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About the Book
"Living Between Two Worlds" by Joel S. Goldsmith explores the spiritual journey of finding inner peace and fulfillment while navigating the demands and distractions of modern life. Goldsmith offers insights and practices to help readers cultivate a deeper connection with their true selves and the divine presence within, ultimately leading to a more harmonious and meaningful existence.
John and Betty Stam
The year 1934. Americans John and Betty Stam were serving as missionaries in China. One morning Betty was bathing her three-month-old daughter Helen Priscilla Stam when Tsingteh's city magistrate appeared. Communist forces were near, he warned, and urged the Stams to flee.
So John Stam went out to investigate the situation for himself. He received conflicting reports. Taking no chances, he arranged for Betty and the baby to be escorted away to safety if need be. But before the Stams could make their break, the Communists were inside the city. By little-known paths, they had streamed over the mountains behind government troops. Now gun shots sounded in the streets as looting began. The enemy beat on the Stams' own gate.
A faithful cook and maid at the mission station had stayed behind. The Stams knelt with them in prayer. But the invaders were pounding at the door. John opened it and spoke courteously to the four leaders who entered, asking them if they were hungry. Betty brought them tea and cakes. The courtesy meant nothing. They demanded all the money the Stams had, and John handed it over. As the men bound him, he pleaded for the safety of his wife and child. The Communists left Betty and Helen behind as they led John off to their headquarters.
Before long, they reappeared, demanding mother and child. The maid and cook pleaded to be allowed to accompany Betty.
"No," barked the captors, and threatened to shoot.
"It is better for you to stay here," Betty whispered. "If anything happens to us, look after the baby."
[When we consecrate ourselves to God, we think we are making a great sacrifice, and doing lots for Him, when really we are only letting go some little, bitsie trinkets we have been grabbing, and when our hands are empty, He fills them full of His treasures. --Betty Stam]
Betty was led to her husband's side. Little Helen needed some things and John was allowed to return home under guard to fetch them. But everything had been stolen. That night John was allowed to write a letter to mission authorities. "My wife, baby and myself are today in the hands of the Communists in the city of Tsingteh. Their demand is twenty thousand dollars for our release. . . . We were too late. The Lord bless and guide you. As for us, may God be glorified, whether by life or by death."
Prisoners in the local jail were released to make room for the Stams. Frightened by rifle fire, the baby cried out. One of the Reds said, "Let's kill the baby. It is in our way." A bystander asked, "Why kill her? What harm has she done?"
"Are you a Christian?" shouted one of the guards.
The man said he was not; he was one of the prisoners just released.
"Will you die for this foreign baby?" they asked. As Betty hugged Helen to her chest, the man was hacked to pieces before her eyes.
Terror in the Streets
The next morning their captors led the Stams toward Miaosheo, twelve miles distant. John carried little Helen, but Betty, who was not physically strong, owing to a youthful bout with inflammatory rheumatitis was allowed to ride a horse part of the way. Terror reigned in the streets of Miaosheo. Under guard, the foreign family was hustled into the postmaster's shop.
"Where are you going?" asked the postmaster, who recognized them from their previous visits to his town. "We do not know where they are going, but we are going to heaven," answered John. He left a letter with the postmaster. "I tried to persuade them to let my wife and baby go back from Tsingteh with a letter to you, but they would not let her. . . ."
That night the three were held in the house of a wealthy man who had fled. They were guarded by soldiers. John was tied to a post all that cold night, but Betty was allowed enough freedom to tend the baby. As it turned out, she did more than that.
Execution
The next morning the young couple were led through town without the baby. Their hands were tightly bound, and they were stripped of their outer garments as if they were common criminals. John walked barefoot. He had given his socks to Betty. The soldiers jeered and called the town’s folk to come see the execution. The terrified people obeyed.
On the way to the execution, a medicine-seller, considered a lukewarm Christian at best, stepped from the crowd and pleaded for the lives of the two foreigners. The Reds angrily ordered him back. The man would not be stilled. His house was searched, a Bible and hymnbook found, and he, too was dragged away to die as a hated Christian.
John pleaded for the man’s life. The Red leader sharply ordered him to kneel. As John was speaking softly, the Red leader swung his sword through the missionary’s throat so that his head was severed from his body. Betty did not scream. She quivered and fell bound beside her husband’s body. As she knelt there, the same sword ended her life with a single blow.
Betty
Betty Scott was born in the United States but reared in China as the daughter of missionaries. She came to the United States and attended Wilson College in Pennsylvania. Betty prepared to follow in her parents’ footsteps and work in China or wherever else the Lord directed her.
But China it proved to be. At a prayer meeting for China, she met John Stam and a friendship developed that ripened into love. Painfully they recognized that marriage was not yet possible. “The China Inland Mission has appealed for men, single men, to work in sections where it would be impossible to take a woman until more settled work has commenced,” wrote John. He committed the matter to the Lord, whose work, he felt, must come before any human affection. At any rate, Betty would be leaving for China before him, to work in an entirely different region, and so they must be separated anyhow. As a matter of fact, John had not yet even been accepted by the China Inland Mission whereas Betty had. They parted after a long tender day, sharing their faith, picnicking, talking, and praying.
Betty sailed while John continued his studies. On July 1, 1932, John, too, was accepted for service in China. Now at least he could head toward the same continent as Betty. He sailed for Shanghai.
Meanwhile, Betty found her plans thwarted. A senior missionary had been captured by the Communists in the region where she was to have worked. The mission directors decided to keep her in a temporary station, and later ill-health brought her to Shanghai. Thus without any choice on her part, she was in Shanghai when John landed in China. Immediately they became engaged and a year later were married, long before they expected it. In October, 1934 Helen Priscilla was born to them. What would become of her now that her parents John and Betty were dead?
In the Hills
For two days, local Christians huddled in hiding in the hills around Miaosheo. Among them was a Chinese evangelist named Mr. Lo. Through informants, he learned that the Communists had captured two foreigners. At first he did not realize that these were John and Betty Stam, with whom he had worked, but as he received more details, he put two and two together. As soon as government troops entered the valley and it was safe to venture forth, Mr. Lo hurried to town. His questions met with silence. Everyone was fearful that spies might report anyone who said too much.
An old woman whispered to Pastor Lo that there was a baby left behind. She nodded in the direction of the house where John and Betty had been chained their last night on earth. Pastor Lo hurried to the site and found room after room trashed by the bandits. Then he heard a muffled cry. Tucked by her mother in a little sleeping bag, Helen was warm and alive, although hungry after her two day fast.
The kindly pastor took the child in his arms and carried her to his wife. With the help of a local Christian family, he wrapped the bodies that still lay upon the hillside and placed them into coffins. To the crowd that gathered he explained that the missionaries had only come to tell them how they might find forgiveness of sin in Christ. Leaving others to bury the dead, he hurried home. Somehow Helen had to be gotten to safety.
Pastor Lo's own son, a boy of four, was desperately ill -- semi-conscious after days of exposure. Pastor Lo had to find a way to carry the children a hundred miles through mountains infested by bandits and Communists. Brave men were found willing to help bear the children to safety, but there was no money to pay them for their efforts. Lo had been robbed of everything he had.
From Beyond the Grave
But from beyond the grave, Betty provided. Tucked in Helen's sleeping bag were a change of clothes and some diapers. Pinned between these articles of clothing were two five dollar bills. It made the difference.
Placing the children in rice baskets slung from the two ends of a bamboo pole, the group departed quietly, taking turns carrying the precious cargo over their shoulders. Mrs. Lo was able to find Chinese mothers along the way to nurse Helen. On foot, they came safely through their perils. Lo's own boy recovered consciousness suddenly and sat up, singing a hymn.
Eight days after the Stams fell into Communist hands, another missionary in a nearby city heard a rap at his door. He opened it and a Chinese woman, stained with travel, entered the house, bearing a bundle in her arms. "This is all we have left," she said brokenly.
The missionary took the bundle and turned back the blanket to uncover the sleeping face of Helen Priscilla Stam. Many kind hands had labored to preserve the infant girl, but none kinder than Betty who had spared no effort for her baby even as she herself faced degradation and death.
Kathleen White has written an excellent and very readable biography John and Betty Stam, available from Bethany House Publishers (1988). She reports that Betty's alma mater, Wilson College in Pennsylvania, took over baby Helen's support and covered the costs of her college education. She added: "Helen is living in this country (USA) with her husband and family but does not wish her identity and whereabouts to be made known."
Resources:
Huizenga, Lee S. John and Betty Stam; Martyrs. Zondervan, 1935.
Pollock, John. Victims of the Long March and Other Stories. Waco, Texas.: Word Publishing, 1970.
Taylor, Mrs. Howard. The Triumph of John and Betty Stam. China Inland Mission, 1935.
the lost giant among giants: lessons from harold john ockenga
In September of 1966, John Piper was a junior at Wheaton College, studying for a career in medicine. In those days, Wheaton began its fall semesters with “Spiritual Emphasis Week.” Piper could not attend the sessions in person because he was sick with mononucleosis and was quarantined in the health center. However, a local radio station carried the sermons, so he listened while in quarantine. The preacher that week was Harold John Ockenga. Listening to Ockenga’s sermons changed Piper’s trajectory. He has referred to his time in quarantine as some of the “most crucial” weeks of his life. Why? Because this is when he sensed a strong call and desire to the ministry of the word. Piper remembers Ockenga’s preaching as the primary instrument God used that week to birth a sense of “calling” to preach — a calling still undimmed. By the end of that week, Piper’s heart was exploding with a desire to “handle the word of God the way [Ockenga] was handling it.” Soon after, Piper switched from pre-med. After graduating from Wheaton College, he went on to study at Fuller Theological Seminary, the school cofounded by Ockenga. Piper is not the only prominent evangelical leader to have been greatly influenced by Harold Ockenga’s ministry. The famous evangelist Billy Graham once said, “I never met a man among evangelicals who could compare to the mighty intellect and spiritual development of Harold John Ockenga” ( Awakening the Evangelical Mind , 66). Ockenga pastored in Boston for more than thirty years. He wrote a dozen books and countless articles. He was the driving force behind the resurgence of evangelical scholarship in the mid-twentieth century, he cofounded two seminaries (Fuller and Gordon-Conwell), and he was a close friend and mentor to several prominent evangelical leaders, including Graham and theologian Carl F.H. Henry. Harold Ockenga may not be a household name today, but it would not be a stretch to put Ockenga among the most influential pastors of the twentieth century. Early Life and Formation Ockenga was born in 1905 in Chicago. From a young age, he demonstrated a sharp mind, great oratory, and natural leadership skills. He professed faith at age 11 but had a life-transforming moment toward the ministry at a conference at age 17. Ockenga had originally planned to attend the University of Chicago to pursue law, but this conference experience led him toward theological studies at Taylor University in Indiana. While at Taylor, he joined the traveling ministry team, which gave him the opportunity to preach more than four hundred times before graduating. It proved to be valuable experience. After graduating from Taylor in 1927, Ockenga attended Princeton Theological Seminary to study under great scholars such as R.D. Wilson, Cornelius Van Til, and J. Gresham Machen. When Ockenga enrolled at Princeton, the institution was in the middle of a controversy that had been going on for nearly a decade between Modernists and Fundamentalists. The Modernists embraced an ideology with roots in the Enlightenment and the liberal theologians of the 1800s. Many questioned the veracity of Scripture, claiming that Christians ought to revise doctrine in the light of modern science. The Fundamentalists, in contrast, were committed to Christian orthodoxy, the authority and infallibility of the Bible, the divinity of Christ, and the priority of evangelism. The battle raged at Princeton throughout the 1920s. Of all the older theological schools and seminaries, Princeton was the only one that still taught orthodoxy. Unfortunately, the Modernists eventually gained control. Ockenga had a front-row seat to a watershed moment in American Christian history. This crucible experience shaped him. In 1929, Machen and a group of scholars left Princeton to launch Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. Ockenga left Princeton to attend the upstart Westminster and became Machen’s foremost protégé. After graduating from Westminster, Ockenga briefly pastored in New Jersey before moving to Pittsburgh to serve as an assistant pastor for several years. While there, he earned his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh and met his wife, Audrey. Preaching at Park Street Church Ockenga became the pastor of the historic Park Street Church in 1936. Dr. A.Z. Conrad, the former pastor at Park Street, had been a prominent preacher with a successful radio ministry. These were big shoes for Ockenga to fill, but he was up to the task. Biographer Harold Lindsell commented that, immediately upon arriving at Park Street Church, Ockenga established himself as a “preacher’s preacher” ( Park Street Prophet , 75). Ockenga continued, and even expanded, Conrad’s radio programming. People from all over New England and even parts of Canada tuned in regularly to hear Ockenga’s powerful expository sermons. His popularity grew as Park Street Church grew — in both numbers and influence. By the mid-1940s, the church had more than two thousand members, supported a horde of missionaries, and had become the most influential church in the region. Ockenga’s ministry was dynamic. He was a faithful and brilliant Bible expositor who engaged in theology, cultural commentary, church history, philosophy, and pulpit evangelism. He was unafraid to publicly rebuke false doctrines and to denounce political ideologies that he believed would impede human flourishing. When describing Ockenga’s preaching, author Owen Strachan says Ockenga preached “that old-style Calvinism; he expounded the glories of aesthetic culture; [and] he threw down the political gauntlet” ( Awakening the Evangelical Mind , 63). Ockenga was, as Lindsell stated, “one of the finest preachers and staunchest defenders of the faith this country has ever known” ( Park Street Prophet , 11). Birth of Neo-Evangelicalism By the time Ockenga had entered pastoral ministry in the 1930s, most denominational institutions, seminaries, and publishing houses across America were dominated by theological liberals — greatly impeding the propagation of genuine gospel work. Evangelicalism seemed under duress. But in the 1940s, a new brand of evangelicalism was born — a brand that would intentionally engage the academy, that would seek to influence the most influential institutions of culture, and that would cooperate across denominational lines for gospel work. This new brand of evangelicalism — later called “neo-evangelicalism” — was first primarily promoted through the formation of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) in 1942. At the gathering where the NAE was formed, Ockenga lamented, “Evangelical Christianity has suffered nothing but a series of defeats for decades.” But Ockenga believed that they could “affect the whole future course of evangelical Christianity in America” if they were willing to rethink their approach to culture and ministry. Ockenga began the charge by serving as the NAE’s first president for three years. He was neo-evangelicalism’s most ardent proponent. He crisscrossed the country, promoting and facilitating dozens of initiatives. Strachan writes, “No figure did more than Ockenga to run, establish, and invigorate the premier institutions of the movement” ( Awakening the Evangelical Mind , 23) Theological Scholarship Matters What are some takeaways from Ockenga’s ministry for us today? One of the greatest lessons we learn from Ockenga is that evangelical intellectualism and quality theological training matter deeply. Theologian Al Mohler has written that Ockenga, along with fellow evangelical leader Carl Henry, diagnosed the “conservative Protestant intellectual withdrawal” from the “intellectual life of the nation” as being the primary reason for the collapse of conservative Protestantism in America ( Awakening the Evangelical Mind , 14). Evangelicals lost their influence as they retreated from the academic spheres. Ockenga’s first academic initiative was the creation of Boston School of the Bible, which offered classes for laypeople in church history, doctrine, evangelism, missions, and apologetics. The school drew hundreds of students from around the region, including many students from liberal churches. While this looked to many to be a success, it didn’t quite accomplish what Ockenga really wanted — to train church leaders and would-be scholars to engage the institutions of cultural influence. Both Ockenga and Henry believed that Christianity was faltering culturally, not because of a “lack of evangelistic fervor,” as Mohler says, but because of “the absence of intellectual vigor.” This inspired Ockenga to pioneer and host the Plymouth Scholars’ Conferences. These conferences, held every other year, were designed as places where evangelicals could engage with trends and thoughts from the world of academia for the advancement of evangelical scholarship. These conferences were the forerunners of the Evangelical Theological Society, established in 1949. Ockenga also promoted evangelical scholarship by teaming up with radio evangelist Charles Fuller to launch Fuller Theological Seminary in California. Ockenga served as the school’s first president remotely while still pastoring in Boston. The final formal academic initiative of Ockenga’s life came after he retired from pastoring in 1969. Ockenga became the president of Gordon College and Divinity School. He led Gordon’s Divinity School to merge with Conwell School of Theology to form a new seminary. Ockenga spent a decade as the president of Gordon-Conwell. Friendships Matter Another lesson we learn from the life of Harold Ockenga is the importance of friendships in ministry. Whether it’s Calvin and Bucer, Whitefield and Edwards, or even Jonathan and David from the Old Testament, we realize that friendships matter. Ockenga’s friendships with Carl Henry and Billy Graham served as the foundation for many projects. In 1950, Ockenga invited Graham to speak at a youth rally. This event sparked a revival in Boston and a series of subsequent revivals in New England. This amplified Graham’s influence throughout the region. It also solidified a friendship between Ockenga and Graham that would last a lifetime. Ockenga would later serve as one of the directors for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and was one of Graham’s closest confidants. Over the course of their lives, Graham and Ockenga, along with Henry, worked together on various ministry initiatives. One of the most notable is Christianity Today . Ockenga served as a contributor, editor, and chairman of the board for the publication for 25 years. Another significant ministry that resulted from Ockenga and Graham’s friendship was the formation of the World Evangelical Fellowship. Both men were passionate about missions. The World Evangelical Fellowship allowed indigenous groups in 21 countries around the globe to cooperate in missions in order to accomplish what Ockenga labeled the “task that had too long been left undone” ( The Surprising Work of God , 217). Investing in the Next Generation Last, Ockenga modeled how to leave a lasting legacy. He believed a commitment to mentoring the next generation was essential. Pastor Larry Osborne has written about the importance of investing in “young eagles” — that is, the leaders of the next generation of the church. Ockenga modeled this beautifully. One author observed a time when Ockenga (in his mid-forties) was at an event with an entourage of young men in their twenties and early thirties. He was frequently flanked by young men he was guiding. Due to Ockenga’s presence in Boston, he was well-placed to befriend and mentor many brilliant young minds. Men like Edward Carnell, Wayne Grudem, Kenneth Kantzer, George Eldon Ladd, John Gerstner, Samuel Schultz, Merrill Tenney, Roger Nicole, Gleason Archer, and J. Harold Greenlee were all profoundly influenced by Ockenga while they lived in Boston. These men would go on to become respected evangelical scholars, theologians, and leaders. Giant Among Giants Ockenga’s preaching, leadership, scholarship, and entrepreneurship were outstanding. Few evangelical leaders in the twentieth century were influential as Ockenga. Yet in his final moments on earth, we observe this influential preacher’s humility. When Ockenga was dying of cancer, the elders from Park Street Church came to visit him. One of them said, “Just think of all the things that God has done through you. He allowed you to minister to millions of people, be president of Fuller Theological Seminary and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, be one of the founders of the NAE and the whole evangelical movement, and be one of the people who helped give Billy Graham his start” ( Surprising Work , 224). Ockenga didn’t seem impressed with his own resume. Then another elder quietly said, “Well, Harold, I suggest that when you see the Master, just say, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner.’” Tears flowed down Ockenga’s cheeks. Harold John Ockenga, the man some called the Park Street Prophet, died on February 8, 1985. At the funeral, Billy Graham honored him with these words: “He was a giant among giants. Nobody outside of my family influenced me more than he did. I never made a major decision without first calling and asking his advice and counsel.”
