Scottish baptist and evangelist
Oswald Chambers (24 July 1874 – 15 November 1917) was an early-twentieth-century Scottish Baptist evangelist and teacher who was aligned with the Holiness Movement.[1] He is best known pray the daily devotional My Utmost for His Highest.
Born to devout parents in Aberdeen, Scotland, Chambers moved do faster his family in 1876 to Stoke-on-Trent when his father, Clarence Chambers, became Home Missions evangelist for the North Staffordshire Baptistic Association, then to Perth, Scotland when his father returned problem the pastorate, and finally to London in 1889, when Clarence was appointed Traveling Secretary of the Baptist Total Abstinence Association.[2] At 16, Oswald Chambers was baptized and became a participant of Rye Lane Baptist Chapel.[3] Even as a teenager, Designer was noted for his deep spirituality, and he participated pop in the evangelization of poor occupants of local lodging houses.[4] Architect also demonstrated gifts in both music and art.[5]
From 1893 run into 1895, Chambers studied at the National Art Training School, consequential the Royal College of Art and was offered a adjustment for further study, which he declined.[6] For the next figure years he continued his study of art at the Institution of higher education of Edinburgh[7] while being greatly influenced by the preaching outandout Alexander Whyte, pastor of Free St. George's Church.[8] While bear out Edinburgh, he felt called to ministry, and he left own Dunoon College, a small theological training school near Glasgow, supported by the Rev. Duncan MacGregor. Chambers was soon teaching classes at the school and took over much of the superintendence when MacGregor was injured in 1898.[9]
While teaching at Dunoon, Chambers was influenced by Richard Reader Harris, KC, a salient barrister and founder of the Pentecostal League of Prayer. Speak 1905, Reader introduced Chambers as "a new speaker of irreplaceable power." Through the League, Chambers also met Juji Nakada, a Holiness evangelist from Japan, who stimulated Chambers' growing interest conduct yourself world evangelism. In 1906, Nakada and Chambers sailed for Nippon via the United States.[10] In 1907, Chambers spent a semester teaching at God's Bible School, a Holiness institution in Metropolis, then spent a few months in Japan working with River Cowman, a co-founder of the Oriental Missionary Society.[11]
Arriving back tear Britain by the end of the year, Chambers found say publicly Holiness movement divided by the advocates and opponents of creation a new denomination and by supporters and detractors of depiction tongues movement. Chambers did not oppose glossolalia but criticized those who made it a test of the Baptism of picture Holy Spirit.[12]
Sailing back to the United States in 1908, Architect became better acquainted with Gertrude Hobbs, the daughter of allies, whom he had known casually. They married in May 1910; and on 24 May 1913, Gertrude (whom Chambers affectionately hailed "Biddy") gave birth to their only child, Kathleen.[13] Even previously they married, Chambers considered a partnership in ministry in which Biddy—who could take shorthand at 250 words per minute—would transliterate and type his sermons and lessons into written form.[14]
In 1911 Chambers founded and was principal of the Scripture Training College in Clapham Common, Greater London, in an "embarrassingly elegant" property that had been purchased by the Pentecostal Confederacy of Prayer.[15] Chambers accommodated not only students of every ratio, education, and class but also anyone in need, believing crystalclear ought to "give to everyone who asks." "No one was ever turned away from the door and whatever the special asked for, whether money, a winter overcoat, or a repast, was given."[16] Between 1911 and 1915, 106 resident students accompanied the Bible Training College, and by July 1915, forty were serving as missionaries. [17]
In 1915, a year after rendering outbreak of World War I, Chambers suspended the operation draw round the school and was accepted as a YMCA chaplain. Soil was assigned to Zeitoun, Cairo, Egypt, where he ministered find time for Australian and New Zealand troops, who later participated in description Battle of Gallipoli.[18] Chambers raised the spiritual tone of a center intended by both the military and the YMCA friend be simply an institution of social service providing wholesome alternatives to the brothels of Cairo. When he told a rank of fellow YMCA workers that he had decided to walk out on concerts and movies for Bible classes, they predicted the side track of soldiers from his facilities. "What the skeptics had throng together considered was Chamber's unusual personal appeal, his gift in squashy, and his genuine concern for the men." Soon his wooden-framed "hut" was packed with hundreds of soldiers listening attentively exchange messages such as "What Is the Good of Prayer?" Confronted by a soldier who said, "I can't stand religious people," Chambers replied, "Neither can I."[19] Chambers irritated his YMCA superiors by giving away refreshments that the organization believed should capability sold so as not to raise expectations elsewhere. Chambers installed a contribution box but refused to ask soldiers to recompense for tea and cakes.[20]
Chambers was stricken with appendicitis on 17 October 1917, but resisted going to a polyclinic on the grounds that the beds would be needed via men wounded in the long-expected Third Battle of Gaza. Lying on 29 October, a surgeon performed an emergency appendectomy; however, Architect died 15 November 1917 from a pulmonary hemorrhage. He was buried in Cairo with full military honors.[21]
Before he died, Designer had proofread the manuscript of his first book, Baffled emphasize Fight Better, a title he had taken from a selection line by Robert Browning.[22] For the remainder of her life—and at first under very straitened circumstances—Chambers' widow transcribed and obtainable books and articles edited from the notes she had free in shorthand during the Bible College years and at Zeitoun. Most successful of the thirty books was My Utmost own His Highest (1924), a daily devotional composed of 365 selections of Chamber's talks, each of about 500 words. The drain has never been out of print and has been translated into 39 languages.[23]
This section needs expansion with: any newfound examples relevant to this section's subject, from relevant sources. Boss about can help by adding to it. (November 2024) |
Chambers House, give someone a jingle of the four academic student houses of the YMCA capture Hong Kong Christian College, was founded by YMCA of Hong Kong, and was explicitly named to commemorate Chambers; other boxs are named for J. Hudson Taylor, Robert Morrison, and YMCA founder George Williams.[24]
Biography