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[Above: The Beatitudes, Matthew 5:3–12—Chinese Union Version / public domain, Gateway Bible]

ISAIAH TELLS US “before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear” (Isaiah 65:24). In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said something similar, “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” Brother David experienced the truth of these promises first-hand.

An ex-Marine, he gave his heart to Christ in his late twenties at a Billy Graham service. Immediately his behavior and language changed. He told others of Christ, began reading the Bible on his knees, and took to heart Christ’s command to make disciples. He applied to serve with Far East Broadcasting Mission and was accepted. In May 1965, he and his family arrived in Manilla, Philippines. To his dismay, the mission made him clean toilets. But he knew this was a test of obedience and performed the job as unto the Lord.

Eventually he moved into higher positions. He developed a concern for the Chinese who desperately needed Bibles. Praying about it, he sensed God promising to use him for just that purpose. He began seeking ways to get Bibles into China and set a goal of ten million. Someone suggested he read God’s Smuggler, which tells the story of Brother Andrew’s efforts to get Bibles behind the Iron Curtain (Eastern Europe). No sooner had he read it than out of the blue Brother Andrew contacted him. Brother Andrew had heard of Brother David’s efforts and sought to encourage him, but the two were unable to meet then. 

On a visit to the United States, Brother David’s American sponsors encouraged him to travel to the Netherlands to meet Brother Andrew. The mission board agreed he could go, but said he must do so at his own expense and ask no one for funds. Brother David had no money. One board member put enough money into his hands to get him to New York, telling him if a meeting with Brother Andrew was God’s will, God would provide the fare.  

Brother David prayed earnestly. In New York he went to the home of some earlier acquaintances, the Olsens, who were working with David Wilkerson among gangs. Their daughter Marie squealed with delight when she saw him, then turned and ran back into the house leaving him shivering outside, wondering why he wasn’t invited in.

Marie returned and thrust an envelope with his name on it into his hands. Four and a half years earlier, impressed by hearing him speak, she had made up her mind to set aside part of each week’s tithe for the next time she saw him. The result was enough money to pay his airfare to the Netherlands. 

Nonetheless money was always scarce. Once while in the Philippines, having obediently given away his last peso when his own family was in dire need, he sat at his table alone and wept. Why did God not provide his family enough to live on? The next day an envelope arrived with $1,000 from an American church. Again, the Lord had seen the need before the event.

Eventually, after many more miracles, on this day 18 June 1981, Brother David led a team that secretly delivered one million Bibles to a beach where Chinese Christians waited. These brave Christians distributed the Scriptures across the nation to spiritually hungry recipients. When word got out, the Chinese government was embarrassed—its propagandists had said Christianity was dead and Bibles were not needed. China agreed to print forty million Bibles on a government press. Brother David helped raise the funds to pay for that huge print job.

—Dan Graves

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The struggle of Chinese Christians in the twentieth century is covered in CH 98, How the Church in China Survived and Thrived in the 20th Century

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Other Events on this Day

• BERNARD MIZEKI'S DEATH IS SURROUNDED BY MYSTERY
• Ephraem The Syrian Wrote Hymns And Is Honored for His Thought

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