Reformer
🇩🇪George Müller
1805–1898 · German/British · Orphanage Founder & Evangelist
“The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety.”
Biography
George Müller was born on September 27, 1805, in Kroppenstedt, Prussia. A self-confessed thief and liar in his youth, Müller was transformed by a dramatic conversion experience at the age of twenty and emigrated to England to serve as a missionary. Settling in Bristol, he became convinced that the Church had drifted into dependence on human strategies rather than prayer and faith in God. In 1836, he opened his first orphanage in Bristol, determined never to solicit funds or go into debt, but to trust God alone to provide through prayer. Over the following six decades, Müller cared for more than 10,000 orphans and built five large orphan houses on Ashley Down in Bristol. His detailed journals recorded thousands of specific answered prayers, often with funds or food arriving at the very last moment. These accounts were widely circulated and became instrumental in igniting faith in believers around the world. Müller also supported over 150 missionaries and distributed millions of Scriptures. In his final years, he traveled the world as an itinerant preacher, visiting 42 countries and preaching to an estimated three million people. He died peacefully in Bristol on March 10, 1898, leaving an estate of less than £800, having given away millions. His life remains the definitive modern testimony to radical trust in God.
Key Works
Müller's primary contribution was the Ashley Down Orphan Houses in Bristol, which at their peak housed over 2,000 children simultaneously and never incurred debt. His autobiography and journals, published in multiple volumes as 'A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Müller,' documented thousands of answered prayers and became one of the most widely read Christian testimonial works of the nineteenth century. He founded the Scriptural Knowledge Institution for Home and Abroad, which distributed millions of Bibles and supported hundreds of schools and missionaries. His practical theology of prayer profoundly influenced Hudson Taylor and the faith mission movement.
Legacy
George Müller's legacy endures as the supreme modern exemplar of prayer-based faith and orphan care. His orphan houses in Bristol provided a model for Christian social welfare globally. The faith mission movement he helped inspire—including Hudson Taylor's China Inland Mission—transformed world Christianity. His detailed prayer journals remain a foundational devotional and missiological resource. Millions of Christians across denominations read his journals as a call to trust God in practical, material ways, and his life has never ceased to generate testimonies of renewed faith and generosity.