SEE SUSANNE

Gladys Aylward the 19th century London parlour maid had but one burning ambition, to go to China as a missionary. While the other girls would take the few bob they earned and spend it in the local pubs in search of romance and possible suitors Gladys would take all the money she earned and put it towards the price of a one way rail/sea ticket to "somewhere" in China. She had been turned down by the China Inland Mission as not having the neccessary qualifications.
She had made postal contact with aging British missionary Jenny Lawson who was in need of a young assistant, Mrs Lawson told her if she could make the journey to Yengcheng in the remote Nancheng region she would be recieved. Soon after Gladys arrived Mrs Lawson took a fall and tragically died so that Gladys herself became responsible for the inn they had set up for travelling mulers.
The story of the Mandarin's first visit to Gladys when with great pomp and ceremony she was appointed foot inspector to all the surrounding villages of the province of which the Mandarin was the local potentate is told in the book "A LONDON SPARROW" by Phylis Thomson here is a brief account of her second encounter with him.
Gladys was summoned to the Mandarin's palace, when she arrived she was informed that the correct manner on meeting the Mandarin was to bow from the hip and remain bowed until formally greeted. Gladys bowed from the hip but after counting to six and not recieving the formal greeting she straightened up and politely enquired the reason for the summons, she felt sure she discerned a small flicker of a smile pass across the Mandarin's face.
Apparently a riot had broken out in the prison with men running around screaming and killing each other, the soldiers had lost control and were afraid to enter, at first she failed to see what this could have to do with her, then it dawned on her that the Mandarin was requesting that she go in and restore order and find out the cause of the disturbance. Gladys Aylward was flabbergasted, "if the soldiers with their weaponry were too frightened to intervene what do you expect from a 5ft female "foreign devil"? surely she would be killed on sight.
The Mandarin regarded her gravely and said "but how can you be killed? you have the living God dwelling inside you, you have been telling every one in all the villages and towns." GLADYS AYLWARD knew that the choice she had was to go in or else she would have to go home to the relative peace and luxury of England a failed missionary.
When she arrived at the prison compound, she was ushered in through the outer wall by the anxious prison govenor and given the key to the inner wall, she could hear the fearful screams and shrieks from within of men who had lost all control of themselves, the governor beat a hasty retreat as she stepped into the prison yard.
The scene that met her eyes was of blood and gore the dead or wounded prisoners lying all around, and in the middle of all this a prisoner with crazed eyes and a meat axe. She heard a shrill voice shouting "how dare you behave like this, it is absolutely disgraceful" the voice sounded rediculously like an english school miss berating her naughty children, she realized that the voice was her own. Gladys walked towards the prisoner with the axe carefully avoiding looking down at the blood soaked bodies on the ground "give me that axe at once, and all of you form up in line until it can be decided what is to be done with you, give me that axe!" meekly the prisoner did so, and the others formed up into a line behind him and the crisis was passed. She ordered them to appoint a spokesman "how can I understand what you are saying when you are all shouting and screaming at the same time.?"
Once a spokesman had been appointed she learned their grieviances and promised to bring them to the governor and bring reform which she did. This is how Gladys Aylward earned her name change from "foreign devil" to "virtuous one."

Have you ever been woken up by a pong? I have and a pretty awful one at that. A peek out of my nets discovered the source and culprit of such a rude awakening. A neighbour two doors up was stood in a 6ft long trench he had dug in his front garden, it was knee deep, a more careful scrutiny revealed that he was actually up to his shins in horse manure.
Later that day when mercifully the offending extractulations had been topped up and covered by soil I was able in passing to bring him to account and discuss the "matter" with him "well sweetheart" says he "it's like this, any fool can dig a hole and put a rose bush in it, it will grow, but if you want show roses with flowers big as saucers and that smell like heaven, you've got to dig deep and you've got to dung 'em good."
Four months later I was able to release any last traces of resentment I had for his particular horticultural philosophy for right there in his front garden was the evidence of roses with flowers "big as saucers and that smelled like heaven."
Mr John Bunyan is famous the world over, indeed I believe his classic allegory THE PILGRIMS PROGRESS is second only to the holy bible as the most read book.
Who does not know of Christian's "progress from this present world to that which is to come,delivered under the similitude of a dream, wherein is discovered the manner of his setting out, his dangerous journey and safe arrival at the desired country."
And yet a surprisingly large number of people do not know that when he opens his story with the immortal line "As I walked through the wilderness of this world I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and I laid me down in that place to sleep, and as I slept I dreamed a dream" Bunyan was referring to Bedford jail where he spent 12 long years imprisonment for preaching the gospel without a license,which under the newly returned Stuart monarchy was against the law. John Bunyan was an early champion of free speach and freedom of worship in Britain. T.L.Osborn has said that there is a way of dealing with the devil when he oppresses you so as to make him sorry he ever thought to do you harm, the writing of PILGRIM'S PROGRESS certainly falls within the scope of that brave statement, for the blessings, the encouragement and sweet edifications that have been passed from generation to generation from JOHN BUNYAN'S discomfiture.
Blessed be God...who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the same comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. 2cor.ch.1v.3-4.

You hear so much about how God's will for us is all blessings and prosperity-the good life. It is all positive stuff and very attractive. If we only think the right things,and say the right things then God will grant us our wildest dreams.
I believe few if any persons in the last century achieved the place of perfection with regard to being in God's perfect will for their lives than Betsy and Corrie Ten Boom, and this place of the perfect will of God was to stand naked in a concentration camp, in freezing weather in front of the leering eyes of their captors.
Corrie Ten Boom's testimony belies the prosperity doctrine, did she believe in God's abundant provision? she surely did, she tells the story of how when the prisoner's rations were reduced to two bowls of watery soup per day, the only way to suppliment this meagre diet was with a small bottle of vitamin oil her sister had sent her, this she shared out with all the prisoners in her block,day after day, week after week long, long after it should have run out.
Did she believe in God's overuling providence? she surely did when she and Betsy knelt to give praise and thanks for every single thing in their lives-even the lice and fleas- they later learned that those little fellas were the reason the guards stayed away from their barracks so they could have their daily bible study and prayer with all who cared to join them, many were saved and helped.
Betsy died there in Ravensbruch, their beloved Father already having died in custody. After the war Corrie travelled the nations of the world, living out of a suitcase into her eighties bringing the glorious message of victory over all circumstances, "no matter how deep the pit, God's love is deeper."
Could Corrie have avoided any of this? yes she could have chosen not to reach out to the persecuted Jews in Holland when the Germans invaded that peace loving country. Just as Jesus could have chosen in the Garden of Gethsemane not to endure the cross, but like their Master they chose the path of God's will.

By the middle of the 19th century the methodist denomination for whom William Booth was an itinerant preacher had become a very respectable organisation and much of fire and fervour in which it had been born during the great awakening a century earlier had died down.
William Booth hailed from Nottinghamshire, when he arrived in London's East end he was staggered by the poverty he encountered among the working classes. He resigned his commission with the methodist new connection and set up The East London Christian Mission.
His first preaching engagement in the new mission was outside the notorious "Blind Beggar" pub in Whitechapel Rd a known hive of prostitution, gambling and every kind of vice.
He threw his hat on to the ground outside the pub and started preaching to it the love of God in sending His Son to die on the cross to redeem men and women from the wicked paths they had chosen for themselves, among the missiles that were hurled in response to his loving invitation to be saved were human excrement, offal and at least one live cat. But three persons got saved so the following evening they set up a tent in a field opposite and God honoured the work by bringing many to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
One freezing november night Booth was walking over London bridge with his son Bramwell and peering over the bridge he discerned rows of cardboard boxes seemingly filled with newspaper, he enquired what they were and Bramwell told him "why father did you not know, they are men and women who have no home, they sleep out in those boxes.
William Booth was distraught, he went home in an agony of grief that such a thing could be so. He paced the floor, back and forth pulling on his beard, "and you knew, you knew, but you did nothing."
From that time onwards the E.L.C.M. started buying up or renting empty warehouses and like buildings and the first hostels were formed. Each building bore this sign, NO MAN NEED BEG, STEAL, STARVE, SLEEP OUT AT NIGHTS, BE A PAUPER OR COMMIT SUICIDE-WE WILL HELP YOU.
In may 1878 Booth summoned Bramwell and his closest ally George Railton to read a proof of the annual statement of the E.L.C.M. at the top of which was written The Christian Mission is a voluntary association. Bramwell objected to the word voluntary "I am not a volunteer, I must serve." William Booth took his pen and crossed the words voluntary association out and wrote in their place SALVATION ARMY.

If you were to visit any city, town or village in England, walking down the high streets and side streets you would be struck by the many, many small chapels and meeting rooms of the many various dissenting denominations each one representing once thriving gospel communities where the extended families of God would meet for prayer and worship and fellowship of the word according to their denominational interpretation.
You would also note how very few these little buildings now exist as living churches, their primary functions ranging from commercial office space, social groups of a vast variety to mums and tots.
Christians in other countries and especially America have very little concept of the sad decline of bible believing christianity in the U.K.
C.H.Spurgeon is well known for his many sermons preached and faithfully recorded in the Metropolitan Tabernacle.Volumes that span 40 years of fruitful ministry in London's east end. But that his life and ministry were overshadowed in his latter years by bitter controversy is not so well known. Nor is the nature and scope of the controversy at all understood or appreciated by christians, or few, christians today. But Spurgeon looked into the present day with the sure eye of a prophet and foretold the "emptying out" of [then] full and prospering gospel communities, and amid almost universal condemnation and derision(despite his popularity as a preacher) he bravely proclaimed "I am willing to be eaten alive by dogs for a hundred years, but I shall be proved right."
The controversy is known to history as THE DOWNGRADE, in the march 1887 issue of Spurgeon's monthly periodical "the sword and trowel." Spurgeon wrote an article decrying, what had at first been a trickle but had suddenly become a flooding, infiltration into the Baptist and other dissenting denominations of men in high positions of authority within the bible schools and leading pastorates throughout the British Isles, who held what was called a more enlightened view. These men no longer believed in the divine inspiration of the bible, they rejected the substitutionary nature of the atonement, the virgin birth, the resurrection and virtually every other supernatural revelation. These men had been infiltrating by stealth, step by step and often covered their true beliefs by carefully balanced words which made them appear orthodox and so acceptable.
Suddenly with Spurgeons article they were thrown into the glaring spotlight. A great dust storm of controversy ensued and enquiry was made everywhere in the churches as to who these men were and so they were forced to declare themselves and their new theology.
The devil does not like to be thus exposed, and even former close associates and lifelong friends of Spurgeon withdrew from the stand he had made. Spurgeon's solution to the problem was simple, let there be a simple credal fomula to which all ministers and aspiring ministers must adhere. For this suggestion Spurgeon was censured by the Baptist Union and this led to his withdrawal from that denomination.
This was a great victory for the men of the NEW THEOLOGY and their encroachment and advance went forward with little resistance or impedement.
The stress and sorrow of the controversy almost certainly contributed to the early death of Charles Haddon Spurgeon.