The Bible or the Axe: One Man's Dramatic Escape from Persecution in the Sudan

by William O. Levi

Book Overview

Exile. Persecution. Torture. The riveting story of one man's escape from the Sudan. By the muddy banks of the Kulo-jobi River, a young Sudanese boy is faced with a decision that will shape the rest of his life. William Levi was born in southern Sudan as part of a Messianic Hebrew tribal group and spent the majority of his growing up years as a refugee running from Islamic persecution. He was eventually taken captive for refusing to convert to Islam...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 080241138X
• ISBN13: 9780802411389
• Release Date: September 2005
• Publisher: Lift Every Voice
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Great Read

Great book, well written, did not want to put it down. It opens your eyes to what's really going on in Sudan and the adversity that they face.

Aqua-Africa

Wow... great story. Have a new appreciation for the religious freedom we have in America.

This Book Will Touch Your Soul

The Bible or the Axe is the testimony of William Levi. It tells the story of his struggle against oppression and religious persecution in Sudan. It tells a story of hope, family, responsibility, and dependence on God. It tells the story of one man's calling. If you have a heart for the persecuted church, this book will touch you in ways you can't imagine. What struck me even more than the gut wrenching opening, or even the torture this man endured, was the unmistakable message of God. I repeatedly had to stop and mark passages in the book to come back to. They were passages that touched me deeply and conveyed profound spiritual lessons. The wisdom that flows from William Levi throughout this book is a gift from God. His understanding of scripture will touch you and change you. His struggle will give you strength and make you think. It will cause you to question the very fabric of your convictions and ask yourself where you stand. You will also ask yourself - will it be the Bible or the axe? In a time of war and distress between nations and religious groups, this book could not have come at a better time. It is one thing to know what the Bible says and quite another to see it firmly in practice. William Levi met the call to love his enemies with service and strength of conviction. To tell you that I enjoyed The Bible or the Axe would be to understate my real feelings. This book is profoundly touching. If you can put it down without feeling changed, without seeing the message God is sending through the words of William Levi, then you haven't opened your heart and paid attention. This book is a must read.

pain is gain only with trust in God's goodness as support

A copy of this book was given to me by blogforbooks dot com by Stacy Harp and provided by the author William Levi, my most grateful thanks to both for making me aware of the book and allowing me the opportunity to read it. I received it Thursday night and read it Friday morning over coffee. Engrossed, subdued by the painfulness of the narrative, a little off the beaten track for me as it is a first person account of his life upto about 1993. But attracted to the snippets of reflection and theologizing that accompanies what is a straightforward tale of trust in God in the middle of a cruel war. Simply put God is good and is worthy of our trust but don't expect Him to be safe and protective from the unpleasantness of life and sin in this fallen world. Our battle is with the darkness of evil and with an evil one, who will who will crush and devour us if he is able to, the only security and hope is in the hands of God preserving us not from trials but from spiritual death and ultimate separation from Him. Dear Mr. William Levi, I am sorry to have read of not just your trials and wanderings but of the death and destruction of your people of Southern Sudan, not just for a short period of time but for several generations. I honestly can not explain your hopefulness and joy in the future except as a gift of God not just for your benefit but for ours as well. Materialism and a superabundance of toys has sapped the strength and vitality of the American church for any type of discipline or chastisement by the Lord. We expect God to be safe and to make us safe to continue to accumulate more while not only sharing little but understanding even less of how hard it is to claim the name of Christ in much of the world. The jolt that your book provides that here you are safe in America but spending all your time and energy on Operation Nehemiah when you could be enjoying yourself as do we, is as unwelcome as it is necessary. I am sure that the energy and trust of God so evident in your book will continue to bring you true joy as it enables you to bring help to your countrymen and women who have suffered so much over the last 30 years. In your task i wish you the best of not successfulness but of Godliness and Goodness. Thank you for what must have been very difficult to share your life with strangers as you wrote this book. sincerely, We each have our own story to live out in this world. Some short and bitter, some like William's sad on the surface but joyful underneath. He is the descedent of Hebraic tribesmen who preserved the Hebrew faith in the Horn of Africa for 2 millennium and who became Messanic Christians with the first Western missionaries. But the ugliness of civil war based on religion, the jihad of extremeist Islamatists in Khartoum have killed 2 million and exiled 5 million of his Southern Sudanese countrymen. To retain one's faith at all in these circumstances is amazing, but to prosper, to thrive in the face of murderous and destructiveness o

Finally - A book that fills the void!

Finally a book that spans the gap between the suffering and persecuted Africans of Sudan and the western world. This is a book that every American and indeed, every Westerner should read. In the midst of being the very honest and personal story of William Levi's life, the book also has adventure, the romantic descripton of growing up in the jungles of Uganda, the powerful testimony of a very supernatural deliverance and the needed educational information about Sudan - the backdrop upon which the story is cast. I pray that this book finds its way into the hands of many people who have the various resources, the passion, the compassion, and the energies necessary to bless the African people of Sudan. Having zero relationship with the author or anyone involved in his ministry, I encourage anyone who is considering buying this book to buy five and give them to people you know. I was truly touched by this book and I'm sure you will be as well.