Robert Raikes

Robert Raikes inherited a publishing business the Gloucester Journal from his father in 1757.  Wanting to serve God my making a difference with his platform, Robert looked into the prison system in England and advocated for reform – arguing it was preferable to prevent crime than to punish it.

In investigating the prisons and the poverty that fed them, Robert was made aware of a dark underbelly of English society.  The slums of England housed many children employed in the factories.  In their time off, usually just on Sundays, they ran unsupervised and uncontrolled through the city.

Speaking to some adults about the children roaming the area, a woman replied to him, “Sir, if you could take a view of this part of town on a Sunday, you would be shocked indeed, for then the street is filled with multitudes of these wretches, who, released on that day from employment, spend their time in noise and riot, playing at a throwing game, and cursing and swearing in a manner so horrid, as to convey to any serious mind an idea of hell rather than any other place.”

Wondering what he could do to bring improvement to this situation, he was struck by God with a single word in his heart – “TRY.”  Speaking it over with his pastor, he broached the idea of a school for the children on Sundays.  With volunteer teachers, the children would be taught to read and write part of the day and receive Bible lessons the rest of the day.  Initially, the school was derisively called “Raikes’ Ragged School.”

His initial attempt had minimal attendance.  When he explored why, he found that many children did not want to come because they were ashamed of the clothes they had.  Raikes assured the children that all they needed was a clean face and combed hair.  He also instituted a matching program – for every penny the children brought for clothing, donors were lined up to match it.  This taught the children and their families the benefits of saving and thrift.

One anecdote shows how Robert handled children.  One girl had an attitude, and was causing her mother a great deal of grief.  Raikes met with the girl and her mother and pleaded with the child to ask her mother’s forgiveness as the first step toward changing course.  When she refused, Raikes replied, “If you have no regard for yourself, I have a great deal of regard for you…If you will not humble yourself, I must humble myself.”  He then knelt in front of the child’s mother and asked her forgiveness for failing to reach her daughter.  Seeing this grown man on his knees in humility before her mother broke the child.  She fell on her knees and was much changed after that.

Before long, Robert had over a hundred children ages 6 to 14 attending his Sunday School.  While this wasn’t the first attempt in England at a task like this, it was the first to really gain traction.  Using his paper to publish what was happening, Raikes’ schools became a model for dozens of similar schools around England.  By 1788 there were 300,000 children attending Sunday Schools around England.  Police commented that crime had drastically dropped.

Some criticized the schools – complaining that they would weaken home-based religious education and that Christians should not be employed on Sunday.  Some politicians worried that the Sunday Schools could be used to propagandize children into radical ideas.  Nevertheless, the idea stuck.

Robert Raikes passed away on April 5^th, 1811, age 75.  His Sunday Schools became the forerunner of the English public education system.  Robert used what he had and had great success.  Perhaps that is why he wrote, “I can never pass by the spot where the word ‘TRY’ came so powerfully into my mind, without lifting up my hands and heart to heaven, in gratitude to God, for having put such a thought into my heart.”

Christian History e-mail: 05 April 2022, Dan Graves

https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/church-history-for-kids/robert-raikes-and-how-we-got-sunday-school-11635043.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Raikes

Fabian

Fabian was born in the early 200s to a noble family in Rome.  History does not record much more about his early life, but it is a fair assumption that he was well-educated and raised in the Faith.

Fabian came to Rome in the year 236 as an observer to the selection of a new Bishop.  It was a difficult election – Pope Pontian had reigned only five years before he was deported, following him Anterus held the position only a few months before he died.  Discussions over the next Bishop were somewhat heated with many prominent Christians in contention.

According to the Church Historian Eusebius, who lived less than a century after this, among the assembled crowd a dove flew down and landed on the head of Fabian.  Though he was not a leader in the church, the crowd noticed this and acclaimed Fabian as the next bishop.  According to Eusebius, “the whole body exclaimed, with all eagerness and with one voice, as if moved by the Spirit of God, that he was worthy; and without delay they took and placed him upon the episcopal throne.”

Despite the unusual manner of his election, Fabian proved a very capable bishop.  He organized the city of Rome into seven ecclesiastical districts to better provide for the spiritual needs of the residents.  Deacons were assigned to administer these regions.  He also organized charitable work within the city.  Fabian also had a great concern for the lost.  He sent a number of missionaries to Gaul (modern-day France) and established at least seven churches there.  A surviving letter he sent reflects this passion for the lost:

“We beseech you also to be zealous in praying in your pious supplications, that our God and Lord Jesus Christ, who will have all men to be saved and not one to perish, may, by His vast omnipotence, cause their hearts to turn again to sound doctrine and to the Catholic faith, in order that they may be recovered from the toils of the devil…”

Fabian also had a great interest in preserving the history of martyrs.  He advocated with Rome for the return of the bodies of two martyrs who had been sentenced to hard labor in Sardinia.  Fabian initiated repairs on the catacombs where many Christians had been buried and gathered eyewitness accounts and court records of martyrs over the (then) two centuries of the existence of the Church.

Finally, Fabian exhibited a passion for sound doctrine, roundly condemning a new heresy begun by an individual named Privatus in North Africa.

In the year 249, Decius ascended as Emperor of Rome.  Part of his agenda being a restoral of the Roman stage religion, this led to another round of persecutions for Christians.  Decius put out a decree that every person should offer a sacrifice to the Roman gods within a certain period of time.  This sacrifice would be witnessed by and recorded by the magistrates.  Bishop Fabian, being one of the few vocal opponents of this edict, was one of the first victims of Decius’ persecution.  He was thrown in prison.  Historical accounts vary as to whether he died in prison or if he was beheaded but it is know that he died on January 20^th, 250 – fourteen years and ten days after his remarkable ascension.

Bishop Cyprian of Carthage, a contemporary of Fabian, and one who would himself die a martyr, wrote to the church of Rome about Fabian:

“I greatly congratulate you that you honor his memory with so public and illustrious a testimony…For just as the fall of a bishop tends to bring about the ruinous fall of his followers, so it is a useful and helpful thing when, by the firmness of his faith, a bishop becomes manifest to his brethren as an object of imitation.”

E-mail from Christian History Institute, 10 January 2022.

https://popehistory.com/popes/pope-st-fabian/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Fabian

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decius

Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus

Stand Up, Stand up for Jesus

Episcopal Reverend Dudley Tyng was forced to resign from his pastorate in Philadelphia for preaching forcefully against slavery.  Undaunted, he became a Presbyterian and planted a church in his home town.  In addition to his church plant Dudley, along with other ministers, preached at the local YMCA to young men and were used by God to spark a revival of thousands in the city.

In March of 1858, the thirty-three-year-old Tyng preached a sermon to about 5,000 young men in the YMCA hall where over a thousand made professions of faith.  During his sermon he remarked, “I would rather that [my] right arm were amputated at the trunk than that I should come short of my duty to you in delivering God’s message.”

That week, Reverend Tyng went to visit a local farm where he saw a mule-powered corn-shelling machine.  As he reached out to pat one of the mules, the sleeve of his coat caught in the gears and his arm was quickly pulled in to the machine.  The injury was severe and his arm was amputated.

Infection set in and it soon became clear that Dudley was going to die.  His friend and fellow preacher Pastor George Duffield was at his bedside and asked him if he had any message for the men in the city.  “Tell them to stand up for Jesus,” he replied.

Duffield preached the funeral sermon for his friend Dudley Tyng.  He used as his text Ephesians 6:14, “Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness.”  He closed his sermon by having a hymn he wrote sung, a hymn based on his friend’s final words to him:

Stand up, stand up for Jesus, Ye soldiers of the cross;

Lift high His royal banner, It must not suffer loss:

From victory unto victory His army shall He lead,

Till every foe is vanquished, And Christ is Lord indeed.

Stand up, stand up for Jesus, The trumpet call obey;

Forth to the mighty conflict, In this His glorious day:

Ye who are men, now serve Him Against unnumbered foes;

Let courage rise with danger, And strength to strength oppose.

[note the allusion to Dudley Tyng’s injury]

Stand up, stand up for Jesus, Stand in His strength alone;

The arm of flesh will fail you, Ye dare not trust your own:

Put on the gospel armor, Each piece put on with prayer;

Where duty calls, or danger, Be never wanting there.

Stand up, stand up for Jesus, The strife will not be long;

This day the noise of battle, The next, the victor’s song:

To him who overcometh A crown of life shall be;

He, with the King of glory, Shall reign eternally.

[the fifth stanza, omitted from most hymnals today, allude to Tyng’s death in the third line]

Stand up, stand up for Jesus, Each soldier to his post;

Close up the broken column, And shout through all the host:

Make good the loss so heavy, In those that still remain,

And prove to all around you That death itself is gain!

https://wordwisebiblestudies.com/the-strange-case-of-dudley-tyng-stand-up-stand-up-for-jesus/

https://www.hymncharts.com/2015/07/27/the-unusual-story-behind-stand-up-stand-up-for-jesus/

https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/history-of-hymns-stand-up-stand-up-for-jesus

Agape, Chionia, and Irene

In the year 303, the Roman Emperor Diocletian, then in his 19^th year of power, desiring to restore Rome to his vision of its prior glory, instituted what was the final major persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire, and arguably the most severe.  The emperor issued a number of edicts removing legal protections from Christians and mandating they comply with religious practices only to gods officially sanctioned by Rome.  Later edicts required universal sacrifice to Roman gods and were targeted at Christian clergy.  This persecution lasted ten years.

Born in the city of Aquileia, on the northern Adriatic coast of Italy, the orphaned sisters Agape, Chionia, and Irene were living devout lives under the supervision of a priest named Xeno.  As young women, they each declined numerous offers of marriage, preferring lives of service and prayer.

When the edicts from Rome were announced, they hid their Christian writings but were arrested for refusing to eat meat sacrificed to the Roman idols.  Diocletian had been passing through the area on his way to Macedonia and they were brought before him.  Seeing their beauty, he encouraged them to renounce their faith and find grooms from among the men in his entourage.  The sisters replied that they had no bridegroom but Christ and were ready to suffer for Him.  Enraged, and seeking to make an example of them, the emperor ordered they be brought with him and put on trial in front of the governor of Thessalonica.

Standing firm, though alone, the sisters refused to bow to the demands of the governor.  They were ordered to stand before yet another official, and they were subjected to yet another trial.  At this second trial, they were found guilty of not renouncing their faith.  The official sentenced the older two, Agape and Chionia, to be publicly burned at the stake.  According to tradition, in death the sisters appeared to be sleeping as the bodies themselves had not burned.

Irene, the youngest, was ordered to be taken to a brothel.  En route, the escort was met by two soldiers who instructed them that their orders had changed and instead they were to take her to a certain mountain and abandon her to her death there.  They did so and reported back, enraging the official who had given no such order.  He sent a contingent of soldiers to bring her back and, in the melee, she was shot with an arrow in the throat and died on the mountain, allowing her dignity to be preserved.

Their names in the Greek mean, respectively, ‘love’ (Agape), ‘snow’ (Chionia – indicating purity), and ‘peace’ (Irene).  Word of their martyrdom helped buttress the Church for the remaining nine years of persecution that was to follow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agape,_Chionia,_and_Irene

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletianic_Persecution

https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2019/04/16/101106-virgin-martyrs-agape-irene-and-chionia-in-illyria

Robert Sheffey

Born in 1820 in the little town of Ivanhoe in far southwestern Virginia, which today has a population of about 550, Robert Sheffey was known as an odd preacher.  His contemporaries were in agreement that he “couldn’t preach a lick” but his influence and spiritual power were known far and wide.

Born to people of relative upper class his parents encouraged him, like his siblings, to enter a professional career but his salvation experience at age nineteen revectored his life and he sought God’s will for his life.  At age 24 he married a young woman named Elizabeth.  He tried his hand at farming, clerking at a local store, and even teaching children, but God directed his heart into the proclamation of His Word through preaching as a Methodist circuit-rider. 

Widowed after ten years of marriage, Robert Sheffey developed some eccentricities.  Many stories speak of his concern over animals.  He regularly righted turned-over beetles or turtles and even halted funeral processions to gently move insects out of the road to keep them from being crushed by wagon wheels.  One story has him stopping by a puddle and collecting all the tadpoles, transferring them to a creek where they would have a better chance at survival.  He took special care of his horse, often dismounting and walking beside the horse when going up a grade.

His concern for the lostness of people was even more prevalent.  He often gave his socks those in need, many times pulling them off of his own feet.  He gave his coat to those shivering on cold days.  He even once gave his own horse to a stranger whose horse had died while pulling a heavily loaded wagon.

As noted before his rhetorical skills were somewhat lacking, but nobody could dispute the work of God as he preached.  Sometimes, he would step up to the pulpit and prostrate himself on the floor in prayer, leaving the congregation in awkward silence.  Despite the oddities, his altar was usually full of the penitent and many lives were changed.

His powerful prayers, however, evoked the most awe.  He publicly prayed against liquor stills and those who ran them.  One local minister recounted his prayers against three stills on a creek near to where they were meeting.  The owner of the first, a man of good health, suddenly dropped dead.  The second caught fire.  The third was obliterated when a large tree fell on it.  Men were said to have left the area rather than become the subject of his prayers.

Sheffey held several weeks of meetings in his hometown of Ivanhoe.  When the citizens rejected his message, preferring the life of sin that was characteristic of many prosperous mining towns, Sheffey publicly shook the dust off his feet and left the town.  One resident later remarked, “Whether you believe in it or not, after that happened, we lost everything.”  The fortunes of the town took a sharp downturn.  Entire buildings and houses disappeared into sinkholes.  The town was never the same.

Robert Sheffey died in 1902.  His stories were collected and placed into a book that was published in 1974.  A movie was made about his life entitled ‘Sheffey’, which was re-released in 2020, the 200^th year after his birth.

Christian History e-mail, 04 July 2021

https://today.bju.edu/perspective/rescuing-bugs-cursing-towns-eccentricities-robert-sheffey/

https://iblp.org/robert-sheffey-the-power-of-prayer/

John Hunt

As a boy in the early 1800s, John Hunt prayed.  He prayed for protection from the many things that made him afraid: dogs and thunder among them.  As he grew older, his prayers grew less frequent and his faith drifted.  He was clumsy and was bullied on the farm where he worked.  He realized his own lack of faith and often promised the Lord that he would change, but did not.

Then, illness set in and John faced a literal fight for his life.  He knew then that his promises were in vain.  Desperately, he vowed that if God would spare his life that he would serve Him the rest of his life.  Upon his recovery John told godly neighbors about his promise, in a bid to keep himself accountable for his own spiritual growth.  He attended church and read the Bible and other books in his spare time.  He prayed about what God would have him to do.

God drew his heart toward missions.  He had a mind to go to South Africa – an arm of the British Empire at the time.  South Africa had a modicum of civilization and some advanced medical care available for his fiancée, Ms Hanna Summers, who was in poor health.  John, however, received a direct appeal to go to Fiji.  At the time, Fiji was known as the home of savage cannibals.  Despite the incivility of the place, Hanna agreed to go.

The couple sailed from England in 1838.  En route, they refused a lucrative offer to remain in Australia and arrived near Christmas Day of that year.  John and Hanna mastered the language fairly quickly, but initially saw few conversions as they moved from island to island.  At times, they were treated cruelly – one king threatened them with death if they closed the windows to dull the smell of roasting bodies near to their home.  Eventually, however, they found an island that was receptive and revival broke out. 

Lives of the natives were changed dramatically.  John translated the New Testament into the native language and worked tirelessly to fan the embers of this small flame.  Overwork led to dysentery and John became deathly ill.  The islanders who were taught so well by John and his example gathered around him praying, asking God to take any ten of them rather than him.  Despite their prayers, John Hunt slipped into eternity as the young age of 33.

The seeds he planted, the zeal of the islanders he nurtured, and missionaries who followed him were all used by God for a great awakening in the Fiji Islands.  Within 50 years of John Hunt’s arrival on the islands, there was not a single person remaining who professed the old religions.

Almost entirely from:

https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1801-1900/john-hunt-arrived-in-fijis-cannibal-land-11630453.html

Martin Rinkart

The Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) was the most destructive war ever fought in Germany, including the two World Wars.  While a lot of political drama added to the tinder, the main conflict was between the fragmented Catholic states of the Holy Roman Empire and the various Protestant states.  The war began when Ferdinand II, the Holy Roman Emperor, made moves to conquer the various Protestant states in Bohemia, precipitating this deadly conflict which eventually drew in most of the states in Europe, including Denmark, Sweden, and France.  Complex alliances were formed: the Catholics in France supported the Protestants in Germany, the Swedes and Danes allied with the Lutherans, Spain sided with the Emperor, France got involved to weaken their rival Spain.

Eilenburg, in today’s Eastern Germany, was a walled city and therefore a refuge for war-displaced people.  As soldiers from each side came through, they compelled the citizens of Eilenburg to quarter and provision them.  As you can imagine, food was scarce and times were very hard.

When the Thirty Years’ War began Eilenburg had a new pastor, Martin Rinkart.  Martin did his very best to tend to his flock as well as provide for his young family.  Overcrowding and hunger led to plague in 1637.  Of the four pastors in Eilenburg one fled and two others succumbed to disease, leaving Martin the sole pastor for the town.  In addition to giving spiritual counsel, he performed as many as 50 funerals a day, including that of his wife.  At times, large trenches were dug for mass burials.  Over 8,000 died in the city.  Following the plague came famine.

In the midst of this famine the Swedish army returned in 1639, demanding 300,000 florins (roughly $2-3M) as a tribute.  Rinkart, now the leading spokesman for the city, spoke with the General requesting they lower their demands.  Up the general’s refusal, Martin returned to the town and addressed the survivors saying, “Come, my children, we can find no hearing, no mercy with men, [so] let us take refuge with God.”  The sight of this pastor leading his town in prayer so moved the General that he lowered his demand to 2,000 florins.

The war continued.  As the long war finally drew to a close, Martin found himself the object of much criticism from his own townspeople.  He has indebted himself tremendously to be able to feed himself and his children, all the while giving generously.  He had also indebted the town in his efforts to feed those survivors in his city.  When a permanent peace finally came in 1648, Martin Rinkart was exhausted and the following year the 63-year-old pastor passed away.

Sometimes, the most trying times drive God’s people to the deepest faith.  It was in the midst of literal war, famine, and plague that Martin penned a hymn of Thanksgiving for his church:

Now thank we all our God; With heart and hands and voices;

Who wondrous things hath done; In whom His world rejoices;

Who, from our mother’s arms; Hath blest us on our way;

With countless gifts of love; And still is ours today.

O may this bounteous God; Thro’ all our life be near us;

With ever joyful hearts; And blessed peace to cheer us;

And keep us in His grace; And guide us when perplexed;

And free us from all ills; In this world and the next.

All praise and thanks to God; The Father now be given;

The Son and Him who reigns; With them in highest Heaven;

The one eternal God; Whom earth and heav’n adore;

For thus it was, is now; And shall be evermore.

 

https://historyguild.org/the-thirty-years-war/

https://g3min.org/thanksgiving-during-a-plague-martin-rinkart-1586-1649/

https://breakpoint.org/giving-thanks-in-dark-times-the-life-and-labors-of-martin-rinkart-1586-1649/

Gottfried F. Alf

Gottfried F. Alf

Do you really believe that the Gospel is “the power of God unto salvation, to everyone who believes…” (Romans 1:16)?  God works in each individual heart in individual, often unexpected ways.  In 1850, the town of Mentnowo, a German colony near Warsaw, Poland, had no minister.  Lutheran ministers were few and covered very large areas.  The once red-hot Lutheran faith had become a flicker of its former self and spiritual lethargy was the norm among both clergy and lay people.

In cases like that at Mentnowo, where there was no local minister, it was expected that a schoolteacher (who presumedly knew how to read) would lead Sunday worship and read a sermon.  In Mentnowo, this task fell to nineteen-year-old Gottfried Alf.

Taking his task seriously, Gottfried began to study the Bible to better understand the sermons he was reading.  Reading intently for over two years, he realized his own lost condition and understood that salvation came only by the work of Christ.  In 1853, he committed his life to Christ.

Gottfried shared what he had learned with his students.  Many of them came to faith, as well as many parents.  Other parents resisted and complained to the over-extended pastor of the region.  This pastor told him to hold no more Bible teaching and no more prayer meetings.  When he refused to quit, they orchestrated his firing from his job and kicked him, his wife, and their young child from their home.  Now without income, his father took the family in and allowed Gottfried to farm some of his land to provide for his family.

Convicted of the truth of the Gospel and with an insatiable desire to share, Gottfried began making trips around the region to preach.  People were saved.  Lives were changed.  The status quo was disrupted.  As a result of this, Alf was arrested and beaten by the Lutheran authorities.  Realizing he no longer had a place in the church into which he was born, Gottfried became a Baptist – incurring the wrath of both the Lutherans, the local Russian Orthodox clergy, and his own father who threw him off his land.  By 1866, the year overt persecution ceased, hostile authorities in the regions he visited had beaten and/or imprisoned him at least thirty times.  In some cases, food was withheld, chains were put on deliberately tight, medical care was neglected.  Other times he was exposed in chains to crowds who would heckle, jeer, and threaten.  Despite these difficulties, Gottfried continued to preach and work.  He founded many churches in Poland and in Ukraine.

A biographer records just one of his imprisonments with these words:

“Not far from Adamowo, although he was carrying a pass, Alf was stopped by two of his enemies. They found, however, that Adamowo was not listed in his pass and took him to the magistrate in Wiszkow…. Since he carried tracts in his travel bag, he was labeled a sectarian and was thrown in prison on May 13 for four days. For the first three days he was among criminals and without food or drink; on the fourth day a German smith heard of him and brought him food. He was then transported to Pultusk, where he was imprisoned eight days. He was held here so long that his pass expired, which was further cause for punishment. He was then ordered to Przasnysz, a particularly torturous journey by foot since he was not feeling well. Fortunately, brethren with a wagon came searching for him and carried him to Prasnisz, where he remained imprisoned for four days until May 28.
The authorities then sent him to Chazecharow, where on the next day the magistrate ordered him to pay ten rubles. Alf sent in the ten rubles, but that did not settle the matter.… Alf was ordered to deliver the money personally with a written declaration that he had not traveled with any evil intent and would not spread a false faith but only the pure Christian religion…. [By] June 3, Alf had endured twenty-one days of suffering and approximately 1,300 kilometers [808 miles] of tiresome travel. After four weeks he arrived home…. His wife and most of the brethren had given him up as lost and dead.”

Gottfried Alf’s persistence and suffering paid off.  By his death in 1898, many thousands of people had come to faith.  Many of his converts later emigrated to the United States, establishing churches there.

Christian History e-mail: 28 Nov 2021

https://www.captivefaith.org/post-reformation/alf/

Wang Ming-Dao

Wang Ming-Dao

In 1920, a young Chinese man named Wang Ming-Dao, who had been a Christian since childhood, resolved to take his faith seriously.  Writing out a list of his sins, he prayed and vowed to leave them behind.  Praying until he received assurance of forgiveness, he arose a changed man and zealously studied the Scriptures.

A teacher at a Presbyterian boarding school in Beijing, he came to believe the Biblical method of Baptism to be immersion.  Stubbornly holding to this conviction, and teaching it, led to the loss of his job.  Though the loss of his job discouraged him, he remained faithful and began preaching on his own and with a number of evangelistic campaigns in 1923.  He pastored a church called the Christian Tabernacle and also began publishing a quarterly Christian magazine which was widely read.

Beijing fell to Japanese forces in 1937.  By 1939, the Japanese occupiers insisted that all publications print patriotic slogans supporting the Japanese military.  Wang faced a dilemma: become a political publication or shut down.  He chose a third option: publish anyway without the propaganda.  He faced immense pressure from the Japanese and from other Christians and Christian groups which had capitulated to their captor’s demands.  Wang refused to join, and preached on the suffering, faithfulness, and protection that Daniel and his friends faced in Babylon.

The fall of Japan in 1945 led to the rise of Mao-Tse Tung and Communist rule in 1949.  The Communists established an organization which came to be known as the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) – an organization and a set of guidelines for Christian churches which included severing all ties with Western churches and organizations, agreeing to a rewritten Bible, denial of core beliefs including the Incarnation, the virgin birth, the resurrection, the Trinity, and other abuses of power.  Wang Ming-Dao realized this was intended to bring the church under state control and, despite intense pressure, he felt it was his duty to resist and continue to teach uncompromising Biblical truth.

Wang published a number of books between 1951 and 1954, proclaiming the Gospel and defending Biblical truth.  The TSPM ramped up its pressure and in 1954 convened a meeting to accuse him of crimes but, like Daniel in the Bible, they could find no fault with him.  Into early 1955, attendance at the Christian Tabernacle reached record numbers.

On August 7^th, 1955, police arrived at his home around midnight and arrested him, imprisoning him without a conviction.  At the time, he did not realize that his wife had been imprisoned as well.  To the Communists, his defiance was counter-revolutionary and a severe crime.  He was subjected to daily interrogations and torture and then subjected to further torture by especially-placed cell-mates.

After over a year of this pressure, Wang was informed of a number of the detainment of Christians he was close to.  Worse yet, he was told of his wife’s imprisonment and deteriorating health.  Under such intense personal pressure, Wang broke and signed a document stating he was a counter-revolutionary and confessing to his ‘crimes.’

While TSPM leadership was elated, Wang was crushed at his actions.  Plagued with guilt and remorse over his confession he, with his wife’s support, reneged on his promise to join TSPM and they were both re-arrested seven months after their release.

Wang served an additional 22 years in prison, subject to the same daily torturous interrogations faced before.  However, the Lord stood by him and he remained faithful.  He clung to a verse from Micah, “When I fall I shall arise, when I sit in darkness the Lord will be a light unto me. I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against Him until He pleads my cause and executes judgment for me.” (Micah 7:7).

In 1979 China – suffering from famine, a result of Mao’s disastrous policies, let many prisoners go, including Wang Ming-Dao – malnourished and nearly blind from his ordeal.  He settled in Shanghai and preached again, as God gave him opportunity.  In his final years he became one of the leaders of the house-church movement which had sustained the Gospel through the dark years of Communist oppression.

Wang Ming-Dao died at home in 1991.  He shows us that Christians, even when they fail, can have a radiant witness in their faith and do great things for the Kingdom of God.

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/wang-ming-dao-faithful-political-coercion/

https://www.evangelical-times.org/the-fall-and-rise-of-wang-ming-dao/

Emma Whittemore

Used to the glitz and glamour of the social scene in late 19^th century New York City, Emma Whittemore had it all.  With her husband Sidney, she enjoyed all that wealth had to offer.

One day, a friend persuaded her to attend a meeting to hear an evangelist at the local YMCA.  Unbeknownst to her, a separate friend had persuaded her husband to attend the same meeting.  Both were deeply convicted by the message, and both went forward to, in her words, make “firm resolutions to live a different life.”  They then returned home to pray and determine what that commitment meant.

Emma’s friend called on her again to see if she would be willing to accompany her to hear a man named Jerry McAuley.  Jerry, an ex-con and reformed alcoholic, had opened the nation’s first mission to the homeless, Water Street Mission.  They first resisted, but then agreed to go, “just this once.”  Emma spoke often of that first evening at the mission.  They heard cursing, saw fighting in the open, and saw clawing women dragged away to the police station.  The sights, sounds, and smells were something her refined self had never experienced. 

Walking into the meeting, Emma and Sidney whispered condescending words to each other about the people they were gathered with.  Their haughty attitude changed, however, when Jerry finished preaching and opened the floor for testimonies.  One after another, slum tenants stood up and praised God for deliverance from addiction, strength amidst temptation, and daily deliverance from sin. 

Astonished, both Emma and Sidney’s hearts sank in shame at the thought of their own pride.  They noticed a genuineness among the people – truly transformed lives – and not the veneer they knew they possessed.  Emma later wrote of her life prior to this meeting as a “useless life.”  Sidney stood weeping, covering his face with his hands in shame, and asked for prayer.  Jerry called him up to the front, and Emma followed.  Spontaneously, a group surrounded them, as Emma later wrote, “a drunkard, a thief, and a tramp on my husband’s side, and on my side one or two poor women…” and the drunkard led them in prayer for the couple.

Emma wrote of that night, “From that night I date the giving up of a worldly life.”  Their “just this once” trip to the mission turned into the first of many visits.  Jerry’s wife Maria mentored Emma, showing her how to minister to poor women and how to give her testimony.  Emma’s heart broke for the horrors she saw among the street women but she continually prayed, asking God for strength to continue.  He provided it.

Emma opened her first home for fallen girls on October 25^th, 1890.  She gave it the name “Door of Hope.”  Emma felt God was leading her to trust in Him alone for provision, so she never held a fund-raiser and never voiced a need.  Day by day, sometimes hour by hour, God provided.  Funds came in, just in time, time after time to meet the needs of Door of Hope.

Within four years, Door of Hope had helped 325 girls.  Emma’s primary concern was always that they would know the power of Christ in their lives.  As she put it, she could take them out of the dens of vice, “but only Jesus can get the vice out of the girls.”  Her second goal was to turn these women into evangelists, active in their efforts to share with others.

Door of Hope went international.  When Emma died in 1931, there were at least 97 homes around the world, in the US, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Africa, Japan, and China.  The great evangelist Wilbur Chapman said of her, “She has probably been instrumental in saving more fallen women than any other one person.”

https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1801-1900/emma-whittemore-and-door-of-hope-11630627.html

Gladys Aylward

Gladys Aylward

Born north of London in 1902, Gladys Aylward left school at the age of fourteen, working as a parlor maid in the homes of London’s wealthy class.  Raised in a Christian home, she nevertheless allowed herself to be taken in by the seduction of wealth via her work.

In her mid-twenties, she went to a revival meeting and recommitted her life to Christ.  She became very active in sharing her faith.  Learning about missions work in China, she felt very convicted to go.  Gladys was accepted to training with China Inland Mission in 1929, despite her lack of education.  She excelled in the practical work, but failed the classroom work – having a very tough time with the Chinese language.  Her classroom failures resulted in her being dropped from consideration for the organization.

Undeterred, she went back to work as a maid, planning to get all the expenses to pay for herself to go to China within three years and secured the patronage of a lady missionary already on the field.  Her frugality and prayers resulted in earning all she needed in less than a year.  Traveling by train through Siberian Russia into China, at a time of war between the two countries, the trip itself was fraught with adventure and danger, including being detained by Russian authorities and having to covertly enlist the aid of the British Consulate to smuggle her into China.

Her initial job was taking care of mules.  Her mentor had set up an inn and a mule stop for travelers.  The provided a place to sleep, food to eat, and care for the animals.  In this context, Gladys became very fluent in Chinese and used the opportunity to witness to many travelers, and won many to Faith.

After her mentor passed away, Gladys was offered a job by the Chinese government as a foot inspector.  The government of China had recently outlawed the practice of “foot-binding” – tightly binding the feet of young girls to change the size and shape of their feet as they grew.  Gladys had the authority of the government to go into homes and check on the feet of these girls.  This opened many doors to many families who otherwise would have never in their lives met a Christian, let alone an evangelist.  The Gospel was shared hundreds of times in this context, and many more were won to faith.

In her time there, at one point the local leader instructed her to intervene in a prison riot.  At 4’ 10” tall she was hardly an imposing figure, but the leader had heard her speak that a Christian had nothing to fear and directed her to walk into the prison and stop the riot.  Stepping in the midst of the angry mob she shouted, “I cannot hear when everyone is shouting at once!  Choose someone to be your spokesman and send him to me!”  The designated person told her of overcrowding, lack of food, and a hopelessness among the inmates.  Gladys promised to advocate for reforms and oversaw changes that brought in regular food.  She arranged for looms and a grindstone for grain so that the prisoners could be productive and useful in their incarceration.

In 1936, she saw a woman and a young girl begging by the road.  The young girl had sores and was obviously malnourished.  Speaking to them, she became certain that the child did not belong to the woman but was there as a ‘prop’ to aid in begging.  Gladys purchased the child for a small amount of money – this child becoming the first of over 100 children rescued by Gladys in the next two years.

In the Spring of 1938, Japanese bombs began to fall on the city.  She initially tried to stay but as the fighting got closer to the city, Gladys knew she had to leave with her children.  The Japanese had blocked the main roads leading into and out of the city, so she had to take her over 100 children over treacherous mountain paths.  Their food ran out, but that 12-day journey was rife with God’s blessings.  One night, a Buddhist priest hid them in his temple while they slept.  Another night, a group of Chinese soldiers came across them – providing them with food and guarding them while they slept the night.

Gladys had hoped to find boats waiting to help them cross the Yellow River, but when they arrived all the boats were gone.  Broken, Gladys broke down and wept until some of the children approached her and asked why they couldn’t ask God to part the sea for them as He did for the Israelites.  Admonished, Gladys called the children to her and they prayed and sang hymns.  Hearing the music, a Chinese officer found his way to them and was able to arrange for some military boats to transport them across the river to safety.  When the children had reached the safe haven, Gladys collapsed.  Taken into medical care, it was discovered she had Typhus. 

Gladys Aylward took many months to recover.  Greatly weakened, she was flown back to London where she took many opportunities to speak about the need for the Gospel in China.  After the war, she returned to China.

When the Communists took over and expelled Christian missionaries, Gladys moved to Taiwan and established in orphanage, taking in abandoned children.  She died in 1970 and is buried in Taipei.

The story of Gladys Aylward is captivating, and it was while she was still alive.  In 1957, a biography about her was published, entitled The Small Woman.  The book became the impetus for a 1958 movie called The Inn of the Sixth Happiness starring Ingrid Bergman in Gladys’ role.  When Newsweek magazine reviewed the movie and summarized the plot a reader wrote in, believing the story to be fiction, to say, “In order for a movie to be good, the story should be believable!”

Gladys Aylward appeared to be an unlikely candidate for mission work, but God chose her and gave her great determination to do the work.

 

https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/missionary-gladys-aylward

http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/73.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladys_Aylward

Monica

Saint Monica

Monica was a woman born in northern Africa around 332 AD, still in the days of the Roman Empire.  A Christian woman, she was married at a young age to a non-believing Roman official named Patricius.

Monica determined to set a Christian example for her husband.  Despite his raging temper and propensity to cheat, she prayed for him and for her three children: two sons and a daughter.  Patricius mocked her piety, but allowed her some freedom to attend church and give alms.  Over time, he grew to admire her virtues and became deeply affected by her genuine love for him.  When he grew ill at a relatively early age, Patricius came to faith just prior to his death in the year 370.  Patricius’ mother and two of Monica’s children came to faith shortly after.

Praying fervently for her remaining son, Augustine, Monica was known to weep over his soul.  She later recounted the counsel of one church leader who told her, “the child of those tears shall never perish.”  Augustine chased the trappings of the world and traveled to Carthage to study Rhetoric – the art of public speaking and persuasion.  Enmeshed in Greek Philosophy and captivated by the ‘rock star’ status of a successful Rhetorician, Augustine met a woman with whom he lived and even had a child by that woman, despite Monica’s warnings against fornication.

Taking a teaching post in Rome Augustine moved there, and eventually moved from there to Milan.  He couldn’t outrun Monica though, either her prayers or her physical presence.  In Milan, Monica met the great church father Bishop Ambrose who joined Monica in praying for her son.  Monica’s persistence wore her son down, and he agreed to go with her to church to hear Ambrose – hoping that the famed Bishop could teach him a trick or two of oratory.

Augustine was unimpressed with Ambrose’s skills in rhetoric, but in talking to him was stricken by the deep convictions of Ambrose.  Around the year 387, at the age of 33, Augustine came to faith and was personally baptized by Ambrose.

The two made the decision to travel back to Carthage.  En route, Monica fell ill passed away outside of Rome.  Augustine’s grief over the loss of his mother prompted him to write his autobiography ‘Confessions.’  In that book, he records some of Monica’s last words to him: “Son, for my own part I have no further delight in any thing in this life.  What I do here any longer, and why I am here, I know not, now that my hopes in this world are accomplished.  There was one thing for which I desired to linger for a while in this life, that I might see you as a Christian before I died.  My God has done this for me more abundantly, that I should now see you…become His servant.”

The Catholic Church holds Monica in high esteem, considering her the Patron Saint of homemakers, married women, mothers, abuse victims, alcoholics, and widows.  We hold her in high esteem as a diligent Christian woman, a warrior in prayer, and the mother of one of the great theologians of the early church.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Monica

https://mycatholic.life/saints/saints-of-the-liturgical-year/st-monica-mother-of-st-augustine-august-27/

Calvary Covers It All

 

Walter Taylor – Calvary Covers It All

Born in 1865 in Pittsburgh, Walter Taylor was an ideal student.  He got great grades and had a great reputation.  However, there was a darker side to him: as a youth, Walter ran with a gang.  As a youth, he habitually broke into rail cars, stole from street vendors, and seemed to love to cause havoc.  He was very adept at avoiding getting caught.

As a young man, his overriding interest was making money.  Walter, nobody knowing about his darker side, got a teaching credential.  He moved from teaching to contractor work, to auditing, and back to teaching again – always chasing the jobs that paid more money.  Eventually, as a young man in his early 30s, he became an executive in a Chicago-based pharmaceutical company and later became one of three men who entered into an agreement to buy the business.

With his life looking up, tragedy struck Walter in 1896.  His young wife struck ill and died.  She was a godly woman, a partner who begged him to come to faith – something he snidely mocked her for.  She asked to have women over for prayer meeting – another thing he stubbornly refused.  At her funeral, when all others had gone, he was alone in his room.  Remembering all the vile things he said about her faith, all the complaints he gave her about her faith, he fell to his knees.  In his heart, he realized that she was in Heaven and that if it had been him in the coffin, that he would not have gone to Heaven.  On his knees in his own room, he came to faith.

Taylor wanted very much to serve his Lord.  He prayed that God would extract him from his pharmaceutical company contract.  Not long after, his two partners asked if they could buy him out of his part of the partnership – something he readily agreed to.  Feed from the financial burden, he threw himself into Christian work at the Y.M.C.A.  He then attended Moody Bible Institute while volunteering at Chicago’s Pacific Garden Mission to the homeless.  It was at the mission where he was set to sing a gospel song and he asked if there was a pianist who could accompany him.  A woman named Ethel, visiting for Christian work from Cleveland, stepped forward.  She played the piano and accompanied him vocally – and their voices meshed beautifully together.  In 1898, they were married.

Walter took his bride to a mission in Colorado, ministering to coal miners and rail workers.  After that, he accepted a position in Montreal.  While both ministries were fruitful, he later acknowledged that he was, in fact, running from God’s true calling of him to minister to the homeless.  He resisted because he remembered working in Chicago’s Mission, and specifically remembered catching lice from a man he had put his arm around.  He finally surrendered to God’s call when the Pacific Garden Mission called him back to lead the ministry.  Walter and Ethel, known affectionately as ‘Ma’ and ‘Pa’ Taylor, expanded God’s Kingdom among the most beat-up people in society.

It was during their tenure there that Ethel noticed a man in the service.  He was called “Happy Mac” – an alcoholic and a former dancer.  She and Walter had shared the Gospel with him many times and, despite his reluctance, he kept coming back.  This time, however, was very different.  She could see him intently listening to the words of the sermon – and could see that he was clearly troubled.  Catching up with him afterward, she asked him how he was doing.  “Mac” broke down, grieving his sin, saying “You don’t know how bad I am.  I can’t be saved, I’m just too bad.”

Ethel, remembering the words a guest speaker had used recently, told him, “Mac, Calvary covers it all!  All the sin of your past life, Calvary covers it all!”  “Mac” asked her to repeat it and she did.  God used those words to bring “Mac” – later to become the great evangelist Walter MacDonald – to faith.

Reflecting on “Mac’s” conversion, Ethel later went alone into the mission worship center, sat at the piano, and wrote the words to the great hymn, ‘Calvary Covers It All’:

Far dearer than all that the world can impart; Was the message that came into my heart;

How that Jesus alone for my sin did atone; And Calvary covers it all.

Calvary covers it all.  My past with its sin and stain;

My guilt and despair Jesus took on Him there,

And Calvary covers it all.

The stripes that He bore and the thorns that He wore; Told his mercy and love evermore;

How my heart bowed in shame as I called on His name, And Calvary covers it all.

How matchless the grace, when I looked on His face; Of this Jesus my crucified Lord;

My redemption complete I then found at His feet, And Calvary covers it all.

How blessed the thought, that my soul by Him bought, Shall be His in the glory on High;

Where with gladness and song I’ll be one of the throng, And Calvary covers it all.

Christian History e-mail: 09/03/2021

https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/it-happened-today/9/3

https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1801-1900/walter-grand-taylor-converted-in-his-room-11630646.html

https://www.baptistbiblebelievers.com/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=JYYudWCKwuc%3D&tabid=367&mid=1190

https://www.rmjc.org/node/603

https://baptistbiblebelievers.com/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=0zvVEqYzU4Q%3d&tabid=229&mid=745

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cameron Townsend

Cameron Townsend

William Cameron Townsend was born into a Christian family in Southern California in 1896, the fifth of six children.  He enrolled in college after High School and, during his junior year, 1917, a missionary from an organization called the Student Volunteer Movement (SVM) spoke to the class, challenging them to give their lives to the ministry of evangelism.  Cameron spoke with the missionary and committed himself to the cause of SVM.

Cameron had previously enlisted in the California National Guard to serve his country in World War I.  He applied for, and surprisingly received, a discharge to instead go onto the mission field in Guatemala.  He committed to sell Spanish-language Bibles there for a year.  Nearing the end of his year-long commitment, Cameron was approached by a native Cakchiquel Indian asking him what he was selling.  He explained that it was the Bible, and it was God’s Word to him.  The man flipped through the book, then condescendingly asked, “If your God is so smart, then why doesn’t he speak my language?”  Learning more about these natives, Cameron was astonished to find that they were a group of about 200,000 people on the margins of Mexican society, many of whom spoke no Spanish at all.

The man’s remark impacted Cameron so much that he ended up remaining in Guatemala an additional 13 years, devoting that time to translating the Bible into the Cakchiquel language.  To do so, he had to invent an alphabet and a system for writing, and commit time to education of the people.  When his mission organization chided him for spending so much time in translation and less time in evangelism, he wrote back, “The greatest missionary in the Bible in the mother tongue.  It needs no furlough and is never considered a foreigner.”  He focused not just on the linguistic needs of the natives, but arranged with other mission groups for medical and vocational assistance as well.

Understanding that the Cakchiquel Indians were but one of thousands of unreached people groups, Cameron sought to expand his vision.  He returned to the United States in 1934 and founded an organization called the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL).  SIL’s focus was technically on preserving linguistics of indigenous cultures – preserving oral traditions and history in the native tongue – and in literacy education.  This secular emphasis opened doors for missionaries in many closed countries.  Partnering with SIL was Townsend’s other organization, Wycliffe Bible Translators, whose purpose is decidedly spiritual: Bible translation and missionary activities.  Providing logistical and technical support to both organizations was yet another organization, the Jungle Aviation and Radio Service (JAARS).

Today, the services of SIL International remain true to the intention of “Uncle Cam” in providing literacy services worldwide.  SIL is the most extensive linguistic operation in the world – currently involved in 1,341 communities in 98 countries and impacting nearly a billion people, per their website at the time of this writing.

Nearly a century after the finishing of that Cakchiquel Bible, Wycliffe Bible Translators have translated the full Bible in more than 550 languages, the New Testament in over 1,300 languages.  They estimate that about 1,800 languages still need a Bible translation to begin.

Cameron Townsend introduced the idea of “people groups” and “heart language” into the modern study of missions.  “Uncle Cam” once said, “The greater need is where the greatest darkness is.  Our orders are to forget self and to give our lives in service for the Master.”  His vision has guided nearly a hundred years of missionaries.  When he passed away in 1982, he was lauded as one of the three most impactful missionaries of the 20^th century.

docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/33c277_a5294400facb93dcd183b3ed1d3e46fb.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Cameron_Townsend

https://www.wycliffe.org/blog/featured/a-man-with-a-vision

https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/william-cameron-uncle-cam-townsend-4453/

https://www.thetravelingteam.org/articles/william-cameron-townsend

https://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/townsend.htm

https://www.sil.org/

Saint Lawrence

Saint Lawrence

Lawrence, martyred in the third century, is one of the more recognized ‘saints’ of the Roman Catholic Church.  A staunch believer and a personal friend of Pope Sixtus II, he was asked in the year 257, at age 32, to be one of the seven Deacons in Rome.  In his case, it was a great position of trust which included care and maintenance of the treasury of the church and distribution of alms to the poor.

A year after he was appointed, the Roman Emperor Valerian issued an edict that all leaders in the church should be put to death and all church properties and wealth seized.  In the middle of Church services, Pope Sixtus was seized and immediately put to death.  Lawrence was arrested and, the Prefect of Rome knowing Lawrence knew the details of the church’s wealth, offered Lawrence his freedom if he would present the full wealth of the church to him.  Lawrence replied, “I need three days to gather the wealth of the church, the church is very rich.”  The Prefect agreed and freed Lawrence.

According to Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, Lawrence spent the time arranging for the security of vital church documents and distributing the full wealth of the church to the poor and indigent.  On the third day, he appeared before the Prefect and invited him outside to see the riches of the Church.  Eagerly following him, the Prefect was astonished to see not gold, but an assembly of the blind, the lame, and the sick.  “Here are the true treasures of the church,” Lawrence told him, “In these vessels of clay reside the treasure of God, the Holy Spirit.  You see, the church is truly rich, far richer than your emperor!”

Furious, the Prefect ordered the preparation of a great gridiron, a large metal grate on which the prisoner would be chained and slowly roasted alive over hot coals.  His intention was for Lawrence to suffer slowly before dying.  Many sources report that, as he was being tortured, he defiantly shouted to his persecutors, “I am cooked on that side, you might want to turn me over!”

Many conversions to the Faith followed his execution, including a number of Roman Senators who witnessed the execution.

Christian History e-mail, 10 August 2021

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Lawrence

https://www.britannica.com/topic/martyr

 

 

 

Francisco Penzotti

Francisco Penzotti was born in Italy in 1851, and emigrated with family to Uruguay when he was 13 years of age.  He became a carpenter and at age 19 married a Spanish immigrant named Josefa Joaquina Segastibelza.  When they wed, the local Catholic priest insisted on a large fee in gold to perform the ceremony.  They scrounged up the money, but soured on the church because of it.

Soon after they wed, the couple was on their way to a dance when a Bible distributor from the American Bible Society offered Francisco a copy of the Gospel of John and invited him to a Methodist meeting.  Though the Roman Catholic Church issued strong warnings against attendance at such meetings, Francisco and Josefa went and were eventually led to Christ.  He later said that the thing which impressed him most about these meetings was their eagerness to study the Scripture.

After conversion, the persecution began.  Arsonists burned down Francisco’s carpentry shop.  He took this as a sign from God to go full-time into Bible distribution and received backing from the American Bible Society.  He traveled around South America visiting Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Ecuador, Chile, and Peru establishing mission posts and distributing the Scriptures.  He ended up settling in the Peruvian seaport city of Callao where he found the fields ‘ripe for harvest’ and his little church grew wildly.

At the late 1880s, Article IV of the Peruvian constitution forbade the public exercise of non-Catholic religious observances.  Bible sales were legal, but discouraged and, as a result, most Peruvians were ignorant of the teachings of Scripture.  Penzotti sold Bibles and held private meetings to expound the Word of God.  His meeting houses overflowed and he had to rent larger and larger meeting places – raising the ire of local Catholic priests.  At times, objects were thrown into his meetings and even the occasional rifle shot to intimidate the congregants.

On July 26^th, 1890, Peruvian officials arrested Francisco Penzotti while he was eating breakfast for violating Article IV of the Peruvian constitution.  He was forcibly marched to prison at bayonet point.  He was housed in a filthy prison with hardened convicts and his health was nearly broken.  However, he won a number of his fellow inmates to Christ.  The church, with well-trained leaders, prospered even more in Francisco’s absence.

The President of Peru intervened, and ordered Francisco’s release after about 8 months of confinement.  Persecution continued, however, with “Death to the Protestants” vandalizing the church doors and continued harassment.  He was jailed again.

This time, a picture of him behind bars was smuggled out of Peru and published in American and Italian papers, along with his story.  Francisco’s story caused public outrage in Italy, the United States, and Great Britain.  The American Secretary of State himself intervened with the government of Peru, demanding assurances that the safety of Protestant missionaries could be guaranteed.  This international pressure helped ease the persecution suffered by Peruvian Christians, as well as across South and Latin America.

Francisco Penzotti, the Italian-born man, is seen as the man who opened the door for Protestant missions in Peru, as well as much of South America.

Christian History e-mail 26 Jul 2021.

https://www.bu.edu/missiology/2020/02/28/penzotti-francisco-g-1851-1925/

https://www.umc.org/en/content/penzotti-francisco

Blind Chang

Blind Chang

Chang Shen was a Manchurian in the late 19^th Century who had a notorious reputation within a violent Buddhist sect in China.  He was a womanizer, an alcoholic, a thief, and a gambler.  People who knew him called him so pu wei te, meaning ‘one without a particle of good in him.’  In his cruelty, he turned his own daughter out of his house and forced her into a life of prostitution.  He later drove his wife out of his home.  Seventeen days later, he lost his eyesight.  People who knew him considered his blindness a judgment from the gods for his evil.

In desperation, he traveled, blind, to a missionary hospital over a hundred miles away in Shenyang with the hopes they could help his eyesight.  En route, he was robbed of what possessions and clothing he carried with him.  The missions team, at the time very discouraged from a lack of progress in reaching people, described him as “…destitute and desolate, with scarcely any clothes left upon him, and in the last stages of dysentery.”  They felt a great deal of compassion for him and, since the hospital was full, one of the missionaries gave up his own bed for him.

Attending chapel, ‘Blind’ Chang heard the Gospel for the first time.  Immediately, he understood his own sin and need for a Savior and he joyfully gave his life to Christ on the spot.  A month later, his bodily health restored but his eyesight still gone, he desired to return to his village and asked the missionaries to baptize him before he left.  This request the missionaries denied, telling him, “We will visit you in your village in a few months.  If you are still living a consistent life for Christ, we will baptize you then.”  This disappointed Blind Chang, but he agreed.  His excitement for his newfound faith was evident.  He said, “None of my people have ever heard even the name of Jesus, or of His offer of the gift of eternal life; and do you think that I can keep that to myself any longer?”

Traveling home, he spoke of his new Savior to everyone he came into contact with.  Some listened, others treated him cruelly – encouraging their children to throw rocks at him, or siccing their dogs on him.  As a man without any direct human encouragement, and without eyesight, God stepped in and provided comfort to him directly.  He had dreams of Jesus encouraging him, and stayed true.

His village had a large elm tree where villagers would sit in the shade on hot summer days.  It was there that Blind Chang found a ready audience.  He spoke to whoever was sitting there, sharing the Good News of Jesus with all.  Five months later, in October of 1886, when one of the missionaries came to visit him, the missionary found not only Chang, but a number of other converts – saved by God through the witness of a blind man who knew only the rudimentary Gospel and a single hymn he had been taught at the mission hospital.  The missionary examined the new believers, and the nine people he baptized that day became the nucleus of the village church.  The land around the elm tree was later purchased by the mission for a church and a center of evangelistic work in the region.

That missionary later wrote, “One thing of which I am well assured, is this: Blind Chang, with little knowledge, but with a heart thrilled to the core with the truth which he knew, had in these months done more work and better work for the Kingdom of Heaven than half-a-dozen foreign missionaries could have done in as many years.”  By 1895, Chang had worked his way around to nearby villages, sharing his faith and had personally led over 500 people to Christ – many of them of the worst of society: highway robbers, opium addicts, and prostitutes.

The missionaries told Chang of a school for the blind in Beijing, where he could learn to read God’s Word in Braille.  Amazed that he could do so, Chang immediately set out.  Finding a warm welcome there, he mastered Braille in 3 months.  They wanted him to stay longer, but he insisted on returning to his village to continue his evangelistic work.  He continued his reading, memorizing large portions of the New Testament, much of the Old Testament, and many Psalms.  The sight of a blind man, with the background they all knew well, reading God’s Word with his fingertips, continued to win native Chinese to Christ.

In 1899, the Boxer Rebellion began in China – an uprising against the westernization of China.  Missionaries and Chinese converts were prime targets for violence.  Away from his home in a village, when word of the violence reached him, his friends hid Blind Chang in a mountain cave.

Nearby, fifty believers were rounded up and sentenced to die.  One of the unbelieving residents told the Boxers, “The man you really want is Chang Shen.  If you kill him, you will stop the foreigner’s religion.”  The executioners told the men that if any one of them would lead them to Chang Shen that all would be spared.  All refused.  Word of this reached Chang Shen and he insisted on being taken to die in their place.  His companion reported that there was an eagerness in him as he traveled to save his friends.

On July 19^th, 1900, he was arrested and bound.  He was taken to the Buddhist Temple and instructed to offer incense.  Chang refused.  He was treated roughly and he still refused.  Three days later, he was beheaded and his body burned.  After his body burned the Boxers fled in terror saying, “We have killed a good man!”

After the Boxer Rebellion was over, the government of Manchuria ordered a stone monument to be erected in honor of Blind Chang.

e-mail from Christian History, 22 July 2021

https://articles.asiaharvest.org/china-resources/liaoning/1900-blind-chang

https://www.persecutionblog.com/2010/07/he-was-blind-but-now-he-sees.html

 

 

 

Jonathan Edwards - Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

The first Great Awakening was a tremendous movement of God within the American colonies from about 1720 through about 1740.  Many of the colonies had been settled by those seeking religious freedom at great cost.  A century later, emphases had shifted from godly living to wealth and prosperity.  Visiting preachers were shocked at the deadness and lethargy of the churches.

A number of things were used by God to awaken the church.  Evangelist George Whitfield came from England to America numerous times – making seven tours of the colonies and preaching over 18,000 sermons.  Hardly a soul in the American colonies was not familiar with Rev. Whitfield.  The intellectual underpinning of the first Great Awakening was pastor Jonathan Edwards.

Jonathan Edwards has been called the last great Puritan.  He has also been called America’s first great Philosopher.  The only son out of twelve children, Jonathan was both the son and grandson of preachers.  He was sent to Yale College at age 13, and graduated at age 17.  After teaching in New York for a couple of years, Jonathan became the assistant pastor to his grandfather in Northampton, MA, and became the pastor after his grandfather’s death.  Edwards was deeply disturbed by the spiritual lethargy of his church.  He began preaching on justification by faith and, coupled with the enthusiasm of the Great Awakening, saw many conversions among existing church members as well as from the community around them. 

The Great Awakening showed a great deal of unity among the church, among Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Episcopals, Baptists, Methodists, independents.  The population of people attending church in the American colonies more than doubled in that time, and spiritual fervor was greatly increased.  However, there was an old guard, resistant of the movement and suspicious of the emotional excesses the movement displayed.  Edwards was a fierce advocate of the Awakening, preaching sermons and prolifically writing defending the movement.  His book ‘Religious Affections’ was an examination, in great detail, of how to tell whether a spiritual movement was indeed of God.

Out of this environment, he wrote the sermon most identified with the Great Awakening, ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.’  This is a lengthy sermon beginning the text from Deuteronomy 32:35, “In due time their foot will slip.”  It’s a hard-hitting sermon filled with ominous overtones and vivid imagery for the unconverted.  He delivered the sermon dryly and in monotone, his nearsightedness compelling him to hold the manuscript close to his face.

“All you that never passed under a great change of heart by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all that were never born again, and made new creatures, and raised from being dead in sin...you are thus in the hands of an angry God; ’tis nothing but his mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction...The wicked are now walking over the pit of hell on a rotten covering…”

“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince: and yet 'tis nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment; 'tis to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep: and there is no other reason to be given why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up…”

Edwards’ sermon sparked a tremendous emotional response.  Some wept openly and loudly, often compelling Edwards to stop and ask them to quiet down so he could continue.  Others gripped the back of the pews in an attempt to keep from sliding into Hell.  Still others fainted.  The sermon was used by God to convert great numbers of people, making them see their own spiritual need.

Jonathan Edwards wrote many things: books, pamphlets, essays.  He could write an essay on spiders (literally) and switch from that to a detailed treatise on the freedom of the will.  His books made him the best-known American scholar in Europe.

In his later years, Edwards was expelled from his congregation.  The ‘old guard’ rebelled against him when he insisted on individuals having a small examination to determine their conversion before partaking in Communion.  He served as a missionary to Native Americans for a couple of years before he was offered the presidency of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University).  He died a few months later from complications after a smallpox inoculation.

Jonathan Edwards spoke from powerful convictions – convictions that the Christian faith was not something to be merely studied intellectually, but something that should make changes in a person’s behavior and their everyday life.  He understood that the beginning of conversion was a complete understanding of one’s own depravity and complete and total dependence upon God.

http://edwards.yale.edu/archive?path=aHR0cDovL2Vkd2FyZHMueWFsZS5lZHUvY2dpLWJpbi9uZXdwaGlsby9nZXRvYmplY3QucGw/Yy4yMTo0Ny53amVv

https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1701-1800/the-great-awakening-11630212.html