WHY MAKE USE OF THIS STUDY GUIDE?

 Because it is timely, practical, contemporary, and focused!

 

• Timely! This Overcomers Study Guide for the book Overcomers speaks powerfully to the situation in our world today.  Contrary to what we might think or have experienced, our own times present a new height of Christian persecution over the world. Each generation has had its biblical “overcomers” – but surprisingly, the statistics for Christian persecution and martyrdom in our own century are staggering worldwide.    

 

• Practical!  There is much to be learned from one of the most recent sagas of godless repression – by exploring what those who trusted Jesus experienced during Ethiopia’s Marxist Revolution. Learning how God sustained them can instruct and prepare us for similar suffering. 

 

• Contemporary! Over the centuries, Christian overcomers have inspired the Body of Christ with their Spirit-dependent steadfastness.  When the fledgling evangelical believers in Ethiopia found themselves unprepared for their ordeal, Chinese Christians came to help the underground church know how to live under communism.  So too, the Ethiopian saga can encourage other nations’ believers in times of testing today. 

 

• Focused! It is thrilling to discover what the Spirit of God did during Ethiopia’s  recent chapter of the on-going acts of the Spirit. The Overcomers Study Guide’s concluding Supplements provide specific lenses for absorbing and applying unchanging realities that undergird the Ethiopian story, and can assist us in our own call to overcome. 

 

God’s people can be assured as we face our own trials. We ask ourselves, “How would I stand up if faced with difficult tests?”  We can be encouraged that God sustains those who depend on Him, in any situation, and in any time. Biblical overcomers are blessed by the Spirit’s enabling in every generation!