The Rev. Nelson K. Malkus entered his eternal reward last evening, April 10, at the Quarryville Presbyterian Retirement Community in Quarryville, Pa. He was 96 years old. Testimony of Nelson K. Malkus
“My times are in thy hand”   Psalm 31:15
    God’s hand has indeed been evident in my life as I examine it in retrospect. That from the great throngs He should choose me for Himself is a constant source of amazement to me.
That He should then call me to be an ambassador is equally so.
    When I began attending evening classes at the Philadelphia School of the Bible in 1939, full-time service was the farthest thing from my mind. However, in the closing weeks of the four year course, the Lord applied to my heart the missionary appeals I had heard and the messages of “Goforth of China” and A. T. Pierson’s “Mueller of Bristol” which I had recently read. He gave me the overwhelming conviction that I would never be happy unless in full-time service and that on the foreign mission field, if He so led.
    The choice faced us—”Shall we apply to a ‘faith’ board and go immediately to the field or shall we spend another five years in further training which, too, would enable us to apply to the Independent Board?” To do the former was by far the easier. To do the latter seemed nigh impossible, for we were both twenty-seven years of age, had two children, and had no financial backing that would seem to make further education possible. However, God gave us the grace to
attempt the latter, largely on these two grounds: First, His own promises as found in such passages as Luke 1:37, Matthew 6:32b, 33, Romans 4:21, Psalm 62, and Philippians 1:6. Second, the conviction that the Independent Board was the one board under which we felt we could work whole-heartedly. We had long had a knowledge of the board and knew it to be Biblical as to message and methods and separated from the world and apostasy.
    Now, after two years at Columbia Bible College and three at Faith Seminary—years of wonderful training in scholastic and spiritual lessons, during which God has supplied every need, material, mental, and spiritual—we praise the Lord for our recent appointment by the Independent Board. During these several years, the sweet consciousness of being in the very center of God’s will has been our portion as we have simply tried to obey His leading step by step.
    I must not close this testimony without thanksgiving to God for using many who will read this in helping to supply us with material needs backed up with prayer and for a God-given helpmeet, without whom all of this could not have taken place.
     This summer my wife and I expect to study at the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Then the five of us look forward to going to Mexico sometime this year, there to work with Mr. and Mrs. William M. Baird, whom God has wonderfully used to bring to the fore the great issues which there face the Christian church today. Many obstacles are seen and many unseen but we rest in the words of II Chronicles 32:7, 8 and John 10:4.
     II Chronicles 32:7, 8 reads, “Be strong and courageous, be not afraid nor dismayed for … all the multitude that is with him, for there be more with us than with him: with him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the Lord our God to help us and to fight our battles.” John 10:4 reads, “When he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.” “Brethren, pray for us for we feel so inadequate for the task.”

Malkus was born in Trenton, N.J., Feb. 28, 1916, to Jacob and Addie (Kellum) Malkus. Raised in the Trenton area, he later attended Drexel University in Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Biblical University (formerly Philadelphia College of the Bible), and Columbia Bible College, graduating there in 1945 with a bachelor’s degree. He took his preparation for the ministry at Faith Theological Seminary, graduating in 1948 and was both licensed and ordained in June of 1948 by the New Jersey Presbytery of the Bible Presbyterian Church.

Malkus was first called to serve as a missionary in Mexico, 1948-1951, then more remotely to the Philippines, 1951-1952. Leaving the foreign mission field, he pastored churches in Texas, Nebraska, and Washington before taking a three-year term with National Presbyterian Missions, 1970-1973. He is perhaps best remembered for his long term of service as the executive director of World Presbyterian Missions (RPCES) from 1973 up until the Joining and Receiving in 1982. After the J&R, he transitioned to a post as an associate coordinator with Mission to the World, 1982-1984.

At the age of 70, when most men retire, Malkus took up a post as chaplain at the Quarryville Presbyterian Retirement Community and ministered in that capacity from 1986 until 1991. At the age of 75, he was officially registered as honorably retired. But that was just on paper, for he immediately turned to serve as associate pastor at the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Lancaster, Pa., 1998-1999, then again as an interim chaplain at Quarryville, 1999-2000.Malkus took up his last pastorate at the age of 84 and again served as associate pastor at the Westminster church of Lancaster from 2000 to 2002.