In these days, we received revelation and inspiration from the divine move in history from continent to continent. We are motivated knowing our region in Northwest Ohio is directly connected to the movement in China during a pivotal time of missionary work from the Western world into a closed society. The story of a young woman missionary named Susan Bird and her companions in the Oberlin Band from Oberlin, OH paid the ultimate price to bridge two worlds. This bridge that would later issue forth the serving of brothers such as Watchman Nee and Witness Lee reminds us that it is the Lord who master-plans and orchestrates all things for His good pleasure. It is also He who ushers the earthly time, events, places, people with an eternal outlook. Moreover, this revealed truth encourages us to thrive, to live well, to be His testimony, and to continue sounding out all that the Lord is doing within His Body with an out-standing, out-reaching vision that encompasses more than our limited time and space. We are His masterpiece, His remnant, too. Without such a sister and her fellow lovers of Christ, the gospel and the full truth would never have made it to us. The church in Toledo is part of a long, winding, and miraculous lineage that was preserved in the hearts of the saints and dispensed to a dry land throughout the last 20 centuries. Today, we are a group of people surviving from that line?and we would like to ask whoever is reading, are you? We have produced a message on this topic taken from our meeting at the end of 2018.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/the-church-in-toledo/i-was-reading-about-the-city-of-oberlin/1463255577166779/?__tn__=HH-R#01. I was reading about the city of Oberlin.
THE CHURCH IN TOLEDO SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2019 READING TIME: 10 MINUTES
The history of the city of Oberlin, Ohio began with two preachers. They were dissatisfied with the existing cultures so they wanted to build their own city based upon Christian values. They bought 5,000 acres and decided to do just that. Two guys in a wilderness. Much like where we are in the swamp. They named the city after another brother who inspired them. Something always comes out of believers when we are touched by the spirit; there is a dispensational energy that is generated out of us, and really breaks the mundane life and practice. This life we have is a life of production, of expression, of something pure and beautiful.
That city is a picture of us today built out of the black swamp. That's the starting point. There was definitely a strong spiritual practice that carried the city even before the city was established. At that time, the area was at the frontier of civilized country before they encountered the muddy trenches and roads of the Northwest Ohio wetlands to the west. This is interesting for us to see the Christian believers' influence at that time. There is a reason that the city was gathered by Christians. Later, Oberlin College became a theological school. There must have been a very strong foundation and influence by the Puritan founders. If you look at the nature that hosted the believers' practice, it was so pure. Puritans did carry a nature; when the environment becomes no more pure, they move forward, they move ahead. It is no accident that the city founded in that spirit is so close to us today. We feel connected to that city both geographically and spiritually. Oberlin was founded the same year Toledo was. Oberlin is only about 100 miles away, and easy to get to with one hour and a half of driving. When there was the Lord's calling, there was a group of people who answered. You might be surprised that in the middle of nowhere, Small town, Ohio, was the frontier to China's gospel.
Joined in spirit to the Oberlin Band
We are here today to trace a point in history-approximately 100 years ago a group of brothers and sisters brought themselves to the city of Oberlin for the Lord's calling. At that time, there was a great opening in China to the Western world and the young brothers and sisters known as the Oberlin Band gave themselves, as missionaries, to the Lord's move in China. These were some of the missionaries that were slaughtered during the Boxer Rebellion, a very brutal uprising that took place in China. The real church, not the commercialized church, came from that vein that has been flowing through time and space since the day of Pentecost, since Paul's ministry. These dear saints are a part of that vein. We honor those people.
We've been doing a lot of research lately trying to trace through history to find those saints that gave themselves to the Lord's calling. A sister named Susan Rowena Bird in that early cohort of the Oberlin Band impacted us greatly. She and many young people in Oberlin followed such a calling. They left us writings as an irrefutable testimony of their faith. The language is authentic. These saints paved a way for the church; they paved a way for us today. Unfortunately today, not many believers understand the meaning and definition of the church, not many speak that same language anymore-a language that's not physical, but rather heavenly and spiritual.
Through deeper research, we discovered Susan Bird first came to Oberlin College at the age of 19 for secretarial school. This young sister answered the Lord's calling during her studies at college and joined the Oberlin Band to China as a missionary. If you look at Susan's life, it was really no different from ours today. She wanted to be a secretary and have a career. In the same way, we also came to Toledo for a practical need; some of us study literature, some law, some physics, etc. We all came for our own future. For her to be a secretary at that time was very practical. We may feel these people and their motivations from 100+ years ago are far from us. Actually they're not. They faced the same attractions in the world. They struggled to do something meaningful with their lives. Yet when they faced the calling of the Lord, they couldn't resist. They did what no logical young person would do and gave up their earthen careers to live an unconventional life.
What made these young people, these college kids, willing to give their life for the church? The church cannot be an organization or an institution; it must be something far more personified to make young people be willing to give all. Do you think 100+ years ago these young people didn't have dreams just like the young people today? Oh, they had their dreams, but something must have caught them, a greater attraction or meaning to essentially support their life. Back then, this region was a large and booming industrial area ? there were a lot of jobs open to those graduates. What happened to them? In the middle of pursuing their own career, they heard a greater calling, a greater and nobler meaning and purpose of their life ? just as our dear brother Paul did. These young saints discovered this and gave themselves to this.
When the Boxer Rebellion happened, sister Bird was mobbed and beheaded on her 35th birthday. That was very brutal, violent and terrifying. You can imagine in this young age, she gave her youth and prime time to the Lord, to a country no one can understand. As a Westerner (or in the eyes of a Westerner), there were a lot of great things Susan Bird could have done, but she chose a very humble, very micro way of serving the Lord. Even to the end, Susan did not know herself whether she had made any impact with her life. In her letter to her mother 24 hours before her death she wrote, ?If you never see me again, remember I'm not sorry I came to China. Whether I have saved anyone or not, He knows.? Her letter was very short but the feeling was quite complex. I think these were words she could not have written if she did not have that calling. She wanted her parents to know she regretted nothing. She trusted the Lord and she gave all to Him, despite the uncertainties and the lack of any sure outcomes of her serving.
There were only 40 or 50 people that met with Susan, but her short time in China was able to impact some of the most powerful figures in a very confusing time. These people were influential to a point that they lived a life that was outside-the-box. They didn't just do what a typical Christian was supposed to do?to read the Bible or be a missionary. Even in that generation they had a view for a country and to recover their fellow humankind. This would later safeguard the landing of God's word in the heart of the Republic of China, and produce the literature works of Nee and Lee to take refuge in and spread out from Taiwan.
"The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church"
Susan Bird had no idea that when she went to China she would impact the country in such a spiritual way. Still, even today, who remembers her? Who even understands the statement on the memorial at Oberlin College, "The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church" Susan's understanding of serving the Lord was all before the Lord, not before man. So the calling is directly from the Lord, not from the mission board or man's value. Her value was before the Lord. This kind of understanding, especially to those people who died in that era, is rare among the believers today. Few know what the church is and what the sacrifice was for.
Today we are here, hoping to find our own meaning: why we are in the Toledo area, and why this region was greatly used 100 years ago by the Lord. We want to make sure we are still following that pure line, to make sure we are still in that noble band, from that genealogy of the Bible. We've never met Susan Bird; we are even more than a century apart, but we feel close to her. Why? Because the transcendent life that was in her is still living on in us.
Today even those who go to the school of Oberlin may pass by the memorial arch set up by Kung Hsiang-Hsi (one of the brothers that Susan served and who became an influential figure in Chinese and world history) everyday without knowing the meaning of the words inscribed there. The arch's extensions on both sides contain Scripture inscriptions: "Neither count I my life dear unto myself," "We are more than conquerors through Him that loved us," "If we died with Him, we shall live with Him," and the phrase "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." What impact do those words hold for the modern generation today? It may be difficult to find the fruit of what those early Oberlin graduates died for in the city. With their blood they did sow the seed of the Church from China all the way to this home of ours. We are the fruit of their service still speaking out today.
We are small here. We are nobody. It is okay. You have to understand, none of those people were famous. Those people changed the dispensation because they are nobody. This is who we are. If you are not the church then who are you? I am the church. You are the church. This is the only thing we declare.
What we get from the dear brothers and sisters of the Oberlin Band is very authentic to the core value of our faith, especially when facing death, which is the biggest fear in human life. There is no fear. On the surface we may look very ordinary, but we can have a global impact. If you look at their language, the work is very small, especially sister Susan Bird. In the same way, our work seems very small, but the impact of our scope is global. Susan is our example. This sister is still impacting us, not as a mega church, or commercialized religion, or superstitious Christianity. Those things are not the Lord's work. Rather it is a young 35-year-old who gave her life in a hidden way who is our pattern today. This is the very intrinsic, very hidden line that the Lord is still holding for the genealogy of His people. If you listen to their language, that is the language we are familiar with in our core.
The messy world situation, the political scandals, the lusts and greed, the lies and the warfare-all that is happening overseas and in our own country now is just a symptom. We are all in trouble as a human race. We should be fearful. Yet we should also be faithful to produce something that was given to us. We need a language to shine out through these deceitful times. We should have that generosity to give the true humanity away, just like those dear saints before us. As a believer, we have been pushed to the corner; we have been taught to only care about our own selfish things. But if we stay in this comfort zone, we will never be able to have the capacity to see or understand what is going on in the global move of the Lord. What we're saying today is that we are the remnant that still exists on that narrow path. We are still holding the language passed down in the blood of the martyrs in our hands, and we have this reality to speak it out. This is the future not just for the church, not just for the believers, but even for all of humankind.
-This message was taken from a gathering of the church in Toledo at the end of 2018.
