Kanamori's life-story

IN JAPAN I am known as the man of one sermon, because I preach the same sermon everywhere. This sermon consists of three parts,—God, Sin, and Salvation. In fact, I try to give all the fundamental doctrines of Christianity in one sermon. To preach it, therefore, requires three hours. Its English translation, published by Fleming H. Revell Company of New York, is called “The Three Hour Sermon.” But though this sermon consists of three parts, in reality it is on one subject. The first two parts, God and Sin, are like two posts on which rests the cross of Christ as the climax of the sermon. Thus I became literally a preacher of one sermon, on the cross of Christ.

When I am engaged in an evangelistic campaign in any one place for several nights, sometimes a week or two at a time, I repeat this same sermon night after night. I tell my congregation each time that I am going to preach this same sermon every night: “Therefore you who have heard it to-night need not come again. Your part now is to decide whether you will accept or reject this offer of salvation through Jesus Christ. But in this place there are many people who have never yet heard this Gospel message. Perhaps such may be found in your own homes, or among your own friends. Why can’t you send them, or bring them here tomorrow night, and let them also have the opportunity of hearing the Gospel? And if you don’t wish to stay, you may go back, leaving your friends.” Thus I change my congregation every night, instead of changing my sermon, which amounts to the same thing. I need not be troubled about getting a new audience every night, since I have sixty millions yet to preach to.

However, though I preach the same sermon, I usually have large congregations. I do not preach now in the churches. Our church buildings are too small to hold the large crowds which come every night to hear this one sermon. I am obliged everywhere to rent theaters for my meeting places. The largest ones hold from three to four thousand, and they are packed every night.

Since the fall of 1915 I have conducted evangelistic campaigns in all parts of Japan, and also among the Japanese in the island of Hawaii, and on the Pacific coast of America. I will give you here the exact figures of these campaigns, by which you can judge for yourselves the present situation of Christianity in Japan.

In Japan proper I have already visited forty provinces out of the forty-seven. I have held evangelistic campaigns in more than two hundred cities and towns. Everywhere people flocked to hear the Gospel. They are hungering and thirsting for the saving power of the Gospel. Their old religious beliefs have been shattered and destroyed by the light of modern civilization, and they are looking for the true religion which can satisfy their spiritual need.

As I have said, Christianity in Japan was strictly forbidden for many centuries, and people had very poor ideas about it. When the missionaries first came they found the ground so very hard that it seemed almost impossible even to sow the seed; but for the last fifty years they have been patiently working on this hard ground, plowing the field and sowing the seed, yet without being able to see the longed-for fruits. Now the harvest has come. The time of ingathering has arrived. Throughout the whole country, from the highest to the lowest, all people are ready to receive the message if you preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ in its purity and simplicity. From the figures just given as a result of my four-years’ campaign, you can easily see how receptive the minds of the Japanese people have become to the Gospel message. But as an example of the great awakening in my country, I wish to tell you about the largest campaign I have ever had thus far in Japan.

In the spring of 1919 I conducted an evangelistic campaign for six nights in the city of Tokyo, the capital of Japan. This campaign was undertaken by a Presbyterian church in Tokyo which is one of the largest and strongest Japanese churches in the country. The pastor of the church is one of the greatest Christian scholars, as well as one of the most thoroughgoing orthodox theologians, in Japan. The total membership of his church is about a thousand, but those members who are living in and around the city of Tokyo are not over five hundred. The campaign was conducted in the large auditorium of the Tokyo Y. M. C. A. building, which holds from eighteen hundred to two thousand. For a whole year this church was earnestly praying in preparation for this great campaign. When the time drew near, for five successive Sunday mornings the services were turned over to me, that I might train the whole church for the coming campaign. Before beginning on such a campaign I had to instruct the Christians on the following points: First, how to prepare for the campaign; second, how to work during the campaign; and third, how to follow up later the work of the campaign. Unless the churches taking part in the campaign are thoroughly instructed on these points, it cannot be a successful one.

When the first preparation Sunday came, almost the whole church gathered for instructions. At this time I set up two objectives for the Christians to attain. First, they must try to get a total of ten thousand unbelievers,—not Christians of other churches,—to attend our meetings. Second, out of this number they must try to get at least fifteen hundred decisions for Christ.

The first thing needed was money. Where could we get it? War means money. Without money you cannot wage a successful campaign. I said to the congregation:

“I don’t know how much this campaign will need in all, but I think we must have at least fifteen hundred yen ($750) to begin with. It will be cheap indeed if we can save fifteen hundred souls with fifteen hundred yen, which means only one yen a soul. Now for this fifteen hundred yen you must not look to anybody else but to yourselves. This is your campaign, and you must pay for it. This morning at the beginning of the preparation I ask every one of you to give as much as you can for this campaign fund. If there is any one among you here who says he has no money to give, I advise him to sell his clothing and buy a sword, as Christ told his disciples on the eve of a great conflict.”

Then I distributed paper and pencils among them, on which to write the amounts which they were willing to give. When those papers were gathered up and counted, they brought the result to me, and I found exactly fifteen hundred and four yen.

Then the people said, “This is not the work of man, but of God.”

To attain these great objectives the next thing was to advertise the meeting in various ways. Newspaper advertising was, of course, the first, and then many big advertising boards were set up in the crowded quarters of the city. Besides this, three hundred and fifty thousand posters or handbills were printed, and each member of the church distributed five hundred of these during the campaign days. Even the Sunday-school scholars, numbering over three hundred, were enlisted in this work. Each of the younger children distributed one hundred posters, and the older ones three hundred. Last of all, every church member was requested to find twenty unbelievers who would promise to attend the campaign meetings. These we called the “pledged hearers.” This plan of finding the “pledged hearers” before the campaign opened worked out very well, as the church people were thus brought into direct personal contact with most of the people who came to our meetings.

With this training and these objectives we began the campaign February 5, 1919. But unfortunately we failed to attain our first objective. There were two reasons for this: One was that on the very first morning of our campaign all the city papers made a public announcement from the headquarters of the Police Department, strongly advising the people not to attend any kind of a mass meeting on account of the terrible influenza, which was then raging throughout the whole city; the other was such a big snowstorm on the fourth night that all the city trolley cars stopped running.

But in spite of these hindrances about eight thousand people came during the six nights. Of these about two thousand were Christians, so the unbelievers, who were the real object of the campaign, numbered only about six thousand, a little over half of our objective.

We had the most unexpected success in attaining our second objective. From the six thousand unbelievers we had three thousand and sixty-one decisions for Christ. More than half of the unbelieving portion of the audience decided to accept Christ. This was a great surprise. No one ever dreamed of such a great result as this. Moreover, this audience of eight thousand people was made up of all classes. Among them were high government officials, members of Parliament, professors of universities, teachers of all kinds of schools, students from the universities, as well as high-school boys and girls, merchants, bankers, and business men; in fact, all classes of Japanese society were represented in this audience. But the greatest surprise of all was that out of the three thousand decisions we found about two thousand were all educated young men and women, the essence of the rising generation of Japan. Here are the exact figures of the campaign.

But I must tell of the “follow-up work” of the campaign. We began immediately. For the five nights following the campaign we had meetings for the new converts, during which I preached the practical side of Christianity, such as consecration, prayer, Bible reading, and so on. A little over sixteen hundred out of three thousand converts attended these after-meetings. Then for a whole month the pastor and his associates conducted special preaching services every night, just for the purpose of educating and training these three thousand converts. After that about fifty Christian homes of the church were thrown open for district meetings for the converts living in that district. And lastly, the names of the new converts were all printed on one big sheet and distributed to all the church-members, so that every one of these new converts should come under the care of some member of the church. To each member were assigned from three to ten names, for whose spiritual training he would be responsible. In these ways we carried on our “follow-up work” after the campaign. God wonderfully blessed that campaign.

Immediately after this a Congregational church carried on the same kind of an evangelistic campaign. In this we had two thousand decisions. After these two big campaigns we had twenty smaller ones in and around the city of Tokyo, conducted by twenty churches, in which a little over five thousand decisions were made. So that the whole number of decisions during the three months’ campaign was 10,440. Of these converts about one thousand were taken into the churches of their choice before the summer of 1919.

Thus you can easily see how mightily the Spirit of God is now working among my people. And it is not man’s work, but the work of God himself. In the presence of such fire from heaven man must take off his shoes and praise the Lord only.

In this connection I must tell you one secret, if it can be called a secret. In that big campaign in the Tokyo Y. M. C. A., if it can be said that I had any part in it, it was not by my preaching so much as by my praying. This I say to the glory of the Lord, and not my own. Though I made fifteen hundred decisions the objective for the church, I had my own secret objective, which was three thousand decisions. For the last three years I had been conducting my evangelistic campaigns all over the country, except in Tokyo, the capital. And now at last God had led me to this city of about three million people, to conduct a campaign on a larger scale than I had ever attempted. Surely the result of this campaign must exert great influence all over the country. So I prayed to God that he would pour out his Holy Spirit in this campaign as he did at Pentecost in Jerusalem, and show forth his power and glory, and let all people know that our God is a living God.

So I prayed for three thousand decisions, the same number as at Pentecost. For ten days of the campaign I left my own home, which is in the same city, and retired to a private room on the fourth floor of the tower on the Y. M. C. A. building, and there spent a quiet time in prayer and fasting. It is my usual custom during these campaigns not to see any one in the afternoon. After lunch I always retire and engage in prayer. When I preach my three-hour sermon to an unbelieving audience, I never take my evening meal. I lose my appetite as I feel the burden of my message to those thousands of unbelievers, whose eternal destiny is now in my hands. If they accept my message and believe in Jesus, it will be life eternal to them, but if they reject it the result will be just the opposite. Who can feel equal to such a great responsibility as this?

When I was once asked, half jestingly, why I do not take food before I preach, I answered, “Could you sit at your table, eating and drinking, laughing and joking with your good friends, and in this manner spend the last critical hour just before you appear before thousands of souls in the attempt to settle their eternal destiny?”

No, I cannot do it. I always feel that the only place from which I can go to my pulpit is “the mercy seat.” Thus I prayed and fasted for this blessing of getting three thousand decisions, and God answered my prayer, and gave me exactly 3,061 decisions. Is not this a real Pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit? God is working mightily through his Holy Spirit throughout the length and breadth of my country.

This condition is not confined to the large cities alone, but in more than two hundred places where I conducted similar campaigns we found the same conditions. Of course there are some differences in the results of the campaign. From my own experience I can say the result of such a campaign almost entirely depends upon the pastors and churches which have undertaken it. I always tell those pastors with whom I work that the work of the evangelist is like that of a woodman who goes to the forest and cuts down the trees big and small, and brings them to the shop of the carpenter. There the woodman’s work ends, and the carpenter’s work begins. Now the carpenter must work upon this raw material which the woodman has furnished him. He must cut and saw and plane, and make posts and boards and build the house. But if the carpenter does not work, and lets the timber lie piled up outside his shop, the rain and frost will come, and the timber will surely rot and decay. Who is responsible for the rotting of the timber? The woodman or the carpenter? When I had faithful pastors and working churches I have always seen fine results.

I have received a printed report of the result of my five-months’ campaign on the Pacific coast. Out of sixty-four places on the Pacific coast where I worked during five months, fifty-six churches have sent in a report, one year after the campaign. There are two churches which have received on confession of faith all converts within one year, three churches took all but one, and thirteen churches have taken in more than half of the converts during the same period. Altogether, out of 1,773 in these fifty-six churches, 625 persons were taken into their respective churches within one year of this campaign, and 382 persons were still under probation. So that altogether 1,007 decisions should be regarded as the fruit of that campaign.

And from Hawaii came another report, which is as follows: Out of 2,040 converts during a three-months’ campaign 245 persons were taken into the different churches on confession of faith. I think these figures show how sound are these decisions, especially when you remember that the large majority of my audiences hear from me the Gospel of Christ for the first time in their lives.

In many parts of America I have found great misunderstanding and also gross misrepresentation of the present situation of the Christian work in Japan. I hear even voices of discouragement. But I hope by these statements out of my own experience those misunderstandings and misrepresentations may be already cleared up. I can say now with a good conscience and a firm assurance that a great time has come for the evangelization of Japan. Indeed, “the fields ... are white already to harvest.” Or, to change the figure, the iron is so very hot that if you strike it at once you can make anything you like out of it, but if you do not strike the iron will cool off, and you can do nothing with it, so, you see, the evangelization of Japan must be brought about quickly. And I believe it can be done if we do our part; that is, if we, obeying the last command of Jesus, preach the Gospel to every creature in the country. My experience shows that if six persons hear the Gospel, at least one will accept it. Then, if the whole sixty million can hear the Gospel, there will be a possibility of gaining ten million souls for Christ at the present time in Japan.

Seeing that such a wonderful opportunity presents itself before us, I cannot help making a desperate effort for the salvation of my people. So I have resolved, the Lord willing, to reach the whole nation of sixty million with the Gospel of Jesus Christ within the next ten or twenty years. But the question is, how can I reach so many millions within so short a time? Of course, I cannot expect to do it through preaching alone, and so I have decided upon another way; that is, through the printed page.

For this purpose I have written a book in Japanese called “The Christian Belief,” which contains twelve chapters: First, The One True God; second, The Heavenly Father; third, The Sinfulness of Sin; fourth, The Divine Judgment; fifth, The Reality of the Future World; sixth, The Deity of Christ; seventh, Salvation Through the Cross; eighth, Christian Consecration; ninth, Prayer; tenth, The Life of Trust; eleventh, Bible Reading; twelfth, The One Soul Campaign.

If any one will read it through, he may be able to grasp at least the outline of Christian doctrine, both theoretical and practical. Though this is a small book of about two hundred pages, when I wrote it, four years ago, I spent five months over it actually upon my knees and fasting. And God has wonderfully blessed it. Within three years after its publication over 150,000 copies have been printed. I call these books my “printed preachers,” because they are doing the same kind of work of leading souls to Christ in their own quiet way. And now what I call the new plan of evangelization is this,—to put this book in the hands of every Japanese, so that every soul in my country shall have the opportunity of hearing the Gospel. And as the book is written in such easy and simple language that even a child can read it, any Japanese can read and understand it.

Very fortunately for the free distribution of this book, my Japanese publisher, who is himself an earnest Christian, has kindly promised to let me have it at five cents a copy, which, in these days of the high cost of printing, is a great sacrifice on his part. So now, if I have one nickel in my hand I can give away one book, and one man can hear the Gospel message. And if I have sixty million nickels for this purpose, I can send out at once sixty million “printed preachers” throughout the whole Empire of Japan. This I think is the quickest way at the present time to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the whole nation.