Booth Disregards Doctor’s Advice

Before William Booth became a minister, he conducted religious services in small country places as a lay preacher. And he had the poor in his heart and work, even as a teenager. At seventeen he was made a local preacher in the Methodist church. His superintendent wanted him to become a regular preacher at the age of nineteen. But his doctor advised him against the ministry, telling Booth that his health was so poor that he was totally unfit for the strain of the preacher’s life.

That doctor had no way of knowing that Booth would eventually take on strenuous work among London’s poor, physical labor that would make the life of a Methodist minister seem like a vacation. Nor did the doctor have any way of knowing that Booth would launch an organization of worldwide proportions and that he would live to be eighty-three.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, ESV © 2016 by Crossway Bibles.
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