Thesis: By examining Jack Overduin’s “Faith and Victory in Dachau”, Corrie Ten Boom’s “The Hiding Place”, and Eli Wiesel’s “Night”, it is clear that both documents present differing perspectives on the theme of providence. While both Jack and Corrie realize that both the good and bad times are in God’s hands, Eli doubts God’s existence in the bad times, and believes the desirable times arise from fate or chance.
I. Introduction: (maybe use the Heidelberg Catechism Lord’s Day 10 about providence)
II. How Providence is viewed when things go well. (During the favourable times, Jack Overduin and Corrie Ten Boom thank God for His blessings and care over them while Eli believes he is just getting lucky.) A. “Faith and Victory in Dachau” 1. Pg. 193 “Again and again, we compared our lives with what they had been only a few weeks before. It was a miracle of His mercy!” 2. Pg. 154 “ In His eternal wisdom God gave each of us the grace that we needed, The one received the grace to continue to live in Dachau’s torment without succumbing spiritually and morally, and the other received the grace to die.” 3. Pg. 209 “The S.S guards ate with us. What a difference! They had a dry piece of army bread, while we had delicious sandwiches made with homemade bread form our parcels. Usually, we also had cake and cookies and several kinds of fruit. A strange world indeed! But all in the hands of God.” 4. Pg. 223 “The heavy iron gates opened in front of me and closed behind me. But I had not been freed by my labor, rather, God in His grace had given me many faithful friends who had spared neither time nor effort nor cost nor risk to obtain my freedom.” B. “The Hiding Place” 1. Pg. 154 “Safe. Then- then Eusie, and Henk, and Mary, and –they’d got out of the secret room! They’d escaped! They were free! How had they managed it? How had they got past the soldiers? Never mind, dear Lord. You were there, and that’s all that mattered…” 2. Page 166 “Swiftly I opened the package that Nollie had pressed into my hand with the first embrace. It was what my leaping heart had told me: a Bible, the entire Book in a compact volume.” I couldn’t even find words with which to thank her: the day before, in the shower line I had given away my last remaining Gospel.”
C. “Night” 1. Pg. 34 “No. Two steps from the pit, we were ordered to turn left and herded into barracks.” 2. Pg. 38 “ I thanked God, in an improvised prayer, for having created mud in His infinite and wondrous universe” 3. Pg. 42 “The next morning, the "veteran" inmates treated us without brutality. We went to wash. We were given new clothing. They brought us black coffee.” 4. Pg. 50 “"Please, sir . . . I'd like to be near my father." "All right. Your father will work here, next to you.” “We were lucky.” 5. Pg 76 “Were there still miracles on this earth? He was alive. He had passed the second selection. He had still proved his usefulness . . . I gave him back his knife and spoon.”

III. How Providence is viewed during the hard times. (Jack and Corrie learn they need to trust that even in the midst of anguish and suffering God is in control of everything, and they find hope in Him. Eli however questions God, and does not mention once that everything is in God’s hand.
A. “Faith and Victory in Dachau” 1. Pg 67-“God rules over everything, even over evil and injustice done by man. God was fulfilling His plan for my life even during the height of the S.S. atrocities.” 2. Pg. 68 “God works in His own ways” Pastoral work was absolutely forbidden in the concentration camp, and no clergymen were ever admitted to do such work. God, however saw that the camp was full of persons in great need. Therefore, a few pastors had to be taken prisoner and transported to the camps.” 3. Pg. 43 “No moments in this cell will be meaningless, purposeless, or worthless. It must produce dividends; all of it is part of the total plan of God for our lives, and it serves the coming of God’s Kingdom” 4. Pg. 47 “Our crosses, our sufferings, and our dangers must be drawn up into another plan. Namely the plan that glorifies God.
B. “The Hiding Place” 1. Pg. 63 “If God has shown us the bad times ahead, it’s enough for me that He knows about them. That’s why he sometimes shows us things you know—to tell us that this too is in His hands>” 2. Pg. 67: “There are no ‘if’s’ in God’s world. And no places that are safer than other places. The center of His will is our only safety.” 3. Pg. 150 “ Was it possible that this- all of this that seemed so wasteful and so needless- this war, Scheveningen prison, this very cell, none of it was unforeseen or accidental/ Could it be part of the pattern first revealed in the Gospels? Hadn’t Jesus been defeated as utterly and unarguably as our little group and our small plans had been?” 4. Pg. 192;” And so it was that when were herded into that room ten minutes later we were not poor, but rich. Rich in this new evidence of the care of Him who was God even at Ravensbruck.”
C. “Night” 1. Pg. 33 “The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?” 2. Pg. 76 “How can I believe, how can anyone believe in this God of Mercy?" 3. Pg. 2 (preface)“A miracle? Certainly not. If heaven could or would perform a miracle for me, why not for others more deserving than myself? It was nothing more than chance.” 4. Pg. 69 “When You were displeased by Noah's generation, You brought down the Flood. When Sodom lost Your favor, You caused the heavens to rain down fire and damnation. But look at these men whom You have betrayed, allowing them to be tortured, slaughtered, gassed, and burned, what do they do? They pray before You! They praise Your name! “ 5. Pg. 67 “What are You, my God? I thought angrily. How do You compare to this stricken mass gathered to affirm to You their faith, their anger, their defiance? What does Your grandeur mean, Master of the Universe, in the face of all this cowardice, this decay, and this misery? Why do you go on troubling these poor people's wounded minds, their ailing bodies?”
IV. Conclusion