Olympic champion and co-focus of the Academy Award winning 1981 film Chariots Of Fire Eric Liddell... was born both in China as the son of missionaries and later schooled in England. He pursued athletics in the form of rugby and running and did both with excellence. You're familiar with his Olympic story I'm sure....He refused to run the 100 meters because the trial heats were on the Lord's Day. Instead he ran the 400 meters and set a world's record in winning the gold. With the Olympics over he resumed what he believed to be God's calling him as a missionary to China.
He married Florence MacKenzie in China in1934 and they had three daughters. I'm hesitant in even trying to write about him for his life was so exemplary that I feel that I'm trespassing rather than visiting. What I want to point out here in this post is that Eric Liddell had the world and its riches at his fingertips but he chose the hardship of a missionary's life in China. At first, as China and Japan were at war with each other, he was constantly accosted and threatened by bandits but after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, Japanese soldiers became his biggest threat. He along with other foreigners were rounded up and herded into a camp. Eric Liddell died in that camp of an inoperable brain tumor in 1945, never seeing his third daughter, and was translated from an earthly tent to..."a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
God was in control of every minute of Eric Liddell's life, from the cinder track in Paris to the rocky landscapes of rural China. God is also in control of every minute and hour of the days ahead. Am I saying with certainty that the Tribulation is upon us? No....I am saying that the single most trying time that this world has ever experienced, the only exception being the days of Noah, is nigh upon us. Only a human mind constricted by either the baubles of this world or even in many cases the blessings of this world could but come to a similar conclusion. Only the mind that has failed to meditate upon Old Testament passages of rebellion and then judgment, and only that same mind that has somehow failed to identify the twentieth century as horror upon horror as to violence in volume that the world had never seen, and mortification upon mortification as to how a civilized society can so quickly reject its Benefactor and become barbaric....only that mind can ignore the hard realities today of America's imminent judgment. Only a mind so untuned to the narrative of the Bible can so nonchalantly say that America can be great again....or even....God bless America.
God may not call us to a foreign mission field but we can implore of Him our own mission field over living in Vanity Fair, and we can determine to be alert rather than sleeping through the sounds of the approaching hoofbeats.
Note: I could not more highly recommend Duncan Hamilton's recent biography of Eric Liddell...For The Glory. It's a beautifully written book about an extraordinary person who displayed his Christian character during the 'best of times' and 'the worst of times.' The last quarter of the book describes life in the internment camp... Weishien. Hardship is detailed here in an unusual way. I don't quite know how to describe it other than... in other books about such camps one might read a day to day account of other people's difficulties whereas in Hamilton's For The Glory it's as if the reader is the one moving in for an indefinite sentence and given a tour of their bleak future and the duties expected of them.
He married Florence MacKenzie in China in1934 and they had three daughters. I'm hesitant in even trying to write about him for his life was so exemplary that I feel that I'm trespassing rather than visiting. What I want to point out here in this post is that Eric Liddell had the world and its riches at his fingertips but he chose the hardship of a missionary's life in China. At first, as China and Japan were at war with each other, he was constantly accosted and threatened by bandits but after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, Japanese soldiers became his biggest threat. He along with other foreigners were rounded up and herded into a camp. Eric Liddell died in that camp of an inoperable brain tumor in 1945, never seeing his third daughter, and was translated from an earthly tent to..."a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
God was in control of every minute of Eric Liddell's life, from the cinder track in Paris to the rocky landscapes of rural China. God is also in control of every minute and hour of the days ahead. Am I saying with certainty that the Tribulation is upon us? No....I am saying that the single most trying time that this world has ever experienced, the only exception being the days of Noah, is nigh upon us. Only a human mind constricted by either the baubles of this world or even in many cases the blessings of this world could but come to a similar conclusion. Only the mind that has failed to meditate upon Old Testament passages of rebellion and then judgment, and only that same mind that has somehow failed to identify the twentieth century as horror upon horror as to violence in volume that the world had never seen, and mortification upon mortification as to how a civilized society can so quickly reject its Benefactor and become barbaric....only that mind can ignore the hard realities today of America's imminent judgment. Only a mind so untuned to the narrative of the Bible can so nonchalantly say that America can be great again....or even....God bless America.
God may not call us to a foreign mission field but we can implore of Him our own mission field over living in Vanity Fair, and we can determine to be alert rather than sleeping through the sounds of the approaching hoofbeats.
Note: I could not more highly recommend Duncan Hamilton's recent biography of Eric Liddell...For The Glory. It's a beautifully written book about an extraordinary person who displayed his Christian character during the 'best of times' and 'the worst of times.' The last quarter of the book describes life in the internment camp... Weishien. Hardship is detailed here in an unusual way. I don't quite know how to describe it other than... in other books about such camps one might read a day to day account of other people's difficulties whereas in Hamilton's For The Glory it's as if the reader is the one moving in for an indefinite sentence and given a tour of their bleak future and the duties expected of them.
