Jonathan Goforth

“Published originally on InterVarsity Christian Fellowship's urbana.org website. Used by permission.”

During the revolutionary uprising in China in 1900 known as the “Boxer Rebellion,” the Empress Dowager sent a message to the Governor of Honan Province where Jonathan and Rosalind Goforth were working, commanding the massacre of all foreigners.

As they fled with nine other missionaries and their four children, the Goforths were attacked by a mob.

[Jonathan] rushed forward shouting, “Take everything, but don't kill.” At once he became the target for the fiercest onslaught….One blow from a two-handed sword struck him on the neck with great force… but the wide blunt edge struck his neck leaving only a wide bruise two-thirds around the neck. The thick pith helmet he was wearing was slashed almost to pieces, one blow, severing the inner leather band just over the temple, went a fraction of an inch short of being fatal for the skin was not touched.

His left arm which was kept raised to protect his head was slashed to the bone in several places. A terrible blow from behind struck the back of his head, denting in the skull so deeply, that, later, doctors said it was a miracle the skull was not cleft in two. This blow felled him to the ground. It was then the seemed to hear clearly a voice saying—“Fear not! They are praying for you!” Struggling to his feet, he was struck down again by a club” (pp 134, 135).

By the grace of God, the little party reached safety and was soon on the way to Canada, wounded but better off than many missionaries who lost their lives. Goforth carried no resentment for his narrow escape. In a lecture given soon after arriving he laid the cause of the uprising to the “land-grabbing greed of the great [European] nations” (p. 147) who sought to divide China among themselves. Many Chinese felt that “the only way to escape the evil was to destroy and expel the foreigners” (p. 149).

Jonathan Goforth was raised on a farm in western Ontario, Canada, the 7^th of 11 children. At 15 years of age his father gave him a plot of land as his own responsibility. He divided his time between working that land and studying in high school. He became a Christian at 18, but then heard a message that changed his life forever. A schoolmate persuaded him to hear George Mackay, a missionary in Formosa. Mackay gave this challenge:

For two years I have been going up and down Canada trying to persuade some young man to come over to Formosa and help me, but in vain…I am therefore going back alone. It will not be long before my bones will be lying on some Formosan hillside. To me the heartbreak is that no young man has heard the call to come and carry on the work that I have begun (p. 29).

Goforth said later, “I heard the Lord's voice saying, ‘Who will go for us and whom shall we send?' And I answered, ‘Here am I; send me.' From that hour I became a foreign missionary” (p. 29).

To prepare himself, he entered Knox College (Seminary) in Toronto. Being utterly unacquainted with city habits and ways, his fellow students enjoyed making great fun of him. He forged his own path. His earnest devotion to Christ and his missionary call led him to spending time evangelizing in the slums of St. John's Ward, a haunt of thieves, prostitutes, and down-and-outers, much to the amusement of his fellow students. Goforth would sometimes lead as many as three people to Christ in a single afternoon. During those days he had his first experiences of the Lord providing for his financial needs – money for travel, even for clothes.

However, before he graduated, due both to the steady influence of Goforth's spiritual life on his fellow classmates as well as the growing Student Volunteer Movement, daily prayer meetings for missions were started. By the time he graduated, the majority of the members of his class volunteered for service on the mission field! Goforth applied to his own Presbyterian Church for service in China, but they said they had no money to send him. Hearing this, the Knox students decided to raise the necessary funds and provide for a mission in China with Jonathan Goforth as their missionary (p. 54).

Rosalind Bell-Smith, born in England, was raised in a comfortable Episcopalian home in

Canada

. She was educated in private schools and graduated from the Toronto School of Art. She responded to the Gospel in an evangelistic meeting and began to participate in mission activities. She and Jonathan happened to be on the same committee to open a new mission in the east end of Toronto. After some months, he asked her to marry him, and she replied in the affirmative “without a moment's hesitation.”

But then a few days later when he said, “Will you give me your promise that always you will allow me to put my Lord and His work first, even before you?” I gave an inward gasp before replying, “Yes, I will, always,” for was not this the very kind of man I had prayed for? (Oh, kind Master, to hide from Thy servant what that promise would cost! (p. 49).

The first taste of what her decision would mean was Jonathan's announcement that instead of giving her the engagement ring she had dreamed of, he had decided to spend the money on books and pamphlets on China that he was distributing from his room in Knox. She wrote later, “As I listened and watched his glowing face, the visions I had indulged in of the beautiful engagement ring vanished. This was my first lesson in real values” (p. 49).

The lessons were to continue. Rosalind and Jonathan went to China in 1888 and settled in Chefoo, their first task to study Chinese full time. They had only been there a short time when a fire destroyed all the goods they had brought with them, including wedding presents and pictures, such as a self-portrait her father had painted. Jonathan tried to comfort his wife by saying,

“My dear, do not grieve so. After all they're just things.” The fire meant little more to Goforth than a temporary hindering of his language study….To his wife, it meant the burning of the bridges behind her as far as art was concerned and it meant also the dawn of personal responsibility towards the souls of her Chinese sisters (p. 76).

Among the heartaches that the Lord permitted these two to experience during their missionary service included living in primitive conditions as they moved frequently in their pioneering ministry, the death of five of their eleven children, many experiences of hostility (as we see in the opening paragraph), long separations from each other, and then Jonathan's blindness several years before his death. But through them all, they went forward, following the Lord who had called them, never doubting His faithfulness, love, and care. When little Gertrude died, that day Rosalind's devotional reading included the words: “It is the Lord. Let Him do what seemeth Him good” (1 Sam 3:18). “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). Jonathan wrote home: “We pray that this loss will fit us more fully to tell these dying millions of Him who has gained the victory over death (p. 87). Later, Rosalind, hearing once again of their loss of all their goods, this time by flooding, wrote: The blow most dreaded often falls /To break off our limbs a chain (p. 104).

Jonathan and Rosalind decided to establish their mission in Changte, in Honan Province. Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission, wrote to them at this time, “Brother, if you would enter that Province, you must go forward on your knees” (p. 80). The Goforths used their home as a place of ministry. The Chinese came out of curiosity; then stayed to listen. Jonathan's message focused on Jesus, expositing Scripture. “My only secret in getting at the heart of big sinners is to show them their need and tell them of a Saviour abundantly able to save” (p. 83). At first he struggled with the language, and almost came to a place of despair. Then one night there was a breakthrough. He had fluency as never before. Two months later a letter came from Knox College, relating that on that very night the students had decided to have a prayer meeting focusing just on Jonathan, and were impressed with the presence and power of God as they prayed (p. 88).

During the last five weeks we have had such a number of men coming day by day that we have kept up constant preaching on an average of eight hours a day….The guest-room was filled, while others were listening outside the door and windows….During this time [five months] upwards of 25,000 men and women have come to see us and all have had the Gospel preached to them (pp109, 113).

While Jonathan worked with the men, Rosalind spoke to the women who crowded into their courtyard, fifty or more at one time. He wrote:

It has been our privilege to see the manifest signs of Holy Ghost power among them. None but the Holy Spirit could open these hearts to receive the truth, as we see some receiving it every time we speak. I never saw anything approaching to it in previous years. It cheers us beyond measure and makes us confident that God is going to save many people in this place (p. 110, 111).

Just before beginning the ministry in Changte, Jonathan wrote on the flyleaf of his Bible in 1894, “Seven Rules for Daily Living”:

3) Never let a day pass without at least a quarter of an hour spent in the study of the Bible.[i]

7) Seek each day to do or say something to further Christianity among the heathen (p. 355).

Over the years the Goforths established a strong church in Changte, and then together began a ministry of itineration, taking the Gospel to surrounding towns and villages, and then to Manchuria. Jonathan poured himself into the lives of responsive young men, training them as evangelists, pastors, and teachers. He was effective in witness among students, attracting them with his knowledge of geography and astronomy, and then opening their eyes to the truth of the Gospel.

His missionary strategy as it developed over the years was different from many of his contemporaries. “We plan for no big schools, no big hospitals, until the converted Chinese build and equip them, but we do plan to evangelize intensively” (p. 279-280). Though for many years he followed the pattern of hiring national evangelists, he came to change his policy when he noted that when foreign funds and contacts were cut off, the national church grew more in vitality and greater confidence in the Lord as the supplier of their needs (p. 320).

He made friends with military leaders who invited him to preach to their soldiers. Marshal Feng Yu-Hsiang became a close friend. Jonathan reported that once after 13 days of meeting, he baptized 960 men, and then 4,606 officers and men partook of Communion. Feng's army often marched singing hymns.

Limited space hinders me of reporting perhaps Jonathan unique contribution. He hungered for greater effectiveness and was inspired by accounts of the revivals in Wales, India, and Korea. He studied them, read books such as Finney's Lectures on Revival, and reviewed the Biblical accounts of the work of the Holy Spirit. The Lord began to use him in unusual ways, as the Holy Spirit fell on people in his meetings. Even the normally reserved Canadian Presbyterian missionaries were affected:

The missionaries attended the meetings regularly and not a few took part with their Chinese brethren in making acknowledgment of faults and shortcomings, not for any thought of example to the Chinese, but simply because God was moving their hearts and they were led to see themselves under God's searchlight. It was a time when we were all brought very close together, not only missionary to missionary, Chinese to Chinese, but Chinese to missionary and vice versa, and all because all were getting near to Christ and He was saying again, --“That they all may be one…I in them and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in one” (p. 201).

Jonathan never “retired.” Though hindered by blindness in his mid seventies, he continued his preaching and teaching, and spent his last two years in Canada, seeking to encourage their Church's missionary involvement. Everywhere he went his soul was aglow with one message "the fullness of the Christ-life through the Holy Spirit's indwelling." Physical sight was gone but his life was as a "shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day." On the last Sunday before his death he preached four times. One who was there gave her impressions:

As Mr. McPherson led Dr. Goforth into the pulpit he walked with firm step, head erect, and face aglow with the joy of Christ, the sightless eyes were turned upward as if he could see. The congregation listened with marked attention and stillness as with radiant joy, as seeing the Lord he loved, he delivered his address in the power of the Spirit (p 347).

2. What questions do you have as you read this brief description of their lives as missionaries and as a married couple?

3. What do you think you God wants you to learn from the example of this couple?

All documentation is from his official biography written by his wife, Rosalind Goforth. Goforth of China. Zondervan, 1937.

[i] Rosalind writes, “How often have I seen him, when taking up his Bible to read, first uncover his head and in an attitude of deepest reverence remain so a few moments before beginning his reading. In this simple act we see the secret of his life. Before he crossed the Borderland he stated that he had read the Bible 73 times from cover to cover” (p. 314).

[Photo: Plaque in the entrance of Knox Presbyterian Church, Spadina Avenue, Toronto.]