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Lives of Power
DR. CLYDE COOK
RHS: Dr. Robert Harold Schuller
CC: Dr. Clyde Cook
RHS: Well, we have different guests every week and today I have one of the most distinguished guests I’ve ever had. He is one of the presidents of Christian Universities in the United States, a little over a hundred Christian schools; colleges, universities. But Clyde Cook has been the president of Biola College for twenty-five years. An amazing story, a very dear friend and is not a stranger to be sitting in this church. So, welcome the president of Biola University, Dr. Clyde Cook. Oh, wow let’s get quick to a story. You were born outside of the United States?
CC: Born in Hong Kong.
RHS: And lived in the Orient, how many years before you came to America?
CC: Well we were in Hong Kong for seven years and left there because of the Japanese attack on Hong Kong December the eighth. Woke up early that morning at five minutes to eight, we hear the siren go off and then the dive-bombers followed right after that. We were between two batteries, one up on the top and one in the bottom, and there were bombs falling all around our house and so it was a very, very emotional time there. And then we got, Hong Kong fell on December 25th and we wound up in a concentration camp for six months and then were able to get out thanks to an exchange program between the diplomats and America with the Japanese they got an exchange. We wound up in Africa.
RHS: You know some people here don’t even know the history. What was going on? You say the war, what war?
CC: It was World War II.
RHS: Who was fighting who, why, yeah.
CC: The Japanese bombed Hong Kong just six hours after they bombed Pearl Harbor and because of the dateline it was the eighth there and so the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor then launched the US into this war with Japan and its allies.
RHS: Wow.
CC: But the story goes back to my great grandfather going to China in 1848 and then they had a daughter who was a missionary went out with Hudson Taylor and the China Mission. They had a daughter, my mother who was, her father died when she was six months old and then she left there and she went back to the US and got a master degree and also a baccalaureate degree and went back out to join her mother who was a single parent out there and she met my father who came from Scotland. And on his ship going up to meet her mother and fell in love, got married. Went down to Shanghai and there my first brother was born, Calvin, second brother was Luther and I’m surprised they didn’t name me Zwingli! And then we moved on to Hong Kong where my sister Athenie was born, in fact she’s here today along with my wife and granddaughter. And then three other children were born there. So, my youngest brother was just like four months old when the Japanese attacked Hong Kong.
RHS: Wow, were there people killed in Hong Kong in that?
CC: Oh yeah, hundreds and hundreds of people. Nobody thought that anybody would attack the British Crown Colony, the British Empire, but that was wrong. And it was devastating, we weren’t prepared, we didn’t have the planes and so forth and so we ended up in the concentration camp. But we had two meals a day, a little bowl of rice and a little bowl of soup. My mother was down to ninety pounds and would not have lasted just a few weeks with out getting out, and of course nursing a four-month-old baby at the same time, so we’re very grateful. A third of the camp actually died of starvation. And so by the grace of God we were able to get out. Regrouped the family in Africa and my mother didn’t know whether my father was dead or alive because he was in Canton captured up there in prison. The elder three were up in She Fu captured there. So my mother didn’t know whether the father or the kids were dead or alive and so a couple times a week in Africa she would go to the Red Cross to see if there was any word of dad, and coming down from the Red Cross, she met my father on the street and had this wonderful reunion and then my father, as soon as he got the family settled in South Africa, joined McArthur as part of the Pacific Campaign.
RHS: What a huge chunk of history came into your young life. WOW! And Jesus Christ was personal to you.
CC: Actually not at that time. You know I was kind of riding on the coattails of my father and mother. But it was August the tenth, 1950 where I trusted Jesus Christ as my personal savior.
RHS: Why? What provoked that?
CC: Well, I heard Jim Rayburn, the founder of young life speak and so he just shared the gospel in such a way and I was just, I could speak the language, the jargon. I went to church, directed the youth group and so forth and but just because you’re born in a garage doesn’t make you a car. Just because you’re born into a Christian family does not make you a Christian. I had to personally trust the Lord Jesus Christ and that’s what I did under his ministry and life has never been the same. What a blessed savior we have.
RHS: Yes!
CC: If I could just mention a couple of things about my mother. Because May is mothers’ month, you know? Mother’s Day is celebrated in May and incredible impact that she had on me and the first image that I would share is when the bombs were falling how she took us, the children, and put us under the staircase and we could hear the bombs falling all around us shaking the house and she would read the daily light and sing a song in Chinese and then we’d sing “He Leadeth me.” In fact I can’t hear “He Leadeth Me” anymore without in the back of my mind (WHISTLES) and the whole house just shaking. Here and the house just town houses just about thirty yards away got just obliterated. And I just see my mother and the calmness she had with bombs just shaking the house all around. And the second incident happened, Hong Kong fell on Christmas day and we had a week there, not knowing what to do. And the Japanese came around and one Japanese came around and he was a believer! And he was an organist and he was apologize for the war and asked if he could stay for devotions and he played the piano while we had the devotion, but a big contrast just a few days later on New Years Eve, a whole other group of Japanese came to demand that we send out the Chinese girls that we were harboring in this house and it had a fence around the house with a gate with a chain and a lock. And we wouldn’t send these young Chinese girls out and so they start pounding on the lock and they just kept pounding and pounding and pounding. And I just remember as a child, seeing my mother, Mrs. Cliff push the sofa up to the door and there they got down on their knees and here were these two ladies just praying and asking God to spare us and to spare everybody in the house and that day the image is very vivid in my life and heart today. Well, after an hour they left and we went out the next morning and just touched the lock and it just fell apart. Disintegrated! It was as if God had His hand on that lock and preserved our family and how I thank Him for that!
RHS: WOW! So you are retiring this year as president of Biola College. One of the great Christian Colleges/Universities in the world
CC: Thank you.
RHS: And when I first was introduced to it fifty years ago it was a good Bible school. I don’t think it was a great university and it has become that! Under you!
CC: Well, under the grace of God and..
RHS: Yes, yes.
CC: the wonderful faculty and the students that we’ve had including your grandson, one of the two best students ever graduated from Biola. I don’t say the best because, Tom Leonard’s up here somewhere and he’s saying well, what about me! You know or my wife or Kyle or lots of other people who can say the same. So even my wife, my wonderful wife almost fifty years.
RHS: Stand up! We all want to see your wife and..
CC: And a sister next to her and her husband and isn’t she beautiful? I even say you know she’s one of the two best wives because my mother might be listening or my daughter or everybody here who’s a wife and to last twenty-five years in this job you try not to offend very many people!
RHS: So, you’re going to go out of Biola, you’re going to become a diplomat for the United States of America probably.
CC:
That’s right. And here’s one of the two best preachers in the world!
RHS: Well I do want to thank you for affirming my ministry these many, many years. It’s been very supportive and I needed it..
CC: Well Thanks.
RHS: and I thank you for Biola College, Biola University. What’s the future of private Christian Colleges like Biola?
CC:
I think it’s very bright because you know we’re living in a culture that says there’s no absolute truth. And at Biola and so many other Christian Colleges we believe that God has revealed His absolute truth in His word and so we have an anchor. We have something that brings all the disciplines together to the word of God and so the contrast with the other schools, I don’t think you can be properly educated when you skewed the source of all truth and knowledge. God is the source of all truth and knowledge. And so, we’re providing a very important role there. And then I think the interaction with the culture. You know Oz Guinness said, “Christians are vastly under represented in two areas: the media and in the Universities.” And Biola with its excellent film program and its philosophy program, the largest philosophy program in the world is making a difference in those two areas. So we won’t be under represented in those two areas. And certainly you’ve made a wonderful contribution, as has the Hour of Power in making sure that word gets out through the media.
RHS: Well thank you very, very much! God loves you so do I.
CC: Thank you so much.
RHS: Thank you!
