Elisabeth Elliot

Elisabeth Elliot born December 21, 1926) is a Christian author and speaker. Her first husband, Jim Elliot, was killed in 1956 while attempting to make missionary contact with the Auca of eastern Ecuador. She later spent two years as a missionary to the tribe members who killed her husband. Returning to the United States after many years in South America, she became widely known as the author of over twenty books and as a speaker in constant demand. Elliot toured the country, sharing her knowledge and experience, well into her seventies.

Miles J Stanford

Born in 1914 in Wheaton, Illinois. On September 19, 1940, Stanford became a Christian and thereafter began studying the Bible eight to ten hours daily. He joined the US Army Engineers in 1942 and served overseas as a cartographer for a year in England and nearly two years in Germany. During this time he developed an ongoing correspondence with other Christians so that in late 1945, when he was discharged from the Army he was writing to nearly 200 people.

From 1946 to 1955, his study and correspondence continued to expand. In 1951, he met and married Cornelia de Villiers Schwab in Brooklyn, New York. Cornelia shared a similar desire for personal growth and to help other Christians develop spiritually. Subsequently, Miles and Cornelia moved to Warrenville, Illinois and assumed heavy responsibilities in a local Bible church, Pleasant Hill Community Church. The correspondence rapidly expanded during the next seven years. In 1960, The Green Letters series began, with letters going out to 1,500 correspondents every other month for three years.
In 1962, the ministry was relocated to Colorado Springs, Colorado, and for nearly the next four decades Stanford published other books and (with Cornelia) maintained the robust and growing correspondence ministry. He established his website in 1996, making many of his publications available for free online.
At the age of 85 and after nearly 50 years of ascension ministry, Stanford died on September 21, 1999.

Theology

Theologically, Stanford was Pauline and dispensational. He drew upon the written ministries of William Newell, Lewis Sperry Chafer, and a number of the original Plymouth Brethren, in particular John Nelson Darby.

The historical and theological significance of Stanford was his careful and exhaustive exposition of the believer's positional and conditional aspects in the "First Adam" (Adam) and the "Last Adam" (Jesus). Not only did he set forth these Pauline doctrines of the Christian's "death, burial, resurrection, and ascension with Christ", he comprehensively documented their "life-out-of-death" application in the Christian's experiential "walk with Christ." The motive for he work of the Holy Spirit, the object of the Christian's "progressive spiritual growth", is "intimate fellowship with God the Father and God the Son, above in the heavenlies." As Stanford was apt to exhort believers, "Abide Above - for your life below."

It is absolutely essential for the believer to learn the scriptural difference betweeen: 1)his relationship to earth and heaven, (2)the flesh and the Spirit, (3)Judaism and Christianity.

Only from the Pauline epistles will the Holy Spirit minister these Christian truths to him. Then, when established and hid with Christ in God, he can be ministred to by the remainder of the Word without being drawn from his position in Christ, Who is his Life.

Resting in Him,
Miles

J Vernon McGee

He was born in Hillsboro, Texas. He graduated with his B.D. from Columbia Theological Seminary and his Th.M. and Th.D. from Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas. He served Presbyterian churches in Decatur, Georgia; Nashville, Tennessee; and Cleburne, Texas before he moved with his wife to Pasadena, California, where he accepted a position at the Lincoln Avenue Presbyterian Church.

He moved from Pasadena to Los Angeles and became the pastor of the Church of the Open Door in 1949, where he continued as pastor until 1970. McGee also served as the chair fo the Bible department at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (currently Biola University) and as a visiting lecturer at Dallas Theological Seminary.

In 1967, he began the Thru the Bible Radio Network program. In a systematic study of each book of the Bible, Dr. McGee took his listeners from Genesis to Revelation in a two and one-half year "Bible bus trip," as he called it. After retiring from the pastorate in January, 1970, and realizing that two and a half years was not enough time to teach the Bible, McGee completed another study of the entire Bible in a five year period. Thru the Bible is broadcast on TransWorld Radio in the UK every weekday.

Dr. McGee continued many speaking engagements after he retired, refusing to be slowed by a bout of cancer from which he fully recovered. However, a heart problem surgically corrected in 1965 resurfaced, and he died in his sleep in 1988. After his death, the five-year program of Thru the Bible continues to air on over 400 radio stations in North America, and is heard in more than 100 languages and is broadcast worldwide via radio, shortwave, and the internet.