Called to Controversy

by Ruth Rosen

  Moishe took each admonition seriously and felt weighed down by his inadequacy. As for the third admonition about leading one person to Jesus each day, he recalled,

  I knew I couldn’t do that, but I made a promise that every day I would try to explain the gospel to at least one person who didn’t know Jesus. This promise was not easy to keep because everyone connected to the school was a professing Christian.

  Each day of that conference put more pressure on me. I felt terribly guilty that I did not measure up to the standards set forth. Finally, the week came to an end, and I realized that I had not explained the gospel to anybody. . . . I decided to go down to the bus station, where I knew the driver stopped at midnight and left at 12:15 a.m. I reasoned that at least I could talk to the driver about Jesus. . . . The bus driver saw me coming. He jumped in the bus, slammed the door, and began the route early.

  This ludicrous scenario helped Moishe realize that he had taken the deeper life speakers too literally and that spiritual growth would be a matter of reasonable efforts on his part and plenty of grace on God’s part.

  Moishe’s passivity and attempt to conform were temporary and did not mean that he had become docile. Chapel proved a good example. Certain speakers came with an obvious agenda to recruit missionaries, and they spent their allotted time promoting their own organizations. Moishe grew very annoyed with this type of speaker. Equally annoying were others who repeated the same message over and over: “When you get out in the real world. . . ” and they would go on to say what a different life students could expect from the sheltered upbringing they’d had. Moishe wasn’t sure who they were addressing, but he felt he’d come from “the real world” to be at the school.

  Although he attended chapel on most days, Moishe and Catherine occasionally used the time to get coffee and donuts if they suspected a speaker would not be worth hearing. When they were confronted about this breach of a school rule, Moishe stood up to the president of the school and said, “If you and the rest of the faculty would sit through chapel and see how awful some of these speakers are, you’d understand why I skip some of them. It doesn’t help my spiritual life when speakers act like we have to show we are dedicated Christians by going to this field or that field. I already know the mission I’ll be serving with. I feel like I’m taking a browbeating every time I listen to one of these organizations that make you feel guilty if you won’t consider serving with them or donating to their cause. And the ones who talk as though we have no idea what the real world is like treat us like we are children.” He paused, wondering if he was about to get thrown out of school.

  The president simply said, “All right, you two are a little older than the other students, and you may use your discretion to be excused now and then. But don’t make an issue of it or flaunt your absence.”

  Moishe enjoyed hearing some of his favorite faculty members at chapel, and he also made a point to be in chapel when anyone from the ABMJ was speaking. Charles Kalisky did not promote the ABMJ; instead he talked about Israel. Henry Heydt, also from the ABMJ, did not promote the mission either. Moishe said, “I appreciated the way the speakers from the ABMJ tried to give something meaningful to benefit the students without making a big deal about the mission. And I noticed they never expected an offering or used guilt to solicit students’ support. Both of these things made me proud to be associated with them.” This stark comparison led Moishe to a conscious and lasting decision: if ever he got a chance to speak at any school’s chapel, he would be sure to give something meaningful to the students rather than try to get them to give to him or his mission.

  Moishe also attended chapel whenever Charles Anderson, the school president, spoke—even though Anderson had excused Moishe from going. He said, “Dr. Anderson had this very practical and straightforward approach that I liked.”

  Charles W. Anderson was not only the president of NBI; he was the founder. The school had started as Brookdale Bible School on the campus of Brookdale Baptist Church, where Anderson was pastor. The church and school remained affiliated, and students were generally encouraged to attend Brookdale Baptist Church. This was fine with Moishe and Ceil, whose only church experience had been at a Baptist church similar to Brookdale.

  The teacher who most influenced Moishe was William Lincoln, of whom he often said: “If William Lincoln taught a sewing class I would have taken it. I would have taken any class from him because I knew that I would learn more about God and about life, no matter what subject he taught.” Lincoln taught church history, and he was not an easy grader. Moishe recalled:

  William Lincoln was so enthusiastic for God—a person of deep feeling. He would talk about the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre that happened centuries ago and his eyes would fill with tears. He must have taught the material countless times, but you could see he felt just awful about the lives that were lost so many years ago. He was also the first person I heard say that Jesus had a wonderful sense of humor.

  Lincoln’s only graduate degree was a THB from Princeton. But he was a very well-educated man who had concluded that all education is self-education. He showed me that going to school gives one the opportunity to learn—but no one can teach you anything; you teach yourself.

  Lincoln was not as strait-laced as some of our teachers. He knew the value of strategically used sarcasm. For example, somewhere I picked up the idea that if people didn’t hear the gospel, God would not hold them responsible for their sins—that if they lived mostly righteous lives, they would go to heaven without receiving Jesus. I brought this up in class, and he stood there and nodded his head. Then he said, “If that’s true, maybe we should stop preaching the gospel and keep Jesus a secret. Think of all the people we’re sending to hell by preaching the gospel.” Then he went on to explain what the Bible teaches, but his ironic or sarcastic approach was just what I needed to get my attention. Later in life I often used that same approach.

  Wesley Olsen was another highly influential teacher, and he, too, had a way of using irony or sarcasm to get Moishe to take a second look at what he was thinking and where it would lead. Olsen taught biblical theology and systematic theology. He encouraged the students to think through carefully the things they thought they knew. When he’d ask a question, any student who tried to give a predigested answer would find that this professor would go along with it just so far, and then, as Moishe described it: “Bang! He would cut you off so dramatically, so logically, so incisively that you had to give up your whole preconceived idea, and then he’d start to teach you. He used the Socratic method. He was very interactive.” When it was his turn to teach, Moishe well remembered Olsen’s style and adopted it to train missionaries.

  Moishe recalled negative lessons as well. The school had a canteen where students were allowed to dish up their own sundaes, malts, or milkshakes and pay on the honor system. To Moishe’s horror, when the school year ended, the “honor system” had landed the school a good fifteen hundred dollars in the red. “It was not just people forgetting to leave money, but to lose that much money, somebody had to be stealing from the money that we did leave. That proved to be the case, and the thief was discovered. But the fact that one of us was stealing—and at a school that charged only a hundred dollars a year in tuition—was upsetting because it showed a frightening level of corruption in our midst. I thought that even among the most dedicated Christians there are wolves among the sheep,” he said.

  At the end of Moishe’s first year at Northeastern, Dean Bleecker approached him. “His general attitude was serious,” Moishe explained,

  and he said, “We’ve been discussing your adjustment to school.” Well, of course it was quite an adjustment so I was interested to hear his conclusion. He said something like: “You’ve been doing very well, and we know that academics are a struggle for you. And we can see you working, and we appreciate what you’ve done for your practical Christian work.” I had been going to Patterson Jail, as well as working with the ABMJ in New York City.

  The
n the dean said, “I think it might help with your adjustment if you could have a little more of your own family life.” And then to my great surprise—and I felt so privileged—the dean told me that they wanted to excuse me from the rule that said we had to live in the married dorm. He even suggested a nearby neighborhood where I could find affordable outside housing. This solved so many problems for us, because the nearby neighborhood was Montclair, New Jersey, where many Italian families lived. Not only were people’s temperaments in that neighborhood far more similar to our own, but what could be better than having an Italian landlady who was proud of her cooking—and who loved the smell of garlic as much as we did? It never occurred to us that the cultural differences we experienced at Northeastern were two-sided . . . and that others were very happy for us to find a home more to our liking off campus.

  Among all the adjustments and lessons of that first year of Bible school, Moishe was also still learning what it meant to have a personal relationship with God. Toward the middle of his first semester, Moishe had a paper due that was crucial for his grade, and it had to be typewritten. Unfortunately, Moishe’s typewriter needed repair. He only needed $3.50 to get it fixed, but he said, “It might as well have been $3,500 because I didn’t have it.

  “I was desperate. It was then and there that I learned to petition and pray, and God encouraged me with a swift answer.” When Moishe went to his student mailbox, he found a check for five dollars from the Public Service Company of Colorado. It was the refund from a service deposit. He cashed the check and took his typewriter to be repaired. “I got my typewriter, the paper was finished on time, I was still in school, and I knew that God had answered prayer,” said Moishe. “So, maybe it’s all right to ask for things, I thought. It wasn’t long before I needed to ask again.”

  In the move from Denver, his overcoat and other winter clothes had gotten lost. That meant when he went from New Jersey into New York City to do volunteer work at the ABMJ, he had only a suit coat over a sweater to keep him warm. Moishe explained,

  As I went to my assigned place and began my work, Hilda Koser, the missionary from Brooklyn, came to me and said, “Mr. Rosen, I hope you don’t mind my asking you, but a man from Kalamazoo died, and his wife sent me all of his clothes. He didn’t die of anything contagious. He was evidently a rather tall man like you, and all of the people to whom we minister in Brooklyn are much shorter. I wouldn’t insult you by offering you secondhand clothes, but I know that the man’s wife would be so pleased if she knew who the clothes went to.”

  Hilda Koser couldn’t have known how much I had been praying for an overcoat! I said I would take a look at them after I finished my work. . . . The man must have been rather well off. There were several Hart, Shaffner, and Marx suits and, best of all, two overcoats! All of the clothes—the shirts, the suits, even the barely worn size thirteen shoes—were exactly my size, and the styles were what I would have chosen. This was too good to be true!

  I had barely finished praying before God had greatly answered. That kind of thing went on for several weeks. I would have a need, I would pray, and my prayer would be quickly and decisively answered in a unique way. Then, after perhaps six remarkable answers, I prayed yet again, and what I asked did not happen. It was as though God were telling me, “I’ve shown you that I can answer prayer and that I will answer prayer, but not every time that you ask it.”

  I don’t expect God to give me everything I ask of him, but I know that he answers, and I continue to ask, even for little things like parking places, and they often come to pass in remarkable ways.

  * The once-a-week “hash” was made with canned government surplus corned beef, but the ratio of potatoes to meat was very high as the school was on a tight budget.

  FOURTEEN

  The right enemies help more than the wrong friends.

  —MOISHE ROSEN

  Moishe was honored, awed, and perhaps just a little frightened that Harold Pretlove had asked to see him. Pretlove was the acting missionary secretary, which meant he was the chief executive officer of the American Board of Missions to the Jews. He was a mysterious figure to Moishe. A slender man whose suits matched his gray hair, Pretlove regarded the new missionary with a friendly, if somewhat detached, air. He said, “We’ve been thinking about what to assign you for your volunteer work.”

  Moishe nodded. In addition to sponsoring his education at Northeastern, for which the tuition at the time was one hundred dollars per annum, the ABMJ had generously provided a stipend of two hundred dollars per month for living expenses.

  Moishe felt it was right that he be expected to do some work in return. He and Ceil had been coming on Tuesday and Thursday nights to attend training classes that the ABMJ provided for staff and laypeople who were interested in Jewish evangelism. They also took part in the mission’s weekly worship service on Sunday afternoons. But Moishe expected an additional assignment and had been somewhat surprised by the lack of direction he’d received in the first few weeks. Nevertheless, he was totally unprepared for what came next.

  “I think that it would be good for you to take charge of our outdoor meetings.” Pretlove smiled beneficently.

  Swallowing hard, Moishe hoped he could respond to Pretlove’s assignment without stammering: “I’d be glad to participate, Mr. Pretlove, but I don’t think I can be in charge of something I don’t know anything about.”

  The boss had a solution: “Well, the Lord himself will teach you, just as he taught Moses how to lead.”

  Moishe tried to imagine that it might possibly happen that way. His Yiddish name, after all, was a derivative of the Hebrew name Moshe (in English, Moses). If only I could have a rod to throw down, and it would become a snake to impress people, he thought. But he feared he would have to make do without any signs or wonders.

  Pretlove continued with optimism: “You’ll have a couple of weeks to get volunteers, and if you stand up at next Sunday’s service and ask for people to join you, I’m sure that you’ll find many, many who will want to help.”

  With a combination of dread and hope, Moishe stood before the congregation of some eighty people the following Sunday and said, “We’re going to have an outdoor meeting next week before the service, and we’re wondering if there are any volunteers to help us. If you’d like to volunteer, will you raise your hands?” All hands remained motionless. Perhaps if no one volunteered, he would be let off the hook. “Well,” he added, “think about it, and if you’d like to help, let me know after the service.”

  After the service, up came up Madiline Osbourne, a Bible college graduate who she said she didn’t know anything about outdoor meetings, but would help if Mr. Rosen would tell her what to do. “And,” she added, “Maybe I can get my dad to come, too.”

  “Can he preach?” Moishe asked hopefully.

  “Well, no, and he can’t hear either; he’s deaf.”

  Then came Anna Frank, a dear lady who was bent over with age and with scoliosis. She smiled warmly as she cocked her head to look up at the rookie missionary. “I know about outdoor meetings, Brother Rosen; I’ve been to many. I can’t speak because I’m too old, and if I open my mouth wide, my teeth fall down. But I’ll go and I’ll pray for you, and I’ll help.”

  With three volunteers and the possibility of a fourth, the outdoor meeting was now inescapable. Moishe felt he’d best not wait for “God himself” to teach him how to lead such a meeting. After the service, he went to Joseph Serafin, an older missionary, and Serafin told him to come back Tuesday and he would show him “the ropes.”

  On Tuesday, Serafin provided Moishe with a real soapbox to use as a portable platform, a portable organ, and the American flag. Serafin explained that Moishe would need to find someone to play the organ and that he had to display the flag: “New York law requires that we display it. Shows we’re not Communists and all that. You sing a hymn or two, have each of your volunteers get up and give a little testimony, and then you give your message.”

  “Mr. Serafin, will yo
u come with me?” This was the most instruction Moishe had received, and it would be a big relief to have someone with Serafin’s experience come along. Unfortunately, the older man would be at his own church at that time.

  Over the next few days Moishe prepared a message based on Hebrew Scriptures that predicted the Messiah, and Ceil typed it, some eight pages, single-spaced. The appointed day came. The Rosens went to their own church in New Jersey and had a quick lunch before Moishe headed into the city. He was at the mission center by 2:30.

  The small group prayed, then prayed some more. Then Mrs. Frank, also known as Momma Frank spoke up, but not to the Almighty. “Brother Rosen, don’t you think it’s time we go now?” Moishe smiled wanly and agreed. He wrote a note to Mr. Osbourne, who must have been about 80 years old, and the note said, “We’re going to ask you to give a five-minute testimony.”

  Mr. Osbourne had not been born deaf and could talk well enough. When he saw the note he asked rather loudly, “What’s a testimony?”

  “Just tell how you came to believe in Jesus,” Moishe wrote, and Mr. Osbourne nodded.

  They prepared to go. The “portable” organ required two people to carry it. With all of the other things they had to take, they decided to leave it behind. Moishe folded his notes into his Bible and grabbed the soapbox. Someone else took the flag, others took hymnals, and out the door they went.

  Moishe had picked a location a couple of blocks from the mission, which stood at Seventy-second Street and Broadway on the upper west side of Manhattan. The group set up shop and began to sing “’Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus.” But Moishe was tone deaf, and the others found it difficult to hold the melody—all except for Mr. Osbourne. He had a strong voice, and once he got going, the rest of the group followed him. He had absolutely no idea that he was leading the singing.