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Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me..~Matthew 16:24~He makes His ministers a flame of fire. Am I ignitible? God deliver me from the dread asbestos of 'other things'. Saturate me with the oil of the Spirit that I may be aflame. But flame is transient, often short lived. Canst thou bear this, my soul - short life? Make me thy fuel, Flame of God..~ Jim Elliot
He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end..~Ecclesiastes 3:11~
Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations..~Deuteronomy 7:9~Lord God Almighty,Thank you so much for being ever faithful and ever true to Your people..Your infinite knowledge and ways are beyond human comprehension and i know You ever desire the best for Your children. Thank you for all that You have, can and will do for my life. Please continue to keep my eyes focused on You, Your Word & Your ways. Lead and guide this heart and soul of mine, hide me behind Your cross, i pray. From the depths of my humble heart, i truly need You, Lord Jesus..there is none other like You..for You are my strength, my song, my salvation..my All in all..now and always..Hide me behind Your cross..If I live on my own, all I do will be loss,Let Your presence in me lead others to believe Lord, hide me behind Your cross..
We give ourselves to prayer. We preach a Gospel that saves to the uttermost, and witness to its power. We do not argue about worldliness; we witness. We do not discuss philosophy; we preach the Gospel. We do not speculate about the destiny of sinners; we pluck them as brands from the burning. We ask no man's patronage. We beg no man's money. We fear no man's frown…Let no man join us who is afraid, and we want none but those who are saved, sanctified and aflame with the fire of the Holy Ghost.~ Samuel ChadwickLord God Almighty,A heart saved, sanctified & set aflame for You always, i plead..
Do you need a reason for missions? Do you need inspiration or ideas for a sermon or message on missions? Are you involved in teaching or learning about missions? Quotations from missionary leaders like William Carey and Hudson Taylor have served as battle cries for the Christian missions movement.
Why missions? World evangelism has advanced with inspiring missionary slogans like these:
I have but one candle of life to burn, and I would rather burn it out in a land filled with darkness than in a land flooded with light.
~ John Keith Falconer
God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supply.
~ Hudson Taylor
God isn't looking for people of great faith, but for individuals ready to follow Him.
~ Hudson Taylor
The Great Commission is not an option to be considered; it is a command to be obeyed.
~ Hudson Taylor
If I had 1,000 lives, I'd give them all for China.
~ Hudson Taylor
God uses men who are weak and feeble enough to lean on him.
~ Hudson Taylor
Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.
~ William Carey
The spirit of Christ is the spirit of missions. The nearer we get to Him, the more intensely missionary we become.
~ Henry Martyn
He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.
~ Jim Elliot
We are debtors to every man to give him the gospel in the same measure in which we have received it.
~ P.F. Bresee
In the vast plain to the north I have sometimes seen, in the morning sun, the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary has ever been.
~ Robert Moffat
Sympathy is no substitute for action.
~David Livingstone
If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him.
~C.T. Studd
No one has the right to hear the gospel twice, while there remains someone who has not heard it once.
~ Oswald J. Smith
Any church that is not seriously involved in helping fulfill the Great Commission has forfeited its biblical right to exist.
~ Oswald J. Smith
The mission of the church is missions.
~ Oswald J. Smith
We talk of the Second Coming; half the world has never heard of the first.
~ Oswald J. Smith
Let my heart be broken with the things that break God's heart.
~ Bob Pierce
No reserves. No retreats. No regrets.
~ William Borden
When James Calvert went out as a missionary to the cannibals of the Fiji Islands, the ship captain tried to turn him back, saying, "You will lose your life and the lives of those with you if you go among such savages." To that, Calvert replied, "We died before we came here."
The gospel is only good news if it gets there in time.
~ Carl F. H. Henry
You can give without loving. But you cannot love without giving.
~ Amy Carmichael
The command has been to 'go', but we have stayed -- in body, gifts, prayer and influence. He has asked us to be witnesses unto the uttermost parts of the earth..but 99% of Christians have kept puttering around in the homeland.
~Robert Savage
People who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives..and when the bubble has burst, they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted.
~ Nate Saint
We must be global Christians with a global vision because our God is a global God.
~ John Stott
Believers who have the gospel keep mumbling it over and over to themselves. Meanwhile, millions who have never heard it once fall into the flames of eternal hell without ever hearing the salvation story.
~ K.P. Yohannan
Tell the students to give up their small ambitions and come eastward to preach the gospel of Christ.
~ Francis Xavier
The mark of a great church is not its seating capacity, but its sending capacity.
~ Mike Stachura
'Not called!' did you say? 'Not heard the call,' I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father's house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face -- whose mercy you have professed to obey -- and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world.
~ William Booth
It is not in our choice to spread the gospel or not. It is our death if we do not.
~ Peter Taylor Forsyth
If God's love is for anybody anywhere, it's for everybody everywhere.
~ Edward Lawlor
Never pity missionaries; envy them. They are where the real action is -- where life and death, sin and grace, Heaven and Hell converge.
~ Robert C. Shannon
People who don't believe in missions have not read the New Testament. Right from the beginning Jesus said the field is the world. The early church took Him at His word and went East, West, North and South.
~ J. Howard Edington
Love is the root of missions; sacrifice is the fruit of missions.
~ Roderick Davis
Missionary zeal does not grow out of intellectual beliefs, nor out of theological arguments, but out of love.
~ Roland Allen
I have but one passion: It is He, it is He alone. The world is the field and the field is the world; and henceforth that country shall be my home where I can be most used in winning souls for Christ.
~ Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf
If you take missions out of the Bible, you won't have anything left but the covers.
~ Nina Gunter
The concern for world evangelization is not something tacked on to a man's personal Christianity, which he may take or leave as he chooses. It is rooted in the character of the God who has come to us in Christ Jesus. Thus, it can never be the province of a few enthusiasts, a sideline or a specialty of those who happen to have a bent that way. It is the distinctive mark of being a Christian.
~ James S. Stewart
The Christian is not obedient unless he is doing all in his power to send the Gospel to the heathen world.
~ A. B. Simpson
The will of God -- nothing less, nothing more, nothing else.
~ F. E. Marsh
The history of missions is the history of answered prayer. From Pentecost to the Haystack meeting in New England and from the days when Robert Morrison landed in China to the martyrdom of John and Betty Stam, prayer has been the source of power and the secret of spiritual triumph.
~ Samuel Zwemer
'Go ye' is as much a part of Christ's Gospel as 'Come unto Me.' You are not even a Christian until you have honestly faced your responsibility in regard to the carrying of the Gospel to the ends of the earth.
~ J. Stuart Holden
I care not where I go, or how I live, or what I endure so that I may save souls. When I sleep I dream of them; when I awake they are first in my thoughts..no amount of scholastic attainment, of able and profound exposition of brilliant and stirring eloquence can atone for the absence of a deep impassioned sympathetic love for human souls.
~ David Brainerd
We shall have all eternity in which to celebrate our victories, but we have only one swift hour before the sunset in which to win them.
~ Robert Moffatt
Evangelism is not a professional job for a few trained men, but is instead the unrelenting responsibility of every person who belongs to the company of Jesus.
~ Elton Trueblood
You have nothing to do but to save souls. Therefore spend and be spent in this work. And go not only to those that need you, but to those that need you most..It is not your business to preach so many times, and to take care of this or that society; but to save as many souls as you can; to bring as many sinners as you possibly can to repentance.
~ John Wesley
Perhaps if there were more of that intense distress for souls that leads to tears, we should more frequently see the results we desire. Sometimes it may be that while we are complaining of the hardness of the hearts of those we are seeking to benefit, the hardness of our own hearts and our feeble apprehension of the solemn reality of eternal things may be the true cause of our want of success.
~ Hudson Taylor
Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not whether they be clergymen or laymen, they alone will shake the gates of Hell and set up the kingdom of Heaven upon Earth.
~ John Wesley
If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our bodies. If they will perish, let them perish with our arms about their knees. Let no one GO there UNWARNED and UNPRAYED for.
~ Charles Spurgeon
I'd rather have people hate me with the knowledge that I tried to save them.
~ Keith Green
Some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.
~ C. T. Studd
It is no marvel that the devil does not love field preaching! Neither do I; I love a commodious room, a soft cushion, a handsome pulpit. But where is my zeal if I do not trample all these underfoot in order to save one more soul?
~ John Wesley
Preach abroad..It is the cooping yourselves up in rooms that has dampened the work of God, which never was and never will be carried out to any purpose without going into the highways and hedges and compelling men and women to come in.
~ Jonathan Edwards
Lord, make me a crisis man. Let me not be a mile-post on a single road, but make me a fork that men must turn one way or another in facing Christ in me.
~ Jim Elliot
Those were great days, and great victories were won. We always managed a riot or a revival. Sometimes a riot and no revival, but never a revival without a riot.
~ William Nicholson
Could a mariner sit idle if he heard the drowning cry? Could a doctor sit in comfort and just let his patients die? Could a fireman sit idle, let men burn and give no hand? Can you sit at ease in Zion with the world around you DAMNED?
~ Leonard Ravenhill
While women weep, as they do now, I'll fight; while children go hungry, as they do now I'll fight; while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I'll fight; while there is a drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, while there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I'll fight -- I'll fight to the very end!
~ William Booth
Make it an object of constant study, and of daily reflection and prayer, to learn how to deal with sinners so as to promote their conversion.
~ Charles G. Finney
Isn't it staggering when you think that one sermon on the day of Pentecost produced 3000 people? And we had some cities yesterday where 3000 sermons were preached and nobody was saved. And it doesn't even faze us.
~ Leonard Ravenhill
Can we go too fast in saving souls? If anyone still wants a reply, let him ask the lost souls in Hell.
~ William Booth
Let us not glide through this world and then slip quietly into heaven, without having blown the trumpet loud and long for our Redeemer, Jesus Christ. Let us see to it that the devil will not hold a thanksgiving service in hell, when he gets the news of our departure from the field of battle.
~ C. T. Studd
We are not called to proclaim philosophy and metaphysics, but the simple gospel. Man's fall, his need of a new birth, forgiveness through atonement, and salvation as the result of faith, these are our battle-axe and weapons of war.
~ Charles Spurgeon
Ministers often preach about the Gospel instead of preaching the Gospel. They often preach about sinners instead of preaching to them.
~ Charles Finney
Christian people, are you figuring round and round to get a little property, yet neglecting souls? Beware lest you ruin souls that can never live again! Do you say -- I thought they knew it all? They reply to you, "I did not suppose you believed a word of it yourselves. You did not act as if you did. Are you going to heaven? Well, I am going down to hell! There is no help for me now. You will sometimes think of me then, as you shall see the smoke of my woe rising up darkly athwart the glorious heavens. After I have been there a long, long time, you will sometimes think that I, who once lived by your side, am there. O remember, you cannot pray for me then; but you will remember that once you might have warned and might have saved me."
~ Charles G. Finney
Do all the good you can by all the means you can in all the places you can at all the times you can to all the people you can as long as ever you can.
~ John Wesley
Whenever, in any century, whether in a single heart or in a company of believers, there has been a fresh effusion of the Spirit, there has followed inevitably a fresh endeavor in the work of evangelizing the world.
~ A. J. Gordon
Oh, to realize that souls, precious, never dying souls, are perishing all around us, going out into the blackness of darkness and despair, eternally lost, and yet to feel no anguish, shed no tears, know no travail! How little we know of the compassion of Jesus!
~ Oswald J. Smith
Many do not recognize the fact as they ought, that Satan has got men fast asleep in sin and that it is his great device to keep them so. He does not care what we do if he can do that. We may sing songs about the sweet by and by, preach sermons and say prayers until doomsday, and he will never concern himself about us, if we don't wake anybody up. But if we awake the sleeping sinner he will gnash on us with his teeth. This is our work - to wake people up.
~ Catherine Booth
Brethren, do something; do something, do something! While societies and unions make constitutions, let us win souls. I pray you, be men of action all of you. Get to work and quit yourselves like men. Old Suvarov's idea of war is mine: `Forward and strike! No theory! Attack! Form a column! Charge bayonets! Plunge into the center of the enemy! Our one aim is to win souls; and this we are not to talk about, but do in the power of God!
~ Charles Spurgeon
When you are forgotten or neglected or purposely set at naught, and you don't sting or hurt with the insult or oversight, but your heart is happy, being counted worthy to suffer for Christ -- that is dying to self.
When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed, your advice disregarded or your opinions ridiculed, and you refuse to let anger rise in your heart or even to defend yourself, but take it all in patient, loving silence -- that is dying to self.
When you lovingly, patiently bear any disorder and irregularity, any impunctuality or any annoyance; when you come face to face with waste, folly, extravagance, spiritual insensitivity.. and endure it just as Jesus endured it-- that is dying to self.
When you are content with any food, any offering, any raiment, any climate, any society, any solitude, any interruption by the will of God -- that is dying to self.
When you never refer to yourself in conversation, or to record your own good works, or itch after commendation, when you can truly love to go unknown -- that is dying to self.
When you can see your brother or sister have his or her needs met and can honestly rejoice in spirit and can feel no envy nor question God, while you own needs are far greater and in more desperate circumstances -- that is dying to self.
When you can receive correction and reproof from one of less stature than yourself and can humbly submit inwardly as well as outwardly, finding no rebellion or resentment rising up within your heart -- that is dying to self.
~ Bill Britton
1. She is at peace with herself and God.
2. She is submissive and committed to God's headship order (1 Cor.11:1-16).
3. She has a meek and quiet spirit.
4. She has a servant's heart.
5. She does not call attention to her physical beauty.
6. She considers homemaking a high and noble call.
7. She is a Spirit-filled, loving and joyful person.
8. She is a woman of prayer and devotion to God.
9. She lives in the light of Proverbs 31 and has learned the secret of Isaiah 26:3.
"Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee."
Godly women are writing their history not on the pages of their own book, but in the lives of those around them whom they love and serve. They spend their lives unknown by the world in the narrow circle of their home within which they labor increasingly for God and others, but they will not lose their reward..God's eye is upon them as they live out their lives in the orbit of His will amid all the cares, sorrows and trials of the home. One day, when the books are opened, their devotion will be commended by Him who sees and knows all.
You can live out your life with the attitude that you are "just a woman", or you can turn that perspective around and become "a just woman". This is not a special category of uniquely gifted or inspired ladies. It is simply the woman whose heart is turned wholly toward God, the one who knows her own righteousness does not count. The Bible says the just shall live by faith...this is the key ingredient that makes all the difference in our lives. May we all diligently seek to acquire and exhibit the attributes of godliness and live in His righteousness alone..:)
When I stand at the Judgment Seat of Christ
And His plan I begin to see,
The plan for my life as it might have been
Had He had His way with me.
Will I see how I slowed Him and blocked His way
And would not yield my will?
And will there be grief in my Saviour's eyes,
Grief, tho He loves me still?
He would have me be rich,
But I chose to stay poor.
He wanted to bless,
And I kept closing the door.
Will my memory run like a hunted fawn,
Down paths that I cannot retrace?
Will I remember things I should have done
As I gaze on His precious face?
Then will my trembling heart well nigh break
With tears that must be shed,
I'll cover my face with my empty hands
As I bow my uncrowned head.
Lord, of the years that are left to me
I give them into Thy hand.
Take me, and break me, and mold me to fit
In the pattern that You had planned.
~ D.Windsor
Dearest Heavenly Father,
Thank you so much for granting me Your everlasting, unfailing and unchanging love manifested through the wondrous gift of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. i surrender my all to You and humbly ask You to take my heart and life that You may break me, Lord. Please make me the woman You want me to be..daily fill me and use me as You deem fit, dearest Holy Spirit. Father, help me to always seek Your holy face to worship You wholeheartedly all the days of my life, teach me to lean upon Your all-sufficient grace as You continue to unfold Your special plan and purpose for my life. Spirit of the living God, please seal this heart prayer of mine with Your divine power. Be with me whatever it may be with me..this life is Yours..surrendered, abandoned, sold-out, set apart..for You..alone.
In Jesus' name,
Amen.
Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near:
Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
~ Isaiah 55:6-9
It is of no use for any of you to try to be soulwinners if you are not bearing fruit in your own lives..How can you serve the Lord with your lips if you do not serve Him with your lives? How can you preach His gospel with your tongues, when with hands, feet, and heart you are preaching the devil’s gospel, and setting up an antichrist by your practical unholiness?
~Charles Spurgeon
From subtle love of softening things,
From easy choices, weakenings...
From all that dims Thy Calvary,
O Lamb of God, deliver me.
Give me the love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay...
Let me not sink to be a clod:
Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God...Amy Carmichael's life is a model of selfless dedication to the Savior, a life of discipleship and abandonment. She lived for one reason, and that was to make God's love known to those trapped in utter darkness. She was born in northern Ireland in 1867 and was the oldest of seven children. Her father's early death when she was eighteen had a profound effect on her, leading her to think seriously about her future and God's plan for her life.
Years before she became a missionary, God gave her a glimpse of the work she would one day do. His first prompting came on a wintry Sunday morning as the family returned home from church. Amy and her brothers spotted an old woman carrying a huge bundle. She writes that they felt an overwhelming urge to help but also a feeling of embarrassment. "This meant facing all the respectable people who were, like ourselves, on their way home. It was a horrid moment. We were only two boys and a girl, and not at all exalted Christians. We hated doing it. Crimson all over (at least we felt crimson, soul and body of us) we plodded on, a wet wind blows in about us, and blowing, too, the rags of that poor old woman, till she seemed like a bundle of feathers and we unhappily mixed up with them." As they passed a beautiful Victorian fountain, she heard the words of 1 Corinthians 3:12-14 in her spirit: "Gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble—every man's work shall be made manifest; for the day shall declare it, because it shall be declared by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide." She turned to see who was there, but there was no one—just the sound of the fountain's water and the laughter of a few passers-by. Before this time Carmichael admitted to a preoccupation with her social life. However, now it appeared that God was calling her to "settle some things with Him."
In September 1886 the Carmichael family had traveled to Glasgow, England, to attend a conference in Keswick, in England's Lake District. It was there that Carmichael felt God's hand on her life. The purpose for the conference was the promotion of holiness or the "higher Christian life." Carmichael writes: "The hall was full of a sort of gray mist, very dull and chilly. I came to that meeting half hoping, half fearing. Would there be anything for me? ...The fog in the Hall seemed to soak into me. My soul was in a fog. Then the chairman rose for the last prayer...'O Lord, we know Thou art able to keep us from falling.' Those words found me. It was as if they were alight. And they shone for me."
Amy Carmichael realized nothing could be more important than living her life for Jesus Christ who, with nothing of worldly possessions, had given His very life for her. She knew He was calling her to do the same and give all of herself to Him. This meant she must become "dead to the world and its applause, to all its customs, fashions, and laws." In 1895, she was commissioned by the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society to go to Dohnavur, India, where she served fifty-six years as God's devoted servant without a furlough. A major part of her work there was devoted to rescuing children who had been dedicated by their families to be temple prostitutes. Amy Carmichael often recalled the image of the old woman carrying her heavy bundle alone. She realized God had given her a love for those in the world deemed unlovely. The overflow of this love God used to start the Dohnavur Fellowship in India that became a place of safety and refuge for temple children. More than a thousand children were rescued from neglect and abuse during Amy's lifetime. To them she was known as "Amma," which means mother in the Tamil language. The world often was dangerous and stressful. Yet she never forgot God's promise to "keep them in all things."
"There were days when the sky turned black for me because of what I heard and knew was true...Sometimes it was as if I saw the Lord Jesus Christ kneeling alone, as He knelt long ago under the olive trees...And the only thing that one who cared could do, was to go softly and kneel down beside Him, so that He would not be alone in His sorrow over the little children."
She was a prolific writer with thirty-five books published to her credit. Even as a young girl, Carmichael had showed talent as a writer. However, after a tragic accident in 1931, much of her time was spent in confinement in the Dohnavur Fellowship's compound. Obedience, total commitment, and selflessness were the marks of Amy Carmichael's life. In a world where the thought of living one's life for Jesus Christ above all else is rapidly fading, she remains a bright and ever burning example of one whose sole existence was devoted to her beloved Lord and Savior.
God may or may not take you, as He did Amy Carmichael, to some far away land. However, He does have a plan for your life—to use you as His light of eternal hope and forgiveness to others. Ask Him to make His will perfectly clear. The rewards of God are not based on human achievements or financial success. They are given, instead, to those who "settle some things with Him" and commit themselves to Christ through a life of obedience and selfless devotion. I wish Thy way
And when in me myself should rise,
And long for something otherwise,
Then Lord, take sword and spear
And slay..
~Amy Carmichael
Lord, I give up all my own plans and purposes,
All my own desires and hopes,
And accept Thy will for my life.
I give myself, my life, my all
Utterly to Thee to be Thine forever.
Fill me and seal me with Thy Holy Spirit
Use me as Thou wilt,
Send me where Thou wilt
And work out Thy whole will in my life
At any cost now and forever.
In Jesus' name,
Amen.
~the prayer of Betty Stam, wife of John Stam, missionary to China
Jesus told His followers that each had to take up his cross and follow Him. His listeners knew that a cross meant death. There is a price to pay for following Christ, but with it the greatest reward. John and Betty Stam realized this when they committed their lives to missions. China greatly needed missionaries, since many had been forced to flee the country in the previous years of political upheaval.
Despite news of Chinese violence, both John and Betty responded to a request for workers from China Inland Mission. Betty met John at a CIM prayer meeting. They were attracted to each other, but they agreed that marriage might hinder their plans for service in China, so Betty left for China alone in 1931. John followed a year later. At his graduation from Moody Bible Institute, John urged his classmates to make sacrifices for God.
"The Great Commission was never qualified by clauses calling for advance only if funds were plentiful and no hardship or self-denial was involved," proclaimed John. "We are told to expect persecution, but with it victory in Christ."
When he arrived in Shanghai, John was delighted to see Betty, who had recently been forced to return for medical reasons. Their time together in Shanghai led to their engagement and marriage. The following year John and Betty served together in the land of China. Even though they didn't know the language very well, they always had a Chinese tract or Bible to hand out, and they gained many friends by their endearing and friendly manner. As their understanding of the language increased, John and Betty were able to spend more time proclaiming the Gospel. They were pleased to see the church grow as Chinese Christians began to take leadership roles.
In the fall of 1934, only weeks after the birth of their daughter, Helen Priscilla, John and Betty were assigned to the province of Anhwei. Missionaries had previously been evacuated from this station, but John and Betty were assured that the area was reasonably safe from Communist threat. But the situation had been misevaluated and within weeks of arriving, Communist soldiers were pounding at their gate. John, Betty and baby Helen were held captive, but John was permitted to send a letter to CIM. He must have known that they would likely be killed, but his letter shone with hope and contentment. He concluded with the words "may God be glorified whether by life or by death."
The next day the couple was forced to march to Tsingteh. Their captors paraded them before the townsfolk, who were amazed at John and Betty's calm expressions. One brave Chinese Christian dropped to his knees and begged for their release. John's last words were a plea for mercy for this brave man. Then with a swing of the sword, the Communists ended John and Betty's earthly lives, and placed them forever in the glorious presence of their Lord.
A Chinese pastor found little Helen thirty hours later, tucked in a sleeping bag. Ten precious dollars were hidden beside her-enough to get her to safety. John and Betty spent but a few years in China before they were martyred, but their deaths stirred a revival for missions. Money poured in to missions agencies and a new generation of young people dedicated their lives to overseas service. Through their faith and dedication, John's last written wish was honored, and God was indeed glorified in life and in death.
