Eternal Perspective
November 7, 2025
Kabul, Afghanistan - November 29, 2014
They knew the risk.
They counted the cost.
Werner Groenewald - pastor, teacher, father.
Jean-Pierre and Rodé - his teenage children.
The Taliban stormed their compound that morning.
Gunfire. Smoke. Silence.
And in that silence… Heaven sang.
Because this isn’t a story of defeat - it’s a story of victory.
The Groenewalds didn’t die for a cause.
They lived for a Kingdom.
Werner and his wife, Hannelie, had already done what most believers only talk about.
They left behind comfort and predictability to follow a whisper - a holy nudge that said, “Go where others won’t.”
Afghanistan wasn’t an easy place for anyone, much less a Christian family.
But they believed that love could reach where politics never could.
Werner taught English and discipled quietly.
Hannelie, a doctor, treated the sick and the broken.
Their home became a lighthouse disguised as a house - a place where kindness preached long before words ever did.
And every morning before sunrise, Werner would open his Bible, gather his kids, and remind them:
“We live for the King, even when the kingdom costs us everything.”
When the attack came, the world called it tragic.
But Heaven called it testimony.
Their bodies fell on Afghan soil,
but their legacy rose higher than the mountains surrounding Kabul.
They were not victims - they were victors.
Because when you live with eternity in your eyes,
death is just the doorway into glory.
Hannelie survived.
She returned home with scars no heart should carry,
and yet, when asked how she could forgive those who killed her husband and children,
she answered with the same calm her family had lived by:
“Because Jesus forgave me first.”
Those six words shook the world harder than any act of terror could.
Hebrews 12:2 says,
“Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.”
That’s what sustained the Groenewalds.
They didn’t measure life by safety, status, or comfort.
They measured it by obedience.
By eternity.
When you live that way - when your gaze is locked on the One who conquered death -
fear loses its voice.
Pain loses its permanence.
And faith becomes something unbreakable.
The Groenewald legacy isn’t about death.
It’s about devotion.
It’s about waking up each day knowing that the Gospel is still worth it -
even when it costs you everything.
They remind us that courage isn’t always loud.
Sometimes it’s quiet faithfulness.
Sometimes it’s teaching in the dark.
Sometimes it’s raising your children to love Jesus in a land that hates His name.
They remind us that eternity makes every sacrifice worthwhile.
And here’s the truth:
Every believer faces their own Kabul -
their own moment where faith collides with fear,
where obedience costs something.
But when your eyes are on Jesus, even death bows its head.
The Gospel doesn’t stop at your pain; it moves through it.
And somewhere between surrender and suffering,
He turns ashes into anthems.
Takeaway:
When your heart beats for eternity,
the world can’t take anything from you that Heaven can’t restore.
The Groenewalds showed us that the Gospel still advances with power.
And eternity is still on the line.
“They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.” - Revelation 12:11
🔥
Stay tuned for the Season 3 finale -
Episode 8: “The Reckoning - Eternity on the Line.”
It’s the close of this chapter - and the spark of the next.
Until then… keep your heart on fire.