The Blind Evangelist

The Blind Evangelist

In spite of his limitations, he answered God’s call.

A. J. FREEMAN was blind in his right eye from birth. He immigrated to America from Sweden at the age of nineteen. In the summer of 1895 when he was twenty-seven, a coworker accidentally jabbed his thumb into Freeman’s left eye while they were roughhousing. Freeman’s remaining optic nerve was severed, leaving him totally blind.

Freeman visited many doctors and spent an entire year at the Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary in Chicago under the care and supervision of the foremost eye specialist in the world. When even he was not able to help, Freeman sank into a deep depression. An unknown young man visited the hospital ward on an irregular basis and explained how Jesus Christ offered salvation. A Christian nurse also shared the same message with Freeman. Their words made him remember how his mother had shared the gospel with him in his youth. But lost in his depression, he spent his days plotting revenge on the man who had unwittingly blinded him.

Becoming suicidal one day, Freeman climbed up on the windowsill of his fifth-floor hospital ward, preparing to jump. As he trembled on the brink, a burning question flashed into his mind, What shall become of me? Just then an unseen nurse gripped his arm, preventing him from jumping. Immediately he fell to his knees and prayed for God to save him. From that time on he considered the window in the room his gateway to heaven since it marked the place where he had found life instead of death.

Freeman now had renewed hope that perhaps he had a purpose in life. Ambitious and hardworking by nature, he entered the School for the Blind in Jacksonville, Illinois, in the second year after his accident. There he learned the craft of broom making.

Freeman returned to his wife in Moline, Illinois, and started a broom factory. In a relatively short time, Freeman had fifteen men making brooms for him, producing more than six hundred brooms a day. In addition to his business venture he was being called upon by temperance and women’s societies to sing and testify about Christ and the gift of salvation he had received. He began to spend so much time in this work that eventually his business began to suffer.

Freeman longed to serve the Lord full-time, but at the turn of the twentieth century such service was rarely remunerated, and he believed that his first duty remained to support his family. In addition, he was unable to travel anywhere without a guide.

In 1902 at a revival at Freeman’s home church, many people placed their faith in Jesus Christ. Freeman’s own ten-year-old daughter, Esther, was among those who responded to the call to follow Christ. One night while walking to church with her father, Esther exclaimed, “Oh, Pa, I feel just like a new person.” But Freeman, believing the gospel was too difficult for a child of ten to understand, continued to doubt her salvation. Then one day he and his wife came home to find Esther telling a group of children about Jesus and praying for their salvation. “This,” said Freeman, “made me realize that the gospel is a power unto salvation also for little children who believe in their Saviour.”

Esther could sing and soon began playing the mandolin with her father, and before long “Freeman and Esther” were well known locally as a singing group. Freeman’s opportunities of service with Esther made the call to serve God more clear to him.

Finally, on December 20, 1903, at the age of thirty-five, Freeman was ordained to the ministry by the Swedish Free Church of Moline, Illinois, and became a full-time evangelist. Eventually more than twelve thousand persons came to put their faith in Jesus Christ through the preaching of the blind Swedish evangelist.

Reflection

Do you feel that you have physical or other handicaps that limit how God can use you? Maybe you just feel too shy or are too easily embarrassed. Just remember A. J. Freeman—for if God can use a blind Swedish immigrant, he can use you.

Since I know it is all for Christ’s good, I am quite content with my weaknesses and with insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 Corinthians 12:10