John Bradshaw - George Muller Baker/Milkman Story a MYTH
Did you ever look at one of those interesting pictures where you, you gaze at it long enough or in the right way and suddenly an image appears? They call them stereograms, auto-stereograms. They create the illusion of a three-dimensional scene. They look like a collection of random dots or patterns, but hidden in there, well, it might be an animal or a building, could be anything at all. It's due to something called stereopsis, binocular depth perception, your brain making sense of the information it's receiving from two eyes at the same time. You can stare at one of those things for ages and not see anything, and then suddenly the image jumps out. It can be hard not to see it after a while. The city of Bristol in the west of England is a little like one of those images.
Look at Bristol today and what do you see? It's a city of half a million people, 100 miles or so west of London. The drive will take you two and a half hours. By train, you're there in a little over an hour and a half. Cross the Severn River and you're in Wales. Cross the Avon River and you're still in Bristol, but if you do so, you can cross it on the Clifton Suspension Bridge, an incredible thing designed by the man voted by British people to be the second-greatest Briton from Great Britain: the delightfully named engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Brunel also designed the SS "Great Britain," which in the mid-1800s was the largest passenger ship in the world.
And, in case you're wondering, no, it isn't the same Avon River as the one that runs through William Shakespeare's hometown. Stratford-upon-Avon is upon a different Avon River. In fact, there are five different Avon rivers in England. The word "Avon" comes from a Celtic word meaning "river". So the Avon River is the "River River". If you were to study Bristol, you'd notice it's an historic city. People have been living here for 1,000 years or more. Beyond that, it's fairly typical for a city of this size. Hollywood icon and Academy Award nominee Cary Grant was born here as Archibald Leach. Banksy, the world-renowned artist, is also a Bristolian. Okay, we're going to look more closely now, and we're going to look slightly to the north.
If you go out of the downtown, past the university, keep on going, and before long you'll get to Ashley Down. There's a cluster of buildings, which at first glance give nothing away. You'll have to look more closely. Look really close and a picture begins to emerge: a picture of faith, of incredible faith, a portrait of a remarkable man who impacted the world, who changed the world for thousands and thousands of people, a man whose life and ministry still changes lives today. His name? Johann Georg Ferdinand Müller. He was born in a place that doesn't even exist today: the Kingdom of Prussia. He was born in 1805, about 32 miles and 322 years from where Martin Luther was born.
George Müller became one of Bristol's most well-known residents. Even Charles Dickens visited Bristol to see Müller and witness his work. His work was housing, raising, and educating orphans, thousands and thousands of orphans. And what's remarkable about Müller's enterprise is that he did it all without ever asking anyone, not anyone, for money. This was 100 percent a faith venture. Here is how it began. As a child, Müller was trouble. He was a liar and a thief and a drunk, and he was immoral, and he was a gambler, while he was still a boy, barely a teenager. His father wanted him to become a minister in the Lutheran church, the state church. Not because the dad wanted his son to be a man of God, he wanted him to earn a decent living and have a secure job and occupy a respectable place in society. And it might have worked out if Müller wasn't such a scoundrel. He was a young man without a future. At least, he didn't have a good future.
While he was studying for the ministry at a university in Halle near Leipzig, he was invited to a Bible study in someone's home, and there something changed in his heart. He found faith in Jesus. He got new friends, new habits, a new direction in life. He became something of a spiritual leader on campus. When war prevented him from going to Bucharest to serve as a missionary, he came to London to serve as a missionary to Jews. Before long, he was pastoring a church in the southwest of England.
When he came to Bristol in 1832, King William IV was on the throne. Müller pastored a church that stood right on this spot, Ebenezer Chapel, and it was here that things really began to change for him. He decided he would no longer receive a salary, and that he wouldn't rent pews to his congregation. That was the custom at the time. And it was here in Bristol that he and his good friend Henry Craik founded a movement that impacted the world, running orphanages without ever raising money to do so. He built numerous buildings, many of them very large, and raised thousands of orphans, but he never raised any money. He did it all by faith. Tell you more in just a moment.
Thanks for joining me on "It Is Written". When George Müller got married at the age of 25, he and his new wife Mary made the decision that George would not receive a salary, nor would the Müllers ever speak to anybody about their needs. They'd never mention hardship. Now, you might think that God just rained money down on them from heaven, but that's not what happened. Frequently, things were difficult; often they were flat broke or down to just a few pennies. But throughout it all, Müller was a very successful minister. He won a lot of souls. Ebenezer Chapel, here in Bristol, was a very busy place. And then George got the idea that he would look after orphans.
Now, his motivation for that was two-fold. Number one, he wanted to look after orphans, but secondly, well, this is what George Müller himself said: "This is the primary reason for establishing the orphan house. I certainly desire to be used by God to help the poor children and train them in the ways of God. But the primary object of the work is that God would be magnified because the orphans under my care will be provided with all they need through prayer and faith. Everyone will see that God is faithful and hears prayer". It began right here on Wilson Street, and God provided the means. First a donation of a shilling, call that around $12 today, then a wardrobe was given, a closet; then 10 shillings, $120. Then somebody volunteered. Before long, Müller was operating two orphanages, two orphan houses, right about there.
When the houses were no longer suitable, when they were no longer big enough, and the neighbors started complaining, Müller decided to build new orphanage buildings here in Ashley Down, which back then was way out in the country. Now, if you know anything at all about the George Müller story, then you've heard of the miracles. Like when there was nothing to eat, so Müller had the children bow their heads and pray and ask the blessing on the food that they were about to receive, and when they said, "Amen," there was a knock at the door, and it was the baker explaining that God had impressed him to bake extra bread to provide for the orphans, and he did so right on time. And then, there was another knock at the door, and it was the milkman explaining how the milk cart had broken down, and he didn't want the milk to spoil, so could the orphans use some milk? What a great story! Except that...
Ellie Manley: Uh, well, it's not true, firstly. Well, we don't know if it's not true; we just have no evidence that it ever happened. It's not recorded in any of Müller's diaries or any of his writings. And we don't have any evidence from anyone at the time to say that happened. We do know that there were lots of things like that that did happen.
John Bradshaw: Ellie Manley is the director of the George Müller Museum, which is located in one of the very buildings in which Müller's orphans were housed. So, tell me a true story, then. What's one of the stories that we know happened?
Ellie Manley: A verified one. Do you know the banana story?
John Bradshaw: No.
Ellie Manley: No, nobody does. I found it recently. So there's, after George Müller died, the person who took over was his son-in-law, James Wright, and after him it was a man called Bergen. And so, the banana story is from the time of Bergen. So, we're talking early 20th century. And they decided that they wanted to treat all of the orphans, all 3,050 of them, to a banana each on their summer picnic. And bananas were a luxury good, you know, they were things that the children would be unlikely to have tasted. Um, and they were all very excited about treating the children to that, and so they saved up money, and it was all a big secret, and they were gonna buy these bananas. And so, the day before, um, they were due to go on the picnic, they went to buy the bananas, to the fruit market with the money that they've saved, but there weren't bananas at the fruit market. There were just so few of them that they wouldn't even have a little slice for every child. And anyway, the price of bananas had skyrocketed, and they couldn't afford the bananas, even if they wanted to. So, they came back to Bergen and said, "We can't do bananas anymore". Um, "There's no other plan for tomorrow's picnic". And so, Bergen said, "We'll pray," and they all gathered, the staff team gathered, and they prayed for bananas, as you do. And that's it. They went about their days. Now, the next day, an hour before they were due to leave, a cart arrived with a little gift for the orphan house. And what had happened was, um, in the docks the previous day, there'd been a massive shipment of bananas that hadn't made the fruit market. And by the end of the day, they didn't know what to do with the bananas, and the ship needed to leave, and so they were pushing bananas into the water, just binning them. And somebody walked past and said, "Oh, there's an orphan house on the hill. Why don't you give the bananas to them? They might like them". Nobody knew that they had been praying for bananas. But the next day, an hour before they were due to go on the picnic, a cartload of bananas arrived, and there were enough bananas for five for every single child. So, they were definitely provided with bananas that day.
John Bradshaw: Müller's father actually begged him not to become a missionary. He wept as he spoke with his son. But then Müller's life changed. He wrote in his autobiography, "I had once fully served Satan". But then he became the young man who would walk 10 or 15 miles to hear a sermon preached. He really changed through the power of God, and then dedicated himself to serving God. Tell me something about the scale of the operation here at Ashley Down when it was at its, at its peak, at its busiest.
Ellie Manley: Well, it got very big very quickly, is the answer. So, Wilson Street started with 30 girls, and then another house was opened for infants, so, children under the age of 7, another one for boys, another one for girls, another one for infants, etc. Um, and we don't have clear records of the staff members involved. We know that by the time they moved up here to Ashley Down, 112 children moved with them to the first house here. Um, that house quickly filled up. It held 300 children. And the first building cost Müller 10,000 pounds, which in today's money is about half a million pounds. So, it's a lot of money. And it started with Wilson Street. So, George Müller lived his life without a salary, and he never asked for money in setting up the orphanages. But he would pray, offer all of his needs up to God, and hope that, you know, he had enough to feed 10,000 children over his lifetime. And so, Wilson Street, when it opened, the first donation was two pennies. The second donation was another bit of money, two shillings. And the third donation was a large wardrobe. And from there somebody gave him a teaspoon, and somebody gave him, um, a knife. And somebody else gave him a fork. And by the time, um, a couple of months later, the first orphanage opened, he had 21 knives and 21 forks, and they'd all come in from different people randomly. And that's how the next, you know, several decades happened, that people gave tiny little donations from all over Bristol until he had 10,000 pounds to build a big building with. He didn't borrow to build that. He waited till he had the money to do it before building. Um, he didn't go into debt. And there are, um, stories about him having to stop the build because he can't pay the builders, and they're like, "Well, we like this project. We'll keep building this week. Maybe you'll have the money next week". But he won't go into debt. He was waiting till he's got the money. But ultimately he prayed a lot, a lot, a lot, and 10,000 children were cared for, and then after he died, another 7,556 children were cared for, so, five big buildings, 17,500 children.
John Bradshaw: Müller did more than just provide orphans with a place to stay. The children were educated, and every one of them left here with a trade. An interesting commentary on the times, a local mill operator complained that Müller was robbing him of a labor source by educating the children. All of the girls were trained to make what were called Bristol samplers, and many of the girls were trained to be nurses, at a time when there was no system of care for orphaned children. They left here with money and clothing, and a Bible. The homes were in use until the 1970s. In addition to the orphanages, Müller and his ministry partner, Henry Craik, founded the Scriptural Knowledge Institution to support missionaries, distribute tracts and Bibles, and establish schools and Bible study opportunities for adults and children. When he was born, life expectancy was less than 40 years, but at the age of 71, Müller began to travel abroad. For 17 years he traveled throughout Europe and North America and the Middle East and the South Pacific. He went to more than 40 countries. In all, 17,500 children came through the Müller homes. That's a staggering number, and all done by faith. In fact, this box right here is as forward as Müller ever got when it came to asking for money. It's likely this was in the church he pastored here in Bristol. Time and again the Müller homes needed money, and there was none, and yet God provided. On one occasion when George was asked for money for housekeeping, he said he could provide it tomorrow, in spite of the fact that he, at the time, had nothing. But then, someone gave a pound, about 160 pounds today, close to $200. And then someone sent 44 dozen onions, 29 pounds of salt, and 26 pounds of grain. Müller, once an absolute rebel, surrendered his life to God and became a giant of faith. Now, the truth is, anyone can have that kind of faith. I'll tell you how you can have it in just a moment.
John Bradshaw: There were many times at the George Müller orphanages in Bristol when donated food would arrive exactly when it was needed, when desperately needed money would be delivered while Müller and others were praying that God would provide the exact amount. People were moved by the Spirit of God and would donate cloth and clothing and other needed things. Time and time again, after the children had eaten breakfast, there'd be absolutely no food for lunch, or after lunch, no food on hand for dinner. And God would provide without anyone outside of the orphanage being aware of the need. The Müller organization still exists today. Joel Preston is the leader of the George Müller Charitable Trust.
Joel Preston: So George Müller, best known for caring for vulnerable children, as well as living by faith, but he was also a church leader, he was an evangelist, he was a preacher, he prayed in money for missionaries for the Scriptural Knowledge Institute, and so today we take Müller's approach in the sense that we look to strengthen the church to meet the needs of the vulnerable. And we do that by focusing on what we refer to as our three "F's". We free children from poverty. We focus people on Jesus. And we fuel leaders for mission.
John Bradshaw: So, is the organization active here in Great Britain only? Or here and other parts of the world? Where are you aiming?
Joel Preston: Well, we focus all around the world. That includes Britain; it includes locally in Bristol, but also many, many countries around the world. We're aware that the needs are great in many countries, and we think that our funds that God provides can have a big benefit all around the world.
John Bradshaw: So, for an organization that doesn't actively solicit funding, how does funding find its way to you?
Joel Preston: Through prayer and through the generosity of the church. And so, yeah, we rely on God still for the donations that kinda come in. We pray every day that God will provide what He wants us to have so that we can bless other people, our partners around the world who are caring for vulnerable children, local churches who are looking to engage with young people in their local communities and just bring that hope and wholeness to vulnerable people locally and internationally.
John Bradshaw: The Müller organization is still run today on faith 100%. So, how do you have faith, real faith? How did George Müller have faith? Well, first, we remember he was a real, genuine Christian. He was connected to God. He was a man of the Bible. This is one of George Müller's Bibles right here. It's said he read the Bible through more than 200 times during his lifetime. And he prayed. He read, and he prayed, and he maintained his connection with God. Now, you might be tempted to think that faith came easy to George Müller. But he would disagree. He said, "I do not naturally have the gift of faith" found in 1 Corinthians, chapter 12 in verse 9, which says, and I have it, "To another faith by the same Spirit".
Now, Müller didn't believe he had the gift of faith. But he developed faith, and he utilized faith, and his faith grew. He learned to simply depend on God. He wrote this: "My faith is the same faith which is found in every believer. It has been increasing little by little for the last twenty-six years. Many times when I could have gone insane from worry, I was in peace because my soul believed the truth of that promise, 'We know that all things work together for good to them that love God.'" Romans 8:28. It's important we understand faith. The Bible says we are saved "by grace...through faith," Ephesians 2, verse 8. God's people in the end of time are described as "those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus".
Revelation 14:12. Faith is expecting the Word of God to do what it says it will do because God has spoken and has said so. And in order for a person to have faith like that, you need to actually know God. I'll give you two great examples of faith from the Bible. God told Abraham that he would be a father in his old age. Romans 4:21 says, "He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God; and being fully persuaded that, what He had promised He was able also to perform".
Now, notice that? He believed God could do what He had promised to do. That's faith. Faith is not you having faith in you, but faith in what God has promised. If God has promised it, why wouldn't you believe it? A centurion, not a Jew but a Gentile, approached Jesus and asked Him to heal his servant. "Jesus said..., 'I will come and heal him. The centurion answered and said, 'Lord, I am not worthy that You should come under my roof. But only speak a word, and my servant will be healed.'" This prompted Jesus to say, "Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel"! The centurion believed that there was power in the word of God to do what it says it can do. There's story after story in the Bible demonstrating what real faith looks like. On one occasion, Jesus asked Simon and some others to cast out their nets to fish, even though it wasn't a good time of day for fishing.
"Simon answered and said to Him, 'Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net.'" Luke 5, verse 5. They caught so many fish they filled up two boats with the fish to the extent that those boats began to sink. But that's faith: expecting God's Word to do what it says it will do. Peter doubted that they'd catch fish, but he acted on the word of God. When you do that, when you put God's Word first and expect it to do what it says, when you're concerned about the honor of God, that's when God is able to do great things.
Now, Müller gave four points for growing your faith: One, carefully read the Bible and meditate upon it. Two, maintain an upright heart and a good conscience. Three, let your faith be tested. Don't run from that. And four, let God work for you. Don't trust in yourself, but trust in God. When George Müller died, Bristol came to a standstill. Factories closed. Thousands of people came out to pay their respects to a onetime thief and drunk who gave his life to God and believed that God was able to do great things. He said, "The God whom I dishonored by my wicked behavior and unrepentant life did not give up on me". He died at the age of 92. He's buried right here, just two and a half miles from the orphanages he established. When you take a close look at Bristol, you see a man of great faith, a man of great faith in a great God.
Our Father in heaven, I thank You for Jesus and for the gift of faith and that we can have faith in You, a great God. We thank You for Calvary. We have faith to believe that that was for us. We thank You for Jesus. We have faith to believe that He died for us. We thank You for the return of Jesus, and we have faith to believe that He is coming back for us.
Friend, how's your faith? Can you believe that Jesus died for you, that He's coming back for you, that He is with you at all times? The Bible says it, and therefore we can expect it to be so.
Our Father, again, we thank You; we praise You. We thank You for the example of men and women of faith. We thank You for Your faithfulness. In Jesus' name. Amen.