TWICE-BORN MEN

REMARKABLE CONVERSIONS OF WELL-KNOWN MEN
IN DIFFERENT AGES AND IN VARIED RANKS OF LIFE

Compiled by HY. PICKERING

The Moody of Japan

PAUL KANAMORI, called “The Moody of Japan,” one of the most influential scholars, teachers, and preachers in modern Japan, was reared in a native school which was attended by some hundred or more scholars. He told how one of the scholars became possessed of a Bible, which he read without any aid of commentary. He was fascinated, and, like a boy, could not keep it to him­self. Others became readers, until quite one hundred boys were Bible-readers and formed themselves into a kind of fellowship.

As time went on, these boys, without any teacher or instructor or help of any kind, were gradually but surely converted to the Lord Jesus Christ. The joy of the re­ligion of Jesus filled their souls, and they made it known. They went into the open market place, as did those in the Acts of the Apostles, and bore their testimony to the truths they had embraced.

This was over fifty years ago, with the result that they were persecuted with such severity that they were greatly tried. Eventually, one by one they could not withstand the enemy, and only some forty remained loyal and true. This company went out one night to a place known as the Flowery Mount, and there they consecrated them­selves fully to the service of Jesus Christ, as their Divine Saviour, and dedicated their powers to Him. They drew up a statement of their faith and pledged themselves, at all costs, to be loyal to their belief. These boys varied in age from thirteen to eighteen years of age.

Kanamori was one of these boys, and an elder one. As the leader of the company, he was watched, and eventually was cast into prison. He was searched on entering the jail; but he had taken the precaution to conceal the Gospels according to Matthew and John in the lining of his waistcoat. These he fed upon during his exile. Then, fearing lest he should be detected and deprived of these precious portions, which were the bread of life to his spiritual nature, he set to work and committed them to memory. Then, said he, “They might take the Word of God from me altogether, but they could never take that which I had in my memory.”

The time came when he was released, and he acquired once more a copy of the Bible and a copy of “Pilgrim’s Progress.” He soon afterwards joined a Christian College and became the pastor of a Church.

It was during his connection with this college that he had a sad backset, for he came under the spell of the New Theology and Higher Criticism. He was charmed and enthralled with the German books upon the new inter­pretation of the Bible. He devoured the productions of the latest and cleverest writers, and became a full-blown Modernist. He was a great linguist and scholar, never ceasing in his studies and attainments. The time came when he was so advanced in his theories that his con­science began to trouble him. How could he be one thing in the study and another man in the pulpit ?

He consulted his many friends, but all persuaded him to go on with his pulpit work ; but he said very emphatic­ally, “I could not be two-faced, I must give up my Church. I could not be receiving their money and neglecting to preach the Gospel. I had become an unbeliever.” Eventu­ally he resigned his charge. He became an out-and-out Modernist. The Bible was full of mistakes. The myths and errors were many, and the Book was uninspired. It was on a par with books of Mohammed, Buddha, and others. Everything he read was destructive and he was no better than an agnostic.

“Now I must look for a new sphere of labour, and so I went through my country lecturing upon socialism and economics and abandoned the Gospel and the Cross. Christ was not Divine, He died as a good man with a fine character, He was only the son of Joseph and Mary. The virgin birth was all a myth. When He died there was an end to Him. His resurrection was all imagination. The disciples were deluded.”

It is hard to believe that after such a previous history and career that he lived and worked in this dark ex­perience for no less than twenty-four years. Now no one could imagine his being idle. He told how he had trans­lated the German writers into his own language and how those volumes were simply devoured by the young aspiring scholars of the times. His writings were read by all the intellectuals until he became well known throughout Japan as the scholar and teacher for the schools. He was indeed a wanderer from God and a prodigal, “eating of the husks that the swine did eat. “

At the end of this long period an event happened which brought him to think and consider his ways. Though be had forgotten his Heavenly Father, He had not forgotten him. His dear wife, the mother of his nine children, was called Home. It was a very sad and terrible loss. He was smitten in a very vital place. His children could not be comforted. They cried day and night. There was no comfort in his theories and myths. His beliefs were hollow and meaningless. Where could he go, to whom could he look for help and relief ? His children kept coming to him for help, but he could give them none. They talked of their mother being in Heaven, and yet needed so much on earth and in their home. They sought comfort in her photographs. They had them placed in the different rooms of the house. They had one in the kitchen. They kept talking to them. Mother seemed very near in spirit. Then the youngest child cross-questioned him: “You go away and come back again. Mother has gone away. Why does she not come back again?” Then he told this little one, only four years of age, “God needs mother and she is kept busy and is very happy,” “But father, cannot you go and take mother’s place and let her come here? We all so need her and want her.” Then he said the first one the child asked for, when it comes from school is “mother,” not “father,” but there was no mother. In his own thoughts he was thrown back to the resurrection. “I am the Resurrection and the Life,” saith the Lord. “He that believeth on Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth on Me shall never die.” He saw his only hope was in the living, risen, Divine Saviour.

He went through a long period of struggle and deep repentance, when one day the light broke in. His Hea­venly Father received the prodigal. “As He put the robe on me, the ring of heirship on my finger and shoes on my feet, I began to realise He had received me. The old joy and experience came back, and I felt compelled to make it known. I became as a child, in the pure simplicity of childlike confidence and faith.” He accepted the Saviour once more to deliver him from his errors and unbelief. “He healed my backslidings, He loved me freely” (Jer. 3. 22).

The speaker mourned, on account of the years of more than waste that had marked his career, and the great numbers that had gone wrong through his teaching, erroneous teaching. There was nothing that could blot that out. Still he rejoiced in that God had spared him ten years to preach the Cross of Christ. “Wherever I go I preach but one theme, Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” He rejoiced that during the past ten years he had seen over seven thousand five hundred people in his own country turn to God, and many turned from their disbelief and error back to the old paths and to the saving power of the Cross.

In his closing remarks, he testified to his firm and unreserved faith in the inspired Word of God. He held up the Bible, saying, “he believed in it from cover to cover.”