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CRC Blog Analysis On A. Wetherell Johnson’s
Created
for Commitment: The Remarkable Story of the Founder of the Bible Study
Fellowship
“The Worlds of Audrey Wetherell Johnson”
Tyndale House Publishers (www.tyndale.com) published
A. Wetherell Johnson’s memoir Created for Commitment: The Remarkable Story of the Founder of the
Bible Study Fellowship (https://www.amazon.com/Created-Commitment-Wetherell-Johnson/dp/0842304436/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1530807246&sr=8-1&keywords=created+for+commitment) on December 1, 1982.
When Audrey’s mother, Maud Wetherell, became
a born again believer she told her widowed and strongly Anglican mother that
she was converting outside of the Anglican faith. As a result Maud was kicked out of her own
home and estranged from her mother. Maud
sought employment as a nanny where she met her first husband staunch Anglican John
Cope. The couple had four children, two
boys and two girls: Claude, John,
Katherine, and Marjorie. (Above Right: The Cope Family Home)
There she met her second husband and Audrey’s
father Henry Johnson and Audrey was born on December 1, 1907 in
Leicester. Audrey and her older sister
Katherine “Kitty” moved with Maud and Andrew to France where Andrew served as
a Christian missionary. Her mother Maude became seriously ill and had to return
back to England. While Andrew continued
his ministry throughout France, Africa, and Switzerland, the two sisters Kitty
and Audrey finally returned back to Kenilworth, Warwickshire, England to join
their mother in August of 1914, due to the threat of World War 1. The three moved
to the suburbs of Birmingham while Andrew continued his ministry, visiting his
wife and children every chance he got. (Above Right: Audrey Wetherell Johnson in 1914)
Audrey found escape and solace in
classical music by Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, and Back which she and her
sister Kitty would listen to every night before going to bed.
She also found solace in books by
Shakespeare, Mark Twain’s The Prince and The Pauper, Kipling’s The Jungle Book,
A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, Robert Louis Stevenson, Charles Dickens, Sir
Walter Scott, Jack London, Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas, C.S. Lewis, John
Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, and Alfred Lord Tennyson.
She also studied history, philosophy,
psychology, Buddhism, Confucianism, read books by Fredrich Wilhelm Nietzsche,
Jean Jacques Rousseau, Hegel, Coue, Blaise Pascal, and Voltaire
It was while she was in France that she discovered
that all of her Christian experiences were feigned and that she no longer
believed in the Bible and at best considered the Bible a bunch of myths; in
other words she identified herself as agnostic.
She returned to England to visit her mother where she was appalled at
the blood of Jesus Christ and found it harder to still hide her unbelief from
her Christian parents; perhaps she was afraid her mother would reject her like
her mother before her. (Right: Maud Wetherell Johnson)
At her father’s (Henry Johnson Left) request she attending a business
college and then got a temporary job as a member of the faculty of a public
high school, which she excelled, but still within her she was in great
despair: she no longer believed in the
Christian God Jesus but yet she had nothing to fill the emptiness. She started her quest –what is the
truth? Is God real? She prayed that God
would reveal if He was real along
I studied with three
questions in mind: (1) What does this Bible passage say? (2) What did it mean to the people of the day
when it was written? And (3) What does
it mean to me? Page 43
Thus began her love story not only with the
Trinity God but also with the Bible, which she read with such passion, such
velocity and such intensity – that each experience of reading the scriptures
was a literal touch or message from the Holy Spirit.
Soon she began to give speaking engagements
about the Bible and what she learned. She
realized that she wanted to commit to full time Christian ministry and preferred
to work with the most depraved and the most poor, in what she was convinced was
Sudan. In the meantime she taught a
group of factory girls about Trinity God and the Bible in the slum area of Floodgate
Street in Birmingham, England. (Left: Girl in the slums of Floodstreet)
She
then received training as a delivery nurse and became the nurse for a large
district in Bracknell, Berkshire where she delivered over 600 babies on her own
without anesthetics or doctors present during her two years there. During that two- year period she also taught
Bible classes; one that focused on the writings of Andrew Murray. (Right)
Mildred spoke of the
absolute paganism in China, the danger of the travels, and the glory of seeing
God change lives after only one
hearing of the gospel. I sat
enthralled. Deep down in my heart, it
seemed God was saying to me, “This is what I have for you. Why do you keep trying to get Me to call you
to Africa.” Page 62. (Left China Map in 1935)
Audrey filled out her application and
sent it to the China Inland Mission founded by J. Hudson Taylor and was called
for an interview by Mr. Roland Hogben and was later accepted into the C.I.M.
Bible Institute in London where she studied theology, Bible, how to teach the
Bible, the Chinese language and its culture and its history.
Finally in September of 1936 Audrey (Right) set
sail on the H.M.S. Ranchi for China where she would remain for the next nine
years without taking a single furlough. Her first task was to attend the
language school in Yangchow where she learned to write, speak, and read in
Chinese.
In April of 1937 she was assigned to her first
missionary station in Kiangsi Province of China where she arrived in June of
1937. While at Kiangsi Province of China
Audrey experienced illnesses and bouts of depression. She sought comfort from her spiritual mentor
and dear friend Miss Ruth Brittain.(Below Left)
I remember going into her room once feeling very despondent and like an
unworthy Christian. I said, “I need a
fresh touch from God, perhaps an outstanding work of the Holy Spirit.” She replied, “What you need is to saturate
yourself in the Bible. Why don’t you
leave your study, and lie on an enclosed private porch, and meet God through saturating
yourself in one of the books of the Bible!” This was a shock. I had just come out of the Bible Institute,
under Mr. Hogben no less, and thought I knew the Bible. Page 115
Audrey did what Miss Brittain suggested by going
to the upstairs balcony and started reading the book of Hebrews the way she
always had but nothing happened. She
then prayed an earnest prayer to God and then started reading Hebrews all over
again and a miracle happened.
Looking back I cannot explain any particular truth the Lord gave me or
remember any particular verse that shone with special meaning. But what happened was this: Through reading
God’s Word in the power of the Holy Spirit and depending upon God to give life
through it, it was as though God had picked me up and taken me into Heaven
where He dwells. I had been with Him! My entire spiritual being was renewed. Leaving the balcony, feelings of lassitude
disappeared, depression was gone – I had received God’s words and was
rejuvenated in every part of my being.
Page 116.
Her next station was at Lin Ming Kawn in the
Hopeh Province of north China where she arrived in March of 1939. There she ministered to a Chinese
congregation of 300 Chinese who would walk 9 miles to get there. Services were held all day on Saturdays and
Sundays.
Until that hot day in August of 1942 when the
Japanese came to the Chinese Inland Mission’s headquarters and took all the
missionaries to two interment camps, one in Shanghai and the other fifteen
miles away called the Longhua Camp. It
was the Longhua Camp that Audrey along with 2000 other aliens would be held for
three long years.
For the next three
years she would eat rice covered with worms, one-inch cube of meat, and every
now and again a half spoonful of vegetables (spinach, cabbage, tomatoes, and
beans) that the prisoners grew themselves from the packets of vegetable seeds
they smuggled in their luggage and pockets.
She along with her fellow prisoners would stand in line twice a day for
water. At bedtime, 7 p.m., she would
strap her waist with a tight belt to ease the hunger pains. She did have her triumph – one of her
greatest was her being able to teach 500 children in one room with only a
blackboard and chalk.
Then the war ended and in August of 1945 allied airplanes appeared in the sky dropping every
color possible of parachutes full of cans of food. Audrey saved a red parachute as a memento. Then an American Liaison officer arrived at
the camp and for the next two hours told them all the news of the war and how
they won. He and the other Americans
then passed out newspapers and magazines to the prisoners. (Above Left: F Block Internees on top of the buildings roof the night the war ended)
Then the most emotional and compelling part of Created
For Commitment happened: the
prisoners of the internment camp now set free decided that they needed to put
the Japanese Flag (what they called the
Rising Sun or the Poached Egg)
down and raise all the flags representing all the countries the prisoners were
from. Immediately the women set to work
and gathered any materials they could to produce each country’s flag. Once the flags were made it was decided by
the prisoners that they would unfurl all of the flags on the same balcony and
same place where guards would stand with their guns in what would be a
religious service.
Never will I forget the dramatic scene.
Two thousand newly released prisoners stood before that balcony where
the flags were now mounted but still unfurled!
Someone had managed to procure from the Chinese a small harmonium. We sang, “Our God Our Help in Ages Past,” and
also “Praise My Soul the King of Heaven.”
Then the master of the ceremonies read two meaningful passages of
Scripture from the Old Testament, chosen partly in deference to the Jewish
friends present. He read Deuteronomy 8 (Below Right),
which remarkably fitted our situation and was a warning to the nations, “lest
ye perish.” Following this, he read the
beautiful Psalm 23. Below Left)
Following the singing and reading, the leader led us in prayer, and all
the flags on the balcony – about ten of them – were unfurled. We were asked to keep silence as we
remembered the lives laid down for this victory. The sun was setting, the sky was red, the
only sound we hear was the flap, flap, flapping of the treasured unfurled flags
that represented our new freedom.
At the end of the silent prayer someone sat down at the harmonium and
played the national anthems of all the nations represented. There was not a dry eye among us as we
sang. Pages 161-162
In 1947, at the age of 40, Audrey and her
spiritual mentor, best friend and companion Miss Brittain sailed to San
Francisco, where after a six-month rest, she began speaking at conferences and
universities.
It was here that she decided to go by the name Wetherell instead of Audrey since there were so many women named Audrye in the United States. Then in 1952 while Wetherell finished a speaking engagement at a church in San Bernardino, California, five women from that church asked Audrey to please teach them from the Book of Colossians.
It was here that she decided to go by the name Wetherell instead of Audrey since there were so many women named Audrye in the United States. Then in 1952 while Wetherell finished a speaking engagement at a church in San Bernardino, California, five women from that church asked Audrey to please teach them from the Book of Colossians.
These were all earnest Christian women, well-versed in Bible content. My heart fell! What had I come to? There in San Bernardino was such an abundance
of churches where people could hear God’s Word, while by contrast in China were
millions who had not even heard His name.
Am I to give more to those who already have so much? Page 214 (Right: Wetherell Johnson in 1950)
After much prayer and God leading her to read
verses Jeremiah 45:5 and Zechariah 4:10 Wetherell decided to grant the five
women’s request but she did have her own conditions which she felt were God ordained.
A few days later, when these ladies returned for my answer, I said, “I
will not spoon-feed you. Are you willing
for me to dictate a few questions, which will help you in your study of each
passage? I would then like you to first
share with all of us what God has given you, after which I will share with you
what He has give nm.” Readily they were
happy to agree to this method of study and teaching.
Wetherell soon made a demand upon herself when she
noticed that during her lecture she saw the women taking notes which she felt
was a distraction from them listening to her own words which could diminish the
spiritual impact they might otherwise experience. (Left: The Bible Study Fellowship production department in Oakland, CA)
Therefore I decided to type a resume of each lesson, together with
typewritten questions applying to the following lesson. I stipulated that the use of commentaries
would not be allowed! Little did I
anticipate then that these lesson notes, with questions, would someday develop
into the composition of 5,000 words to each set of notes and twenty related questions
for the following week’s lesson. Page
214 (Above Right: BSF notes in Chinese)
Bible Study Fellowship did not
discriminate: everyone of every single
color, economic status, and religion or lack thereof were welcome: atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, Hindus,
Christian Scientists, Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons, Jews, and every Christian
denomination one could think of including Catholics.
A Catholic priest attended my class for six weeks and we developed a real friendship. Sometime during the 1960s after Pope John advocated Bible reading, we noticed a great increase in Catholic membership. Priests in one of the Bay Area churches were so impressed with Bible Study Fellowship that any one who taught catechism on Saturday had to be a member of Bible Study Fellowship class.
Page 238 (Right: Wetherell Johnson in 1969)
The remaining the 392-page-book Wetherell explains
the growth of BSF, and the guidelines for the Christian life, what the Bible
says about salvation, reading the Bible, how to live the confident Christian
life, and how to be triumphant even amongst a suffering life. (Left: Johnson in 1980)
There is so much more in Created For Commitment: Wetherell’s extensive traveling all across the
globe and how she found the presence and existence of God in every experience;
her heartbreak over her family including her half sister who suffered a nervous
breakdown and severe depression; her broken romance; and her life while living
in England, China, Switzerland, France, California and Texas. (Right: Johnson in 1981)
Some might say this book is about Audrey but
this writer would say the book is ultimately about Jesus living through Wetherell’s (Left) spirit and the birth and the metamorphosis of BSF, which exists and
thrives to this very day.
