Boko Haram Attacks Nigerian Village, Burned Bible Found Amidst Ashes

As Rebekah stood on a hill just outside her Nigerian village one hot day in 2014, she could do nothing but watch as her house and church burned to the ground.

She and her neighbors were devastated at the sight of their village in flames and helpless to defend themselves against the heavily armed Boko Haram militants who had caused the destruction. But for Rebekah, that wasn’t the worst of it; she later learned that her husband and one of her sons had been killed in the attack.

Seven months after Rebekah’s life was so radically altered by the Islamist attack, Nigerian military forces pushed Boko Haram out of the region. Though the destruction was widespread, government authorities allowed Rebekah and the other villagers to return to the charred remains of their homes to reclaim what was left. As she sifted through the ashes, Rebekah’s heart filled with hope at the discovery of her burned but still usable Bible.

She bent over, carefully picked it up and brushed away the ashes. “Thank you, Lord,” she sighed. Although parts of Genesis and Revelation were burned, the rest of her Bible survived intact. As she continued to mourn the loss of her husband, a son, her home and her church, the charred Bible was a source of great comfort.

“Each time I open my Bible during my studies, it reminds me of God’s faithfulness,” she said. “Seeing the ashes of some [pages] I could no longer read makes God’s Word more alive in my heart.”

Rebekah said she takes special encouragement from verses describing the Lord as a husband to widows. “I always look up to the Lord for every need,” she said. But she looks primarily to the book of Job for solace. She said it helped her realize that her relationship with God is all she really has.

“Job said, ‘Naked I came and naked I go back,’” she explained. “He didn’t come with anything and he is never turning back to God with anything. The Lord has given and the Lord has taken.”

Rebekah still chooses to use her burned Bible today. While a new one would be nice, her tattered copy has gotten her through difficult times. It’s the Bible her church gave her when she and her husband married, and it’s the Bible they had read to their children every day.

Persecutors often try to weaken the faith of Christians by taking or destroying their Bibles. And many more believers don’t own a copy of God’s Word in which to seek God’s guidance and comfort as they face persecution.

Even in communist and Islamic countries where governments severely punish anyone caught with a Bible, believers still regularly ask us for them. And The Voice of the Martyrs is committed to filling this need for Bibles in the most dangerous and restricted areas of the world. In recent years, we have distributed more than 1 million Bibles each year, and we won’t stop until every believer has one.

Despite the damage caused by fire, Rebekah clings to her treasured copy of God’s living Word and is grateful that it survived the Boko Haram attack. “That is what I am still holding onto,” she said.