Ōtsuki Takeji

Who was Ōtsuki Takeji?

Ōtsuki Takeji was the founder of the third largest independent Japanese church, known as the Holy Ecclesia of Jesus. Ōtsuki was born in Ayabe City in 1906, and as a young man converted to Christianity while a student at Dōshisha Middle school, a private mission school in Kyoto. Ōtsuki was attracted to the faith through the evangelistic preaching of Kanamori Michinori during the daily chapel program and went on to receive baptism. Dissatisfied with Dōshisha's "liberal and socialistic" form of Christianity, Ōtsuki found his way into the Japan Holiness Church in 1930. Ōtsuki completed his theological training at the Holiness Bible Seminary in Tokyo and engaged in evangelistic work in several locations around Japan before accepting appointment as a missionary to Manchuria in 1936.

It was while serving as a Holiness missionary in Manchuria that Ōtsuki had a "direct encounter with the living Christ," life-transforming experience that was to become the foundation of his independent ministry While praying in preparation for the New Year Convention and asking God to send him a guiding motto, he was presented with the words of Jesus from there Sermon on the Mount, "Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God." Ōtsuki explains that his belief in God was beyond question, even though he had never seen God.