George Muller

Müller ran orphanages in Bristol that housed more than ten thousand children across sixty years, and the method was the thing people argued about: he refused to ask anybody for money, ever, and would not borrow, holding that what was needed would arrive if it was needed. He published the accounts every year so the claim could be checked, which is why the story survived scrutiny. Born in Prussia in 1805, he spent his youth stealing and was in a debtors' jail at sixteen before arriving in England as a missionary candidate. Answers to Prayer and the autobiography are essentially the diary, day by day, of money coming in and going straight out again. He preached across Europe and beyond into his eighties. He died in Bristol in 1898.