BUT Fraser’s strength was giving out. Rumors that had reached him across the Salween made him anxious to get back to his colleagues, and great indeed were the changes he found. For the Flaggs were no longer living up in the Cold Country. A serious earthquake had taken place there, leaving Mrs. Flagg with an overstrained heart which could no longer bear the altitude of seven thousand feet. They had therefore moved down to Muhch’engp’o, two thousand feet lower and more in the center of their eastern district, where to his surprise Fraser found them when he came up from the river.
Hardly could he believe his eyes! There, close to the spot where the wife of Pa Tsong-si had hailed him, the first time he passed that way, there a new settlement was springing up―right on an inviting, lower ridge, running out into a great circle of protecting mountains. The level site had often attracted him, and now he found it a very hive of activity, for the local Christians had come to the help of the missionaries and were doing all in their power to make the new place habitable. And to Fraser’s joy he found that they were doing it voluntarily, without payment of any kind, in a spirit of loving indebtedness.
The people have been most kind [he wrote]. They have put up a bamboo and thatch house for us, just like their own, only rather larger―without asking a penny in payment. They have also fixed up a garden (we can occupy as much land here as we desire). They have ploughed up the ground and are digging it for us. They have put up a goathouse, kitchen and sleeping quarters for the servants, and have dug a trench a mile long to bring water to the place―all without a farthing of payment. In fact, I do not know that we have paid anything since we came. They are still bringing us presents of eggs and vegetables.
More than this, the Christians were cutting wood and putting up a fence all round the mission station.
Here we are on a ridge [Fraser continued] protected on both sides by the slopes of a big deep valley, covered with forest.... The vegetation is luxuriant and the effect superb as the clouds roll up over the hilltop or hang suspended halfway up the mountains. I like it here: we all do. The Flaggs are thinking of putting up a permanent home next dry season.... After a shower such as the one just over, the streams rise high. I can hear the roar of the river down in the valley below us, as I write. But the weather is wonderful for crops and gardens. Things seem to spring out of the ground almost as by magic, for the soil is fertile. Ferns and grass grow luxuriantly, and the trees are high. We are hoping great things from our experimental garden, having planted seeds from India and America, as well as yours from Letchworth.
And best of all, they were in the midst of the people, centrally situated, close to the largest of their chapels, the one at Sinchaiho which had come to occupy a place all its own in the work. For it was halfway down to the river in the valley (a tributary of the Salween) where in a quiet place the baptisms were held. Some hundreds of believers had already confessed their faith in Christ at this spot, and Sinchaiho was becoming the natural center of the Lisu Church.
Here, then, Fraser made his home with the Flaggs in the new mission bungalow, while the Christians from all sides gathered about them. Even from across the Salween they came, as Sunday by Sunday Fraser led the large gatherings on the leveled space round the house or down in the Sinchaiho chapel. They were memorable days―especially the Sunday when he witnessed the baptism, amid scenes of great rejoicing, of two hundred and forty more believers. He did no baptizing himself, standing aside in favor of the colleague to whom he was handing over the care of all the work. But his joy was as great as the long travail of soul that went before it had been deep. It was of this time he wrote: ‘I never was loved so much in my life before.’
Looking back over the years of his Lisu work, Fraser was growing impressed with the large part that praying friends had had in it all. His chief desire in going home on furlough was that he might make personal contact with every member of his Prayer Circle and be greatly prospered in adding to their number. Some time before he had written to them a letter which fully expressed his mature thought, both as regards the work and their part in it. With sincerest humility it began:
Perhaps I ought to apologize when writing to you on the prayer life, for most of you are older Christians than I am and have longer and perhaps deeper experience of it than I have. At the same time I have opportunities to observe the working of prayer that some of you have not, so you will forgive me if I try to pass on thoughts which have come to me in connection with my work....
He then went on to speak of a promising center in his field, a place where he had himself spent much time teaching the Christians, where through various causes the work had gone back and was now discouraging. And among those who had reverted to heathenism were two or three of the best instructed young people in the district, certainly the best readers and writers. While this caused deep sorrow and led him to revise his methods, it emphasized the fact that it is not human instruction or influence that we have to depend upon, but the grace of God working in the heart.
Some missionaries question whether my methods are the best. They feel that I am trying to cover too much ground, and that it would be better to go in for ‘intensive work’ as it is called.... What is the use, they wonder, of spending two or three days in a village and then going on elsewhere and leaving them for perhaps a year? What can you expect of them? Why, they know practically nothing! Yes, I admit that it is not ideal. I believe in instructing my converts as much as anybody. Yet I can show numbers and numbers of Lisu Christians, with no more knowledge than two or three days’ instruction could impart, standing firm with the grace of God behind them (that is what makes all the difference), trying in their blundering way to observe the Lord’s Day, to pray and to sing―while those you give weeks and months of attention to, in other places, fall away.
Instruction, especially in the Scriptures, is a splendid thing. It is necessary, essential, if a man is to grow in grace. We are to be ‘renewed unto knowledge after the image of Him that created him.’ Paul prays for his converts that they may be filled with knowledge. Knowledge is good, wholesome, needful. If a man is already a Christian, knowledge―spiritual knowledge―will help to establish him. I intend to do all I can to impart spiritual knowledge to my converts. I do not despise secular knowledge either. It is, I believe, a help rather than a hindrance to the apprehension of spiritual truth. But it is possible to over-emphasize almost anything, however good it may be. That the Apostle Paul believed it possible to over-emphasize knowledge, his first letter to the Corinthian Church shows, in more than one passage. They say that ‘knowledge is power’; but this, I feel, needs to be qualified. In the spiritual realm it is certainly not true that knowledge always imparts power to keep a man from falling away.
As a matter of fact, much knowledge has no lifegiving power in it at all. I really believe it is possible to preach dead sermons―full of good, orthodox truth, but dead because the power of the Holy Spirit is absent. I believe it is possible to read a dead Bible, for the same reason. There is no magical charm about the letter of even God’s Word. Apart from the power of God’s Spirit, the best instruction we can give our converts is as dead as the dry bones of Ezek. 37. With the ‘breath of God’ breathing upon it, it may become as powerful as ‘the exceeding great army’ the bones were turned into. The power came from the breath of God, not from the dry bones. The dry bones were all right, but they were absolutely useless without the breath of God. And so is education, teaching, instruction of any kind out here on the mission field, if it is of the dry bones variety. Some people go so far as to say that the problem confronting the church on the mission field is fundamentally an educational one, and too many put that belief into practice. It seems to me like constructing costly artillery, firing big shells―and doing no damage to the enemy. And I can imagine Satan laughing up his sleeve.
Then follows a yearning plea for prayer, much prayer, more prayer for those emerging from spiritual darkness into the light of life. How Fraser’s heart went out for these babes in Christ! that the eyes of their understanding being enlightened they might ‘grow up into Him in all things.’
I used to think [he continued] that prayer should have the first place and teaching the second. I now feel it would be truer to give prayer the first, second and third place, and teaching the fourth.
For these people out here are not only ignorant and superstitious. They have a heathen atmosphere all about them. One can actually feel it. We are not dealing with an enemy that fires at the head only―i.e. keeps the mind only in ignorance―but with an enemy who uses GAS ATTACKS which wrap the people round with deadly effect, and yet are impalpable, elusive. What would you think of the folly of the soldier who fired a gun into the gas, to kill it or drive it back? Nor would it be of any more avail to teach or preach to the Lisu here, while they are held back by these invisible forces. Poisonous gas cannot be dispersed, I suppose, in any other way than by the wind springing up and dispersing it. MAN is powerless.
And here comes in the place of prayer, intercessory prayer, even at a distance.
For the breath of God can blow away all those miasmic vapors from the atmosphere of a village, in answer to your prayers. We are not fighting against flesh and blood. You deal with the fundamental issues of this Lisu work when you pray against ‘the principalities, the powers, the world-rulers of this darkness, the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenlies’ (Eph. 6:1212For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. (Ephesians 6:12)).
I believe that a work of God sometimes goes on behind a particular man or family, village or district, before the knowledge of the truth ever reaches them. It is a silent, unsuspected work, not in mind or heart, but in the unseen realm behind these. Then, when the light of the Gospel is brought, there is no difficulty, no conflict. It is, then, simply a case of ‘Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord’.
This should give us confidence [he urged] in praying intelligently for those who are far from the Gospel light.
The longer the preparation, the deeper the work. The deeper the root, the firmer the plant when once it springs above ground. I do not believe that any deep work of God takes root without long preparation somewhere...
On the human side, evangelistic work on the mission field is like a man going about in a dark, damp valley with a lighted match in his hand, seeking to ignite anything ignitable. But things are damp through and through, and will not burn however much he tries. In other cases, God’s wind and sunshine have prepared beforehand. The valley is dry in places, and when the lighted match is applied―here a shrub, there a tree, here a few sticks, there a heap of leaves take fire and give light and warmth long after the kindling match and its bearer have passed on. And this is what God wants to see, and what He will be inquired of us for little patches of fire burning all over the world.
How truly this had been the case in his own experience, we have seen; and Fraser was the first gladly to acknowledge the efficacy of the help of his Prayer Circle. It was for the continuance of their intercessions on the part of his colleagues, Mr. and Mrs. Flagg, he now pleaded.
It had been a sore trial to him, some months previously, when Allyn Cooke, on his marriage with Miss Leila Robinson, had been appointed to Tali to relieve Mr. and Mrs. Hannah who had to go home on furlough. The station was a central one and could not be left without missionary supervision, but Fraser had so hoped that the Cookes would come into the tribal work. Prayer and thought had reconciled him to the situation, however, and he was thankful for the co-operation of Ba Thaw, and the American Mission to which he belonged, in the care of the Tengyueh Lisu, when he had to leave. He had planned to revisit many of the old centers in the west, on his way to Rangoon, but was able only to take in the Atsi Kachins at Pangwa and the district of Mottled Hill, spending a Sunday in each.
It had been a hard parting, when Fraser set out from Muhchengpo to pay a farewell visit to Moh at Hsiangta. But there a glad surprise awaited him, ‘a token for good’ as he went on his homeward way. For Moh had kept his recent mail, and there was a letter from Lewers on the Upper Mekong, telling of the work of the Lisu helpers Fraser had spared from his own field to go to one still more needy. He had missed them; but great was the joy now with which he heard of the blessing of God upon their labors. More than a hundred families up there had already turned from drunkenness and demon worship to Christ, and the missionary wrote begging Fraser to come and help them with the many inquirers.
The Lisu Church a missionary church already! And for himself how great the reward― ‘never loved so much in my life before!’ But more precious even than the love of thousands who, through him, had come to know the love of God was the deeper fellowship with that dear Lord Himself, Whose call he had obeyed in all the freshness of youth.
Truly―He that loveth his life shall lose it; ‘but whosoever shall lose his life, for My sake and the Gospel’s, shall save it’ unto life eternal.