Phil Saint (1912-1993)
pioneer in evangelizing through art
by his daughter Martha
A great tent for 2,000 people was raised in the city of Roque Sáenz Peña, in the province of Chaco, northern Argentina. The announcements said that a person called Phil Saint was to preach the Gospel and draw each night, accompanied by live special music. It was in the decade of the 70s, and curious folks came every night to see this artist draw funny cartoons on his large easel.
A favorite topic was the story of Sammy Scales, a little fish that almost swallows a tempting worm on a hook, while the artist explained about the temptations that are like that worm, tempting on the outside but very dangerous on the inside. The children, youth and adults enjoyed the chalk sketches and understood perfectly each message.
Another theme was the Rich Man and Poor Man, with a cartoon of a rich, pompous man on the left, with his elegant suit and fancy glasses, compared with the poor man dressed in rags, a torn hat, unshaven; both had a sad face because, as the artist explained, neither one knew Jesus Christ as Savior. Then he would draw a large cross between the two faces as he explained the Gospel. The artist had a wide assortment of cartoon figures that he used as the occasion presented itself, so that the audience would smile, but would also think about a Bible truth.
His chalk board measured about a meter and a half by a meter, and had colored lights installed above and below the easel, including the so called “black light” that was used with special florescent chalk. He would make, or have made, different easels over the years. In the first years of his ministry he used great sheets of off-white paper, and he would leave the drawings with the church that organized the event. Later he changed to the back side of vynil sheets (used in upholstery) and erased the pictures each night.
After drawing a couple of cartoons, Phil Saint would draw the main picture of the night, in full color, in about 15 minutes. The lights in the tent (or auditorium) would be darkened, leaving only the platform lights to concentrate the attention on the drawing, which was accompanied by special music, instrumental and sung.
He might draw a beautiful scene of white capped mountains, called Whiter Than Snow, or a beach along a jungle river where his brother Nate died with his four colleagues, called Through Gates of Splendor. He might draw a cross as a bridge over a chasm separating a burning city from the celestial city, called The Way of the Cross Leads Home, or the scene of the three crosses outside the walls of Jerusalem, called Calvary. He might draw a man walking along a road that disappears into the distance, called When We Come to the End of the Road, or a tiny sparrow sitting on a branch in the midst of an autumn forest called His Eye is on the Sparrow. Some older pictures related to the destruction of Japan after the atomic bomb, called Japan at the Crossroads, or to the sinking of the Titanic.
The artist, who developed his ministry since the age of 21, had a wide assortment of pictures to draw, each accompanied with specific hymns or songs. When he drew the picture of Calvary, he would sing (or have a soloist sing) songs about the cross and the death of Jesus Christ. Each feature picture would be connected to a hymn.
The lights would be kept low in the huge tent, keeping the audience “captive” in a sense, while the evangelist, after finishing his picture, hung the frame and changed the colored lights to enhance the effect. Audible expressions of awe would escape from members of the audience at the beauty of the scene, especially when in the midst of darkness, the black light showed a radiant cross previously hidden in the sky. After wiping his dusty hands on a damp cloth, Phil Saint would open his Bible to preach a direct salvation message to his audience in about 30 minutes. For the first time in their lives, many people were hearing the Gospel, and as the message was coming to a close, the audience received an invitation to come forward and receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Thousands of people in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Paraguay and other countries responded to the Gospel through this evangelist who drew, sung and preached.
CHILDHOOD IN PENNSYLVANIA
Phil Saint was born in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania in October of 1912, and grew up with six brothers and one sister in the small town of Huntingdon Valley, just North of Philadelphia. He was the only one interested in art, which was the profession of his father, Lawrence B. Saint, a man so able that his oil portraits looked like photographs. I know because I have three of his portraits on my living room wall and you can’t tell the difference unless you are up close. The spiritual life of the Saint family was of high level; they had family devotions every day, and attendance twice a week to church. At the age of five little Philip was a believer in Jesus Christ and in his youth he gave his life for Christian service. From an early age he loved to draw and he often watched his father at work painting in oil, or making the beautiful stained glass windows for the National Cathedral at Mount St. Albans in Washington, D.C.
Phil used to say: “I have always loved to draw. My father taught me the fundamental principles of art, and he did it with the patience and devotion that no other could have done; but he also was very severe, very strict. Many times he made me do a picture over because it needed improvement.” When it was discovered that Phil was 50% color blind, his father sadly told him to limit himself to pictures with no color. But when Phil developed his ministry, he saw the importance of using colors, so with the help of other people, he memorized where the different colors were in his chalk tray so as not to use the wrong color. It would be common to see him walk up to someone who came early to a meeting, mark his hand with a chalk and ask what color it was. So he would place it in the right place on the tray. But still he would mix up the colors once in a while.
His father didn’t like him using chalk for drawing, thinking that the technique was cheap and unworthy of a fine artist, but Phil could not abandon this technique God had given him to lead people to Christ. Later on his Dad approved of the method after seeing the positive results.
When Phil finished high school, he studied in a commercial school where he learned typing and other skills, and worked for a time as secretary-chauffeur for Herbert Johnson, the famous national cartoonist, whose cartoons came out regularly in newspapers of that time. Phil learned a lot watching this man at work, and sold his own first cartoon to a magazine at that time, but he decided he didn’t want to dedicate his life to that profession because God was calling him to reach lost souls for Christ through chalk drawings.
He accepted to draw for a class of children, explaining the plan of salvation. That first attempt brought results in converted children. Phil prepared some sermons, illustrating them with simple drawings. He was invited to teach young people at summer camps, and slowly the invitations and opportunities grew to preach and draw. In the decade of the 1930s he covered much of the United States in his car, driving thousands of miles, with the desire to win souls to Christ. Many came, curious to see him draw, and God worked in hearts.
After several years as a traveling evangelist, Phil realized that he needed further education, so he went to Wheaton College where he graduated with honors in 1941. Another student graduated that same year, a lively gal, Ruth Brooker, also called to Christian service. They were married in October 1941, and enjoyed 51 years of married life, 16 years in the United States, and 35 years in Argentina. Five children were born in the United States: Ruth Ellyn in 1942, Martha in 1944 (me), David in 1947, and Jim and Joe (twins) in 1950; Evelyn was born in Argentina in 1959.
Phil traveled a lot all his life, going to Japan after the Second World War, to the Caribbean with the Latin American Mission, and to Latin America in 1954 (Uruguay and Argentina). It was during his visit to Cordoba, Argentina that God called him to move there as a missionary. Leaving Greensboro, North Carolina in December 1955, the family moved to Costa Rice where Phil and Ruth studied Spanish. Phil prayed with emotion: “Lord, please help me to learn well the Spanish language so I can preach to these people in their own language about the Savior, so they can come from darkness to your glorious light!” For many years he practiced the habit of reading aloud in Spanish every day, to continually improve his pronunciation and vocabulary. His preaching was excellent, without an accent.
The Saint family was established in Cordoba, Argentina in March, 1957, and Phil participated in evangelistic campaigns within and without Argentina, using different musicians to sing and play. When there were many places where an adequate auditorium was not available, Phil bought a tent, then a larger one, and the largest was for 2,000 people.
PHIL’S ILLUSTRATED BOOKS
He wrote and illustrated a number of books. Two Mighty Men came out in 1942, and Drawing Men to Christ in 1943. Several children’s stories came out in 1954 and 1959.
His autobiography came out in 1972 called Amazing Saints, with various editions coming out in 1985 and 1986 now called Saints Alive! And a revised edition was done in 1994 after his death. All have his line drawings and cartoons.
He published several books of cartoons, such as Biblical Cartoons from Daily Life (1981), Seventy Biblical Cartoons (1985), and Drawings about the Here and Hereafter (1989). He was always interested in anthropology, and published Fossils That Speak Out in 1985, 1989, and 1993.
Mom and Dad visited Guatemala (where my family serves the Lord since 1977) for the last time in 1990 where Dad drew (with colored markers this time) and spoke on Channel 21 and preached in churches. In the photograph Sam and Martha Berberian are on the far left and far right, Ruth and Phil in the center, and the grandkids beside and in front.
My Dad painted a number of oil pictures during his life time, many of them of similar themes as his chalk drawings, and many of them he would give away as he would travel. His last painting was of the five missionaries who died on Palm Beach with the heavenly choir singing. He died in Argentina at the age of 80 in a tractor accident, with chalk under his fingernails and oil paint on his hands.
(by Martha Saint-Berberian, Nov. 2007)
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