Bill Wallace of China by Jesse C. Fletcher

It seems that God give every generation of believers an example of faith and obedience from a most unlikely source. At the turn of the 1800's God raised up a balding shoe cobbler by the name of William Carey to become the unlikely father of modern missions. In the mid 1900's another unlikely hero of faith was raised up by the name of Bill Wallace.

Jesse Fletcher introduced Wallace to Christians in America in 1963 when he first wrote Bill Wallace of China. Now we are offered this classic in a reprint in the Baptist Classics series. Fletcher writes this biography as a journal of action. In that light he doesn't being with Wallace's birth but rather with this decision as a seventeen year old to enter medical missions.

One problem Fletcher labored under in writing this inspiring story was that Wallace left little written material behind. With Carey and others we have a wealth of letters and journals. Bill Wallace was a surgeon. As a result, much of his work was written on the lives of the people he touched rather than on paper.

Hollywood couldn't invent as thrilling a story as the true one of the man. Fletcher does a good job of putting us in Wallace's shoes. We see his faithfulness through the Boxer Rebellion, World War II, and the Communist takeover of China. Wallace would not heed to the please of the American embassy and his own mission board to flee the Communist Chinese. As a result he was eventually martyred in that land far away.

Our generation needs to be reintroduced to the true heroes of the faith. Bill Wallace was indeed one of them. Special credit goes to Broadman and Holman Publishers and Timothy and Denise George for all the reprints in the Baptist Classics series. This edition included group discussion questions for each chapter.

Bill Wallace of China by Jesse C. Fletcher (Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1996), hardback, 276 pages.