Page 289 - Three Score Years & Ten
P. 289
“THREE SCORE YEARS AND TEN” MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA
Amy Moore
Letters from Alan came through regularly from India and the children all seemed very happy there.
They were getting a lot more good things to eat there than they ever could in China during the war
years, and with such a healthy climate they must have been benefiting all round.
NORTH WEST BIBLE INSTITUTE
God has wonderful ways of working and just about the time when we were sad that our efforts to form
a teaching band for Chinese workers in the south had to cease, up in Fengxiang the North West Bible
School was just beginning. It all began with the evacuation from Henan of the Rev. James Taylor. He
was the grandson of Hudson Taylor and worked with the Free Methodist Mission in China. As the
Japanese occupied Henan, he and his family moved across to Shaanxi with the desire to commence
a Bible School in that province. The CIM was also interested and we offered our property in Fenxiang
which was vacant at that time.
The two missions joined together and a Board of Trustees of fifteen members, two thirds of them
Chinese, was appointed. Mr. and Mrs. Theo Fischbacher were the representatives of the CIM on the
teaching staff and Rev. James Taylor was the Principal, with Pastor Mark Ma, also evacuated from
Henan, as Vice-Principal. The Superintendent of Shaanxi Province was CIM representative on the
Board of Trustees, so Percy’s father was involved from the beginning, and later, when Percy became
Superintendent, he took his place on the Board and went up and down for meetings when necessary.
They commenced with eight students who came for a three month course. We came to know Pastor
and Mrs. Ma and their children very well in the next few years as well as the Taylors and
Fischbachers. The Taylor children were all at school in Chefoo and were taken to Wei Xian by the
Japanese at the same time as our Raymond was.
A remarkable movement sprang out of this work which became known as the ‘Back to Jerusalem
Band’. During a time of prayer in 1942, Pastor Ma sensed God saying to him, “The door to Xinjiang is
already open. Enter and preach the Gospel.” Xinjiang in the far northwest was not a place he had
ever prayed about or had much interest in, and the thought of going there with a wife and several
small children horrified him, so he tried to forget all about it.
Five months later at Easter in 1943, Pastor Ma was on a preaching engagement in another city with
several of the Bible Institute students, and as they strolled along the river bank, he told them of his
‘vision’ he felt God had given him. One of the students with him told him that ten years before, she
had been given a vision of a vast area far away in the west where people were crying for help. She
heard a voice saying, ‘The people there in the darkness have no one to tell them the Good News.’
She was so moved that she cried out, ‘Oh Lord, here am I’. Ten years had gone by, but now as she
listened to Pastor Ma, her vision was being renewed. They prayed together that morning as they
stood by the Wei River that the vision might be fulfilled.
During that same Easter 1943 remarkable things were happening at the Bible Institute. A burden for
the far distant unreached areas where Christ was not known lay upon the Bible School leaders, and
that Easter they emphasized to the students the needs of the unreached. Out in the courtyard a huge
map of China had been drawn with whitewash on the ground, and the needs of Tibet, the tribes in the
South West, Sichuan, Gansu and Ningxia, and even as far as Mongolia and Xinjiang were all
emphasized. The old Silk Route had been open for centuries for trade and travel, but not yet to many
of the messengers of the Cross. Mr. Hunter had been in Xinjiang for many years and Arthur Moore’s
historic journey from Lanzhou to Urumqi with Percy Mather, as well as the journeys of the Misses
Cable and French, were examples of some of the few missionaries who had attempted that long
289
Amy Moore
Letters from Alan came through regularly from India and the children all seemed very happy there.
They were getting a lot more good things to eat there than they ever could in China during the war
years, and with such a healthy climate they must have been benefiting all round.
NORTH WEST BIBLE INSTITUTE
God has wonderful ways of working and just about the time when we were sad that our efforts to form
a teaching band for Chinese workers in the south had to cease, up in Fengxiang the North West Bible
School was just beginning. It all began with the evacuation from Henan of the Rev. James Taylor. He
was the grandson of Hudson Taylor and worked with the Free Methodist Mission in China. As the
Japanese occupied Henan, he and his family moved across to Shaanxi with the desire to commence
a Bible School in that province. The CIM was also interested and we offered our property in Fenxiang
which was vacant at that time.
The two missions joined together and a Board of Trustees of fifteen members, two thirds of them
Chinese, was appointed. Mr. and Mrs. Theo Fischbacher were the representatives of the CIM on the
teaching staff and Rev. James Taylor was the Principal, with Pastor Mark Ma, also evacuated from
Henan, as Vice-Principal. The Superintendent of Shaanxi Province was CIM representative on the
Board of Trustees, so Percy’s father was involved from the beginning, and later, when Percy became
Superintendent, he took his place on the Board and went up and down for meetings when necessary.
They commenced with eight students who came for a three month course. We came to know Pastor
and Mrs. Ma and their children very well in the next few years as well as the Taylors and
Fischbachers. The Taylor children were all at school in Chefoo and were taken to Wei Xian by the
Japanese at the same time as our Raymond was.
A remarkable movement sprang out of this work which became known as the ‘Back to Jerusalem
Band’. During a time of prayer in 1942, Pastor Ma sensed God saying to him, “The door to Xinjiang is
already open. Enter and preach the Gospel.” Xinjiang in the far northwest was not a place he had
ever prayed about or had much interest in, and the thought of going there with a wife and several
small children horrified him, so he tried to forget all about it.
Five months later at Easter in 1943, Pastor Ma was on a preaching engagement in another city with
several of the Bible Institute students, and as they strolled along the river bank, he told them of his
‘vision’ he felt God had given him. One of the students with him told him that ten years before, she
had been given a vision of a vast area far away in the west where people were crying for help. She
heard a voice saying, ‘The people there in the darkness have no one to tell them the Good News.’
She was so moved that she cried out, ‘Oh Lord, here am I’. Ten years had gone by, but now as she
listened to Pastor Ma, her vision was being renewed. They prayed together that morning as they
stood by the Wei River that the vision might be fulfilled.
During that same Easter 1943 remarkable things were happening at the Bible Institute. A burden for
the far distant unreached areas where Christ was not known lay upon the Bible School leaders, and
that Easter they emphasized to the students the needs of the unreached. Out in the courtyard a huge
map of China had been drawn with whitewash on the ground, and the needs of Tibet, the tribes in the
South West, Sichuan, Gansu and Ningxia, and even as far as Mongolia and Xinjiang were all
emphasized. The old Silk Route had been open for centuries for trade and travel, but not yet to many
of the messengers of the Cross. Mr. Hunter had been in Xinjiang for many years and Arthur Moore’s
historic journey from Lanzhou to Urumqi with Percy Mather, as well as the journeys of the Misses
Cable and French, were examples of some of the few missionaries who had attempted that long
289
