C.T. Was Right & We Were Wrong
by Norman Grubb

In the folowing article, Norman recounts his early years with C.T. Studd in Africa and how close felowship at the isolated station qui ckly brought to light any subtle sinful attitudes–and the way of cleansing and restoration.

At Nala we met with C.T., Pauline’s father, my father-in-law, whom I then saw for the first time. In himself he was all that we expected, in his loving welcome, the old aristocrat now accustomed to living the African way; always scrupulously clean, in simple khaki shirt and shorts and stockings, with his long beard and somewhat bent frame, aquiline nose and keen piercing eyes. His home was a stoutly built mud house, originally built by a Belgian official, with his bedroom on one side, and an open centre where we sat, had our meals and small meetings, all surrounded by beautiful palm trees in their hundreds.

But we were ill at ease. Without realizing it ourselves, we had been the petted and pampered "fine young Christians" in the homelands, and now we were going out (even the Executive Committee told us that!) to bring help, refreshment and encouragement to the tired little band in Congo. Tired little band! They were not looking for any to bolster them up. All they wanted were some more fellow-soldiers! We found C.T. had no time for special welcomes and favours for a daughter or special preference for a new son-in-law. He stood where Jesus stood, "Who is my mother or my brethren? Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, my sister and mother."

I think, without recognizing it ourselves, we were puzzled and hurt that we did not get any better reception than any other new recruits. There was no let-up with this man–no diversions, no days off, no recreations. The zeal of God’s house had eaten him up, and souls were his meat and drink.

But what shocked us most was his attitude to the professing African Christians, five hundred of whom would gather on a Sunday morning. Where we had been told to expect a concourse of shining saints, C.T. was saying that sin was ram-pant, and nobody who continued in sin entered heaven, no matter how much he was supposed to have been born again; and that he doubted, holding up the fingers of his two hands, whether ten of these five hundred would really get there. We thought this awful.

Our theology was thin enough on any count; we had never had any Bible training, but we had picked up the usual evangelical teaching that once a person was born again, no matter how he sinned, if once in grace, always in grace. He could not be unborn. C.T. took no count of that. His stand was "without holiness no man shall see the Lord," and a per-son living in sin, unless he repented, no matter what his past claims to grace, he would be outside heaven. That shook us. There were Scriptures for "once saved, always saved," but there were Scriptures on the other side also.

C.T.’s strongest critic was the greatest pioneer of those early days, James Lowder by name, who single-handed penetrated the Ituri Forest to the south and met with such a response from the tribes-people that that whole area later became our richest harvest field. But doctrinally he was at opposite poles to C.T., and accompanying us on our journey in, even before we had met C.T., he sowed the seeds of these questionings in my mind, fertile soil with my feeble Bible foundations. Later, as with Paul and Barnabas, "the contention was so sharp between them" that he left the work. Years have now passed, and James Lowder, now in his eighties, lives in Miami, and we have maintained friendship by occasional visits, for nothing can ever take away for me the greatness of his pioneer daring and the greatness of the fruit of it. But at the time he strongly influenced me towards his point of view. This was good for me. It made me search the Scriptures until, after years of consideration, I have come to take a middle line.

There are the Bible assurances of being secure in Christ. There I personally live without a shadow of uncertainty. But I don’t ask that the Bible should be a systematic theology to suit my theological mind. Revelation through the apostolic writings was a string of unsystematic letters, written existentially to meet some church need of the moment; and in them I also find plain statements about the dangers and possibilities of falling away. Why should I be more stematic than the Bible and Paul and the other apostles? Why must I be bound by the frowning looks of the majority of evangelicals if I don’t wholly subscribe to their pet convictions? If I drive a car, I don’t live in fear of an accident; but there are occasions when crossing a road I look around to see if it is safe. So to me the Bible does give many plain warnings, and I can go along with C.T. in this, that though living in the eternal security of being sealed unto a day of redemption, it is "a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" in a condition of blatant disobedience.

It was a good thing for those simple believers just rising out of the morass of heathen superstitions and sin to be brought up straight against the facts of sin as sin; and C.T. never had any remedy for sin or the possibility of living a new kind of life except the Blood and Spirit of Jesus. The very intensity of this gospel of holiness that he preached and lived, even going to the extent of cutting off any water baptism or partaking of the Lord’s supper for ten years, when he found that many were hiding beneath these as supposed means of salvation, is undoubtedly the firm foundation to the holy Spirit-filled church in Congo today which, if he was alive, could now be said to be his "joy and crown".

It was true that C.T. was never one with whom it was towards his point of view. What he saw to be truth was truth to him, and that was that. C.T.’s soldier virtues, sword in hand for God and againsts the devil and sin, did made him, doubtless unrealized by himself, one with whom it was uncomfortable to disagree.

Pauline also had never been the daughter he was closest to. He teased her in childhood and often reduced her to tears in those younger years, and pu, I believe, something retiring into her nature. The other three, especially Edith and Dorothy, were of the more sporting type dear to his heart. Strange that in his last years he should be landed with us two as his successors. God’s ways. Yet, neither Pauline nor I had ultimate difficulty, or at least not after certain earlier battles had been fought and won, in standing along with him in the fierce oppositions of some of the missionaries, his own home committee and in the end the Christian church in general. We had settled the matter that we all have sides of our nature in which we are unacceptable to some and could well do with improvement; but God is with those who stay int he battle lines, no matter how "ornery" they may be; and C.T. was one of those. While others criticized, left, attacked, he stayed on where the fight for souls and a Spirit-filled church was at its fiercest, and we decided that that was where we should be too.

But we did have troubled years. Before long we both tried our hands at "improving" him and got our fingers burned. I went to suggest that if the church was in such a low state, why not have some special prayer meetings for revival? "Surely," he said, "but I don’t believe in praying in work hours. Let’s have a meeting at 4 a.m." (work and activities starting at 6 a.m.). "But," I said, "that is the time when we get up to have our own quiet times. When shall we have those?" "Why not earlier?" was the answer. Next morning I was up at 4 a.m. for my own quiet time; but across the compound I heard the old man’s banjo going. He had gathered a 4 a.m. prayer meeting of some of the Africans. I did not attend!

Pauline tried her hand by suggesting that she might take over the runnong of his domestic household. "Thank you," h e said, "but Mama Mototo" [one of the women co-workers] "does it very well."

Finally, I think he saw that in our conceit and self-assurance, and indeed criticism of him, we needed a good lesson. So he s uggested that we go out about 25 miles and occupy a newly opened station, beautifully situated on a hill called Deti, from which in the early morning you can look out over miles of palm-filled forest and see spirals of smoke arising in the still air from the many villages; and equally see the fierce tropical storms approaching. We knew enough of the simple language used as a lingua franca among the tribes of that area–Bangala.

C.T. had shown wisdom in concentrating his attention on this market language, poor though it was, because by it we could at once reach many tribes, the men in the main knowing it. It meant interpretation in village meetings, but that too had its advantages, when we had tried Christian interpreters, because they could often put in more intelligible language things we were trying to say in more Western forms. C.T. has been justified in standing against criticisms from other missions in the use and development of this language, because it is now the officially adopted language for the whole of north Congo.

In those earliest days we also had another significant little indication that God speaks more through warm hearts than critical minds. Lilian Dennis, who accompanied us to the Congo, is a nurse but no linguist. But she had a heart filled with love for God and the people, and was far more mature in the Spirit than we youngsters were. She only had the language very roughly in those first few months, whereas I was able to get along fairly well. So I would speak at the Sunday services. One Sunday morning when I was away, it fell to her lot, doubtless with fear and trembling, to have to speak both morning and evening. In the morning she spoke very haltingly on "I will, be thou clean." The elders came to her afterwards and said, "Mama Deni, what you said so reached our hearts that we would like you to repeat it this evening." I never had that said to me!

So off we went to Deti. We were soon trying immature experiments. The Africans loved the bits of western clothing they could get hold of, and they were their Sunday best. Well, we also had nice European clothing. But we thought it much better if any African Christians who went out to take the gospel to the villages should dress in their native barkcloth, a rough garment made of the bark of a certain tree and worn round their waists. They rebelled. We insisted. We soon had things in chaos, and where a few hundreds had been coming to the meetings, we were reduced to around eighty. Then God spoke to us. "Go back and humble yourselves and just be learners. Your father has forgotten more about leading people to Christ than you ever knew." So we wrote, confessed our pride, apologized and got all the loving welcome back he could give us.