Tuesday November 5th, 2013 Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God The Life Story of the Author of My Utmost For His Highest David McCasland PART 5 “We are not called to be successful in accordance with ordinary standards, but in accordance with a corn of wheat falling into the ground and dying, becoming in that way what it never could be if it were to abide alone.” —He Shall Glorify Me 20 IN HIS PRESENCE (1917) The New Year stormed in with such violent rain that on January 2, 1917, Chambers posted a sign outside the study hut: CLOSED DURING SUBMARINE MANOEUVRES! It temporarily replaced the previous notice which said, BEWARE! THERE IS A RELIGIOUS TALK HERE EACH EVENING. “Apparently out here,” he wrote, “no one prepares for rain, so when it comes we are like the earth, patient and absorbent.” In his thoughts and prayers for the days ahead, several possibilities appeared: Diary, January 7: I am to give six more lectures at Alexandria, then if it can be arranged I would like to visit all the centres in Egypt before returning to England, or going on to Palestine, if developments take place in that direction. At the time, the British army was stalled in the northern Sinai after taking the town of El Arish just before Christmas. Everyone expected that sometime during 1917, they would mount a massive attack and try to take Palestine from the Turks. January 22: There seems every prospect that I will be going round all the camps in the Canal Zone and into Palestine, I hope, speaking to the men and seeing things for myself. January 29: My mind is ever ruminating on our return to England in April, and I await the final touch of conviction about it that will cause me to say—this is God’s order. January 30: The committee have asked me not to think of leaving in the spring as they want my kind of work to continue. This needs praying about, but we shall see it all right when the time comes. Oswald and Biddy concluded that the Y.M.C.A. committee was right and, for the time being, they were exactly where they should be. If America entered the war, as many felt sure it would, that might turn the tide in Europe and help bring the conflict to an end. There was certainly no shortage of spiritually needy men in Egypt and the response to their ministry at Zeitoun grew day by day. In mid-January Oswald began holding a Sunday morning service at the Aotea Convalescent Home for New Zealand soldiers. After walking a mile through soft sand to Aotea and then another mile back in the sun, he spoke for the usual communion service at Zeitoun. Afternoon at the American Mission in Cairo and the evening service at Ezbekieh rounded out his normal Sunday schedule—preaching at least three, and often four times. In the midst of constant giving out, he treasured his rare opportunities to receive from others. Diary, February 3: This afternoon I went into Cairo and had a most absorbing time with Dr. Rendel Harris and Bishop and Mortimer. It was a season of pure intellectual and spiritual pleasure. The Doctor was memorable in his estimates of the men we talked of—Dr. Forsyth, Dr. Denney, Dr. Robertson Nichol, Dr. David Smith and Dean Inge. The thing that ‘keened’ me up was that his scholarly estimate verified my own personal views. It was all nutriment to my very bones. Another great encouragement came when Eva Spink and Gladys Ingram arrived from Alexandria to work fulltime at Zeitoun. Biddy and Mary Riley eagerly welcomed their friends from the B.T.C. days in London. Jimmy Hanson, Chambers’ right hand man for many months, continued his flurry of activity at Zeitoun as a jack-of-all-trades who could repair almost anything. Besides Chambers’ associates working at Zeitoun, other former B.T.C. students occupied strategic positions with great ministry opportunities. Thirty miles north of Cairo, at the busy Benha railway junction, Miss Ashe and Gertrude Ballinger operated a Y.M.C.A. hut right on the train platform. Every day they served hundreds of troops in transit whose trains stopped there. On the front lines near Gaza, Philip Hancock served as Y.M.C.A. secretary among the men who would spearhead the coming battle for Palestine. Diary, March 10: This morning I am filled with a sense of quiet wonder at the way things have transpired and that the ‘B.T.C. Expeditionary Force’ should really be altogether here now. ‘This is from the Lord; and it is marvellous in our eyes.’ There is an all-alive expectancy over the next thing God will allow circumstances to precipitate. Oswald’s diary entry for Monday, March 26, is typical of the busy days filled with an endless round of people: The Saturday evening class was peculiarly satisfactory. Three Australians, really way-back Scots, came in and questioned me. These rough ‘old dogs’ were acquainted intimately with Calvin’s ‘Institutes,’ Pascal, Coleridge, Hugh Miller, Thomas Guthrie, Thomas Boston and the Bible. Altogether it was the most delightful question class I have had. In the morning Kathleen and I went to Benha to see Miss Ashe and Miss Ballinger. The hut [there] is the nucleus of any amount of possibility. They are really roughing it more than any of us, and, as usual, are appearing no end ‘bucked’ [encouraged] with the very difficulties. Sunday was a full and glorious day. The Aotea Home service was a fine season, the subject being ‘The Blind Spot,’ Mark 6:20. The Communion service here was also a great time, I spoke on ‘Spiritual Auto-Suggestion,’ 2 Cor. 11:3. The afternoon was busy with the free tea, and in the evening I went to Ezbekieh where the service was peculiarly vigorous and fine, and we had quite a swarm of men to supper afterwards. When a break in the schedule came, Oswald rarely let it pass without planning a special event: Good Friday, April 5, 7 p.m. The Pyramids This is now our fourth visit to the Pyramids. As we came flying along in the motor from Cairo, moment by moment the familiar went in the fascinating colours of sunset, and now it is completely unfamiliar and ancient and Egyptian, and the most gorgeous of moons is rising higher and higher into a faultless blue night. As we left Cairo we were enthralled in noticing the moon rising over the Mokattam Hills, it had that ‘unperspectived’ effect (to coin a word) of the Egyptian twilight where everything looks like a perfect pre-Raphaelite decorative painting, rather than a modern landscape picture. We are now sitting at the foot of the Great Pyramid, the moon is beautiful to a superb degree over a deep veil of mist and all around is silence, great lofty invaluable silence everywhere. We are now by the Sphinx; it is noticeable, as Pierre Loti points out, that the moonlight brings out the features of the Sphinx which in sunlight seems for the most part a defaced mass of stone boulder. The swinging ride home at night was a glorious remembrance. Biddy’s roles of wife, mother, and hostess in the bungalow were each a full-time job. In addition, she helped prepare and serve the Sunday tea for the men, and carried on a growing correspondence with friends at home and people they had met in Egypt. Every day she found time to write at least half a dozen letters, each with a bit of personal news and a word of encouragement from the Scriptures. Once a month she transcribed, typed, and mailed one of Oswald’s talks as an article for publication in the League’s magazine in England. And every time Oswald spoke at Zeitoun, she recorded his message in shorthand. Occasionally she accompanied him to the Aotea Home on Sunday morning and took notes of the talk there as well. For students of the Bible School Correspondence Course, Biddy prepared typed lesson summaries from Oswald’s longhand notes. No one had any idea where she found time to do all that as well as type his daily diaries in multiple carbon copies and send them to family and friends. The idea of putting some of Oswald’s sermons into print originated ten years before, when he was visiting America. The Revivalist Press in Cincinnati published two of his sermons in pamphlet form in 1907. The League of Prayer published little besides the writings of the late Reader Harris, and printed only one pamphlet by Chambers, a sermon titled Death to Self: Christian or Pagan? Throughout 1911 at the B.T.C. in London, Biddy took verbatim notes of Oswald’s lectures on Biblical Psychology. Because of interest expressed at God’s Bible School, she sent the notes to Cincinnati where the Revivalist Press gladly published Biblical Psychology as a book in 1912. Three years later, the Revivalist Press published Oswald’s Studies in the Sermon on the Mount (1915). In the months just before the B.T.C. closed in 1915, Oswald’s friend Rae Griffin and several students had urged Chambers to put some of his lectures into print. Two booklets, The Discipline in the Cure of Souls and The Discipline of Peril, were published in May 1915 with The Discipline of Prayer being made ready for print. All profits from the sale of these booklets were designated for student scholarships at the Bible Training College. When Chambers left for Egypt, Rae Griffin took over the booklet venture, with any net proceeds promised to the B.T.C. work in Egypt. Chambers had great respect for a keen mind well-expressed in print. He often quoted some of Reader Harris’s last words: “Probably the most lasting of all preaching is with the pen.” Oswald maintained a free literature table in the hut with League of Prayer materials and a few of his own booklets. If men wanted to contribute toward further printing they could, but no charge was ever made. His goal was to spread greater understanding of the Word of God. Oswald’s autumn 1916 reading and meditation in Job resulted in a month-long series of evening talks in the Zeitoun hut beginning in March 1917. When he finished the series in April, Biddy set to work typing her shorthand notes. His messages had spoken so clearly to the needs of soldiers, missionaries, and Y.M.C.A. secretaries, Biddy saw great value in putting them into print. With summer coming on, Oswald started construction of an information hut for the soldiers and an underground room he called a “dugout,” where he and Biddy could work and find refuge from the oppressive midday sun and heat. The roof of the dugout above ground resembled a miniature fort and became a favorite gathering place in the cooler hours of early morning and late evening. A free-standing wooden roof now covered the Bungalow, shielding the house from the direct rays of the sun. On one side of the roof, a wide, sloping trough was positioned to catch any precious rainfall and channel it into barrels below. His earlier notation about being unprepared for rain had not been forgotten. Chambers believed that if physical improvements were not made and new touches occasionally given to the huts, they would come to reflect slovenly care, which would be unpleasing to God. “A grave defect in much work of today,” he said, “is that men do not follow Solomon’s admonition, ‘Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.’ The tendency is to argue, ‘It’s only for so short a time, why trouble?’ If it is only for five minutes, let it be well done.” But no matter how well prepared the buildings were, there was no adequate protection from an Egyptian sandstorm. May 18: Today is awful. Last night about sundown the wind began to rise, and it rose and rose until at 1:30 a.m. it sounded like a veritable hurricane ... all day it has been a terrific wind filled with sand, and the heat of the nethermost pit. Everything is covered deep and dense with sand, we eat sand, drink sand, think sand, and pray sand. These women folk are just no end of an admirable crowd, and I can assure you it takes some vitality, morally, physically, and spiritually to be cheerful in weather like today. All the morning long there were crowds of men streaming into the hut for cool drinks, they were grateful to get in any kind of shelter from the wind and sand. Oswald considered it a privilege when his friend the Rev. Douglas Downes asked him to give a series of talks at the Dermatological Hospital in Abassia. The patients, all venereal cases, had been neglected for some months while the Y.M.C.A.’s scarce human resources were channeled to other hospitals. Many people saw the men with venereal disease as “moral lepers” with self-inflected “wounds.” Chambers went expectantly, glad of the opportunity to talk to these men of the salvation and healing presence of Jesus Christ. To free Oswald for the ministry at Abassia, Biddy taught the Thursday night classes at Zeitoun. In summer Chambers usually rose by 5:30 a.m. to have his time alone until everyone met for prayers at quarter past seven. Breakfast followed, then a full morning of work until noon. After the meal until three o’clock, everyone, including soldiers in camp and Egyptian workers, rested through the hottest part of the day. Following afternoon tea in the bungalow or the dugout, men thronged the huts until they closed at 10:00 p.m. During the evening class from 7:30 to 8:30, the canteen closed so soldiers and workers could attend Oswald’s class. Word filtering back from the front lines in the northern Sinai pointed to an autumn offensive into Palestine. Y.M.C.A. philosophy called for it to “follow the troops,” and some informal discussion had taken place on what that might mean for Chambers and other secretaries around Cairo. The final decision lay with the military authorities, but the Y.M. was ready whatever the request. On July 24, Chambers made an uncharacteristically long and personal diary entry: This is my birthday, my 43rd. It has been a glorious day in all ways, very hot but psychically very fine, and as it was a summarizing time for me, I am going to put down the results of the summary as I wrote it to two of my intimate friends. The first was a restatement of beliefs: Foremost, that Redemption, and not Rationalism, is the basis of human life, and that on that basis, spirituality is the reality of mind and conscience and feeling at one with Jesus Christ in a ‘spontaneous moral originality’ of relationship. Second. That the ‘soul saving passion’ as an aim must cease and merge into the passion for Christ, revealing itself in holiness in all human relationships. Third. That the Holy Spirit must be recognized as the sagacious Ruler in the saint’s affairs, not astute common sense. Fourth. That organization must be seen to be scaffolding raised by the organism, and must never be allowed to take the place of the organism. Fifth. That a scheme of socialistic propaganda [teaching] is about to be enacted on a universal scale with a mixture of astonishing good and atrocious bad, and until this has had its vogue Our Lord will not return, that is, if the past fairness to human schemes which God seems ever to have exhibited, is anything to go on. The other is rather intimate autobiography, but I will put it down: There comes to me growingly a sense of the ‘externals’ of things. Perhaps the plunging horror and conviction of sin in my early life not only disrupted my art calling and all the tendencies of those years, but switched me off by a consequent swing of the pendulum away from external beauties of expression in form and colour and rhetoric, and made me react into the rugged and uncouth and unrefined. But now I seem to have the experience Ruskin refers to—his grief at realizing the loss of his appreciation of the beauty of an English hedgerow, and his sad wonder if he would ever have the old emotions back again; then his recurrent joy and bounding delight when he found it all came back with redoubled force in later life. That perhaps states it. The beauty of form, of expression, of colour, all the fleeting features of the immense external fields of life, are again delighting me marvelously. The old delight is back in a glorious edition de luxe, as it were. It is no longer an individual delight but a personal one, without the lust to possess, and without the forced detachment of the spectacular, yet with all the complete delight which possesses a child’s mind in things. My inner career at the beginning was heavy and strong, and even lurid and very agonizing in the earlier phases; latterly, austere and peaceful, and now it is merging into a joy which is truly the receiving of a hundredfold more. By mid August, he and Biddy were proofreading the last pages of his talks on Job, before sending them to the Nile Mission Press in Cairo. He chose the book’s title from a favorite line of Browning: Baffled to Fight Better. Oswald’s heavy speaking schedule necessitated reusing many of his sermons. His diary records dates, places, and message titles, presumably in an effort to keep from repeating a talk to the same audience. On Sunday, August 26, at the Aotea Home, he preached a new message with the striking title, “A Poetical View of Appendicitis” with Jeremiah 8:11 as his text: “They have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.” That morning, Chambers gave his audience this spiritual application: “That is the perpetual peril at all times, relieving present pain by a temporal fictitious cure, when what is needed for an effectual cure is a surgical operation.” There is no evidence that anyone considered it unusual at the time, but in months to come, it would seem almost prophetic. While Oswald’s diaries reveal a man full of health and enthusiasm, photographs taken during this time show his face weathered and lined with fatigue. His sunken cheeks appear in marked contrast to his appearance two years before. Friends often expressed concern when he refused to rest during the midday heat and left the compound to visit men in hospitals. In the past four months, he had had only five days off during a brief holiday at Damietta. He and the others at Zeitoun had taken those days only because the American Mission needed the E.G.M. compound and their bungalow for a conference. With Jimmy Hanson away for three months in England to be married, Oswald’s responsibility for everyday tasks had greatly increased. Characteristically, though, his diary and letters were full of praise for the hard work of others: August 25, 1917. 4:30 p.m. Items Hut Surely no work ever had such devoted women as these here, nothing seems to daunt. Here is Woodbine [Gertrude Ballinger, just recovered from a near fatal illness] back again at Benha with Miss Ashe who has had an arduous time of it, and these here [Zeitoun] at it. In addition to their other duties, Biddy, Miss Riley, and Eva Spink had just agreed to provide daily meals for twenty-five officers stationed in the nearby camp. Chambers’ diary continued: There are no dangers or heroic footlights to reveal matters of devotion of a rare stamp, but let anyone bear in mind the peculiarly arduous conditions of the climate here and remember that these women have had exactly one week’s respite in the summer while the missionaries take two months in the year, and one will be able to gather a way of estimating the service of these faithful women, who would certainly have been among those in the New Testament of whom it is recorded ‘they ministered unto Him of their substance.’ To Mrs. Hobbs, Biddy’s mother, he wrote: As for Biddy I love her and I am her husband but I do not believe it is possible to exaggerate what she has been in the way of a Sacrament out here—God conveying His presence through the common elements of an ordinary life. The letters she has received from mothers and wives and sisters and fathers and brothers are in themselves a deep testimony to a most unconscious ministry of wife and mother and woman. Of the other women, what can I say. Never I think did any man have such a unique privilege as I have had in being associated with such women. He continued with appreciation for Mrs. Hobbs and Dais, Biddy’s sister, who had been so faithful in sending letters and books while enduring the food rationing and shortages in Britain, which had not touched them in Egypt. At times I wonder if my words can be of any use to people who have been and are in suffering that I cannot imagine. They may say, ‘Well what does he know of it all?’ I know nothing but I do know that He is completely able for any strain any human being may be put to. I think surely we will be Home to England next year. What a joy it will be to come back and see and be with you again. I am longing to get back, and contradictory though it seems after, what I have just said, I have much burning to say and preach... I have been supernaturally protected by God’s providence. Perhaps what He has taught me in these wonderful desert days may yet be uttered in the cities of men. Chambers’ diary continues the same tone of present contentment and expectancy for the immediate future: September 3: The evening class was still fuller yet, and some fine private conversations issuing. As Biddy and I walked out again tonight in the desert under the glory of the waning moon, the wonder and the greatness of the time God has given us out here came again, also the sense of His protection so wonderful and complete. On September 4, he wrote to his brother, Franklin: Hanson is now en route to England or Heaven—as the submarines permit! Hancock is at Gaza. Miss Ashe and Miss Ballinger are at Benha Station. All the other B.T.C. workers are at Zeitoun. Their work is beyond praise. I am like the figurehead—they do the work and I get the nominal praise but they do everything. There is every prospect of my going up the line some while later at the appointment of the Y.M. Administrative Council as a sort of co-ordinator of the Y.M.C.A. out here. The equipment is very quaint and modern. Boots, water bottle, sleeping tent, gas helmet and gumption. I shall fascinatingly enjoy it: mostly after El Arish, it is dugouts in the sand. However this is some way ahead yet The religious side here is a great and big thing still growing. A blackboard talk every night at 7:30 and this has grown to outside the hut as well as inside. And three meetings on Sunday. Aotea Home 9:30 a.m., Zeitoun 11 and a big meeting in the Canteen at 7:30 Sunday evening. September 14: Again it is a lovely morning, the sun rose in a real marvel of glorious light. Each sunrise here looks as if it were a new thought of God, and makes me think what delight the Creator must have in thinking them. I think I ought to give some notice in the diary of our animals, they are real adjuncts to the compound and especially to Kathleen’s world. First, there is the donkey, he has a very reputable stable inscribed ‘Eshat el Homar’ (Hut of the Donkey); alongside is the rabbit hutch, but alas no rabbits, John Silence (of whom more anon) killed both, at least we suspect so. Then Patsy, prime favourite, a perfect delight of a small black and tan collie, the very doggy incarnation of good temper, gentleness and splendid spirits. He is full of the most eminent sagacity and doggy good humour, lavishly fond of Kathleen, very spunky and no end of a sport. In fact he fills in Tweed’s place like no other dog I ever had. He is splendidly loyal and comrady and a favourite with everyone. Each night after the class he goes for his run in the desert with Biddy and myself. We are taking care of him for Mr. Downes. And then the cats—first the four kittens whose gambols and friskings are endlessly entertaining, and another Persian kitten which lives at the cash desk with Gladiolus mostly. And then John Silence, the presiding silent genius of the compound. He is a big cat, strong, jet black, panther-like, and completely devoted to the compound like a phantom. We have tried to get rid of him because he is quite wild and untamed, but he always comes back, silent and affectionate and dominatingly persistent. Certainly he is unlike any other cat I have ever known. These are the abiding compound pets, there are many other stray ones, tortoises, chameleons, lizards, and Kathleen’s doves and pigeons, but they are safely housed in Mr. Swan’s dovecote and are a very aristocratic assemblage. A special tiny hut built for Kathleen served as a playhouse. Her toys, dolls, and favorite things, supposed to be kept in her hut, were usually found all over the compound, where she generously shared them with others. For every journey, long or short, she carried a weird collection of odds and ends, all of which she considered essential. The opening of Kathleen’s “kit bag” became a regular feature at Zeitoun, during which soldiers expressed the greatest interest as she lectured on the merits of each item. While life went on in Egypt, the British Army was poised at Gaza, with a railroad and water pipeline stretching behind them back to sources of supply. General Allenby had requested the Y.M.C.A. to attach secretaries and workers to each casualty clearing station in the battle area once the advance began. Their job was to help with physical aid, encourage the wounded, and pray with the dying. September 20: I received the welcome news yesterday that I must hold myself in readiness to go up the line soon now. On September 21, Biddy wrote home: “My dearest Mother and Dais, There have been two odd mails in this week but no letters from home yet. I am sending off a diary, and this is only a note as I want to try and get the diaries up to date, and as I am a month in arrear, I’ll have to hurry up. We have got the Correspondence booklet ready and dispatched to Gertrude [Oswald’s sister], and I am very glad that it and Job are done and we can soon look forward to seeing them in print and being read. “There’s a real chance of Oswald going soon for the Y.M. have undertaken the work of the clearing stations once the fight begins, it can’t be long postponed now or the rains will be on them and make fighting impossible. All the secs. from here are to be ready to go any minute, and I think Oswald could catch the next train! “He will go with an American doctor, Dr. Deaver, a delightful man and he’ll be a fine companion, and of course it’s essential to have medical knowledge as well as the other kind of help. So when you read of the ‘taking’ of Gaza in the papers you’ll know that he’ll be up amongst the wounded men and mighty glad he’ll be too to be there. I don’t suppose it will be too long at a time as of course they are only temporary [at] the clearing stations till they get sent off to the various hospitals. We shall carry on here as well as may be, rather like walking about with your head cut off! but we’ll do our durndest all the same. “A very nice Padre has started to take a Weds. evening service here, setting Oswald free for Ezbekieh again, he had a great time this Weds. and lots of the old ones gathered round. The Padre is very Scotch and at the end asked if anyone wanted to ask a question at him! It made me smile. “Well, I shall be led into writing a long letter and I mustn’t stay to do that. Friday is generally a busy day and we have about 18 hospital men to tea. It is a boon to have it cooler, the air is delightful now and one can begin to enjoy being in the sun! though it’s still blazing and fierce at noon. Yours lovingly, Gertie.” Although rumors abounded concerning the start of Allenby’s advance, no word came for Oswald to leave. On September 24, he began a new series on Ecclesiastes in the evening classes at Zeitoun. His diary chronicled the days of waiting, filled with people and God’s blessing on the whole enterprise at Zeitoun. October 1: What testimonies we have from time to time, all spontaneous and unsolicited. A man came to see me yesterday and his story was simple and splendid, and such an evidence of God’s working in the haphazard. Some months ago he had been sent from hospital to the School and was lying out in the cold over against the wall the other side of the compound. He was a very heavy drinker, really drinking himself to death. We began our family worship and the hymn struck him, and the Spirit of God got hold of him, he came to the Devotional Hut classes, took stock, prayed, asked God to give him the Holy Spirit, lost all appetite for drink, threw up his smoking. He found smoking harder to give up than drinking, but he thought of Abraham giving up Isaac and was ashamed of himself, and pitched his cigarette case over the wall and has never smoked since, or had the desire for it. All this without one word to anyone, just by the Spirit of God. He has written from hospital telling me how he was saved, and asking would I put new heart into a mate of his who had just lost his mother. Chambers’ personal study in the autumn centered on the minor prophets, especially Hosea. October 3: Hosea 14 is a great illumination for the parable of the prodigal son, especially verses 1–5. The magnanimous generosity of God’s mighty joy in restoration when once backsliders return, no vindictiveness, no back memories, just great vast new beginnings, with the past as a fine culture of character for the present. V 9 is searchingly fine, ‘For the ways of the Lord are right, and the just shall walk in them.’ October 5: The class was good and as large and keen as ever, and the night is now a supreme glory of moon and stars. Many men came to say good-bye as they are off up the line. I am told I must wait a little longer before going up. October 7: A gem of an experience came after the evening service, a soldier came to see me under deep compunction of conscience, and after a talk we knelt in the deep and glorious moonlight at an old sun-bleached form in the compound and he transacted business with God on Luke 11:13, confirmed by 1 John 5:14–15, and his witness was undoubtedly John 14:27, ‘My peace I give unto you.’ One never gets used to the unspeakable wonder of a soul entering consciously into the Kingdom of Our Lord. It was a great joy to experience it all again. October 17: I certainly find Dr. Forsyth’s The Christian Ethic of War the greatest book I have read for many a year. Wherever the next phase of the BTC is formed in God’s providence, this book shall undoubtedly be the text-book of the Christian Ethic class. Oswald returned from his Wednesday night meeting at Ezbekieh feeling ill and spent a sleepless night suffering from intense abdominal pain. He assumed it was some kind of stomach bug, but it kept him in bed all the next day. His only diary mention of any difficulty was “lack of opportunity to write.” For three days he had no appetite and was unable to sleep, except in fitful minutes of sheer exhaustion. His face was drawn in pain and frequently he could not suppress his audible groans. The constant pain in his side ranged from a dull hurt to an aching throb. On Sunday, October 21, he lumped three days diary together, writing: As there is every prospect of my going up the line shortly, it is time some of these saints got broken in to taking the classes, so Biddy took the class Saturday night and the service this morning, which was peculiarly radiant with His presence. This evening Mr. Swan is taking the service. By Tuesday, October 23, Oswald felt a little better, but prevailed on Mr. Swan to take all the evening classes for the coming week. During the day Chambers rested, read, and moved about as he was able. He resisted all suggestions of going to a hospital for an examination. Allenby had just launched his long-expected offensive against Gaza and Beersheba, and the battle was raging. He would not take a bed needed by wounded soldiers as they were brought back from the fighting in Palestine. October 28: It is two years today since I began in this region, in the old hut, Zeitoun II, with Atkinson and Mackenzie and Cumine. In the early morning the passing of an Eastern night before the dawn brought out all its characteristics, limitless silver, gray-black shadows, dim white walls, violet blue skies. There is no idea of distance, and it is a thing to be witnessed. Biddy took the morning service in the Devotional Hut, she has what we in Scotland mean when we speak of a ‘lift’ or an inspiration, her subject was Romans 12:1. We had many people to dinner, Woodbine among them. Cross of the Remounts turned up, thus we are kept always in touch with many men. The next day, Monday, October 29, the pain returned with such searing intensity that he allowed himself to be taken to Gizeh Red Cross Hospital. A resident surgeon immediately performed an emergency appendectomy, which was termed “successful.” Biddy made plans to stay in the hospital and give Oswald round-the-clock care. Word from the hospital reached the camp at Zeitoun in time for the evening class, where scores of men knelt in the sand to pray for God’s hand of healing on their spiritual “officer in charge,” O.C. For a week, Oswald gained strength and appeared to be recovering well. On Saturday, November 3, Eva Spink’s prayer journal noted praise “for Thy keeping of my beloved two [Oswald and Biddy] in bringing him through safely.” The next day he suffered a serious relapse from a blood clot in his lung. He rallied from it only to be hit with another more serious attack the next day. As he drifted in and out of consciousness, Biddy clung to the verse God had impressed on her: “This sickness is not unto death.” The attending nurse tried to deal honestly with Biddy about the gravity of the situation. “There’s no way he can recover,” she said gently. “It’s best to face it and be prepared for the worst.” Incredibly, Oswald came through it and began regaining strength again. Biddy felt sure a visit from Kathleen would cheer him, so friends brought the bright-eyed four-and-a-half-year-old with a huge ribbon in her hair to the hospital. Biddy took her to Oswald’s bed where he managed a smile and a greeting. “Hello, Scallywag,” he said, and could say no more. Kathleen knew her Daddy’s voice and his pet name for her, but she hardly recognized the man in the bed. He was so sick, so frail, so unlike her father had ever been before. She told him a story of the animals at Zeitoun and gave him a kiss before the nurse insisted the visit must end. For another week Oswald fought back and gradually regained strength until Tuesday, November 13, when without warning he began to hemorrhage from the lungs. The next day he improved slightly but the attacks resumed during the night. At seven o’clock on the morning of November 15, he died. Biddy left the hospital, numb with shock, and made her way to the Zwemer home just around the corner from Groppi’s Restaurant. The thought of dinners at Groppi’s with Oswald ambushed her with a fresh wave of pain and loss. A knock at the door brought Mrs. Amy Zwemer, who wrapped Biddy in her arms and gave her the gift of quiet listening and tears. Samuel, just back from the Far East, joined them as they committed Oswald to the glorious presence of God and waited together in prayer. The words of Psalm 142:7 came to Biddy powerfully out of the silence: “Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name: the righteous shall compass me about; for thou shalt deal bountifully with me.” Before returning to Zeitoun, she jotted names of people for William Jessop to cable as soon as he could. Her mother and Dais must know, Oswald’s father and mother, Mrs. Reader Harris, Franklin in Perth, and Arthur in Harrow. They could send the word round to others. The message? “Oswald in His Presence.” On the day Chambers died, Allenby’s forces advanced to within three miles of Jaffa, the biblical seaport of Joppa. A journalist’s dispatch from Palestine, printed on November 16 in the London Daily Telegraph, seemed to sum up the final battle Oswald had fought and won in Gizeh Red Cross Hospital. The London paper proclaimed: “These Scots, who have borne the brunt of the work for the last two years in Egyptian desert warfare, are daily adding to their magnificent record. Nothing they have done in the past is equal to the present grand advance.”[ Tomorrow: 21 THE WORK GOES ON (1917–1919) 1917, A great New Year to you all “And God shall wipe away all tears,” Rev. 21:4 ________________________________________ -~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~ Isaiah 40: 28: Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. 29 He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. 30 Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: 31 But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.” James 4: 8
Posted on: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 12:27:44 +0000
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