16 October 2016
Dear Phyllis,
It has been some time since I wrote a testimony. I know I have written about Mino Mission before but some of those stories bear repetition.
Mino Mission was started by Sadie Lee Widener in around 1920. Miss Widener had come to Japan shortly after the turn of the 20th century to teach at the girls school in Sendai. She was a hard core fundamentalist (so am I) and when liberalism started coming into her denomination she left that mission to go to the Mino area of Gifu-ken (prefecture) to start her own mission. Around 1924 a young lady, Betty Whewell, came out to work with the Mino Mission. They were both Alpha type, pure, undiluted, choleric women. And when nationalism with the central message of Shinto idolatry began to dominate Japan in the 1930s these two women were the fiercest opponents to take a hard stand for Jesus.
As pressure began to mount against churches in Japan the police in Ogaki issued an order forbidding singing hymns on Sunday. Sadie Lee said, “This is where we draw a line.” The next Sunday their Japanese Christians were kneeling worshiping the Lord. Sadie Lee looked up and saw the police (Japanese gestapo) standing in the middle of the room taking down names. She confronted the police and demanded, “Look at them! They are worshiping the only true God, Jesus, and we are not going to stop.” Then she went on, “I have been in Japan for 20 years, and the only time I was ordered to refrain from singing was when your emperor was dead in his casket in Tokyo. Last week you gave the same order that was issued when the emperor died.” The police turned ashen gray and bolted from the room.
One day they were having a street meeting in Ogaki when an ugly mob formed. As preaching was impossible the believer retreated back to the mission compound, but the crowd followed them. When they got back inside the safety of the compound Betty said, “We have a large crowd here, let's preach.” They had hardly got started when the mob crashed through the gate and stormed inside. One young buck saw the box they had for preaching and jumped up on it ranting his message against the mission. Betty saw that man standing on Jesus' box in the mission compound and something snapped inside her, “This is not right.” She gave the box a mighty kick and the poor fellow went flying with his feet above his head. He came down flat on his back like he had been dropped from an airplane and was knocked out cold. Then the police came. Everyone was taken to the police station for intense interrogation. The police keep demanding of Betty, “What was he saying?” “Shiran” (crude “I don't know”) At last the police were satisfied that Betty was poor in the language and honestly didn't know what he was saying. The next day the pastor came to Betty and said, “Sensei, that was very dangerous yesterday when that man said, 'Ten no heika sama, Banzai!' (three cheers for the emperor) and you knocked him down”. That was the only time in pre-war Japan when someone said “Banzai for the emperor” and got decked.
Around 1937 when many churches were closed, Betty went with a group of Christians up to a village in the mountains to have a street meeting. A police man saw the believers setting up their banners for the street meeting and stormed forward demanding, “Who are you and what are you doing?” Betty faced him and replied, “I am Betty Whewell from the Mino Mission, and we are here to tell people about Jesus.” The policeman gasped, “Ah so desu ka. (Oh is that so) and fled. Mino Mission was famous and no one dared to face them.
Betty took Sadie Lee Widener back to the states in 1939 and Miss Widener went to be with the Lord midway through that voyage. Betty got stuck in the states and never got back to Japan until 1949 when the war was over. (Had Betty been in Japan maybe the war might have been over two or three years sooner.)
Betty had a good friend, Mrs. Johnson, who had been a missionary in Manila before the war and had a military couple who came regularly to her Bible study, Douglas and Jean MacArthur. Mrs. Johnson wrote Betty and asked if she would like an introduction to the MacArthurs in Tokyo. Of course she was delighted when got for an invitation from Mrs. MacArthur to have tea one day. At the conclusion Jean MacArthur said, “I have to go down town. Would you like a ride to the train station?” As they were going out the main gate, Jean MacArthur chuckled and said, “There has been some mistake. Someone passed the word that the general was coming out. This honor guard that we got, of everyone saluting us, is an honor given only to the general.” Betty grimly replied, “That was no mistake. God made them salute me.”
In 1955 when Joe Carroll came to Japan, Betty invited him to preach at their church in Tomida Hama. Joe preached a blood and thunder message but got no response to an invitation for salvation. When Betty saw no one moving she got down off the platform, went back in the crowd and grabbed one man by the ear saying, “You have been here long enough. Get up there and get saved.” She hailed two or three more sending them forward for salvation. They got saved. Joe stood there in stunned awe and thought “Who does that woman think she is? The Holy Ghost?”
Yes, she was the Holy Ghost. When I was with the Mino Mission in the early 1960s I was bewildered. I never saw a place where there was more activity and presence of the Holy Spirit, and I never was in a place that was more dominated by the flesh of a woman. Because of their fierce stand against idolatry and their uncompromising position for the Word of God, God blessed them in a way that I saw in no other church. They had the largest church in Mie-ken and the finest believers in the country. The Mino Mission believers had virtually renounced their Japanese citizenship and became citizens of another country – heaven (Phil. 3:20). Being with those believers was an experience that you could have in no other place in Japan. But Betty's domineering spirit was stifling.
In 1987 Betty heard I was working in Nagoya and invited me to preach in Tomida Hama one Sunday. I really didn't want to go but shigata ga nai (nothing you can do about it). It was one of the worst services of my life. Everyone in that church was like automons who responded when their button got pushed. Preaching in there was like preaching to mannequins in a morgue. Several years later, I was talking to a boy in the Pentecostal Bible school in Ikoma, and was stunned to discover that he was a Mino Mission believer. I asked, “Were you there in 1987?” He gasped and said, “Were you the man who preached on Micah 7:18?” He could almost quote my entire message verbatim and said, “Man, that was one of the best meetings of the year.”
By 1990 nearly 80% of the old timers, original believers, had left the Mino Mission. They were still some of the finest Christians in Japan but Betty had squelched the Holy Spirit so badly they could no longer survive. Some say Betty Whewell will stand on one of the highest platforms in heaven for being one of the most courageous missionaries in Japan. I think she probably will be in the middle of the line. She should be in the front of the line as she towered over nearly every male missionary for her fierce stand against idolatry, her intensive payer life, and her genuine love for Jesus and His Word. And yet I wouldn't be surprised to see her at the end of the line for her domineering flesh over others - down to when you could or couldn't smile. That literally happened to me. One night a sister was giving a tremendous testimony and I was beaming. Betty came to me and demanded, “Stop smiling!” I retorted, “But I'm being blessed.” Betty came back, “You don't have to smile like that.”
Betty lasted well up into her 90s. She never returned to the states after the war. She nearly destroyed the mission she so courageously directed for 50 years. Her number one pastor was Ishiguro sensei who was a clone of Betty. But today Ishiguro sensei's son, Isaac, is the pastor and fresh green sap is flowing back into that vine. Mono Mission today is very healthy.
Praise God.
bill
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