The Watchmaker’s Daughter

0:00Hi, friends, thanks so much for downloading this podcast. And I hope truly that you will hear something that will encourage edify equip and enlighten you to get out there and influence and occupy until he comes. And on that note, may I take just a few moments here to describe this month's truth tool. It's by Pastor Jack Hibbs. He's written the book called Call to take a bold stamp. I absolutely love this book because it reminds us that in Christ, all things pass away, all things become new that we are standing for his truth, that we have a new nature because of him. We should be living boldly, but far too often we retreat out of fear from cultural blowback. So I want to encourage all of us to just stand up for Christ to be unashamed of who we are in him and to go into a culture that's telling us in no uncertain terms, they're lost and they're hurting. So if you'd like a copy of Pastor Hibbs new book called Call to take a bold stamp, just give a gift of any amount by calling 877 Janet 58. We are listener supported radio. And this is my way of saying thank you. So that number again is 877 Janet 58 or you can go online in the market with Janet partial dot O R G go to the bottom of the page.

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2:18We were all brought into oppression and there I was four months in soldry confinement. So there I could I have alone. Seven, five steps so and two steps so and always alone. But you know, it was not really alone for Jesus was with me and I will never forget when I said, oh Lord, I cannot be alone anymore without any human beings. And suddenly I saw a little aunt and I saw him going over the floor and I said, thank you Lord, I have company, I have an aunt and you say her that little little animals and and we had a good time together and we talked together but when there was danger that end always ran to a little hole in the

3:21wall and then the Lord told me a little a little thing he said, Corey, that little hole in the wall is the hiding place for that end. Don't forget that I am your hiding place. And so that little aunt gave me a sermon. You are my hiding place. Welcome to in the market with Janet partial that of course is Corey 10 boom talking about feeling comforted by the Lord while she was in a concentration camp and even a little aunt provided her with hope in Jesus Christ. We're going to focus in on Corey this hour by looking at a brand new book about her life called the watchmakers daughter, the true story of World War two heroine Corey 10 boom. The author joins us this hour Larry Loftus who's a New York Times and international bestselling author of three prior nonfiction thrillers, including the Princess spy and into the lion's mouth.

4:23They've been published in multiple languages around the world. And before becoming a full-time writer, Larry was a corporate attorney. Larry, thank you so much for spending the hour with us. I absolutely am moved by your book. I thank you so much for giving us the gift of an hour, but even more for the gift of this book as well, which leads me to a whole bunch of questions right out of the gate. Not the least of which is how do you go from being a corporate attorney to a writer? Repentance lots of repentance. And by the way, I think I've got you on both sell land and the internet. So I guess I should probably hang up the phone here. The cell phone would be great. That's terrific. It'll stop that kickback for you Larry. OK. So yeah, it took, uh, it was a 25 year sentence. If that makes sense, my, my, my, my purification is, it was completed. And I was a free man to do what I love to do, which is to write these kind of books.

5:25Well, and that's my second question, Larry. And that is your interest in nonfiction is absolutely thrilling. I know pun intended because it is one of the more difficult kinds of writing to do. It has to be historically based. And yet when I read the watchmaker's daughter, it reads like a novel, except that I know Corey was all too real. And the book is laid in, by the way, with pictures from the 10 Boone family and part of the artifacts that are very much tied to her story. So obviously, this is a difficult genre. It isn't pure fiction where you have the license to write things in art, true. And yet in nonfiction, you have to be bound by the back facts, but you can tell it with the liberty of a writer. Did you find that a difficult format to work in? Well, originally, when I had first started, I wrote a book called End of the Lions Mouth about the spy who inspired James Bond and my agent at the time. I'd written it as a historical fiction. And he said, wait, isn't this most of this true? And I said, it's all true. And he said, well, just do it is straight, you know, narrative nonfiction.

6:26But I love thrillers. So I figured, why don't I do this from now? So I did it from from day one is to take a nonfiction story and just structure it as basically as a thriller. So I can't make anything up, but I get to decide where the chapter closes. So when somebody's about to get killed or shot or there's a missing brief case, that's where I end it. Are you particularly interested in that time period? You seem to write a lot with enthusiasm around World War II. And if the answer to that question is yes, what drew you to that time period? Indeed it is. I still all of my books have been in the World War II era. All of them about spies until this one with Cory. She wasn't a spy, but she and her family were involved in the Dutch resistance, which would have the same consequences. She either gets shot or you get sent to a concentration camp. But I just love World War II because that's really the only time in history

7:26where there's been a worldwide event where every country's involved. And because we call them now the forgotten generation, I'm so glad you're writing this because you teach us not about the 10-boom family alone or Cory alone, but you drop it contextually into what is happening in that part of the world. World War, which thanks me to God, we haven't experienced since that time, but it is a great tutorial for people who have not been taught about World War II. Because you are enamored by that particular epic of time, it wouldn't come as a surprise that you would stumble across the life of Cory 10-boom, but did you pursue her story? And if so, what caught your attention about her? No, in fact, good question. Back in 20, my second book in the genre came out of 2019 codename lease. And it was about an SOE spy who had been operating in France, was captured. They sent her to a concentration camp in Germany, which was Ravensbrook. So one of my, I have a good friend who was reading, reviewing my work, and she said, hey, you have to read the hiding place.

8:29And I knew about the hiding place, and I knew about Cory 10-boom, but I had not read the book. And so I said, why? And she said, Larry, she's there at Ravensbrook at the same time as Odette. And my character, my subject, was in a bunker. She was a spy. She had been convicted to death. So they put her in a bunker below ground, and she could see nothing. Whereas Cory's on the outside. She's in the regular barracks, so she can see everything. So that gave me a full picture of what happened at the camp. Wow. We're just getting started. You can tell this is going to be a fascinating conversation, but I have to tell you the book is absolutely riveting. And I know Cory's story very well. Her to speak many, many times while she was still alive. But I have to tell you there were even more things I learned reading Larry Loftus' brand new book, The Watchmaker's Daughter. The true story of World War Two, Heroin, Cory and Boom. You're going to learn more about this hero when we return.

9:36There's overwhelming evidence that we are witnessing the spiritual free fall of our culture, which raises the question, what are believers supposed to do? That's why I've chosen no reason to hide as this much truth tool. We need to know how to be brave and courageous in the midst of a decaying culture. As for your copy of no reason to hide when you give a gift of any amount to in the market, call 877-JAN-58, that's 877-JAN-58, or go to inthemarketwithjannetpartial.org. That tradition where I saw my sister star before my eyes, I've enjoyed the joy of the Lord, because I got more intimately acquainted with Jesus Christ. And when you come to him, he will give you the joy also in this prison. And I must say there was such an open atmosphere there.

10:38And afterwards, I told him, now you can ask Jesus to come into your heart and I told for that man, I said, now who of you is willing to do to do that and ask Jesus to come in your life? And they all raised their hands, also the God. Now, when I give an invitation and every one raised his hands, no, then I always think, that is mass suggestion. I don't trust that, but I had to believe it, because I saw in the eyes the joy of the Lord. The Holy Spirit had done a great miracle to give joy in such a surroundings. I never forget when I went home, when I left the prison, I came in the street and the guards and the prisoners all brought me to the car. I was amazed that they wanted to pray that the prisoners should run away and they stood around the car and they shouted something

11:43again and again. I said to my interpreter, missionary, say, what do they, what do they shout? She said, they shout, old woman, come back, come back and tell us more of Jesus. Then she told that she had been in that prison and she had brought a gospel, which she said, I didn't come back. I thought it was just in vain, but today I have seen what the Holy Spirit can do and now I will go every week and later she wrote me a letter that every week she went and the feast is gone on, she wrote. The joy of the Lord is our strength. Hmm. Corrie Ten Boom. I'm so glad you're getting to hear her voice. Who would have thought that a concentration camp could be a mission field? And yet, Corrie was being refined and she was being obedient and we are the richer for her story. You can learn more about her life and the brand new

12:45book that Larry Loftus has authored. It's called The Watchmakers Daughter, the true story of World War Two Heroin Corrie Ten Boom. This gentleman, by the way, is a New York Times Wall Street Journal, USA Today, an international best-selling author of non-fiction spy thriller. So he's just shared with us how he's interested, particularly in World War Two history, which is probably why his books can be found in Spain and Portugal and the Netherlands and Italy and Serbia and Czech Republic and Taiwan and India and Australia and New Zealand and throughout the UK. It was after all a World War. So he discovers the person of Corrie Ten Boom and writes this book, The Watchmakers Daughter. Larry, I kept thinking because it's not just a richly told story. Clearly, God has gifted you as a writer. It's not only an important part of world history, but I kept thinking, did you have to go to either a Ten Boom foundation or to survivors of the family to get permission and or access to the photos and the copies of the letters that she wrote as well? It's just all

13:47throughout the book and there's always questions about intellectual property and identity, etc. So how did you go about the process of getting all of that so we would be the beneficiaries in the book? Well, it brings up the bigger question of why did I write the book? Because, you know, and this is what I had to decide up front, is the hiding place tell the whole story? And I learned from doing my prior books, all the subjects of which all had prior biographies or autobiographies or both, but I found out that most of the time it's only part of the story. So I researched Corrie's story, not only with all of her books, but with the people around her, like Hans Poli, who was the first permanent refugee in there. He wrote a book in 83 called Return to the Hiding Place. Her nephew Peter had written his own memoir called In the Secret Place in 1954. So I had to read that. And then all of her archives, all of Corrie's archives, you mentioned photos and things. All of them are held in her archives in the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College. So I went there and

14:53spent four days open to close, you know, going through box after box file after file. And I saw everything. I mean, all of her passports from her entire career, the actual letters that she had written from prison in Dutch and photos from early family all the way through until recently were death. So I had everything in front of me. And after doing all of my research, I realized the hiding place is only 10% of the story. For example, Hans Poli, who's the second most important person in the story, he's not even in there. And the only way I can figure that that happened is because Corrie didn't actually write the hiding place. It was written by two professional writers, whose names are right below hers. John Elizabeth Cheryl. So the Cheryl's had no access to any kind of files. There were no archives for them. And all they had was Corrie's memory from 35 years earlier, which, you know, I mean, memories last about five years, seven years. But anyway, so there's

15:53a lot that was not in the story that I thought that has to be told. There are things that happen with Peter, her nephew, things that happen with Keek, another nephew, the girlfriends that are involved. There's just so much more. So when I finished the research, I'm like the hiding place is 10%. I have to write this book because people need to know the other 90% of this story. That's why it's so rich and such a wonderful, wonderful book. Well, with your time, friends, I strongly recommend it. So Larry, because this is not a fictitious character that springs from the creative mind of a writer of fiction, but a real person whose story you're going to tell when you looked at the artifacts, the letters that she herself had authored. What was it like to meet if I can put it that way, Corrie, when you were going through the archives? It was surreal. You were spot on. It was surreal, Janet, when I'm holding in my hands the actual letter. I mean, they had she had sent letters to like her sister, Nali. Well, Nali kept all those. And so I'm holding in my hands the actual letter written in 1944 from Corrie to her at multiple letters like that. So it was

17:01surreal. Wow. When we come back, it would know, obviously, in a book this rich, so well-researched, so well-written, that even with the gift of one hour of Larry Loftus's time, I can't possibly cover everything in the book. And that's not bad. I just want to peak your curiosity so you'll go out and you'll read The Watchmakers' Daughter as well. But I want to highlight some of the parts of Corrie's life and I'll do that with Larry right after this. I remember that when I was in a concentration camp and we were pushed together in a room with 700 people, the room was built for 200. Some people started to fight. Other people joined them and at last it was a chaos. We heard swearing and beating. And Betsy, my sister said,

18:04Corrie, let's pray. That's dangerous. And she prayed. And she prayed and she prayed. I'm never forget it. And when she prayed, it was as if a storm laid down. We heard less swearing and beating. At last it was absolutely quiet. And then Betsy said, thank you Lord. Amen. Do you see what happened? There was a room of 700 prisoners in danger and there was one woman who prayed. And that woman, my sister, was used by God to save the situation of that whole room. I believe we must understand that we can be used by God to save the situation in the world. Wow, amazing stories and there are so many more in The Watchmakers' Daughter.

19:07The new book by international bestselling author Larry Loftus. There, let me just do a little bit of background for her family. So most of us know particularly because it's indicated in the title as well. Even if you don't know that she was raised in a family that repaired watches and there are pictures of her father in your book as well. And this was something that she did helped in the shop as well with her father. But from where did this passion to just step out of the cultural mainstream come from it? By that I mean, obviously they did not decide that they would take in Jews and hide them in their house lightly. They knew that that could come with a very high cost and eventually of course it did. But what compelled them in your research is you were studying. Motive is something particularly people like you I'm sure love to dig into. Why did you do what you did and when did you do it? Why would this family who were respected as Watchmakers and obviously something very much appreciated in the Netherlands? Having been there, I can say that that's something that is very much treasured. Why would they take that risk? Where

20:07did that come from? Well, it goes back to their entire family history and I mentioned this in the book. Corey's father, Casper, was a spiritual giant. As was her grandfather, as was her great grandfather. And throughout the ten boom heritage, they always loved the Jews. They always prayed for Jerusalem. So that was nothing new for them to embrace the Jews and Jerusalem. But what happens when World War II breaks out is now they have a reason to be active in their faith. And so the ten boom family and hundreds of thousands of other Dutch people brought Jews into their home. And not only Jews, there were actually two groups that Nazis were after. One were the Jews. Two were called Dutch divers, people like Khan's Polly. The Nazis would snatch young German, young Dutch boys off the street between like 16 years of age to about 35. They would snatch them off the street and send them to Germany to work in a factory because all of their men were

21:11in the Vermacht at war. So they snatch boys off the street, arrested them, shipped them just like they would Jews to Auschwitz. And they shipped them to these factories, most of whom never to be seen again. And one of those happens to be what happened to one of Cory's nephews. I won't spoil it, but it did happen within her family. So when the Gustapo starts knocking on doors, they're looking for two groups. Jews or any boys that they can snatch and send off to Germany. So Cory and her family start immediately bringing people in because they hear, hey, this family likes us. They'll help us and they were connected within their church. Khan's Polly's mother, new, new Cory's aunt. And so you have all of these basically neighborhood relationships. So people started knocking on their alley door. And the first couple were overnight guests. The first couple were Jews that just showed up, knocked on the door, hoping for a place to stay. And then Cory and the ten boom started taking in

22:13what I call permanent residents. People that stayed there for months and months and months. So Khan's Polly's are the longest nine months. So in the back of the book, I include every person that came through the Baye as their house was called. And I divide it between the temporary people that were there for a day or two. And then all of the permanent refugees like UC, who plays a very prominent role at you. His real name is Meyer Mossow, but he went by UC. So all that's covered in there as well. Yes, you write about this in the book. And I thought it was most intriguing. For a woman who had such a rich spiritual heritage in the lineage of her family, the question of you shall not give false testimony was ever before her. So when the Gestapo would come and they knew that they in fact were protecting not just the Dutch divers, but also the Jews as well. How did she reconcile that conflict in her heart? There are actually two places in the book where that comes to a point. And the first is when Cori's told the Nazis, the Gestapo in charge made

23:15everybody turn in the radios because radios were outlawed. And so they had two. And so they hid one and turned in the other and Cori turned in the other one. And the German said, is this the only radio in your home? And Cori said, yes, she lied. It was the first time in her life that she had lied and it crushed her. So fast forward now, well into the story when they have refugees staying in the house. You see, as I mentioned, is a Jew and he's in the house. And he heard that Nali had said, Nali is Cori's sister who was married and didn't, she was, they had their own house. But she said, hey, if we're asked, we're going to tell people, yeah, we're hiding Jews. And so it became a big deal for Eusti because he said, what are you talking about? What about, what about Rahab lying about the spies? There are biblical principles that we can go to to say, you need to tell them, no, I don't have any Jews here. The book is very rich. I keep saying that, but there are so many

24:18details, so many times you'll step into the story and say, could I have been found faithful? What I have been obedient, what I have known how to discern in the midst of evil times, could I have helped turn a concentration camp into a mission field? Could I pray for my enemies so much in the book, The Watchmakers Daughter, back after this. As a Christian, how do you digest the cultural issues of our day? And in the market, we believe that understanding happens when we bring biblical truth to expose the darkness in our world. That's what we do every day on in the market. May I ask you to join us when you become a partial partner, your monthly gift ensures this daily program continues. Become a partial partner today by calling 877 Janet 58 or go to in the market with Janet Partial.org. I had a meeting in Holland and an old gentleman came to me and he said, I was in a school where

25:23a mist and foam was a teacher. Can it have been you? Have you been a teacher? I said, no, that was my sister. Oh, he said, when I bought a boy of seven years old, I loved your sister. And how is he and I told that my sister was with the Lord? And after we had talked a little bit about my sister and about when he was a little boy of seven years old. I asked him, I should like to ask you a question about a message that you heard today. He said, what do we mean? I said, no, we have heard a message that the Lord gave me, that we have to be born again to enter the kingdom of God. Are you born again? Aren't we child of God? He said, I go every Sunday to the church.

26:24I said, that's very good. That's not sufficient. A mouse born in a biscuit tin is therefore not yet a biscuit. And to be in a church building does not make me child of God. That is the Lord himself who said, there must happen something. You must receive Jesus as your Savior. And then he does the miracle in you that you are born into the very family of God. Then you may say to God, Father, my Father. I taught a little bit more with him and he understood and he accepted it. And then he said, his first real yes to Jesus. And that's very important. Now, do you see the picture? Do you see the pattern? It was about 70 years before that my sister, my mother and I prayed for the

27:29children in a class in school. One of these boys of six or seven years old, I met after 70 years and God used me to bring him to a decision for the Lord Jesus. Cory, 10 Boom, who would let her call herself Trump for the Lord because her years in the concentration camp, refined her, molded her, shaped her and in obedience. She told the world about Jesus and what she had learned while she was in that camp. You can learn more about her wonderful, amazing story. And the watchmaker's daughter is the newest book by Larry Loftis, who is a New York Times Wall Street Journal, USA Today, an international bestselling author. He loves to write non-fiction spy thrillers. So there are stories of real people, not biographies necessarily, although there's so much that's biographical about their life. But he writes in the cadence that makes you feel that you're reading a novel except that these are real people. It's the best kind of writing there is actually. And there is so much to Cory's life that we don't

28:33know other than what we've seen in the hiding place. So this is a wonderful opportunity for you to go deeper in her story. And there is such depth there. Larry, I was reading your book and I realized that I had never contextualized the relationship. So having bent to the Netherlands, if you go to Amsterdam, if you want to go to the house of Anne Frank, the line goes around the block and you can wait for hours before you go to see her house. Raises a couple of questions. Where is she in the time frame in relationship to Cory? And because the Frank family was also about being hidden and the 10 boom family hid Jews, looking back, was this a more common practice than maybe we thought at the time? Indeed. In fact, I mentioned in the book, there's actually two sort of famous women that are there at the same time, not only Anne Frank, who is 13 at the time when this starts happening, but also Audrey Hepburn, who lives in Arnhem. So I thought these two people are very important people in the overall story because Cory's in Harlem, but Anne Frank

29:36is in Amsterdam, which is 10 miles away. And Audrey Hepburn's in Arnhem. So I felt like I need to include them in the story too. So we get a big picture of what's happening around because they both had Anne Frank through her diary and then I've got a biography on Audrey that has some of her quotes as well. And by the way, all the quotes that are in the watchmaker's daughter, they're verbatim from the primary source. So if it's nonfiction, you can't make up any dialogue. That's straight from the horse's mouth. Right. Wow. That's amazing. That makes it all the more compelling. So to the second part of my question, because school kids growing up in America to learn something about Anne Frank, and you tend to think this is an isolated story, but because the 10 booms were doing this as well, do we know after World War II that this was a greater practice, sort of safety haven that was being practiced in the Netherlands at the time? I don't know about after World War II, but all of the Netherlands, they were shell shocked because they had been under the Nazi boot, you know, for five

30:41years. And so they were shell shocked, which is part of the reason Cory said, we have to help all the people who've been damaged, physically damaged, emotionally damaged, spiritually damaged, and then Betsy had said when they were at Ravensbrook, not only do we need to do this for our countrymen in the Netherlands, we need to do it for the Germans because they're the most hurt of all people. And so that's the reason Cory went back and started the facility she did at Darmstadt, which was an old concentration camp that she turned into another center for healing. Wow. I wept when I read the part about Lieutenant Rams, share some of that with our listeners, that I had never heard that story before. And I was thinking as I was reading it, there's a natural tension like a sort of G string and a cello that's playing throughout the back and forth because it was dangerous for Cory to answer his questions. It was even more dangerous for the German lieutenant to be asking those questions. He's a huge part of this story, Hans Rams, Lieutenant Hans Rams, who was a German officer that was the SS ran all the prisons and concentration

31:46camps. So he's with the SS and they're all trained in Nazism and their ideology, if you will, was that the weak are useless and the sick are useless and handicapped people should be done away with. And so when he meets, not just Cory, but Betsy because he has to interview them. He's the interrogator, if you will, for the for the first prison that she's at. And he has the authority to set people free. He has authority to keep them in prison. He has authority to send them to concentration camps. So he interviewed Cory. He interviewed Betsy. He interviewed Peter, her Cory's nephew. And unbeknownst to any of the three, Hans is pretty much asking the same questions. He's intrigued by their, by their Christian faith. He's not a Christian. I mean, that's anathema, if you will, because that's just kind of the weak thing that people do that don't

32:47have anything else to rely on. And so he has to overcome that. And he's worried about his family because they live in Germany and he thinks that they all may be dead from bombing. And so internally, he has his own struggle and his own turmoil. And here he's got in front of him, these three people that he interviews separately. And each one keeps bringing up the Lord and how valuable people are. And basically, they're all just witnessing to him every time that they come to see him. Kind of a spiritual blitz if I can do a play on words there. What I thought was interesting too is that when you write, and if you go right to what you said before about the dialogue, cannot be embellished, then I thought to myself, I had never thought about what it would be like to be a part of the Third Reich. And to wake up every day, as you write, Lieutenant Ram's said to Cory, that there was a darkness he had to deal with, that he woke up every morning and dreaded the day and lived in a darkness he didn't know if he could ever escape from. And so he's literally

33:48being surrounded by the members of the Ten Boom family who tell him over and over and over again. But even though she doesn't know if he's going to make a profession of faith, he burns papers that protect her. He gives her the heads up as to where her dying sister is located. So she might be able to see her sister. I mean, he is a hugely pivotal character. But he's such, I mean, if I can barrel from Victor Hugo for a minute, if this were fiction, this is one of those redemption stories where you think the black-hearted John Valjean cannot change. So that's exactly what happens with Lieutenant Ram's, which I thought was amazing. But it also says something about this diminutive little Dutch woman who had the strength of lions to be able to say to this German who at any time could have turned on her and sent her off to the ovens did not do that. That tells you so much about the strength of Cory in this situation. Yeah, I love the Hans-Rombs part of this story. In fact, it reminds me of what I heard some people from Hollywood say about another character, another one of my books. But that is that Hans-Rombs is Oscar Bate. If this thing ever makes it to

34:54the big screen, you will have actors lining up to play Hans-Rombs because he makes that transition, as you say, from the villain to essentially the hero. He saves Cory's life. If he does not burn those papers, then not only will she be executed at the very least, sent to a concentration camp where she'd probably die. But every single person listed in those notes will be picked up. The Jews would be sent to death camps. They would be executed. The resistance people would be picked up. They would be executed. So Hans-Rombs saved a lot of people by burning all those notes. And if the Gestapo found out that he did that, then he'd be sent to a concentration camp. So he essentially is putting his own life at risk by saving Cory, her family, and all the people written in those notes. Wow. Just one of the many aspects of the story you'll find in The Watchmakers' daughter. This is the story of Cory Ten Boom, written by a man who loves to write about the World War II

35:57era, loves to write about people who lived lives on the edge, who took great risks. But perhaps the greatest risk taker of all was a small little Dutchmaker watchman's daughter who decided that she would look at the lions, and she would be a Daniel, and then told the world about it after she was eventually released from the concentration camp, which in and of itself is another miracle story. Larry Loftus is with us. It is an absolutely fabulous book. You read it, and then you give it to somebody else, so they'll learn back after this. I remember when I was in the concentration camp, we had to stand on roll call. And there was one morning that I could hardly bear to see and to hear what had happened in front of me.

37:02A guard was using that time to demonstrate his cruelties. Suddenly a skylar came, and he started to sing in the sky, and we all looked up and listened to the bird song, and when I looked at the bird, I looked at the sky, and suddenly I thought at some 103, where there's 11, where written for, as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy and love towards them that fear him. And it was as if I woke up to reality. Oh, love of God, how deep and great, far deeper than man's deepest hate. God sent that skylar

38:04during three weeks daily, exactly during the time of roll call, to turn away your eyes from the cruelty of man and to the ocean of God's love. How deep was her faith, Corey Tenboom, the watchmaker's daughter. That happens to be the title of the newest book by Larry Loftus, an international best selling author as well. By the way, at the end of the book, he has a little biography of so many of the people that are told in Corey's story. There's page after page after page of footnote, which tells you how much research went into doing this book. So Larry, I have to ask you because as you decide to write about someone and your previous books and even with Corey's book, by the time you're done doing the research and you're spending months, if not years, with a particular character. When it's all said and done, you have a pretty firm idea about who this person is. You're either going to move toward loving them or loathing them. What surprised you the most about Corey and what characteristic did you admire the most? Yeah, that's a great question. And I would summarize

39:09it by saying, what's the upshot of the book? What's the takeaway of the story? And I would say, this is what moved me. You start with, well, Corey hid Jews. Well, hundreds of thousands of Dutch people hid Jews. Corey suffered, millions suffered, millions suffered far worse than she did and you know, and died in concentration camps or were shot. But where Corey is different and for me, the takeaway is that she forgave everybody's. And that was very difficult because first she had to forgive the Germans, which when Betsy first said, well, we have to come and minister to Germany, courted one any part of that. You know, she wasn't going back to Germany. So she had to forgive the Germans, which she did. Then she had to forgive the guards. And as you heard in that last clip, many of the guards were very cruel. And so for her to forgive a guard was tough, particularly when she does run into one in the story. And I won't throw out a spoiler what happens. But it's very moving.

40:12And she has to forgive this man who was very cruel to her, very cruel to Betsy. And she does. She forgives him. And then thirdly, the hardest of all was she had to forgive and she did forgive the man who betrayed them who was a Dutchman, a quizzling. They were betrayed to the Gestapo, not by a German, but by another Dutchman who had thrown his lot with the Nazis, suppose maybe thinking that they would win. But she asked to forgive him. And this man cost her, Corey, her sister's life, her father's life, her nephew's life, her brother's life, her in a concentration camp. And she forgave him as well. Wow. That's so interesting. You should say that, Larry, because I think that's the takeaway for me as well. You know, this is not reality TV. There were no cameras rolling. This was the real deal. This is really under a refiner's fire when your character is manifest. To see the cruelty of the guard being performed in front of you and then to stop and think about

41:14how great God's mercies are. Says something about the character of a person when they're in the midst of adversity. But this idea of forgiving, when she knew that it cost her family members, their very lives, when betrayal put them in the camps to begin with, when the Germans were broken people as well, you don't think that when they're your, your torture or your dementors, right? But yep, this is exactly who she was. It seems like a flipping question. And on some levels, it seems to be self-evident again because of the rich spiritual legacy from which she came and the way in what she really and truly had the word of God deeply buried in her heart. But where does that, to the person who's listening who's never heard of Corrie 10 boom before? Where does that ability to forgive your Nazi Gestapo guard, your ability to forgive the person who betrayed you? Where does that come from? Yeah, I talk about this in the book because that's the hardest thing of all to forgive someone that literally cost you the lives of your family. And I put in the book that

42:15sometimes we can't at our own strength do that. And I believe that Corrie and you'll see this in her comments in the book, but it was only by God's grace. And when she meets one of the guards, she didn't want to touch this guy. He held that his hand. He asked her forgiveness. She didn't want to touch him. This guy was very cruel. And she said, Lord, I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You do the rest. And as soon as they touched hands, Corrie's heart changed. I mean, God immediately moved her heart. And she genuinely felt love for this man. So there are sometimes, you know, for us, our takeaway is there are people who have hurt us so deeply that it feels like it's impossible to forgive. And it just requires God's grace. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I know that you can't plan these things. But in a day and an age where we've never been so divided as a country where there's marked animosity like we've never seen or felt before, the timing of your book seems

43:16to be almost a divine appointment right now to talk about forgiveness and endurance in the midst of hard times. And to think that in your own power, you can't do it. But in your weakness, his strength is made manifest. And if you have the will to forgive, he'll give you the ability to forgive. It almost seems like it's almost too perfectly time for where we are as a country right now. Yeah, that did not escape me because when I was going through this story, I'm like, wow, this, this could really hit home for people today. Yeah. Absolutely. There it is. An absolutely fabulous book I learned. I thought I knew an awful lot about Corrie, but I learned so much more by reading it. But again, I had to contextualize this book in the day and age in which we live. And I thought we need a story like this now maybe more than ever before. I thank you for giving it to us. It's called The Watchmaker's Daughter, the true story of World War Two, heroin, Corrie 10 Boom. Again, you know, when I'm particularly impacted by a book and I think you can tell that in my voice, I always love to say in my classroom, this would be required reading. And you'd

44:17thank me for it. Thanks so much for joining us friends. We'll see you next time on In the Market with Janet Parsley.