SOME ON E H AD PRAYED The day was long, the burden I had borne Seemed heavier than I could longer bear. And then it lifted— but I did not know Some one had knelt in prayer. Had taken me to God that very hour, And asked the easing of the load, and He, In infinite compassion, had stooped down And taken it from me. W e cannot tell how often as we pray For some bewildered one, hurt and distressed, The answer comes— but many times those hearts Find sudden peace and rest. , Some one had prayed, and Faith, a reaching hand, Took hold of God, and brought Him down that day So many, many hearts have need of prayer— Oh, let us pray. — Anon The story of Dr. Louis Talbot’s activities in Los Angeles makes fiction tame. He found a church of 1,200 discouraged members. He leaves it with 3,500 and the future bright. He came to a debt of over a million dollars. He leaves the church free from debt and thousands of dollars raised on new promo tional enterprises. He has extended the missionary program to where literally hundreds of American missionaries and native workers belt the globe, supported by this great church. It is absolutely true that the sun never sets on the missionary activities of the Church of the Open Door. He came to 300 students in the Bible Institute. Now there are more than a thousand. His ministry over the air has been phenomenal. His daily verse by verse exposition of Scripture is heard by hundreds of thousands over two of the largest radio networks in the West. In addition, he has had a remarkable writing ministry, producing ten full-length books on Scriptural sub jects, as well as dozens of pamphlets and articles; his book, God’s Plan of the Ages, has become a textbook in many schools. Few men in this generation have achieved success as has Dr. Talbot. Some characteristics cling to him. He is persistent. He has tremendous faith. He is absolutely loyal to the Book from which he draws his message: He is a tireless worker. He has a more than natural ability to understand and inter pret the Scriptures. He knows how to give all he has and hold back nothing. He knows and loves Jesus Christ. He has taken literally the Bible exhortation, “ Search the Scriptures.” The mother who prayed her boy from the liquor business into the front ranks of God’s marching hosts did not live to see him reach his zenith. But she did live to see him a success in the work of her Christ. Then she contentedly died. But before she died, she saw her husband and every child in her large family, save one, accept Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. Five years after her. triumphant death, that one un saved boy was gloriously converted. The brewer and his family were safe inside the fold. So Louis Talbot thought of his frail mother and then turned to the Scripture that read, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved! and thy house.” —Reprinted from The Methodist Challenge by permission of the author. T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S M Y PERSONAL IMPRESSION OF DR. TALBOT (Continued from Page 7)
A typical AU Nations Evangelistic Fellowship Released Time Bible Class v * t children of the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. New York City. Twenty-six of these classes are being conducted during the present school term. A total of approximately fifteen hundred young people are being reached with the Gospel every week through this medium. To acquaint refugees with the gospel, as well as to conserve the work accomplished among the youth in the summer camps, refugees are advised to attend the Newcomer’s Fellowship of New York’s Second Presbyterian Church, where sociability and Bible study headline the program. The leader of this work is Dr. F. J. Forell, himself a refugee from Germany where he held the highest ecclesiastical post in Silesia, and where he was officially known as “ Social Pastor of Silesia and Secretary of the Board of Home Missions.” A personal friend of Martin Niemoller, descended from many generations of Lutheran ministers, Mr. Forell and his wife escaped from Germany and found themselves in separate camps. Permitted to come to America if. invited by some church, he became Assistant Pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church of New York in 1941 where he now works among refugees and serves as Director of Evangelism for the Presbyterian Church of New York. He has baptized well over 100 refugees in New York. Though the Fellowship will expand its fifteen-year-old work of reaching orphans and underprivileged of Brooklyn’s slums, it intends to continue to evangelize refugees, especially since Congress recently voted to admit thousands of displaced persons. Says the Fellowship: “ These children have been torn from their loved ones and homes, to come to what is known through out the world as a Christian country. Here is a marvelous missionary opportunity and the challenge to live up to our Christianity.” With much of Europe virtually inaccessible to the gospel, these refugees parked on our very doorsteps constitute a mis sion field of key importance. For not only can they be won to Christ, but they can be trained for service, and then prayed out to their homelands as missionaries to their own people. For fifteen years weekly classes have been held for various groups in Brooklyn’s slums. Present average attendance total over 1,000. These meet in twenty released-time Bible classes, and twenty-five after-school classes. One Sunday School draws over 100 colored children who attend no other church, a Sunday evening service for mothers of the children, and six adult classes. Some meetings are restricted to Jewish people only. One is designed for men. The latest class is com posed of seventeen gypsies. The number of workers handling these activities, many of them volunteers, totals seventy. But probably the most intriguing of the Fellowship’s min istries is its six-year-old refugee work centering around the hundreds of war-victimized boys and girls, uprooted from their homelands and left on America’s doorstep, chiefly those seek ing refuge in the New York City area, port of entry for 40,000 displaced persons annually. The interest and prayers of God’s people are earnestly solicited for the All Nations Evangelistic Fellowship. Page Ten
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