Logan Papworth was a layman with no formal theological background.
This testimony was given shortly before the Lord took Logan home to Glory. He may have misspoken himself at times and did not correctly recall or identify some things that happened in his life.
This testimony was given shortly before the Lord took Logan home to Glory. You'll probably find a date or a detail that may be a little bit off here or there, but we wanted to print it without modification.because no one is more qualified to share this story than ol' Logan.
However, his testimony is recorded exactly as it was given to Milton Walton.
Testimony of Logan Papworth
(written in December 1960)
I have been asked to explain the Christian Salvage Mission. To do that it would be necessary to cover a little personal history first.
At 12 years of age, I was baptized and admitted into full church membership and instructed to keep the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. As the years went by I became increasingly dissatisfied for I couldn’t follow that instruction to begin with.
Then at about the age of 50, a business friend from Detroit called my attention to the fact that I was a member of a certain church that was supposed to be pleasing God. He pointed out that there was nothing in the Bible anywhere that said that such and such membership would square accounts with God. I was continually reading the Bible but couldn’t get ahead.
One Sunday afternoon shortly after I was 50 years of age, something happened which I have always considered to be the very hand of God. As I was driving a truck and thinking about my problems, I approached a railroad crossing. I looked up and my truck and the railroad locomotive were going to meet right square in the middle of the highway. I remember crying out, “God, save me!” all at once my truck stopped and I sat there and watched the train go by. I got out of the truck and looked around and said to someone, “Well, you saved my life, now what do you want me to do with it?”
I didn’t realize at the time, but this, to me, was the new birth spoken of in the Gospel of John. Then I was 50 years old, and I made up my mind if I was going to do anything for the Lord, I would have to do it fast because everybody referred to me as an old man.
I started by selling Colportage materials, books, Bibles and Testaments.
One Sunday afternoon, the Sheriff of the county (a Catholic friend of mine) said that he had a friend of mine in jail. He wanted me to come and visit the boy. I went there. He was locked in with 14 or 15 men. They all wanted me to give them the Testaments I had. They also wanted to know if they could sing. They wanted a church service. So the next Sunday, after making arrangements with the Sheriff, I took in song books and some Testaments. The men asked me to speak about Biblical truths and I did as best I could.
From then on, for six years, I visited and worked with those men in the county jail as an unofficial Chaplain. At the end of this time, the jail was torn down and a new one built which had no ‘common room’. So this work was ended
Then some time after that, I began to teach 10-year old boys and girls in Sunday school. I soon learned that these children were old enough to receive the Lord Jesus as their Saviour and Lord, if the teacher used language they could understand.
For eleven years this work continued. During much of this time my employment was that of a scrap buyer handling many tons of paper. All this time I kept wondering if there wasn’t some outlet for the wonderful Christian reading being thrown into the paper baler. Some of this consisted of books on Theology, some of which would cost $12 to $15 each. I would tear off the covers, throw them in the baler and sell them as waste paper to make corrugated paper boxes. During this time I still continued to feel something missing in my life.
Saturday nights the converts of the jail, ( I called them my converts, for it seemed to me the Lord never had any like them) would be leaning up against the telephone pole in front of the tavern. Some even would be coming out of the tavern wiping their lips. (I naively assumed they probably went in for lemonade). Then I realized there was something wrong with me, since I was not getting across to these men what the Lord Jesus meant to me, and what He should mean to them.
Then one day I noticed the command in the last half of Ephesians 5:18, “…but be filled with the Spirit,” discovering that this is a distinct command of God. I knew of no such experience as being filled with the Holy Spirit, who is God, so I began to study the Gospel of John, especially the 14th chapter, then the Book of Acts.
I saw that there was a person Jesus said, whom He would send down to earth when He went back into Heaven; that this person was to be exactly like Him, to do for us what He would have done could He have stayed here. I noticed in John 7:17 that Jesus speaks of a gift. Searching through the Bible for every occurrence of the word “gift” I found in every instance there was the thought of someone receiving something. So the words ‘giving’ and ‘receiving’ went together.
Now here was God wanting to give me the Holy Spirit, and I wanted to receive Him, but I didn’t know how. By prayer and study I did what was referred to in I John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” I sat down and asked my Lord Jesus what there was in my life that displeased Him.
I took paper and pencil and set them down, one item after another, until there were 17 of them. I stopped right there and, one by one, confessed each of them as a sin. He promised in this Epistle that if anybody did that, He would forgive them. He would even go further, He would cleanse them from all unrighteousness. So I did that.
Now my heart was cleared out of all the roots of the sins of which I had been forgiven when I became a Christian. It was just like a clean, washed vessel. I took my heart, and my body with it, and laid them on the altar – as a living sacrifice, spoken of in Romans 12:1,2. Then I said to my Heavenly Father, “As much as I can, I have prepared my heart as a home for this gift of yours, this person who wants to live in it. Right now, by faith, I believe He has come to live in my heart and I thank you for Him.”
About this time I learned that Christian magazines were wanted in the Far East by missionaries. So I got the name of a missionary and wrote to her. She told me what she wanted.
I had 12 Moody Monthlies so I mailed them to her. She wrote back and told me the condition they arrived in and what would have to be done to have them arrive in good condition. I also heard from the International Postal Union informing me that the materials I was sending was not packaged right.
Slowly, in 1956, we managed to ship out a couple hundred pounds of reading material to the East. The work of shipping grew bit by bit. I ran out of money and magazines. Then people began giving me magazines and money for postage. This continued all through the next couple of years, until 1959. Word then got out through a remark of the Editor of the Moody Monthly of what I was doing. Immediately the magazines began to arrive in such volume that I saw I was going to have to make other arrangements.
Then I had a printer print a Newsletter for me explaining to those interested in what I was doing, what I needed and how the packages needed to be packed to arrive properly and in good condition.
This missionary had told me of other workers that would like the services I was engaged in, so by October of 1959 we had 36 workers in foreign countries receiving packages. Every month each worker was mailed four magazines, as near to the publication dates as I could obtain. Included in this number were seven Seminaries who wanted reading material. There were 11 missionaries or national workers who could take all the material that I could send to them. They would hand it out all day long.
When the great flood of material began to come in late 1959, we were more or less prepared for it. We had a list of people to ship to. We knew the customs, censorship and postal regulations needing to be obeyed to get the material through.
While all this was going on there were many interesting things happening. A missionary in Central India, who was the first one I wrote to, had been corresponding with us n regard to a “Decision Slip”. She said that when people read the magazines they often said, “I want to do something about this.” But there was nothing to pin them down to. She compiled a decision card that could be printed and inserted in the magazines. This was added to each magazine or paper large enough to carry it. They were sent out with a prayer that we might get a decision from the 2,000 magazines with the decision slips inserted.
Some very surprising things happened. In a publishing house in Rangoon, Burma, a member of the Lutheran church picked up the magazine, “Pentecostal Evangel” and began reading it. When he got to the last page he found the decision card. Afterwards he wrote us that it dawned upon him that here he was an official in the Lutheran church and not yet a Christian. So he signed the decision slip and mailed it to us. Shortly after that he sent more decision slips he had obtained from other people who also wanted to be colporteurs. He himself had six men under him who passed out reading material clear up to the northern border of Burma. He won his son to the Lord and his son in turn won a Hindu to the Lord who lived in the State of Madras. He, in turn, is now doing personal work using the magazines.
It was during this time a letter was received from Nigeria by the manager of the Home of Onesiphorus in Chicago in which the writer asked for a zipper Bible. The manager, knowing we were interested in this kind of work, turned the letter over to us. We wrote to the gentleman who said he was Secretary of Agriculture for the nation of Ghana. In our letter we enclosed the Gospel of John with instructions on how to use it and six decision slips. We told him to go out with the Gospel of John, using it to win others to Christ and, after their decision, have them sign the cards.
The forepart of the 1960 we received a letter from him. There were six decision slips enclosed, one of them, being his own. Now he asked for a sipper Bible. The very day we received the letter, a friend from Burr Oak, Michigan stopped by. He said he was so impressed by this work he had to stop by and bring a zipper Bible. And so the need and supplier were brought together at the proper time.
This Ghanaian has since become a personal worker in his spare time in his own country. He has built up a small congregation to which he preaches on Sunday. Just recently he wrote and said that if we could supply him with Christian cards, when people would come to hear him preach he would distribute them after church. More or less humorously he said, “The people think they are getting cards, but they are also hearing the Gospel and I get an audience that I can tell about Jesus.”
One day we received a letter from Rev. Charles Fuller of the Old Fashioned Revival Hour. In it he enclosed a letter from a young man in the Philippine Islands who wanted help. This young man was a Chinese pastor who was training 14 Filipinos to become evangelists. Between them they only had one Bible and copy of Scofield’s “Tightly Dividing the Word of Truth.” He was slowly writing 16 copies (four at a time) for his men to study and report on. He needed study books. Particularly he wanted the Scofield Bible Correspondence Course from Moody Bible Institute. Now this course costs $100 and we were very doubtful about obtaining it. So we prayed.
Then a letter came from a lady in Ohio whose husband had been a pastor. He had died and she asked if we could use his library. She sent them and upon opening the shipment there was the complete Scofield Bible Study Course. So off it went to the Philippines.
This Filipino pastor told us of a library in Manila which needed books very badly. Corresponding with them we found they needed 6,000 theological books very badly. That seemed a hopeless number. But as books were sent us which they could use, we mailed them to them. Now they tell us we have given them more books than any other group, including their own denomination.
They, in turn, told us of another worker in the Philippines who had charge of 30 preachers and 30 Bible Women who needed material, such as Sunday school Bibles and Sunday school quarterlies.
By one person telling another, the work of the Mission has grown until now there is a total of 76 workers, both American and national.
There are so many interesting things happening and being reported back to the Mission that it is hard to tell this in a consecutive way for so many things are happening at the same time.
We received a decision for Christ from a boy in Eastern Nigeria. As near as we could determine, it came from a Moody Monthly which had been handed out 500 miles from the town it was mailed to. Somebody handed it to a native of Nigeria who read it. One day at the crossroads he met another young man who had a pocketful of reading material. They traded reading material as some boys in the United States trade baseball cards. This continued until the magazine got to the boy who signed the decision slip.
Some of these young men, not yet out of high school, are already turning in decision slips they have obtained by getting their friends to read the Christian material we are sending to them.
The man in Ghana who said he was Secretary of Agriculture, gave us his assurance that he had received Christ as his Saviour. He is also a pastor. His name is Rev. Wood. We became acquainted with him through our correspondence. He had no formal education beyond high school. What Bible training he has he is receiving from the Radio Bible Class of Grand Rapids, MI, which he receives via short-wave radio. Now as a pastor, he was asking for material. He needs all kinds of Sunday school papers, material for teachers.
One day a friend was here at the office and saw a book, “Winning Children”. He wanted to know what I was going to do with it. I replied I would “send it slow mail”. He took the book to the post office and sent it Airmail.
This pastor in Ghana, after reading it saw that children could be won to the Lord as well as adults. He had 14 churches in his charge. He picked out one of his young men and trained him as a child evangelist. Now they have classes for children in all of his 14 churches. The adults are so interested in what the children are doing they are planning to go to the back country with the Children, where people who are not Christians could listen to them, hear them sing and recite verses of Scripture. We are still waiting to hear how the children do when they take them out on the trip into the country.
One day, early this year of 1960, we received a letter from a young man in British Guiana who was the national secretary of the Youth for Christ. They were going to have a national convention and he wanted 1,000 Youth for Christ magazines. Any month of any year would be satisfactory just as long as there was something which they young people could read. He reported in his letter that he had inquired everywhere and he was told that the Christian Salvage Mission was the only outlet that he could find which would undertake to supply him with material such as he wanted, and in the quantities he wanted.
We prayed about it. Then we inquired around until we found 1,000 copies. The Lord provided the postage money and we mailed them to him. All of the magazines arrived before the date of the convention. However it was cancelled because some pastors thought they weren’t ready for a nationwide convention.
Since monthly meetings were being held in high schools in different parts of the nation, he took the magazines with him and gave them out to read. These magazines are turning up in some very unexpected places. Two young men in the reform school of that country have sent in decision slips from magazines which reached them in prison. Now they are asking for more Youth for Christ magazines and the supply is gradually disappearing.
One of the very unusual things about the work of the Mission has been the fact that people from all kinds of denominations send in material which they use in their church. This material, in turn, is sent out to missionaries of all kinds of faiths. They are Christians, but some of them are inclined to Calvinistic teaching and some are Wesleyan in their thinking.
There has been only one inquiry from the field in the four years of our existence from anyone asking who we are as Christians. We think that is remarkable. People out there are so desperate for Christian reading material that as long as we are true to the Word, and don’t ask if we belong to their particular sect, as Christian workers they will use all the material we can send because it is good, sound useable material.
As we come to the close of 1960, we now have 76 workers out there, 33 of whom are colporteurs who can take as much material as we can supply. One man alone listed his needs as 360 pounds of material every month. Just recently we received a letter from South India, from a new worker, who has correspondents who pass out reading material as far away as Ceylon.
We have this year come very close to having sent out 5,000 pounds of material to various workers in several countries. As a result, we have had a total of 178 decisions for Christ. Many of these are being watched by local pastors and favorable reports are being returned as to their growth as Christians.
It sounds as though we have done something very big this year. We have only begun to scratch the surface. In looking at the map of India along with railroad for 100 miles, there are 200 towns and villages, each with a Reading Room and everyone wanting English Christian reading. The national workers are calling attention to the fact that every time they get a man to read a Christian magazine and get a decision for Christ, he is lost to the Communists.
This work started as a one-man war against the Communists. It has grown into something far different as these results show. We have before us 1961. Orders for material are far beyond what we can supply. We are going to have to have more help. We have to break down the work so that different people can do different parts of it and get the materials sent.
The last four years have been the most gratifying ones of the manager of this Mission. To think that the Lord would use a man like him to do this kind of work. So we will shortly be ending this year and will see what next year brings.
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On November 14, 1969 the "man with a dream" was called home to be with his Lord.
