Dwight L. Moody

Dwight Lyman Moody (February 5, 1837 – December 22, 1899), a.k.a. D. L. Moody, was an American evangelist and publisher who founded the Moody Church, Northfield School and Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts, the Moody Bible Institute and Moody Publishers.

Moody left a lucrative shoe business to devote his life to revivalism, working first in the Civil War with Union troops through YMCA in the United States Christian Commission. In Chicago, he built one of the major evangelical centers in the nation, which is still active. He toured the country and the British Isles, drawing large crowds with a dynamic speaking style.

During a trip to the United Kingdom in the spring of 1872, Moody became well known as an evangelist. Literary works published by the Moody Bible Institute claim that he was the greatest evangelist of the 19th century. He preached almost a hundred times and on several occasions, filled stadia of a capacity of 2,000 to 4,000. According to his memoir, in the Botanic Gardens Palace, he attracted an audience estimated at between 15,000 and 30,000.

Moody helped in the work of cross-cultural evangelism by promoting "The Wordless Book", a teaching tool Charles Spurgeon had developed in 1866. In 1875, Moody added a fourth color to the design of the three-color evangelistic device: gold — to "represent heaven." This "book" has been and is still used to teach the Gospel message to uncounted thousands of illiterate people around the globe.