Jonathan Goforth

Jonathan Goforth

14 Sermons|8 Images
Jonathan Goforth (1859–1936) was a Canadian preacher and missionary whose fervent ministry ignited revivals across China, establishing him as a pivotal figure in early 20th-century Protestant missions. Born on February 10, 1859, near Thorndale, Ontario, the seventh of eleven children to farmers John and Jane Goforth, he grew up in a hardworking Presbyterian family. Converted at 18 after hearing Rev. Lachlan Cameron preach, he felt called to ministry while reading Robert Murray M’Cheyne’s memoirs at Knox College, Toronto, where he graduated in 1887. Inspired by missionary George Leslie Mackay, he wed Rosalind Bell-Smith in 1887 and embarked for China in 1888 as the Canadian Presbyterian Church’s first missionary there. With Rosalind, he had eleven children, six surviving to adulthood, enduring profound personal losses amid their mission. Goforth’s preaching evolved from church planting in Henan—where he narrowly survived the 1900 Boxer Rebellion with sword wounds—to a revivalist focus after witnessing Korea’s 1907 awakening. From 1908, his itinerant evangelism in Manchuria and beyond sparked the Manchurian Revival, with thousands converting as he preached repentance and prayer, often eight hours daily to crowds of up to 25,000. His ministry, marked by a rejection of modernism and a reliance on the Holy Spirit, faced criticism from liberal colleagues but bore fruit, with over 13,000 conversions by 1913. Blind by 1934, he returned to Canada, preaching until his death on October 8, 1936, in Wallaceburg, Ontario, leaving a legacy as a “God-intoxicated” revivalist whose work paved the way for figures like John Sung, chronicled in Rosalind’s Goforth of China (1937).
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