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WELCOME
From Editor Dave Littlewood
PERSISTENCE IN PRAYER NEEDED
Yonggi Cho tells how we can have victory over the devil
MEN WHO PAID THE ULTIMATE PRICE
Discover the story of the writer and the printer behind Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, the book that changed England
LEARNING FROM GOD’S GENERALS
I’d have loved to work with William & Catherine Booth, says historian and author Roberts Liardon
TIME TRAVEL
This issue we journey back to Scotland in 1930
BIBLE CROSSWORD
Test your knowledge of the Scriptures
BIG PICTURE – PITCHED IN BATTLE
The first of 2,000 converts make their way to the altar at one of Billy Graham’s famous gospel crusades
PENTECOSTAL MAN FOR ALL SEASONS
Meet John Carter, AoG founder, pastor, evangelist, editor, lecturer, college principal & long-serving General Secretary, all rolled into one!
CALLED TO BE A CHRISTIAN MYSTIC
How Damascus Road led to a yellow robe and turban for one evangelist determined to reach his nation
SUNDAR SINGH IN HIS OWN WORDS
“If happiness depended on the thoughts of man, then philosophers would be filled to overflowing,” and more…
THE MOTHER OF BRITISH PENTECOST
We look at the life of Mary Boddy, the vicar’s wife who helped shape an entire movement
BLESSED ASSURANCE, JESUS IS MINE!
Fanny Crosby and the story behind that hymn
Cross-cultural phenomenon
One of the remarkable things about the Christian gospel is that it is a completely cross-cultural phenomenon. People of all races and culturesare included. Right at the beginning of the Church, God said to the apostle Peter that he should ‘not call common what I have cleansed’. This was a shock to Peter because at the time he assumed only Jews were to be included in the new faith. But his visit to the gentile home of Cornelius and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on this household soon convinced him that the gospel was – as Jesus himself had told them – for every human being on earth, regardless of race.
While we greatly respect the labours of those who have gone to the foreign mission field, we must confess that one mistake many missionary organisations made over the years was to impose their own culture on their converts. It was assumed that becoming a Christian also meant becoming a Westerner. Hence when Hudson Taylor decided to dress in Chinese clothes and grow a pigtail (to relate more closely to the Chinese culture he was living in), his fellow Protestants were either incredulous or critical.
One man who went to great lengths to reach those of his own culture was the remarkable Indian mystic, Sadhu Sundar Singh. Shortly after his remarkable conversion to Christianity, a truly Damascus Road experience, Sundar donned the yellow robe and turban of a travelling sadhu and become a Christian holy man – something unheard of at the time. As a faith-based itinerant preacher, Singh endured appalling suffering in order to reach the people who would be impervious to a Western-based approach.
One woman who herself went cross-cultural was Mary Boddy. The wife of an Anglican clergyman at Sunderland, Boddy was an unlikely pioneer of the (then) unheard of ‘Pentecostal’ movement. But this woman of God not only embraced truths which were foreign to her Christian heritage, but also led others into the blessings of the Holy Spirit. So it was Mary Boddy who one day led a Bradford plumber into the experience of the baptism of the Spirit. That man – Smith Wigglesworth – was to become perhaps the most famous name in all Pentecostal history.
When I met John Carter many years ago he was by then an old man, radiating the love of Christ. Yet in his younger days he was considered a fiery radical, one of the pioneers of a new movement based on the belief that the Holy Spirit’s power is present today to work miraculously. Carter was ostracised for his beliefs, but he lived to see the fulfilment of many prayers in the spread of the so-called Charismatic Movement to Christians of all denominations and races.
Truly, as Peter realised, God is no respecter of persons!
David Littlewood, Editor
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