TH E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S /
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I Lived Seventy Miles . ★ %
★ ? For the past five years, as Superintendent of the Hunan Bible Institute, at Changsha, the China Department of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, Charles A . Roberts lived and worked under constant threat of i n v a s i o n — just seventy miles from the Japanese lines. (Mr. Roberts arrived in Los Angeles on July 4, 1943. His wife and children bad returned to America earlier.) Changsha, the capital of the province of Hunan, normally has a, population of three-quar ters of a million, and boasts a railroad, airfield, excellent wa terways and highways. Yhe broad ribbon of the Siang river, crowded with sampans, small steamers, and junks, flows past the city, on through the beau tiful countryside of red earth and green crops, and into the Tung T ’ing Lake, the center of China’s Rice Bowl. THREE TIMES IN THE PAST FIVE YEARS, Japanese troops have attempted to take Changsha. Three times they have occupied a part, but neyer the whole of the city, and three times they have been thrust back, leaving destruction in their wake. The Hunan Bible Institute is located just outside the east gate of the city, in beautiful buildings erected through the efforts of the Rev.. Frank A . Keller, M .D„ with the purpose of training men and women for the Lord’s work. At Changsha and in the surrounding dis tricts, t h e Biola Evangelistic Bands, a department of the In stitute, h a v e carried \on the work of evangelism for many years. They have gone with the gospel to p l a c e s where Christ had not been named. They have kept up this work in s p i t e of the nearness of the Japanese, difficulties of trans portation, soaring costs of liv ing, and d a n g e r s on every hand. T h e y are engaged in this all-important work today. ★
I had stood at the gate since the first distant roar of heavy guns, ad mitting the women and children, re gretfully refusing entrance to any men of military age, and watching, with a sore heart, as mother and son, husband and wife, or father and chil dren bade grave farewells. Four large, three-story dormitories had b e e n turned over to the refugees. Once stu dents had been housed there; now some two thousand strangers were taking possession, five and eight to a room, grateful for any shelter. Slowly the streets and gateway emp tied. I looked out to see closed shops and homes—everywhere t h e m u t e evidence of hasty evacuation. The same thing must be true inside the city—a city of cheaply built homes that had replaced the more solidly constructed buildings destroyed by the Chinese themselves in their "scorched earth policy,” in 1938, when the Jap anese had made their first drive to ward Changsha.
HE MASSIVE gates to the Hu nan Bible Institute had been A flung wide open to admit the crowd of refugees seeking shelter from thè approaching horde of Jap anese troops. Elderly wrinkled grand mothers hobbled on tiny bound feet through the gate and clung tightly to the hands of small grandchildren whose faces mirrored anxious fear. Here and there a younger woman car ried hastily bundled possessions in one arm and a baby in the other. Children held tightly to precious bun dles of clothing. Old men with carry ing poles brought in boxes and rolls of bedding; others wished a place for their pigs and chickèns, and one dairy man asked shelter for twenty cows! It was a scene that had been repeated in many other cities during the China Incident, a scene that wrung one’s heart with pity. It was September, 1941, and an American compound could still offer some protection to Chinese women and children.
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W rinkled O ld Men Came Asking
Shelter for Themselves and Earthly Possessions
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Photo by Ewing Galloway
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