God’s Battle Axe Series

Every kingdom has its heroes. No battle is fought and won without them. The Kingdom of God is no exception. In Isaiah 53: 12 God said of the Messiah, “Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong”. Jesus Himself said in Revelation 3:21, “To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I was victorious and sat with my Father on His throne”. Is it any wonder that the fearful are listed among those that would be cast into the lake of fire? (Revelation 21:8).

Don’t get me wrong. Though we do not fight spiritual war in our own strength, there are believers who have excelled in it in the strength of their Master, Jesus Christ. We may not know all of them on this side of heaven, but heaven has a record of these brave souls and all they have done or are doing to push back the forces of darkness. In this section of the magazine, we will feature the lives and times of these great men and women in each edition. We are starting with an unsung Kingdom giant,
Gladys May Aylward.

Gladys was born on February 24, 1902, at Edmonton, London in Great Britain to Thomas John Aylward and Rosina Florence. From her teen years, Gladys worked as a domestic servant in several households in Edmonton. While serving at the residence of a nobleman, Sir Francis Younghusband, she claimed that she received a calling from the Lord to go overseas as a Christian missionary. She subsequently applied to the China Inland Mission and was accepted as a missionary to China. However, due to her poor performance in the Chinese language class, she was dropped from the programme.