Part II
[ Go to Part I ]

Should They Not Hear At Least Once?

In Pondoland, Africa, a one-hundred mile journey over fields, gullies and through woods was rewarded by a crowd of two hundred heathen who had heard of the coming of Flexon and his party and were awaiting them. Each man held a spear and a club. After Flexon had preached, each man laid down his weapons and held out his han

Richard Gant Flexon (1895–1982) made a vast contribution to the holiness movement and especially to God’s Bible School. This is the first of a two-part account of his fascinating life.

ds.

“‘Mfundisi (missionary), we have never heard such a story. Won’t you send someone to tell us more?’ I knew we could not afford it, but how could I turn down two hundred heathen who had heard of Christ for the first time from my lips? I could not do it.”

Traveling deep into the mountains of Luzon, in the Philippines, Flexon found headhunters who had never seen a missionary or heard of Jesus Christ.

“A government official gripped my hand and said, ‘Back in those mountains are two million Iggorrots (headhunters). Don’t you think they should be able to hear the gospel at least once?’ He ran along beside the jeep for three miles begging for someone to go to his Iggorrots. Only a missionary knows the sorrow such pleading brings.”

Suffering All Things

Night has fallen in a town high in the Peruvian Andes. In the bedroom of a three-room mud house, seven people are sleeping. Sleeping? Not all! In one corner lies a man violently ill. His hosts had not seen the necessity of boiling the drinking water which had been dipped from the ditch in the street. There are no windows in the room; the only air comes in through some cracks in the floor. There is no doctor available and no place to get medicine. In recalling the experience, R.G. Flexon simply says, “The conditions under which I lived the next few days cannot be described.”

The Woman by His Side

Emma Flexon was one in heart and soul with her husband in his passion for the lost. She traveled with him as far into primitive situations as he would allow and gave up traveling abroad only when the doctor forbade it. On Flexon’s last visit to British Guiana (now Surinam) a band of Arrowwack Indians walked six days from neighboring Brazil to request that the gospel be preached to them. Flexon promised to send someone and if he could not, He would return with his wife.

“I shall never forget her reply when I told her of my promise. She had long suffered with arthritis of the spine, and with an enlarged heart. But as she stood weeping, with her hands outstretched, she said, ‘I am ready to go anywhere on earth to give people an opportunity to hear the gospel.’”

Akin to the Prophets

There was something of Elijah and Daniel in R.G. Flexon. The decisiveness of character which appeared even before his teen years carried him on a straight course through turbulent and changing times. Truth was never compromised in the face of opposition. On a missionary trip to Jamaica he faced a peculiar test. Protestants of the island had rented a theater seating two thousand people for a three-night crusade. R. G. Flexon was asked to preach the second night, and God had laid a holiness message on his heart. Just before he rose to speak, the leader announced that they did not want any doctrinal messages in these meetings, but a general sermon on Christ. He was formally introduced, took his text and began.

“Immediately there was a change in the atmosphere. I may as well have been at the North Pole. For fifteen minutes I fought demons but God came to my help. I gave an altar call, and preachers were among the seekers for holiness.”

R.G. Flexon held many general leadership positions in the Pilgrim Holiness Church; and though he did not leave the denomination when it merged with the Wesleyan Methodist Church in 1968, he stepped down from leadership, “because of personal disappointments on crucial church issues.” To the end of his life, he maintained a strong conservative stance—a stance which is illustrated in his ringing call published in God’s Revivalist, September 23, 1971:

“Has the spiritual part of God’s church ever drifted with the standards of the world? Have they not always lifted up a standard that was opposite to the world in their age and called upon the church to stand by that standard? Some warn that we will limit our ministry if we cry out against worldliness.... I ask, must we compromise...standards God has always owned and blessed in the interest of superficial growth?”

The Cincinnati Years

One more crucial assignment remained for R. G. Flexon. In 1965 he became deeply involved in the future of God’s Bible School at Cincinnati, Ohio. The institution was heavily in debt, and the outlook was very dark. Newly-elected President Samuel Deets asked Brother Flexon if he would stand by him until the huge debt was paid. In later years, Brother Flexon wrote, “Together we went to work on the debt.” That “working together” was a great factor, under God, in the revitalizing of God’s Bible School. His autobiography reveals that his “gift” of fund-raising was not without its price. Hours of prayer and fasting were often involved.

Other avenues of service opened up as he continued to serve the school under two administrations. To keep up with the responsibilities of teaching and counseling, he read through fifty good-sized books in nine months during those years.

The Glow of Approaching Glory!

In his years on the Hilltop, Flexon often traveled with GBS’s men’s quartets. A member of one of those quartets, John Parker, who also served as Flexon’s helper and companion, has given us a rare and intimate view of the aging saint:

“Sharing an apartment with him, I saw a man consumed with a burning passion to win souls. I saw that for him prayer was a way of life. In the eighty-third year of his life, with multiple physical problems, he maintained a consistent and intensive prayer life. He was up long before dawn, in the 4:00 to 5:00 A.M. time frame, communing with God. He lived not only to reach the lost personally, but to train and provide for the training of laborers for the whitened harvest fields. He was ‘un-worldly.’ He owned nothing of this world’s goods. He literally spent up his possessions, burned up his physical body, and poured out his life in the pursuit of souls.”

The missionary convention in November 1981 was his last visit to the Hilltop. His mind was clear and his spirit fervent to the end. Just a few hours before his death, he admonished two of the GBS quartet boys who were at his bedside in the hospital in Salisbury, Maryland, “...Stay true to God! Never compromise the truth!”

On Monday evening, April 19, 1982, he slipped across the river, climbed the last hill and drew near the entrance to the Celestial City. Joyful blasts of welcome were sounded by the King’s trumpeters as a band of “Shining Ones” escorted him through the gates into the presence of the King whom he had so faithfully served. A great multitude with glowing faces of varied hues waited their turn to greet him, some of the more than one hundred twenty thousand who had responded to his invitation to join the company of the Redeemed. Thus was the Eternal Word fulfilled, “He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him (Psalms 126:6)."

[ Go to Part I ]

Sources:
1. Flexon, R.G., In Christ: Seeking the Lost.
2. Flexon, R.G., Illustrations from the Life of R. G. Flexon.
3. Peisker, Armor D., Life, A Joyous Adventure.
4. God’s Revivalist, Flexon Memorial Issue, June 3, 1982.
5. The Convention Herald, Silver Anniversary issue, July 1988
6 John Parker, E-mail “Eulogy to R.G. Flexon”

Anita Brechbill, a freelance writer and editor of Ropeholders, lives in Mifflinburg, Pennsylvania. We are deeply grateful to her for this fascinating account of one of GBS's heroes in faith.