Southwestern receives lifetime of papers of Southern Baptist martyr

Southern Baptist medical missionary and martyr Bill Wallace suffered profoundly in his last weeks on earth, but he had long been prepared. “There is no sacrifice in all the world too great for a man to make for the Lord Jesus Christ,” he wrote in an emotional letter shared with his home congregation moments before he left for his fateful mission to China in 1935.

Now, Wallace’s farewell message and many other papers from his life will be on display in Mathena Hall at Southwestern Seminary, along with his previously acquired portrait. Craig Kubic, Southwestern’s dean of libraries, has successfully requested a permanent loan of Wallace’s papers, including the historic letter.

“The Bill Wallace collection represents the outstanding devotion and effort by the members of the Wallace Memorial Baptist Church of Knoxville, Tenn.,” Kubic says. “They have collected and preserved a genuine tribute to the legacy of one of the SBC’s most notable missionary doctors who was martyred in China.”

Wallace’s zeal for foreign ministry puzzled many. “You may ask, why do I want to go to China, that heathen nation, and there spend my life and energy,” he said to his congregation in his legendary letter. “You might say there is much to be done in this country, and many have said you can do a lot of good here. Why should I go when there are such hardships and inconveniences? The only answer I have is that it is God’s plan that I go.” The lengthy letter in Wallace’s handwriting will also be digitized and available online through Southwestern Seminary’s J.T. and Zelma Luther Archive.

Wallace was a dedicated surgeon with a heart for spreading the Gospel, and his life story is familiar to generations of Southern Baptists. Born in Knoxville, Tenn., in 1908, Wallace completed medical school and a surgical residency, all aimed at being called as a medical missionary. In 1935, he was sent to Wuchow (now Wuzhou) in southern China to work as a surgeon at the Baptist-run Stout Memorial Hospital. On receiving his assignment, he delivered his heartfelt testimony to Broadway Baptist Church of Knoxville, his home church. Then, bags packed, he immediately walked to the train station, with fellow church members accompanying him, and stepped on a train to begin his journey.

In China, Wallace worked through Japanese bombing raids, but in 1950, the start of the Korean War initiated an intense anti-American propaganda campaign, and missionaries were no longer welcome. His arrest came that December.

Wallace was detained as a spy, then jailed and tortured. Less than two months later, on February 10, 1951, Wallace died a martyr.

In 2015, Mike Boyd, senior pastor at Wallace Memorial Baptist Church in Knoxville and a member of Southwestern’s board of trustees, acquired Wallace’s portrait from the University of Tennessee medical school, which Wallace attended. When Boyd learned that a room at Mathena Hall—which will house the Roy Fish School of Evangelism and Missions and Scarborough College—would bear Wallace’s name, he and the church knew that Southwestern should house the portrait. This year, Kubic arranged the permanent loan of Wallace’s papers, to be on display with the portrait.

Wallace never questioned his call to China. In his legendary letter, he wrote: “God’s call was so definite to me, and I think He made it definite so there would be no doubt in my mind as to God’s plan, so that through the long years of preparation there would be no doubt that I was doing God’s will.”