Following story is told by Earl Pöysti in 1947, published both in english and in russian.

God is pouring out His grace to all nations

Missionary Hudson Taylor worked in China for several decades preaching Christ to people of that country. In his old years, when he was in England in the beginning of the century, he was once preaching in a big meeting in the center of London. During his message that the Lord had inspired him to speak from the pulpit, Hudson Taylor suddenly stopped. He just stood there staring ahead and not saying a word.

Several minutes later he continued his sermon. The people in the audience were surprised, but they thought that such a long pause occured due to the old age of the speaker – he could have lost his thought of simply got tired. That wasn’t anything unusual for a person of his age. The sermon went on but after some time it was interrupted again - once again Hudson Taylor became silent and stood there staring ahead as if he was contemplating something. After a few minutes when he began to speak again, he explained the reason for those two interruptions in his message.

He told the audience that he had seen a vision. He saw the northern part of the globe and the place that had appeared before him was Russia! There was revolution and the whole country was covered by blood. Great tribulation, suffering and famine.

Then the panorama of the vision changed – Hudson Taylor saw the heavens open up and there was fire that came down and spread all over Russia and beyond its borders. He realized that it was the fire of the Holy Spirit that God was going to pour out upon all of Russia. Then the good news of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world would be spread all over the earth, especially in the countries where people had never heard about the Lord and that would bring about a great awakening in all the nations of the world! After that Hudson Taylor saw Jesus Christ returning – the Second Coming of the Saviour!

When this vision was given to him for the second time, he no longer had any doubts – the vision came from the Lord and was given to him by God! I heard that story long time ago. My father used to tell it to me and I also read about this vision in Christian literature. I also used to tell it to people but frankly speaking, I always had a feeling of uncertainty about it thinking something like ”what if someone just made this up?”

So in 1947 after my father and I finished our mission trip to Europe, we were on our way back to States and we made a stop in London. We had an opportunity to visit a certain church over there and since my father was sick, I was asked to preach. I spoke about missions and mentioned that Hudson Taylor story, though again it sounded like I wasn’t very confident about it. When the meeting was over I saw an old gentleman with a walking stick coming my way. He came up to me, shook my hand and said: ”Thank you for telling that story about Hudson Taylor. That’s exactly how it happened. I was present at that meeting when he saw this vision!”

Taken from Youtube -video ”Earl Poysti & Hudson Taylor vision” 9.12.2020