with fervor of his desire to draw away from the business world and to spend more time with spiritual things. To his brother Milton he wrote: "It is time we were becom ing disentangled from the affairs of this life, and shaping up our matters so that the greatest glory possible to the Lord may result from our work, not as a business matter, but through the constrain ing love of Christ. There is nothing that will count in the way of build ing a man up and enlarging his soul like the study of the Scrip tures. You and I have been robbed of our birthright in this respect by reason of having so much business to encumber us. We must try to become disentangled." Now that the Institute was debt- free, Stewart wanted to make cer tain it would remain that way. He still believed that the bulk of the money to run the school must come from a wide number of in terested Christians. But he wanted to do all he could to insure extra income in the years to come. To carry out this desire he turned over to the school 4,000 shares of Union Oil stock and the major interest in the Western Machinery Company. Within a few years this latter benevolent act nearly proved fatal to the school. As early as December 1929, the board of directors began a serious study of how to curtail expenses. One of the first items they trained their sights upon was the Insti tute's radio station, KTBI. This sta tion founded in 1921, was one of the first in the nation. The direct ors felt it was best to sell the sta tion and buy radio time. Negotia tions were completed in late 1930 and KTBI became KFAC which
today is known as "The Music Station of Los Angeles." Early the next year, the board of directors authorized the Institute to go on the air with the "Pilgrims' Hour," conducted by the president of the board, Charles E. Fuller. The program was released over seven stations of the old Columbia Broad casting System: Spokane, Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, San Francisco, Fresno and Los Angeles. Due to financial difficulties, the program folded in May of the same year. Another drain on the dwindling funds of the Institute was its min istry in China. With the help of Dr. Frank Keller, who had been a missionary with the China Inland Mission, the Bible Institute founded the Hunan Bible Institute during the early twenties. Through the encouragement of T. C. Horton and Lyman Stewart, Milton Stewart underwrote most of the expense of building BIOLA's training center in China. Milton Stewart poured some $355,000 into getting the buildings erected and his wife gave another $139,000 to oper ate the school from 1922 to 1928. The 10-acre campus was located on the main arterial highway from Hankow to Canton, and mid way between the northern and southern sections of the city of Changsha. By the start of the de pression, BIOLA was contributing some 30 to 40 thousand dollars a year to the China work. Now the board decided this must be drasti cally curtailed. The summer school, correspond ence school, evening school, music department, library, Bible women, sailors' work, shop and book store were either stopped or trimmed as much as possible. Page 25
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