In my Facebook post, I’ve listed four characteristics of J.O. Fraser, a man that God could use to bring revival to a totally unreached people group. Surely this is a life worth studying.
His main driver was a passion to bring the good news of Jesus to these people who had never heard.
“If our Master returned today to find millions of people unevangelized and looked, as of course He would look, to us for an explanation, I cannot imagine what explanation we would have to give. Of one thing I am certain, that most of the excuses we are accustomed to make with such good conscience now, we shall be wholly ashamed of then.”
(Words from the booklet that changed the course of James Fraser’s life and caused him to go to China as a missionary. He read them when he was a student at the University of London.)
“It was a lovely day and I had a clear view of the plain in both directions, as well as of the city. Of course, no missionary has ever lived there, and the whole plain, with a population of perhaps 100,000, is without the light of the Gospel. I believe God would be glorified by even one witness to His name amid the perishing thousands of Baoshan. It does seem a terrible thing that so few are offering for the mission field. I can’t help feeling that there is something wrong somewhere. Surely God must be wanting His people to go forward. Does not the Master’s last command still hold good? As one thinks of even one corner of the world here in Yunnan, there seems a strange discrepancy between its huge districts, large towns, unreached tribespeople waiting for workers who do not come, and the big missionary meetings at home. The collecting and the subscribing, the missionary literature published, etc., etc. And the need is the same, if not greater, in other parts of the world. Hundreds of millions of people who have never yet had the Gospel definitely brought before them. A mere handful of missionaries sent out from the home countries to evangelise them.”
(Words from his biography after he went to Yunnan province in China, living amongst so many people who had never heard of Jesus.)
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)
(The last words Jesus spoke before ascending back to heaven.)
“Therefore, I glory in Christ Jesus in my service to God. I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done – by the power of signs and wonders, through the power of the Spirit of God. So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ.
It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation.” (Romans 15:17-20).
(Paul’s Ministry Strategy).
Source: “Mountain Rain”, a biography of James O. Fraser, Pioneer Missionary to China, by Eileen Fraser Crossman.
