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There was a man who was born on August 19, 1843 near Clinton, Michigan. When he was 17 years old he moved to his sister’s home in Tennessee where he enlisted in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. He got out of the army a year later in 1862 and he went to St. Louis to study law. On September 21, 1866 he married his wife, Loentine. In 1869, he and family moved to Kansas where he practiced law. He then entered politics and served in the Kansas House of Representatives. President Grant appointed him United States District Attorney for Kansas in 1873. But he resigned within six months under suspicion of misuse of his office for personal gain. He began to drink heavily. His wife gained a legal separation from him and then eventually divorced him. He returned to St. Louis and reentered law practice. But during this time he sunk into a life of thievery and drunkenness. And then, in 1879, a man named Thomas McPhetters witnessed to him and he got saved. He trusted in Christ alone as his Savior.

He immediately became active in Christian ministry. He assisted in the evangelistic campaign of D. L. Moody in St. Louis that year. He joined the Pilgrim Congregational Church. He was licensed to preach by the St. Louis Association of the Congregational Church shortly thereafter. And then he organized and pastored the Hyde Park Congregational Church in the city. In 1882 he accepted a call to a mission church of the denomination in Dallas. He started the church with fourteen people. Thirteen years later, the church reached a membership of eight hundred.

He was also involved in Bible teaching and theological training. He helped start several schools, including Southwestern School of the Bible in Dallas, Northfield Bible Training School in Massachusetts, New York School of the Bible, and, finally, Philadelphia School of the Bible (now Philadelphia Biblical University).

In the field of missionary endeavor, he founded the Central American Mission in 1890. And he presided over its direction for nearly thirty years.

He was a voluminous writer....

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