Stories: Edward Kimble and the Shoe Salesman

It was July 1, 1885 when a young man named Edward Kimble was concerned about one of his young Sunday school students, who worked in a shoe shop. So one day Kimble, challenged by the Spirit, visited this guy in the store. Found the student in the back stocking shoes and lead him to Jesus.

And Dwight L Moody who was that student eventually left the shoe store and went on to become one of the greatest preachers and evangelists of all time. Moody’s preaching career took him to Britain; he preached in a little chapel that was owned buy a guy called Fredrick Brotherton Myer.

And in his sermon Moody told the story of how he was converted and that message changed Myer’s ministry and inspired him to become an evangelist like Moody. And over the years Myer came to America several times to preach; and once he came to Massachusetts and there was a confused young preacher/ college student sitting in the back row who heard Myer saying, ‘If you are not willing to give up everything for Christ, are you willing to be made willing?’.

And that made this guy called J. Wilbur Chapman respond to the call of God on his life. And Chapman went on to become an effective evangelist himself. He later employed a baseball player to help him prepare to conduct an evangelistic crusade. This Billy Sunday helped set up his own crusades and learnt how to preach by watching Chapman.

And Sunday eventually took over Chapman’s ministry becoming one of the most impressive and dynamic evangelists of the 20th Century. And his preaching turned thousands of people to Christ. And inspired by the 1924 Billy Sunday Crusades a committee of Christians decided to reach their city for Jesus.

That committee invited an evangelist by the mane of Mordecai Ham to hold a series of evangelistic meeting. And there in Charlotte, North Carolina, November 1934 a lanky sixteen year old boy sat in the crowd spell bound by the message of that preacher; who seemed to be shouting and speaking directly to him. And night after night he attended and finally gave his life to Christ. And that teenager’s name was Billy Graham who possibly had the biggest effect in communicating the Gospel than any other recent person.