John Wesley

Basil William Miller was born in Laconia, Indiana, February 26, 1897. He moved with his family to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) in 1905, and nine years later entered a small Christian college in Greenville, Texas, to earn A.B. and B.D. degrees.

After pastoring churches in Oklahoma, he was called to teach at Pasadena College in California. He married Esther Kirk and they had four children. He earned a master’s degree at the University of Southern California and five more graduate degrees—the M.A., S.T.M., Th.M., S.T.D., and Ph.D.—were earned while he was holding pastorates in San Diego, Pittsburgh, New York City, San Antonio, and Pasadena.

In 1939, Dr. Miller was involved in a serious car accident and suffered a severe concussion which kept him bedridden for a year and partially incapacitated for the next four. Then, in 1947, he suffered a heart attack. During his convalescence he began his writing career and, over a period of 35 years, produced 200 books and thousands of articles for Christian publications.

Two wartime biographies caused a publishing sensation. Martin Niemoeller: Hero of the Concentration Camp appeared in 1942 while the German pastor was still confined in Dachau. The other bookk was Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek. The Chinese leaders were at the height of their popularity and the book generated more prepublication orders than any previous Zondervan title. Some 950,000 Basil Miller books were in print by mid-1951. He had published 136 titles by 1955 and his final count probably tops 150.

Until his death on May 7, 1978, at the age of 81, he was “driven almost beyond endurance with the knowledge that there is so much to do, and so little that I can accomplish.”