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Cassie's Own
Words:
Words Of Wisdom from Cassie
"I think that the way of advancing the Kingdom is just being
a loyal friend and a good example to nonbelievers, as well as Christians. Just trying not to contradict myself and get rid
of all hypocrisy, and just to live for Christ."
"Don't seek human love for comfort, seek God's unfailing love instead."
"I
will die for my faith. I will die for my God. It's the least I can do for Christ dying for me."
"A True Christian Martyr
and Woman of God"
On April 20th, 1999, Cassie Bernall was sitting
in the library of Columbine High School, in Littleton, Colorado, when two white racists neo-nazis, who were also followers
of the demented so-called rock star Marilyn Manson, burst in, and began shooting everyone in sight. Cassie stood up and began
to pray. One of the killers pointed a shotgun in Cassie's face and asked her, "Do you believe in God?" Cassie stood face to
face with her killers and she said "Yes". One of the killers then said to her," Why?" and then immediately shot her in the
face, without giving her a chance to answer.
Cassie died a true Christian Martyr for her faith.
She could have begged for her life, in hopes that her killers would take pity on her and might spare her life. She refused
to do that. Cassie did not give those low-life pieces of trash that killed her the satisfaction of seeing her beg and plead
for her life. Cassie knew where she would be going. She kept her faith in Jesus. Cassie proved that she loved Jesus so much,
that she was willing to die for her faith in Him. Today, many say they love Jesus, but if asked to prove their
faith like Cassie did, many would back down, and cry like little babies and beg for their lives.
At a time in the world where people need a hero,
as a role model, Cassie Rene` Bernall serves as a true hero. I am proud of Cassie. She was what a true Christian is all about.
So many of these wimps that we see on "Christian TV" that tell us about faith and living for Christ, are not even fit to walk
on the same ground that Cassie walked on. They would cave-in and act like pansies if they were faced with the same situation
Cassie found herself in. If only most Christians truly believed like Cassie, imagine all the people who be serving Jesus right
now! As I travel around the world, I have personally shared Cassie's amazing story with the congregations of churches I have
spoken at. As a result, thousands have answered my alter calls, and have given their lives to Christ, and have rededicated
their lives to Him. They have made commitments to take up Cassie's mantel. On April 20th, 1999, Cassie laid down her mantle.
Do you have enough faith, courage, and love for Jesus to pick up Cassie's mantel?
Even as Cassie lives in Heaven, she still preaches
God's Word today, through this ministry, Michael W. Smith's music ministry, and her mother's book," She Said Yes.",
by Misty Bernall.
This ministry is now dedicated to the memory
of Cassie Bernall, MY HERO!.......Pastor Johnny
Lee Clary
Denver Rocky Mountain News
by Carla Crowder
A Columbine killer pointed
his gun at Cassie Bernall and asked her the life-or-death question: "Do you believe in God?" She paused. The gun was still
there. "Yes, I believe in God," she said. (Alan Keyes in the - WorldnetDaily said, "Several of the students at Columbine High
have told of being with a girl when a gunman demanded of the group whether any of them believed in Jesus Christ. The girl
hesitated a minute, and then said "yes." The gunman said "for what?" --and killed her") That was the last thing this 17-year-old
Christian would ever say. The gunman asked her "Why?" She had no time to answer before she was shot to death.
Cassie entered
the Columbine High School library to study during lunch. She left a martyr.
Though lots of fellow Columbine
students already were strong, vocal Christians, Bernall's confession in the face of death has inspired them to keep the faith
no matter how bad it gets. She did something that one of the thieves did when Jesus was on the cross. She admitted she believed
in Jesus Christ before she died," said Joshua Lapp, a 16-year-old Columbine sophomore and member of St. Philip Lutheran Church.
Crouched in the library, hiding from the gunmen, he listened as Bernall was shot to death after her confession. How would
he have reacted? "I would've done the same thing she did," Lapp said. He only knew Bernall from passing in crowded school
hallways. But his voice was still halting as he spoke of her. It was just ... she's ... after she said that, you know she's
now in a better place," Lapp said. "She died for her faith. That's why she died and that's how she lived her whole life.
She
was a martyr for Jesus," said Crystal Woodman, a Columbine junior and member of Bernall's youth group at West Bowles Community
Church. The girls used to volunteer together, reaching out to homeless people downtown. Woodman, too, barely escaped from
the library, and only after asking God to "send your angels down." Teens like Lapp and Woodman aren't blaming God for Tuesday's
violence. They're thanking him they're alive. "Everybody that made it out, they know they made it out for a reason, or somebody
was watching out for them," Lapp said. Churches where these students worship have had countless vigils, memorials and counseling
sessions this week. On Thursday, another prayer session sprung out of the mud and muck at the park across from Columbine.
At first it was just a small circle.
The Faith Christian School
girls soccer team from Arvada had come over in their maroon sweats to pray at the site. Hundreds of people buzzed around them:
friends, students and strangers hauling posters, flowers and letters to the giant memorials growing in the park. The girls
prayed and the circle grew. Twenty kids, then 50. Holding hands, singing hymns. Young voices praying aloud under a cold, slate
gray sky. Matt Baker, a tough-looking kid wearing baggy jeans, a Tommy Hilfiger sweatshirt and a yellow baseball cap turned
backward, prayed: "If we lean toward you God, we know you're going to lean right back." The circle kept getting bigger, crowding
out the television crews scrambling to go live.
A hundred kids. Maybe 120.
Finally everyone grew quiet, captured by a sweet, high-pitched voice. "The only way you'll get through this is through Jesus.
If you don't have Jesus, get Jesus," she said. "You don't know if you have tomorrow." It was the voice of Sam Matherne, a
student at Cherry Creek High School and a member of the Orchard Road Christian Center. She, too, was a friend of Rachel Scott.
"My best friend died in there, don't let it be in vain," Matherne said. Nearby, raindrops pattered on the memorials, smearing
posters and letters. A letter to Bernall and to God, written on white notebook paper, stayed dry under a tent. "This sweet,
innocent beautiful girl (is) one of your most precious creatures and the world has suffered a great loss." But, as these teens
see it, according to Bernall's friend Woodman: "Now she's in heaven. She's so much better off than any of us."
Two days before her she
was murdered , Cassie wrote this:
"Now I have given up on everything else I have
found it to be the only way To really know Christ and to experience The mighty power that brought Him back to life again,
and to find Out what it means to suffer and to Die with him. So, whatever it takes I will be one who lives in the fresh Newness
of life of those who are Alive from the dead."
The morning Cassie was killed, she handed
this note to a friend:
"Honestly,
I want to live completely for God, it's hard and scary but totally worth it."
MARK 8:35
"Whoever loses
their life for me and for the gospel will save it."
LUKE 23: 43
"I tell you the
truth, today you will be with me in Paradise"
REVELATION 21: 4
"He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying, or pain."
On the news you came, no faces, no names Just
two young lives of many snuffed out by sad, hurting boy's with guns.
To our homes you came, two faces, two names,
still no-one special just two that were slain.
In my heart you flooded, two special girls, one
God, we shared the faith but you seemed to have something more.
The ability to say "yes" down the barrel of a
gun, the ability to say "no more" when suddenly it wasn't fun.
Two shining stars you seem to be, not saints but
people just like me.
Your courage gave God the tools he needs to turn
grieving hearts to glad, cause at his hand you sit and through your lives I too can make a stand, and to my God and all the
others I have the courage to now say "YES"
In tribute to Cassie and Rachael who were slain
during the Columbine Massacre, who's never ending faith and God loving courage is an example to us all.
Mal, Gisborne, New Zealand
BELOW IS ANOTHER STORY OF A TEEN WHO FACED THE SAME QUESTION, WAS SHOT NINE TIMES AND SURVIVED!
THE FAMILY GIVES ALL CREDIT TO GOD...READ ON:
Girl did not forsake God
Teen-ager who suffered nine gunshot wounds is recovering through 'divine intervention'
By Rebecca Jones
Valeen Schnurr went home from the hospital Monday, four bullets still inside her, lodged somewhere
next to her indomitable spirit.
The 18-year-old was among the most critically wounded in last week's shooting at Columbine High School,
with at least nine bullet and shrapnel wounds down the left side of her body.
Her fast recovery has surprised everyone.
"When the doctor tells you, 'divine intervention,' what else can you say?" asks Valeen's mom, Shari
Schnurr, who spoke from her south Jefferson County home Monday afternoon, following a six-day vigil at Swedish Medical Center.
Val passed a supreme test of faith during last week's terror. Like Cassie Bernall, she answered yes
to a gunman's taunting question: Do you believe in God.
The gunman shot them both. Cassie died. Val almost did, too.
But miraculously, the bullets and shrapnel missed Valeen's vital organs. Another wound in her arm will
likely leave her with permanent nerve damage, but she can move her hand, a good sign.
It's not unusual for surgeons to leave bullets in shooting victims, said Kim Feldhaus, an emergency
room physician at Denver Health Medical Center. Unless they threaten an organ or lodge in a dangerous spot, they are essentially
harmless, she said.
While her parents are prepared for post-traumatic stress in the months to come, "The psychiatrist says
she's doing unbelievably well," says her father, Mark Schnurr.
Valeen was studying in the library last Tuesday with her good friend Lauren Townsend when a teacher
ran in yelling about a gunman and warning the students to take cover. Valeen and Lauren huddled together, listening to the
guns and bombs in the cafeteria below.
Slowly, in dribs and drabs, she has told her parents what happened next. She saw the two gunman come
into the library and walk past the area where she hid. She thinks they threw a pipe bomb because she saw books flying.
She heard other students being shot, some pleading for their lives. The screams coming from her end
of the room drew the gunmen's attention, and they came back her way, guns blazing.
When the bullets and shrapnel hit Valeen, she slumped and clutched her abdomen. "Oh my God, oh my God!"
she remembers saying.
"God!" one of the gunmen taunted her. "Do you really believe in God?"
Moments earlier, Valeen saw what happened when Cassie was asked the same question and answered yes.
"Val was scared to say, 'Yes,"' says Valeen's mother. "But she was scared to say 'no,' because she
thought she was dying."
Finally, she told the gunman, "Yes, I believe in God."
"Why?" he asked, as he stopped to reload.
"I do believe in God," she said, "and my Mom and Dad have taught me about God." She thinks she babbled
on for a few seconds after that, but her memory is fuzzy. Finally, she remembers crawling away, under a table.
And then the gunmen left. "She thinks crawling away may have saved her life," says her mother.
She lay under the table, holding Lauren's hand. When someone yelled, "They're leaving. Everybody out!"
she touched Lauren's face and said, "Wake up, it's time to get out!"
"She told me, 'I tried hard, Mom!"' Shari Schnurr says. "But she wouldn't wake up!"
Lauren Townsend did not survive.
Valeen tightly wrapped her sweatshirt around her middle, to keep pressure on her wounds, and tried
to carry Lauren out. "But she knew she was too weak," her mother says. "She had to leave her."
Her mother says Valeen prayed constantly as she fought to stay awake and alert.
In the chaos outside, it took nearly an hour for emergency personnel to get Valeen to a hospital. Paramedics
who transported her told her parents they did not expect her to live.
Shari Schnurr was at her job as a dental assistant when a friend called to tell her about a gunman
at Columbine. Thinking it must involve some lovesick teen-ager, she wondered if her daughter, a peer counselor with a penchant
for helping troubled students, was in the thick of it.
Before racing home, she called and left a message on her home recorder: "Val, I know you're home. Sit
on the sofa and wait. I'll be there in five minutes." "I was praying I'd see her car in the driveway when I got home," she
says. "It wasn't there."
She got a call from her office saying Val had been wounded and was taken to Swedish. "I was still thinking
it would just a be a little arm wound or something." Then she got to the hospital and learned the horrific nature of her daughter's
wounds. "At that point, I fell apart."
Her husband arrived at the hospital moments after she did. They didn't see their daughter until 5 p.m.,
after surgery. They walked into the recovery room with their priest. When Val saw the priest, she said, "I'm dying, aren't
I?" "I had to assure her that no, she'd be fine," says her dad.
One of the gunmen, Eric Harris, lived just around the block from the Schnurrs.
"She says she didn't know him," says her mother, "but I know that if he'd come to her and asked for
her help, she would have been there trying to help him."
"I couldn't be more proud of her," says her father. "I just hope that through this, she sees how special
she really is. There's got to be a reason that all these guys survived."
April 27, 1999
God Wins!
It is SO GOD for Him to take a VERY horrible thing and make something
beautiful out of it!
Where are you in Gods Eyes?
Where is God it your Eyes?
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