Copied from the Moody Bible Institute website (they provided the pictures too) with a few paragraphs from Christianity Today thrown in for good measure:
MEET DWIGHT
Dwight Lyman Moody was born the sixth child of Edwin and Betsy Holton Moody in Northfield, Massachusetts on February 5, 1837. Dwight’s formal education ended after fifth grade, and he rapidly tired of life on the family farm. He left home at age 17 to seek employment in Boston.
After failing to secure a desirable position, he asked his uncle, Samuel Holton, for a job. Reluctantly, Uncle Samuel hired Dwight to work in his own retail shoe store. However, to keep young Moody out of mischief, employment was conditional upon his attendance at the Mt. Vernon Congregational Church.
At Mt. Vernon Moody became part of the Sunday school class taught by Edward Kimball. On April 21, 1855, Kimball visited the Holton Shoe Store, found Moody in a stockroom, and there spoke to him of the love of Christ. Shortly thereafter, Moody accepted the love of God and devoted his life to serving Him. The following year brought Moody to Chicago with dreams of making his fortune in the shoe business, working toward his goal of amassing a fortune of $100,000. As he achieved success in selling shoes, Moody grew interested in providing a Sunday School class for Chicago’s children and the local Young Men’s Christian Association.
It slowly dawned on Moody that, in light of his new faith, his life should not be spent on amassing wealth as much as on helping the poor. In 1858 he established a mission Sunday school at North Market Hall in a slum of Chicago. It soon blossomed into a church (from which, six years later, was formed the Illinois Street Independent Church, precursor to the now famous Moody Memorial Church). By 1861 he had left his business to concentrate on social and evangelistic work. He drew the children of the German and Scandinavian immigrant underclass to his mission with candy and pony rides, and he drew the adults through evening prayer meetings and English classes. He was convinced, “If you can really make a man believe you love him, you have won him.”
There he met and in 1862 married one of the Sunday school teachers, Emma C. Revell, with whom he had three children – Emma, William and Paul.
YMCA
During the revival of 1857 and 1858, Moody also became more involved at the YMCA, performing janitorial jobs for the organization and serving wherever they needed him. In 1860 when he left the business world, he continued to increase his time spent serving the organization. In the YMCA’s 1861–1862 annual report, Moody was praised for all his efforts. Although they could not pay him, the YMCA recommended he stay “employed” as city missionary.
As president of the Chicago YMCA for four years, he championed evangelistic causes such as distributing tracts all over the city, and he held daily noon prayer meetings.
Meanwhile, Moody’s Mission Sunday School flourished, and it was different. Moody’s desire was to reach the lost youth of the city: the children with little to no education, less than ideal family situations, and poor economic circumstances. Soon the Sunday School outgrew the converted saloon used as a meeting hall. As the classes grew, associates encouraged Moody to begin his own church. Eventually, on February 28, 1864, the Illinois Street Church (now The Moody Church) opened in its own building with Moody as pastor.
CIVIL WAR
As the political landscape of the United States changed in the 1860s, Moody’s connection with the YMCA proved a useful tool in his ministry. With the Civil War approaching, the Union Army mobilized volunteer soldiers across the north. Camp Douglas was established outside of Chicago, which Moody saw as a great evangelistic opportunity. Along with a few others, Moody created the Committee on Devotional Meetings to minister to the troops stationed at Camp Douglas, the 72nd Illinois Volunteer Regiment. This was just the beginning of Moody’s Civil War outreach. From 1861 to 1865, refusing to fight saying, “In this respect I am a Quaker,” but he ministered and evangelized on battlefields and throughout the city, state and country to thousands of soldiers, both Union and Confederate, through the YMCA and the United States Christian Commission. And he relentlessly sought and received financial support for all his projects from rich Christian businessmen, such as Cyrus McCormick and John Wanamaker. In all this, he tried to mix effective social work with evangelism. All the while, he maintained the Mission Sunday School.
While ministering in Chicago, Moody and his wife met a woman named Emma Dryer, a successful teacher and administrator. Moody was impressed with her zeal for ministry and her educational background. He knew that women had a unique ability to evangelize to mothers and children in a way that men never could, and saw Dryer as just the person to help him encourage this group.
Moody asked Dryer to oversee a ministry specifically to train women for evangelistic outreach and missionary work. Under Dryer’s leadership, the training program grew rapidly, and so did her desire for this ministry to reach men as well as women. She continued to pray that the Lord would place the idea for such a school on Moody’s heart.
Moody believed music would be a valuable tool in his evangelistic campaigns, so when, in 1870, he heard Ira Sankey sing at a YMCA convention, he convinced Sankey to give up a well-paying government career to join him on the sawdust trail.
THE CHICAGO FIRE
On Sunday, October 8, 1871, as Moody came to the end of his sermon for the evening, the city fire bell began to ring. At first, no one thought much about it, as these city bells often rung. However, this night was different—it was the beginning of the Great Chicago Fire. Moody’s first concern was for his family, locating them and making sure they were somewhere safe. After securing his family’s safety, Moody and his wife stayed on the north side of the city to help other residents. The fire finally burned out Tuesday afternoon, after consuming much of what Moody had built, including his mission church, his home and the YMCA.
This was a poignant time in Moody’s life and the fire forced him to reevaluate his ministry. It was during this time of evaluation he realized he needed to heed the Lord’s call on his life. For years, he had been moving forward and then asking God to support his plans. He traveled to New York to raise funds to rebuild the church and the YMCA, but while walking down Wall Street, he felt what he described as “a presence and power” as he had never known before, so much that he cried aloud, “Hold Lord, it is enough!” He returned to Chicago with a new vision: preaching the Kingdom of God, not social work, would change the world. He now devoted his immense energies solely to the “evangelization of the world in this generation.”
In June 1872 Moody made his first trip to the United Kingdom. While he was there a few close contacts urged him to come back in a year. In June 1873, Moody and his family, and his good friend and musician Ira Sankey with his wife all traveled from New York to Liverpool, England. Moody and Sankey traveled throughout the UK and Ireland holding meetings, helping fuel the revival that was slowly sweeping the region. Moody’s visit made a lasting impression, and inspired lay people across the region to begin children’s ministries and ministry training schools for women.
Moody was revolutionary in his evangelistic approach. In the summer of 1873, Moody and Sankey were invited to the British Isles by evangelical Anglicans William Pennefather and Cuthbert Bainbridge, but both sponsors died before Moody and Sankey arrived. Without official endorsement, Moody and Sankey held campaigns in York, Sunderland, and Jarrow to minimal crowds. In Newcastle, their evangelistic efforts began to reap converts, and from then on their popularity escalated. Despite conflicting counsel from friends and trusted contacts, he and Sankey traveled to Ireland during a time when Catholics and Protestants were constantly at odds with each other. Moody was different: he did not care what denomination a person claimed, but just wanted the message of Christ to be heard. As a result, the revival swept into Ireland, and he won praises of both Catholics and Protestants.
After preaching for two years in England, Scotland, and Ireland, Moody returned to America as an internationally famous revivalist. Of his fame, Moody admitted, “I know perfectly well that, wherever I go and preach, there are many better preachers … than I am; all that I can say about it is that the Lord uses me.”
1875 – 1878
After two years overseas, the Moody family finally returned to the United States. They settled in Northfield, where Moody was born and raised, and he began to plan his next round of evangelistic city campaigns. Immediately, calls for crusades poured in. During these crusades, Moody pioneered many techniques of evangelism: a house-to-house canvass of residents prior to a crusade; an ecumenical approach enlisting cooperation from all local churches and evangelical lay leaders regardless of denominational affiliations; philanthropic support by the business community; the rental of a large, central building; the showcasing of a gospel soloist; and the use of an inquiry room for those wanting to repent. From October 1875 to May 1876, Moody and three other evangelists toured through the major cities of the Midwest and Atlantic coast, preaching the message of salvation.
Moody would embark on yet another city campaign before the desire to train young Christian workers would grip him again.
MOODY’S SCHOOLS
Moody was on the cutting edge of ministry. Through his revival work, he saw the need for an army of Bible-trained lay people to continue the work of inner-city evangelism. “If this world is going to be reached,” he said, “I am convinced that it must be done by men and women of average talent. After all, there are comparatively few people in this world who have great talents.” In 1879 he established Northfield Seminary for Young Women to provide young women the opportunity to gain an education. Two years later, Moody created the Mount Hermon School for Boys with the same goal as the girls’ school: to educate the poor and minorities. Moody had an amazing ability to bridge the gap between denominations, which was apparent in the diverse religious backgrounds of the school’s students.
In 1880 Moody invited adults and college-age youth to the first of many summer Bible conferences at his home in Northfield. These conferences helped nurture dispensationalism and fundamentalism, both of which were just emerging. At one conference, the Student Volunteer Movement was founded by 100 collegians who pledged to work in foreign missions after their college education.
Alternating between Europe and America, Moody and Sankey held numerous evangelistic campaigns before more than 100 million people. At their 1883 Cambridge, England, meetings, seven leading university students, the famous “Cambridge Seven,” committed themselves to become missionaries in China (under Hudson Taylor).
In 1886 (about 20 years later) Emma Dryer’s prayers were answered and the Chicago Evangelization Society (renamed Moody Bible Institute shortly before his death) was founded, one of the first in the Bible school movement. From this work, he launched yet another work, the Colportage Association (later Moody Press), an organization using horse-drawn “Gospel wagons” from which students sold low-cost religious books and tracts throughout the nation.
Moody had been focused on ministry near his home in Northfield but he came out to Chicago to help raise money for the Society, support Dryer, and see his dream become a reality. The Chicago Evangelization Society had been Moody’s vision but really came to fruition because of Dryer’s hard work. History of Moody Bible Institute.
That same year, Moody assembled a large group of college students at Mount Hermon for the first “College Students’ Summer School.” This conference would birth the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions. By 1911 it was estimated that 5,000 student volunteers from America alone had come out of the program. Moody’s vision for the mission movement grew as it spread around the world to Europe and South Africa.
LATER YEARS
Moody continued to evangelize throughout America, often preaching in major cities and at various universities. His heart was for his schools, and he spent much of his time in Northfield. Moody was a visionary who always seemed a step ahead of the status quo. From training women, to reaching out to lost children, to bridging the gap between denominations, he was unlike any other.
When the managers of the 1893 World’s Exhibition in Chicago decided to keep the Fair open on Sundays, many Christian leaders called for a boycott. Not Moody. He said, “Let us open so many preaching places and present the gospel so attractively that people will want to come and hear it.” On one single day, over 130,000 people attended evangelistic meetings coordinated by Moody.
Moody was a man of great discernment. He had an innate ability to find capable, godly people to put into positions of leadership and bring his ideas to fruition. This enabled him to continue his evangelistic outreach while his ministries flourished. Throughout his life, Moody always found time to be with his family, making every effort to show his love and care for them. Despite a tireless schedule (he preached six sermons a day just a month before he died), he loved to spend time with his children and grandchildren at their Northfield, Massachusetts farm, where he died on December 22, 1899, surrounded by his family.
Students, and pet mastiff, Lion
I heard his death was caused by cardiovascular disease, but could find nothing to corroborate that.
Oh, the impact this man has had on so many, even today! But we need to remember that he did not work alone. Without his supporters and ‘worker bees’, he would have struggled to be used as God intended. Each person was, and is, important (remember the lesson of the apostle Andrew 😊). Another lesson? Continue to be faithful. Emma Dryer prayed 20 years before her vision was accomplished! Not so different from many in scripture – Abraham waited 25 years before Isaac was born, David waited about that long from the time he was anointed by Samuel until he actually became king of Israel.
Don’t put God in a time box. We are called to be faithful, no matter the task He gives us, and patient no matter the wait time.