The Missionary Who Would Not Turn Back

In 1925, Eric Liddell was the most famous athlete in Britain. His gold medal at the Paris Olympics had made him a national hero, and lucrative opportunities stretched before him like an open road. Instead, he boarded a ship for China.

For nineteen years, Liddell served as a missionary teacher in Tianjin and later in the rural countryside of Siaochang. When Japan invaded China and the British government urged its citizens to evacuate, Liddell sent his pregnant wife and daughters to safety in Canada — then stayed behind. Friends begged him to leave. He refused. There were students to teach, villagers to serve, a calling to honor.

In 1943, the Japanese army interned him at the Weifang civilian camp. Conditions were brutal. Even there, Liddell organized games for children, tutored teenagers, and shared his rations with the sick. He died of a brain tumor in that camp on February 21, 1945 — five months before liberation.

A fellow prisoner later said, "He never seemed to wrestle with the decision. He simply knew where he belonged."

Luke tells us that Jesus "set His face toward Jerusalem." He knew what waited there — rejection, suffering, a cross. Yet He walked forward without hesitation. Liddell understood something about that kind of resolve. The kingdom of God does not belong to those who look back at what they might have kept. It belongs to those who, having put their hand to the plow, simply keep walking.