I hadn’t completed even my 1st semester at college when the Dean of Students paid me an unscheduled visit. Hebinformed me I was being relocated to another dormitory because I posed an unfavorable arson risk where I currently resided. Humiliatingly, I was burned in effigy in front of probably 30 guys from my dorm who came and cheered my very public, vicarious execution.
What was this all about? My two roommates didn’t share either my enthusiasm for Jesus, much less, my silent disappointment over their licentious lives. So they made a straw-stuffed replica of me at the end of a noose and lit me up. They even torched my favorite flannel shirt and blue jeans. (Fortunately they didn’t ignite my only other set; I was wearing them at the time.)
Now lest you picture that at age 17, I was the next Billy Graham, you need to understand that my courage for Christ was not much longer than my nose. I tried to live for Jesus on the secular campus: I’d read my Bible regularly; I’d attend Sunday worship and mid-week InterVarsity Christian Fellowship meetings faithfully; I’d even share the Gospel sporadically; but I was no Hananiah, Mishael or Azariah.
In case these three names don’t ring a mental bell for you, they too were mid-teenagers living away from home, and they too got burned – but in much more than effigy. Why not attend this Sunday morning to hear more about their “Red Hot Testimonies?”
