Modern Heroes of the Christian Faith
The Bible is filled with biography – one character after another parade across the pages. God loves to teach lasting lessons through the lives of individuals. With that in mind, Stephen Davey has undertaken a special biographical series illustrating biblical truths through the lives of contemporary believers. These ordinary men and women provide a wonderful legacy. They are influenced and influential because of their faith in God. They are Modern Heroes of the Christian Faith.
Modern Heroes of the Christian Faith
Witnessing God's Power through Blindness: The story of Fanny Crosby
Ever wondered how disability can become an avenue for divine glory? Well, let's walk together on an intriguing journey that begins with Jesus' encounter with a man born blind and culminates with the extraordinary life of Fanny Crosby, a blind woman who memorized much of the Bible and authored over 8,000 hymns.
This episode will also bring you closer to the inspiring life of Fanny Crosby. Despite being blind, she managed to memorize the Bible, found solace in poetry and songs, and was an active participant in politics. Her life took a dramatic turn when she heard the Gospel at the age of 30. She embraced the Savior and became a prolific hymn writer, penning down hymns that are cherished to this day. Be ready to be inspired as we unravel her life’s timeless lessons on perseverance, victory, and embracing divine providence.
music playing inaudible. Welcome to Modern Heroes of the Christian Faith. As you listen, through this series, steven Davie will introduce you to ordinary men and women whose lives and legacies were influenced by their faith in God. I'm your host, scott Wiley. This series is produced by Wisdom International. You can learn more and access all of our other resources at wisdomonlineorg. Today, you'll meet Fanny Crosby. Fanny Crosby is known for two things her blindness and her remarkable hymns. But understanding how she endured her blindness and why she spent the latter part of her life writing hymns is where the real treasure is found. Here's Steven, to introduce you to Fanny Crosby music playing.
Speaker 2:Travel back to Israel in the early centuries and you would discover one particular handicap was so feared that it was always associated with the wrath of God. In a word blindness. It would become the ultimate degradation imposed by conquering generals to put out the eyes of their defeated foe, assigning them to live without being able to see. Aristotle mentioned that in the Mediterranean region, blindness was believed to be hereditary. In other words, it was a result of someone in the family tree somewhere being blind. And so you can imagine how people would refuse to marry anyone related to a blind person. They would be terrified that it would somehow be inherited or passed along. Blindness was also considered irreversible.
Speaker 2:By the time Jesus Christ came to walk through this region, blindness was considered by everyone to be incurable, unless God did something miraculous. Blindness was considered incurable except by the hand of God. Now, with that concept in mind, i want to have you turn in your Bibles to the Gospel by John, in chapter 9, and you'll understand a little better why. the disciples asked Jesus the question that they did John, chapter 9 and verse 1. As he, that is, jesus, passed by, he saw a man blind from birth, and his disciples verse 2, asked him Rabbi, that is teacher, who sinned this man or his parents that he would be born blind? Now you notice here, this is a grown man who'd never been able to see. In other words, this is the most irreversible case you're going to find. This guy is, without a doubt, incurable. Now notice, they asked who sinned Verse 2, this man or his parents. Somebody sinned again, buying into the concept of their day that this disability is associated with the wrath, the anger, the discipline of God. Somebody, somebody sinned somewhere. So who did it? Lord? Who sinned? Who's at fault? Now, obviously we probably know more medically than they did then.
Speaker 2:Disabilities can indeed result from the impact of any number of things Poor medical care, the wrong medicine prescribed, perhaps even drugs or alcohol, or disease introduced prenatally, some kind of accident. But even all of those things, as we're about to see again fresh, according to a correct understanding of Scripture, are secondary causes to God's primary purposes. In other words, god doesn't say well, look at what your mother did while she was pregnant, or look at what the doctor did when you were born or before you were born, look at that accident that happened to you or that crime against you. Now, what in the world am I going to do with you. God never says to you or me that particular event was out of my control. I'm so sorry it happened, but there was nothing I could do about it. And God never says any of that.
Speaker 2:But this was the prevalent view in the first century and, i fear, even in the 21st century. Isn't that too bad? Somebody, somewhere, did something wrong. God had nothing to do with it, and this particular man here now in John chapter 9 has to pay for it for the rest of his life. Somebody sinned.
Speaker 2:Look at verse 3. Jesus answered it was neither that this man sinned nor his parents, but it was so that the works of God might be displayed in him. Now, that's shocking news. By the way, to this day that kind of statement is both alarming or comforting, depending on where you are in the equation That God was behind this disability. Jesus is effectively saying that everything is ultimately secondary to God's purposes, which are primary. Can you imagine Jesus Christ stuns all of them here by declaring that this man's lifelong disability was actually planned by God, the Father, to bring glory to Christ at this moment in time in this man's life and, with it, credibility to the gospel. You imagine this? That's because of what God is about to do. God, the Son that is. He's about to turn this disabled man into a rather amazing, passionate apologist in front of the religious leaders.
Speaker 2:Verse 6,. Look there, when he had said this, he spat on the ground and made clay of the spittle and applied the clay to his eyes and said to him go wash in the pool of Salon. Now you read that and, trust me, there are all sorts of fanciful and allegorical interpretations of what Jesus did here. I mean, why didn't he just command this individual man to see He could have done that? What's the spitting on the ground and making mud? I mean, that sounds gross, frankly, doesn't it? So it must mean something deep, allegorical.
Speaker 2:Here Jesus is evidently. Someone suggests he's making a new man like Adam out of the dust of the ground, and the act comes from his mouth. And just as God breathed on Adam, so the spittle comes from the mouth of Christ, et cetera, et cetera. Pretty interesting, it'll probably sell some study guides, but it's nonsense. It misses the point. Jesus Christ, who knows the future, knows that he is going to use this blind man for the glory of God to confront the religious leadership of his day. And so the first thing that Jesus does in fact, i'll point out a couple of things that he does to literally obliterate their rules of the Sabbath, rules that had developed into doctrines. Instead of simply speaking so that this man is healed, he does what they would consider physical labor making mud. You know, when you were younger that'd be fun if you had to do it now and be work right. So he's working, the rabbis of Jesus.
Speaker 2:They had defined the Sabbath rest so ridiculously that it meant a man couldn't carry a handkerchief from an upstairs room to a downstairs room in his hand. It'd be work. He couldn't light a lamp or extinguish a lamp It'd be work. He couldn't even cut his fingernails or pull a stray hair from his beard. In fact, women weren't even allowed to look into a mirror on the Sabbath because they would be tempted to fix something and more than likely engage in some kind of repair work. I'm not going any further than that. So Jesus is actually setting up this conflict. He's setting it up, furthermore, by making mud and applying it to his eyes. Jesus is applying a poultice, as crude as it was. He's acting like a doctor Again.
Speaker 2:The Jewish leaders didn't allow any medical work on the Sabbath day? None at all, unless a person's life was in danger. You couldn't work on a toothache. You couldn't even pour cold water on a sprained ankle. That was off limits.
Speaker 2:So Jesus is obviously at work, curing this man by intentionally breaking the traditions of the religious leaders. That meant absolutely nothing, of course, to God and His Word. So he's working with his hands and he's obviously giving this man medical treatment. In fact, did you notice that Jesus even prescribes a remedy by telling the man to go and wash himself off in the pool of slum? In other words, i want you to go work too.
Speaker 2:So Jesus is deliberately setting up this drama so that the religious leaders are going to be boxed into a corner where they will either have to rethink their false religious traditions or deny the obvious hand of God. Blindness, they believe, could only be cured by the hand of God. So Jesus must be God incarnate or empowered by God, or this really didn't happen, which is exactly where they will land, unfortunately. So this man is cured and he engages with fearless courage, and our purpose isn't to expound on the chapter, but if you read through it, he'll have two different conversations with these religious leaders. It's absolutely fascinating And the crux of his apologetic.
Speaker 2:His defense of Jesus Christ boils down to verse 32. But at least look there. This cured man says this. Since the beginning of time, it has never been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do Nothing. In other words, how obvious can it be? So obvious that they could do nothing more than tell him he's a sinner verse 34, and kick him out of the temple? That he becomes an irrefutable testimony to the power of God through Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And God has allowed this man to suffer for his entire life so that, at this moment, he can most effectively establish a witness to the authenticity of the power of Christ. Who must be, who must be moving the hand of God.
Speaker 2:Imagine this man's disability was planned. Does that bother you That God is that sovereign That this could be purposed by God? Forget the fact that he was healed for a moment. Every one of us, by the way, are going to be healed one day, right? Okay, forget the fact that he was healed while he was still alive. God planned that this man would live the majority of his life blind. Why? Not? because he sinned, or because his parents sinned. But go back again and look at the last part of verse 3, so that the works of God might be displayed in him. Wouldn't that make life worth it? No matter how you suffer and every one of you suffer suffering is the universal language. Imagine that somehow that suffering could allow the work of God to be displayed. We would never regret it. It's exactly what happens here.
Speaker 2:I couldn't help but go to this text because I knew we'd be commissioning a disabled group with their hearing impaired as they go to reach a world that well. We've learned a little song. I didn't quite catch it, i couldn't see her, but they're going to be able to reach this world tremendously as they prove to be demonstrations of the grace of God at work in their lives, in the midst of disability, like this Testimonies, so that the work of God can be displayed in them. You know it caused me to think as well, in light of our series, that the most prolific musical testimony in the history of the Christian church was a woman who testified courageously of her salvation. She would write hymns like and I shall see him face to face and tell the story saved by grace 8,000 more hymns too, by the way, copied more than a hundred million times in more languages, as well than any other hymn writer. In fact, she would write under 200 different pen names because hymn publishers didn't want the public to know that she had entirely dominated the musical scene. She would have as many as 40 hymns churning through her mind before writing them down. Well, actually she never wrote any of them down because she was blind And her name was Fanny Crosby, francis Jane Crosby.
Speaker 2:Her friends called her Fanny Crosby. She wasn't actually born blind. She caught a cold. It created a rash around her eyes. The family physician was away at the time and a country doctor was called to treat her. He prescribed hot mustard poltises to be applied to her eyelids, which had become swollen with this rash. The infection did clear up, but the treatment scarred her eyes. It wasn't long after that that Fanny's parents realized that she had lost her sight. It would be discovered later that this particular doctor was not even qualified to practice medicine. He had quickly left town and had never been seen again.
Speaker 2:When she was five years old, friends and neighbors her father, having passed away a few years earlier pulled their funds to send her to the best eye specialist in the country, dr Valentine Mott. She could still remember, even though she was five years old, his diagnosis where he said to her, and I quote poor child, i am afraid you will never see again. But that wasn't her attitude at all. In fact, the first poem she would compose when she was only eight years old goes like this Oh, what a happy child I am. Although I cannot see, i am resolved that in this world, contented I will be. How many blessings I enjoy that other people don't So weep or sigh because I am blind, i cannot and I won't. Pretty powerful for an eight-year-old girl, isn't it? She would later write this if I could meet that doctor now, i would say thank you for making me blind. It was intended by the blessed providence of God that I should be blind all my life and I thank God for the way He arranged it. That's a powerful balance, by the way, for the believer. The secondary cause might be a doctor unqualified to practice medicine who makes a mistake, but the primary cause is the intentional plan and will and providence of God, so that His work might be displayed in us through that.
Speaker 2:Now, one ability that God gave Fanny and early on it was clear to others was a photographic memory. In fact, a neighbor took her under her wing and taught her the Bible, would read to her, and by the time she was ten years old she could quote verbatim Genesis, exodus, leviticus, numbers, deuteronomy, the book of Proverbs, most of the books of the Sultry, or Psalms, along with Matthew, mark, luke and John. Pretty amazing. It was obvious that she was capable of a formal education, and so when she was twelve years old they enrolled her in New York City's famous institution for the blind, and she loved every subject, evidently just dove in to everything. She loved every subject except mathematics A woman after my own heart. She even wrote a little poem to voice her frustration. It went like this I love abhor. It makes me sick to hear the word arithmetic. When she graduated she would become the institution's most famous teacher. She would teach there for twenty-three years.
Speaker 2:Eventually she became famous for her poetry, secular poetry, secular songs. She even wrote the first secular cantata by an American composer called the Flower Queen. She was published twice with books of poetry. I found this interesting. She was very passionate about politics. In fact she would know at least five presidents personally, as she would lobby regularly in Washington for the education of the blind. She was the very first woman to address the Senate and she did nothing but quote poetry and they dissolved in tears as they hurt her. She urged them to acknowledge the plight of the blind During the Civil War. She often pinned a miniature union flag to her dress to show her support for Abraham Lincoln. On one occasion in a restaurant, a woman from the South found it offensive and snapped at her to take that dirty rag off. Fanny jumped to her feet and said, and I quote repeat that remark at your own risk, and the manager arrived at time to stop the fight.
Speaker 2:So Fanny Crosby knew much of the Bible, as I mentioned, by heart. She did not know the Savior until she was 30 years old. She was invited to attend a revival service at a church in New York City and she went along and heard the gospel. Never resolved in her own life until that meeting. But it was interesting that it wasn't during the sermon or afterward. It was during the closing hymn written by Isaac Watts that she gave her life to Christ. She would say later in an interview when we began to sing of the fifth stanza and when we reached the third line hear Lord, i give myself away to all that I can do, she said I did.
Speaker 2:Up to this point she had yet to write one hymn for the church. She had written music that was being produced and played on city stages. She had published volumes of poetry but not one hymn. In fact, it was still going to be 10 years later when she met William Bradbury, a famous hymn writer and publisher, and he challenged her to use her incredible talent for the sake of the gospel and to write something poetic for the church, on the spot, kind of as a dare. I can do that and I will. She agreed. She wrote her first hymn. It was published and she was 40 years of age. She would go on to write more than 8,000 hymns over the course of the next 51 years of her life.
Speaker 2:She did have a personal request and she had a notebook where she would write anybody that she heard of trusting Christ, because it was her prayer that her hymns would be instrumental in leading one million people to faith in Jesus Christ. That's why her hymns are so gospel oriented. I have little doubt that was achieved primarily because a man by the name of Ira DeSanke became a close friend of hers and he was a musician for D'Amoudi, and he introduced her to the public and began to sing her hymns and, of course, they would be picked up decades later by George Beverly Shea and Cliff Barrows of the Billy Graham Crusades. I think it's interesting that she came to faith in Christ at the singing of a hymn and God used her to display his glory through her, and many, no doubt, have come to faith through the singing of her hymn.
Speaker 2:I want to pull from her personal testimony three observations, and they are timeless. First, usability in one area of life is often created when we accept our inability in other areas of life. Let me say that again Usability in one area of life is often created when we accept our inability in other areas of life. Our testimony, so compelling, is her submission to an incredibly difficult life as nothing less than joyful submission to the providence of God. Frankly, she and many others before and since remain a challenge to the church, don't they? To all of us, in so many areas where we might spend our lives pining away at doors that God has bolted shut, instead of looking at doors that God has opened wide. No, i want to do this. No, i want you to do that, instead of developing resentment or this resignation. She maximized this opportunity as, ultimately, the work of God which would be displayed in her life. Let me make another observation. Second, victory over one issue of suffering does not guarantee victory over every issue of suffering. Again, the study of someone's life not only brings up their successes, but it reveals their failures.
Speaker 2:Annie married a former student who had also enrolled at the institution for the blind. They had gotten to know each other In fact, he started out as her student, even though eleven years younger than her. They, over the course of several years, fell in love. He, also blind, had become a proficient organist and was performing concerts in major cities. A year after their marriage they had their only child, a daughter they would name Francis. Sadly, not long after her birth she died suddenly from typhoid fever.
Speaker 2:Fanny's husband, van, grew more and more reclusive in his grief. In fact, for the rest of her life Fanny never spoke publicly of even having been a mother, so deep was that wound. Until late in life she opened up about her years of sorrow. Eventually, after years of living together intermittently, fanny and Van separated. Most biographers and historians conclude that this was the result of Van's reclusive resentment to the pain and sorrow of losing his little girl.
Speaker 2:I thought it was interesting. It was one thing to deal with the disability of blindness, which they both amazingly overcame, but too much to deal with the grief of death. Fanny responded to that by writing a hymn she entitled Safe in the Arms of God. Victory over one issue of suffering doesn't guarantee victory over every other issue of suffering. Fanny would spend the remaining 20 years of her life as a guest of wealthy patrons who appreciated her and supported her as she continued to compose one hymn after another, averaging four and five, sometimes six a day. It was her way of trusting Christ through grief, and you read her hymn lyrics, and they long for heaven.
Speaker 2:One more observation. Thirdly, disability, both its cause and its cure, is ultimately in the plan of our sovereign Lord. It ought to be our testimony that the grace of God and the trustworthiness of Jesus Christ are sufficient, and that's our daily challenge, isn't it? But this is ultimately from the hand of God. Like Job, he gives us good and he gives us grief. He gives to us that which we would appreciate and he takes things away. Why was this man born blind in John chapter 9, as recorded there? Why did God allow Fanny Crosby to be misdiagnosed and mistreated.
Speaker 2:Why do you, even now, suffer in whatever way you do? so that we can demonstrate trust in the grace and purposes of God, so that the works of God might be displayed in our lives. You happen to be a sheet of music upon which a perfect, loving, intentional, creative Lord is composing the harmony of His glory and His grace. And one day, one day, the tables are going to be turned, aren't they? Those who suffered most, i believe, will sing the loudest. I mean, don't ever think that seeing the Father's face through Christ, seeing the glory of the Father's house in all its splendor, will mean the same thing to you and to me, in the same way as it will be to someone who was blind until they got there. Don't ever think for a moment that, walking down golden streets next to the river of life and looking at the wind a whisper through the leaves of those tree limbs, don't ever think for a moment that kneeling at the feet of Jesus will be the same for you as it will be for someone who couldn't see, someone who couldn't walk, someone who couldn't speak. Tables are going to be turned, and not that we won't enjoy it, but they will enjoy it all the more. Frankly, i think that God and this is I'm speculating here, but I think that God and His grace typically not always typically takes all of our physical and mental abilities away over time to make us both long for heaven all the more and then be able to enjoy it all the more when we get there. This is not heaven. This is not heaven. I know that's shocking to you. This is not heaven. You just so happen to be right now in, even in your disabilities, your sorrows, your griefs, your sufferings. You are, according to God's unique plan, a display of the glory and the grace of the works of God, and He's setting you up uniquely to demonstrate that now and uniquely there.
Speaker 2:Vanity Crosby died at the age of 94, having displayed the glory of God through her life. She would say near the end of her life, and I quote How in the world could I have lived such a helpful life as I have, were it not that I was blind? I have always believed that by this means the Lord consecrated me to the work that I have been permitted to do, and when I remember how I have been so blessed, how could I ever complain? Well, that's just convicting, isn't it? Little wonder that on her memorial headstone of the words to perhaps her most favorite hymn, lyrics that reflect her joy and her trust, her attitude, her trust in the coming day and her joy, her decision to display this attitude of joy on earth, lyrics that celebrate that cause to live for His glory and, with great confidence and joy, anticipate the future. And it's probably her most famous of all. This is my story, this is my song. Be my Savior all the day.
Speaker 1:That was Stephen Davie, the president of Wisdom International. You're listening to his series called Modern Heroes of the Christian Faith. If you enjoyed hearing the story of Fanny Crosby, please leave a rating and review on Apple Podcast or wherever you're listening, And please subscribe so that you won't miss an episode. Stephen has a website filled with resources to help you know what the Bible says, understand what it means and apply it to your life. Learn more at WisdomOnlineorg. I'm Scott Wiley. Thanks for listening. Join us again next time on Modern Heroes of the Christian Faith.
