Born for Battle

Thirty-One Studies on Spiritual Warfare
by R. Arthur Mathews

What do you do when the doctor tells you that you have a terminal illness? Arthur Mathews decided to write a book, at the request of his friends. Mathews had spent a lifetime serving, first in the army during WWII and then as a missionary in Asia. At one time, he, his wife, and their toddler were confined to their quarters for two years, denied basic necessities, and cut off from the Chinese people they had come to serve. During those two years, they endured two systematic attempts to starve them into submission. But no matter what each day held, that evening they would make it a point to kneel down with their little girl and sing hymns of praise to God. And they prayed. Seriously. Every day.

Mathews was able to apply some of the lessons he learned in WWII to the spiritual realm—he came to see wrestling in prayer as the first and foremost weapon against the enemy’s attacks. After he moved to the U.S., he taught people how to pray. When he was terminally ill, his friends asked him to write those lessons down in book form and that is how “Born for Battle” came into being.

A companion piece to this how-to book is the biography “Green Leaf in Drought” by Isobel Kuhn. Kuhn’s book tells the story of Arthur and Wilda Mathews’ struggle to survive under the communists from 1951–1953. Mathews’ book shares some of the spiritual principles that God taught them during that two and a half year crucible.