If Ye Shall Ask...[First Edition]

Oswald Chambers (24 July 1874 - 15 November 1917) was an early 20th century Scottish Baptist and Holiness Movement evangelist and teacher, best known for the daily devotional, My Utmost for His Highest, which compiled his Christian preaching to students and soldiers.

Born to devout parents in Aberdeen, Scotland, he first moved with his family to Stoke-on-Trent, then to Perth, Scotland, and finally to London in 1889 when his father was appointed Traveling Secretary of the Baptist Total Abstinence Association. At 16 Chambers was baptized and became a member of Rye Lane Baptist Chapel.

From 1893-1895 he studied at the National Art Training School (now the Royal College of Art). Whilst continuing his studies at the University of Edinburgh, he felt called to ministry and left for Dunoon College, a small theological training school near Glasgow. He soon taught classes and took over much of the administration. Richard Reader Harris, KC, a prominent barrister and founder of the Pentecostal League of Prayer, introduced Chambers as “a new speaker of exceptional power” in 1905. Through the League, Chambers also met Juji Nakada, a Holiness evangelist from Japan, who stimulated Chambers’ growing interest in world evangelism. In 1906, Nakada and Chambers sailed for Japan via the U.S.

In 1911 Chambers founded and was principal of the Bible Training College in Clapham Common, Greater London. During WWI, in 1915, he suspended the operation of the school and was accepted as a YMCA chaplain. He was assigned to Zeitoun, Cairo, Egypt, where he ministered to Australian and New Zealand troops, who later participated in the Battle of Gallipoli.

Chambers suffered appendicitis on 17 October 1917, but resisted going to a hospital on the grounds beds would be needed by men wounded in the Third Battle of Gaza. On 29 October, he received an emergency appendectomy, but died two weeks later, aged 43. He was buried in Cairo with full military honors.