mildred and Carla.”
Four ministers from area churches participated in the memorial service at Law’s church. Besides Law and Stephens, the pastor of Vessel’s church, Do Right Baptist Church in Gonzales, and the pastor of one of the teenagers who was killed, gave eulogies. Many people helped with food, and a fund has been established to help the families involved pay medical and funeral expenses.
Leaders of New St. John Baptist Church have chosen to construct a new building rather than meet in their pretty, little white building that prior to March 10 had been the site of sweet memories. They held their Sunday services March 14 in the Gonzales Civic Center.
Many young people came forward to dedicate their lives to Christ during the March 15 service, Law said, noting two gang members laid their jackets on the altar and said, “We don’t want this life anymore.” A 19-year-old boy was one of the four people killed; he was shot in the head as he sat behind Carla Vessel Miller. Three other teenagers were among the wounded.
“We have a God who is a acquainted with violence. His own son, the Lord Jesus Christ, died a violent death,” Law said during the memorial service.
“God is doing a great work in the midst of this tragedy in our community,” Law said in a Baptist Press interview March 16.
As of March 16, Miller is being guarded at bedside in New Orleans' Charity Hospital, according to an article in the Times-Picayune daily newspaper. The lower half of his body was paralyzed when a stray bullet struck him during his arrest.
The two men whom Miller had forced at gunpoint to drive him to both his mother-in-law's house and the church were able to get into the church and warn Stephens of what they thought was about to occur. But as Stephens left the sanctuary to call the police, Miller entered the church. Stephens was about to preach on a passage in the third chapter of the Gospel of John, he said in a March 12 Times-Picayune article. "I was going to tell people to be strong in these trying and strange times," he said.
"The safest place in the world I always thought was a church," Gonzales Police Chief Bill Landry said, also in the March 12 issue of the Times-Picayune. "Now that sanctuary has been broken. We'll all be a long time getting over this."
-------------------------------------------------------------------- Missions day camp at SBC to explore ‘I Can Do It, Too!’ by Lynne Jones Date: March 16, 1999 - Tuesday ALPHARETTA, Ga. (BP)--Special activities are planned again this year for children of parents attending the Southern Baptist Convention in Atlanta. The "I Can Do It, Too!" day camp will be Tuesday and Wednesday, June 15-16.
The day camp is for boys and girls who will have completed grades one through six by June of this year. It is contracted through the mission education team of the North American Mission Board with Duane Ortego, childhood education consultant and former missionary to South Korea. Ortego coordinated day camp activities last year in Salt Lake City.
In addition to the regular mission education emphasis, career missionaries will be on hand to share their testimonies with the children. The day camp also will include field trips and mission points.
Registration is open to the first 200 children, and pre-registration is available by calling the LifeWay Christian Resource Center Advanced Registration line at 1-800-254-2022 or through the Internet at www.registration@lifeway.com. This year the cost is $70. The schedule is Tuesday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (lunch included) and Wednesday 8 a.m. to noon. Parents also will be required to sign a medical release for their children.
Volunteers staff the day camp, and anyone who is interested in volunteering should call Ortego at (770) 704-0267.
Day campers should dress comfortably and are required to wear a day camp wristband, day camp T-shirt, soft-sole recreation shoes and socks.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- Most Texas Baptist churches still using LifeWay literature by Herb Hollinger Date: March 16, 1999 - Tuesday NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--More than 80 percent of the nearly 5,000 Baptist churches in Texas purchased Bible-based literature during the winter quarter from LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention, LifeWay told Baptist Press.
The March 12 response from the SBC publishing house was requested after media reports that the Baptist General Convention of Texas had approved spending up to $250,000 for the “development, production and distribution of literature” for Texas Baptist churches.
According to a March 3 story in the Texas weekly newsjournal, Baptist Standard, the “biblically based, Texas-focused” Bible study literature will appear in March 2000. The announcement by the BGCT followed approval by messengers to the 1997 state convention meeting of a recommendation “that literature and other resources for Sunday school, discipleship training, missions organizations and other Bible study groups be developed as either a supplement to existing materials or a substitute for existing materials for those who so choose.”
According to the state paper, the literature project, with an authorization to spend $250,000, is being developed by the BGCT Sunday school/discipleship division.
With more than 80 percent of the state’s churches using LifeWay-related products, James T. Draper Jr., president of LifeWay Christian Resources, said LifeWay is “grateful for the opportunity that has been ours for 108 years to provide Bible-based literature for Southern Baptist churches, including almost 4,000 in Texas.
“Following input from Texas Baptists and others, we are excited that our 21st century curriculum, with its increased options, will contribute at an even higher level to spiritual growth of persons of all ages,” Draper said. “Through evangelistic efforts such as FAITH and other new initiatives, we are committed to continue partnering with Texas churches in achieving the Great Commission.”
Publication of the Texas materials does not signal that the Texas convention is forming a “publishing house,” despite critics’ claims, a BGCT official told the Baptist Standard. He said Cooperative Program unified budget funds will not be used to print and distribute the materials but the article did not identify from where the funds would come.
After the market for the literature develops, it is to be produced on a “cost-recovery” basis -- with subscription fees paying for publication, the Baptist Standard reported.
The Texas convention has hired a Georgia company to develop the curriculum with writers to be “well-known, reliable Texas Baptists,” the paper said. The literature will be non-dated quarterlies.
Traditionally, the SBC publishing house has produced Bible study literature for most Southern Baptist churches, although some also use other literature available from a number of independent sources. However, this will be the first time, apparently, a state convention related to the Southern Baptist Convention will produce Bible study literature for its affiliated churches.

-------------------------------------------------------------------- BWA to send to United Nations reports of religious persecution by Wendy Ryan Date: March 16, 1999 - Tuesday WASHINGTON (BP)--The Baptist World Alliance is asking Baptists around the world to document instances of religious persecution which then will be sent to the United Nations for action.
"Religious freedom is under threat around the world,” said Denton Lotz, BWA general secretary. During the BWA executive committee meeting March 8-11 in Washington, Lotz distributed a form which Baptist leaders can use and send to the BWA offices in Washington. Forms are available from the BWA office and will be posted on the BWA website, www.bwanet.org.
George Younger, BWA representative to the United Nations in New York, in his report strongly urged Baptist leaders to send documented reports of religious persecution to him that he can present to the United Nations. "Religious persecution is now a big issue with the U.N. and the climate at the U.N. is very good for support of those who are persecuted for their faith," Younger said.
Persecution, civil war and even natural disasters, however, have not stopped the work of evangelization, as Baptist leaders at the BWA meeting recounted stories of evangelism and church growth around the world.
"With all of the persecution in Asia, there is a tremendous movement of God's Spirit with different people from different backgrounds,” said Bonny Resu, general secretary of the Asian Baptist Federation.
Resu reported enormous growth in Baptist churches and baptized believers in Nepal and in Orissa, India, where Australian Baptist missionary Graham Staines and his two sons recently were burned to death. Baptists, who number more than 400,000, are the largest Christian group in Orissa.
Mar Gay Gyi, general secretary of the Myanmar (Burma) Baptist Convention reported there are more than 10,000 baptized believers and a community of 50,000 Baptists among the Wa tribe in Myanmar. For 20 years, the Wa people suffered under communistic rule that ended in 1980. "As soon as there was freedom, we were allowed to go in and do mission," he said. Burmese Baptists planted churches, started schools and helped with a water supply system.
Mar Gay Gyi also said the state-sponsored Buddhist faith affects their evangelists, but does not stop the commitment of Burmese Baptists to double their churches and members by 2000. Currently there are 1.2 million Baptists in Burma. He reported just three weeks earlier more than 40 people were converted in a village, as Burmese Baptists focus not only on the hill tribes, but in the towns and villages of Burma.
In Latin America, the destructive effects of Hurricane Mitch, which hit several countries late last year, did not stop a continental, evangelistic meeting in Guatemala that saw 7,000 people accept Jesus Christ in one week.
"God is glorified even in tragedies," said Rosalio Ramirez, general secretary of the Guatemala Baptist Convention.
Ramirez told Baptist leaders that the meeting, part of the Latin America evangelistic campaign, "There Is Life in Jesus Christ," was planned for Guatemala two months before the hurricane hit. Plans were made to cancel, but the people from Nicaragua and Honduras wanted to come. "Do not cancel, we are coming in God's name to say there is life in Jesus Christ," Ramirez said he was told by the Nicaraguans and Hondurans. For three days 160 people traveled without food from Nicaragua, and 100 came from Honduras. "In the middle of everything, the hand of God has been with us," Ramirez said.
Concerning Kosovo, Theodor Angelov, former president of the Bulgarian Baptist Union and former president of the European Baptist Federation, reported, "If peace comes soon, we will establish several churches in Kosovo.”
Morris H Chapman, president of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, now serving a two-year term as president of the North American Baptist Fellowship, pleaded for Baptists in North America to be involved in evangelism. "We are here with the mandate of the Great Commission to go and make disciples, "Chapman said.
Baptist leaders at the executive meeting thanked BWA President Nilson Fanini for his strong evangelistic emphasis, which has given many Baptist groups an identifying goal for the last decade in this century. In his message, Fanini reported more than 2,000 people had accepted Christ as Savior in crusades he has held in the last year.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- BWA leaders endorse statement on issues facing at-risk children by Wendy Ryan Date: March 16, 1999 - Tuesday WASHINGTON (BP)--The Baptist World Alliance executive committee endorsed "The Oxford Statement on Children at Risk" during its March 8-11 meeting in Washington.
The statement asks Christian churches to be aware of problems facing children globally, to support programs to assist at-risk children and to pray regularly for these children and their families.
Recommended to the executive committee by the BWA’s Baptist World Aid committee, the Oxford Statement was adopted at a consultation on children at risk in Oxford , England, two years ago involving 51 representatives from 38 evangelical ministries from Africa, Asia, Europe and North and South America.
Among United Nations statistics on children cited at the BWA meeting:
-- more than 35,000 die every day from malnutrition.
-- 40 million lose their lives each year by abortion.
-- 100 million are abandoned each year and 10 million are sexually exploited.
-- nearly 2 million are killed in war each year and countless more maimed.
Among other challenges facing at-risk children are drug and alcohol abuse, child slavery and lack of education, the BWA executive committee was told.
Already as part of the BWA human rights program, Thorwald Lorenzen, chair of the BWA Human Rights Commission, has written a booklet, "The Rights of the Child," detailing many of the problems children face and relaying firsthand accounts of BWA visits to countries where children suffer especially from war. This booklet is available from the Baptist World Alliance.
In news on another children's project, Karl Heinz Walter, general secretary of the European Baptist Federation, reported more than 3,255 children from Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine, countries most affected by the 1997 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, have been hosted by Baptist churches in Europe. Walter said studies have shown beneficial results to children who are able to leave the affected areas and go away for a vacation and healthful care.
Relief for debtor nations, African development, racism and other justice and development concerns also were addressed during the BWA executive committee meeting.
The BWA executive committee again called on Baptists to support Jubilee 2000, a resolution on relief to debtor nations approved during BWA General Council meeting in Durban, South Africa.
The BWA president and general secretary will write the alliance’s 192 member bodies and ask them to take action on the resolution that asks the world's richer nations to forgive the debts of 30 of the poorest nations as part of the biblical concept of Jubilee and as a gift to them to begin the new millennium.
Donald Lawrence, president of the BWA youth department who supports Jubilee 2000, said, "In Jamaica, we spend more on debt repayment than on development," while Paul Montacute, director of Baptist World Aid, said much of the money given for hurricane relief in Latin America is being used for debt repayment.
"Development is the critical area of need," said George Younger, BWA representative to the United Nations in New York, who underscored especially developmental needs in Africa.
Younger said the United Nations has made the needs of Africa a special focus and he called on the BWA to do the same. "The BWA cannot neglect Africa," he said, “and we must move to the point where the whole developing world is the focus for our evangelistic and humanitarian activity."
African Baptist leaders supported the call for Jubilee and asked for prayer especially for Angola, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, countries torn apart by civil war.
Nigerian Baptist leader and BWA Vice President Osadolor Imasogie also asked Baptists to pray for the newly elected democratic leader in Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo. Baptists are giving him their support. Obasanjo, educated in Baptist schools, has said his three and a half years’ imprisonment or, "sabbatical," as he has described it, renewed his Baptist faith and made him more patient and tolerant.
Imasogie, who describes himself as "a personal friend of the new president," said he translated three books Obasanjo had written in prison, one of which had been smuggled out to Imasogie.
Frank Adams, general secretary of the All Africa Baptist Fellowship, said African Baptist leaders in their meeting last July in Durban, South Africa, called on Baptist churches in Africa to develop and live out an understanding of the gospel that will address the poverty, war, unemployment, AIDS and other needs of Africa.
Theodor Angelov, former president of the Bulgarian Baptist Union and former president of the European Baptist Federation, said freedom in Europe has created "a new iron curtain of poor and rich countries."
"We must help the poor and the hundreds of refugees," Angelov said.
Supporting the call of the BWA Summit of Baptists Against Racism held in Atlanta in January, the executive committee agreed to take a motion to the July General Council meeting in Dresden, Germany, that would make the first 10 years of the new millennium "A Decade to Promote Racial Justice" around the world.
BWA General Secretary Denton Lotz said BWA also will be providing specific suggestions to member bodies to help in the fight for racial justice.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- Expectant couple put trust in God over medical science’s hopelessness by Bryan Cribb Date: March 16, 1999 - Tuesday LOUISVILLE, Ky. (BP)--The two parents watched the screen anxiously and with awe. The head appeared. The arms twitched. Then the feet wiggled -- the feet of their 18-week-old baby.
For Lee and Dena Smith, the day -- April 10, 1997 -- and the unborn child were answers to years of praying. Seven to be exact. The ultrasound technician could sense their excitement and smiled kindly as she cheerfully chatted about each new discovery.
Then silence.
As the second anniversary of that day approaches, Lee talks about the day as if it were yesterday.
Unnerved by the sudden stillness, Lee tentatively asked what was wrong. No answer. Lee watched the technician scan the spine and brain stem. He asked again.
"I do see a problem," said the technician. "And the doctor needs to look at it before I tell you what I think."
The doctor looked grim. He compassionately, yet firmly, told the tragic news: Their child had an incomplete formation of its spine -- a birth defect known as spina bifida. Accompanying this rare abnormality was hydrocephalus -- an abnormal increase in spinal fluid in the head cavity which leaves no room for brain development.
This neural tube defect had dashed the Smiths’ hopes for a child, at least a healthy one.
More tests at a research hospital revealed a grave situation.
Doctors offered no hope, explaining the baby would die in utero due to the fluid build-up. If, by a slim chance, the child lived, she would exist in a mentally vegetative state, totally paralyzed.
"Really the only option for you is to terminate the pregnancy now," said one doctor. The Smiths were devastated.
"I remember going to the doctor’s office the first time. I thought that this is what Abraham must have felt like when the child of his faith was in the womb of Sarah," recalled Lee, a master of divinity student at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. "And now, having this news, I wondered if I may have felt like Abraham did when God said to sacrifice Isaac."
The choice was clear according to the doctor. Nothing within human rationale justified carrying the baby to term.
But, something in the Smith’s faith said, "Let God have his way. If stillbirth was required, then the Lord would give the grace to endure that."
So Lee and Dena agreed to wait. Their decision shocked the doctor. "The doctor acted like we were absolutely foolish," said Lee, a native of Raleigh, N.C. "He was short with us and very uncompassionate."
“’Well, if you’re determined to do that, I’ll see you in a month,’” the doctor said condescendingly, Lee recalled. “’In a month you’ll see that the hydrocephalus has continued to worsen. It will not go away. It will continue to build up until the child’s head cavity explodes in the womb.’”
When the Smiths returned home, Lee called everyone he knew -- the deacons in the church where he pastored, his family, his friends. The Smiths’ request was simple and earnest: They did not care whether the child was mentally or physically handicapped, they wanted a child -- a life.
Church members began to pray. And they instructed Lee to take that Sunday off. "No, I want to preach," Lee said.
He preached from Matthew 14, which tells of Jesus calming both the storm and the fears of his disciples. He is a "God of our storms," Lee said.
During the altar call, many came to pray. Overcome with emotion, Lee and Dena left and went home. The congregation stayed, petitioning God long into the afternoon.
The following month seemed to last forever.
"During that time we just prayed, prayed and prayed. And the Scripture that came to my mind is in the James 5:16b, which reads, ‘The fervent prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much.’ I began to hold to that Scripture," Lee said.
The Lord also spoke to Dena that month. She read a book about the women approaching Jesus’ tomb to anoint his body. On the way to the tomb, with despairing hearts, the women had no clue that the stone was rolled away. They were in their "grief journey." But when they arrived, a miracle had happened.
"I don’t know if God can do this in my situation or not. I don’t know if this is my wishful thinking," Dena said at the time. "But I feel that the Spirit of God is saying to me, ‘You’re in your grief journey, but the work is already accomplished. The stone has been rolled away.’"
She believed it, and Lee believed it as well.
"It was a comforting sense of the Spirit of God, saying, ‘You don’t know it yet, but I’ve already dealt with this problem,’" Lee said.
The day for the follow-up exams finally came.
As the doomsaying doctor began the ultra-sound, Lee noticed something different. A full spine. Brain tissue developing. And no fluid.
The doctor didn’t say a word. After about 20 minutes of testing, he turned the machine off. "You’re child is fine," he said bluntly.
"I don’t know what to say about it. The spine is fully developed. The ventricles of the brain where hydrocephalus builds up are normal size. I don’t have an explanation for how this happened," the doctor said.
"Let me explain it to you," Lee said, reciting James 5.
By that time word had spread, and a crowd had gathered. "I announced that continued fervent prayer could reverse what in the scientific realm doctors would classify as a hopeless case," Lee said.
Lee had another word for the doctor: "If there is one-in-a-million chance for a natural remedy, not to mention supernatural intervention, doctors shouldn’t tell people there’s no hope. That one-in-a million might be my child."
On Sept. 12, 1997, the one-in-a-million Alison Hayley Smith came into the world.
"She’s doing great," Lee said.
Since then, Lee has shared this miracle in a dozen churches, incorporating the story into his sermon on Matthew 14, "The God of our Storms."
God has used Alison’s story to minister to others swirling in the hurricanes of life, Lee said. Following one service, a lady whose baby had the same condition approached Lee.
"I encouraged her that a handicapped life was better that no life," Lee said. "Sometimes God chooses to heal, and sometimes he doesn’t. When he doesn’t, he’s still the same God. And, the God of all comfort makes himself available, and his grace is sufficient."
The Smiths view the their storm to be like that of Job. "You almost want to say, ‘Lord, why did you put me through that month of hell if you were going to heal the child?’ Well, for the same reason he put those disciples through that long night of toil upon the sea of Galilee in Matthew 14 -- as a faith-building tool.
"No matter how dire the news is, I don’t believe there’s ever a hopeless situation. There’s always hope in the gospel," Lee said. "God is able to do abundantly more than we could ever ask or think."
-------------------------------------------------------------------- Bible with visual design for teens also may appeal to ‘big peopleR by Terri Lackey Date: March 16, 1999 - Tuesday NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--If your kids aren’t interested in reading the KJV, NIV, RSV or even the Good News translations of the Bible, perhaps you could tempt them to indulge in a cartoon interpretation.
Broadman & Holman Publishers has released a Bible designed in comic strip format to entice teenagers -- ages 14 and up -- to partake in God’s Word. B&H, the trade book division of LifeWay Christian Resources, purchased the rights from a British publishing firm, Lion, to sell the Graphic Bible in North America and Canada.
“This is a Bible for kids who are losing interest in Sunday school or who have never set foot in a church,” said Dee Ann Grand, manager for B&H children’s products. “It’s a Bible that will appeal to kids who are comic book lovers or who like to read graphic novels.”
It might also catch the playful eye of “big people,” she suggested.
Adults who pick up one of the 256-page Bibles for their children shouldn’t be surprised to find they don’t want to fork it over.
“You know those cereal commercials where the parents can’t quit eating their kids’ breakfast? This Bible is kind of like that. Once you pick up it and start reading it, you don’t want to give it back,” Grand said.
The Graphic Bible’s artist is well-known British illustrator Jeff Anderson, who has worked for Marvel UK and drawn the DC comic character Judge Dredd. The writer, also British, is Mike Maddox, who has scripted for DC Comics of the Batman and Superman fame. Both are Christians.
“Once I became a Christian, this just seemed like a dream project,” said Anderson, who worked on the Graphic Bible project more than five years. “Just getting started took six months. I did more than I normally would as an illustrator.
“The special thing was breaking each bit down into parts. I spent a couple of hours a day reading (the Bible), making thumbnails, thinking about angles.”
The Graphic Bible is divided into about 100 biblical episodes, from the Creation to John’s vision of Jesus’ second coming.
Anderson said the Bible is a natural for graphic illustration.
“It has such great stories. I could have made it five times as long.”
“That’s the great thing about comics,” he said, “It’s like the cinema plus the printed word. You can see how people are feeling.”
The Graphic Bible, Grand said, is B&H’s way of enticing teenagers away from their computer games and television sets and into the Word.
“We want to pull kids away from the computer screen by showing them that the Bible has just as much action and drama as those awful movies they love,” Grand said.
After all, the Holy Bible does portray some famous rifts, like the ones between Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Rachel and Leah, David and Goliath, Christ and Satan.
“Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were thrown into a fiery furnace and Daniel was thrown to the lions, and they all lived,” Grand said. “You can’t get better drama than that. And there’s even a happy ending.”
The Graphic Bible can be purchased in LifeWay Christian Stores or can be ordered by calling 1-800-233-1123.