Please turn your cassette over at this point.
They're going to fail as I nearly did,
unless you do.
I waited and I waited and then decided
that perhaps I was wrong.
Maybe God didn't want me to have a
husband.
Well, if he didn't want me to, then
that was it.
But he wouldn't leave me alone.
He was a God of love.
And he knew that I longed for fellowship
and companionship.
I had prayed for fellow workers.
And so into the next year, I did.
And I waited and I prayed in the
same way for that fine girl, who of
course, as you know, never came.
I wonder if she should have come.
Young men, young women, in the name of
Jesus Christ, I challenge you, everyone.
What are you doing for Jesus Christ?
Not what you're doing for your career, or
yourself, or even your mother and father, but
for Jesus Christ.
If you will bring into my storehouse your
completed tithe, says God, then you can prove
me and you see what I will do.
But you haven't got your completed tithe in,
so you haven't got any blessing.
I do believe somebody should have come into
that path of fellowship.
Because you see, it was I who watched.
The people who I couldn't get round to,
die without Jesus Christ.
Into that next year, when I realized that
probably no one was coming, I'm afraid I
just went lower and lower and lower.
And tonight, friend, may I remind you that
if you have a missionary, or if you
know of that native worker, or if you
don't, then find one.
Now, you should be praying every day.
They are in the forefront of the battle,
and they need upholding and caring.
If you will bring into my storehouse your
completed tithe for what purpose?
That my family may be upheld and kept.
They're not asking for your money.
They're asking for your upholding care and your
love.
And so one day, they walked up the
city of Yontong, a grim, hard-hearted woman.
Is this Clarice Edwards?
Yes.
She's not preaching about a God of love,
because there isn't one.
Love?
You're talking about love?
That's the God who picks you up and
pulls you out and puts you down in
the middle of China and proceeds to forget
all about you.
He doesn't care that you're so lonely that
you ache or what happens to you or
anything.
He only, well, that's all it is to
it.
And, well, here we are.
Lord, if you want a grumbly, crotchety old
maid, well, here she is.
I'll serve you, but you wait and see
what you get.
My heart was filled with my own self
-pity, my own self-righteousness, my own pride,
my own ideas.
Myself.
Friend, are you there?
Are you there?
I meet them every day in the London
tube, on the buses, in the trains.
The miserablest lot you could ever meet.
They don't care about anybody but me and
mine and now us and ours.
Got the worst headache in the world, haven't
you?
Well, I'm telling you, you haven't.
God does not demand.
God does not push.
God does not pull.
He says, if you will bring.
And when that tide goes in, it is
in God's hands and He will do with
you as He so desires in such a
wonderful and loving way that you will find
you are usable wherever He puts you.
I walked up the city street and sitting
on the side of the road was an
ordinary mountain woman leaning against her knee was
a very dirty, miserable-looking little child.
I discovered she was there to sell it.
I bought it.
I didn't buy the child, as you now
know, because I loved children, because I didn't.
Or because I pitied it, because I didn't.
Or because I wanted it, because I didn't.
I wanted my own baby.
And my house at that moment was filled
with my own self-pity and my own
ideas.
I bought it because I truly believed that
Jesus Christ asked me to.
As I stood on that busy city street
it was as if somebody brushed past me
and a voice somewhere behind me was saying,
Bite, bite me.
I haven't any money.
Oh yes you have.
And I suddenly remembered that in my pocket
there lay a few Chinese coppers.
Do you mean to say that you want
me to buy this with my own money?
Because you see Gary, you can only buy
a body, but I can save its soul.
Do you know how I earned this money?
Because this is my wages, you know.
See that mountain?
I climbed up that mountain almost on my
hands and knees because it is too steep
for an animal to climb up.
When I got to the top of that
mountain I called those village people together and
I shouted myself hoarse.
That's my job.
And I came down here to receive my
wages.
Yes, that's the voice.
I know.
I know exactly how you feel.
You see guys, one day I too climbed
the mountain and I too perspired all over
climbing it.
When I got to the top of the
mountain I didn't shout.
In fact, I never even opened my mouth.
I allowed those men to do exactly what
they liked with me and they nailed me
to a cross.
Do you know what for?
Because guys, I hadn't any money.
In fact, I hadn't anything else to give.
So I gave myself.
My warm life's black.
I was thirty-three and I woke.
I was thirty-three.
Friend, have you ever been to Calvary?
Oh, not a place.
Can you close your eyes and know that
God through the power of His Holy Spirit
will give you a vision of what Calvary
cost the Son of the Living God?
Blood and sweat and tears.
Murder.
Our most horrible death.
And it was for you?
I did.
I'm never going to Jerusalem or Bethlehem.
I don't need to.
I know it all.
All I know is He bought.
And I just realized that all I could
do was to hand myself body, soul and
spirit over to Him.
I bought the child.
It was the first act of what was
going to be the complete submission of myself
to Him.
I never dreamed that I was buying my
first daughter, a little girl who was going
to come into my life and mean so
much.
From her there came one by one the
others, all in different ways, all under different
circumstances, all so different in their temperaments and
characteristics.
But they came.
And I praised God for them.
He kept us.
He fed us.
He clothed us.
We all lived in a pickled mess in
the inn.
But we were very happy.
And by the time the war came I
had 40 children.
And so one day looking down and on
this sort of all scrambling mess below, I
said, Oh Lord, I don't think I can
bear anymore.
I believe 40 are a good round number
for one woman and please don't send any
more.
But you know God doesn't always answer your
prayer as you expect.
That was the year the war began.
And down being pushed in front of the
ever advancing Japanese enemy came hundreds and thousands
of lonely pathetic refugees.
And when they had passed through our little
place there were always a few children left
behind.
So the family grew and grew until there
were over 80.
80 of us during those years ran around
the mountains.
He protected us.
He kept us.
He fed us.
And then we made a final getaway, came
over the Yellow River where he worked miracles
for us to make a new life for
ourselves in the province next door, Shenzhen.
I watched the older ones go away to
join the army, the navy or the air
force.
I watched the girls go away to join
Red Cross units and to be put into
hospitals for wounded soldiers.
And for wounded refugees.
And each time I broke my heart I
praised God for them and handed them over
to him.
He'd given to me to love and to
bring up.
And I prayed and longed that they should
go out to be the testimony and the
witness which I longed to be in the
place where they were going.
I don't know what became of lots of
them.
War separates.
War kills.
War hurts.
War breaks your heart.
But we kept the smaller ones of us
together as long as possible.
And then, as you know, when the first
enemy retreated, so a second, more wicked, more
evil enemy swept in.
And what we had not lost under the
first enemy, we now lost under the second.
The Japanese never took away our Bibles.
The Communists did.
The Japanese did not do what the Communists
did.
And we watched with aching, breaking hearts this
evil, horrible thing take bit by bit everything
we possessed.
Then tonight I don't know you.
I don't know your thoughts.
I don't know that you love the Lord
Jesus or that you know him as your
savior.
But I challenge you if you have any
idea that Communism has a good point.
It came from hell and if there's any
good in the devil then there's good in
Communism because that's its master.
I hate it with every breath I breathe
because it is my Lord's greatest enemy.
It has killed, it has murdered, it has
suppressed more love, more people than any other
thought or religion has ever done since the
world began.
And all that amazes me is that you
can sit and listen and swallow the bait
that they're throwing out on you.
Great Britain, I challenge you to give to
God your completed tithe and get the blessings
because if you don't, you know what's going
to land in?
Something that you least expect.
Now don't say nobody's ever warned you and
don't go around saying it cannot come here.
That's what we said.
I sat in a lovely little village on
the side of the mountain and said, oh
no, it couldn't come here.
But I watched that village disappear bit by
bit, bit by bit, man, woman and child.
If you haven't got the blessing, why?
Because you have not given to God.
We met, the family and I, for the
last time in a field outside the city
of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan.
I had decided it was time to go.
I brought danger on everybody who looked on
me or even spoke to me because although
I held a Chinese passport and was Chinese
in my thoughts, in my love, in my
language, in my clothes and in everything but
my face, I still had a foreign face.
I came out.
I would willingly have died for China but
God didn't ask death.
He asked that I live.
I came to England and then I turned
my face back.
I knew that I could not go again
to the place that had been my home
in North China.
It was closed.
It was behind an iron curtain.
And so I asked the Lord where he
would have me go.
I set off and I wandered around the
east and into the far east.
Had some of the most amazing experiences going
into South Africa, Ceylon, Malaya and all around
those fields looking into every face.
There might be my son.
I might find my daughter.
I might find a lonely Chinese.
I did.
In every place.
I found them there, not my sons and
daughters in every place but Chinese who were
lonely, who were refugees, who were longing for
freedom.
God gave us blessings but there was no
witness in my heart for staying in any
of these places until I arrived in Hong
Kong.
And here the whole place was absolutely chock
-a-block full of refugees.
They literally were there in their hundreds.
Every place where you could put a bus
there was one.
Every shop doorway, all the pavements down the
sides of the roads, even down the middle
of the road there were families living.
And I who knew what it felt like
to be a refugee felt this is what
God has sent me for.
I will work among refugees.
And so I took a little room and
I sort of set my little house in
it as it were and I prayed and
expected that God would show me what to
do.
Well He did, because He does.
I didn't know in those early days how
to begin.
I wandered among up and down the road,
sitting beside those heart-breaking families, nursing some
of their dirty babies.
I wasn't really doing anything.
I didn't know how to do it.
And then a miracle happened.
I met one day in the street one
of my own daughters.
I thought he was dead.
He thought I was dead.
And now, right there, in the middle of
all these great crowds of people, we met.
And we joined up.
This has been a most wonderful partnership, my
son Michael and I.
I praise God for him for all he
has done, all he means to me and
all I know he means to God.
We opened right there in Kowloon what is
now the Hope Mission.
It was just then an empty shop.
There was nothing in it.
And for the first couple of months everybody
who came in just either leaned against the
wall or stood up, but they crowded in.
God blessed us from the very moment that
we stepped into the place.
And I praise God for all he has
done in that little place.
We have the usual activities that go on.
Every night there are these different groups and
they come for their prayer meeting or their
Bible study or their band practice.
They're terribly in a hurry.
Mostly they're young people who come out leaving
all their families behind.
They're lonely.
But here they find fellowship.
This is not only their spiritual home but
they will tell you it's their home.
So that although they don't actually sleep there
they count it as their home.
We now have in Hong Kong four rooftop
schools.
If you have seen on television those great
high resettlement buildings and you know what happens
you rent a rooftop and you put around
it a fence or what I call chicken
wire and you build a little lean-to
in the middle and you open your school.
The children live in the building believe they
just come up to the rooftop.
Every resettlement building holds one thousand families.
We have four.
The opportunity is wonderful.
And if you see them your heart just
sings with effect that they are not only
learning to read and write and understand the
things of the world but they are learning
of Jesus Christ.
We last year opened what we call a
poor school which is for the children of
beggars.
These have no status, no name they can't
take jobs because they have no pass and
so they are beggars.
Their children will be beggars unless something is
done.
Well they are not going to be beggars
if we can help it and so with
others of like mind these poor schools have
been opened we have won.
It was wonderful to go out there just
a little while ago and have their dirty
little hands put on you and a little
dirty face looking up and saying Grandma, oh
Grandma, are you my Grandma?
Yes dear, I am your Grandma.
Oh how wonderful to have a Grandma but
isn't it wonderful to have a father?
Oh yes, but he is up above you
know and they in their simple way are
proving the love of Jesus Christ.
I did not remain in Hong Kong I,
because I again believed that I should go
one step further went to the island of
Formosa.
Now again I didn't know where I was
going I only believed that that was what
I should do and when I got on
to the island I just didn't know again
where to start but I arrived when the
island was going through a wonderful time of
shall I say not actually spiritual revivals but
revivals of all kinds.
All sorts of reforms were going on they
were unifying the language land reform, schools were
being built institutions opened so that things that
never could and I do not think ever
will happen on the mainland of China are
really happening in Formosa and I just as
it were went down into the middle of
it and had a most wonderful time and
while I was having this time of student
retreats revival meetings, conferences, conventions which I had
sort of come into because when I had
come out of Shanxi into Shanxi and discovered
that our mountain dialect would not be understood
down there on the plains I had learned
Northern Mandarin and oh how grateful I am
to God for letting me learn it while
I was still anyway younger than I am
now and it was all ready to go
into in Formosa where it is now the
official language and imagine I arrived speaking the
official language to me it was just overwhelmingly
wonderful and then right in the midst of
all this busyness God as it were put
a full stop I went home one night
to the little room that I was living
in to discover that somebody had already been
in it they had not stolen anything but
they had left right there in the wash
bowl which was on a little chair inside
the room a newborn baby and I picked
up the bowl with the baby in it
and I said oh no Lord there is
some mistake here now I do not want
a newborn baby and you know that I
have nothing to feed it on close it
in or any time to look after it
and also may I remind you that mothers
are young I am well over 50 but
there is no answer from heaven at all
just as if God was there but as
I was standing with the bowl with the
baby in my hands it was just as
if I could see myself all those years
ago standing in the kitchen of my own
home dear Lord Jesus I promise I will
never again ask anyone to do something that
I believe you are asking me the person
God is able to do so I took
the baby God worked more miracles for that
baby in its first few days than he
has worked for you and me in all
our lives so it lived but before long
there were other babies people got the idea
that I loved babies and so every time
I came home well I knew what was
going to happen and now somebody told me
that outside in a very lovely place from
our city on the side of the mountain
there was an old hotel I took it,
rented it the Gladys Earwood Children's Home it
has been filled up to last year with
children of all kinds, all sorts and all
conditions orphans of all sorts lonely, pathetic, lost,
abandoned babies God blessed in a very wonderful
and mighty way and then four years ago
I came to a very important time in
my life I had my 60th birthday very
important in China and of course there were
great celebrations and all the important people you
see gave me honours and so forth but
at the end of that week a nice
family arrived now the family is rather large
and they filled everywhere in fact they swamped
the hotel and they were in everybody's house
and so forth because you see the family
have grown up and married and then they
have got children and so they go on
and on you see and there they all
were and on this night after all the
grandchildren had paid their honours and everything are
just the family my sons and my daughters
and my eldest son gave a speech he
is an officer in our Chinese Air Force
and a very very fine Christian in that
force and now our honourable mother has got
to the honourable age of 60 and so
we the family have decided that it is
time that she had a rest she has
spent all her life and looking after such
as us who were just little bundles of
nothing that she picked up on the side
of the road and has loved and cared
for and then of course you know the
usual all sorts of things that would go
on and so now we have decided and
we have got a little house and we
have even sent outside and bought a bed
we don't have beds in Formosa as you
know and so we are expecting that our
mother will now take her rest and sleep
every night and all night on the honourable
bed well I thought this was a very
wonderful idea and I went and took up
my residence in the little house quite small
but it is very nice and I slept
very comfortably on the honourable bed for one
whole month at the end of that month
one of those very boys had been doing
accounts of the orphanage with me on his
way out very late at night to go
back to the orphanage up the hill his
foot kicked against what he thought was a
bundle of rubbish just outside my door he
picked it up he was on his way
up the street to put it in to
the bin which is there for the purpose
when he thought he felt it move he
was very annoyed that somebody would tie up
a little dog or a cat and leave
it on our doorstep he brought it back
but when it was opened it was neither
cat or dog but a baby I believe
the dirtiest baby we have ever had the
sickest baby I have ever had anyway it
just breathed I decided that to wash it
would kill it so I took it to
the kitchen I rubbed it all over with
cooking oil wrapped it in a towel and
took it to bed with me decided that
in the night I would feel beside me
a little cold lump all I would have
to do would be put it out onto
the floor and well, it would have died
I would have done my best anyway but
I slept all night and in the morning
it was still alive it lived all that
week lived into the next week into the
third week and now I woke up well,
wasn't it going to die?
why didn't it die?
I didn't know because it didn't seem to
move much it didn't cry or anything it
just didn't die and so I just got
hold of two boys from the orphanage and
I said, now listen you go straight down
to the police because everybody but the people
who should know know about the baby the
neighbours had all been in the family had
all been in even some important people from
the government had been in but the police
didn't know and they ought to know and
so I said, well go and report it
to the police and on the way back
you better drop into the registry place and
just register it you can think up a
name on your way it's going to die
anyway so why, why, what name you give
it?
imagine my amazement when they came back with
the paper with the name of the baby
on it to find they had christened it
or shall I say registered it as Ai
Chi Guang now Ai Chi Guang literally means
the first of a new A-World family
well Ai Chi Guang was just a bundle
in a bed for nearly one year didn't
do anything just was there just breathing, whether
he knew anything understood anything we didn't know
there was no voice there was no nothing
of what we would call sense at all
and I nearly broke my heart and it
turned to Christmas and our babies were so
lovely and we were going to have such
a wonderful Christmas and I stood looking at
them and they were all gurgling at the
Christmas tree and the little silver paper things
we'd saved to hang on, you know and
then I went home to my little house
to Chi Guang who maybe would never know
a Christmas tree would never know that Jesus
had ever come or that he'd ever die
and I just picked him up and I
said oh Lord I do not believe that
this is your will surely you can't just
expect a little breath to go on in
a body like this please will you answer
my prayer I will never ask you for
anything again if you don't want me to
but would you take him back to heaven
or would you heal him and God healed
him here tonight is Ai Chi Guang he's
been naughty he's even taken his clothes off
in the book and to you who have
anything to do with him or seen him
you know very well that when God heals
he really heals because here he is there
are no spots on him let me tell
you we have been here just over four
months and he's learned enough English to carry
on quite comfortably without me and get lots
of things that I don't know anything about
we come back to the beginning if you
will bring into my storehouse your completed tie
that my family may be sustained then you
can prove me and you see what I'll
do I'll open windows of heaven for you
I'll pour out blessing and friend he has
we have in this new family 26 and
then to climax the whole thing just two
years ago God sent to me my fellow
worker and my heart was filled with a
tremendous joy and I thought of all the
lonely years in Shanxi when I had longed
and pleaded first for the husband and then
for the fellow worker and they had neither
of them came and I felt this is
worth waiting for here was somebody who was
going to sit in in a most wonderful
way and I praise God for keeping me
waiting and then sending to me dear Kathleen
who although she had never nursed a baby
knew nothing about orphanages and didn't know anything
about the mission field but who certainly loves
the Lord and has fitted in in a
way which to me has been literally amazing
I've left her there with those babies and
my heart is absolutely at peace about them
and her and all that is connected with
the work that doesn't belong to me but
to God and so tonight friend as we
have thought of all these various things that
I in a very simple way have tried
to fit together to not just prove how
wonderful God is but to prove what you
can get for yourself if only you would
give Him your completed task I wonder why
people don't tonight would you let God speak
to you would you allow Him to come
right up close and in your ear challenge
your heart because I truly believe that there
are many of us here whom God wants
to teach how to pray I also believe
that there are many who should be doing
at least something for Him maybe there are
those who should be giving and there are
certainly those who should be giving what you
give I don't know nothing to do with
me but it just isn't mine it's yourself
if you will bring into my storehouse your
completed task that my family may be sustained
and safe then says the great over and
above all one Jehovah who controls the house
I will open the windows of heaven for
you and you'll get so many blessings you
can't use them up because I will just
keep on pouring them out oh aren't we
miserable tonight as we bow our heads in
a word of prayer shall we ask God
what He is going to ask of us
would you be willing mothers if God asks
you for your son or your daughter would
you be willing young men young women if
God asks you to go would you go
or have you some reserve if you're in
a particular place that you can't you have
to go where He puts you that jar
of pickles in your pantry is put there
mother's hand wants it to be put and
in the same way you in God's storehouse
are in the hand of God to be
put down in the place that He knows
and only He knows you are going to
be useful in God did not send me
to Africa He knew I wouldn't be any
good in Africa He didn't send me into
the slums of London He knew I wouldn't
be any good He sent me into the
middle of China because He knew I'd sit
in there and I believe that in this
way He does so with each one of
us if we are not in the way
of His blessings then would you like to
go home and see why and how you
can get back and get those blessings friends
you live in the miserablest place on earth
Great Britain you're the biggest lot of grumblers
there is and you've got nothing to grumble
about may God challenge you do you realize
how many hungry people there are in India
tonight have you ever been hungry do you
realize how many people still live in refugee
camps have you ever lived in a refugee
camp do you know how many people live
under the arm hand of communism have you
ever lived under the arm hand of communism
have you ever lived through an earthquake like
Turkey is right now do you know anything
about a typhoon do you know anything about
an enemy soldier standing in front of you
and you're a woman do you of course
you don't do you think you know anything
no you don't know sorrow you don't know
suffering may God bless your hearts and through
those breaking hearts pour His love friends tonight
there is one way to get into Russia
shall I tell it to you prayer God
sent Holy Spirit prayer there is one way
to save a child in China tonight on
your knees with believing Holy Spirit prayer may
God teach it to you there is going
to come a day friend when you stand
before God's judgment throne and He's going to
say what have you got must I go
an empty handed just to meet my Savior's
home you got anything He doesn't want your
hat or your pie or your car or
your land He wants you and the souls
which you should be catching for Him if
you were brave can you hear the sobbing
of God leaning out of that wonderful glorious
heaven oh if only they would give to
me something to use that my family that
is dying without me might know of my
love God has given to you the privilege
of living in freedom of being able to
read this book when and where and how
you like of praying anywhere how and when
you like He hasn't given this privilege to
millions no man in Russia tonight or China
tonight can pray where and how he likes
He lives under the hand of the devil
as we pray would you let God deal
with you as He had to deal with
me friend I have not done what I
wanted to I have not eaten what I
wanted or worn what I would have chosen
I have not lived in a house that
I would have ever looked at twice I
longed as I've told you for a husband
and baby and security and love and He
didn't give it He left me alone for
17 years with one book a Chinese Bible
that's all I know and no other I
don't know anything about your latest novels, pictures,
theatres I live in a rather out of
dated world and I suppose you say well
it's awful miserable isn't it friend I've been
one of the happiest women that have ever
stepped inside I've had a great family of
someone else's children who I've loved with a
great love because Jesus Christ loved me and
who I am now receiving love back from
I have a wonderful family and they are
now going into the places that I will
never go to they are doing things that
I can never do because that's what God
promised the heavens opening and the blessings tumbling
out shall we pray dear father accept what
we are now going to give to thee
something that is precious something that we've kept
that we are now going to hand over
our pride our jealousy our self centredness our
prayerlessness our silly little empty nothing all the
things we've got ourselves tied up in oh
lord give us freedom freedom in thee that
you might be able to pick us up
and put us down and use us when
and where and how you like that someone
might know how much you love them we
pray right now not only for ourselves but
for those whom we should be upholding and
keeping those lonely missionaries sick frazzled tired of
the heat or the cold surrounded by hedonism
superstition cruelty and sin oh god we get
in yet we ask thee that you would
teach us how to pray for the men
in Russia the children in China people behind
iron curtains behind war oh god give us
visions make us to dream dreams that we
may know something of Calgary what it cost
and a lost soul that we may learn
not only how to pray but how to
do how to be how to go and
how to give