“The Watchmaker’s Daughter”
Upon seeing the title of this new book by Larry Loftis, I became immediately both excited and grateful. I heard Corrie Ten Boom’s story on Focus on the Family. Hers was a gripping, moving, thrilling story of faith overcoming despair and love overcoming hate. I listened as her story went from her coming to faith in Jesus at the age of five with a simple prayer, “I asked the Lord Jesus into my heart and like a gentleman he came in.” To her experience in the Nazi camp, to meeting a Nazi guard who had degraded her sister and her at a church service, and the personal crisis she had in welcoming him. “I shook as I saw him walking toward me, then he held out his hand as he told how he, too, had become a believer in Jesus. If my Savior could accept him, how could I not?”
“Among Christian circles her name is very well known,” Loftis said. “In Jewish circles, it is a mystery why Corrie’s name is not more widely known because both she and her father (Casper Ten Boom) were inducted into Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.”
In their home in Netherlands the Ten Booms hid “several hundred Jews and Dutch resisters atop the Ten Boom store. Most of the refugees stayed for a matter of days-or hours-but several people lived in the house for months alongside the family.” Corrie’s love for the Jewish people and her willingness to risk safety and security had a long heritage. Her grandfather invited guests into their home a century before to pray for the people of Israel. In 1944 the Ten Booms were turned in by an informant, and the family plus those they were hiding, were taken by the Gestapo and imprisoned at Scheveningen. Following the war, Corrie actively shared her faith and her family’s story giving herself the nickname, “Tramp for the Lord.” She passed away at the age of 91. “The Watchmaker’s Daughter,” will be a book well worth reading for both Jews and Christians alike.
(Source: timesofisrael.com)
