1877
William Strong was born on this day, March 3, 1877, to Presbyterian parents. His father had done mission work in South America for two years, but a breakdown in health sent him back to America. There he founded an insurance company. Following in his father’s footsteps, William sold insurance, too. He joined a church and attended it dutifully, but had no personal knowledge of Christ. In his Autobiography of a Hypocrite, he wrote, “I was simply strolling on my respectable way to Hell without being conscious of the fact, beyond a vague uneasiness which told me something was wrong.”
His wife Jessie and he lost four children to death. Only too well he recognized the importance of the life insurance that he sold. Determined to sell a policy to a Christian businessman, he waited for him at the Fulton Street Noon Prayer Meeting. That wait led to his conversion. He was astonished at the number of savvy businessmen he saw “wasting time” there. But as he listened to the speaker, a light dawned in his soul. Thirty-five years after his first birth, he was reborn by a conversion to Christ.
Immediately, he began to study the Scriptures. Since he commuted to work by train, he put his travel hours to work reading the Bible and studying. He attended the Fulton Street Prayer Meetings, which were just three blocks from his office. But when he began teaching the resurrection of Christ at his liberal church, he met serious opposition. He resigned.
William began work with local servicemen. One day, when he was almost too sick to function, he learned of a serious financial need in Bolivia. He sent the funds. As he collapsed, words kept ringing in his ears: “Who will go for us?” He determined to become a missionary. After he recovered from his mysterious illness, he tried to find a mission that would accept him. But he was forty-five years old. No one wanted him. Confident that the Lord knew what he was asking, William forged ahead, founding his own mission. By 1923, he was in Tacna, Chile, working with US servicemen.
In 1926 all U. S. soldiers were ordered home. But at that time, every young Chilean man was required to give a year of service to the military. William began to work among them. Soon he was holding mass meetings. He distributed 20,000 Gideon New Testaments each year.
His son, Bill and daughter Agnes joined him, and other workers followed. At first, the work was known as Soldiers & Gospel Mission. But in 1964, it became Gospel Mission of South America.
Chile is a slender, mountain-bounded land over 2,000 miles long. The Gospel Mission worked from Copiapo toward the North to Coyhaique near the South–a spread of 1,500 miles. Its churches, pastors, camps, Bible institutes, and correspondence courses were factors which helped bring about evangelical growth in the nation.
William Strong worked for his Gospel Mission thirty-seven years, redeeming the thirty-five years he had lived without Christ. He died in 1960. But his son Bill and others carried on. By 1997 there were over 7,000 national men in various branches of Chilean military service, who called themselves the Uniform Evangelical Mission.
Today the Gospel mission works in three countries (Chile, Argentina and Uruguay), emphasizing Bible translation and education with a strong use of radio and TV.
1933
Under the influence of alcohol, Dawson Trotman was arrested and on his way to jail. The policeman who was hauling him in looked down and asked, “Do you like this kind of life?”
“Sir, I hate it,” answered Trotman. Three hours later, after Trotman sobered up in a park, the policeman returned his keys to him on the strength of a pledge to do better. That weekend, Dawson found his way to church. His Sunday school leader assigned him ten salvation verses to memorize. But three weeks later, with twenty verses in his head, he had drifted back onto the bottle and reckless behavior. This wasn’t his first time in church. Although he’d been stealing since a child, he had become president of a church’s young people’s society. But he did not have eternal life.
Suddenly it registered with him that he could have everlasting life just as a Bible verse from the Gospel of John, chapter five promised. He prayed, “O God, whatever that means, I want to have it.” Another verse flashed into his mind, “But as many as received Him [Jesus], to them gave He power to become sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.” Dawson pleaded to “receive” Jesus right then–whatever that meant.
His life changed. While working as a truck driver in California, he taught a sailor named Les Spencer how to live for Christ. Another sailor asked Spencer the secret of his changed life. Spencer brought the man to Trotman and asked him to teach the other man. Trotman felt exasperated. He had just spent months passing on to Spencer everything he needed to know to do the job himself. “You teach him!” he said. That was the beginning of the Navigators.
Trotman and his friends founded the Navigators on this day, March 3, 1933. (The organization was not incorporated for another decade.) Soon Spencer and his shipmate were teaching 125 men aboard the USS West Virginia, who, in turn, taught others aboard the ships that soon would be sunk at Pearl Harbor.
Dawson Trotman, a dashing man who had been valedictorian of his class and student president, continued to put his talents to good use. The Navigators grew and grew. Today over 100,000 people subscribe to its Discipleship Journal. You may have seen other study guides and books that the organization publishes, or their prayer magazine. More than 3,000 people work for the Navigators in almost a hundred nations. That is how one man’s obedience snowballed.
Trotman died in 1956, rescuing a girl from drowning. Billy Graham, whose ministry used Navigators’ material, preached his funeral.
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