When Jacob Deshazer went as one of Jimmy Doolittles raiders on Japan on April 18, 1942, he was an atheist. He was captured and imprisoned by the Japanese. He saw two of his companions shot by a firing squad. He saw another die of slow starvation.
During the long months, he pondered the question of why the Japanese hated him, and why he hated them. He began to recall some of the things he had heard about Christianity.
Boldly, he asked his, jailers if they could get him a Bible. At first they laughed boisterously, as at a good joke, then grew ugly and warned him to stop making a nuisance of himself. But he kept asking.
A year and a half later – May 1944 – a guard brought him a Bible, flung it at him, and said, “Three weeks you have. Three weeks, then I take it away.”
True to his word, in three weeks the guard took the Bible away, and DeShazer never saw it again.
In 1948, DeShazer, his wife, and infant son were on their w back to Japan as missionaries, all because he asked for a Bible and a Japanese guard gave him one for three weeks.
“For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword…” (Hebrews 4:12)