Trent Cornwell » Missionary Biographies

Not Just a Church Planter

Trent Cornwell — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 17:38:35 +0000

I have always had great respect for Jason Holt and his family. The Skype conversations, his blog entries, and the testimonies I had heard about his ministry from people who had visited it did not fully prepare me what I saw. God is truly blessing the ministry there in Santiago. Jason is a super talented man of God. The Holts are a loving, caring, and hard working family. However, those are not the things that I was most impressed with. Those are not the things that make them unique from a vast amount of ministries I have seen around the world.

Jason’s simple, strategic, and Biblical method for training leaders of leaders is what makes him more than a “church planter”. Most people wait for faithful men they can train for the ministry. Iglesia Bautista Fe (the church the Holt family started almost 4 years ago) doesn’t wait for faithful for men, they create them through God’s power. Souls are being saved and are being taught that God has a wonderful plan for their lives.

It was so thrilling to here the men in the Chile Baptist College talk about their desire to reach their city, country, and the world with the Gospel. I had the opportunity to teach a 16 hour course of spiritual formation. I emphasized the need to disciple the entire church to reach their God given potential. I encouraged them to not create a false sense of dichotomy between them and the “average church member”. At night we had approximately 20 students come out for the Fe Bible Institute classes. In my mini-missiology course I desired to encouraged them by helping them see the context in which they serve. They are part of something that is awesome and worth giving their lives to.

In Chile I did not see just a good church. I saw a good start to a church planting movement. That is what we support our missionaries to do. That is what most of them go to the field to do “plant churches, train national leadership, reach the country”. You can see it on almost every prayer card.

Many times the hard times and the difficulty of getting a church off the ground causes people to tame their dreams. Language school and the “dip” (the time it gets the hardest before it gets better) causes missionaries to lower their view of what God can do in and through their lives. Jason did not get discouraged to a point of quitting during the difficult times but allowed it remind him of who important the work must be if Satan would fight it.

Let me encourage you to get to Santiago, Chile and see the beginning stages of a world changing church planting movement. By God’s desire and power Santiago will never be the same. A group of faithful men are addicting themselves the Word of God and His work. The results will be explosive. It is more than a church it a church planting movement!

You can learn more about Jason Holt and other great missionaries at www.bcwe.org

World Evangelism Today with Mark Tolson

Trent Cornwell — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:34:24 +0000

Click on the icon below to listen to today’s interview with Mark Tolson.

Love in China

Trent Cornwell — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 17:35:08 +0000

I was sent this video from our staff missionary to China. It is such an exciting recount of the great missionaries who have given their lives to see the people of China come to Christ. I will never forget the night that Mark surrendered to give his life for the people of China. He is following in a great heritage of people who were first in love with God and secondly in love with the people of China as a result.

I pray God will give us more families like Mark and Natasha Tolson. You can learn more about them at www.projectchina.org

Love In China promo video from Love In China Communications on Vimeo.

The Killing Fields / Chad Phillips Missionary to Cambodia

Trent Cornwell — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 12:31:44 +0000

I had the great joy of eating lunch with Chad Phillips. He, his wife, and two kids will be headed to Cambodia to serve as missionaries. I loved hearing his story. He grew up in the youth group of Victory Baptist Church and they are now sending him out. As a youth pastor I can not imagine anything that would be more rewarding then seeing one of your young people exported to the other side of the world.

Here is a brief overview of the Killing Fields..

The Killing Fields were a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Vietnam War.

At least 200,000 people were executed by the Khmer Rouge^[1] (while estimates of the total number of deaths resulting from Khmer Rouge policies, including disease and starvation, range from 1.4 to 2.2 million out of a population of around 7 million).^[2] In 1979, Vietnam invaded and toppled the Khmer Rouge regime, which was officially called Democratic Kampuchea.

Could I encourage all the youth pastors out there to teach these type of things to your young people? They are not learning about this in school. If you do not believe me just ask them. We need to be students and teachers of the current events of the worlds. It may just be that God would call one of your young people to Cambodia and your teaching on the Killing Fields might open their eyes to this.

Farewell Message

Trent Cornwell — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 10:36:16 +0000

This morning at the Our Generation Training Center (www.ogtc.info) we are having a brief orientation with some of the students headed to work with Project China this summer. We went around the room and heard why they believe they should go to the field of China this summer. We heard some wonderful and heartfelt responses. It reminded me of an article I read for the 3rd International Convention from the Student Volunteer Movement.

FAREWELL MESSAGES FROM THOSE EXPECTING TO SAIL FOR THE FOREIGN FIELD WITHIN A YEAR

Mr. Mott: Now we should like to have all of the students who hope to sail to the mission field within the next year stand. (About sixty arose immediately.) I wish you to answer these two questions. Indicate the field to which you expect to go and then in a sentence, if you can put it into a sentence, the reason why you go there that is – at least one reason; I suppose some of you have many reasons – but at least one reason.

“To the Soudan Africa because He says Go!”

” To work among the lepers of China because the Master has called me.”

“To China because of the great need!”

“To China to nurse the heathen for Jesus sake.”

“To China because of the great need of that field with its multitudinous inhabitants.”

“To the Upper Congo because God has placed it upon my heart to go there.”

“To China because I believe He wants me there.”

“To Bolivia South America because I believe that He wants me to go there and I have felt in this convention especially the need of that field.”

“To China because God has definitely called and is definitely leading me there.”

“To Bulgaria because I hear God’s voice and the voice of the people’s need.”

“To Bulgaria because God has greatly blessed us and I wish my own people to know of this great blessing.”

“To Arabia because while I was unwilling God kept laboring with me until He has made me desirous of going.”

“To China because the Lord has shown me the need of that field and has said Go China because the love of God constraineth me.”

“South America to hasten the coming of the King India to tell the women there of Jesus India because there may be some who will never enter the Kingdom of God if I do not hasten to go and tell them.”

“To China because woe is me if I preach not the gospel and I am not satisfied to stay in this country.”

“Field not definitely known but I go because of the last command of Jesus Christ”

“To India because of the condition of my sisters there.”

“To China because of John iii 16 To China because God calls me there India with the desire to be obedient and to have my little light shine in the greatest darkness.”

“Returning to Japan because my life has been given to that empire.”

“China because the harvest truly is great but the laborers are few.”

“To China because we cannot but speak the things that we have seen and heard to the uttermost parts of the earth.”

“To the Soudan Africa because He says ‘Go’”!

“To work among the lepers of China because the Master has called me.”

“To China because of the great need.”

“To China to nurse the heathen for Jesus sake.”

“To China because of the great need of that field with its multitudinous inhabitants.”

“To the Upper Congo because God has placed it upon my heart to go there.”

“To China because I believe He wants me there.”

“To Bolivia South America because I believe that He wants me to go there and I have felt in this convention especially the need of that field.”

“To China because God has definitely called and is definitely leading me there.”

“To Bulgaria because I hear God’s voice and the voice of the people’s need.”

“To Bulgaria because God has greatly blessed us and I wish my own people to know of this great blessing.”

“To Arabia because while I was unwilling God kept laboring with me until He has made me desirous of going.”

“To China because the Lord has shown me the need of that field and has said ‘Go’.”

“China because the love of God constraineth me.”

“South America to hasten the coming of the King India to tell the women there of Jesus.”

“India because there may be some who will never enter the Kingdom of God if I do not hasten to go and tell them.”

“To China because woe is me if I preach not the gospel and I am not satisfied to stay in this country.”

“Field not definitely known but I go because of the last command of Jesus Christ.”

“To India because of the condition of my sisters there.”

“To China because of John iii 16.”

” To China because God calls me there India with the desire to be obedient and to have my little light shine in the greatest darkness.”

“Returning to Japan because my life has been given to that empire.”

“China because the harvest truly is great but the laborers are few.”

“To China because we cannot but speak the things that we have seen and heard to the uttermost parts of the earth.”

“China I want to go back because I know the need better than I did when I went out there.”

” China because God has called me India.”

“China or wherever the Master may send me because by His grace.”

“He has made my faith to stand not in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”

“I leave this week for Bolivia South America because so far as I can learn there is only one saved man in the country.”

“I am going to Cairo the citadel of Islam to work among Mohammedan students because Trinces shall come out of Egypt.”

Mr. Mott: We have four traveling secretaries of the Volunteer Movement standing I think you will agree with me that we ought to give them a little extra time I will call upon Miss Rouse traveling secretary among the women’s colleges of the country who has also spent one year among the women’s colleges of Great Britain and a large part of another year among the women students of Europe Miss Rouse has already accomplished a truly remarkable work among the college women of the world.

Ralph Winter Auto Biography Part #2

Trent Cornwell — Sat, 23 May 2009 08:43:32 +0000

Ralph Winter was a mission’s mobilizer. He lived a wartime lifestyle to help get the gospel to the world. He challenged everybody everywhere by his writings and teaching.

He went to heaven on May 20th. Many people may not even know who he was but he did all in his power to get the gospel to the world.

This is a man you need to know!

Taken from http://www.ralphwinter.org/autobiography/

Part #2

Some years before, when I was at Princeton Seminary along with Dan Fuller and Bill Bright, all three of us decided to transfer to the about-to-be-opened Fuller Theological Seminary when that seminary opened in Pasadena , California , the following year. Neither Bill Bright nor I finished at Fuller. We thought we had more pressing things to do. He started Campus Crusade and held to that vision for the next 50 some years. I had felt led to be a full time missionary rather than a tent-maker in Afghanistan . While in transition to that more complex calling I conceived a radically new method for learning a foreign language and earned a Ph.D. in linguistics to forward that idea. I thought this new approach would benefit all missionaries. Incidentally Bill and I formed a friendship which lasted until the day he died. Our project in Pasadena would never have succeeded without his help. He and Vonette invited me and my new wife to lunch at his home in Orlando just a few months before his death.

Finally, I was finishing up at Princeton planning to be a standard missionary. At that time there were still some conservative-Evangelical Presbyterian mission countries, and Roberta and I and our then two children were recruited for one of the Board’s Evangelical fields, Guatemala , to work in the Western highlands with a Mayan Indian tribe called the Mam. Work had been going on there for many years, even Bible translation. This is the precise place, we were told, that Cameron Townsend was persuaded that it was of little use distributing Bible portions in Spanish to people whose mother tongue was radically different. A minority of the missionaries already believed this. It was not Townsend’s creative idea. But he was the young man later called affectionately “Uncle Cam,” who actually did something about that idea that became a major contribution, that is, he established today’s marvelous Wycliffe Bible Translators.

During ten years in Guatemala , like Townsend, I became involved in a plan conceived by others. It was the idea of reaching out to assist the real local church leaders (for the first time including Indians). These local church leaders were laymen—most of the 200 churches were run by ordained elders. Those of us involved in this scheme reasoned that these elders could be taught and ordained as full fledged ministers without relocating themselves and their families for years to the capital city to attend “seminary.”

The plan was to work with these existing leaders rather than untried younger students, and for the edu- cational process to fit into their life cycle rather than, as with younger students, extracting them out of soci- ety into the life cycle of a school in a different place and a different culture. This idea caught on with our people and with other missions and in other countries and soon I was invited to be the Executive Director of a Theological Education association that covered the 17 Latin American countries north of the Equator. A year later the one-year-old School of World Mission at Fuller wanted another professor. They were so impressed by this training system that I was invited to join the faculty, the first faculty member added after the founding. I was then deeply involved in the calling of all of the additional professors and deans of the School of World Mission during the next ten years.

Not long after joining the faculty at Fuller this new “theological education by extension” idea became a movement. Its growth was due in part to global trips by myself and others promoting the idea which were sponsored by the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association. Soon this idea encompassed 500 mission pro- grams around the world and enlisted 100,000 local leaders training for ordination. Some have cast me as the creator of this movement. I simply got the idea from a missionary (James Emery) who had been in Guatemala longer than I. Like Townsend I helped to implement an idea I did not conceive.

In any case, the movement was running by itself, and although I was called to Fuller to promote this new idea, I only continued to teach one course in that area and soon transitioned into a first love, with a teaching focus on the historical growth factors of the Christian movement in the last 2,000 years as my main teaching duty. This involvement was immeasurably enlightening. I discovered that a great deal that I had been taught at seminary about theological developments in Christian history, both at Fuller and at Princeton, were not quite the whole story or perhaps dead wrong. But that is another story.

[A recent book entitled For the Glory of God, published by Princeton University Press, written by a sociologist, Rodney Stark, does the same thing. It is a devastating critique of historians and sociologists in general and Christian historians and theologians in particular. A fabulous 80 pages are devoted to the rise of science under Christian influence. I have written for permission to print that chapter as a separate book with our publishing imprint (the William Carey International University Press). Christian students and non-Christian students at Caltech will be flabbergasted.]

Even more important, at Fuller those ten years I had a thousand missionaries go through my classes and write masters or doctoral theses about their field work and experience. For me this was a glorious intro- duction into the global phenomenon of Christianity and it led to some disturbing conclusions. I began to write and promote insight into the idea that thousands of minority groups were still walled off from missions by the tendency of many missions to assume that the churches they established could easily bridge the many ethnic differences which make most countries into a linguistic mosaic. Realizing that this perspective was an overlooked dimension that affected the strategies in virtually all fields, it became serious enough so that, it seemed to me, something, someone would have to stop teaching and begin actively promoting outreach to these additional totally pioneer fields that were invisible to anyone with American melting pot assumptions.

The entire mission faculty at Fuller was involved in a discussion over a period of two years concerning the need for a vast “implementation annex” to the Fuller School of World Mission. Ed Dayton from World Vision was involved. The Fuller provost, Glenn Barker was involved in these discussions. I still have a little diary where I recorded who came to the meetings (which I convened) and what we discussed. Gradually a major new enterprise, intended to be a harmonious and supportive extension of Fuller, was brought into focus. Fuller’s president, David Hubbard, tried hard to think how all this could be an elaboration of the existing School of World Mission (which, incidentally, would not have been ideal since many missions already refused to send any of their missionaries to Fuller due to ambiguities over in the Fuller theology faculty about statements of Biblical inspiration). We knew that for theologically political reasons it had to be a project that was legally separate from Fuller.

Meanwhile I continued to explore the possibilities of some current mission leader being recruitable to set up this kind of large informal annex. I tried in vain to persuade a number of leaders. It finally became clear that I was the only one who was willing and able to walk out of their present job and attempt a project as huge and risky as this was. Later I realized that since we obviously began with a huge fund-raising need, many more were deterred by that grim reality alone.

(In fact, once the property was paid off, we had many takers.)

So, in the fall of 1976, I took a two-year leave of absence from Fuller. I continued to teach some, but my main task was to establish this new center. I was 51 at that time. I had engineering training, a Ph.D. an M.Div. plus mission field experience and teaching at Fuller behind me. I could always go back to Fuller, where I am to this day still listed as a faculty member (a “Distinguished Missiologist in Residence”). What did I have to lose? My wife and my whole family of four unmarried daughters were completely unanimous that this was what God wanted us to do.

I did not push into this very eagerly. At no time in my life before or after have I to the extent I did then, sense that God was forcing me to choose a much harder row to hoe. And on the other hand, after we made the decision to leave Fuller we did not at any point in the next thirteen years, during which we paid off the campus, feel that God had promised us success. We only felt that the value of the goal was sufficient justification to go all out, sink or swim. I coined the phrase, “You do not evaluate a risk by the probability of success but by the worthiness of the goal.” We were willing to fail because the goal we sensed was so urgent and strategic.

I said I was 51 at that time. That is exactly the half way point between the age of 24 and my present 78 years. The second half of my productive life has been even more exciting than the first half. Suffice it to say we started without backers, no denomination, not even a single congregation, no mailing list, and only about $100 in cash. It would seem that if we went from that to a $40 million dollar set of properties that are free and clear this would be a fascinating, almost unbelievable story. My first wife’s book in its latest revision is called I Will Do a New Thing, tells that story in detail. We became self-sufficient not needing or wanting to go out for funds in the name of our institution. We now in our university enroll in various programs over 6,000 new students a year, drawing upon over 900 teachers/professors all over the country, teaching in over 130 places in the U.S. alone, are active in many languages with half of our staff either at regional centers in the USA or in similar activities around the world. Our basic institution is a community of missionaries whose support comes in directly as is the case with most missionaries. The basic corporation’s legal name is the Frontier Mission Fellowship. Its two main closely cooperating projects are the U.S. Center for World Mission, which is on the north side of Elizabeth and the university which is on the south side. The Frontier Mission Fellowship, of which I am still the active General Director was incorporated late in 1976. Paul Cedar spoke at our 25th anniversary cele- bration in 2002. Some years ago he withdrew from all boards except ours. We have greatly appreciated Lake Avenue Church . All four of my daughters are full-time missionaries and both they and their 14 children and my own support comes in part from Lake Avenue . Bill Bright was another major supporter from the very first days all through our 27 years of involvement following the Fuller teaching period.

But, as I say, the second half of my “productive” 54 years will need to be pursued another time.

I will now head into the period of my life during which I served in the development of the college campus in Northeast Pasadena . Our 25th Anniversary booklet tells a good deal of that story. My first wife’s book, I Will Do a New Thing tells even more.
But I have decided that I cannot push on into that radical, tumultuous period from 1976 until the present (that is, from the my age of 51 to my age of 79), without describing a bit more of what led up to so radical a break with a much safer past.
Why did I not continue to teach at Fuller, in the world’s largest school of missions? Long before I even went to Fuller I had been almost continually caught up in things which you cannot do in the classroom. I will mention eight.

I first caught McGavran’s attention because of a brief article I had written entitled, “Gimickitis” which portrayed local accountable fellowships on the mission field to be the most central goal. Later, his invitation to join him at Fuller also built on his interest in the fact that I had been involved in a radically new approach to the development of pastor leadership. These were the main reasons I was invited to teach at Fuller. But let me go back even further.

I finished my Caltech studies during the 2nd World War while still 19. A year later when I was still 20 the war abruptly ended my pilot training and took me to Westmont . Dr. Hutchins, pastor of Lake Ave Church actually drove me up to Westmont in the fall of 1945 and made sure I got a job teaching that would exactly pay for my studies in the Bible, church history and Greek.

A series of “antecedents” that help explain that significant departure from teaching at Fuller are mentioned in the next chapter.

Ralph Winter Autobiography Part #1

Trent Cornwell — Fri, 22 May 2009 08:39:53 +0000

Ralph Winter was a mission’s mobilizer. He lived a wartime lifestyle to help get the gospel to the world. He challenged everybody everywhere by his writings and teaching.

He went to heaven on May 20th. Many people may not even know who he was but he did all in his power to get the gospel to the world.

This is a man you need to know!

Taken from http://www.ralphwinter.org/autobiography/

Part #1

In our society the unbending social concensus, the pervasive conviction, is that, in order to grow up right, during their first 24 years, people need to be incarcerated in little square rooms and battered over the head with books full of facts irrelevant at that age. Now if you subtract those lost years, 24, from my present age, 78 you get 54 years. That is, these last 54 years are the main productive period of my life.

I early caught on to the fact that I could learn more, learn faster and retain longer by directly concerning myself with the concerns of God for His Kingdom and for His righteousness. That is to say, I was an early believer. The will of God in this imperfect world was central early in my thinking. Thus, during those early typically unprofitable years I did think of a maze of things that ought to happen, and I worked in my spare time to make some of them become real.

For example, the Navy did me a favor by paying for some of my education, helping me finish Caltech debt free. It then gave me some very practical training in Pre-flight school to become a fighter pilot on an aircraft carrier. However, the war ended just before I finished Pre-flight school and so I never got out of California during those two and a half years in the Navy.

An example of something I did out of school hours was when I was 23 and still in school at Princeton Seminary. I initiated a stream of tentmakers going to Afghanistan to teach English. Meanwhile I was using up the last of my wartime GI Bill tuition to acquire a Ph.D. in linguistics in order to go to Afghanistan myself. By this time I was married and we both were eager to do this, even though our finally going did not quite work out. Recently my wife and I attended the annual “Kabul Reunion” at which about 50 veterans of this long-standing effort in Afghanistan gathered to fellowship together.

I had accepted Christ when a “chalk talk” evangelist somehow got into the Sunday School of a fairly liberal Presbyterian church in Highland Park . As an early teen I confirmed that decision at a huge “Christian Endeavor” conference held in the Long Beach Civic Auditorium. Bob Munger, a young pastor at that time, led the decision service. Later, when I was 15 my par- ents felt they had t 80 o move from a denomination that had formally given up the highly Evangelical Chris- tian Endeavor movement to a church that embraced that movement. Little did they know that Lake Ave Church would not long after hire a full time youth pastor who had to stand up in front of the group instead of letting young people lead the meeting, and so the incredible, ecumenical Christian Endeavor movement was phased out at the Lake Avenue Church , too. In any case, by this time my whole family was already at Lake Avenue and really liked it. My father soon became a trustee and was one of those opposed going into debt for the removal of the “ Corner Church ” and the building of the present “Chapel.”

[He was not against doing it, he was just against going into debt to do it. At that moment in Lake Avenue history the church moved from where 50% of the budget was going to missions down to 33% for missions. When the current sanctuary was built, again with even more massive debt, our mission budget declined to 18%, and now it is even lower.]

A major new element in my life began at Lake Avenue where I first encountered Dawson Trotman and Charles E. Fuller. My life was turned around into an intense commitment, which involved and was then fueled by memorizing 500 verses in the Bible during a period both before and after enlistment in the Navy.

Back in those days just after the war Lake Avenue was in a rather hazy relation to any denomination and so after teaching and studying at Westmont (on top of a Caltech degree earned during the war), and studying both at Princeton Seminary and Fuller Seminary, and getting my Ph.D. (at Cornell, combining cultural anthropology, linguistics and mathematical statistics), my wife and I went back to Princeton Seminary to finish up and be ordained as a Presbyterian missionary.

The kind of men God used

Trent Cornwell — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:24:39 +0000

I thank Philip Bassham for sending me this. Source

Horatius Bonar, writing the preface to John Gillies’ Accounts of Revival, proposes that men useful to the Holy Spirit for revival have been marked in these nine ways:

1. They were in earnest about the great work on which they had entered: “They lived and labored and preached like men on whose lips the immortality of thousands hung.”

2. They were bent on success: “As warriors, they set their hearts on victory and fought with the believing anticipation of triumph, under the guidance of such a Captain as their head.”

3. They were men of faith: “They knew that in due season they should reap, if they fainted not.”

4. They were men of labor: “Their lives are the annals of incessant, unwearied toil of body and soul; time, strength, substance, health, all they were and possessed they freely offered to the Lord, keeping back nothing, grudging nothing.”

5. They were men of patience: “Day after day they pursued what, to the eye of the world, appeared a thankless and fruitless round of toil.”

6. They were men of boldness and determination: “Timidity shuts many a door of usefulness and loses many a precious opportunity; it wins no friends, while it strengthens every enemy. Nothing is lost by boldness, nor gained by fear.”

7. They were men of prayer: “They were much alone with God, replenishing their own souls out of the living fountain, that out of them might flow to their people rivers of living water.”

8. They were men whose doctrines were of the most decided kind: “Their preaching seems to have been of the most masculine and fearless kind, falling on the audience with tremendous power. It was not vehement, it was not fierce, it was not noisy; it was far too solemn to be such; it was massive, weighty, cutting, piercing, sharper than a two-edged sword.”

9. They were men of solemn deportment and deep spirituality of soul: “No frivolity, no flippancy . . . . The world could not point to them as being but slightly dissimilar from itself.”

THE TRIAL AND INCARCERATION OF JOHN BUNYAN

Trent Cornwell — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 10:04:42 +0000

I have been taking many notes of great stories of church history during the Baptist History Seminar at our church. Next Thursday night we start a new series with our student ministry called UNSTOPPABLE. I want to show them how there has always been a group of people since the time of Christ who held to the teaching we teach today. Many people and forces have tried to stop the church… but by God’s grace and design we are UNSTOPPABLE.

THE TRIAL AND INCARCERATION OF JOHN BUNYAN

John Bunyan was a Baptist preacher, a pious man, and a man well-beloved by all who knew him. John Bunyan was incarcerated in the Bedford jail in England. The following account is taken directly from a transcript of the trial on October 3, 1660, that led to his imprisonment at Bedford:

Judge Wingate: “Mr. Bunyan, you stand before this Court accused of persistent and willful transgression of the Conventicle Act, which prohibits all British subjects from absenting themselves from worship in the Church of England, and from conducting worship services apart from our Church. You come, presumably, with no legal training, and yet without counsel. I must warn you, sir, of the gravity of the charge, the harshness of the penalty, in the event of your conviction, and the foolhardiness of acting as your own counsel in so serious a matter. I hold in my hand the depositions of the witnesses against you. In each case, they have testified that, to their knowledge, you have never, in your adult life, attended services in the Church of this parish. Each further testifies that he has observed you, on numerous occasions, conducting religious exercises in and near Bedford.”

John Bunyan: “The depositions speak the truth. I have never attended services in the Church of England, nor do I intend ever to do so. Secondly, it is no secret that I preach the Word of God whenever, wherever, and to whomever He pleases to grant me opportunity to do so. I have no choice but to acknowledge my awareness of the law which I am accused of transgressing. Likewise, I have no choice but to confess my guilt in my transgression of it. As true as these things are, I must affirm that I neither regret breaking the law, nor repent of having broken it. Further, I must warn you that I have no intention in the future of conforming to it.”

Judge Wingate: “It is obvious, sir, that you are a victim of deranged thinking. If my ears deceive me not, I must infer from your words that you believe the State to have no interest in the religious life of its subjects.”

John Bunyan: “The State, M lord, may have an interest in anything in which it wishes to have an interest. But the State has no right whatever to interfere in the religious life of its citizens.”

Judge Wingate: “The evidence I hold in my hand, even apart from your own admission of guilt, is sufficient to convict you, and the Court is within its rights to have you committed to prison for a considerably long time. I do not wish to send you to prison, Mr. Bunyan. I am aware of the poverty of your family, and I believe you have a little daughter who, unfortunately, was born blind. Is this not so?”

John Bunyan: “It is, M’lord.”

Judge Wingate: “Very well. The decision of the Court is this: In as much as the accused has confessed his guilt, we shall follow a merciful and compassionate course of action. We shall release him on the condition that he swear solemnly to discontinue the convening of religious meetings, and that he affix his signature to such an oath prior to quitting the Courtroom. That will be all, Mr. Bunyan. I hope not to see you here again. May we hear the next case?”

John Bunyan: “M’lord, if I may have another moment of the Court’s time?”

Judge Wingate: “Yes, but you must be quick about it. We have other matters to attend to. What is it?”

John Bunyan: “I cannot do what you ask of me, M’lord. I cannot place my signature upon any document in which I promise henceforth not to preach. My calling to preach the Gospel is from God, and He alone can make me discontinue what He has appointed me to do. As I have had no word from Him to that effect, I must continue to preach, and I shall continue to preach.”

Judge Wingate: “I warn you, sir, the Court has gone the second mile to be lenient with you, out of concern for your family’s difficult straits. Truth to tell, it would appear that the Court’s concern for your family far exceeds your own. Do you wish to go to prison?”

John Bunyan: “No, M’lord. Few things there are that I would wish less.”

Judge Wingate: “Very well, then, Mr. Bunyan. This Court will make one further attempt in good faith to accommodate what appears to be strongly held convictions on your part. In his compassion and beneficence, our Sovereign, Charles II, has made provision for dissenting preachers to hold some limited meetings. All that is required is that such ministers procure licenses authorizing them to convene these gatherings. ”You will not find the procedure burdensome, and even you, Mr. Bunyan, must surely grant the legitimacy of the State’s interest in ensuring that any fool with a Bible does not simply gather a group of people together and begin to preach to them. Imagine the implications were that to happen! Can you comply with this condition, Mr. Bunyan?

“Before you answer, mark you this: should you refuse, the Court will have no alternative but to sentence you to a prison term. Think, sir, of your poor wife. Think of your children, and particularly of your pitiful, sightless little girl. Think of your flock, who can hear you to their hearts’ content when you have secured your licenses. Think on these things, and give us your answer, sir!”

John Bunyan: “M’lord, I appreciate the Court’s efforts to be as you have put it – accommodating. But again, I must refuse your terms. I must repeat that it is God who constrains me to preach, and no man or company of men may grant or deny me leave to preach. These licenses of which you speak, M’lord, are symbols not of a right, but of a privilege. Implied therein is the principle that a mere man can extend or withhold them according to his whim. I speak not of privileges, but of rights. Privileges (licenses) granted by men may be denied by men. Rights are granted by God, and can be legitimately denied by no man. I must therefore, refuse to comply.”

Judge Wingate: “Very well, Mr. Bunyan. Since you persist in your intractability, and since you reject this Court’s honest effort at compromise, you leave us no choice but to commit you to Bedford jail for a period of six years (Editor’s Note: This six ultimately became 12 1/2 for his repeated refusal to sign the license). ”If you manage to survive, I should think that your experience will correct your thinking. If you fail to survive, that will be unfortunate. In any event, I strongly suspect that we have heard the last we shall ever hear from Mr. John Bunyan. Now, may we hear the next case?”

Of course, neither Judge Wingate nor the world had heard the last of John Bunyan, for during his lengthy incarceration in the old Bedford jail, with his Bible as his constant companion and guide, Bunyan gave to the world the epic Pilgrim’s Progress. Bunyan was denied pen and paper, and Pilgrim’s Progress was written with pieces of charcoal from the fire that kept his body warm on the paper wads used as stoppers in the milk bottles from which he drank.

Article originally posted at http://www.preachingjesuschrist.com/john-bunyan-trial.html

Ramblings from North Africa

Trent Cornwell — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 08:26:53 +0000

Description:

Project North Africa’s First Year of ministry to muslims. This book will help you see the great need of the gospel in the muslim world. Through this book we get a glimpse of what it is like to live in a closed muslim country. Read of the heart aches and great joys of ministry in a muslim country!

I will be taking sometime every Thursday night in the month of Jan. to read a small part of this book to our young people. They have met the author and his family. I believe it will challenge them to overcome their fears at school by hearing of the the testimony of people that put their lives at risk for the cause of Christ. I greatly encourage you to do the same.

Message of Hope Project

Ahmed received a letter in his mailbox explaining Christ. It angered him so much that he responded with a letter of his own. The response he received changed his life. He began learning and growing in the conviction of the Holy Spirit. He was then met with, baptized, and is now preaching the gospel. His first contact with the gospel was through the mail.

Click here to read the letter

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100′s have signed up. 1,000′s more needed!