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