Friday, November 15, 2024

*** This is a rough transcript of today’s show *** 

It is the 15th of November 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

From the battlefields of the American Civil War yesterday to the First World War and Egypt today, but to get there by way of church history, we need to ask a question about a particular genre of Christian literature: the devotional.  

It comes from the noun “devotion” and refers to religious dedication. And “devotional literature” is as old as the Scriptures, and we’ve had it as long as we’ve had Christians who have sought to learn from others about the nature of the Christian life.

But you know what I mean when I say “devotional”- they’re often on the spinny racks at the airport bookshop. They tend to be divided into short, digestible truths, often to be read daily as a bible companion. EVERY tradition has its own. The fine folks at the Lutheran Free College sent me a copy of their “Luther for the Busy Man” (also good for women and children).  

And what might you think is the best-selling, most popular English devotional of all time? What text has been, perhaps, the most constant companion of daily Bible readers in the last century?

 If you haven’t read it, or him, you probably have seen the book somewhere, “My Utmost for His Highest” by Oswald Chambers. The book was published 97 years ago, but Chambers died on this day in 1917, 107 years ago- and there is a story there.

Chambers was born in Aberdeen in 1874 to Hannah and Clarence Chambers. Clarence, a Baptist minister, would move the family to Perth and then to London.

At the age of 15, he was taken by his father to hear Charles Spurgeon preach; on the way home, he told his father that he would have gone forward were there an altar call. His father explained that he could come to Jesus right there, under the street lamp, and the two prayed together.

It was in London that Oswald’s penchant for art was realized and he earned a scholarship to what is today the Royal College of Art. Friends and family suggested the ministry to him, but he said he’d have to be “grabbed by the scruff and thrown into the ministry”. Be careful what you wish for.

His freelance artwork dried up, and he thought he had no future. That, and a personal crisis, led him to transfer from the University of Edinburgh to a small bible college in Dunoon, Scotland. He would stay from the time he was 22 to 31, first as a student and then as a teacher and administrator.  

He would come to America to “God’s Bible School” in Cincinnati and then to Tokyo to a Bible school there were his interest in missions was piqued.

Back in the UK he travelled and spoke on behalf of the League of Prayer and in 1910 married Gertrude Hobbs. He called her “biddy,” as in B.D. short for “beloved disciple,” and she would be his partner in ministry. Their honeymoon was spent in the United States preaching amongst the Holiness churches (Chambers could be considered in the Wesleyan and mildly Charismatic- Pre-Pentecostal).

That same year, his dream of opening a Bible school was realized when he was given a 19-room estate outside of London for that purpose. Chambers taught daily, preached on the weekends, taught evening classes in London, and taught as many as 600 students through correspondence. He and Biddy welcomed their only child, Kathleen, and all seemed sorted- until 1914 and the outbreak of WWI.

Oswald volunteered for the YMCA and was in Egypt by October of 1915, with the family joining that December. There, Chambers would suffer from appendicitis but refused to take a bed for soldiers. By the time it became dire, it was too late and Chambers died, having published nothing on this day in 1917. But Biddy, who was a professional stenographer, had taken notes from his sermons and talks. A wife of a soldier suggested she send the men an old sermon, and from this, she began sending edited sermons to as many as 10,000 troops a month.

From this, she edited Oswald’s works into 250-500-word observations and exhortations, which became “My Utmost for His Highest,” a simple devotional that sold over 13 million copies and was translated into almost 100 languages. Today, we remember the man who died before he saw the fruit of his life work—Oswald Chambers was 43 years old.

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary and a good word from Colossians 2:

 9 For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, 10 and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. 11 In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, 12 having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.

13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 15th of November 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man whose Psalty show is in the works! He is  Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man remembering Randy Savage, the Macho Man who would have been 72 today- I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.