The Promises of the Lord Part I — Bertha Smith

Seeking Reality and Finding the Lord

Land for the last 21 years. People are hunting reality, and I would hate for anybody to go to a Baptist church and then go home and tell me what a captain of one of our U .S. destroyers told me when he got out to China.

He grew up in Virginia. I started to say a state church, but Virginia has so many Episcopalians. He is a member of the Episcopal Church and lost his wife and left him with a little baby, his first baby.

His heart was so broken. For a number of years he was stationed in the New York Harbor, and that man told me that he visited 50 churches trying to find peace. He had just grown up in a church and had never had any personal experience with the Lord.

He visited 50 churches without anybody finding from one single sermon how to be saved, how to find the Lord as he expressed it, how to find the Lord. He just gave up and decided that there wasn't any way for him to find the living Lord.

He went back down to Baltimore and married a Baltimore Catholic and gave his little girl a Catholic mother. He hadn't had much peace since. His little girl of 12 years old was led to the Lord by one of our Baptist missionaries in the port of Chifu.

The woman was living in the same house as me, and I just wrote him a note and sent it out to the ship. When I found out he was captured, I told him to come over, I wanted to see him. I told him about his little girl and have him saved.

He was thrilled, and then he told me that he himself had never found the Lord. He had lived a miserable life ever since he married that Catholic woman, and that followed losing his own precious first wife.

We don't want anybody to go to a Baptist church and not find the Lord. Why don't you make it your habit, friends, that at once a day, the rest of your life, you pray for the power of the Lord to come upon these Baptist pastors.

They are God's people, they are God's men, most of them, set aside to be our church leaders by the Lord himself. You just pray down the power of the Lord more and more upon those who know the power, praise the Lord for everyone who knows how to preach in the power of the Lord, and then pray for the power of the Lord down upon those who do not know how to preach in the power of the Lord.

Then pray for those who are not called of God just to go sell insurance. Then add to that, begin to pray for our six seminaries. Once a day, pray for our six seminaries. I have my last little leaflet in my homework tonight to give out.

I want you to take this like a standard of excellence and paste it in the back of your Bible or put it on your desk under the glass on your desk, and you recheck yourself by it every few days. It's called, The Man God Uses, by Dr. Oswald Smith of the Big People's Church of Toronto, Canada.

A church is a convention all within itself, just an independent church. A few years ago they had produced 500 missionaries and were supporting them in different fields. Now they produce most of them. A few of them came to them grown and already saved.

But most of the missionaries that they had appointed had grown up and been saved in that church. Isn't that glorious, for one church? That was ten years ago, I suppose. I don't know how many missionaries they have by now.

If anyone did not get this little leaflet, the first little leaflet I gave out on The Man God Chooses, we have enough of these for you to come up and get one after the service. And I want all those, especially those who got the other leaflets, this is just one sheet.

I hope this stack is thick enough for everybody here to have one. I just want to praise you, thank you rather. I praise the Lord and thank people. Of course, thank the Lord, too. But I do want to thank you for inviting me and thanking you for giving me a wonderful place of rest over at the motel and a parking lot big enough for me to walk two miles in every day without getting out on the street and having quiet where I could get ready to speak.

Then I just praise you, thank you that you have come and listened. Then with all my heart I do thank you for the offering, and I assure you, as I said to the little group that will be here this morning, none of it will be spent for oysters or key bone steaks.

The Word of Life and the Promises of God

In the first chapter of 2 Peter, I want to read something very interesting to you and me regarding the Lord's word. I'll read the first three verses, the first four verses, rather. 2 Peter 1 .1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the word of life.

Now, he's speaking of the living Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ, who came down, Peter associated with it. It's called the word of life. For the life was manifested in the flesh when he became man in order to die.

And we have seen it and have witnessed and shown unto you the eternal life. Oh, pardon me, I'll finish this, but you see I'm not reading from 1 Peter, I turned two leaves at the same time. For the life was manifested and we have seen it and have witnessed and shown unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested unto us.

That which we have seen with our hands, have seen and heard, declare we unto you, and ye also have fellowship with us. And truly the fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. Now, of course, you see, I've read from 1 John, and it was 1 John that said he'd handled the word of life, he'd had his hands on the Lord.

He knew of his flesh and blood. Well, I just turned over two leaves too much, went forward too fast. We come back to the 1 Peter, 2 Peter, and we begin with Simon Peter. Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the knowledge, through the righteousness of God and our Savior, Jesus Christ, grace and peace be multiplied unto you.

Now, Peter had to announce himself. He was writing this letter to save people, and he had to introduce himself and let them know who it is that's writing it. And he does that in the 1st verse. He calls himself, he's both a servant and an apostle of the Lord.

So he has an authority, being an apostle, to write to them, what he's going to say. Then he greets them, grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, according as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue.

The Lord has provided everything that we need to live godly in this world. He's provided all that we need to live victoriously in every situation that any child of his may find himself or herself in. And how is his preparation for us made real?

How do we lay hold on him to be our victory in every situation? Well, the next verse tells us, 2 Nephi 3 Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises, that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through love.

The Holy Spirit here, through Paul, describes the word of God, the Lord's promises to us, as being great and precious. Now, you and I would never use great and precious to describe the same thing. We would refer to the great rocks of the mountains as saying, the rocks are great, but great rocks, they're not precious.

What are they worth? Well, we describe the precious doers of the African mines as being precious. They are small and there are so few of them, so few of them. They are precious. But here, God's promises are described as being great and precious.

But not only great, that great has a modifier. Exceeding great, exceeding great! His promises are exceeding great and precious. Fortunately, I grew up in old times when children at Sunday school were taught to memorize the Bible.

Memorize, memorize, memorize! That's the only way the Chinese ever taught. In olden times it was just through memory. Modern Chinese have a different kind of teaching and they learn to use their minds and think things through.

But, friends, we need both. We need both. We need to learn to teach and think things through, and before children are old enough to think things through, when their minds are so keen, they ought to store the word of God in their hearts so they'll have it then and they can do the thinking through later on, after they are saved and after they know the Lord and after they know the Holy Spirit as the teacher of the words and the revealer to the heart of the truth.

But it ought to be stored in their minds. And our day school teachers, assigned, we had worship every day. I learned more Bible in day school worship than I did at Sunday school. I went to Sunday school once a week, and I went to day school all the time, every day, five days a week.

And we were taught the word of God. And, friends, I can never, never praise the Lord enough for all the passages of scripture that I was taught to memorize when I was a child, by psalm after psalm and chapter after chapter.

Faith in Wartime and the Missionary Calling

When the Japanese were coming on our city in 1937, six months after they had invaded northeast China, I was there alone in a mission field in the western part of Shantung province where our work, what we called our North China mission, China is so big our mission work has to be divided into groups.

And it was divided into four sections, a section down in Shanghai called, down in South China, called the South China mission. And one around Shanghai and up in the cities, some cities up in the interior from Shanghai, which was called our Central China mission.

And then over in Hunan province, another group which was called our Interior mission. And up in Shantung province, that northeast province, that's where the peninsula juts out toward Korea and Japan, we call it the northeast corner of China, was called our North China mission.

Travel was so difficult and took so long, and missionaries had to get together once a year for their annual business meeting. And you just might be interested to know that no missionary can ever write to the foreign mission board and request so much of your mission money for their work.

The foreign mission board wouldn't pay one speck of attention to it if it were the opinion of one person. Even those missionaries in one city, if there are eight or ten there, they couldn't write to the foreign mission board and request so much money for their field, for their section.

And that field usually covered four or five counties. It had to be the whole group. And we came together once a year, and that was a glorious time to see each other once a year, and that was the time that the single women all got kissed.

If you were in a section by yourself, you kissed only ladies. We didn't even kiss the missionary preachers when we saw them once a year in those days. But when we got together once a year, all the women kissed all the other women.

And for the single women, that was their annual kiss, where they lived out by themselves somewhere. Well, one time when the war came and they'd invaded the eastern part of China, I was out there by myself, and the railways had been cut, and I couldn't get the mission meeting.

And I'd always get a pretty new silk dress for the fall when I'd go to Chifu to the mission meeting. You'd get pretty Chinese silk, and you just took an old dress that you liked and took it to a tailor.

And while you were having mission meeting, they made you a dress for a few dollars, and you went back home with a pretty new dress. And of course, that lifted your morale to have a new dress once a year without spending much money.

And so I couldn't go. But someone, a Chinese, was passing, and they were going to be able to get a letter for me by hand down to Chifu by somebody else. And I wrote a letter to the chairman of the mission to read to the missionaries.

And I started off by saying, oh, how I do want to go to mission meeting. I want a new dress, and I want to be kissed. And the chairman of the mission said, I suggest that we appoint one of the ladies to go over to the western Shandong to kiss Bertha.

Well, it was a great time when I had a mission meeting. And then we passed on all the money that we were to spend, and every dollar that was sent out there of your money that was given to the Lord for your mission work was passed on by the group.

And it had to be assigned to a certain evangelist by name, or a certain Bible woman by name. And it was sent in to the foreign mission board as the desire of the group. And if they had the money, they sent everything that we asked.

That used to didn't come. They had to cut it so much, and we'd have to get together and cut and cut and cut. They had to commit it. It had to spend all night sometimes cutting down what we'd asked for and what we really needed.

But they knew we wouldn't get it in the early days. And one time, we didn't ask for anything but our salaries. And we told them, and the mission board passed a resolution, a motion, that if we're going to have to borrow money to send it to us for our salaries, not send it to us the next year.

We'd just take the consequence. Well, that was about the time they decided to quit borrowing. We had a new secretary, and he made new arrangements for the banks to stretch out that debt they'd had for borrowing money over a longer period of years and let us pay it as we could over a longer period.

And eventually, we got it all paid. Well, they sent our salaries on anyway, even though we'd requested them not to if they had to borrow. And after a while, now they passed a resolution never to borrow, because you people are so liberal and love your mission work so much, you give so liberally.

Well, that's neither here nor there, but that wasn't long after that letter was written, till the Japanese were coming toward our city. And their counter-noir was getting louder and louder. And I was nine hours by train from the nearest other Baptist missionary.

I was a city church in five counties. We had churches in each of the county seats and many preaching chapels in market towns. Well, I didn't know what I would do. Our city was filled with people who had come from northern cities as the Japanese took the city.

All the people who could afford it just started out walking. The trains were all taken over by the Japanese, and they weren't selling tickets to ordinary passengers. They were loaded with soldiers, and of course the Chinese loading those that hadn't been taken over to send their soldiers out to meet the Japanese to fight.

And people were coming through our city to stay as long as they could, and then they were going to move on west. And I didn't know whether I'd be moving west or what I would do. But I was just living day by day and doing what I thought was standing there.

And no, one day I was sitting on a chair. I'd just come in. That wasn't often. The city was being filled with wounded soldiers who were coming back, Chinese soldiers. Public schools had all been closed and taken for temporary hospitals.

Stores had been ordered closed and to pack up their goods in the back of their stores and fill the fronts of the hospital full of carts for wounded Chinese soldiers that were being brought back. I could have spent all my day just going from one cart to another telling them about the Savior.

I did spend every afternoon at that. But they had no pastor then. The Chinese had a Bible pastor every morning I had to leave from 6 to 7. And then I had a girls' school going at that time. I had my yard full of all the school girls.

Classes were stopped probably at that time. But we had all the girls and all the members of the church, all the young women folks on our place. I had four rooms given to me across the street. People closed up their own outside gates and just made gates through the walls and through the walls of their rooms into the next courtyard with only one entrance.

And that was just opposite the entrance into our own Baptist mission. And they put up an American flag over it and fixed a room there for me. And it was autumn and they even put up a stove. Chinese don't have heaters in their houses, but they've got one somewhere and put it up for me.

So I could room over there a part of the time. And the Japanese wouldn't know when they got there but I was rooming over there all the time. And then we had 20 rooms given to us back of our own property across the street.

We had a girls' dormitory there with the girls in it. And then 20 rooms on another side who did the same thing. And I just had hundreds of women who just came to me. And if we had just one church member, one man, we took in all the women folks of his family for the sake of that one church member.

And we were saving the basement of our church for our Christian men to come in through during the actual siege of the city. But it happened so quickly they didn't get there. But it was a time when nobody, it was a time, I'll tell you, when the Lord's promises became exceeding great and precious at the same time.

And one day I evidently had just come in. We're having meetings every night at our church. We had some Chinese deacons and teachers in the mission school who could lead some of them, but I took my turn.

And the church was just filled up every night with people wanting to know, many people coming from northern cities. And the Chinese who lived there who had never been interested in the gospel just came and said, our religions and our gods are not good to use, no good to use at a time like this.

And they wanted to know the true God. And we had services every night. I was the only one at that time that could play the pump organ. And so you just start singing and people know we're having a service and they just come, just crowds every night packed in.

Well, I had to take those who wanted to be saved, I had to teach them and get them, do what I could to them before they had to, for them before they went on west. And one day I told all those who, one time I counted them when they came forward for prayer afterwards wanting to be saved because there were so few, there were only 15.

I remember another time when I counted them, there were 35. And I asked them that the next day to come over to the Condor residence. They were my co-workers, Frank Holland and his wife were on furlough, that's the reason I was there alone.

And they'd been due back in the summer before. But the Japanese had invaded China the 7th of June and Miss Condor had a bad heart and the doctors wouldn't let her go back into a war-torn situation with a bad heart.

That was why I was left there alone. And this was the autumn when they were reaping, when they were throwing their own arrow. Well, as I said, I came in and sat down for a few minutes and that cannon roar was just so loud.

And I knew they were making for our city. And one of those exceeding great and precious promises just popped into my mind. Now, you know the Lord put it there. And he couldn't put it there because I had memorized it.

I had memorized John 14, 15, 16 and 17 at one time. And this is John 14, chapter 20. And it is one exceeding great and precious promise I want you to know. It says Jesus, you remember in that 14th chapter, Judas had already gone out and Jesus was having a little farewell with the 11 disciples.

And he was trying to get them to see that it would be better for him to go away, as he called it, than it would to remain with them. Now, when he was with them, as I've said before, in the Old Testament, God was for his people.

In the Gospels, God was with his people. And how glorious for them to walk with him and talk with him. And as John said, know from experience that he was flesh and blood, perfect man and perfect God. And he was trying to get them to see that he would come back.

If he went away, he would come back. And when he came back, he'd be inside of them. And that would be better than remaining with them. And so he said to them, in that day after Pentecost, ye will know that I am in my Father.

You know, the Lord always is present tense. He always is present tense. He didn't say that, in that 14th chapter of John, the first part of it, when they asked him the way to the Father, he didn't say that I am, I will be up in heaven, or I came from heaven.

He said, I am up in heaven. And he was up in heaven while he was down there on the earth talking at the same time. And then he said, and he didn't say, I will be with you, but he was always present tense.

And he said, I am with you, I am with you. And after Pentecost, even though that was the future, after Pentecost, ye will know that I am in my Father, and he in me, and I in you. Well, I began to think about that verse.

Spiritual Protection in the Midst of War

Now my position, my position, where is it? I'm here now, and I'm the only one the Lord has to stand by these people and keep Japanese soldiers away from these Chinese women. At that time they were trying to get America to approve of their so-called holy war on China, their vowed purpose being to clear China of communism, would that they had.

Their purpose was to annex China to their great empire of the East. That was their purpose. Just taking China. And from the reports that we'd heard from cities taken by the Japanese, not a female from 12 to 70, would escape those soldiers.

And they gave to their armies three days of complete and absolute liberty as a reward for taking the city. They could loot, they could take any amount of money from anybody they wanted to, they could rob, they could do, they could just do anything, humiliate the women, do anything they wanted to do for three days.

Well, it took them much longer than three days to get that army back in order after they took our city. It came near being two months, and it was three days. And the women were frightened to death of them.

And the men couldn't protect their own wives or their own daughters or their own sisters. And I was the only one there that could protect them. And I got in a rickshaw and put an American flag over it and went all over the city and gathered up non-Christian girls where people called on to come and rescue their girls.

And we just filled our place full up. And fortunately we had our school teachers there living on the place. And we had several women teachers. And I divided all, I didn't take any men of course, I divided all those women into groups.

And I took the most advanced group, college graduates and teachers and college students who had come back home because the colleges were closed, it's the only town of the world. And then the head teacher, the Bible teacher in our school took a Chinese woman, one of the Bible teachers took the next group, and other teachers took the other groups.

And those who couldn't read were put in groups. And we had four Bible classes a day in the church, in the church Sunday school teaching rooms. And the school building was around the corner and we didn't go out on the street to get around it.

But we kept everybody, gave them a lot of homework to do and we just kept everybody just as busy as they could be studying the word of God. And people that had never had a Bible in their hands, the most ardent Buddhists who had been brought up to that, were studying the Bible every day.

And four times a day they were having it taught and explained to them. Well, needless to say, we were just as busy as we could be as the Japanese army came on in and then after they took the city, when it took months before, and really the fighting was not over for two months.

The Chinese tried to retake the city after the Japanese got it. First it was the Chinese inside the city and the Japanese outside. And after it was the Japanese inside and the Chinese outside. And they fought for about two months until the Chinese finally had to give up and move on west.

Well, the Lord surely performed miracles for us during that time. Even two bombs were accidentally dropped in our American mission property with U .S. flags flat over the flat buildings and over the gates and everywhere.

Well, of course, that was an accident. They were trying to reach the government building and the government building over there is the government of the whole county and not just the city. And they were trying to reach that government building and they were firing in that direction and we were just between the guns just a very short distance from the government building.

And our church was a two-story church and the Connolly residence was a two-story building. And all the other buildings were one-story and of course our buildings were easily hit. And I had a little Chinese house in Connolly's yard.

When the two bombs dropped, I was sitting with my Chinese secretary having him write out the Bible verses and the points I was making in the noon Bible class to all these people who were, most of them men, a few women, who were coming forward at night wanting to be saved.

And I just didn't know how many more days anybody could be there who came forward for prayer after the services. And some Christian prayed with each one of them. And we gave them a New Testament and a little book on how to be saved and how to live saved in Chinese, how to keep saved and what to do.

But still we wanted to be sure they were really laying a hold on the cross of Christ before they had to go on west. And I suggested that any who wanted more personal help come over to the Connolly home the next day at noontime, 12 o 'clock.

They'd take from 12 to 2 for their lunchtime. And they don't go around making a living like we do it all day, rushing around making money and getting ulcers. They take it easy and have an hour for rest every day.

And I knew they could eat and then have an hour to come. And the next day 35 people came and we had to move over to the church. And then after that more and more people came to the church. So I had added to the night meetings and to the morning Bible class and the day classes during the day, a Bible class at noon for the people who would come in the church.

And they write out everything. So in that wonderful Chinese language that writes this way, you can just write on a strip of paper and just have a half a dozen and flip them over as they read it. And all the verses that I wanted them to see for the eye that I was giving at that noon class on how to be saved and verses to memorize, what to do.

Well, just all they needed to know to be saved and start out living a new life. And we were sitting there, I dictating to him when the first bomb fell. I thought it had struck the Connolly residence, American two-style brick house.

And I thought, I supposed all the top store was knocked off. The window panes blew out and the doors were open. Do you know the Lord preserved my heart in perfect peace? Now that was a miracle. We had the Connolly home, had a basement in it.

And that had been assigned to the, to a young preacher and his wife who had just come back from, from East Shandong. He graduated our seminary over there and that was his home there. And he was acting as pastor of the church.

And our head teacher and his family was there. And some, all the men teachers of our school were in that basement and their families. I went down to the basement to see if everything was all right. And they started to show me the windows.

And I said, now the house doesn't matter now. All I want to know if anybody's hurt. And finally nobody hurt. I stepped out into the yard. Our great big trees were cut, big shade trees. Went on with a little pastoring.

The pastor, the pastor's wife hadn't come at that time, pardon me. There's nobody in it. And it was, it was badly damaged. My little Chinese house was, was ruined. Went on around where there was a basement with, with a dozen people in it.

The pastor and his mother was there and, and the mother's face was streaming with blood. I looked at her and told her I'd tend to that later. I wanted to go out to their dormitory to see if anyone was hurt.

And that young man said, Miss, Miss, don't go out now. And I said, I'm going out to school to see about the girls. He said, don't go out now. And I said, well, somebody might be hurt and a minute's delay might mean the loss of a life.

He said, in Jesus name I ask you not to go out now. I said, in Jesus, for Jesus sake. I said, but it's for Jesus sake that I'm going. But since you feel that way about it, I'll not go. And I stepped back down in the little basement.

And in a minute the second drop, bomb was dropped just where I was going. Now friends, if I'd have been an old maid who wouldn't listen to anybody, I wouldn't be here talking to you tonight. Well, finally we went on.

We found none of the girls were badly hurt. And we spent all of our refugees, you see this was before the Japanese came in, all of our refugees packed up and went home. And it left about a half a dozen teachers there who lived on the place.

And then we spent the afternoon nailing straw mats over school building windows and moving school furniture and straw mats over house windows, getting the place ready to leave. And we and that dozen teachers found a refuge with friends outside the city wall about two miles away and went over there to stay.

And while we walked that mile the next morning that two miles from our place outside the city walls where we were going out to a hospital where we were going to be taken in, there was not a gun fired on that city.

Well, they were marching on the city, that's the reason they were not firing. We just got out there and the siege of that city began. And all day long it was just terrific. Well, of course, next morning I went back to see if everything was all right.

One of the men went back with me and we got to the gate. We'd left three men there and their wives who wanted to stay. One was my secretary and two others were teachers. And they'd taken refuge and they thought it was the most safe place on the building.

And we counted 28 shells that had exploded or not exploded in our grounds. And the roof of the house was badly damaged by that time. What the bombs hadn't done, it seemed that the shelling had. We'd been just in line of their shells, shelling at that government building.

Well, it was just glorious. I moved back in just a few days and that was when the four of the rooms were prepared in that room for me to come back. And that was when the other rooms were given to us around.

And we went back and I went in a rickshaw and went all over the city and gathered up those girls. Well, it was two months before we had policemen on the streets. It was just a military situation. Well, it was more than two months, it was the spring.

And soldiers just came all times of the day demanding young women. And I'd have to go out and get them out. Well, I want you to know the promises of God that God had given me beforehand took me through everything.

I started to tell you about the day that I came in, just when they were marching toward the city, and just sat down tired. And just as I sat down, the Lord had that John 14, 20 pop into my mind. And I'll quote it again, in that day after Pentecost, after the Lord would come back in spirit, I will be in my Father and you will be in me.

Oh, I said, that's my position. I'm to be inside of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ is to be inside of his Father. I like to illustrate this with these boxes. Here's God the Father, and the Lord said he would be in God the Father.

Now, you see, I couldn't be in God the Father alone, because he's the essence of all holiness, and I have this devil nature that I got from Adam and Eve. And I'd be frightened to death with God the Father, and his holiness couldn't admit me into his presence.

Now, he's a way yonder in a cloud from me. He loves me, and he looks after me all the time, and he looked after me before I ever knew him. But you see, I couldn't be that near to him. But Jesus said, I'll be in my Father.

And so inside of God the Father was the Lord Jesus Christ. And he's the one that settled my sin problem. He settled my sin problem. He came and took a human body, because God could die and die, and took me and his own body to the cross.

And so my position is inside of the Lord Jesus Christ. I like to use all three of these names. These names are precious. The Lord means the one in authority over me. And Jesus meant Savior, and Christ, you remember, meant the anointed one.

And priests and kings were anointed. He's my king and he's my priest, standing at the right hand of God, pleading for me. And kings have authority. He's my king, the Lord Jesus Christ. And I'm supposed to be dwelling inside of him.

Oh, just look what a position! What a position! I'm out there inside of the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, I said, that's to be my position during this war, and I got up. And I took a step over into God the Father.