Rough hands snatched a book off the desk with a shout, “You can’t have that!”
The crinkle of the brown paper bag as the Bible was shoved inside, the clink of the wedding and engagement bands carelessly tossed, the clang of a closing cell door marked with the words “This person must die”.
And then silence. A young woman fell to her knees, meeting the cold ceramic floor of the former mental institution. Trembling hands and quivering voice lifted up, Darlene Deibler Rose recalled a song from her childhood Sunday School back in the United States. It was the first – but certainly not the last – of the treasures in her memory that would carry her through the next several weeks.
After arriving in 1938 with her husband Russell as missionaries in New Guinea, Darlene spent nearly four of her eight years on the island in the Kampili labor camp during World War II. Two days after her 27th birthday, the dreaded Kempeitai Secret Police took her from the camp to an isolated prison in Macassar. There, amidst the accusations and interrogations, the guards took her Bible.
But it was not the punishment they had anticipated.
Shaking with the chills of malaria, wracked with the symptoms of beriberi and dysentery, Darlene walked around her six-foot-square cell in attempts to keep up her physical strength. But more importantly, as she paced, she recited Scripture.
Working through the alphabet one verse at a time, she drew from a bank of memorized chapters and books of the Bible. A bank into which deposits had been made throughout her childhood, from Vacation Bible School verses to Psalms she felt compelled to memorize and review over the years.
“The Lord fed me with the Living Bread that had been stored against the day when fresh supply was cut off by the loss of my Bible.” She recognized that the Word hidden in her heart undermined the attempts to take away the sustenance of Scripture. When she had nothing but worm-infested porridge to eat, she fed her spirit on that Living Bread.
As drunk men ravaged the prison cells, she clung to Psalm 27 and turned it into a prayer, “Lord, don’t ever leave me or forsake me. Your wonderful presence has made this cell a place of beauty, a sacred place like a chapel lighted by Your presence.”
When the Lord’s presence was hard to feel one night, she searched the Scriptures hidden in her heart since she couldn’t turn pages to find comfort: Psalm 119:11, Psalm 119:105, 1 John 1:9, Isaiah 43:25, 1 John 3:21, Numbers 23:19, Hebrews 11:1, Job 13:15, and finally, 2 Corinthians 1:10.
“He will yet deliver,” echoed over and over from 2 Corinthians 1:10. Again and again, the Lord brought it to her mind. He will yet deliver.
As she contemplated the phrase in the early hours of the morning, a guard appeared at the door. She was ushered into a car, forced to write and sign a statement, and then accused and held at the end of a sword.
He will yet deliver. Wondering if she was going to be delivered into the presence of the Lord, her heart was still filled with a song. Another car pulled up, into which she was ordered to enter before it sped back to the Kampili labor camp.
Back in the labor camp, Darlene led prayer after air raids, quoting her cherished Psalm 27 when it was too dark to read from another prisoner’s Bible. The air raids burned their huts to the ground, leaving charred remains of their few belongings. As she knelt in the ashes, “He pulled Scripture passages out of the storehouse of my memory, to remind me that they had been hidden there for just such a time as this.”
Upon return to the United States after the end of the war, she was reminded of her verse from the very beginning of the war: “The beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by him; and the Lord shall cover him all the day long, and he shall dwell between his shoulders” (Deuteronomy 33:12).
Not only had the Lord covered her with Scripture while she was in solitary confinement, He had comforted her with His Word when she was separated from her husband Russell and her spiritual mentor Dr. Jaffray. Both of those men had encouraged her with Scripture before their parting, words that remained with her even after they had passed on to be in the Lord’s presence. In the midst of air raids, she held onto singular phrases even when the rest of the passage wouldn’t come to her memory: “It shall not come nigh thee” (Psalm 91:7). When the news of her husband’s death was delivered, it came with a whisper from the Lord in the form of Isaiah 43, “Did I not say that when thou passest through the waters I would be with thee, and through the floods, they would not overflow thee?” In the lonely nights, she described the balm of Scripture comforting her as the Lord standing in the cathedral of her heart and reading from the scroll of her memory.
Darlene Diebler Rose’s story is an example of a principle of living victoriously in the midst of persecution, according to Nik Ripken in Insanity of Obedience: “As important as God’s written Word is, believers in persecution know their oral Bible is all they will be allowed to take into prison with them. Believers in persecution suggest the Bible you know by heart is in actuality, your Bible.”
Darlene’s Bible, the one she knew by heart, was her strength and sustenance through those difficult years. The time she invested in memorizing Scripture throughout her youth was never wasted; the returns on her investment were far more valuable than she ever expected. Having such a storehouse of Scripture provided abundance despite her lack of physical access to the Word of God. Time and again, the Holy Spirit brought to mind exactly what she needed in the moment because she had prepared for such a time.
If the Bible you know by heart is, in actuality, your Bible, what do you have in your heart to take into the trials and struggles of life? How are you investing in the bank of Scripture that you can draw from in times of need?
If you’re a National Bible Bee participant, you’re likely stockpiling your storehouse of Scripture over the summer. While the sheer quantity may be evident (and overwhelming at times!) in the stacks or binders of verse cards, don’t lose sight of the treasure you’re hiding in your heart. May the testimony of the power of memorized Scripture in Darlene’s life be an encouragement to you: the time you invest in the Word of God will never return void but will pay dividends throughout your life.
Written by NBB Alumna: Julia Cagasan
