One More Down the Ridge

On the morning of May 5, 1945, Private First Class Desmond Doss stood atop the Maeda Escarpment on Okinawa — a sheer four-hundred-foot cliff the soldiers called Hacksaw Ridge. His battalion had been driven back by withering Japanese fire, leaving dozens of wounded men scattered across the plateau above. Most would have counted them lost.

Doss didn't. The young medic from Lynchburg, Virginia — a Seventh-day Adventist who refused to carry a weapon — crawled back into the killing field alone. Under mortar blasts and sniper rounds, he dragged wounded soldiers to the cliff's edge, rigged a rope litter, and lowered them one by one to safety below. Each time he reached another broken body, he prayed the same prayer: "Lord, please let me get just one more."

He worked through the night. By dawn, he had rescued seventy-five men.

When Ezekiel delivered God's words to Israel, the nation's shepherds — its kings and priests — had abandoned the flock. The weak were neglected, the injured left unbound, the scattered left unsearched for. Into that failure, the Almighty made a staggering promise: "I Myself will search for My sheep and look after them. I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak."