172 — June 21 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

An Ambassador for Jesus Christ

 

George Pleasant Bostick was the fifth son of fifteen children, three of whom became missionaries to China. These three gave a total of 110 years to reaching the Chinese with the gospel of Jesus Christ. For many years their mother prayed that God would call at least one of her sons to be a preacher of the gospel. When G. P., as he was affectionately known by his family and friends, answered God’s call to China, she was apprehensive, but later when her youngest son, W. D., and youngest daughter, Addie, also went to China, she exclaimed with joy, “If I could feel as confident and happy about the other children as I do about these three, I would be willing for them to go to China. What a privilege and honor!”

 

G. P. Bostick was converted to Christ at an early age and was shortly afterward baptized into Floyd’s Creek Baptist Church in North Carolina. Soon after, he had a clear and definite call to preach. The church recognized his call and licensed him to exercise his gifts. He was later ordained at the New Hope Baptist Church near Raleigh, North Carolina. He was a joyful ambassador for Christ, yielding to God fifty-two of the sixty-eight years of his life.

 

He experienced deep sorrow in losing the wife of his youth and, later, the fine consecrated missionary whom he met in China and married. In both instances, he was a great distance from home when they died suddenly, and both were buried before he could return home. While on furlough, Bostick met and married Lena Stover. She assumed the responsibility for his family and was his devoted wife for the last fourteen years of his life. He contracted typhus fever and never fully recovered. On the occasion of his death, she testified, “He loved life in all its fullness, for God and family and humanity. He died as he had lived. I have never seen such a passing; a going out, as it seemed to me. He was in a coma…On the borderline he called the names of loved ones who had gone on before.” He joined those loved ones June 21, 1926. George Pleasant Bostick was one of those early pioneer missionaries who opened a great nation to the gospel of Jesus Christ. God grant us leadership in world evangelism with the same devoted, courageous, pioneer spirit.

 

Dr. Dale R. Hart: Adapted from: This Day in Baptist History Vol. I. (Thompson/Cummins) pp. 254-255.