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JULY, 2009

FINAL REMINDER
This is everyone’s last opportunity to REFLECTION: BLOOD/ WATER
reenlist for the UP Team. Within a week
after the distribution of this Newsletter, the
folks at the Foundation will be compiling a
new list of members and supporters.
Contact Anita at
aprochnow@silverdollarcity.com or at
(417) 336-7055. You may, of course, also
contact me at bburt98@aol.com or at (417)
331-1028. Your decision options are:
Remain a member with your same day and
hour; remain a member with a different
day and/or hour; remain or become a
supporter without an hour who prays
regularly for the UP Team objectives and
members. If you have not responded or do
not respond, we will assume you no longer
want a relationship with the UP Team.
This ongoing prayer effort is very
important in God’s overall plan. Prayer
from the heart is always pleasing to Him
and the sacrifice of extended prayer is
doubly pleasing. Remember, God has
chosen to impact the lives of individuals,
communities, regions and nations through
the prayer of His people. Spiritual
transformation is the goal – here and our
nation through here. When we pray
faithfully, great things happen.

Please, come with me in spirit to the
foot of the Cross. Let’s walk
right up to the vertical beam
and wrap our arms around it.
Our Lord and Savior, Jesus
Christ, has been hanging there
in agony for hours now, and He
has said, “It is finished,” and
“Father, into your hands I
commend my spirit.” What
happens next is recorded in
John’s Gospel, and it is the
reason why I have invited you
to join me at the foot of the
Cross: “Since it was the day of
Preparation, the Jews did not
want the bodies left on the
cross during the Sabbath,
especially because that
Sabbath was a day of great
solemnity. So they asked
Pilate to have the legs of the
crucified men broken and the
bodies removed. (Note: Most
crucified people died of
suffocation, and the breaking of
the legs prevented them from
raising up to get air.) Then the
soldiers came and broke the
legs of the first and of the
other who had been crucified
with him. But when they came
to Jesus and saw that he was
already dead, they did not
break his legs. Instead, one of
the soldiers pierced his side
with a spear, and at once
blood and water came out.
(He who saw this has testified
so that you also may believe.
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His testimony is true, and he
knows that he tells the truth.)
These things occurred so that
the scripture might be
fulfilled, ‘None of his bones
shall be broken.’ And again
another passage of scripture
says, ‘They will look on the
one whom they have pierced.’”
I have invited us here, so that
spiritually that precious Blood
and Water might pour down
upon us. Understanding the
meaning of this is very
important for our Christian
walk. There is a medical
explanation for what happened
when the soldier pierced the
heart of Jesus. But that pales in
comparison with the symbolic
spiritual meaning. First: The
flowing of Blood and Water
signifies that Jesus gave the
very last drop of His Blood for
our Redemption. Just as He
had spent His ministry years
reaching out to others, loving
and serving people, so on the
Cross He literally gave all He
had to give. “Washed in the
Blood of the Lamb” is a phrase
signifying that when we
proclaim Him as Savior, when
we truly believe in Him as a
living Person, that Blood
washes away the stain of
original sin in our spirits and
keeps on washing away the
stain of personal sin, as long as
we genuinely repent because

we have hurt our Beloved.
Jesus loved and loves us so
much that He shed every drop
of His Blood for us. And the
genuine Christian chooses to
give all to and for the Lord.
Second: The Water symbolizes
two things: The water of
baptism and the living grace of
the Holy Spirit. Jesus said that
unless we are born of water and
the Holy Spirit we cannot enter
into the kingdom of heaven.
We need constant cleansing, by
being washed in the Blood and
by being cleansed by the living
grace of the Holy Spirit. Third:
If Jesus gave His all for us, and
He did, then that is how a
Christian is called to live, by
giving our all for Him and for
others. Total commitment,
complete following of our
Lord, daily service to other
people – these are the
hallmarks of the genuine
Christian. It is easy for a
person to call himself and
herself a Christian; it is easy for
a person to go to church and
believe that by that the
Christian responsibility is met.
But this is so far from the truth.
When we stand before the Lord
He is not going to ask us how
often we met our “religious
obligations;” He is going to
look into our hearts and at that
moment we will know if we
truly lived our lives in
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passionate love for Him and
others or if we just went
through the motions and were
really more focused on
ourselves than on Him. The
Blood and the Water: The
awesome reality is that though
Christ died once and for all, He
is now the Great High Priest
ready to spiritually shower His
Blood and His Water upon us,
to purify us, to strengthen us, to
give us new resolve to take up
our cross and follow Him, and
find our greatest happiness and
joy in doing that. The great sin
of Christianity is, in my
judgment, complacency. Let’s
pray that passion replace
complacency, one Christian at a
time – beginning with any
complacency that might be in
us.
“THE VOICE OF THE
MARTYRS”
This publication provides documented
stories of Christian persecutions around the
world. VOM also provides Bibles and
other Christian literature to our persecuted
brethren. Their address is P.O. Box 443,
Bartlesville, OK 74005-0443. Their
telephone number is (800) 747-0085. In
the June issue of this year, the Director,
Tom White (himself once imprisoned for
many years), has this editorial: “We like
to leave good things to our children and
their inheritance, possibly some furniture,
a car, maybe our house. The apostle Peter
uses the phrase ‘inherit a blessing’ in 1
Peter 3, but goes on to describe a type of
blessing (Greek: makarios = happiness)

that we would rather not hear about. ‘But
even if you should suffer for
righteousness sake, you are blessed.’ In
1992 I was worshipping with a
congregation in northern Nigeria. The
Muslims had burned their large church
building to the ground. The Christians
rebuilt, erecting a building of sheet metal.
The next month a man came with a
bulldozer and knocked it to the ground.
The Christians came back, lined up their
pews on the bare ground and continued to
sing under the hot sun. They were blessed.
In Luke 6, 22-23 Jesus tells his disciples,
‘Blessed are you when men hate you,’
telling them to jump for joy remembering
their great reward in heaven. We would
like to think that Jesus was addressing only
his new disciples or a missionary over in
the field being ‘boiled in a pot.’ In our
flesh we recoil at hatred or rejection. If we
as Christians are insulted by the media,
ridiculed by a college professor, or fined
thousands of dollars by the New Mexico
Human Rights Commission (as Christian
photographer Elaine Haguenin was for
refusing to photograph a lesbian wedding),
we feel as if we are cursed or slapped in
the face. Here is some good news. The
favor of God has little to do with our
physical circumstances. Old Testament
material blessings – which we take out of
context to endorse a comfortable lifestyle –
are actually worthless rubble compared to
the New Testament path of blessing that no
one can take from us. We can remain
spoiled, earthly-minded children choosing
to ignore dozens of passages in the New
Testament (Matthew 5 and 10, Luke 6,
Acts 5, and many others). The opportunity
to place our faith in the fire of the world
should not be overlooked because of the
fear of the unpleasant. The reason the
early church survived and grew under
severe persecution in the first few centuries
is because it was blessed by the Holy Spirit
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with a love and passion (Latin, pati = to
suffer) for the world. This same grace and
attitude of forgiveness was their soul’s
protection. The fact that early Christians
were beaten and many times lost their
property was only an additional reason to
rejoice in faith. We realize that greedy
Romans were not converted by greedy
Christians. The Christians experienced a
New Testament blessing, not one
dependent upon emotional or material
gratification, as evidenced by all of the
verses that refer to ‘bless,’ ‘blessings,’ and
‘happy’ in the New Testament. The
growing Christian community in Iran is
also experiencing a blessing from being
hated. Iranian Christian Hossein Karimi
was arrested January 30, 2009, by Iranian
secret agents in the town of Karaj. He was
held for 27 days. Twenty-seven-year-old
Hossein, a new Christian convert from
Islam, was charged with attending a house
church, evangelizing, storing Bibles and
converting to the Christian faith. This was
his second arrest. This time he was
temporarily released after placing his home
as collateral. If Hossein loses a house for
Christ’s sake, does heaven regard his
sacrifice as a blessing or a curse? Will he
stop his activity? Does he know that if
everything is God’s, then he loses nothing?
I think he does. Jesus promises him a
mansion with many rooms someday.
Recently, about 50 volunteers from
Oklahoma City came to help us for a few
days at our Bartlesville shipping center.
These Christians from Capitol Hill Baptist
Church had special shirts made for this
mission trip. On the back of their shirts
they had printed ‘Jesus suffered outside
the gate…Let us go…bearing His
reproach (Hebrews 13: 12-13). I was
stunned to see little children, as young as
four years old, wearing these shirts. They
are forming an invincible spiritual attitude
for whatever the future holds to be, as the

apostle Paul frequently stated, ‘crucified
with Christ.’ Are we willing to be
rejected? Are we willing to go outside our
gate of comfort for Jesus’ sake? Add your
name now to the 2,000-year-old list of
those victors (not victims) who willingly
take up their cross to receive the blessing
of being hated, rejected, or passed over for
Christ’s sake. As we remain in Christ, He
catches the world’s curses hurled against
us and turns them into jewels.
ON THE LIGHTER SIDE
This has been around for awhile, but it is
always good for a chuckle: Changing a
light bulb the Christian way: How many
Christians does it take to change a light
bulb? Charismatics: Only 1; hands are
already in the air. Pentecostals: 10; one to
change the bulb, and nine to pray against
the spirit of darkness. Presbyterians:
None; lights will go on and off at
predestined times. Roman Catholics:
None; candles only. Baptists: At least 15;
one to change the light bulb and three
committees to approve the change and
decide who brings the potato salad and
fried chicken. Unitarians: We choose not
to make a statement in favor of or against
the need for a light bulb. However, if in
your own journey you have found that
light bulbs work for you, you are invited to
write a poem or compose a modern dance
about your light bulb for the next Sunday
service, in which we will explore a number
of light bulb traditions, including
incandescent, fluorescent, 3-way, long-life
and tinted, all of which are equally valid
paths to luminescence. Methodists:
Undetermined; Whether your light bulb is
bright, dull, or completely out, you are
loved. You can be a light bulb, turnip bulb
or tulip bulb. Bring a bulb of our choice to
the Sunday lighting service and also bring
a covered dish to pass around. Nazarenes:
6; one woman to replace the bulb while
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five men review church lighting policy.
Lutherans: None; Lutherans don’t believe
in change. Amish: What’s a light bulb?
STORY: THE WEDDING GOWN
THAT MADE HISTORY
I just received this, and it is quite a story:
“Lilly Friedman doesn’t remember the last
name of the woman who designed and
sewed the wedding gown she wore when
she walked down the aisle over 60 years
ago. But the grandmother of seven does
recall that when she first told her fiancé
Ludwig that she had always dreamed of
being married in a white gown he realized
that he had his work cut out for him. For
the tall, lanky, 21-year-old who had
survived hunger, disease and torture, this
was a different kind of challenge. How
was he ever going to find such a dress in
the Bergen Belsen Displaced Persons’
Camp where they felt grateful for the
clothes on their backs? Fate would
intervene in the guise of a former German
pilot who walked into the food distribution
center where Ludwig worked, eager to
make a trade for his worthless parachute.
In exchange for two pounds of coffee
beans and a couple of packs of cigarettes
Lilly would have her wedding gown. For
two weeks Miriam the seamstress worked
under the curious eyes of her fellow DPs,
carefully fashioning the six parachute
panels into a simple, long sleeved gown
with a rolled collar and a fitted waist that
tied in the back with a bow. When the
dress was completed she sewed the
leftover material into a matching shirt for
the groom. A white wedding gown may
have seemed like a frivolous request in the
surreal environment of the camps, but for
Lilly the dress symbolized the innocent,
normal life she and her family had once led
before the world descended into madness.
Lilly and her siblings were raised in a
Torah observant home in the small town of

Zarica, Czechoslovakia, where her father
was a teacher, respected and well liked by
the young yeshiva students he taught in
nearby Irsheva. He and his two sons were
marked for extermination immediately
upon arriving at Auschwitz. For Lilly and
her sisters it was only their first stop on
their long journey of persecution, which
included, Plashof, Neustadt, Gross Rosen
and finally Bergen Belsen. Four hundred
people marched 15 miles in the snow on
January 27, 1946, to attend Lilly and
Ludwig’s wedding. The town synagogue,
damaged and desecrated, had been
lovingly renovated by the DPs with the
meager materials available to them. ‘My
sisters and I lost everything – our parents,
our two brothers, our homes.’ Six months
later, Lilly’s sister Ilona wore the dress
when she married Max Traeger. After that
came cousin Rosie. How many brides
wore Lilly’s dress? ‘I stopped counting
after 17.’ With the camps experiencing the
highest marriage rate in the world, Lilly’s
gown was in great demand. In 1948 when
President Harry Truman finally permitted
the 100,000 Jews who had been
languishing in DP camps since the end of
the war to emigrate, the gown
accompanied Lilly across the ocean to
America. Unable to part with her dress, it
lay at the bottom of her bedroom closet for
the next 50 years, ‘not even good enough
for a garage sale. I was happy when it
found such a good home.’ Home was the
U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington,
D.C. When Lilly’s niece, a volunteer, told
museum officials about her aunt’s dress,
they immediately recognized its historical
significance and displayed the gown in a
specially designed showcase, guaranteed to
preserve it for 500 years. But Lilly
Friedman’s dress had one more journey to
make. Bergen Belsen, the museum,
opened its doors on October 28, 2007. The
German government invited Lilly and her
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sisters to be their guests for the grand
opening. They initially declined, but
finally traveled to Hanover the following
year with their children, their
grandchildren and extended families to
view the extraordinary exhibit of the
wedding dress made from a parachute. ‘It
was an emotional trip. We cried a lot.’
Two weeks later, the woman who had once
stood trembling before the selective eyes
of the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele
returned home and witnessed the marriage
of her granddaughter. The three sisters –
Lilly, Ilona and Eva, who together
survived Auschwitz, a forced labor camp, a
death march and Bergen Belsen – have
remained close and today live within
walking distance of each other in
Brooklyn. As mere teenagers, they
managed to outwit and outlive a monstrous
killing machine, then went on to marry,
have children, grandchildren, and great-
grandchildren and were ultimately honored
by the country that earmarked them for
extinction. As young brides, they had
recited the blessings that their ancestors
had been saying for thousands of years. In
doing so, they chose to honor the legacy of
those who had perished by choosing life.”
“In memoriam – 63 years later: It is now
more than 60 years after the Second World
War ended in Europe. This e-mail is being
sent in memory of the six million Jews, 20
million Russians, 10 million Christians and
1.900 clergy who were murdered,
massacred, raped, burned, starved and
humiliated with too many people looking
the other way. Now, more than ever, with
Iraq, Iran and others claiming the
Holocaust to be ‘a myth,’ it’s imperative to
make sure the world never forgets, because
there are people who would like to do it
again.”
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PERSONAL REQUEST Christians. Each chapter has a narrative, a

As many of you know, I have a pretty prayer and excerpts from the writings of
serious illness; my bone marrow (blood the Early Church leaders. It is not an
factory) has shut down and there are no argument, not a defense of the faith; rather
answers right now, though we remain very it is an explanation from the heart. The
hopeful. You also know that my wife, book could also be used by Catholics for
Barb, is homebound, and I am a caregiver. individual or group study. The cost
When I lost my job in November, it was through AuthorHouse is $14.10, and the e-
actually a blessing, because I needed to be book version is $4.95. When the books
home with her. I received a severance arrive in Amazon and retail outlets, the
package, but that is dwindling. I have prices will be $14.49 and $15.49
looked at and tried a number of home- respectively. The AuthorHouse website is
based businesses, but nothing positive has authorhouse.com. The toll free number is
materialized. In fact, I have been 888-519-5121. Thank you for any
scammed a couple of times. I am not assistance you can provide. I deeply
complaining, because I have total trust in appreciate all of you. Thank you so much
the Lord that His perfect will be done. for your faithful prayers for the UP Team
But there is also some good news: Since I and for Barb and me. Peace.
have been at home, I have completed two
new books, and they are available for PRAYER MOBILIZATION
purchase. My request is that you be Please pray for all spoken and unspoken
“marketers” for me – to individuals, needs…for individuals, churches,
churches and book stores. Here are the ministries and organizations…for all who
two books: 1) “Reflections: The pray faithfully for others and those for
Challenge and Excitement of the whom they pray.
Committed Christian Life, Volume 1.’ It bburt98@aol.com
is based on the three-minute messages that Peace! Bob Burton (417) 331-1028
I did until recently on KLFC Radio. I
selected 35 and expanded them, plus I
added discussion questions for each.
There are many more to choose from; that
is why it is “Volume 1.” I have committed
to make a donation to this great Christian
radio station (88.1 fm, and also streaming
on the Internet) for every book sold. Its
cost through AuthorHouse, the publisher,
is 13.40 plus tax and S&H. There is also
an e-book version of the book through
AuthorHouse for $4.95.
2) “Christian…Catholic…and Praising
Jesus!” I have experienced so much
misunderstanding of and prejudice toward
my Church, the Roman Catholic Church,
here in the Bible Belt, that I determined to
write a book about Catholic doctrines,
showing how Catholics are definitely