Jonathan helped his wife collect the last few items she needed and wished her well. He waited anxiously until nightfall when she returned.
“You should have seen her, Jonathan!” Rosalind exclaimed, her eyes shining brightly. “I drew a portrait of Mrs. Chang herself, and God helped me to give her the most lifelike eyes. When I showed it to Mrs. Chang, she was shocked. ‘Give that to me!’ she demanded, grabbing at the picture. But I said, ‘No, not until you agree that this picture has eyes that seem to see, yet it is merely a picture I drew myself, right in front of you.’ ‘I agree,’ she said. ‘It is just as lifelike as the gods I have, but it is only a picture. Just give it to me.’ So I gave it to her, and she was happy. Really, Jonathan, I think she is just a lonely old lady. She says she is waiting to die and even has her coffin ready outside the bedroom door. She invited me to come back and talk with her some more. I think that’s a good sign, don’t you?”
“Indeed I do,” replied Jonathan, smiling at his wife.
From then on, whenever the Goforths were visiting Hsiwen, they made a special point of going to see Mrs. Chang. At first she was not interested in discussing religious matters with them, but gradually her heart softened, until one day she too declared she wanted to become a Christian.
From that time on, the old woman completely changed. She owned a second house in town that she rented cheaply to the church so that they could start a school. Every Sunday she opened her courtyard and served tea to the women who wanted to meet for Bible study between church services. She even gave her coffin to the pastor, who for many years used it as a Bible and hymnbook stand.
Every time Jonathan came to preach in the church at Hsiwen, he saw the coffin and thought of old Mrs. Chang and how his wife’s artistic abilities had helped convince her that it was useless to worship a drawing on a piece of paper.
Chapter 13
New Directions
The years rolled by, and in the spring of 1907 Jonathan was asked to accompany Dr. MacKay, secretary of foreign missions for the Presbyterian Church in Canada, on a trip to Korea. The three-week trip was an eye-opening experience for Jonathan. Christian revival was spreading across Korea at the time, and many Christian schools, churches, and hospitals were being built and staffed by thousands of new converts. Jonathan had experienced good results during his nineteen years of missionary work in China, but nothing like what he was seeing in Korea.
On their way back to China, Dr. MacKay and Jonathan traveled through Manchuria. While there, they visited three mission stations, all of which Jonathan spoke at. He did not preach one of his prepared sermons but rather spoke about the revival and what he had seen in Korea. His enthusiasm was contagious, and when he had finished speaking, he was invited to return to the mission station to hold ten days of meetings. At the second station, the same invitation was extended, as well as at the third.
Jonathan had more than enough work to do in North Honan, but after receiving three identical invitations, he decided he had better think seriously about going back to Manchuria. He discussed the invitations with the Presbyterian Council in Honan province, and the council agreed to release him for a month in the fall. The response to the meetings in Manchuria was more than Jonathan could have hoped for. Everywhere he spoke, people began to weep and cry out to God to forgive their sins. Bandits knelt beside government officials and prayed for each other. Beggars and college students sat together all night discussing how the God of love had changed their lives.
Word of the success of the meetings spread like wildfire, and by the time Jonathan got back to make his report to the Presbyterian Council in Honan, the council had already heard. Over the next few weeks, letters began to pour in to the council from all over China. In the letters, other missionaries and church leaders pleaded with the council members to release Jonathan from his regular mission duties so that he could visit their mission station or church to share the same message he had shared in Manchuria.
By the spring of 1908, one year after Jonathan’s trip to Korea, the Presbyterian Council decided that Jonathan Goforth’s place was not just in the mission in Honan but was in the entire country. Jonathan was commissioned to hold meetings across China.
This new venture would involve many days of grueling travel to get to the various places where he was invited to speak. As a result, the Presbyterian Council decided it would be impossible for Rosalind and the children to accompany him, especially since Rosalind had given birth to two more children, Mary and Fred, following Constance’s death. Reluctantly, Jonathan accepted the decision, and arrangements were made for his family to return to Canada for an extended furlough.
A few days before Rosalind and the children were due to leave, Rosalind and Jonathan took a long walk together. When they were alone, Rosalind turned to Jonathan and asked him a serious question. “Suppose when I got back to Canada I was stricken with an incurable disease and had very little time left to live. If I cabled you to come to me, would you?” she asked.
Jonathan looked at his wife of twenty years. “Rosalind,” he replied, “you are asking me to make a decision about a situation that has not occurred and that I hope never will.”
“But,” his wife persisted, “would you come?”
Jonathan sighed deeply. He did not want to hurt his wife’s feelings, but he knew she would not give up until he answered her. He had been called to China, and he would not let anything, not even someone he loved as dearly as her, come between him and that call. He hesitated for a moment, trying to think of a gentle way to tell her this. Then it came to him. “Rosalind,” he began. “Suppose our country was at war with another and I was the commander of a very large and important unit. Would you think it right of me to desert my post even if I received a telegram that you were in the condition you suggested?”
He waited quietly for an answer. With tears streaming down her face, Rosalind looked up at him. “No,” she said quietly. “Your duty would lie with king and country.”
Jonathan reached for his wife’s hand and held it tightly. He was grateful she understood the path that lay ahead for both of them.
For the next year, Jonathan Goforth crisscrossed China. Everywhere he spoke, large numbers of Chinese people became Christians. He was often at the point of exhaustion because the large crowds that attended his meetings would not let him stop preaching. Sometimes a single meeting would go on for twelve hours or more, ending only when it became too dark to see the front of the room!
By 1909 it was long past time for Jonathan to go on furlough, so he returned to Canada to be reunited with his family. Following a joyful reunion, Jonathan spent the next ten months traveling around Canada with Rosalind and their six children. A number of churches welcomed him as he shared with them about the revival meetings in China and Manchuria. Many other churches, though, did not invite him to speak. They didn’t want to risk an all-day meeting breaking out in their orderly midst!
While it was good to be together in Canada, the Goforth family longed to be back in China. It was a great relief to them when they were finally given permission to return in June 1910. The World Missionary Conference was to be held in Edinburgh, Scotland, that month. Since Jonathan was chosen to represent the Canadian Presbyterian Church at it, the family would travel to China via Great Britain. After the conference in Scotland, Jonathan was invited to Spurgeon’s Tabernacle in London for a ten-day speaking engagement. He was also invited to speak at the huge Keswick Convention. Both of these events brought thousands of people to hear Jonathan speak. As he looked out on the faces of people eagerly listening to what he had to say, Jonathan felt a twinge of sadness that the British seemed more ready to listen to his message than people in his homeland.
The Goforth family finally arrived back in China in August 1910. Upon the family’s arrival, the Presbyterian Council decided to split Jonathan’s time between holding revival meetings across China and working in North Honan province. The plan, which required a great deal of responsibility, had one problem: Jonathan had no Chinese evangelists or preachers to work alongside him.
Over the years, Jonathan had trained fifteen Chinese men as evangelists, all of whom were busy at work in their own mission fields or were working with other missionaries. Jonathan didn’t have the heart to ask any of them to leave the good work they were doing and come back to work with him. Instead, he prayed and asked God to give him a new man to work alongside him. He did not immediately recognize the answer to his prayers when he saw the man. No one could blame him; there was hardly a less likely candidate for an evangelist than Su Chuangting.
In November a huge tent was set up in the center of Changte as part of a special evangelistic campaign. Jonathan preached there three times a day for twenty-nine days straight. Many people were converted during the campaign, and on the last night, over a thousand people were jammed into the tent.
As the final service started, Rosalind played the organ and eleven-year-old Wallace accompanied her on the violin. While they played, from his perch on the platform at the front, Jonathan watched as a rickshaw pulled up to the back of the tent and a well-dressed man climbed out. The man steadied himself against the wheel for a moment while he reached into his pocket to pay the driver. Jonathan was sure he had not seen this man before and hoped he was coming into the tent. That is, until the man turned around and began staggering down the center isle. Every eye turned to watch the disturbance as Su Chuangting fumbled his way to the very front row and plunked himself down.
Jonathan’s heart sank. The man was obviously very drunk. Even from six feet away Jonathan could smell the liquor on Su Chuangting’s breath. As the last lines of the hymn were sung, Jonathan prayed that the drunken visitor would not disrupt the service. He then stood and began to preach on the verse “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15).
As Jonathan preached about sin, Su Chuangting became very agitated. He muttered angrily to himself and kept rising to his feet as if he were going to walk out, but he didn’t. The service lasted a long time, and by the end of it, some of the effects of the alcohol on Su Chuangting had worn off. When Jonathan invited those who believed the message he had just preached to raise their hands, Su Chuangting’s hand shot into the air. Later that night, after the service was over, Su Chuangting asked Jonathan how he knew so much about him and the sins he had committed. “At first I was humiliated that you were telling everyone all the sins I had committed, but then when I heard that God would forgive me, I forgot about my humiliation and I wanted to know Him,” Su Chuangting said.
The following morning, right after breakfast, there was a knock at the door. When Jonathan answered it, Su Chuangting was standing there. He started talking before he was invited in. “Pastor,” he said excitedly. “My father is a noted Confucian scholar from one of the proudest families in the province. When I told him what I had done last night he flew into a rage. He began slapping my face, and then he ordered me out of the house. My wife spat on me and told me she no longer wanted to live with me, and when I went to my job as secretary of the electric-light company, I was told I had been dismissed.”
Jonathan wasn’t sure what to say to comfort the man. “I am so sorry…” he began.
“No, no,” interrupted Su Chuangting. “I am not here for pity. Something happened to me last night, and I must get to the bottom of it. You must take me with you everywhere you go! I want to learn the secret of how it is possible that last night as I prayed my whole past life seemed to drop off me like a cloak. Now I have no desire to drink or go with prostitutes or smoke tobacco or do any of the other things that bound me so strongly.” He grasped Jonathan’s hand. “I am going to follow you all over the world, even if I have to starve for it. I have to learn the secret of the power that has brought about this amazing change in me. The things I once hated I now love. During the Boxer Rebellion, I so hated you and all foreigners that if I could have gotten near you with a knife, I would have killed you. Now, somehow, I feel I would gladly die for you!”
