And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.
—Revelation 11:3
3489 Job Wasn’t Big Enough
The Standard Oil Company was making preparations to establish itself in Indonesia. Company executives were seeking a manager for their Indonesian operations. They were informed that the man best qualified for the place was a certain missionary. The company approached the missionary in reference to his availability for the position. Their offer was large: $30,000 yearly. The missionary declined. Those seeking his service raised the offer. Still he declined. Finally they said, “Just name your salary. We’ll pay it if the salary we have named isn’t large enough.”
“Oh,” replied he, “the salary is big enough, but the job isn’t big enough!”
—Al Bryant
3490 No Post Equal To It
Matthew Culbertson gave up his commission in the United States Army to become a missionary. At Shanghai he did valiant service during the Taiping riots. A minister said to him, “Culbertson, if you were at home, you might be a major general.” The missionary replied: “Doubtless I might; men whom I taught at West Point are major generals today.”
And then he added these words with deep earnestness: “But I would not change places with one of them. I consider there is no post of influence on earth equal to that of a man who is permitted to preach the Gospel.” He had chosen “the better part,” and had no yearning after secular honors.
—Old Scrapbook
3491 Counting His Titles As Dung
Baron von Welz renounced his title, estates and revenues and went as a missionary to British Guiana where he filled a lonely grave. Renouncing his title, he said, “What is to me the title Wellborn when I am born again to Christ? What is to me the title Lord when I desire to be the servant of Christ? What is it to be called Your Grace when I have need of God’s grace? All these vanities I will away with and all else I will lay at the feet of my dear Lord Jesus.”
—A. Naismith
3492 Two Russian Youths’ Tragic Choice
At the beginning of the century, two young Russian Jews were invited to a noonday service in a little Methodist church in New York City. One of them, Abraham Silverstein, accepted the invitation. He heard the Gospel, accepted Christ as his Saviour, and became a missionary to the Jews. The other young man, known later as Leon Trotsky, refused to enter the church. He returned to Russia and dedicated his life to atheistic communism. Ultimately he fell into disfavor with the party, fled from Russia to Mexico, and was murdered there in 1940.
—J. B. Dengis
3493 Wilder’s Better Choice
In 1839, when R. G. Wilder, missionary to India and founder of the Missionary Review of the World, graduated from Middlebury College, he divided first honours with his classmate, Foote. Strange to say, both had been born in the same year and on the same day.
Foote became a lawyer and rose rapidly in his profession. He amassed wealth and married a young woman of singular beauty. But in the midst of his prosperity, death took wife and daughter from him and, overcome with sorrow, he blew his brains out.
When Wilder turned from flattering prospects at home to devote his life to India, his twin-honour man said to him, “Why bury yourself among the heathen, Wilder?” Wilder worked in India more than thirty years, preached in more than 3,000 cities and villages, scattered more than three million pages of tracts, and gathered into schools over 3,300 children of whom 300 were girls. He had Christ; his twin-honour friend Foote had not. Was not Wilder’s the better choice?
—Naismith
3494 Alexander Duff’s YouthFul Dream
A Scottish boy, lying on the heather beside a brook, fell asleep and had a wonderful dream. The sky became glorious with a dazzling golden light. Out of this light came a chariot drawn by horses of fire. Faster and faster it came down from the sky, and when it came near the boy he heard a voice as sweet as the mountain brook, saying, “Come up hither, I have work for thee to do.” When he got up to obey, he awoke, and found it was a dream.
The impression did not leave him, and one day the boy went to his room, knelt down beside the bed, and prayed, “O Lord, Thou knowest that silver and gold I have none. What I have I give to Thee. I offer myself. Wilt Thou accept the gift?” God did accept the gift, and that boy became one of the truly great missionaries. His name was Alexander Duff, missionary to India.
—Old Testament Leaders
3495 He Was Called Foolish
Because William Carey studied foreign languages and the travel reports of Captain Cook, he was called a foolish, impractical dreamer.
Even after he became a minister he was called foolish. This, after he had proposed for discussion at a minister’s conference: “Whether or not the Great Commission is binding upon us today to go and teach all nations,” an older minister rebuked him saying, “Sit down, young man. When God pleases to convert the heathen, He will do it without your aid or mine!”
3496 C. T. Studd’s Dedication
At the age of 16 C. T. Studd was already an expert cricket player and at 19 was made captain of his team at Eton, England. Soon he became a world-famous sports personality. But the Lord had different plans for him, for while attending Cambridge University he heard Moody preach and was wondrously converted. He soon dedicated his life and his inherited wealth to Christ and spent hours seeking to convert his teammates. Sensing God’s leading to full-time service, he offered himself to Hudson Taylor for missionary work in China.
While in that foreign country, he inherited a sum of money equivalent today to half a million dollars. In 24 hours he gave the entire inheritance away, investing it in the things of the Lord. Later he was forced to go back to England, for his health was failing and his wife was an invalid. But God called him again—this time to the heart of Africa. He was informed that if he went, he would not live long. His only answer was that he had been looking for a chance to die for Jesus. “Faithful unto death,” he accepted God’s call and labored until the Savior took him Home.
—Selected
3497 Founder Of Scripture Union
At about the time of the Civil War, a young Congregationalist took leave of his studies at Union Theological Seminary, New York, to spend the summer abroad. The ship carrying him across the Atlantic survived a collision with an iceberg, but Payson Hammond never returned to the seminary. He became perhaps the first evangelist to children in Britain and inspired the founding by Josiah Spiers of the far-flung Children’s Special Service Mission and Scripture Union.
The Union, which now boasts over 1,500,000 members from Iceland to New Guinea, commemorated its centennial in 1967. Its main thrust today is encouragement of Bible study, and it publishes graded helps in over 150 languages for adults as well as children.
—Christianity Today
3498 First Missionary To Moslems
Raymond Lull, or Lullius, to whom the Arabic professorship at Oxford owes its origin, was the first Christian missionary to the Moslems.
When shipwrecked near Pisa, after many years of missionary labour, though upwards of seventy, his ardour was unabated.
“Once,” he wrote, “I was fairly rich; once I had a wife and children; once I tasted freely of the pleasures of this life. But all these things I gladly resigned, that I might spread abroad a knowledge of the truth. I studied Arabic, and several times went forth to preach the Gospel to the Saracens. I have been in prisons; I have been scourged; for years I have striven to persuade the princes of Christendom to befriend the common cause of converting the Mohammedans. Now, though old and poor, I do not despair; I am ready, if it be God’s will, to persevere unto death.”
And he died so, being stoned to death at Bugia, in Africa, in 1314 after gathering a little flock of converts.
—Selected
3499 Story Of Dr. R. A. Jaffery
Dr. R. A. Jaffery, the co-founder of the Alliance Bible Seminary in Hong Kong, went to South China as a missionary more than seventy years ago. He suffered from a weak heart, even as a young man, and also had diabetes. Nevertheless, Dr. Jaffery began his day at 4 a.m. After his personal devotional time, he began writing articles in Chinese for the religious magazine of which he was the editor. He even designed a special desk that could be pulled over his bed. Writing in that position, Dr. Jaffery conserved his strength.
After some thirty years in China, this missionary-statesman was called to Vietnam to pioneer the Alliance work there. The church that he began had a membership of more than sixty thousand Christians.
Then the Lord called Dr. Jaffery to Indonesia, where another pioneering ministry began. Ever obedient to the call of God, Dr. Jaffery started a rapidly growing work that flourished beyond his death in a Japanese prison camp. His was a committed life.
—Bible Expositor
3500 “Never Go Out Of My Sight”
Dr. W. Leon Tucker told this amazing incident: Dr. Percival, a busy surgeon, was a Christian. He had one daughter, Kitty, whom he loved devotedly. One day she came to her father and told him she was going as a missionary to China. He said, “Kitty, I forbid you ever to get out of my sight.” At last she gave up plans for going, and married. She had two darling children.
I lived next door to Doctor Percival. One day he told me that he had to give up his surgeon’s license because of the condition of his eyes. Later he had to have an operation on his eyes. When the bandages were taken from them, his doctor said, “In two weeks you will be totally blind.”
Dr. Percival sent for Kitty and the babies to come. He carefully felt their faces and seemed to get a mental picture of them in his fingertips. He took me out into the light to “look at his pastor.” It was a sad day in our block, and everyone was weeping.
Months later I went out to lunch with Dr. Percival. I had to help feed him. As he walked home I could see that he wanted to say something. “Say it, Doctor,” I said. “Dr. Tucker,” he said, “do you think God is retributive?” I told him I did not believe it. He said, “Tucker, I told Kitty that she could never go out of my sight, but God has taken her from my sight. Wherever you go, plead with parents to keep out of the way when God calls their children into His service.”
—Wesleyan Methodist
See also: Consecration ; Soul-Winning ; Witnessing.