ALONE AMONGTHOUSANDS---J. HUDSON TAYLOR

J.Hudson Taylor was a missionary. He was the first major missionary to go to China. His story is amazing, because the odds were against him, but he never gave up. I read the remarkable book Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret. It tell his story in a very readable format.I highly recommend that you read it. It will likely bless you. There were no Christians in China when he arrived in that country on March 1, 1854. Over time, he learned many things about the Chinese people. Historian Ruth Tucker summarizes the theme of his life:
 "No other missionary in the nineteen centuries since the Apostle Paul, has had a wider vision, and has carried out a more systematized plan of  evangelizing a broad geographical area than Hudson Taylor." ---Ruth Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI, 1963

I'd like to tell you much more about this great servant of God, but suffice it for this article to say that while he was in China the first time he wrote to his sister Amelia  "If I had a thousand pounds, China  should have it-- if I had a thousand lives, China should have them. No! Not China, but Christ! Can we do too much for Him? Can we do enough for such a precious Saviour?"   

On his first furlough home to England, he was given opportunity to speak at Metropolitan Tabernacle. He became good friends with the pastor Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Spurgeon became a life-long supporter of China Inland Missions, which was the mission founded by Taylor.

I can only encourage you to read one of his biographies. I suggest the book I mentioned about his spiritual secret. This will help you in your Christian life. In these dark times we need to be fed by reading the remarkable story of one whom God blessed each step of the way. Here  are some of his own brief words which if you hear them will bless you as few will. It is short. Please take time to read it!

 "At home you can never know what it is to be alone – absolutely alone, amidst thousands, as you can in a Chinese city, without one friend, one companion, everyone looking on you with curiosity, with contempt, with suspicion or with dislike. Thus to learn what it is to be despised and rejected of men – of those you wish to benefit, your motives not understood . . . and then to have the love of Jesus applied to your heart by the Holy Spirit . . . this is worth coming for."                                                    

JOSEPH CARYL (1602-1673) ON JOB 1:12

 I know I have published this before (I think last year), but it is so good I wanted to do it again. Please read. Puritan Joseph Caryl wrote the most exhaustive book ever on Job;  12 volumes! Read it!

Until God gives commission, Satan hath no power over the estates or persons of God's people, or over anything that belongs unto them. Neither our persons, nor our estates are subject to the will of either men or devils. Christ must say, “All that he hath is in thy hand” before Satan can touch a shoe-latchet. As Christ said John 19:11 unto Pilate, when he spake so stoutly “Knowest thou not that I have power to crucifie thee, and power to release thee?” He thought that he had all power in his hand: but Christ tells him, “Thou couldst have no power at all against me unless it were given thee from above.” If the Devils could not go in the swine, much less can they meddle with a man, made after God's image, till God gives them leave.

Every soul that hath interest in Christ may suck comfort and consolation in the saddest, in the sorrowfullest day from the breast of this truth. If Satan and wicked men cannot move till Christ saith “go”, nor wound till Christ saith “strike”, nor spoil, nor kill, till Christ saith “their estates, their lives are in your power”, surely Christ will not speak a word to their hurt, whom he loves, nor will he ever suffer his enemies to do a real damage to his friends. Beside it may fill the soul with unspeakable joy, to remember, that, while a man is suffering, the will of Christ is doing.

FREE WILL AND OBEDIENCE--GEORGE WHITEFIELD

BY GEORGE WHITEFIELD

The doctrines of our election, and free justification in Christ Jesus are daily more and more pressed upon my heart. They fill my soul with a holy fire and afford me great confidence in God my Saviour.  

I hope we shall catch fire from each other, and that there will be a holy emulation amongst us, who shall most debase man and exalt the Lord Jesus. Nothing but the doctrines of the Reformation can do this. All others leave free will in man and make him, in part at least, a Saviour to himself. . . .

I know Christ is all in all. Man is nothing: he hath a free will to go to hell, but none to go to heaven, till God worketh in him to will and to do of His good pleasure.Oh the excellency of the doctrine of election and of the saints’ final perseverance!
 
I am persuaded, till a man comes to believe and feel these important truths, he cannot come out of himself, but when convinced of these, and assured of their application to his own heart, he then walks by faith indeed! Love, not fear, constrains him to obedience.