{"id":211,"date":"2023-06-22T01:18:20","date_gmt":"2023-06-22T00:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.pray4gansu.com\/?page_id=211"},"modified":"2023-06-22T22:45:33","modified_gmt":"2023-06-22T21:45:33","slug":"william-borden-html","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.pray4gansu.com\/index.php\/william-borden-html\/","title":{"rendered":"william borden"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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William Borden, born in 1887 to a millionaire family,<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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was given a round-the-world trip as a graduation gift at the age of 16. Sounds like the intro to a bad reality show!<\/p>\n

Spanning 1904-1905, the trip began in San Francisco, and he spent considerable time in Japan, China, Malaysia, India, Egypt, Palestine, and much of Europe. He was shocked by the idolatry and heathenism that he witnessed, but the Lord seemed to put missionaries in his path, and he spent much of the year learning and interacting with them in their various fields of service.<\/p>\n

He commented in a letter home:\u00a0<\/span>\u201cYou can learn more from a missionary in half an hour than you can pick up yourself in a couple of months of travel.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

He also wrote the following to his mother, just a month or so into his journey:<\/p>\n

\u201cI met such pleasant young people on the steamer who were going out as missionaries, and meeting them influenced me…While talking with them [I] learn of the work and the opportunities..so that I realize things as I never did before. When I look ahead a few years it seems as though the only thing to do is to prepare for the foreign field.\u201d<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>(Borden of Yale, 47-48)<\/p>\n

And in a different letter, after having spent considerable time exploring both China and India:<\/p>\n

\u201cI have so much of everything in this life, and there are so many millions who have nothing and live in darkness! I don\u2019t think it is possible to realize it until one sees the East. I know it is no easy thing to serve the Lord (as a missionary), but others have been enabled to do so, and there is no reason why I should not.\u201d (Borden of Yale, 70)\u201d<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>(Borden of Yale, 47-48)<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Back to School<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Upon returning home, he commenced his studies at Yale. Sometime during his freshman year, he traveled to a missionary conference in Nashville and heard about the great Gospel need among the world\u2019s hundreds of millions of Muslims. Dr. Samuel Zwemer, the great missionary to the Arab world and \u201cApostle to Islam\u201d, had an impact on Borden.<\/p>

Zwemer was the:<\/p>

\u201cman with a map. Charged with..enthusiasm, grim with earnestness, filled with a passion of love for Christ and the perishing..[he] made that great map live, voicing the silent appeal of the [Muslim] world. [Hundreds of millions] under the sway of Islam…what a challenge to the Christian church! … Yet, as.. Zwemer showed, never before had there been such open doors for the evangelization of the Muslim world. \u2018The hour is ripe’ was the burden of his message…\u201d<\/i><\/p>

Borden went home feeling especially burdened to reach Muslims, particularly in the remote province of Gansu in northwest China. And he never wavered from that calling.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Borden of Yale<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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But Borden\u2019s call to the far-flung field of Gansu didn\u2019t excuse him from serving faithfully in his homeland. He left a legacy at Yale that is unprecedented. What began as a prayer meeting with a handful of friends ended up impacting the entire university. One of the original group wrote:<\/p>

\u201c[He] and I began to pray together in the morning before breakfast..We had been meeting only a short time when a third..joined us and soon after a fourth..The time was spent in prayer after a brief reading of Scripture. Our object was to pray for the religious work of the class and college, and also for those of our friends we were seeking to bring to Christ.\u201d<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>(Borden of Yale, 97)<\/p>

The pre-breakfast prayer meetings soon spread. By the end of Borden\u2019s sophomore year there were many similar groups in each of the classes.\u201cIt was not passed down from the seniors to the juniors, but came up from the freshman.\u201d<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>(Borden of Yale, 97)<\/p>

\u201cHow easy [he] was to pray with! He could be jolly with the rest, and when the crowd was gone it would be just as natural for him to say, \u2018Come..[let\u2019s pray together].\u2019 There was no sense of incongruity about it. [He] was so simple in his prayer life, so natural, so trustful! He was the easiest man to pray with I have ever known.\u201d<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>(Borden of Yale, 145)<\/p>

But they didn\u2019t just pray. They actively shared the Gospel with their unconverted classmates:<\/p>

\u201cBill was always picking out the toughest proposition and going through thick and thin to win him for Christ.\u201d<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>(Borden of Yale, 98)<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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No Reserve<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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During his undergrad years at Yale, he helped found Yale Hope Mission, where he would often be found personally ministering to the poor drunks and outcasts and teaching the Bible.<\/p>

According to one well-traveled visitor, when asked what had most impressed him about America, is said to have replied,\u00a0<\/span>\u201cThe sight of that young millionaire kneeling with his arm around a \u2018bum\u2019 in the Yale Hope Mission.\u201d<\/i><\/p>

While in seminary, William donated at least $70,000 (nearly $20 million worth today) to all various Bible societies and Gospel causes, most of which we will never know, since he made every effort to do so in secret. According to his friend, Charlie Campbell:<\/p>

\u201cHis best friends never knew even a small percentage of the gifts he was making…[his] checkbooks show how little he spent for himself and how much he was doing for others.\u201d<\/i><\/p>

But he didn\u2019t just give his money. His millionaire father passed away when he was 18 and still a student at Yale, and he took oversight of his families\u2019 assets.<\/p>

As a seminary student (early 20s), he sat on the board of numerous Bible and Missionary societies, including the China Inland Mission with whom he planned to serve in Gansu, China.<\/p>

According to his biographer:\u00a0<\/span>\u201cThe unusual feature of his relationship to all such organizations was that he was never satisfied with merely giving generous financial aid. In addition, he always gave time, thought and counsel.\u201d<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>(Borden of Yale, 176)<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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No Retreat<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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After graduating from Yale in 1909, and Princeton Theological Seminary (1912), his commitment to the mission field didn\u2019t waver, even in the face of intense pressure by some to take advantage of his education and assets back home, instead of\u00a0<\/span>\u201cwasting it\u201d in western China. One friend expressed surprise that he was \u201cthrowing himself away as a missionary\u201d. Borden\u2019s reply?<\/i><\/p>

\u201cYou<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>have not seen heathenism.\u201d<\/i><\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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College Tour<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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But in the months prior to his departure, he made a three month speaking tour of nearly thirty colleges and seminaries, seeking to recruit even more missionaries for the Muslim world and telling everyone about the Gansu field he so longed to reach. He would speak of:<\/span><\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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