THE TIDE CARRIES THE GOSPEL
The account of a unique missionary method
By George Phillips
I N April 1940 the Lord inspired me to spread the gospel of His grace by the use of tide bottles—the kind employed in making tide and wind charts for ships. To do this, I collected clear whiskey bottles in all shapes and sizes from city dumps, rooming houses, garbage cans, streets and alleys. These I cleaned of their filth and converted to a worthy purpose in much the same- way that the Lord had cleansed my heart and life from sin and converted me to the task of salvaging lost souls for Him. Bottles which had been lying empty and void took the wonderful news of sal vation to many a poor, lost, dying derelict. In the beginning I took these bottles by the sackful and tossed them into the ocean, for I had seen the tide moving the driftwood along and I knew that it would carry these bottles as well. But I knew nothing of tides, whether they were in or out, but later I made it my business to learn the salt water movements and consequently I launched my bottles
much more wisely. Each of the bottles contained five or six gospel tracts and my return address on a slip of paper, rolled in cellophane around a stick. We called them “ bombs” because of their appearance and also because we hoped the truth of God’s Word would explode in the hearts of those who read them. It was tedious work, but after I had been in the work a year the Lord enabled me to invent a roller which rolled and sealed in cellophane the tracts and return card in one oper ation. I loaded the bottles with sufficient sand so that they would be carried from one tide to another and not blown ashore; they could be seen about one inch above the water and thus could be easily picked up. Soon I was obliged to buy a printing press to print the return cards, and as a result of my enclosing them, this work became known all over the world, and was written up in many magazines, newspapers, Sunday school publications, pamphlets and folders. We have received inquiries about it in many languages. Through this publicity others have be come interested enough to start a similar work, on a smaller scale, and we are now the headquarters for many a co-worker in distant parts, such as Belfast, Ireland; Berlin, Germany; Hawaii, Japan, and dozens of other places. Our work began on Puget Sound and has been extended along the Coast into Alaskan waters.' Throughout World War II we reached soldiers on the intervening islands. Thousands of tracts were placed in the Pacific Northwest too, during the war; the Lord supplied all the gasoline I needed. I also sent hundreds of rolls to people who wanted to give tracts to the soldiers going through towns on the trains. What we call our World-Wide Missionary Effort really began in 1941. Walking along the water front near Old Town in Tacoma, I saw a large ship at anchor. I secured the skip per’s permission to place bottles on his ship, The Oremar, but received no response from them. Next I put some bottles on the Susan Luckenbach en route to Shanghai, China, from which I received two returns. From that time on I have used many ships to take the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth, and have had answers from many parts of the world. We are certain many of the bottles landed on Russian shores along the Siberian coast during the war but of course we received no return cards from there. During the war I had letters from many a soldier on distant shores, thanking me for the gospel tracts. Once when our men were going through the jungles of New Guinea, they found on the beach some of our bottles which a ship had thrown off. A native handed a bottle to one of our soldiers, thinking they contained important papers. They did! Thou sands of bottles have thus gone to every part of the world. I keep no count but the numbers are large. In addition to ships, we have used rivers, lakes, trains, planes, buses and people to carry the message.
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