The Dennis Turner Story

5 August 2012

Dear Phyllis,

It isn't that nothing is happening here in Chiang Mai. Fifteen months ago my friend, Mike, challenged me to walk the streets of our muban (housing area) every Wednesday night praying for every house and resident living here. Since then we have seen some highly significant changes. One is, the Lord sending me a blow-torch evangelistic Christian partner (Pammy). Secondly, is the location of an excellent church in the other half of our house. The next is, the coming of an outstanding NGO, Destiny Rescue, with 20 girls. The marriage of Destiny Rescue and our church has doubled the church and given us a real burst of life. There has been some good preaching, and two weeks ago we had a baptism for 4 new believers. This is just a glimpse of what is going on. But today I want to talk about another friend.

Dennis Turner was probably the greatest witness for Christ of any one I ever met. Being around him was like being with Jesus. He was amazing! It seemed the only reason he breathed was was to get more air to talk about Jesus. It seemed with every breath there was nothing that came out of his mouth but the Word of God. You couldn't get mad at him. To criticize him for speaking so much about the Lord, would be like criticizing someone for breathing. It was so natural, it was just part of him.

One time I was building a camper, and had a couple of Japanese boys helping me. Dennis stopped by on his way home. It was 3:00 in the afternoon – tea time. When we sat down for tea, Dennis was sitting next to one of my helpers. They had never met before. It was beautiful to watch as Dennis talked to him about Jesus. Hiroshi wasn't saved that day, but two weeks later, when he did come to Christ; the first thing he said to me was, “Please call Turner san, and tell him I have accepted Christ.” Hiroshi is a pastor today.

I admired him so much and one time said, “I would give anything to be able to witness like you.”Dennis later told me, when he heard that he thought in his heart,“Man, you are mad. You have no idea what you are asking.” I didn't understand what he was talking about at that time, but later learned his truth. He suffered more than any man I have ever met.

As a young man in England, he was working in a packaging house and saw a scrap of newspaper with Japanese writing on it. He was so intrigued that that triggered an intense desire to learn the Japanese language. That curiosity saved his life. In 1940 he was drafted in the British army and was with Percival in Singapore when it was captured by the Japanese. Just before the fall of Singapore, he was given an assignment to take a box of top secrete equipment and dump it in the ocean. He later learned that it was British radar. That assignment took him out to sea, and he finally wound up in Borneo rather than with the British army that surrendered in Singapore. But he was a POW of the Japanese for 4 years. Because of his ability with the language, he was the camp interpreter, which gave him special privileges. One time cholera was wiping out the prisoners. The Dutch doctor gave him some precious medicine. Dennis protested that there were other men who were much sicker. The doctor replied, “We have got to keep you. If we lose you, we are all dead men.” Because of his ability to communicate with his captors, Dennis developed a relationship with the Japanese soldiers that lasted to the end of his life. After the war, the camp soldiers used to have an annual reunion. I have seen a picture of 60 Japanese soldiers dressed in their uniforms with one British man sitting in the middle.

Dennis credits his salvation to one brave Japanese soldier who studied English so he could witness to the prisoners. He asked Dennis, “Tana san (Turner), are you a Christian?” Dennis laughed. Holding up his Japanese dictionary he replied, “This is my Bible.” But he saw that brave young man get savage beatings time and again for speaking to the prisoners about Christ. That testimony, of fearless courage, spoke a message to Dennis that ultimately bore the fruit of bringing him to Christ.

One time I was with Dennis in the home of one of his former prison guards, who was now the wealthy CEO of a prosperous company in Matsumoto. He said, “Tana san, the prison camp commander is out of prison” The camp commander had been tried for

war crimes, and sentenced to 18 years in prison. Dennis cried, “I must see him!” Minutes later the former guard had the commander on the phone; and two weeks after that Dennis and I drove two days to the Waijima peninsula of the west coast to spend an afternoon speaking to the camp commander about the Lord. The proud Japanese officer was now a broken man living with his wife in a traditional house that looked like a scene taken from 1930 Japan. As I sat there for three hours listening to Dennis share Christ with this man and his wife; I marveled, “What an amazing moment in history!”: as the Lord wrote this appendix to the 2^ndWW.”

Dennis was a missionary with the Plymouth Brethren. They were very traditional Brethren missionaries doing a good job in Guma-ken. His wife was an ultra conservative lady, that looked like she had just stepped out of the 1900s. She wore no makeup, had a very long skirt, high neck line, and looked like an Elizabethan era Christian. Phyllis was a highly spiritual missionary wife, with a worn-out Bible, a deep prayer life, and an unusual soul winner. But she won Japanese girls to the Lord so she could get in bed with them. She was a closet militant lesbian.

For years Dennis refused to believe the obvious about his wife. But the effect of it was devastating on him. He was close to a nervous break-down, and went to a doctor for medication. One time they were on vacation in Karuizawa, and, in the middle of the night, Dennis had a Righter 9, rip-roaring, anxiety attack. He got up in terror with every nerve in his body screaming,“Flee!!!” He sat down at the kitchen table with three options. The first was to get in his car and drive to the end of the earth. Everything in him demanded that this was his only choice. The second option was medication. The third option was the Word of God. Against every instinct in him, he picked up his Bible, and opened it at random. His eyes fell on Ps. 55:6 – “Oh, that I had the wings of a dove! For then I would fly away and be at rest.” As he read that unusual psalm he thought, “Great day, this man had exactly the same experience that I am!” He read that psalm over and over, until a quietness came over his soul, and went back to bed in peace.

One afternoon he was in Karuizawa, sharing with me the horrible situation going on in his home. His wife had her sex lover staying with them, and enjoying a very active relationship. In agony he sighed, “What can I do?”

“Kick out the lesbian lover”

“How?”

“You're a man. Do it!”

Will you do it?”

“Yes.”

So we went together back to his home in Ina, three hours away.

Shortly after we got there, Phyllis was in the kitchen fixing supper, cutting up carrots with a large knife. She asked Dennis, “Why is Bill here?”

“He came to take Teriko away.”

In measured tones, she turned to him and said, “If Teriko leaves, I will kill you with this knife.” He came in the living room and apologetically said, “I'm sorry, Bill, but we can't do it.” Fortunately, a month later he was successful in putting Teriko out of the house.

In desperation, he took his family back to England, and did everything humanly possible to save his family. They were living separately, which was a bad testimony to their Christian brethren. The head of his group wrote him a rebuke saying that, on the basis of 1 Pet. 3:7, he thought they should dwell together. Dennis wrote back sardonically, “And where should the third person sleep? Should she sleep on my side of the bed? Should she sleep on Phyllis' side of the bed? Or should she sleep between us?” Thus was the ridiculous help he got from the Christian community. A Christian psychiatrist advised him to go back to Japan, and watch his wife with a telescope; which he did.

For the next 24 years he lived in Ina. For several of those years his daughter, Christine was with him, which was a tremendous help. But for many other years, he lived a deserted, lonely, life by himself. His support was desperately low. The house was colder than a meat freezer in the winter time, and he suffered terribly, emotionally and physically. But his walk with the Lord was amazing. One morning he went into town to a store, and the owner remarked, “Tana san, you must have had some good news this morning. Your face is shinning.” Dennis replied, “Tozen (naturally). I have been digging diamonds all morning.”

His freshness and genuineness was unique. His house was out in the country, and every morning he would go for long walks. One morning, he was passing a field where an old woman was working. In conversation, she asked, “Tana san, why did you come to Japan?” The standard answer is, “To preach the Gospel.” Or, “To tell people about Jesus.” But, uniquely, Dennis replied, “Obaa chan (grandmother), I have found that many people have nayamis (sorrows).” The old lady burst into tears and said, “Tana san, I have a nayami.” He had touched her heart.

And thus it was that he touched the hearts of hundreds of people with sorrows and suffering. He had a major ministry visiting hospitals talking to people in ward rooms. Heaven alone records how many he led to Christ. He was always the favorite guest in our home, as I knew that he would share Christ with other people that we had staying with us like no one else could. I considered his friendship and fellowship one of the greatest privileges and treasurer I had.

And then one day a shocking letter came from England. His wife had repented. He had lived by himself for 24 years praying for her deliverance – and won. That is the greatest testimony of hanging in there, to save a marriage, and winning, that I have ever heard. He returned back to England to spend the remaining years of his life with his wife and children. Some time later I received a letter from Phyllis such as I had never seen. I could scarcely reconcile the contents to the letter with the signature at the bottom. She honestly talked of her years of failure, and said she was devoting the rest of her life counseling younger women not to destroy their marriage and family as she had.

The bottom line was the day when I got a package in the mail of a video his daughter, Christine, sent me, of her father's funeral. I wept as I looked at it. What a testimony! Here was a man who had suffered like no one I had ever known. He had suffered terribly as a POW of the Japanese. He had suffered indescribably as a desperate man trying to be a missionary while fighting an unimaginable struggle in his domestic life. He suffered as a man generally rejected by his missionary brethren. He had suffered 24 years of privation and loneliness in Ina. And at the end of his life he stood on the winners platform by lying in a casket surrounded by his weeping wife and children; and yet celebrating his triumph of faith, and a united family.

Oh, I can't wait to embraces this dear man in heaven, who stands there with a multitude of souls that he bought with his amazing testimony.

bill