E D I TO R I A L Recent JAMES RAY, Editor Events with Great Mission Churches Coventry’s Cross of Nails Forgive us! Calvary Baptist Church Olney, Illiniois (Pastor Chris Jennette) Hazelgreen Baptist Church Alsip, Illinois (Pastor John Reed) I n one night, November 4, 1940, Hitler re- duced the city of COVENTRY, ENGLAND, to RUBBLE. Bombs hit 50,000 houses. When the sun rose to shine on that city the morning after, rescuers discovered the burned and battered bodies of 500 men, women, and children. Journey Baptist Church North Charleston, South Carolina (Pastor Robert Boofer) Emmanuel Baptist Church Newman, Georgia (Pastor Terry Arp) BIBLE BAPTIST CHURCH New Bloomfield, Pennsylvania (Pastor Jim God) Bible Baptist Church Hixson, Tennessee (Pastor Mike Bates) Calvary Baptist Church McMinnville, Tennessee (Pastor Tom Fittis) Victory Baptist Church Charlotte Hall, Maryland (Pastor Jerry Skinner) Pleasant Valley Baptist Church Ringgold, Georgia (Pastor David Flood) Southside Baptist Church Sunfish Lake, Minnesoda (Pastor Jerry Brantham) To schedule James Ray for your church, you may contact him at: worldjray4@yahoo.com or by phone at 423-802-5198 (cell) or BIMI 423-344-5050, Ext 2103. A BABY’S CRY from the arms of a dead mother broke the morning silence. A DAUGHTER (held back by workers) screamed sobs of grief for a mother and father still under the rubble of the family home. From everywhere came the muffled and distant cries of trapped people impris- oned under tons of brick and mortar. People wept openly in the streets. Everything had been reduced to ash- es, smoking rubble, and thousands of nails. A man who had fought the blaze until there was no hope now walked through the desolation. He picked up two of the old burnt nails and with a piece of wire fashioned them together into a CROSS—a CROSS OF NAILS. He then placed the cross near an in- scription on the back wall, the inscrip- tion which still reads “FATHER FOR- GIVE.” Out of the blood and ashes of the city, there still loomed the spire of the Coventry Cathedral. The cathedral was GONE, but somehow as if by a miracle, the spire, looming hundreds of feet into the sky, still pointed UP TO GOD. It al- most seemed that God had left that. The spire still stands today—left just as Hitler left it—as a memorial of endurance and faith against wickedness, one PIECE OF HOPE to turn the heads of the people UPWARD. I walked around that towering spire and thought: “How these people must have hated the Germans—how they must still hate them!” I believed that until a few years later NATIONS • 3