God’s Bible School (GBS), still operating today in Cincinnati, Ohio, welcomed Oswald Chambers in 1907, 1908, 1909, and 1910.
He first visited with his Holiness Movement friend Juji Nakada and stayed for six months.
Chambers returned several times in the years to come to teach at camp meetings.
They loved each other–GBS and Chambers.
God’s Bible School
Martin Wells Knapp founded God’s Bible School in 1900.
A leader in the American Holiness Movement, Knapp decided a school was in order for more teaching of the principles.
It will be a school for the study of the Bible and preparation for engagement in soul-winning work.
The Bible will be studied topically and much of it memorized. . . . It is unsectarian and for believers of every name.
Tuition is free.
The Revivalist, July 19, 1900
The first enrolled students (of 72 total that first year) were Charles and Lettie Cowman on their way to the mission field. A stint at Bible school tided them over until their departure.
Chambers in 1906
Oswald Chambers was a noted speaker for the League of Prayer in Great Britain at this time.
(Wheaton College Special Collections)
He met Japanese evangelist Juji Nakada in 1906 and the two traveled together on the speaking circuit.
They got along famously. In one exchange over their difference in height,
Juji remarked, “you are long like a poker.”
Oswald countered with, “you are short like a shovel. And it takes both to make a fire.”
Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God, p. 98
Nakada invited Chambers to join him in Japan where the Oriental Missionary Society’s five-year-old Bible Training Institute could use a good Bible teacher.
Chambers demurred; he was committed to the League of Prayer.
But the more he prayed and thought, Chambers decided God had opened the door. He laughed, however, after Nakada met his parents.
This small Japanese is very good at stealing hearts and minds. He stole mine, and then visited my home and stole the hearts of my father and brother, and he made them willing to send me to Japan.
Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God, p. 97
The two sailed to America in November 1906. Chambers loved the entire trip.
Chambers at God’s Bible School
The two travelers stopped at GBS in January and Chambers joined the faculty for the spring term. The student body at the time numbered about 200 students.
Prior to joining the League of Prayer speaking circuit, Chambers taught at Duncan McGregor’s Bible College of Dunoon.
He always believed in the importance of clear thinking and careful study of the Bible.
It’s not clear if the idea to open his own Bible Training College came from visiting GBS and then the Bible Training Institute in Tokyo. But Chambers wanted to see what evangelism looked like overseas. That’s why he traveled with Nakada.
Students at GBS soon discovered Chambers was
a demanding teacher who insisted that his students not substitute sentimental piety for seious study.”
A Century on the Mount of Blessings, p 125
Eight days after he began teaching, he surprised his Biblical Theology students with an examination!
An exacting teacher
According to biographer David McCasland,
If Chambers had a pet peeve, it was, in his words, “intellectual slovenliness, disguised by a seemingly true regard for the spiritual interests.”
The solution?
“Examination by honest, hardworking, sanctified students of God’s Word.”
God’s Clock Keeps Perfect Time p. 41
That wasn’t all. According to McCasland, Chambers’ course outline delineated “bedrock convictions about the importance of diligent study and sound learning.” He had advice for his students.
More than half the sidetracks and all the hysterical phenomena that seize whole communities of people, like a pestiferous epidemic, from time to time, arise from spiritual laziness and intellectual sloth on the part of so-called religious teachers.
There are a host of Holiness adventurers whose careers would end, if vigroous sanctified saints were abroad.”
Ibid
Chambers truly enjoyed his six months at the school.
GBS paid him a $500 honorarium for his service when the semester ended in June. After that summer’s camp meetings, he continued with Nakada on to Japan. He wanted to see the Oriental Mission Society‘s work in Japan.
God’s Bible School Camp Meetings
Chambers returned to “the Mount of Blessings,” to speak at their annual ten-day camp meetings the following years. He wrote about the 1907 meeting, which he and Nakada attended before leaving for Japan.
Words fail completely to give adequate expression to the time of blessing on the “Mount of Blessings.’
One thing that will remain with us as long as we live was not the preaching, not the meetings, nor the marches, but testimonies (these were grand), but the splendid, supereffacing service of the students who waited at tables, washed the dishes, erected tents, pulled them down, and did the drudgery.
Their lives for ten days were one unbroken testimony to the blessing of God and to one at least, the impression grew strong, that if our Lord was here, He would still again be hidden and obscure as ONE WHO SERVED.”
The Revivalist Jan-Feb 2017 p 19
It appears he brought his bride Biddy back with him in 1910. Peer closely. Are they in this photo with Charles and Lettie Cowman?
Chambers and The Revivalist
Oswald Chambers’ first article in The Revivalist appeared two weeks after his arrival, on January 17, 1907.
He wrote many articles for the magazine and the Revivalist Press ultimately published his first two books–the only ones he ever saw in print.
(Biblical Psychology in 1912, and Studies in the Sermon on the Mount in 1915).
During their years in Egypt, Biddy often composed articles from Chambers’s talks and mailed them for publication in The Revivalist.
In February 2017, Revivalist Magazine devoted an entire edition to Oswald Chambers. You can read it here.
God’s Bible School dedicated the room where Chambers taught as “the Oswald Chambers room.” It contains a painting of him along with photos and memorabilia from his life and ministry there. Chambers’s writing desk is on display (a donation from the Oswald Chambers Publications Society) and copies of all his books.
Truly, the school and Chambers were blessed by his visits to God’s Bible School.
Tweetables
Oswald Chambers and God’s Bible School. Click to Tweet
Oswald Chambers as a teacher in America. Click to Tweet
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