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About the Book
"The Last Sin Eater" by Francine Rivers follows the story of Cadi Forbes, a young girl living in a secluded Appalachian community. When her family is torn apart by tragedy, Cadi seeks solace in the forbidden practice of confessing her sins to the "sin eater." As she uncovers long-buried secrets and confronts her own guilt, Cadi discovers the power of forgiveness and redemption. Through her journey, she learns the importance of facing the truth and finding healing in the love of God.
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.
A Strange and Holy Calm
My wife and I are investing in calmness therapy for our twin 11-year-old boys. It’s called youth baseball. The financial expenses pale in comparison to the deposits of time. Baseball not only facilitates brain and body development, and teaches teamwork, but also produces contexts for learning to handle pressure and deal with failure. In other words, it provides avenues to cultivate self-control  — the one virtue the apostle Paul saw fit to set before young men in Titus 2. After multiple charges each for older men, older women, and younger women (Titus 2:2–5), he gives a single focus for the young men: “urge the younger men to be self-controlled” (Titus 2:6). Do not misunderstand. We do not  want our boys to be unemotional; and they are not. They’re competitive, and they’re kids, prone to react without proper emotional restraint. Which is why youth baseball can be one valuable tool, among others, in seeking to build men. We want them to learn how to be composed under pressure, when the moment requires it, and give release to their emotions in the proper time and place. We want them to learn to keep their head when others are losing theirs, to not lose control in outrage or self-pity but keep a sober mind, aware that how they carry themselves and treat teammates, umpires, and the opposing team is far more important than winning a game. At times, we cheer, and celebrate a win after the final out has been made. At other moments, we process the disappointment of errors, strikeouts, and losses. But in the ups and downs of the game — and in life off the field — our passions can push us to celebrate prematurely, or wallow extensively. We want our boys to learn how to stay calm in the storm, not by repressing emotions but learning to master them. In the heat of the moment, we want them to keep their wits, tell themselves truth, and stay calm enough to faithfully take the next step for their own good, and the good of others. More than baseball players, we want our boys to become Christian men. He held his peace In a day when outbursts of emotion are not only accepted, but respected, and encouraged, it can be more difficult to raise men who learn to righteously “hold their peace.” It’s a curious phrase at key junctures in the history of God’s people. Some outburst of rage, or rash expression of anger or retaliation, is expected, yet a man of God, we’re told, “held his peace.” First, we see it in the patriarch Jacob, when he hears that Shechem, prince of the land, “had defiled his daughter Dinah.” We expect an explosion. But “Jacob held his peace” until his sons could come in from the field (Genesis 34:5). It’s not that Jacob ignores or minimizes this outrageous act against his daughter, and family, but he maintains self-control until his counselors can gather and decide how to respond. Two of his sons, Simeon and Levi, do not exercise the same restraint and become Jacob’s foil. They come against Shechem with swords, and in doing so, bring “trouble on [Jacob] by making [him] stink to the inhabitants of the land” (Genesis 34:30). So also Aaron, Moses’s brother and the first high priest. When his sons “offered unauthorized fire” before God and were consumed (Leviticus 10:1–2), we might expect Aaron to erupt with rage against heaven at the loss of his sons. Instead, Moses reports, “Aaron held his peace” (Leviticus 10:3) — not because he didn’t care, or wasn’t severely grieved, but because he revered God with a righteous fear and trusted God’s goodness, that he had done no wrong, painful as Aaron’s loss was. King Saul, at the outset of his reign, before his falls from grace, demonstrated admirable restraint when dishonored. As the rest of the nation acknowledges and embraces him as its first king, the critics emerge, “some worthless fellows,” with their cynicism: “How can this man save us?” As king, Saul now has the power to dispose of such men, quickly and quietly. “But he held his peace,” reports Samuel, in an admirable demonstration of his early magnanimity (1 Samuel 10:27). Slow to Anger Most noteworthy, though, is God himself. He says, through Isaiah, to his rebellious people, “For a long time I have held my peace; I have kept still and restrained myself” (Isaiah 42:14). God has not ignored or discounted their sin; nor has he raged in an outburst of unrestrained fury against them. Later he pleads, “Have I not held my peace, even for a long time, and you do not fear me?” (Isaiah 57:11). Now he will act in justice, giving vent to his righteous anger, but none may reasonably charge him with rushing to judgment or the slightest impatience. “In times that socialize us for outrage and outbursts, we need men who know how to hold their peace.” In times that socialize us for outrage and outbursts, we need men not just like Jacob, Aaron, and a young Saul — who know how to hold their peace when the moment requires it — but also like God himself, who the Scriptures describe repeatedly as “slow to anger.” Significantly, when God reveals himself to Moses in response to the request “Show me your glory,” the first words the prophet hears are “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger” (Exodus 34:6). Such divine composure , as we might call it, would become a legacy for the Israelites, that their God was slow to anger.  Not without anger . He clearly stood ready to punish the guilty in time. And never before it was time, and never with an intensity that was unjust or in any way that wronged those he punished or disciplined. Yet, given the rebellion of his people, often outrageous, he was enduringly patient and markedly “slow to anger,” as prophets and psalmists alike would cherish (Nehemiah 9:17; Joel 2:13; Psalms 86:15; 103:8; 145:8). So Too His People The collected Proverbs of the nation made this striking application: As your God, so too his people . If God himself, by all accounts and remembrances, is indeed slow to anger, how can his people not seek to be like him? Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly. (Proverbs 14:29) A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but he who is slow to anger quiets contention. (Proverbs 15:18) Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city. (Proverbs 16:32) Good sense makes one slow to anger, and it is his glory to overlook an offense. (Proverbs 19:11) Here we see how God is forming and shaping his people: to have “great understanding”; to “quiet contention”; to be “better than the mighty”; to manifest “good sense” and the rare glory, in a world like ours, to overlook an offense. This God would save his people from hasty tempers, from exalting folly, from stirring up strife. So too in the New Testament, James extends this legacy to his Christian readers: “Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (James 1:19). Jesus whipped and wept But what of Christ himself, God incarnate? In Jesus, we find full and holy humanity, along with expressions we might not label “calm,” yet are manifestly righteous. We do not picture Christ as calm when he made a whip of cords, cleared the temple, and overturned tables (John 2:15) — actions that prompted his disciples to remember Psalm 69:9: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” Nor would we call him “calm” when he came to Bethany in the wake of Lazarus’s death. “Deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled” (John 11:33), Jesus wept  — visibly enough that onlookers said, “See how he loved him!” (John 11:35–36). Then he came to the tomb and was “deeply moved again” (John 11:38). Nor would we think of his anguish in the garden as serenity. “Being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground” (Luke 22:44). We don’t typically think of calmness as accompanied by “loud cries and tears” — but even here in Gethsemane, in his distress, he did not abandon reverence but was heard because of it (Hebrews 5:7). We would go too far to pretend that Christ was always calm. There were moments he was righteously and manifestly moved by holy emotions. Though neither in the temple, nor in Bethany, nor in the garden, did he lose control. Apart from a few exceptions, the Christ we encounter in the Gospels is stunningly calm. What composure, what self-control, what holy calmness he shows again and again when failed by his disciples, interrupted by the sick, imposed upon by the well-meaning, challenged by the sophisticated, and disrespected by the authorities. The one to whom our Christian growth conforms is one who was decidedly, manifestly calm, with only the rarest of, and most fitting, exceptions. Not stressed to rule the stars But just as helpful today, as we seek to live with the pattern of holy calm that echoes our Lord’s, is his unshakable composure right now, seated on heaven’s throne. Indeed, we are not yet fully glorified. We are not yet beyond the reach of earthly storms, injuries, strange behavior, and surprising acts of evil in this unreasonable world. But our captain is. As his soldiers, we draw on his calmness as absolute sovereign and utterly invincible. His holy composure and admirable serenity are not only our model to follow but also, and most significantly, our hope to lean on. Unlike the priests in the first covenant, standing  daily in God’s service, ever in motion, “offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins . . . when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down  at the right hand of God” (Hebrews 10:11–12). The priests stood, but as John Piper comments, Christ is not standing. He is not in perpetual motion. . . . He does happen to rule the world. And care for his church. But he doesn’t need to stand up to do it. According to Psalm 8:3, he made the stars with his fingers. It is no stress for him to rule one, infinitesimal planet without jumping out of his seat like a basketball coach, or pacing back and forth like a general waiting for news from the front lines. The accession of Christ to the throne of the universe — and his sitting on his throne with complete equanimity — is a signal to all his enemies, and to us, that this war has been won. “The enemies of Christ hate calm and fearless responses in Christ’s people.” The enemies of Christ hate calm and fearless responses in Christ’s people. They signal to Christ’s foes that their destruction is coming (Philippians 1:28). But more than that, holy calm, in the midst of our storms, makes us available to love others in the thick of crises, rather than being absorbed in our reaction. Oh, for Christians like this in our day of outrage and outburst. And for men like this especially — for husbands and fathers and pastors — to be a non-anxious presence in our homes and churches. For men who lean on the stressless, complete equanimity of Christ, showing holy calmness through the emotionally trying and explosive moments in life and leadership, ready to be responsive without being reactive, engaged and even industrious without being frantic, able to hold their peace when needed, and bring genuine concord in our skirmishes, knowing the war has been won.
