American chaplain Henry Gerecke had never met a monster before. But as a man on a mission, racing across Europe in a jeep, he was about to come face to face with 15 such monsters. Monsters who had helped slaughter millions during the Nazi regime. Monsters who were now rotting in 4-metre x 2-metre prison cells in Nuremberg, awaiting hanging… Even monsters need spiritual counselling, it seems…
Four times I’ve used that illustration to start a sermon, and all four times I’ve had parishioners hooked. An unknown Lutheran preacher from St Louis sent to save the worst of Hitler’s cronies with nothing more than a handshake and plenty of prayer? No one’s looking at their phones until they find out what’s next.
I love sermon illustrations. People connect to stories. And the church has the best stories bar none. Great illustrations move the heart. Poor ones annoy like blow flies. The key distinguishing feature is they amplify the Big Idea of our Bible passage. They show us what the preacher’s message looks and feels like in the flesh. Scared about sharing the Gospel? Struggling to forgive that person who has hurt you? Try inviting the man who had set up the Gestapo to church! Testimonies of real Christians facing real opposition in the real world are everywhere, but finding powerful ones for sermon illustrations can be like chasing moonbeams. Here are my five picks for biographies and autobiographies that may have been forgotten, but contain timeless stories.
1. Mission at Nuremberg: An American Army Chaplin and the Trial of the Nazis (Tim Townsend)
Actor and Rabbitoh-in-chief Russell Crowe’s portrayal of Nazi military leader Hermann Göring in last year’s Nurembergfilm has renewed popular interest in this fading moment of modern history. The man who was Göring’s chaplain was the aforementioned Henry Gerecke, whose story has been previously covered herehttps://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/from-hitlers-wolves-to-christs-lambs/ .
Gerecke’s story of ministering to the Nazi prisoners raises plenty of questions, the greatest being: are the worst of us outside Christ’s mercy and salvation? The answer is made clear when war criminal Fritz Sauckel yells out: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” Before the hangman’s rope is placed on the last of the 15 prisoners under Gerecke’s care, you’ll be challenged to see that even in the darkest prison full of the darkest hearts, Jesus is working there.
2. Consumed by Hate, Redeemed by Love: How a Violent Klansman Became a Champion of Racial Reconciliation (Thomas A. Tarrants)
In the summer of 1968, young Tom Tarrants gunned his car through the streets of Meridian, Mississippi, a primary school teacher bleeding to death beside him. Both had just attempted to blow up a Jewish man’s home. Both had been fired upon during an FBI ambush. By night’s end only one would survive.
Tarrants’ autobiography recalls how he and his friend Kathy got entangled in the hate-filled White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan that eventually led to Tom being imprisoned and his jailhouse conversion to Christianity. Only the mercy and love of Jesus could empty such rage and racism from his heart. This page-turner shows how Christ’s love overcomes the lies of the world, but also how one repentant Christian can turn his life around and become a force for change.
3. Saving My Assassin: A Memoir (Virginia Prodan)
Being a Romanian Christian under the brutal 20th century dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu was bad enough. But when you’re a human rights lawyer defending fellow Christians for simple things like taking Bibles across the border, you become a public enemy.
That’s the story of Virginia Prodan, who has a gun pulled on her late one night in her office by a government assassin. Not only does some quick prompting by the Holy Spirit to share the Gospel save her life, but it saves her killer as well. Amazingly, the man walks away from his bloody profession, repents, converts, and miraculously becomes a Christian pastor. You wouldn’t want to fall asleep during one of his sermons!
This wonderful autobiography covers many themes, including what we worship, national persecution, atheism, forgiveness, and the power of faith.
4. Mrs Bartlett and Her Class at the Metropolitan Tabernacle: A Biography by Her Son Edward Bartlett (Steven Hudgik).
Six prostitutes gatecrash a 19th century Sunday school classroom looking to make trouble. Four walk out as Christians.
The remarkable ministry of a reluctant South London teacher named Lavinia Bartlett has been all but been overshadowed by her illustrious boss, the prince of preachers, Charles Spurgeon himself. But Bartlett is a powerhouse of her own. She grew a lacklustre class of just three girls into 500 within a year, then 800 weekly, allegedly making it the largest Sunday school in the world.
Not bad for a 53-year-old woman who had never been to a Bible college, wasn’t a scholar, and who thought her best days were behind her. Her secret? Prayer, the Gospel and pleading with sinners using God’s strength.
When she died, the streets were packed with thousands. Spurgeon said at her funeral: “I have this day lost from my side one of the most faithful, fervent, and efficient of my helpers.”
5. My Life Without God: The Rest of the Story (William J. Murray).
Back in 2017, the Netflix film, The Most Hated Woman in America, was lauded by some young viewers for bringing to light the story of their new anti-hero, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, founder of American Atheists. O’Hair famously won the battle to ban organised prayer in American public schools, using her teenage son, William, as plaintiff.
The irony is William would become a Baptist minister in his 30s, attracting hatred and ostracism from his famous mother.
Murray’s autobiography is brutally honest and refreshingly rare among Christian books. His conversion isn’t the focus. It’s the harrowing insight into what truly happens behind the closed doors of one prominent atheist’s home. A public, proud, and loud hatred of God doesn’t lead to fulfilment and freedom, but moral cancer that is so thick in the air it might as well be woodsmoke.
The fact that Murray finally cried out to Jesus for help shows us that Christ is always ready to answer those seeking his rescue instantly, regardless of their pedigree.
