August 1 Petition Mission

“…the Gentiles, to whom I now send you, to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins…” (Acts 26:17-18). Thus reads the commission to Saul of Tarsus.

John Birch (unfortunately linked in most minds with a conservative advocacy group named after him) was born on the mission field in India and died on the mission field in China. His hope, after the end of WWII, was to take the gospel to Tibet.

As a boy of 11, he had attended a missionary meeting one evening when Leonard Livingstone Legters told of his evangelistic engagements with unreached Indian tribes in southern Brazil. Legters imitated the eerie cries of anguished natives as they mourned the death of their loved one, believing the departed soul had been captured by demons. That night, 11-year-old John told his parents, “The Lord is calling me to the mission field; I have the answer to the death wail of the lost.” Indeed we have!