The following is quoted from Warren Wiersbe’s Be Alive commentary on John 3:14.
“On January 6, 1850, a snowstorm almost crippled the city of Colchester, England, and a teenage boy was unable to get to the church he usually attended. So he made his way to a nearby Primitive Methodist chapel, where an ill-prepared layman was substituting for the absent preacher. His text was Isaiah 45:22 – “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” For many months this young teenager had been miserable and under deep conviction, but though he had been reared in church (both his father and grandfather were preachers), he did not have the assurance of salvation.
The unprepared substitute minister did not have much to say, so he kept repeating the text. “A man need not go to college to learn to look,” he shouted. “Anyone can look—a child can look!” About that time, he saw the visitor sitting to one side, and he pointed at him and said, “Young man, you look very miserable. Young man, look to Jesus Christ!” The young man did look by faith, and that was how the great preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon was converted.”[1]
[1] Wiersbe, Warren. Be Alive (John 1-12) (1986). P. 55.
General George Washington leading the Continental Army on small boats across the Delaware River in the middle of the freezing night, surrounded by chunks of ice, is a popular story and image from early American history. Depicted famously by German-American artist Emanuel Leutze in the painting nearby, this desperate effort was a significant turning point in the war. The daring crossing was an act of desperation and made necessary (and possible) by a long string of events in 1776.
It had not been a good year for Washington’s army, suffering a string of defeats at Brooklyn, Kips Bay, and White Plains. With little hope or troops left, Washington retreated with much of his army across the Delaware around November 7th, expecting the British to soon cross and strike Philadelphia, taking full advantage of their momentum and Washington’s weakness. On November 16, 2,837 Americans surrendered at Fort Washington, after General Washington trusted Nathaniel Greene’s report that the fort could be defended.[1] Another defeat at Fort Lee left Washington with perhaps 3,500 troops after losses and desertions.[2] On top of this, many troops’ commitments were due to expire in early December, reminiscent of when the army had massive turnover during the siege of Boston in 1775.
Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze. Public Domain.
Desperate to defend Philadelphia (where Congress had been held since the First Continental Congress in 1774), Washington expected General Lee to reinforce him soon with more troops. However, Lee – effectively Washington’s second-in-command – had inexplicably spent the night of December 12th apart from his troops at a tavern. Lee was ratted out and captured in a raid that took less than 15 minutes on the 13th. Things looked bleak, but on the same day, Washington learned that Congress had relocated from Philadelphia to Baltimore for safety.
More importantly, continuing a string of possibly Providential, but certainly weather-assisted, events like a storm that allowed Washington to end the British siege of Boston with minimal bloodshed (see this post), and surprise fog that covered Washington’s overnight escape from Brooklyn (see this one), on December 13th, British General William Howe decided to cease military operations for the winter.[3] Absent this decision, the war may have been over soon, with a British victory, but with this decision, we have the backdrop for the famous crossing of the Delaware.
Seeking opportunity for a decisive move, Washington kept his army as intact as he could manage until the time arrived. With Christmas approaching and the British ceding the initiative, Washington now had about 6,000 troops and intelligence that about 2,000 Hessian mercenaries (the actual number was probably lower, around 1,500) were defending Trenton. After the “Long Retreat,” as the string of defeats above came to be known, the Continental Army needed a victory, and got one. Three separate groups were planned to cross the Delaware, but only Washington’s main force made it. Regardless, Washington caught Hessian commander Johann Rall unprepared, in spite of warnings Rall received and disregarded. After all, the sturdy British had closed down for the winter – why wouldn’t everyone do the same?
Just after 8am on December 26th, Washington’s force attacked, killing 21 Hessians, wounding 90, and capturing 900. 500 escaped over a bridge that was supposed to be defended by one of the two forces unable to make the crossing.[4] Washington went on to another victory at Princeton on January 3, as the British were again caught by surprise, thinking the army was still in Trenton.[5] The momentum had turned, with the central event being the daring crossing of the Delaware on Christmas night, in freezing weather surrounded by ice.
[1] McCullough, David. 1776 (2005). P. 234. [2] McCullough, David. 1776 (2005). P. 249. [3] McCullough, David. 1776 (2005). P. 264-267. [4] McCullough, David. 1776 (2005). P. 270-281. [5] McCullough, David. 1776 (2005). P. 288.
On this date in 1976, Mao Zedong, or Chairman Mao, founder of the communist People’s Republic of China, died at the age of 82. Some look at Mao’s death as a positive turning point for Christianity in China, since under Mao China had expelled all Western Christian missionaries between 1949 and 1953. However, while it is impossible to come up with precise numbers across a 3.7 million square mile country, Christians probably were about 1 percent of China’s population when Western missionaries were kicked out, but by the 1980s about 5 percent of the population went by Christ’s name. The Christian population grew by ten times, while the overall population doubled. How did this happen?
Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom, authors of the book “Clouds of Witnesses” say the key to this growth was “the resilience of the Chinese believers themselves…securely rooted in Chinese life before Mao.” [1] In expelling missionaries, Mao was in part responding to “treaty ports” created at the end of the 1839-42 Opium War. Through these ports foreign powers had extra territorial rights, allowing influences including missionaries to come in, but these ports also allowed opium to flow freely into China from Western countries. Therefore, in the mind of many Chinese, Christianity became linked with both Western imperialism and opium addiction. When Karl Marx said “religion is the opiate of the masses” he may have been thinking of this connection. But native Chinese believers, sometimes planted by Europe-based evangelizing organizations like China Inland Mission, remained behind and spread resilient forms of Christianity that were attractive to the Chinese population.
John Sung Several of these Chinese Christians are profiled by Noll and Nystrom, including John Sung who lived from 1901 to 1944, before Mao’s communist revolution. Around Christmas 1926, Sung heard child evangelist Uldine Utley preach a sermon at Calvary Baptist Church in New York, near where he was attending Union Theological Seminary. This sermon, along with other influences, countered the liberal Christianity he was being taught where the Bible was just “a collection of myths.” He returned to China, determined to spread the gospel in the land of his birth with frenetic energy. In a one-year period in 1931-2, Sung and a small group of missionaries “traveled over 50,000 miles, held 1,200 meetings, preached to more than 400,000 people in thirteen provinces, registered more than 18,000 ‘decisions’” for Christ. Many of these new Christians formed traveling bands themselves. Sung is considered the last great evangelist in China and Southeast Asia before Mao’s reign.
Dora Yu Even earlier, another driver of this resilient, Chinese Christianity was Dora Yu (1873-1931). Dora’s ministry benefitted tremendously from a 1905 decision by Dowager Empress Cixi to replace China’s traditional Confucian civil service examinations with general public schools. Under this system, mission-run schools became a valued option, and one of Dora’s early ministries was to train “Bible women” to not only educate women generally, but also to teach them the Bible, pray with them, and teach them to live by faith. Mostly traveling by foot, in “1903, Dora Yu visited with 925 women and 211 children.” Later, her ministry grew and she became famous for itinerant preaching, reaching many others who would carry on the Lord’s work.
Because of our proneness to look at the bucket and forget the fountain, God has frequently to change His means of supply to keep our eyes fixed on the source
Watchman Nee
Watchman Nee In 1920, Nee Shu-Tsu would hear Dora Yu preach. Later known as Watchman Nee, he “planted at least four hundred Christian churches over a thirty-year period of active ministry.” He died in 1972 in a Communist prison after spending 20 years there. Watchman Nee wrote that “Because of our proneness to look at the bucket and forget the fountain, God has frequently to change His means of supply to keep our eyes fixed on the source.”
Whether it is a European missionary, a child preacher in New York City, a Chinese man temporarily studying in New York City, or a Chinese woman walking miles through the countryside:
“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’” – Isaiah 52:7
As Jesus said in Matthew 16:18 – “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” This rock is the gospel of the kingdom of God, and not even a brutal regime like that of Chairman Mao could prevail against it.
Soli Deo Gloria
[1] Noll, Mark A.; Nystrom, Carolyn. Clouds of Witnesses: Christian Voices from Africa and Asia (2011). This post is drawn from chapters 12 and 14.
On March 5th, 1776, a sudden change in the weather led to a decisive victory for the American Revolutionary Army and an end to the British occupation of Boston (see my post on that date here). On this date, August 30, in 1776, weather intervened again. The American Revolution could have ended in bitter loss, but for “a peculiar providential occurrence” – Pea-soup fog. “So very dense was the atmosphere,” remembered Benjamin Tallmadge, “that I could scarcely discern a man at six yards’ distance.” For the book “What Ifs? Of American History”, historian David McCullough wrote a chapter describing the significance of these events.[1]
After a humiliating loss in Brooklyn (including more than 1,000 surrendered troops), George Washington found himself and his 9,000-man army cornered at the end of a peninsula by a British force numbering over 30,000, plus a vast navy. Left with few options and overwhelming odds, George Washington quickly ordered the army to evacuate Brooklyn overnight by anything they could find or make that would float, across the East River to Manhattan. The escape depended entirely on the element of surprise and the cover of darkness. The scale and boldness of the escape was enormous – one Connecticut man recalled crossing the river 11 times that night, ferrying troops and equipment across. The evacuation continued well into the morning, when the British might easily have seen what was happening, close in, and utterly destroy Washington’s army.
However, the escape remained concealed under a different kind of darkness, because “a heavy fog settled in over the whole of Brooklyn, concealing everything no less than had the night”[2] By the time the fog cleared, the escape was complete, and the British, expecting a victorious day, were instead astonished by another overnight, weather-assisted, disappearing act by the American army.
McCullough says that without the fog: “Washington and half the Continental Army would have been in the bag, captured, and the American Revolution all but finished. Without Washington there almost certainly would have been no revolution.” Because of the fog, “the entire force, at least nine thousand troops, possibly more, plus baggage, provisions, horses, field guns, everything but five heavy cannon that were too deep in the mud to budge, had been transported over the river in a single night with a makeshift emergency armada assembled in a matter of hours. Not a life was lost.”
This was not the first time, nor would it be the last time, that weather – or Providence – would play a key role in the American struggle to break away from British rule. Therefore, let every people and nation seek the LORD this day, who can wield nature itself in favor of – or against – the very nations.
“Are there any among the false gods of the nations that can bring rain? Or can the heavens give showers? Are you not he, O LORD our God? We set our hope on you, for you do all these things.” – Jeremiah 14:22
[1] From “What the Fog Wrought.” David McCullough and Robert Cowley. What Ifs? Of American History (2003). P. 52-54. [2] McCullough, David. 1776 (2005). P. 191.
Each June 18 in in the African nation of Zimbabwe, a festival is held to remember the service of Bernard Mizeki and his martyrdom on this date in 1896. As recently as 2005, almost twenty thousand attended the festival at a time when Zimbabwe had massive food shortages and an unemployment rate of 80 percent!
As profiled in the book “Clouds of Witnesses” by Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom[1], Mizeki found Christ, was baptized, and became a missionary under the influence of an Anglican order in Cape Town, South Africa. He planted[2] a one-man mission among the Shona people in an area then known as Theydon, now part of Zimbabwe. The Shona worshiped a creator-deity they called Mwari and sometimes practiced the killing of twin babies and the murder of those identified as sorcerers by their leaders.
Mizeki befriended Shona Chief Mangwende, learned their language in one year, translated key Biblical texts and Christian creeds, held Anglican services, and sought to reform the practices mentioned above. He also identified with and invested in the Shona by marrying a Shona woman, teaching children and others to sing, and providing medical care. His work prospered, and many came to believe.
However, opposition to his work began to grow, especially from those who saw his work as an assault on their culture and authority. On the night of June 17th, 1896 he was assaulted in front of his home and had a spear driven into his side. It seems Mizeki’s removal of some “sacred trees” was the last straw. Then the account gets truly interesting.
Multiple accounts by Africans and Europeans attest to a “great and brilliant white light” and “a noise ‘like many wings of great birds’” around the hut where Mizeki was laid while his friends cared for him, seemingly near death. There was a “strange red glow” around Mizeki’s hut and afterward his body was gone, never to be seen again. Jean Farrant, who documented witness accounts in her book on Mizeki, says each person must decide what to make of this, but that “something happened that night which to the Africans was beyond explanation, which frightened them very much, and left a deep impression”[3] This event is still celebrated today, and others have taken up Mizeki’s work.
Soli Deo Gloria!
[1] Noll, Mark A.; Nystrom, Carolyn. Clouds of Witnesses: Christian Voices from Africa and Asia (2011). This post is drawn from chapter 1. [2] John 12:24 – “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” [3] Farrant, Jean. Mashonaland Martyr: Bernard Mizeki and the Pioneer Church (1966). P. 216-22. Cited in Clouds of Witnesses P. 30.
Driving Toward the Morning Sun 