Nakada’s Ministry in the 21st Century (Part 3)

Juji Nakada’s ministry reaches, even now, into the 21st Century.

Even I have a personal Juji Nakada story.

It took place just a few years ago while I sat at this very computer terminal, typing away.

“John,” sent an email asking for information about Nakada.

What a random question out of nowhere, I thought.

But as I read deeper, my eyes widened.

A book he purchased at a British thrift store (charity shop), opened the door to a conversation.

Nakada and John

Hello Michelle,

Sorry for the out of the blue message. I was looking up a name on the internet and came across a page you had written about O. Chambers…and it had tagged the name I was looking for…which was ‘JUJI NAKADA’.

I often receive random messages from people through my website.

Many of them are friendly and interesting, or they have information I seek. (Keep those emails coming!)

This was the first time, however, anyone contacted me about Juji Nakada.

“John” explained he’d purchased a small pocket Bible, “over 100 years old.”

Inside the cover, was written a strange scribble in Ink…which I think is Japanese

…and next to it says Juji Nakada, Holiness Bible School, Yodobashi, Tokio..(spelt like that), Japan.”

He wondered who this Japanese man was, and turned to Google.

There, he learned Juji was in the UK around 1900, but along with Nakada’s scribbling, he found:

Another name inside the cover…a page in from this name, as if written later.. is the name of a young girl…saying the gift is to her from her parents…with Love dated March 22nd 1903.

I just thought you may know a bit about this man and wondered if you could give me any info?”

What did I know about Juji Nakada?

This email came while I wrote my books about Oswald and Biddy Chambers. I knew about OC and Nakada’s ministry and friendship, so I wrote back with what information I had.

(You can learn a lot about their friendship in David McCasland’s wonderful biography, Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God.)

But as you saw in the previous posts, here and here, Nakada was a force to be reckoned within the Kingdom of God!

“John” wrote back to thank me and share something of his personal spiritual story. He had endured a number of challenges and was trying to find a way to God.

That’s why he picked up that old Bible.

But, like many, he started reading at the beginning and without context, those early books of the Bible can challenge people’s ability to see the God many of us know.

We exchanged a few more emails and I suggested he read, instead, John’s Gospel in the New Testament

Nakada’s Ministry to John

God gave John a sign!

As soon as you told me about John’s Gospel, I saw it as a sign that I should read it right away.

My local church is open each morning, so I went down and sat alone and began to read ‘John’… (Not 1John)…and having seen a film recently called ‘the son of God’, I began to realize that this was what the film was based around. Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem and the miracles…The last supper and crucifixion.”  

He read all the way to John 17:9 before he became restless.

He got up to wander around the neighborhood church.

I was looking at some writing in huge gold-colored carving that was high in the eaves of the ceiling and wondered what book in the Bible it came from, as it didn’t say.

I went back and sat down…and would you believe it, it was John 17 VERSE 10!!!! Is that crazy or what? ‘All mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them’. The opposite side of the ceiling was John 17:24.” 

I love stories like these.

Seeing God, almost teasing him, encouraged John’s fledgling faith.

The OMS connection

I suggested John send an email to the (now) One Mission Society, which he did.

The person he contacted provided more information about Nakada’s ministry and sent him to another man who had more stories about Nakada.

John marveled at the exchanges.

“Such amazing stories all from one man, one book. I would love to have met him.”

I lost track of John after that, but I love to think of how Juji Nakada’s ministry continued for 80 years after his death.

The D. L. Moody of Japan, the founder of The Oriental Missionary Society, Bishop of the Japan Holiness Church, and the editor and primary writer for Tongues of Fire, was still preaching with words.

It reminds me of a quote from the British League of Prayer founder Reader Harris. Oswald Chambers loved this quote and it fits well with this story.

“The most lasting of all preaching is with the pen.”

Thanks be to God for Juji Nakada’s ministry and evangelistic reach into the 21st century!

Tweetables

A thrift shop Bible and a Juji Nakada connection. Click to Tweet

100 years of preaching through Juji Nakada’s Bible. Click to Tweet