Jonathan Goforth
1859 - 1936
"I
love those that thunder out the Word. The Christian world is
in a dead sleep. Nothing but a loud voice can awake them out
of it."
Jonathan Goforth was born in Ontario, Canada in 1859. He
was reared in a Christian home, although he was not
converted until he was 18. He later testified that he had
been under so much conviction at age 10 that he would have
gladly been saved if someone had only told him how to accept
Christ.
While attending college, he was challenged to go to China
by reading Hudson Taylor’s book China’s Spiritual Need
and Claims.
With his young wife, Rosalind, Mr. Goforth went to China in
1888. He and his wife would have eleven children, five of
whom they buried on the field. Language studies proved very
difficult to him. At one point he was nearly at the point
of despair when, in answer to special prayers from their
home church, he began making rapid progress.
During the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900, Mr. Goforth
and his family repeatedly were miraculously spared by God
from the angry mobs. As “foreign devils,” their lives were
constantly at risk, and they had to return to Canada for a
year.
When they went back to China, God opened the floodgates of
blessing on their work. Where converts had come in ones and
twos, they now came in dozens and scores. Missionary
Goforth traveled across Northern China, Manchuria and Korea,
and revival followed everywhere he went.
Hundreds of native Christians were trained as evangelists
(and supported with Mr. Goforth’s personal money) and sent
out to win souls and start churches. When the Canadian
Mission Board suffered a financial setback, the Chinese
churches sent hundreds of dollars to Canada to help pay the
mission board’s bills!
For the last few years of his life, Jonathan Goforth was
blind due to detached retinas. But the work continued to
prosper. In his last full year on the field (1934) he had
nearly 1,000 adult converts baptized. In 1935 he and his
wife returned to Canada where he continued to travel and
speak in churches until his death in 1936.
* Photo provided by Stephen
Ross,
www.wholesomewords.org |
