Cruel Taskmasters

Hear the blessed Savior calling thee oppressed, O ye heavy laden, come to me and rest. Come no longer, Terry, I your load will bear. Bring me every burden, bring me every care.

Come unto me, I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon thee, hear me and be blessed. I am meek and lowly, come and trust my might.

Come, O come, my yoke is easy, and my burdens light. I am missionary Richard Yerby in Japan with a sermon heavy on my heart which is titled Cruel Taskmasters. Listen now thoughtfully to this wisdom spoken by King David in 2 Samuel chapter 23 verse 3 when he was at death's door.

The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. That is the end of that verse in Samuel. After the great flood, Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth followed the yellow, black, and white races respectively.

Each of the three human races manifest certain traits more prominently than the other two races. Since December 3rd, 1973, this former redneck Alabama farm boy now talking to you, named Richard Yerby, has lived in Japan amidst the Japanese who are a Shem's yellow race. And I am recording this now in my house in rural central Japan in late 2025.

That more than half a century of my life has been a rich education to say the least, living among the Japanese, daily mixing with them and thus wise observing their traits firsthand. I perceive them to be madly success oriented. In man's natural eye that is, success according to worldly standards of rising up as highly as possible in material wealth, are to high worldly ranking, fame, status, or such.

My friend listening to me, if you desire to rank highly in the eyes of your almighty creator God, who is soon going to judge you, then you please obey his command in Jeremiah chapter 45 verse 5, which reads, and seekest thou great things for thyself, seek them not. That's the end of that quote. Look around you at the lukewarm, lay out of sin church goers.

Who among them do you see seeking the lowly path? First John chapter 2 verse 15 is also an important commandment. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loved the world, the love of the father is not in him.

And that goes on to tell us that all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of God the father, but is of this world, and it will pass away. It will perish, and those who pursue it will likewise perish horribly. You please listen carefully now.

Obeying such biblical commands as these I've just read is essential to your survival, and the survival of your descendants. And what I mean by that is this, too often with a broken heart and tears freely flowing from mine eyes, I observe some Japanese people around me literally killing their own selves by being their own cruel taskmaster. Some other cruel taskmasters killing those under their cruel rule, and some oppressed teenagers murdering their cruel taskmaster parents in a criminally insane quest amongst this race to rise, rise, rise.

First of all, they push them own selves past the limit of mental sanity. In the early 1980s, I watched such a Japanese boy who lived in my area from the time he was about 11 years old, exerting himself to excel to the highest degree possible in all his endeavors, studying sports and such. In senior high school, years after I'd started observing him, he cracked up.

He just completely quit doing everything, daily sitting in his parents' house, staring at the walls, going out nowhere, accomplishing nothing, proceeding nowhere in such a sad tragedy. Some aggressive adult Japanese men who fail to achieve the high goals they set for their own selves, in some cases, secretly desert their own family. By that, I mean the man of the house goes to work as usual one day and just steals on away, doesn't come back home.

Sometimes the family doesn't see that husband and father for years, or sometimes never see him again. On August 1st, 1978, I moved into the rental house in Matsuda Town, in which I still live now, in late 2025, more than 47 years after moving into this house, and I desire to live here till Christ's rapture of us saints, or till my death. Even so, please come today, this very day, sweet Lord Jesus, to take me home to be with thee.

Oh, I want to see him look upon his face, there to sing forever of his saving grace, on the streets of glory, let me lift my voice. Here's all past, home at last, ever to rejoice. Anyway, that landlord of this rental house was most happy to have this young American guy take up residence in his small, simple rental house in this rural town.

And at that time, he brought his five-year-old son to my house, and the landlord spoke to me thus wise, with his son sitting with us. I want you to teach my son English conversation. When he becomes an adult, I want him to go live in California, join a country club, play golf with high society club members, and sit in their clubhouse, sipping champagne and chatting with them.

I want him to start learning English now from a native speaker. That's the end of his quote. I personally think it would have been beneficial to that high-rising dad for someone to whack him over the head with a golf club and firmly command him to mind not things of high degree, but condescend to men of low degree.

That family lived in a larger city some distance from this rental house in this small town. Thus, that super busy dad never got around to hauling his son to my house weekly or so for an English lesson. Also, he didn't have long to consider that option.

This dad was aggressively into business for himself, blowing every fuse in his created being, striving to become rich and great. He borrowed much money, got too far into debt to be able to pay his debts. And thus, three or so years later, after talking to me about teaching his son English, one day, he simply and secretly walked away from home, deserting his precious wife, small son, and small daughter.

That's the destruction of a Japanese man who was a cruel masstaster to his own self, who sent him my humble abode two or three times. And little old me still abides in that lowly house this day in late 2025, about 45 years after he deserted his business enterprises, his precious wife, and children and all. Tragic.

Oh, so tragic. Next, suicide is a viable way out of trouble for the yellow race, an honorable way out. They take that option more so than the black race or the white race does, I perceive.

I want to read to you verbatim a newspaper article that appeared in the separate English language edition of a Japanese language newspaper here in Japan in the year 2001. The title of the article is, Two Teens Die After Jumping From Building in Saitama. That is Saitama Prefecture adjacent to Tokyo metropolis.

Reading the article now, Saitama, two middle-aged school girls, that is junior high school girls, aged 15 and 14, died Monday after they apparently jumped from the sixth floor of a parking tower of the Dai-E supermarket in Kuki, Saitama Prefecture, police said. According to police, the two girls were found lying in a pool of blood in a parking lot on the west side of the building by a 30-year-old man on his way to his office at about 5 50 a.m. The man reportedly heard the sound of an impact and looked back and saw the girls. They were taken to a nearby hospital where both later died.

They were classmates at a public school in the city. Police found two rucksacks containing textbooks believed to belong to the girls and a plastic bag on the rooftop of the parking building. The girls had written dozens of pages about their worries about family and school in a B5-sized notebook titled Our School Life, November 11, 2001, and found in the bag.

They wrote, first quote, I'm too exhausted to live. Next quote, because I've already decided to die, I want to try doing something I've never done before. And the third quote, I want to live freely, police said.

That is, the police reported those quotes. Police believe the girls intended to commit suicide by jumping from the building. That's the end of that newspaper article.

The following words come from my mind, and I believe that I have a mind of God who created those precious girls for the purpose of them living a blessed life to old age and who is soon to judge those parents and teachers similar to being murderers because they pushed those precious girls past the limits that those girls were able to endure. Japan education system is most oppressive with long hours at school, early time before and late time after regular class hours. The same is true of much of Japan's adult working class also.

You please notice that the 30-year-old man near their death scene was walking to his office job, a day job at 5 50 a.m. American working class. That's an early start for the day shift, isn't it? Also, those two girls were walking to school at such a wee hour of the morning. Japanese students also attend cram schools on weekday late afternoons after they get out of school on weekday nights and on Saturdays and Sundays.

Of course, not every student attends every one of those times, but much long hours devouring the knowledge of good and evil. You Christians listening to me right now who have teenage children or who teach a teenage Sunday school class or who teach teens in any setting, would you please tell them this tragic fate of these two Japanese teenage girls asking your teens to please pray for the salvation of Japanese teens who tragically perish too often in similar manner. Please read my newsletters and listen to audio sermons on my website that tell of my missionary work in Japan.

Please tell that news to Christian youth around you, having them pray for the salvation of Japanese young souls who are perishing around me. My website URL is Christisall.us. Separate the three words with two dashes. Christisall.us. Now, I gave you a case for the high school boy living in my area checked out of life due to oppressing himself and just became reclusive, just shifted into neutral doing nothing.

Next, the fatal tragedy of these two junior high girls ending their own lives in a bloody pool on concrete. But my news gets worse. That is the next doors are the oppressed young ones murdering their oppressors.

Back about the turn of the century, around the year 2000 or so, when a senior high school Japanese boy returned home from school, his mother announced to him that she had enrolled him into another that is an additional cram school. Such cram schools meet after regular school hours or on weekends. Sinfully vain parents didn't rise up nearly as highly in life as they desired to do.

Of course, why, almost no one rises up to be as great as they wish they could be, now do they? So next, these Japanese parents go all out to push their own children up high. Anyway, this poor boy, he just snapped under the heavy mental load. In the dead of that night, he crept into the room where his parents were sleeping and he swung his baseball bat against his mother's head with all his might, killing her.

The commotion awoke his dad who was sleeping next to his mom. His dad, shockingly appalled at the unbelievable sight, naturally flew into a rage and yelled out something to the effect of, you crazy thing. If the dad had been wise, he would calmly have said to that murdering heart, now calm down son, hand the bat over to me now.

But the dad flying into a mad rage against the boy caused the son to apply his bat to his dad in the same manner, killing him also. The boy's grandmother was sleeping upstairs and this murder scene was taking place downstairs. It has been common in Japan for three generations to live under one roof, but that custom is fading in this modern age.

Anyway, the commotion also awoke granny. She slowly came down the stairs, sleepy eyed, calling out, what's wrong, what's happening? Later, the police asked the boy why he killed her in like manner also. He explained, she was old.

From then on, she would never have had a pleasant moment in life. So he murdered granny, sort of as a mercy killing. Three people brutally murdered by their own family member because of that cruel taskmaster of a mother.

If you haven't heard my previous three sermons in this series, please listen to them on my website about both Christians and children of the devil around me speaking against my outgoing gospel outreach. I told of the man in front of the post office on Guam Island, angrily addressing me because three girls in my charge were singing praises to God out in the rain, which they themselves chose to do. Did any of our nation's populace speak out against the emergency personnel who lost their lives when the ten twin towers fell and the ones of them who received permanent lung damage from breathing that air? Such heroes are highly lauded for their sacrifice.

But when I daily stand out in public in hopes of lifting up souls that are oppressed in any way at all, people are quick to speak against it. Away with you such souls. After that precious Japanese teenage high school boy had murdered all three of his family members, he simply walked out of his house at 2 or 3 a.m. or so, leaving the house unlocked.

He had no desire to try to escape. Compact Japanese neighborhoods typically have a tiny playground because many houses have no yard to play in. He ambled out to the nearest dirt lot playground and likely sit down on a bench there.

No longer with anywhere to go or anything to do, his entire life now ruined in shambles before reaching adulthood. A few hours later, schoolmate guys walked past him on their way to school, calling out to him, come on or you'll be late. I can't go.

Why? I just killed all my family. Now, you're the big jokester this morning. Come on.

I'm serious. Go down there to my house to see for yourselves. Those guys began to sense something alarming about his seriousness, so they went to his house and beheld the scene.

In panic and shock, they fled to the school, told their teacher, who told the principal, who called the police. Abba, Father in heaven, please lay it on Christian hearts listening to me right now to intercede for the salvation of Japanese souls around me now who are in similar quandaries. May they turn to Jesus for perfect help and salvation.

At a different time and in a different place in this proud land of the rising sun, an aggressive Japanese medical doctor who was aggressively in love with his profession, married as a young adult, fathered one son, and in time his wife divorced him. Likely no family life for her, married to this aggressive professional. He soon remarried and his second wife had one son by a former marriage.

Doc was aggressively determined to mold his own son into a cookie cutter replica of himself, an aggressive medical doctor. Thus, in their house, he put a sign on the front of the door to his own son's room, which read ICU for intensive care, and he decreed that his teenage son was to daily spend long intensive hours shut in that room in solitaire, isolation, studying aggressively to become a high-skilled great doctor. Eat, eat, eat the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die.

Genesis chapter 2 verse 17 warns us folks certainly should believe those eternal scriptures. The bible has many warnings that if heeded tend to long peaceful and pleasant life. After days and many hours of solitaire isolation in his room, Doc's son also cracked up.

No, he didn't kill his dad. He chose easier targets. While his dad was aggressively at work doctoring, this son killed his stepmother and his stepbrother at home.

He then set fire to their fine doctor's house. You try to picture in your mind that dad busily doctoring away in the hospital or clinic where he worked, and someone with the most solemn grave face comes to his place and breaks that tragic news to him. First wife had divorced him years before.

Second wife and her son now murdered by his son whom he had such high hopes for, who will now be in a different isolation place for a long time, and Doc's fine house is fire gutted. The way of the transgressor is hard. The Lord Jesus Christ's yoke is ever so easy and his burden extremely light.

I expect the remainder of Doc's life to be constantly filled with sadness, sorrow, and remorse. Never again will he pass a pleasant day of aggressively working with high hopes for his family. All of that destroyed.

Now as for me, I work to my limit to turn souls to eternal happiness. Sometimes I sing and preach out in public till my voice is gone. Sometimes till I have no more strength, and it's amazing how that fills me with joy unspeakable and full of glory.

It is joy unspeakable and full of glory, full of glory, full of glory. It is joy unspeakable and full of glory. All that has never yet been told.

As I follow the Lord Jesus Christ, I fish for man as he said those would do who follow him. Follow me and I will make you fishers of man, he says to his disciples. And I, as I'm out in public amongst all these Japanese, I don't know which of them are down ever so low contemplating suicide or such.

And I pray that the Lord will direct their path to mine and my path to them so that I can impart to them the words of life and the words of salvation and eternal life in Jesus Christ which are filled with love, joy, and peace and satisfaction. You pray for me as I do so, please. God be with you to bless you and keep you and take care of you in every way.