Monday 26 April 2010

Hudson Taylor's Holy Spirit lineage-Part Five:A Contemporary Response

This post is all about AUDIO! You should have 8 audio players showing down the page.And they were all working at 10.30 am GMT 29th April on Internet Explorer. But none of them appeared in Firefox on my father's laptop.Nor on my friends Mac. Please keep me informed.Be blessed!I'll provide the source link anyway as a backup. Between Audio 7 and Audio8 there is a Youtube clip if you click the photo!






This is Part One of An Introduction To Third Level Christianity : Recorded Live Before a Future Audience July 1989 by A. Christopher Welch and copied by cassette by Kingsway Communications Eastbourne. Split into 8 for this blogpost. Thought Cloud:Wheels within Wheels,"Another Sound",Going Up In Secret,Ed Miller,Go into your Inner Room,The Law of Faith,John7:10,Song Of Solomon to "U2's Streets With No Name",Level 42-"Heaven in my hands". ( if all else fails Backup Sourcelink = SL)http://www.archive.org/details/IntroToThirdLevelChristianity01-a.christopherWelchJuly1989



Part Two of an Introduction to Third Level Christianity
Thought Cloud:Satan tries to buy you out with a lie,Steve Taylor,Indoctrinated Not to Believe,The spirit of our minds,we see light in His light,the plumbline,the Law of Faith-the secret becomes manifest,Hope,the nature of Holy Spirit Life,Paul McCartney-Rough Ride,Steven Spielberg fim "The Colour Purple". SL http://www.archive.org/details/AnIntroductionToThirdLevelChristianityPart2A.christopherWelch






Part Three of an Introduction to Third Level Christianity


Thought Cloud:Different Aspects of Growth and Stages of Growth,Unity,Ask/seek/knock,Egypt/Wilderness/Land,Stalk,Tabernacle and Feasts,Ortiz,Jews,Purity of supernatural life,Worship,Healing,Bread,Love,Two winds, the anaesthetic. SL http://www.archive.org/details/IntroToThirdLevelChristianityJuly1989A.christopherWelch










Part Four of an Introduction to Third Level Christianity

Thought cloud:

Moses. Joseph.The Narrow Way which opens up to "You have brought me out into a wide place" Paul McCartney "Motor of Love"
Circumcision of the heart. The Place of real Worship. SL http://www.archive.org/details/IntroductionToThirdLevelChristianityPartFour












Part Five of an Introduction to Third Level Christianity

Thought Cloud:Seeking The Lord,Violent Men ,The Law is a schoolmaster
Level 42 Man,Circumcision/setting apart.Snake in the wilderness.Job A light to overturn the world SL http://www.archive.org/details/IntroductionToThirdLevelChristianityPart5








Part Six of an Introduction To Third Level Christianity
Thought Cloud:No Independent Self.The One Life in the Universe.Self For Others Spirit.Example of Jacob. Jacob song Live illustration on piano,Genesis 3 SL http://www.archive.org/details/IntroductionToThirdLevelChristianityPart6







Part 7 of an Introduction To Third Level Christianity
Thought Cloud:The Purpose of the Wilderness.The Holy Spirit is NOT just a Helper alongside.Showing up the serpent lie delusion.The effects on our lifestyle and relationships.Lazarus's exterior bindings.Christians are perhaps worse than the Jews. What is the work of God? Dreams become realisable.The leap of Faith. SL http://www.archive.org/details/IntroductionToThirdLevelChristianityPart7ByA.christopherWelch

Before Part 8 below click here for Chris Tomlin and Zefirelli's Raising Lazarus sequence




Part Eight of an Introduction to Third Level Christianity (Final) Thought Cloud:Until the Master is satisfied.How Intercession Works.What happened at the Cross
Gideon's Army ,International Results. We become Other Lovers.Paul McCartney :Ou est le Soleil? SL http://www.archive.org/details/IntroductionToThirdLevelChristianityFinalPart8ByA.ChristopherWelch


Saturday 24 April 2010

Hudson Taylor's Holy Spirit lineage-Part Four : Norman Grubb's last stand

So I was writing to evangelist Steve Cattell not to get too bogged down with how the church looks on the surface, but rather to take note of how genuine ministers sow the Word into people which then multiplies in number, quality and maturity from generation to generation.

This series is NOT intended to imply a fleshly regard for one strand of Holy Spirit lineage, rather in the manner that followers of William Branham seem to imply about him. Can I insert into this series some of the other contemporary strands that were occurring at this point which also have to do with Norman Grubb.

Most are aware of Evan Roberts being used as the main instrument in the Welsh Revival. He became increasingly connected with Jessie Penn Lewis. Penn Lewis was an early Pentecostal Pioneer in the area of spiritual warfare writing both an account of the Welsh Revival from its roots, and also the important book " War on the Saints". Now Norman returned from the Congo(1920s) rather deflated as to his own spiritual ability, and met up with Jessie. Jessie's agenda was to see Norman "baptised in the Spirit". What actually happened probably has greater importance for the future of the church in the Earth. Somehow in those few hours, Penn Lewis seemed to transfer to Norman the fact that she had died with Christ, and that it was Christ now alive in her.And Norman caught it. Big time. And for the rest of his life devoted himself to increasing clarity of explanation of how Christianity works and what the apostle Paul was really preaching and writing in the New Testament.

It is worth reminding ourselves also that Norman was so impressed by the life story of his friend Rees Howells , he wrote his biography on the steps God used to train Howells in intercession, leading to his ultimate stand of faith.....the Great Dictators of Europe in the Second World War.
Rees established a Bible Training School. And two young men shared a room there under Howell's son who became principal after Rees's death. Those two men alone were none other than Bryn Jones and Rheinhard Bonnke.

Bonnke himself left the college after his studies and took time around London on his way back to Germany. He found himself outside the house of early Pentecostal Pioneer George Jeffrey, who had moved alongside others such as Smith Wigglesworth. Bonnke had no idea that Jeffrey was still alive, so asked if he would pray with him. The two prayed together, and it sounds as though Bonnke got a lot of Holy Spirit zapping. Within hours, after Bonnke's return home, he learned Jeffrey was dead. It seems the Lord had kept him for that moment of transference of anointing and power.

So these then are some examples of the two streams of life and power that get transferred from generation to generation, and are both God! Word and Spirit.

Before reviewing the last commission Norman Grubb received from God, for those who query its validity....let's look briefly at his earlier commissions and see that really, although his final one is a great commission that is still coming to fruition...it is not random. It sits directly in context of other more "acceptable" commissions.
He began his Christian life leading men to the Lord in the 1st World war trenches.
He led Cambridge students to the Lord while there.
He established CICCU which went on to replicate as the Christian Union infrastructure in Universities today.
He established Inter Varsity Press and later
Christian Literature Crusade.
With CT Studd (father-in -law) he began WEC
He wrote Rees Howells Intercessor
He wrote biographies on CT Studd
He spent his last years writing books on the operation of faith and
how the Christian life works in a believer.
His last book "Yes I am" which can be downloaded from the link on this blog page is arguably
to date the most accurate description of the human condition and God's means of salvation ever penned. It will change forever how you do your Christianity and how you do your church. It IS the bottom line.....the fine print....of the New Covenant, which hardly anyone had the anointing or insight to spell out until Norman felt called ( as a Spirit inspired Cambridge intellect) to work a whole lifetime on it. If it was just the theories of a man, like all philosophy we would soon discard it and move on. But many of us, myself included, had crashed and burned through the charismatic movement in the best part of 20 years, with songs published in songbooks in different countries....to discover in our own experience much the same things.

But more importantly, thousands now around the world are discovering these are the very missing keys which St Paul wanted everyone to know , that actually turn the lock that start to make Romans 8 happen in us, through us and around us. You cannot manipulate Romans 8, since a lot of it is external to us. It is a mirror , an outflow of the Christ Life released within believers. It either IS or it ISN'T. There's no middle ground about it.
My challenge has been to show none of this negates any of the previous charismatic territory covered from 1970-90, but it balances it. (Not a human balance. A paralysing controlling balance) It fulfils and fills out what has previously been learned in the Spirit. If anybody wrongly discards what God has been sowing into the Earth through Pentecostalism and the Charismatic movement, then they are missing the point of how God has been building. But all that said, once Einstein came up with the mathematical punchline e=mc2, Newton's findings had to be reworked, confined to their new context. Similarly if the people of God now suddenly see that
"they have in fact died"
a lot of the now meaningless struggle in Christianity immediately dies with it.
And this has spinoffs. The way we do meetings are different. The way we do conferences is different.
The way we do leadership is different. The way we pay for leadership may be different.
The speed with which we advance will be different as we "cut to the chase" with people.
Much of the caterpillar slowness of operation, the almost at the moment dire "pupae" stage, largely unrecognised, will be accelerated to a point where like Jesus, we are producing ministries under the Holy Spirit's exact instructions again in about 3 years. And no, the current 1 year or 3 years in Bible seminaries is not even on the same planet as what was going on with the 12 disciples to turn them into apostles. And , no Morris Cerullo, 5 day schools of ministry which zap people with the Holy Spirit are not the same thing either. They represent only week one of Jesus 3 year course with Peter, James,John,Matthew and everyone else. The same must be spelled out to Youth With A Mission too.
What follows is one of the last things Norman wrote to us at the time. He had by this time stopped travelling, not surprisingly. Although as late as his early nineties he was regularly flying, though he needed a wheelchair to get around. The US authorities then thought it was so suspicious that he should be doing this that they started peering under his rug to see if it wasn't some drug peddling scam under the cover of a 90 year old missionary preacher!!!

Which actually, if you think about it ,just about describes all the problems with the third level.
It is the life of Christ. As us. In our natural - as you find us-forms. But because that's too innocent and spiritual an explanation people look for sin. Which is why both WEC and CLC , the very vehicles founded through Norman, kind of edged him and his writings out.

This is just the same in a whole history of reaction as God does new things in the Church, the last wave ofcourse being what most of us lived through in the early 70s....as the rest of the church tried its best to remain in denial as to what had happened to us in the Baptism in the Spirit.

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Intercession Being Gained in Worldwide, Churchwide Commission
My Fifth and Last Commission

by Norman Grubb


Page Prewitt prefaces the article as it appeared in this month's Intercessor:This issue would not be complete without including Norman's last worldwide, Churchwide commission: boldly proclaiming the revelation of Colossians 1:28: "a total present Christ in you.... He is the perfection in us, and we in Him are His human manifesters. " This is the commission we in Zerubbabel have likewise been commissioned to carry on—and the culmination of our spiritual heritage.
-------------------------
I have this last intercession to share; and probably I can say it is the last, now being 95 years of age. Yet this is the mightiest, because it is the first streams of what is to become a world flood. It was as simple in its beginnings as all the others. Once again, it all stemmed from the originality of the Spirit, totally unplanned and unpremeditated by me or any.
Having handed on the general secretaryship of the WEC (Worldwide Evangelization Crusade) to a younger man just suited for it, I was now free to pour myself into my main absorption—the sharing with my fellow believers of Paul's (and my!) revelation of that mystery once hidden "but now made manifest to his saints" (Col. 1:26). That revelation is of a total present "Christ in you, the hope of [the total coming] glory" (1:27). He is the perfection in us, and we in Him are His human manifesters.
The radicalness of what a number of us call our Total Truth Message to the Whole Church in the Whole World is not in what Paul called his once hidden, now manifest "mystery." That tremendous reality is becoming more commonly known by faith by us the redeemed. We do say with Paul in his Galatians 2:20, "Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." But where we have been held up, and I for long, is with the previous statement of "I am crucified with Christ."
What is that "I" (or "me")? That is the point. Is it just an inconsistent, Satan-and-sin-influenced "me"? And what does it mean when I say "I am crucified"? For evidently the "I" continues in living existence when Paul goes on to say, "Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." There is the "me" back again! So what was crucified? And in what sense am I a "crucified me," who now comes back as a "resurrected me"? I was not clear about that for a long time.

Romans Makes It Clear
But at last I saw the truth about our selves through Paul's Roman letter. He constantly underlines that our human "I" is nothing but a vessel that contains, a branch producing its vine's fruit, a servant (slave) working only at the beck and call of his owner, a wife reproducing the seed of her husband, a temple indwelt by its god. Our human selves never were self-operating or self-relying, but only express and reproduce the products of our owner.
I saw that my "I" that was crucified with Christ was an "I" that was expressing its owner and operator. My "I" had been the expresser of that false "god of this world" and "spirit of error," which works in all the children of disobedience (all of us while unsaved). So when Paul says that I am crucified with Christ, he means that my "I" went into death and resurrection with my Intercessor Savior, who was "made sin" as me on Calvary (2 Cor. 5:21). In His death I am freed forever from the false spirit of error indweller; and by His resurrection I am now occupied, when I have responding faith, by the Spirit ofTruth as fixed, eternal, total Indweller.
What is so radical, and meets with so much questioning and opposition as even heretical, is that my crucified "I" is the very same "I" that now lives. The difference is not and never was in the human "I" container, but wholly in the deity-spirit in possession of my 'I" But that is hard to recognize and accept because of the false concept of my "I" being independent and self-operating.
Really, we have been run since the Fall by that false Satan-deity (Rev. 12:9). That includes much of the lives of us newborn ones, until through sheer desperation we have moved in by faith from our first saved and justified relationship to our real reality of now being indwelt vessels by our Christ-Indweller. Only by His body-death did He cast out forever the false indweller. So it never was a change in our beautiful God-created "I" with its great potential, but only an exchange of who is operating our "I."
We Have Never Been Self-Operating
This then brings me to the problem of resistance from my fellow believers, who have known themselves as Satan-stained by their sins.



While caught in this lie of a seemingly self-acting self which they think can pray more, resolve more, try more, be better, etc., they are horrified and regard as dangerous heresy the total giving up of their "duties" in self-activity.



But at last they must come to what Paul did by much travail: the plain given fact of the human self never having been self-operating. And then they can realize that human self-relying activity through past years actually has been the "error spirit," with his nature of self-for-self appearing as them.
When I am at last exhausted enough by the failure of my self-effort, as was Paul in Romans 7, I am ready and conditioned to recognize with great relief and daring faith that I have "died" to this long-accepted concept of being self-operating. By faith I see that my false owner and Satan-Sin-operator, with his nature of self-for-self, has been replaced forever by my True Owner, with His nature of self-for-others.
As in Romans 8:1-2, I can now accept myself with all my human faculties as permanently operated by, expressing and manifesting my Christ Indweller in His self-for-others nature. I go free. Then delightedly I find myself a willing slave-servant to Him who gets


By faith I see that my false owner and Satan-Sin-operator, with his nature of self-for-self, has been replaced forever by my True Owner, with His nature of self-for-others.


busy giving me my intercessory life's opportunities of being Himself-for-others by me. All who will receive can find and know that they too are Christ-I in place of Satan-I, and never were the delusion of being just an I-I!
The Radical Core
In a real sense, there is not a new word in what we are saying —not a sentence for which we cannot present Bible authority and not a thing new to take to any born-again believer. All we do is tell our fellow redeemed who they really are and already are!
When any say, "So you think you are holier than we [really than we believe ourselves to be] or regard yourselves as The Elite," we say, "Yes, but that is just what you are also!" Can you be more holy than a walking Christ in your human form, which you are when you recognize who you are by the obedience of faith in His declared word? Can you be more elite than "now are we the sons of God" (1 John 3:2)?
Our one reason for existence as Total Truth witnesses and being so bold about it is that though it is nothing but unrecognized truth about who every redeemed person really is, we have very regretfully to say that, whether in victorious life books or evangelical pulpit preaching, we do not find the total truth often given.



Wherever we see even a glimpse of it, we jump to acclaim it. The last thing we wish to be is sole purveyors of it.
But what is the radical spot which causes us to talk of "total truth"? Simply put, it is that there is no such thing as independent self in the universe. There is only One: "I am the Lord; and there is none else" (Is. 45:18). All creation is derivative, operating by God's creative life in some basic form in it. And so all men, made in His image, naturally (except as hindered by unbelief) express by their created selfhood Him, their Creator.
We humans have our wonderful being as selves "in Him" (Acts 17:28); but the nature that is being expressed is His, not ours (2 Pet. 1:4). But because consciousness necessarily comes through the fact and knowledge of opposites, the one utilizing the other to express itself (like light "swallowing up" dark), so there came into existence this false "god" with the opposite nature to the One Living God, and having the deceived imagination that he is an independent self. That is what sin is (1 John 3:4).
This was also that we might know the false opposite, since through the Fall we have been deceived by Satan as if we were independent selves, having received his spirit of error into ourselves to express his self-for-self nature as us. The Last Adam —God's own Son taking flesh as us—removed that spirit of error from us by His death and resurrection as us (2 Cor. 5:14, 21; Rom. 6:19), so that the deceiving spirit is replaced by the Spirit of Truth expressing His other-love nature as us.
The snag and snare is that by Satan's deceit we humans think we are independent selves with a self-operating nature of our own. This has to be, so we learn once for all that lying deceit of being independent. The reason Romans 7 appears to be such a difficult chapter is that the final depth of this revelation is found there.
Through conditioning we have to become desperate enough to see through and discard the one thing we humans cling to: that deceived idea that we have a nature of our own and run our own lives. Only then can we settle into the wonder of the old Satan-nature which he expressed as us (Rom. 6:21; 7:5) being now replaced forever by the glory of Christ, our "True Vine" expressing His True Vine nature by us, the branches (Rom. 6:22). Thus we move fixedly into the glory of the affirmation of Romans 8:2 and its spontaneous consequences in verses 14 through 16 and onward through the whole chapter.


But the Truth Is Resisted
So it is the fact of our having no human nature, but self only being an expresser of the deity-spirit nature (formerly the false one and now the true one) and our claiming this to be biblically true, that makes our "total truth" so radical. It leaves no more room for human self-activity, except as expression of a deity.
Here is where we have to ask where are the preachers or the writers of spiritual books who make this radical fact the fact, and thus give no more room for exhortations to self-betterment? Actually, all the commands of the Scripture have become automatic action: "Of course that is how we live, because it is He fulfilling 'the righteousness of the Law' in us!" "Oh, how I love thy Law!" (Rom. 8:4; Ps. 119:97).
Why can few pastors accept this


So it is the fact of our having no human nature, but self only being an expresser of the deity-spirit nature (formerly the false one and now the true one) and our claiming this to be biblically true, that makes our "total truth" so radical.


truth in its reality? Because it exchanges pastoral management of the flock for direct management by the Chief Shepherd, and the pastors leading the sheep to His direct leadership. Why will all believers start by opposing and resenting this radical reality? It is because we live under the delusion of being self-operating selves merely helped by the Spirit, until that final delusion is exposed in Romans 7 and replaced in Romans 8.
How truly that great George Muller, the father of all present-day faith movements, once said, "There was a day on which I died!" And there's no other way but that such a day comes in all our lives. But we fight and resist until at last we "see" it.


God's Restored Truth for Our Generation
Though our Total Truth reality is radical at its core, we see it as God's restored truth for our generation. We have nothing less than a worldwide, churchwide commission to every believer. And in each issue of our Intercessor magazine we make that plain statement. The Intercessor continually puts this Total Truth in all its articles. Such books as Yes, I Am and other publications and tapes listed in the magazine also offer the truth. In increasing numbers—by literature, by personal visits, by weekend fellowships —we are a "rising army" of co-knowers, witnesses and teacher-sharers, until that great day when "the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" (Is. 11:9).
But right now we are relatively few, although regretfully so and quickly embracing any who show signs of being co-knowers. Of course, the great mystics of the centuries "knew" by the Spirit and gloriously said so.
There are thousands, including increasing numbers today, who do "know" much, and often live the liberated lives of the "knowers." Still, our calling is, like Paul, to present what we see to be the full Bible-revealed basis to a total knowing—the truth of Christ in and as us.
Others Have Seen and Said It
John in his First Epistle repeated it over and over again. We walk in the light. as He is in the light (1:7). We walk as He walked (2:6). We know as He know (2:27). We live holy lives, as He lives(3:7). We love as He loves (4:16). We have a faith that becomes inner knowing as He has (5:4-5, 18-20). And summed up, "As He is, so are we in this world" (4:17), for the very same Spirit who caused Jesus to know and say who He was (John 14:9) now causes us to know who we are (Rom. 8:11; John 16:7)
Inner truth was always known through the centuries (read such a book as The Pilgrim Church by E. H. Broadbent), but these true ones were consistently martyred by the external church. They were intercessors for us and did the dying. Now in our generation it is not physical martyrdom and cutting off of heads for most of us, but plenty of cutting off of our reputations as sound or sensible Christians. So we are left physically free to go to the whole Church in the whole world.
My Summit, My Hope, Glory and Ostracism
Now I reach my summit—at least I suppose so, at 95 years —and a last glorious participation in an "intercession in action." Certainly it is the greatest for me because God, and only God, has brought this worldwide, churchwide commission into being without my having given one thought or plan for it. And as I go to my Lord, I leave behind nothing less than the first sproutings—precious believers knowing who they already are —of a worldwide harvest.
My one hope is that we who are linked in this co-knowing remain as structureless as possible. Being joined to One Body only, the precious redeemed Body of Christ, we have no need for membership, joining or official subscribing. We know only one truth: Christ Himself now living His own life in millions of bodies by the Spirit, until"we all come in the unity of the faith," in understanding as well as a present Spirit-oneness, to that Perfect Man of Ephesians 4:13.
This last intercession is glorious indeed, but it also includes its very present dying that others may live. There is ostracism and opposition by many, even of the precious people of God, who remain in this confusion of and clinging to the false independent self. The Spirit has to make us ready for that final and highly dangerous looking death, where it remains only He as us.
That unpredictable Wind "blows


Inwardly we will "see" our wonderful God-made human selves as solely expressers of His Spirit of Truth in place of that false spirit of error. And we will settle into our true God-ordained condition, as out from us flows the river of the Spirit, as in John 7:37, 38.


where it lists"(wills) in our newborn lives, as I can plainly see in the marvelous unplanned events of just my own life. You may also see where the Spirit has already gained intercessions by you in your own experiences; and you will thus be alive to the glory of such further intercessions, with their commission, cost and completion.
The death-resurrection principle of intercession (see John 12:24) as the highest of our earthly callings is still known and entered into by only a few of the redeemed members of the Body of Christ. Plainly enough, though, Paul gave us his own experience in Romans 6-8. As he found so painfully and with difficulty in his Romans 7 travail, the "death" of that lie of our being independent selves comes to those of us who will stop at nothing in going what he called that perfect way of Christ as us.
But as we move in by the bold choice of faith (as by the affirmation of Galatians 2:20), the Spirit will bring us that same light of revelation which Paul had. Inwardly we will "see" our wonderful God-made human selves as solely expressers of His Spirit of Truth in place of that false spirit of error. And we will settle into our true God-ordained condition, as out from us flows the river of the Spirit, as in John 7:37, 38. Nothing then can stop us from joining what Peter calls "the royal priesthood" of intercessors with, as Paul said, "death working in us, but life in you."

Friday 23 April 2010

Hudson Taylor's Holy Spirit lineage-Part Three: Norman Grubb and the birth of WEC

Again this is from this month's series of articles by Page Prewitt in "The Intercessor" available from here by subscription free of charge.





The following is taken from Norman Grubb's book "After C. T Studd." In this book, Norman recounts his personal recollection of C.T.s last days. More importantly, he shares with the reader the ways of faith from C.T. Studd.
These became the bedrock of Norman's life's calling.
I was sitting on the edge of C. T's native bed. We were in the bamboo house in the heart of the Ituri forest. It was 3 a.m. He looked very white and drawn. His thin legs beneath the blankets were drawn up under his chin, with his wasted arms clasped round them. Without was the still African night, the palm trees



looking lovely silhouetted against the moonlit sky—and behind the dark rim of the primeval forest. We had been talking for hours.
Suddenly, he said,
"This looks like the end of everything. I don't see any way out. " After a pause he added, "Eighteen years ago, God told me to found this mission. We have had all sorts of
difficulties, but He has brought me through them
all. If God doesn't deliver me now, when I am near the end and
faced with the biggest, well, He is—But He isn't, because He
will."
It was the darkest chapter in the mission's history.






That hateful thing; internal dissention, had raised its head in our ranks and torn the work in half. We were without reputation at home. Rumours had spread from mouth to mouth which shook the confidence of many.
Pauline, who is C. T's youngest daughter and my wife, had accompanied me on a visit to him in the Congo, knowing that we should not see him again on earth. While we were there, the storm broke. It would be neither helpful nor necessary to go into the details of the controversy.
... The inward conflict which Pauline and I suffered was intense, as we faced our call to return to England and rebuild in the dense fog of suspicion, condemnation and controversy. It was the darkest valley of our lives also, and we lived there for six months.
Yet we were to learn as an old saint once wrote that "the way to


heaven is through hell. " The more the Lord plans to use an instrument, the fiercer the fire in which it is tempered. We had sought for ten years that we might be instruments meet for his use and the answer had been a great deal of pruning with very little fruit. Now at last, right from "the belly of hell" we lifted were to be lifted up into "a large place."
We were praying together four months after our return when Pauline turned to me on her knees and said, "Father has gone home, I know it. We are to start anew with God " I knew it too. We were dumb with the shock for a time. But it was God's voice. We left that room different people
. We had heard and accepted God's call. Shortly after, a cablegram was handed to us at the breakfast table. We glanced at each other before we opened it, for we guessed its content: "Bwana [C.T. Studd] glorified July 16th. " '



Secret of Effective Service
Prepared thus by the Spirit, we knew what lay before us. We were to take up the sword C.T. Studd had laid down. Something else had also happened in the blackness of that night. Some of the "treasures of darkness, " of which Isaiah speaks, had been laid open to us, and one supremely great secret of effective service had become vividly real to us, which lies at the root of most follows in these pages. It was the answer to that simple but fundamental problem, how can I know God's will? If I know it, then obviously I can believe and act. But first I must know.
How can I put the light we saw in a word? Perhaps best by describing what we did. We made a change in our daily programme at headquarters, but that change made all the the difference. It was customary to start the day's work with a half hour of Scripture reading and prayer; then followed the real business, letters, interviews and committees. Now the emphasis was to be changed. The reading and prayer was to be the real business of the day, and the rest fit in as best it might. In other words our first occupation became, not to exercise our own minds, but to find His mind.'
In "The Law of Faith", Norman recalls the life-changing effects of that simple change in focus.
Then followed three years of great illumination in the way of faith. It was as if that which had been seen dimly as a series of separate peaks of faith which might occasionally, with much effort, be scaled was now seen to be a broad high road in the uplands, a route of the Spirit, a way of life, to be steadily trased and no range of rugged peaks at all. The Scriptures were marvelously opened up: Hebrews 11 especially became alive, and faith was seen to be the permanent element in which the men of God lived, who themselves had first to pass through the school into the life of faith -Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, David, and so through all the list into New Testament days. They were days of great revelation. It was like the thrill of a new discovery, the exaltation of the explorer whose eyes are resting for the first time in history on some magnificent landscape. Experiments were made, feebly made, but the feet were not yet
firm enough on their new road to take one to the destination, and nothing came of it. But the light had truly dawned. Scriptural light, borne witness to by the inner assurance of the Spirit, the consummation without a doubt of the gropings and inner preparations of years. Failures could not quench those certainties. All that was needed was a firmer grasp of method, and, above all, those special sorts of circumstances in which living faith through all history has thrived, those necessary conditions for its healthy growth: difficulties, frustrations, [and this is the best one] impossibilities—for when I am weak, then I am strong. " "In hopeless circumstances, he hopefully believes. "
And they came. There is no need to go into them in detail.



Take note of the word "impossible" in the preceding paragraph. Impossible doesn't mean "Maybe," or "We'll kind of of work it out," or "If we'll just try this we've tried ten
things, but let's just try another." Impossible means
exactly what it says - impossible. Days of blessedness, peace and assurance?



Days of agony and darkness, days when one's life work seemed in ruin around one, when the mission one loved seemed collapsing when the hand of practically all friends and fillow Christians seemed against a tiny remnant of us. [Tiny remnant? At home, just four: Norman, Pauline, a new recruit, and one missionary home on furlough.] And I myself,with my wife, was called to take a stand completely alone, on behalf of a Jew on the field, surrounded by criticism and fierce opposition.
Then in travail, I cannot tell how (indeed I had learned that one usually cannot trace the "how" of God's deepest dealings), what I had seen and voiced in in theory became my own in practice. I saw how to walk the broad road of faith, how to have and maintain that touch with God, that living fruitful union with Him
which in infinite grace and condescension He has given us as our
own inheritance in Christ; and we began to go that way.'
I think there was about $8.00 apiece for the folks on the field. At that point he and Pauline decided they would not take any money that was sent for the mission, but they would personally depend on special gifts.



Christ, the All in All
Fifteen more years have now passed, years when, by God's grace, these vital principles have been even more strongly built into one's life. Others, many others, have learned them, practised them, and rejoice with us to see the marvelous truth of them in their concrete results. In the ranks of the Crusade, tremendous transformations have taken place: God's work has forged ahead, increased and abounded: souls have been saved world-wide: tens of thousands have heard the Gospel who had never before heard the blessed Name: Christians by the hundreds have been revived and stirred into action: Christ Himself has become increasingly the all in all; all fresh springs have been found in Him; all hunger and thirst satisfied according to His Word; desire increased beyond measure that He only should be glorified; His Word become the joy and
rejoicing of the heart.'






What an overwhelming difference that made. Away went worries, plans, defeatist fears. In their place was this: What does God say about it? What God says is always original, always in the impossible, and great enough to be worthy of Him.



What He said was this. Our petty human thinking was occupied with the littleness, poverty, weakness of our condition. He said, "Look at Joshua and see what I did for him, and Moses and Abraham and Daniel. Do you think I have given you a great commission to evangelize the world and not great resources to do it with? Does not all the Bible tell you that I have come to make people strong out of weakness, if they would only believe? Now will you believe?"'




Ask yourself that question: Are you going to look around and see what other people believe, what the Bible says, what God has done for others and not believe for
yourself? In my experience, I would look at Norman and think, "Praise God he is here, and God is showing him things and doing things through him." I wasn't thinking, "That's just the way Norman is. That's not me, and I will never be like that." Instead I thought, "Me, too. He and I
are the same." I didn't see him as some holier-than-thou person who lived above and beyond the common man. Of course, he had more wisdom and more experience than anyone I had ever known. This made me know that he was someone I could learn from because of the truth he taught me that we were both vessels that Christ lived in and through we were the same person. I was never intimidated by him. I felt perfectly free to talk to him about anything: my problems, my fears, my questions, my doubts, my shortcomings, my ideas, and so on. I would struggle with some difficulty or uncertainty for months. When I would see Norman the next time and ask him about whatever my dilemma was, he would promptly give an answer.
Remember, before our digression, God had asked the question, Will you believe?



The answer was obvious.Just one thing remained. For what specifically should we ask and believe? What was our immediate equivalent of Moses' need of manna or Joshua's need of a way across Jordan? That was not hard to find. Men and money, of course. For we were a Crusade to evangelize unoccupied areas, and that needs just those two supplies.
So we came to our first transaction of faith based on guidance, a truly memorable moment in our history, [Take note!] for what we did then we were to repeat in an endless succession of instances for an endless variety of needs. [This is the key!] We came somehow to the conclusion, I can't tell exactly how, that for us the impossible which would glorify God and extend His Gospel would be the supply of ten new workers and all the money for them in a year, by the first anniversary of C. T Studd's death, July 16, 1932.
Having done that, we exactly obeyed the word of Christ, "When ye pray, believe that ye receive." We deliberately thanked the Lord for what we had then received. From that day on, we never asked again for the ten, but daily reminded Him and ourselves in His presence that they were ours, and we thanked Him.' ["we never asked again..." that statement is the key!]



I am quite sure that many of you in Zerubbabel Fellowship do not realize you are here as the answer to that spiritual principle? Here is what I mean: Years ago, (in the early 1970's) Norman and I were sitting in a small group with several others. I spoke up and said, "I don't have anyone at home to share the Galatians 2:20 message with." I was pretty much on my own spiritually. Norman spoke right up and said, "We are going to say a word of faith that you are going to have a fellowship."
Well, here we are! You all are it! Our fellowship came into being through the application of the very same faith principles Norman and others back at WEC headquarters practiced many years ago how God operates today as the result of the spoken Word of faith, and not by asking Him for the same thing over and over. Remember, "Before they call, I will answer" (Isa. 65:24).
As Norman understood how to speak the Word of Faith, he continued forward using the same faith principle.



Calling Forth the Impossible
... One other lesson also that we gradually learned, of deep importance in faith, is that the Source is our concern, not the channel: in other words, that we are to keep occupied with what we have already received from Him in the unseen, and not be diverted into looking around for the way in which He may send it in the seen.



Now for the story of how the ten came. Some readers may think "Well, ten is not many, nor the £1,500 necessary for their outgoing "


No, they are not: but remember we were infants learning to crawl! To us it had all the thrills of new adventure and discovery. As we used this one and only method of obtaining things from God according to His word, by the invisible hand of faith, reaching into His equally invisible resources, we felt all the joys of pioneering in a new country.



What he's not saying here is that it was wartime, and conditions were dreadfully bleak. It seemed that there wasn't any money anywhere. But that did not quench their faith. They knew they were trusting in the God of the impossible and not in apparent circumstances.



The first two came in quite easily and soon sailed. It was then that we saw another condition of the pathway of faith, which is not exactly the faith itself, but is the works which prove the faith to be real and establish us in it. It is the equivalent of the confession with the lips commanded by the Scripture as a necessity for salvation, side by side with the belief of the heart (Rom. 10:9). We saw that one who really believes is ready to make public acknowledgment that the things he has received by faith are his, although he has not yet obtained them in fact. We saw it particularly with, Joshua at Jordan. He came out from the presence of God and told his officers to prepare victuals, for in three days they would cross
the river. A declaration of a certainty, yet only a certainty to faith.
[This was a turning point, this Joshua story. This is what radically changed his life.] In the same way God told us to write to Jack Harrison, C. T's successor on the field, and tell him to expect ten new workers within theyear, although owing to the circumstances the missionaries on the field had no thought of immediate increase. I had a brief controversy with the Devil about it, as he told me what a fool I should look predicting what would not come to pass, and that as the new secretary in London I should be doing the best thing possible to shake their confidence. Yet of course it had to be done. The unmistakable word of the Lord had come, and the letter was sent.



Norman realized that God didn't mention a timetable for crossing the Jordan. It was Joshua who assessed the circumstances, determined how long it would take, and made the statement, by faith, that they would cross in three days. He stepped out by faith and God backed him up.
Probably some of you are still waiting around to see what God's going to do. But God's waiting to see, number one, if you're going to clean up your life. Remember, it's the fervent prayer of a righteous man that availeth much—not someone with resentments and selfishness who says, "Well, today I'm going to start trusting Christ with my life." Doing this is an exercise in futility without cleaning up your sin.
Norman is making the point that God is waiting to see who's going to step out knowing who they are, say what needs to be done, and know by faith it is done. That was the secret Norman learned. That is our secret—not that we're keeping it a secret. But this is the secret that we know that the rest of the Christian world doesn't seem to know. They're sitting around asking, waiting, praying, looking to see what God's going to do, rather than saying this is what He's going to do—and then God backs them up.



The Word of Faith
... The next three, women, were ready to go by March, but there was no money. So we gathered together one morning, faced the fact that nothing hindered them going except finance, and made a definite transaction with the Lord that then and there we received it from Him by faith. The three soon had a fine opportunity of making the open declaration of faith. Two of them were going away the Easter week-end, so they left their addresses with the third, telling her to write them if the money were provided during the week-end.
On the Saturday we had two guests. They themselves lived by faith, and so we took it for granted that they had no spare stores of money. As a matter of fact for years they had a sum in the bank which they had dedicated to the Lord, but He had never told them what to do with it! That night before going to bed, in a word of prayer, someone quite naturally mentioned the three. You can imagine the surprise we had next morning when they came down to tell us about this sum and that in that word of prayer, God had spoken to both of them separately that the money was for this purpose! It turned out to be sufficient for two passages. At this point the faith of the third who had remained with us shone out in really remarkable fashion. We made the news known at dinner time and said that we must send the telegrams. She then said, 'Why not wait half an hour? God may yet send the money for the third passage' in spite of the fact that, being Sunday, no post, or vis?
itors tors would be expected. _7ust at the time she said this, unknown to us, the treasurer had cause to go over to his office, which was closed, and he there found a letter When opened, it had within it a check for] 0 0! The telegrams were sent.
These three sailed in May, followed by two in Tune, a total of seven.
[Remember, they had to have all ten recruits ready to go by July, and it was running close. It was June with a total of seven.] The eighth arrived from Canada. Six weeks remained and no applications remained and no money. Five weeks, none. Four weeks, no application, but a gift of
100. Three weeks, still none. Two weeks, No. 9 applied.



Now there were all but days left. Thirteen days, twelve, eleven, ten. On the evening of the tenth, No. 10 applied. It was at a conference. He had spent three days in fasting and prayer to be sure of God's call, and the next day the Lord seta wonderful seal on his application. A guest at the conference, who knew nothing about Number Ten's offer, was praying before breakfast. The Lord distinctly led him to take a blank cheque from his chequebook and put it t in n his pocket, but He did not reveal the reason. At breakfast he heard a mention of the application and at once knew that the cheque was to be for this purpose. Shortly after £120 was in the Secretary's hands.
Two days later two of us were in Ireland. We went into the matter together and found that £200 was still needed to complete the sum. So we agreed in secret to ask the Lord for this. A couple of days after, as we came out of a meeting
[Norman was at a conference in Ireland, and Pauline was back at home waiting], our hostess handed one of us a telegram, and, although
she had not an idea about our secret prayer, said, of all things in the world, "Perhaps there's £200 in it. " It was from London and read, "Two-hundred pounds for the ten
." [Pauline had sent the telegram].
Within six days of the anniversary, God had sent the ten and all the funds. It never had been our intention to get this number actually to the field by that date, for we filt there must be no hurry about the necessary testing of their suitability. All that we had asked and received from the Lord by faith had been graciously and completely provided. All the ten sailed to the Congo by the autumn, five men and five women. Our joy was great, yet greater and of more importance was the realization that we had been allowed to prove by personal experiment that this was the way outlined by God's word for thefulbnent of His purpose through human agency. "
Walking On—by Faith
When first we were led to pray for the ten, we already had in Mind, as a more distant goal, a memorial in flesh and blood to C. T Studd—tweno:five new workers. In our weakened situation, and realizing that twenty-five represented an increase of almost three-quarters of our numbers, we had regarded it merely as an aspiration for the future; but after the vision and realization of the ten, to ask for the remaining fifteen as our next annual objective by July 16,1933, the second anniversary became obvious.
We went about it by the same methods, although we were growing in the use of them. We kept continually before ourselves the fact that, by the eye of faith, we already had the fifteen, and we busied ourselves in daily thanksgivirg. How hardly we learned that the invisible is verily the real. If hard facts appear to deny it, down crashes that fimsy, foolish palisade of faith, which calls things that are not as though they were!



Four months of this second year had passed. We had reached the beginning of December, and had naturally thought that by now we should have a flow of candidates and some money, but not one was ready to go out, nor had any money come in. According to the principle before revealed to us, we had made the simple statement in our magazine that God would be sending this number by that given date. [It's December, and nothing no money,
nothing. They'd gone from July to December with nothing. And they had already published that new workers would be coming.] The storm troops of unbelief,
armed as always by so-called hard facts, those "appearances" by which Jesus told us not to judge, those waves which were more real to Peter than the Master's answering; "Come, " penetrated our defenses and wiped out both spoken word and written declaration. We had no business to waver. We had to learn that we only had one enemy to fight in this warfare of faith: not things, not people outside us, but only the attempts of fear and doubt, those emissaries of Satan, to get a lodgment within.
[This is one of Norman's "top ten" greatest lines and has been more meaningful in my life than almost any other.] Our failure on this occasion was a lesson to us, and certainly God's mercy came half-way to meet us, just as Jesus upheld the sinking Peter.


I was preparing the January issue of the magazine and said to the Lord that I would not again publish the statement that fifteen would be with us by July unless I had a sealfrom Him. The final proof had to go to the printer the next day, so I said, "If You will only send me £100 before 11 a. m. tomorrow, I will take that as the seal. But if You do not, I will not put in the article. " 11 a.m. came. I had the proof on the desk in front of me, but no £100. So I said to the Lord that I was very sorry, but in these circumstances I must drop the fifteen and publish nothing further about it. As I said that, I saw Colonel Munro coming across from the Office. He entered the room waving something in his hand. It was a cheque from Scotland for £100. The article went in. The fallacy and weakness of my action, and the mercy of God, are obvious. If the exercise off faith means that first we find the will of God, then we receive our request when we pray (Mark 11:24), how can we be foolish enough to go about asking for seals on a thing which we have said that we already have?
Things then began to move. The first three came for "the Heart of Africa. " Some money arrived in February. By March £250 was still needed, but we were led to publish in the March magazine
that they would sail by the next boat without mentioning the financial situation, which meant that the money must be in by March 13. On March 5 came a gift of £100 and on March 11, two days before the time limit came £150 from the other side of the world.



This was followed by a pregnant revelation. The ten had been only "the Heart of Africa," and we had taken it for granted that the fifteen would be the same. The remark of a friend opened our eyes to the fact that, as God's commission to Mr. Studd was world-wide, the perfect memorial to him would be a world-wide twenty-five. We had already received several applications for other
unoccupied fields, but until this moment had not regarded them as within the scope of the memorial twentyfive. Now we saw the full sweep of God's plan, that the first ten should go to the land of Mr. Studd's special labours, and the last fifteen be scattered through many lands and begin to carry out his world-wide vision of occupying every unoccupied region. Two came forward for Columbia, two for Arabia, two far Spanish Guinea, one more for the Congo, three for Lesser Tibet a total of thirteen.


The weeks passed. The Lord sent money for some of these. The gift Pat Symes, our first representative to Columbia, was especially remarkable. He was to open a new field in this part of South America. He had left his home in Australia for a different destination, so that none who might normally have helped knew of his need of funds. We suggested a few meetings in England, but he received definite guidance from the Lord that he was not to take meetings with a view to obtaining financial help and was to remain at Headquarters and prove that God was calling him to this new work by receiving a first £100 direct from Him. [When they would "have a meeting," they never asked for money. They would simply tell what they were believing for. If anyone listening felt led, they would make a contribution.] He had a struggle to come and tell me. He felt that he ought to say so at the next morning meeting but feared and kept silent. Rebuked in the spirit for not speaking he came back after the meeting to find me talking to a woman in the drawing room. I introduced him to her, and during a short conversation he stated what God had told him, and went out.
I had asked him to go and collect some further information on Columbia from a friend living ten miles away on the other side of London. He never told me that he had only six pence in the world, but went on his errand. Four pence was spent on getting there, partly by bus and partly on foot. On the return journey he walked to the Thames Embankment, intending to get a two-penny tram ride from there. A "down and out" accosted him and asked the price of a cup of coffee. Pat refused, saying that he had only two pence in the world, and passed on. The Spirit told him to go back and speak to the man about his soul. Pat went back but found that he could not speak about his soul and do nothing for his body, so the two pence changed hands and Pat walked the eight miles home.
Meanwhile, I continued my interview with the woman who was a visitor from the Midlands. She told me that she had £100 which she wanted to go towards the opening of a new field. "Why, " I said, "that man who has just spoken to us is the first
pioneer to a new field and has asked the Lord for this exact sum. "
Pat arrived back weary and perspiring. I opened the door to him with a cheque of £100 in my hand just at the same time that the Devil had been hard at work telling him that the life of faith was poor business!
Only six weeks now remained. There were still two more vacancies in the fifteen and about £500 needed to send them.
On June 15 we went to our annual Worldwide Evangelization Crusade conference. On arrival at the station we were met with the news that two more fully trained young men had received the call to Columbia. The next day at a preparatory meeting for the conference, the verse was brought to us, "If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you. " The point was pressed home that the person who is consciously abiding is given the privilege of claiming this promise. It was suggested that the audience claim what they specially needed in the way of spiritual blessing in the coming few days. The blessing I needed was £500. I went alone with God, examined whether I was abiding in Him so far as I knew, and received the £500 by faith.

Testings
The Lord always tests faith and a test came the following day. For some years I had attended annually some days of prayer in Ireland early in July; but this year I had the conviction that I was not to go away from my watch-tower of faith in London before July 16 unless the fifteen were complete. Therefore the only way I could attend would be if the £500 came in at the conference or just after. My hostess in Ireland was at the conference and asked me if I was coming. What was I to say? I said I hoped so. The Lord said, "That is not faith, hoping is not believing." On a later inquiry I tried again and said, "I will, if the Lord has sent a certain deliverance. " The Lord said, "There are no 'ifs' about faith. The Scripture says faith is substance (Heb 11:1), and the man of faith acts on faith just as if he had the current coin in his pocket. " Finally when she asked a third time, the Lord helped me through and I said, "Yes, I will attend the prayer days, because the deliverance is coming at the conference. "
The last day of the conference came, and not a penny. Next morning we were all dispensing to return home. Farewells were said and people began to leave for the London train. It was found that there were more for this train than was calculated and not enough conveyances.


[There weren't enough vehicles to ferry everyone to the train station.]

At the last moment several were waiting to go. A large taxi was called. We went in with the party and were driven off at top speed. Halfway along the three-mile journey a tyre went with a bang. We all jumped into a tram, but it was too late. We arrived at the station to find the train had just gone. Ten minutes were taken making fresh arrangements, and then one of those who had lost the train took me aside and said words to this effect, "It is remarkable that I missed this train, for the Lord told me yesterday that if there was money still needed for thefifteen I was to give £400. I intended to say nothing and catch the train, but now I have lost it and must speak. " We were like they who dream. We felt we must tell someone of this wonderful last minute deliverance, forgetting in the excitement of the moment that it was only £400, whereas £500 had been asked of God. A Christian friend was manager of a shop near the station, so we went over and out of the fullness of our hearts told him the story. We had no sooner finished than he said, "While you have been speaking; the Lord has told me to give you £100. " The £500 was complete.
The fifteen finally consisted of ten men and five women. We much wanted the last of the memorial twenty to be a home staff member, and Miss Hand coming in for the first time filled the place."

C.T.'s Legacy—the WEC
It might be interesting for us to take a moment to go back to the events in the months prior to C.T.'s death. During Norman and Pauline's last visit, C.T. looked around his hut and said to his daughter, Pauline, "There ought to be something here that I can give you. But I gave it all to Jesus years ago." He did, however, have an old banjo that they took as a keepsake. So Norman and Pauline left and went back to England.
Norman tells the story that when he arrived back in London from the Congo, he was at a loss for what to do. He made the decision to travel to Wales to see his great friend Rees Howells, whom he trusted to give him the guidance he so badly needed. Mr. Howells asked him if he had a copy of the charter (the legal document that established the mission). In reading the charter, he found that C.T. had veto power. And since C.T. was still alive, he was free to veto any decision the committee made. Hallelujah! The records and anything the mission had belonged to them and not the committee.
In spite of the veto power, Norman and the other took no chances. Norman's brother-in-law, Colonel David Munro, and his wife, Pauline's sister, were with them in London at the time. David, a tough army officer, helped Norman get into the mission office, which was in the house next door, and take the files and whatever else belonged to the mission. They went over early in the morning when only the cleaning person was there. First, Colonel Munro, as any army officer would do, cut the phone lines. Next they gathered up the records and passed them through to the women who were waiting on the other side of the wall.
The cleaning person ran off to alert a member of the committee as to what was going on. A committee member returned with an attorney. All was over when Norman presented the charter to the attorney, who in turn, told the gentleman with him that the mission belonged to C.T. because he still had the veto.
Think about it. From those humble beginnings the WEC [Worldwide Evangelization Crusade the name given to the mission that began with the Ten] has grown into a huge crusade with over 1800 missionaries among nearly 100 unreached people groups all over the world.

Picture of WEC Co-Ordinating Council in 1964 . Note Len Moules fourth from left, who later led a weekend for Amersham Old Town Baptist Church while I was there.

"Anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me" -Matthew 10:38
"He had no money. At fifty years of age, after fifteen years of ill health, how could he face tropical Africa?
As C.T. presented this challenge and his willingness to pioneer the way, it was taken up by a group of businessmen who formed themselves into a committee to back the project—but on one condition. He must be passed by the doctor. Then things came to a dead stop. The doctor's report was absolutely against him.
Penniless, turned down by the doctor, dropped by the Committee, yet told by God to go, what was he to do? 'The only honest thing.' Once more he staked all on obedience to God. As a young man he staked his career, in China he staked his fortune, now he staked his life. A gambler for God! He joined the ranks of the great gamblers of faith, Abraham, Moses, etc. in Hebrews 11, and the true apostolic succession, 'Men that have hazarded [gambled with] their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ' (Acts 15:26). No wonder he once wrote, `No craze is so great as that of the gambler, and no gambler for Jesus was ever cured, thank God!' His answer to the Committee was this: 'Gentlemen, God has called me to go, and I will go. I will blaze the trail, though my grave may only become a stepping stone that younger men may follow.' He carried out His Master's word to the letter: 'He that shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's shall find it."'
-From Summit Living, by Stewart Dinnen
Page Prewitt concludes:These are the ones I consider my spiritual great, great grandfather, my great-grandfather and my grandfather. I look back from whence I came and know that a high price has been paid for me to know the full measure of God. The opportunity is for you to know, too. I think many Christians believe that the burdens and hardships of life are just that -burdens and hardships. Not many can take it that these are the necessary stepping-stones that lead to faith. How few see that the way to heaven is through hell.
Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. (Matt. 7:14)

`All direct quotations in this section are taken from Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret by Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor (Singapore: OMF, Inc. 2008) which is available for purchase at www.omfbooks.com.
' Prologue to The Cambridge Seven; A Call to Christian Service by J.C. Pollock. (London: Inter-Varsity Fellowship 1955). ' Prologue to The Cambridge Seven, A Call to Christian Service.
'After C. T Studd by Norman P. Grubb. (London: Lutterworth Press 1939), 9-11.
'After C. T Studd, 11.
'The Law of Faith by Norman P Grubb. (Blowing Rock, NC: Zerubbabel Press 1998), 15,16
' The Law of Faith, 16.
'After C. T Studd, 12.
9 After C. T Studd, 12, 13.
'0 After C. T Studd, 13-17.
" After C. T Studd, 43-49.


Thursday 22 April 2010

Hudson Taylor's Holy Spirit Lineage- Part Two: CT Studd and the Cambridge Seven

Pictures: CT Studd's boyhood house Tedworth House in Wiltshire and inset- his African house in the Congo.




C. T Studd
Continuing from The Cambridge Seven—just two years later in England:
On 4th February 1885, a wet winter's night in London, a large crowd was making its way into Exeter Hall on the Strand. Inside, the hall was rapidly filling with men and women of all ages and ranks. Well-dressed ladies in silks and jewelry whose carriages would be waiting afterwards to carry them back to Belgravia or Mayfair, mingled with flower girls [remember Eliza Doolittle?] and working women in plain dark dresses who had found their way on foot from the East End slums. Small young city men were sitting besides drab shopmen who, on superficial glance, might have seemed more at home in a gallery of a music hall.
On the platform were forty Cambridge undergraduates. Above their heads hung a large map of China, stretching from one side of the hall to the other. On the table lay a small pile of Chinese New Testaments. [Who do you suppose translated them?] At the stroke of the hour the Chairman entered, followed by seven young men, slightly older than the undergraduates but all, from their dress and bearing evidently men of education and position. After prayer, a hymn, and some introductory remarks, the seven young men, whom the world had already dubbed The Camebridge Seven, each rose and told the crowded hall why they were leaving England, the next day, to serve as missionaries in inland China.
One by one they spoke-Stanley Smith of Repton and St Johns [Repton and Eton were the top prep schools in England; Trinity Hall was the living quarters of the upper-crust of British society attending Cambridge University], a former stroke oar of the Cambridge boat [a high-ranking member of the Cambridge rowing crew]; Montagu Beauchamp, of Trinity, a baronette's son; D.E. Hoste, till lately a gunner subaltern son of a major-general; WW Cassels of Repton and St. John's, a Church of England curate; Cecil Polhill-Turner, an old Etonian, who had resigned his commission in the Queen's Bays to join the others; his brother Arthur Polehill- Turner of Eton and Trinity Hall. And lastly, C. T Studd, the Eton, Cambridge and England cricketer, acknowledged as the most brilliant player of the day. One by one they told how in the past year or eighteen months God had called them to renounce their careers and give themselves for Christian service overseas.The Cambridge Seven struck with force the consciousness of a generation which set more store
on social position and athletic ability. In this different age the story of how the Seven was formed, and the prayers of Harold Schofield overwhelmingly answered, is still relevant. Any account of God's working on the human soul is timeless. But the
Cambridge Seven provide particular evidence on the Christian's growth and grace and on God's calling to a life work whether athome or overseas. And if China is again a closed land, though now without its Christian witness, other lands are open and fields at home are waiting. The Cambridge Seven emerged when British universities had been stirred to the depths by the work of DL Moody the American evangelist.
That seventy years later,in similar circumstances, God may call forth similar bands is the prayer of many.'
The first member of the Studd family to surrender his life to Christ was C.T. Studd's father. This happened when he heard D.L. Moody, the famous American gospel preacher, speak in England. Subsequently, Mr. Studd invited godly men to visit his home with the purpose of their winning his sons to Christ. After his conversion, Mr. Studd moved furniture in his house (which was actually a mansion on the Studd estate) to make room for evangelistic meetings to be held there. The previously-mentioned book, The Cambridge Seven, tells that glorious story. It also tells how, along with C.T, these other men who were in their late teens and early twenties came to the decision to renounce their wealth and elite social position



The three cricketing brothers J.E.K., C.T, G.B.
Captains of Cambridge University, 1882-3-4
RH picture The Cambridge Seven



and become missionaries.
It surprised me to read that these men didn't go to the same place, but were sent to different and remote places away from other English-speaking people. Their stories tell where they went and how they lived. Those stories are unbelievable!
C.T. went to China with Hudson Taylor's China Inland Mission and was married there. His wife was a member of the Salvation Army in China. They became the parents of four girls who were all born in China. Because of ill health, C.T. left China and went back to London. After that he spent a time in India, where he became so ill with asthma that he had to sleep sitting up.
Called to Africa
When he returned to England, C.T. spent quite a bit of time traveling and speaking. On a trip to Liverpool, he saw the following notice outside a church: "Cannibals want missionaries." Upon seeing it, he made the following response: "Why, they certainly do, for more reasons than one." After that, at the age of 50 and in ill health, he packed up and went to Africa. First he took a bicycle and one other person and went there to make an assessment of the conditions in the area of the country where he was interested in locating. He chose the Belgian Congo as the region where he wanted to begin his missionary conquest. He came back to England for 18 months, and then returned to the heart of Africa and lived there for the rest of his life-15 years
until he died. He never returned to England.
When C.T. was planning to leave for Africa he was backed by a committee of businessmen. But when his doctor intimated that if he ventured into central Africa, he would die, the committee withdrew their support. C.T. responded, "Gentlemen,
God has called me to go, and I will go. I will blaze the trail and become a stepping stone that younger men may follow" So he went and gave his life. He loved Africa, and its people, and loved him in return.

On the ship headed for Africa, God gave C.T. the vision that he was going, 'Not just for Africa, but for whole unevangelised world." You can read the whole story in Norman Grubb's biography, "CT Studd, Cricketer and Pioneer."

The Cost
A new committee was formed in London that not only supported C.T. but also kept the mission organized. However, C.T. Studd was the mission. Sadly in time the members of the committee became troubled by some of his practices
(You can get the story from a little out-of-print book called After C. T Studd.) Their first concern came when they learned that fellow missionaries brought morphine to C.T, which he used to relieve the pain he suffered from multiple physical maladies. Secondly, they disapproved of a little booklet C.T. authored. This blistering tract was entitled "The DCD." The name of the booklet was adapted from the well-known Army war cry "We don't care a damn for anything but King and country" to "We don't care a damn for anything but Jesus." A group of young Christian men signed a pact that this would be their heartbeat: they would care nothing for anything but Christ and His work. They named themselves "The DCDs."
People in England, church people and so forth, were horrified that C.T. would use the word damn. They also questioned his strict handling of the natives. As one should understand, he was stern with them regarding their sin. C.Us perspective was that he was living and working in the Congo and the folks at home were totally unknowledgeable about the conditions on the field. He was dealing with a very primitive and undisciplined people. Sin, particularly adultery, was practiced by everyone. It wasn't just that it was rampant—it was a way of life, and it was C.Us responsibility to deal with it. If a man called any woman, she had to submit to his desire at that moment. One of the ways he dealt with their ever-present transgressions was to delay baptism for new converts. Because the committee back in England disagreed both with C.Us theology and his practices, they came very close to cutting ties with him completely.
Norman Grubb and Pauline, Norman's wife and C.Us youngest daughter, were serving the mission from London. They were aware of the intentions of the mission board, and were very disturbed about it. They wanted to meet with C.T. one more time and apprise him of the state of affairs on the home front. About that time a letter arrived from C.T. In it he casually mentioned his desire to see them again. They took this suggestion as permission to immediately visit Studd in the Congo. (The trip took months.) When they arrived, he was shocked to see them. He asked quite sternly, "What are you doing here?" They answered that he had written that he had wanted to see them. Their real reason for going was to discuss the news of the committee. The following is a story Norman loved to tell. I don't know if this is in a book or not.
The committee sent representatives to Africa to personally tell C.T. that he was fired. But they didn't know exactly where he was located. They got very close they actually had their camp across the river from where C.T. lived. He and the others knew the committee representatives were on their way. One of the missionaries' prized possessions was canned food that they called "tin." Studd had in his possession a highly esteemed tin of sausages. I guess they were like our Vienna sausages. In anticipation of the coming mission delegation, Studd chose to serve the treasured sausages to the visitors. In spite of the fact that the Londoners never arrived, C.T. and company had their feast anyway.
Norman's favorite part of the story was C.T. saying grace: "Father, thank you for this and that, but thank you especially for the sausages." Norman would laugh and laugh when he told that part of the story. He loved it that C.T. would think that way when he knew the committee reps were on their way to the Belgian Congo to discharge him from the very mission he had founded. CT's friends in the heart of Africa 1926

Next in the series : Norman Grubb