Bible Women have been of great importance in the world of evangelism for a long time.
But I’d never heard of them before I began research on Lettie Cowman.
The Oriental Missionary Society (OMS) deliberately trained women at the Tokyo Bible Institute because of their effectiveness.
So, what are Bible women?
In missions history, a Bible woman was a local woman who supported foreign female missionaries in their Christian evangelistic and social work.
Think how effective a local woman could be in a new mission field.
When Hudson Taylor’s work began in China, women did not have a “voice” within society.
Women have often tended to be more interested in the Gospel at first than busy men, and with ears tuned to the life-giving word of Scripture, often become Christians much sooner than their menfolk.
(Cheryl Brodersen explains this better in the Women Worth Knowing podcast about Priscilla Studd, 17 minutes in.).
As a result, a local woman had more access to other women than a western male missionary could ever gain.
She had a unique knowledge of the local culture and the lives of her sisters.
Using the Bible, often reading it to women who were illiterate, Bible women could explain the liberating news that God not only sees them but He loves them.
(The same is true for you, no matter your sex).
The Importance of training Bible Women
Coming to faith is the first step. Training women to read and understand the Bible so they could share it with authority and confidence was the second step.
The OMS knew the importance of training women before founders Juji Nakada, Charles, and Lettie Cowman arrived in Japan in early 1901.
The Bible school they opened two months after their arrival always included classes for women.
Cowman and Nakada taught the men and women together each morning. In the afternoons, the students fanned out into the community to share the Gospel.
For some students, converting to Christianity resulted in their families rejecting them. They needed a place to live while attending the Bible Training Institute—which is why the school provided housing for students.
Yuki Sugeno attended a meeting at the Central Holiness Gospel Hall one night and met her Lord and Savior. Her furious father beat her when she announced her conversion.
One of her relatives intervened and with gifts provided by Lettie, Julia Kilbourne, and Nakada, Sugeno could attend school. Once she graduated as a Bible woman in 1905, she preached and helped in many Tokyo churches.”
OMS Archives Box 32.2
In 1911 fundraising for the Bible Training Institute, OMS missionaries calculated $4 a month or 13.3 cents a day ($122 US in 2020), would support a missionary, male or female, for a month.
Preaching
Lettie Cowman, in particular, admired the determination of the many Japanese Bible women with whom she handed out tracts. In 1903, she met a Bible Woman who had been sharing the Gospel for 20 years.
Lettie liked to describe the women’s work in both God’s Revivalist Magazine and the OMS Electric Messages.
In one story, she described how as a western woman in rural Japan, she drew a crowd of curious onlookers while handing out Christian tracts written in Japanese.
Once a sufficient group surrounded her, she turned to one of the Bible women traveling with her.
Our Bible woman preached, and as she told the story of the cross, the glory shone in her soul, and with tender weeping she pleaded with souls, giving a touch of her testimony.
Last year, within three months of graduating from the highest college in Japan, and all the glories of a brilliant career before her in the world, yet all forsaken for Jesus sake and counted as nothing.
God’s Revivalist Feb 12, 1903
One Bible Woman’s Shocking Decision
I’ve written elsewhere about the enormous decision one Bible woman made after graduating from the Bible Training Institute.
Already abandoned by her high-ranking, near-royalty family for becoming a Christian, O-Chan gave her life to God, unconditionally. When she completed the coursework at the Bible Training Insitute, she waited for God’s direction.
God took her up on her pledge and she learned a Taiwanese/ Fomosan jungle chief had become a Christian and longed for a wife.
Marry him?
Yes.
And, by the way, the tribe had a past, as well as a current, history of killing tribesmen from other tribes and eating them.
Well-trained in the Bible, O-Chan gulped and sailed to Formosa to meet her groom.
She lived in the jungle the rest of her life, teaching the people–men and women–about Jesus, raising a family, and using her western health knowledge, to improve their lives.
But it was the Gospel that meant the most to everyone.
Killing ended.
Bible women today
We continue sharing the Gospel through teaching the Bible, often just to women, in churches, missions, foreign lands, and anywhere God sends us.
While I never attended Bible school, I’ve led women’s Bible studies ever since I graduated from college.
I’ve studied the Word of God with women in all four corners of the United States and in Hawai’i.
It’s been an opportunity to learn how God works in different ways, in different lives, and circumstances.
But, most importantly, it’s been a terrific way to hear God’s directions, and share love and affection with many women whom I never would have met otherwise.
I’m sure many of the Bible women spread around the world would agree that sharing and studying the Bible is the most important work we do.
Thanks be to God.
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