Hudson Taylor - a brief biography by Michelle Buckman (his early life)

04/22/20 • 62 min

James Hudson Taylor, founder of the China Inland Mission, was a man passionately driven to seek God's will in all that he did. He is best known for the drastic difference he made in the evangelisation of China.
Born in 1832, Hudson Taylor was raised in Yorkshire, England. His father was a chemist and a Methodist preacher. But as a teenager Hudson began to doubt whether he actually believed in God. Only after much thought and seeking did he turn to God and find true peace.
By the age of 17 Hudson Taylor knew what was to be the direction God had for his life. He was called to China, where he was to spend 51 years.
The mission he founded was ultimately responsible for sending to China over 800 missionaries, and these began 125 schools and saw some 18,000 Christian conversions throughout the country.
(Recorded 26 March 2017)

Previous Episode

John Bunyan - a brief biography by Michelle Buckman

John Bunyan (1628–1688), an English writer and Puritan preacher, is best remembered for "The Pilgrim's Progress" (1678), which became one of the most published books in the English language.
Bunyan came from the village of Elstow, near Bedford. After 3 years in the army he returned to Elstow and took up the trade of tinker. He was converted to Christ after his marriage through 2 books that his wife had inherited from her father and he soon became a gifted and powerful preacher of the gospel among the nonconformist churches. He was arrested when the freedom of nonconformists was curtailed by the king, and spent the next 12 years in prison because he refused to give up preaching.
During the time in prison he wrote a spiritual autobiography, "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners", and began work on his most famous book, "The Pilgrim's Progress", which was published 6 years after his release. It was immediately very popular and within 4 years of his death had sold over 100,000 copies in England alone.
(Recorded 22 January 2017)

Next Episode

Joni Eareckson - a brief biography by Michelle Buckman

Joni Eareckson was born October 15, 1949 and is a Christian author, radio host, and founder of Joni and Friends, an organization "accelerating Christian ministry in the disability community."
On July 30, 1967, she dived into the Chesapeake Bay after misjudging the shallowness of the water. She suffered a fracture between the fourth and fifth cervical levels and became a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the shoulders down. Her story is one of courage and of a living faith in the living God.
(Recorded 27 August 2017)

Auburn Friends - Hudson Taylor - a brief biography by Michelle Buckman (his early life)

Transcript

[This transcript has been edited for clarity]
The person that we're going to talk about today is a man who probably you've all heard of - he is particularly famous, I would say, in these [Chinese] circles, and his name is Hudson Taylor.

Does anyone know of him? I'm going to focus, not on his later life when he became very famous, but on his early life, because when I was reading about him, his early life impacted me more than his later life. So, I'm going to tell you the first part o