The Gypsy Evangelist

The Gypsy Evangelist

How did a Gypsy boy grow up to be a great evangelist?

RODNEY SMITH was born in a tent in England in 1860 to illiterate Gypsy parents, Cornelius and Polly Smith.

When Rodney was a young boy, his oldest sister became very sick. The local doctor diagnosed it as smallpox and told the father to take his family and leave town at once. Cornelius set up camp outside of town. He stayed with his sick daughter in the wagon, and the rest of the family stayed in a tent a short distance away to keep from being infected. Unfortunately Rodney’s brother and mother both came down with smallpox as well. As his wife lay dying, Cornelius asked, “Do you try to pray, my dear?”

“Yes,” she answered, “I am trying, and while I am trying to pray it seems as though a black hand comes before me and shows me all that I have done, and something whispers, ‘There is no mercy for you.

As a boy, Cornelius had heard the gospel while in prison, and so he told her what he had learned—that Christ died for sinners and that he was her Savior if she would look to him. After he finished, she threw her arms around him and kissed him. Cornelius went outside the wagon to weep, and as he did so, he heard her singing:

I have a Father in the Promised Land

My God calls me, I must go

To meet Him in the Promised Land.

He hurried back into the wagon and asked, “Polly, my dear, where did you learn that song?”

She said, “I heard it when I was a little girl. One Sunday my father’s tents were pitched on a village green, and seeing the young people and others go into a little . . . chapel, I followed them in, and they sang those words.” She kept singing the words over and over. That children’s song became a lifeline that pulled Polly from her darkness into God’s light. She died the next day.

Several years later Cornelius himself determined he must turn to God. He went to a meeting at a mission hall where he was wonderfully converted. He came home a new man.

Observing the change in his father, young Rodney had a deep longing to experience the same change in his own life. One evening as he was sitting near his father’s tent, Rodney asked himself the question, “Are you going to wander about as a gypsy boy and a gypsy man without hope, or will you be a Christian and have some definite object to live for?” He surprised himself when he answered his own question, “By the grace of God I will be a Christian, and I will meet my mother in heaven!”

A few days later, on November 17, 1876, Rodney went to the Primitive Methodist chapel in Cambridge determined that, if there was an opportunity, he would publicly give himself to Christ. At the end of the service the pastor invited those who wanted to give themselves to the Lord to come to the Communion rail. Rodney was the first to go forward. There in simple faith young Rodney Smith committed himself to Jesus Christ. He went home, and his father wept as Rodney told him that his prayers had been answered.

Rodney Smith became a great evangelist, known as “Gipsy Smith.” He traveled widely, making over fifty trips to the United States to hold evangelistic meetings. Although uneducated, he was a winsome preacher. His straightforward messages and simple gospel songs brought thousands to Jesus Christ.

Reflection

Why do you think God often draws people to himself who we feel are unlikely candidates for becoming Christians? God specializes in the unexpected—he even had his Son be born in a stable and then die on a criminal’s cross. This reminds us that since God is the God of the unexpected, no one is eliminated as a candidate for his kingdom.

Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes, or powerful, or wealthy when God called you. Instead, God deliberately chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise.

1 Corinthians 1:26-27