Journey of Faith: Divine Providence in Evangelism

Before I come to the main topic of the evening, I'd like to tell you something of the practical side. It's all right to talk about theory and theology, but each man has to find God for himself. I was born in Ireland. At the age of 19, I went to a friend of mine called Jim Wilkinson and I said, Jim, would you like to go out and preach with me? Jim said, can you preach? I said, no, can you? Well, he said, I read a paper once in the Christian Endeavour. I said, I read two papers. He said, who's going to ask us to preach? Well, I said, we can go in the open air together, I'll invite you, and you can invite me. Well, he said, I'm game if you're game, but how do you get a crowd? I said, you come with me, we'll get a crowd.

I had a little ukulele about this size. My friend Wilkinson had a great pair of lungs, but he couldn't sing in tune. When I played in G, he always sang an octave lower in H flat. We never struck the same note together. But a crowd of Irish music lovers gathered on the sidewalk opposite us and listened while we played and sang. And then I stood on the edge of the sidewalk and preached. He said, what did you preach about? Well, I didn't really know when I went that night, but the verse that Mother had used to lead me to Christ was, he was wounded for our transgressions, so I explained that verse.

Jim and I got such a blessing out of this, we decided to form a band of 24 young men to do this kind of work. And so our little band began to grow. In 1933, that's 30 years ago, the height or the bottom, I should say, of the Depression, I felt called to further service. The head of a big organization in London offered to find me a salary if I would give up my secular employment and go out and do this kind of work under his organization. I was delighted. I went straight back to Belfast, my hometown, and told them that I had a call from God and an answer to pray.

The day after I gave up my job, my friend in London left me in a lurch. He had to go to India and China and Japan, Canada and the United States for missionary conference work. He was going to be away for about a year. His committee wouldn't be responsible for what they called a wild Irishman while he was gone, so he wrote me a nice letter and told me to go back to business again. Now I could have gotten my job back, but the more I prayed about it, the more I felt God was calling me to this ministry. But then all my friends turned against me. They said, well, you see, the Lord has closed the door. That's a favorite expression. Well, I see a wide open door, but just one man has let me down, not the Lord.

I told Mother I would send her the usual amount of money each week. She was a widow, depending on me. My brother was out of work. My sister was ill. There were three million unemployed over there and 13 million unemployed here. So it wasn't the right time to begin. All my friends, without exception, said that they thought I was crazy. Well, there was one exception, Sidney Murray. I remember him with gratitude. He said he didn't know whether I was crazy or not. And Mr. T.W. Wynne gave me a ticket to Liverpool in England. I arrived there with two shillings and eightpence in my pocket, about 65 cents in those days.

The only friend I had within 150 miles of Liverpool was a Roman Catholic scarpmaster whom I had met at a jamboree. I went to see him. Frank Nelson said, where are you going to sleep at night? I said, in bed. He said, very funny. Where are you going to get your next meal? I said, I don't know where I'll get it. I know where I'll put it. I wasn't feeling quite as cheerful as I sounded. He was baffled. He said, Edwin, I've been out of work for three years and I've just got a job. I'm going to hold on to it. You go and give up the good job you had. Well, I said, the scripture says, my God shall supply all your need.

Look, he said, in the Catholic Church, when a man has a vocation to the priesthood, we send him to a theological college for a while. I thought the Protestants did the same. I said, more or less. Then he said, what's going to happen to you? I said, I'm going to travel with the gospel, especially encouraging people to pray for a spiritual awakening. He offered to lend me enough money to go home on the next ship, but I said, no, thank you, Frank. And I started out on the bicycle from Birkenhead.

When I reached Chester, it began to rain very heavily, so I prayed that I might reach Shrewsbury, about 40 miles south, without getting wet. You might say, why were you so concerned? Well, Belfast is the same latitude as Juneau, Alaska. It has a raw winter, wet and raw. Same in the northwest of England. My father died of TB, and so did my older brother, and I was the most delicate baby in the family. And the last thing Mother had said to me when I started out was, my son, don't forget, don't get your feet wet. If you do, be sure and change your socks, and all sorts of motherly advice. So I just prayed that I wouldn't get wet. I got there without getting wet, and yet it rained all the way.

Now, of course, you would say, did you hitchhike? Hitchhiking was unknown in England in those days. It wasn't until the GIs went over and showed the Limeys how to do it, that they even caught on. In 1933, if you'd stood in a road in England with your thumb out like that, they would have thought you had a sore thumb. They wouldn't know what that meant. In fact, when I first came to the States, I didn't know what that meant. I was in Canada, and I came down to speak at a Niagara Bible Conference, and it was away in a country place somewhere. And my friends were, knowing when I left Toronto, I was driving, thought I'd be late for the meeting. But I got there right in time. They said, well, how do you do it? I said, well, every corner I came to, there was a fellow with his thumb showing me the way to go.

I didn't hitchhike, but a truck driver, what they call on the other side a lorry driver, had stopped to tie a waterproof cover over some bags of sugar. He wheeled around, he shouted, hello there, in such a friendly way, I knew he must have made a mistake. English people are notoriously reserved. They don't speak to strangers. So I wheeled my bicycle over, I said, did you mistake me for someone? He saw his mistake right away. He said, I'm sorry. I thought you were a friend of mine called Bert Cook. I said, that's funny. I have a friend called Bert Cook too. He said, but you're not English. I said, no, I'm from Ireland. He said, I knew you were a foreigner as soon as you opened your mouth. Then you wouldn't know the Bert Cook that I know, he said, because of course he was English.

But I said, I was in England once before for a short holiday. And the fellow I met was studying to be a Methodist minister at Handsworth College. His name was Herbert J. Cook. He looked at me and then he said, blimey mate, it's the same bloke. The population of England is 35 million. And on my first day, a perfect stranger mistook me for one of the few Englishmen I knew and one that happened to look like me. He's now a professor of Hebrew at the big Methodist seminary. I was talking to him last year and I sort of apologized for the story being mistaken for him. But he said, well, don't you remember when you were over the first time my own mother mistook you for me once momentarily?

Well, the truck driver gave me a ride to Wellington, 10 miles from Shrewsbury. I got to Wellington from Shrewsbury, to Shrewsbury, about 11 miles from Shrewsbury. To Shrewsbury about 11 o'clock at night. I'd nowhere to stay, so I stopped the nearest policeman to see where I'd get cheap accommodation for the night. In Great Britain in those days, the Salvation Army had working men's hostels where you could get a bed for about a dime. I thought that'd be something in my line, so I asked where I'd get cheap accommodation for the night. He looked me up and down. He said, what do you do for a living? Now, I knew what was in his mind. It's not true now that there's nearly full employment. But in those days, when there were so many million unemployed, the police were arresting the unemployed for vagrancy, to keep them out of temptation's way.

I'm digressing to tell you this, but a year later, I was cycling from Glasgow to London, 400 miles. It happened to be a beautiful full moon, so I decided to cycle all night.

At a place called Nantwich, a sergeant and a constable stopped me at four o'clock in the morning and wanted to know what I was doing on the roads at that time of night. I tried to explain, but they weren't impressed. Finally, the sergeant said, I'm afraid, young fellow, you're of no fixed abode and no visible means of support. That's the formal charge. I said, well, I have no fixed abode. I just about live on this bicycle. But I do have visible means of support. He said, what are your visible means of support? I said, my suspenders. That kept him quiet.

But going back to the first day, the policeman said, what do you do for a living? I knew what I was doing. What do you do for a living? I knew what was coming. So I said, I'm, what could I say? I'd been a bookkeeper, but I'd given that up. I couldn't say I was a clergyman. I'd not been ordained. So I said, I'm an evangelist. He must've noticed my hesitation because he said, how long have you been an evangelist? Well, that's not very long. He said, how long? So I said, a little while. He said, I have reasons for asking. How long have you been an evangelist? Well, I said, if you must be technical, I started at eight o'clock this morning. He said, do you have anything to show that you're genuine? I said, yes, I have some letters of introduction. He said, well, show me one, any one.

And I had one written by an Episcopal rector to show to people in the Church of England. One written by a Presbyterian minister to show to people in the Church of Scotland. One written by a Methodist, one written by a Baptist. But the last letter was written by an obscure friend of mine who wasn't at all well-known. He worked in what we'd call in this side a storefront mission. In fact, I didn't ask him for a letter. In fact, I was rather embarrassed when he gave me one. But his letter was the most enthusiastic letter. And I thought this policeman in the middle of England wouldn't know anyone in Ireland anyway. So I showed him the letter written by the nobody. He read it through, then he shook hands warmly. He was a converted man, hence his penetrating questions. He was a deacon in the Shrewsbury Baptist Church. He was a close friend of the William Phillip that wrote that letter in Ireland. I asked him afterwards, what do you mean by a close friend? He said, well, what do you remember about William Phillip? I said, he was about 280 pounds. He said, I'm six foot four. He said, we were both attending a convention in Wales, and they were short of accommodation. He said, all they could give us was a single bed. Ever since then, we've been regarded as very close friends. He took me home that night. I slept in a feather bed. Next morning, I had two eggs for breakfast.

Frank Nelson had said, where are you going to sleep at night? Where are you going to get your next meal? And something clicked in my mind. When the disciples went to the Lord, they said, Lord, increase our faith. He didn't say to them, I will give you a great ready-made faith equal to any emergency. And you can set it up and admire it and use it when you need it. He said nothing of the sort. He picked up a speck, mark you, a living speck, a speck of mustard seed. And he said, if you've got faith this size, you can move mountains. And I thought, if God can take care of me one day, he can take care of me tomorrow. This week, next week, this month, next month, this year, next year. And so for 30 years now, I've lived like this.

A lot of the men in the business, Dr. Cope won't mind my saying this, think I'm odd. You're right that some evangelists, they say, well, I'll come, but you must guarantee me so much. I'm quite content to live from hand to mouth, if it's from God's hand to my mouth. Of course, I roughed it. I slept under haystacks. I walked up and down the embankment in London, trying to keep warm one night. I remember on one occasion, my old bicycle broke down in Kent, near London. I discovered I needed new handlebars, new front fork, new back wheel, new front wheel, new three-speed gear, new crank, new pedals, new tires, new tubes, and several other new parts. I prayed for a new bicycle or the money to buy one. I'd spent my last penny in Woolworths buying Christmas presents for the children of an Englishman who was kind enough to invite me to spend the holiday with him. I didn't have enough money to go back to Ireland, and I didn't want to spend Christmas alone in London. I had to wheel the bicycle the last 10 miles.

When I got to the house, my friend had got tired waiting for me. He'd gone off to work. When I got to the house, my friend had got tired waiting for me. He'd gone off to a meeting. In fact, he wanted to take me to the meeting. But he'd gone off to the meeting, left food on the table, and a note of welcome. The phone rang, and there was my answer to prayer. A Baptist minister across the Thames in Essex had suddenly taken ill. His deacons were in desperation, trying to get another preacher. Two days before Christmas. Christmas fell on a Monday, so Christmas Eve was Sunday. They tried this one, that one, the other one. Couldn't get anyone to come. I don't know how they got my name. I could hazard a guess, but I certainly don't know how they could have found the address of my newfound friends. But they called me long distance and asked me if I'd preached the Christmas sermons in the Horn Church Baptist Church. I said to the deacon on the telephone, but you don't know anything about me. He said, Mr. Roar, don't be offended, but we're so hard up, we'd take anybody. Of course, if you're 21 and three months in the ministry, you can take insults like that.

I went over there and preached. Not a soul in that church knew that I was praying for a bicycle, but another deacon came up to me afterwards, to make a long story short, he wanted to know if I'd be offended if he offered me a Christmas present. A bicycle custom built at Coventry, the best bicycle made in the world. I said, what makes you offer it to me? I had no intention of refusing it, but it was an unusual request. Immediately, he misunderstood his face, flamed with embarrassment. You know, there is a difference in temperament of people who speak English. An Englishman's always afraid of making a fool of himself, so he's very careful what he says. An Irishman doesn't care whether he makes a fool of himself or not, so he doesn't care what he says. An American doesn't realize when he's making a fool of himself. My friend was most embarrassed, he started to apologize. His father had died and left him some money, and he had bought a car, couldn't be bothered with a bicycle anymore, although it was such a good one, so he'd hung it up in a shed. And he said, while I was preaching, he thought God had told him, give that young preacher your bicycle. And he said, if you're not offended, you may have it. I took it.

With that bicycle, I visit every county from Land's End to John O'Groats. I wrote a little story telling all of these things. One critic said it's easy for these things to happen in a Christian country like England, where people are kind-hearted. I thought, well, if English people are kind-hearted, and this is a so-called Christian country, Soviet Russia is not a Christian country. So I left England for Soviet Russia with two dollars and a half. I came back with a dollar and a quarter. I came back with a dollar and a quarter. But those adventures will keep until tomorrow night.