file: /pub/resources/text/sunday.snippets: snip94-08.txt
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                        Sunday Snippets # 8
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                An Example of Hope in a Harsh Prison


[Russian dissident author Alexander] Solzhenitsyn made the comment
[that] he wasn't able, really, to resist the torment of the Gulag 
until he abandoned all hope of surviving.

As long as he had hope of surviving, [he said], he was at the mercy of
his captors.  But when he abandoned hope of surviving, and said that "The 
one thing the can't take away from me is my soul", and he was able to say,
"Whether I live or whether I die, if I never walk out of here, if I never 
taste freedom again, I have a relationship with God that no mortal can 
steal from me", then, he was able to stand.

                - excerpt from a 1991 sermon by Dr. R.C. Sproul
                        [brackets mine]