Auburn Friends

Billy Graham (1918 – 2018) is well known as the American evangelist who preached to millions in person and through radio and television.  He rose to prominence in the late 1940's and is probably among the most influential Christian leaders of the 20th century.

But he was, by his own admission, an ordinary man, a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ who had a calling and gave himself to the fulfillment of that calling.  This brief biography focuses on his early life and development, looking at those aspects of his life that made him the man he became.

(Recorded April 22, 2018)

Joni Eareckson was born October 15, 1949 and is a Christian author, radio host, and founder of Joni and Friends, an organization "accelerating Christian ministry in the disability community." 

On July 30, 1967, she dived into the Chesapeake Bay after misjudging the shallowness of the water. She suffered a fracture between the fourth and fifth cervical levels and became a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the shoulders down.  Her story is one of courage and of a living faith in the living God.

(Recorded 27 August 2017)

James Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission, was a man passionately driven to seek God's will in all that he did. He is best known for the drastic difference he made in the evangelisation of China.

Born in 1832, Hudson Taylor was raised in Yorkshire, England.  His father was a chemist and a Methodist preacher. But as a teenager Hudson began to doubt whether he actually believed in God. Only after much thought and seeking did he turn to God and find true peace.  

By the age of 17 Hudson Taylor knew what was to be the direction God had for his life. He was called to China, where he was to spend 51 years.

The mission he founded was ultimately responsible for sending to China over 800 missionaries, and these began 125 schools and saw some 18,000 Christian conversions throughout the country.

(Recorded 26 March 2017)

John Bunyan (1628–1688), an English writer and Puritan preacher, is best remembered for "The Pilgrim's Progress" (1678), which became one of the most published books in the English language.

Bunyan came from the village of Elstow, near Bedford.  After 3 years in the army he returned to Elstow and took up the trade of tinker.  He was converted to Christ after his marriage through 2 books that his wife had inherited from her father and he soon became a gifted and powerful preacher of the gospel among the nonconformist churches. He was arrested when the freedom of nonconformists was curtailed by the king, and spent the next 12 years in prison because he refused to give up preaching. 

During the time in prison he wrote a spiritual autobiography, "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners", and began work on his most famous book, "The Pilgrim's Progress", which was published 6 years after his release.  It was immediately very popular and within 4 years of his death had sold over 100,000 copies in England alone.

(Recorded 22 January 2017)

Richard Wurmbrand (1909–2001) was born to a Jewish family in Bucharest, Romania.  In 1936, he married Sabina Oster and in 1938 they placed their faith in Jesus Christ.

During World War II, Richard and Sabina preached in bomb shelters and rescued Jewish children out of the ghettos. They were repeatedly arrested and beaten and, at least once, nearly executed. Sabina lost her Jewish family in Nazi concentration camps.

In 1945, when Romanian Communists seized power, Richard and Sabina attended a congress where many religious leaders praised Communism and swore loyalty to the new regime. Richard declared to the delegates, and to the whole nation, that their duty was to glorify God and Christ alone.

On Feb. 29, 1948, the secret police kidnapped Richard.  In 1950, his wife, Sabina, was also imprisoned leaving their 9-year-old son, Mihai, alone and homeless.  Sabina was released after three years, and Richard was also later released, only to be re-arrested and then released in an amnesty in 1964.

In December 1965, two organizations paid a ransom to allow the Wurmbrand family to leave Romania for Norway and then on to England.  Richard began his ministry as a voice for persecuted Christians to the West, where he also wrote "Tortured for Christ", the story of his time in prison.

Recorded June 24, 2018

“God does not have problems. Only plans,” proclaimed Corrie ten Boom when a clerical error allowed her to be released from a Nazi concentration camp one week before all women prisoners her age were executed.

After being released from the horrors of Ravensbruck, Corrie continued to live in reliance on God, just as her family had as they hid Jews from Nazi terror. Traveling the world as an ambassador of the power of forgiveness in Christ, Corrie later established rehabilitation centers to help other Holocaust survivors. Her 1971 autobiography, "The Hiding Place", has inspired many people to see God at work through the darkest of life’s circumstances.

Recorded October 9, 2016

Keith Green (1953 – 1982), a pianist, singer and songwriter is best known for his strong devotion to Christ and challenging others to the same.  Several of his songs are very well known around the world, including "Oh Lord, You're Beautiful", "Asleep in the Light", "Your Love Broke Through", "You Put This Love in My Heart" and "There Is a Redeemer", the last of which was written by his wife Melody.

Along with eleven others, Keith Green died in a plane crash at the age of 29, having been a Christian only 7 years.

"A radical preacher.  A former child television star.  A confused spiritual seeker.  A passionate prophet.  A musical minstrel.  And arguably one of the single most important artists in the history of contemporary Christian music.  His music remains a staple for the spiritually aware and his power to influence since his tragic death only proves Keith Green's lasting charisma.  Elvis has nothing on him." (Rick Chromey, a tribute on the Last Days Ministries website)

Recorded January 28, 2018

Gladys Aylward (24 February 1902 – 3 January 1970) was a British-born Christian missionary to China. 

From her early teens, Gladys worked as a housemaid but following a calling to go overseas she tried to become a missionary.  However, due to her lack of progress in learning Chinese she was not accepted by any mission.

On 15 October 1932, Aylward spent her life savings on a train passage to Yangcheng, Shanxi Province, China. The perilous trip took her across Siberia on the Trans-Siberian Railway.  She was detained by the Russians, but managed to evade them with local help and a lift from a Japanese ship.  She then travelled across Japan and took another ship to China. 

On her arrival in China, Aylward worked with an older missionary, Jeannie Lawson, to found "The Inn of the Eight Happinesses".   She and Mrs. Lawson not only provided hospitality for travellers, but would also share stories about Jesus.  For a time she served as a "foot inspector", touring the countryside to enforce the new law against foot-binding young Chinese girls.

Gladys Aylward was a revered figure among the Chinese people, taking in orphans and adopting several herself, intervening in a volatile prison riot, risking her life many times to help those in need.  In 1938, during the Japanese invasion she led more than 100 orphans to safety over the mountains, despite being wounded, personally caring for them all.

She did not return to Britain until 1949 and finally settled in Taiwan in 1958 where she worked until her death in 1970.

Recorded August 26, 2018

George Whitefield (27 December 1714 – 30 September 1770), was an English Anglican cleric and evangelist who was one of the founders of Methodism and the evangelical movement.

Whitefield was ordained after receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree at Oxford and immediately began working as an itinerant preacher and evangelist. In 1740, Whitefield traveled to North America, where he preached a series of revivals that became part of the "Great Awakening". 

Whitefield received widespread recognition during his ministry; he preached at least 18,000 times to perhaps 10 million listeners in Great Britain and the American colonies. He could enthrall large audiences and was the means of bringing many people to Christ.

Recorded June 23, 2019

Oswald Chambers (24 July 1874 – 15 November 1917) was a Scottish evangelist and teacher, best known for the devotional book, My Utmost for His Highest.

Chambers was stricken with appendicitis on 17 October 1917 while in Egypt serving as a chaplain amongst soldiers during World War 1.  He resisted going to a hospital on the grounds that the beds would be needed by wounded men.  On 29 October, a surgeon performed an emergency appendectomy, but Chambers died two weeks later. He was buried in Cairo with full military honours though only a YMCA Chaplain.

For the remainder of her life—and at first under very straitened circumstances—Chambers' widow, Biddy, transcribed and published books and articles edited from the notes she had taken in shorthand during the Bible College years in London and at Zeitoun in Egypt.  Most successful of the thirty books was My Utmost for His Highest (1924), a daily devotional composed of 365 selections of Chamber's talks, each of about 500 words. The work has never been out of print and has been translated into 39 languages.

Recorded November 24, 2019