To put everything on the altar for the Christ of Heaven is acknowledged as all Christians as a value but is seldom performed in the face of extreme dilemma. When the loss of life or comfort or possessions is faced, we often compromise, holding that God does not want us to suffer. Only a few pastors in Germany stood up against the desires of the Third Reich to incorporate German 'values' and Aryan beliefs into the pristine Gospel of Jesus Christ. Tillich left the country, and the fledgling evangelical church which split from the German Christian Church (Lutheran} had few leaders willing to stand against Hitler: the two most notable were Bonhoeffer and Niemoller. Bot were imprisoned for their beliefs and leadership of a Church which defied Hitler even to his face. Bonhoeffer was killed, accused of complicity in a plot to assassinate Hitler. Niemoeller was responsible for the founding of the "Confessing Church" after disillusionment with Hitler, and the Stuttgart Confession of Guilt. He was imprisoned for his beliefs at Sachsenhausen and Dachau. Martin Niemoller once served as the President of the World Council of churches.

After the War, Niemoller had one common theme which he preached and promoted everywhere he went: Repentance of the German Christian Church for their apathy and /or collusion in World War II and the holocaust. The topic of repentance, while one would think would bring the church together, instead inspired heated arguments and controversy: some thought still amidst ruin, rubble and death, they had done no wrong. Others felt that unless the Church at large all over the world would repent, that they should not be singled out. Niemoller's voice rang brightly over the next 40 years worldwide, that the Church not only needed to repent, but could have stopped the onset of war at the beginning by standing against a tyrant, who while using it, hated the gospel. His death in 1984 came with international respect, and his words have stood as a phoenix of return to viable Christian value and action in the modern world.