appointed parting place; he grasped my hand firmly for a

his shoulders. His lips kept moving in silent prayers for me;

and his tears fell fast when our eyes met each other in looks

for which all speech was vain! We halted on reaching the

appointed parting place; he grasped my hand firmly for a

minute in silence, and then solemnly and affectionately said:

“God bless you, my son! Your father’s God prosper you,

and keep you from all evil!”

Unable to say more, his lips kept moving in silent prayer;

in tears we embraced, and parted. I ran off as fast as I

could; and, when about to turn a corner in the road where

he would lose sight of me, I looked back and saw him still

standing with head uncovered where I had left him—gazing

after me. Waving my hat in adieu, I rounded the corner

and out of sight in an instant. But my heart was too full

and sore to carry me further, so I darted into the side of

the road and wept for a time. Then, rising up cautiously, I

climbed the dike to see if he yet stood where I had left him;

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and just at that moment I caught a glimpse of him climbing

the dyke and looking out for me! He did not see me, and

after he gazed eagerly in my direction for a while, he got

down, set his face toward home, and began to return—his

head still uncovered, and his heart, I felt sure, still rising in

prayers for me. I watched through blinding tears, till his

form faded from my gaze; and then, hastening on my way,

vowed deeply and oft, by the help of God, to live and act so

as never to grieve or dishonor such a father and mother as

he had given me.47

The impact of his father’s faith and prayer and love and discipline

was immeasurable.

His Courage Came from a Deep Sense of

Divine Calling

Before he was twelve years old, Paton says, “I had given my

soul to God, and was resolved to aim at being a missionary of

the cross, or a minister of the gospel.”48 As he came to the end

of his studies in divinity in Glasgow at the age of thirty-two, he

says, “I continually heard . . . the wail of the perishing Heathen

in the South Seas; and I saw that few were caring for them, while

I well knew that many would be ready to take up my work in

Calton.”49 “The Lord kept saying within me, ‘Since none better

qualified can be got, rise and offer yourself!’”

When he was criticized for leaving a fruitful ministry, one

crucial event sealed his sense of calling, namely, a word from his

parents:

47Ibid., pp. 25–26.

48Ibid. p. 21.

49Ibid., p. 52.

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Heretofore we feared to bias you, but now we must tell

you why we praise God for the decision to which you have

been led. Your father’s heart was set upon being a Minister,

but other claims forced him to give it up. When you were

given to them, your father and mother laid you upon the

altar, their first-born, to be consecrated, if God saw fit, as

a Missionary of the Cross; and it has been their constant

prayer that you might be prepared, qualified, and led to

this very decision; and we pray with all our heart that the

Lord may accept your offering, long spare you, and give you

many souls from the Heathen World for your hire.50

In response to that, Paton wrote, “From that moment, every doubt

as to my path of duty forever vanished. I saw the hand of God very

visibly, not only preparing me before, but now leading me to, the

Foreign Mission field.”51 That sense of duty and calling bred in

him an undaunted courage that would never look back.

His Courage Came from a Sense of Holy Heritage

in His Church

Paton was part of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland,

one of the oldest but smallest Protestant churches. It traced its

lineage back to the Scottish Covenanters and had in it a strong

sense of valor for the cause of the great truths of the Reformation.

Paton once wrote, “I am more proud that the blood of Martyrs is

in my veins, and their truths in my heart, than other men can be

of noble pedigree or royal names.”52

The truths he has in mind are the robust doctrines of

Calvinism. He said in his Autobiography, “I am by conviction

50Ibid., p. 57.

51Ibid.

52Ibid., p. 280.

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a strong Calvinist.”53 For him this meant, as we have seen, a

strong confidence that God can and will change the hearts of the

most unlikely people. His Reformed doctrine of regeneration was

crucial here in maintaining his courage in the face of humanly

impossible odds. Commenting on the conversion of one native,

he said, “Regeneration is the sole work of the Holy Spirit in the

human heart and soul, and is in every case one and the same.

Conversion, on the other hand, bringing into play the action also

of the human will, is never absolutely the same perhaps in even

two souls.”54 “Oh, Jesus! To Thee alone be all the glory. Thou

hast the key to unlock every heart that Thou has created.”55

In other words, Calvinism, contrary to all misrepresentation,

was not a hindrance to missions but the hope of missions for John

Paton and hundreds of other missionaries like him. So it’s not

surprising what the next source of courage was for Paton.

His Courage Came from His Confidence in the

Sovereignty of God Controlling All Adversities

We have already seen the words he wrote over his wife’s and child’s

grave: “Feeling immovably assured that my God and father was

too wise and loving to err in anything that he does or permits, I

looked up to the Lord for help, and struggled on in His work.”56

Over and over this faith sustained him in the most threatening

and frightening situations. As he was trying to escape from Tanna at

the end of four years of dangers, he and Abraham were surrounded by

raging natives who kept urging each other to strike the first blow.

53Ibid., p. 195.

54Ibid., p. 372.

55Ibid., p. 373.

56Ibid., p. 85.

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My heart rose up to the Lord Jesus; I saw Him watching all

the scene. My peace came back to me like a wave from God.

I realized that I was immortal till my Master’s work with

me was done. The assurance came to me, as if a voice out

of Heaven had spoken, that not a musket would be fired to

wound us, not a club prevail to strike us, not a spear leave

the hand in which it was held vibrating to be thrown, not an

arrow leave the bow, or a killing stone the fingers, without

the permission of Jesus Christ, whose is all power in Heaven

and on Earth. He rules all Nature, animate and inanimate,

and restrains even the Savage of the South Seas.57

After getting away with his life and losing everything that he

had on earth (“my little earthly All”), instead of despairing or

pouting or being paralyzed with self-pity, he moved forward

expecting to see God’s good purpose in time—which he saw in

the ministry that opened to him, first of missions mobilization

and then of work on Aniwa. “Often since have I thought that

the Lord stripped me thus bare of all these interests, that I might

with undistracted mind devote my entire energy to the special

work soon to be carved out for me, and of which at this moment

neither I nor anyone had ever dreamed.”58

Year after year, “disappointments and successes were strangely

intermingled”59 in his life. There was no long period of time, it

seems, where life was very easy. But we would distort the man

if we said there were no low moments. “I felt so disappointed,

so miserable,” he wrote about one period of his travels, “that I

wished I had been in my grave with my dear departed and my

brethren on the Islands who had fallen around me.”60 It was

57Ibid., p. 207.

58Ibid., p. 220.

59Ibid., p. 247.

60Ibid., p. 232.

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not always easy after the words “The Lord has taken away” to

add the words “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” But the way

out was clear, and he used it again and again. When the mission

ship, Dayspring, that he had worked so hard to fund was sunk

in a storm, he wrote:

Whatever trials have befallen me in my Earthly Pilgrimage,

I have never had the trial of doubting that perhaps, after

all, Jesus had made some mistake. No! my blessed Lord

Jesus makes no mistakes! When we see all His meaning,

we shall then understand, what now we can only trust-

fully believe that all is well—best for us, best for the cause

most dear to us, best for the good of others and the glory

of God.61

Near the end of his life, at age seventy-nine, he was back on his

beloved island Aniwa.

I cannot visit the villages, or go among the people and the

sick, as formerly, owing to an increased feebleness in my

legs and lumbago. Which is painful for the last fortnight.

But all is as our Master sends it, and we submit thankfully,

as all is nothing to what we deserve; and adored be our

God. We have in our dear Lord Jesus [grace] for peace and

joy in all circumstances.62

His Courage Came Through a Certain Kind

of Praying

The prayer that made all the difference was the kind that submit-

ted to God’s sovereign wisdom. How do you claim the promises

61Ibid., p. 488.

62Bell, John G. Paton, p. 238.

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of God for protection when your wife was equally faithful but,

rather than being protected, died? How do you bank on God’s

care when the Gordons on Erromanga were equally trusting in

God’s care and were martyred?63 Paton had learned the answer

to this question from listening to his mother pray, even before he

learned the theology that supports it.

When the potato crop failed in Scotland, Mrs. Paton said

to her children, “O my children, love your Heavenly Father, tell

Him in faith and prayer all your needs, and He will supply your

wants so far as it shall be for your good and His glory.”64 This is

what Paton trusted God for in claiming the promises: God would

supply all his needs insofar as this would be for Paton’s good and

for God’s glory.

His courage, when he was surrounded by armed natives,

came through a kind of praying that claimed the promises under

the overarching submission to God’s wisdom as to what would

work most for God’s glory and his good.

I . . . assured them that I was not afraid to die, for at death

my Savior would take me to be with Himself in Heaven, and

to be far happier than I had ever been on Earth. I then lifted

up my hands and eyes to the Heavens, and prayed aloud for

63Mr. and Mrs. G. N. Gordon were killed on Erromanga on May 20, 1861. They had labored

four years on the island when they walked into an ambush.

“A blow was aimed at him with a tomahawk, which he caught; the other man struck,

but his weapon was also caught. One of the tomahawks was then wrenched out of his

grasp. Next moment, a blow on the spine laid the dear Missionary low, and a second

on the neck almost severed the head from the body.” Mrs. Gordon came running to see

the noise and “Ouben slipped stealthily behind here, sank his tomahawk into her back

and with another blow almost severed her head! This was the fate of those two devoted

servants of the Lord; loving in their lives and in their deaths not divided, their spirits,

wearing the crown of martyrdom, entered Glory together, to be welcomed by Williams

and Harris, whose blood was shed near the same now hallowed spot for the name and

the cause of Jesus.” ( Autobiography, p. 166)

64 Autobiography, p. 22. Compare this way of praying with the way Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego faced the fiery furnace in Daniel 3:17–18: “If this be so, our God whom we serve

is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O

king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”

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Jesus . . . either to protect me or to take me home to Glory

as He saw to be for the best.65

That was how he prayed again and again: “Protect me or . . .

take me home to Glory as you see to be for the best.” He knew

that Jesus had promised suffering and martyrdom to some of his

servants (Luke 11:49; 21:12–18). So the promises he claimed

were both: either protect me, or take me home in a way that will

glorify you and do good for others.66

After one harrowing journey, he wrote, “Had it not been for the

assurance that . . . in every path of duty He would carry me through

or dispose of me therein for His glory, I could never have undertaken

either journey.”67 The peace God gave him in these crises was not

the peace of sure escape but the peace that God is good and wise and

omnipotent and will do all things well. “We felt that God was near,

and omnipotent to do what seemed best in his sight.”68

Did ever mother run more quickly to protect her crying child

in danger’s hour, than the Lord Jesus hastens to answer believ-

ing prayer and send help to His servants in His own good time

and way, so far as it shall be for His glory and their good? 69

65Ibid., p. 164.

66This meant that, in one sense, life was not simple. If God may rescue us for his glory or

let us be killed for his glory, which way to turn in self-preservation is not an easy question to answer.

To know what was best to be done, in such trying circumstances, was an abiding perplexity. To have left altogether, when so surrounded by perils and enemies, at first

seemed the wisest course, and was the repeated advice of many friends. But again, I had

acquired the language, and had gained a considerable influence amongst the Natives,

and there were a number warmly attached both to myself and to the Worship. To have

left would have been to lose all, which to me was heart-rending; therefore, risking all

with Jesus, I held on while the hope of being spared longer had not absolutely and

entirely vanished. (Ibid., p. 173)

67Ibid., p. 148. “Often have I seized the pointed barrel and directed it upwards, or, pleading with my assailant, uncapped his musket in the struggle. At other times, nothing could be said, nothing done, but stand still in silent prayer, asking to protect us or to prepare us for going home to His glory. He fulfilled His own promise—‘I will not fail thee nor forsake thee’” (ibid., pp. 329–330).

68Ibid., p. 197.

69Ibid., p. 164, emphasis added. Paton taught his helpers to pray this way as well, and we hear the same faith and prayer in Abraham, his trustworthy Aneityumese servant:

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His Courage Came from a Certain Kind of Joy

The joy that made all the difference was the joy in God that he

knew could not be surpassed anywhere in any other ministry.

Oh that the pleasure-seeking men and women of the world

could only taste and feel the real joy of those who know and

love the true God—a heritage which the world . . . cannot

give to them, but which the poorest and humblest followers

of Jesus inherit and enjoy!70

My heart often says within itself—when, when will men’s

eyes at home be opened? When will the rich and the

learned . . . renounce their shallow frivolities, and go to live

amongst the poor, the ignorant, the outcast, and the lost,

and write their eternal fame on the souls by them blessed

and brought to the Savior? Those who have tasted this high-

est joy, “The joy of the Lord,” will never again ask— Is Life

worth living? 71

Near the end of his life, he wrote about the joy that carried him

forward, and about his hope that his own children would under-

take the same mission and find the same joy:

Let me record my immovable conviction that this is the

noblest service in which any human being can spend or be

O Lord, our Heavenly Father, they have murdered Thy servants on Erromanga.

They have banished the Aneityumese from dark Tanna. And now they want to kill

Missi Paton and me.

Our great King, protect us, and make their hearts soft and sweet to Thy Worship.

Or, if they are permitted to kill us, do not Thou hate us, but wash us in the blood of

Thy dear Son Jesus Christ. . . . Make us two and all Thy servants strong for Thee and

for Thy Worship; and if they kill us now, let us die together in Thy good work, like Thy

servants Missi Gordon the man and Missi Gordon the woman. (Ibid., p. 171)

70Ibid., p. 78.

71He goes on to expand the ground of this joy:

Life, any life, would be well spent, under any conceivable conditions, in bringing one

human soul to know and love and serve God and His Son, and thereby securing for

yourself at least one temple where your name and memory would be held for ever and

for ever in affectionate praise—a regenerated Heart in heaven. That fame will prove

immortal, when all the poems and monuments and pyramids of Earth have gone into

dust. (Ibid., pp. 411–412)

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spent; and that, if God gave me back my life to be lived over

again, I would without one quiver of hesitation lay it on

the altar to Christ, that He might use it as before in similar

ministries of love, especially amongst those who have never

yet heard the Name of Jesus. Nothing that has been endured,

and nothing that can now befall me, makes me tremble—on

the contrary, I deeply rejoice—when I breathe the prayer that

it may please the blessed Lord to turn the hearts of all my

children to the Mission Field and that He may open up their

way and make it their pride and joy to live and die in carrying

Jesus and His Gospel into the heart of the Heathen World!72

Where did the joy of John G. Paton most deeply repose? The

answer, it seems, is that it rested most deeply in the experience

of personal communion with Jesus Christ mediated through

the promise “Behold, I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20).

Therefore, the final source of his courage I would mention is this

precious fellowship, especially in danger.

His Courage Came from Personal Fellowship

with Jesus

The sweetness of this fellowship reached its highest and deepest

point when it was given through the promise of Christ’s word to

an endangered missionary hovering on the brink of eternity.

The promise had been given precisely in the context of the Great

Commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. . . .

And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew

28:19–20). More than any other promise, this one brought Jesus

close and real to John Paton in all his dangers. After the measles epi-

demic that killed thousands on the islands, and for which the mis-

72Ibid., p. 444, emphasis added.

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sionaries were blamed, he wrote, “During the crisis, I felt generally

calm, and firm of soul, standing erect and with my whole weight

on the promise ‘Lo! I am with you always.’ Precious promise! How

often I adore Jesus for it, and rejoice in it! Blessed be his name.”73

The power this promise had to make Christ real to Paton in

hours of crisis was unlike any other Scripture or prayer:

Without that abiding consciousness of the presence and

power of my dear Lord and Savior, nothing else in all the

world could have preserved me from losing my reason

and perishing miserably. In His words, “Lo, I am with you

always, even unto the end of the world,” became to me so

real that it would not have startled me to behold Him, as

Stephen did, gazing down upon the scene. I felt His support-

ing power. . . . It is the sober truth, and it comes back to me

sweetly after 20 years, that I had my nearest and dearest

glimpses of the face and smiles of my blessed Lord in those

dread moments when musket, club, or spear was being lev-

eled at my life.74 Oh the bliss of living and enduring, as see-

ing “Him who is invisible”!75

One of the most powerful paragraphs in his Autobiography

describes his experience of hiding in a tree, at the mercy of an

unreliable chief, as hundreds of angry natives hunted him for his

life. What he experienced there was the deepest source of Paton’s

joy and courage. In fact, I would dare to say that to share this

experience and call others to enjoy it was the reason that he wrote

the story of his life.76

73Ibid., p. 154.

74“My constant custom was, in order to prevent war, to run right in between the contending

parties. My faith enabled me to grasp and realize the promise, ‘Lo, I am with you alway.’ In Jesus I felt invulnerable and immortal, so long as I was doing his work. And I can truly say, that these were the moments when I felt my Savior to be most truly and sensibly present, inspiring and empowering me.” Ibid., p. 342.

75Ibid., p. 117.

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He began his Autobiography with the words, “What I write

here is for the glory of God.”77 That is true. But God gets glory

when his Son is exalted. And his Son is exalted when we cherish

him above all things, especially when “all things” are about to be

snatched from us, including our life on earth. That is what this

story is about. Here is the story of Paton in the tree.

Being entirely at the mercy of such doubtful and vacillating

friends, I, though perplexed, felt it best to obey. I climbed into

the tree and was left there alone in the bush. The hours I spent

there live all before me as if it were but of yesterday. I heard the

frequent discharging of muskets, and the yells of the Savages.

Yet I sat there among the branches, as safe as in the arms of

Jesus. Never, in all my sorrows, did my Lord draw nearer to

me, and speak more soothingly in my soul, than when the

moonlight flickered among those chestnut leaves, and the night

air played on my throbbing brow, as I told all my heart to Jesus.

Alone, yet not alone! If it be to glorify my God, I will not grudge

to spend many nights alone in such a tree, to feel again my

Savior’s spiritual presence, to enjoy His consoling fellowship. If

thus thrown back upon your own soul, alone, all alone, in the

midnight, in the bush, in the very embrace of death itself, have

you a Friend that will not fail you then?78

“Have You a Friend That Will Not Fail You?”

This is the question that Paton leaves in our ears. Jesus came into

the world to befriend sinners. His enemies accused him of this

and spoke more truly than they knew. They called him “a glutton

and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!” (Matthew

of man—blessed communion with the Father of our Spirits, through gracious union with the

Lord Jesus Christ.” Ibid., p. 359.

77Ibid., p. 2.

78Ibid., p. 200.

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11:19). But Jesus knew who needed the physician—the sick. And

if they would have him heal the deep disease of their sin, he would

have them as his friend. “No longer do I call you servants, for the

servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called

you friends” (John 15:15).

The features of friendship that Jesus focused on in this rela-

tionship were, first, that he laid down his life to save his friends.

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life

for his friends” (John 15:13); and, second, friends of the Master

know what he is doing (v. 15). They are part of the inner ring of the

Great Planner. This means that the friendship of Jesus is woven into

his mission. His friends understand what he is up to in the world.

And they not only understand, they agree. They are on board

with the plan. Friends don’t just sit and look at each other. They

link arms and pursue a common cause. “You are my friends if you

do what I command you” (v. 14). If Jesus is the Supreme Lord as

well as the Best Friend, it cannot be otherwise. Servants do what

the master says because they have to. Friends do it because they

want to. And they want to because they have been taken into the

council chamber. They have been shown the greatness of the plan

and the greatness of the victory. They are thrilled to be with Jesus

in this great global mission.

It will be a costly mission. There will be afflictions all along

the way. That is the appointed path to triumph. So Paton leaves

us with his question: “If thus thrown back upon your own soul,

alone, all alone, in the midnight, in the bush, in the very embrace

of death itself, have you a Friend that will not fail you then?”

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a d o n i r a m J u d s o n

“How Few There Are Who Die So Hard”:

The Cost of Bringing Christ to Burma

The story of Adoniram Judson’s losses is almost overwhelming.

Just when you think the last one was the worst, and he could

endure no more, another comes. In fact, it would be overwhelm-

ing if we could not see it all from God’s long historical view.

The seed that died a thousand times has given life in Myanmar

(Burma) to an extraordinary movement to Christ.

The Fruit of His Affliction

When Adoniram Judson entered Burma in July 1813, it was

a hostile and utterly unreached place. William Carey had told

Judson in India a few months earlier not to go there. Today it

probably would have been considered a closed country—with

anarchic despotism, fierce war with Siam, enemy raids, constant

rebellion, and no religious toleration. All the previous missionar-

ies had died or left.1

But Judson went there with his twenty-three-year-old wife of

seventeen months. He was twenty-four years old, and he worked

there for thirty-eight years until his death at age sixty-one, with

1Courtney Anderson, To the Golden Shore: The Life of Adoniram Judson (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1956), p. 134.

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one trip home to New England after thirty-three years. The price

he paid was immense. He was a seed that fell into the ground

and died again and again. And the fruit God gave is celebrated

even in scholarly works like David Barrett’s World Christian

Encyclopedia: “The largest Christian force in Burma is the Burma

Baptist Convention, which owes its origin to the pioneering

activity of the American Baptist missionary Adoniram Judson.”2

At the turn from the second to the third millennium, Patrick

Johnstone estimated the Myanmar (Burma’s new name) Baptist

Convention to be 3,700 congregations with 617,781 members

and 1,900,000 affiliates3—the fruit of this dead seed.

Of course, there were others besides Adoniram Judson—

hundreds of others over time. They too came and gave away

their lives. Many of them died much younger than Judson. They

only serve to make the point. The astonishing fruit in Myanmar

today has grown in the soil of the suffering and death of many

missionaries, especially Adoniram Judson.

One question that moves my study and prayer and writing of

this book is: If Christ delays his return another 200 years—a mere

fraction of a day in his reckoning—which of us who are alive

today will have suffered and died so that the triumphs of grace

will be told about one of the 3,500 people groups who are in the

same condition today that the Karen, Chin, Kachin, and Burmese

were in 1813? Who will labor so long and so hard and so perse-

veringly that in 200 years there will be two million Christians in

many of the 10/40-window peoples who at that time will scarcely

be able to recall their Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist roots?

2David Barrett, ed., World Christian Encyclopedia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 202.

3Patrick Johnstone and Jason Mandryk, eds., Operation World (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2001), p. 462.

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May God use the life of Adoniram Judson to stir many of us

to give our lives to this great cause!

Deep Faith in the Sovereignty of God

Adoniram Judson lived on the great truths of God’s sovereign

grace. He would have been known as a Calvinist, but not the

kind that wears his Calvinism on his sleeve.4 You can see the

evidence for his Reformed convictions in Thomas J. Nettles’s By

His Grace and for His Glory.5

His father, who was a pastor of the Third Congregational

Church of Plymouth, Massachusetts, had studied with Jonathan

Edwards’s student Joseph Bellamy. Five years after his son had

left for Asia, the father became convinced of the Baptist way

and risked his livelihood by resigning from his Congregational

church. Adoniram, as we will see, received from his father both

the Reformed theology and the courage to put his life on the line

rather than compromise his beliefs.

The importance this has for our purpose here is to stress that

this deep confidence in God’s overarching providence through all

calamity and misery sustained him to the end. He said, “If I had

not felt certain that every additional trial was ordered by infi-

nite love and mercy, I could not have survived my accumulated

sufferings.”6 He loved what he called “the Doctrines of Grace.”

What he saw in them was the power for sacrifice and self-denial,

not the ammunition for argument. “That faith which consists

4Erroll Hulse, Adoniram Judson and the Missionary Call (Leeds, UK: Reformation Today Trust, 1996), p. 48. “When we come to the doctrines of grace we find that he believed them

implicitly rather than by explicit exposition.”

5Thomas J. Nettles, By His Grace and for His Glory (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1986), pp.

148–154.

6Quoted in Eugene Myers Harrison, Giants of the Missionary Trail (Chicago: Scripture Press Foundation, 1954), p. 73.

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merely in a correct belief of the Doctrines of Grace and prompts

no self denial . . . is no faith at all.”7

This was the unshakable confidence of all three of his wives,

Ann (also called Nancy), Sarah, and Emily. For example, Ann,

who married Judson on February 5, 1812, and left with him on

the boat for Asia on February 19 at age twenty-three, bore three

children to Adoniram. All of them died. The first baby, name-

less, was born dead just as they sailed from India to Burma. The

second child, Roger Williams Judson, lived seventeen months and

died. The third, Maria Elizabeth Butterworth Judson, lived to be

two and outlived her mother by six months and then died.

When her second child died, Ann Judson wrote:

Our hearts were bound up with this child; we felt he was

our earthly all, our only source of innocent recreation in this

heathen land. But God saw it was necessary to remind us of

our error, and to strip us of our only little all. O, may it not

be vain that he has done it. May we so improve it that he

will stay his hand and say “It is enough.”8

In other words, what sustained this man and his three wives was

a rock-solid confidence that God is sovereign and God is good.

And all things come from his hand for the good—sometimes the

incredibly painful good—of his children.

The Roots of Confidence in God’s Good Providence

There are roots of this missionary-sustaining confidence in God’s

goodness and providence. One, as we have seen, is the legacy that

his father left him. That’s what his father believed, and that’s what

7Nettles, By His Grace and for His Glory, p. 154.

8Anderson, To the Golden Shore, p. 193.

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he lived. A second source of this confidence was the Bible. Judson

was a lover of the word of God. The main legacy of his thirty-

eight years in Burma was a complete translation of the Bible into

Burmese and a dictionary that all the later missionaries could use.

Once when a Buddhist teacher said that he could not believe

that Christ suffered the death of the cross because no king allows

his son such indignity, Judson responded,

Therefore you are not a disciple of Christ. A true disciple

inquires not whether a fact is agreeable to his own reason,

but whether it is in the book. His pride has yielded to the

divine testimony. Teacher, your pride is still unbroken.

Break down your pride, and yield to the word of God.9

The Bible was a friend closer and more lasting than his wife.

When the bottom fell out some years later and he struggled

with the darkest spiritual depression, he disappeared into the

tiger-infested jungle to live alone. But he did not leave his Bible

behind. This unbreakable attachment to the Bible saved his life

and defined the final outcome.

A Remarkable Conversion

A third source of his confidence in the goodness and detailed

providence of God was the way God saved him. It is a remarkable

story. He was a brilliant boy. His mother taught him to read in

one week when he was three to surprise his father when he came

home from a trip.10 He read his father a chapter from the Bible

to surprise him.

9Ibid., p. 240.

10Ibid., p. 14.

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When he was sixteen he entered Brown University as a sopho-

more and graduated at the top of his class three years later in

1807. What his godly parents didn’t know was that Adoniram

was being lured away from the faith by a fellow student named

Jacob Eames, who was a deist. By the time Judson was finished,

he had no Christian faith. He kept this concealed from his parents

until his twentieth birthday, August 9, 1808, when he broke their

hearts with his announcement that he had no faith and that he

intended to go to New York and learn to write for the theater—

which he did six days later, riding on a horse his father gave him

as part of his inheritance.

It didn’t prove to be the life of his dreams. He attached him-

self to some strolling players and, as he said later, lived “a reck-

less, vagabond life, finding lodgings where he could, and bilking

the landlord where he found opportunity.”11 His disgust with

what he found there was the beginning of several remarkable

providences.

He went to visit his Uncle Ephraim in Sheffield but found

there instead “a pious young man” who stunned him by being

firm in his Christian convictions without being “austere and

dictatorial.”12 Strange that he should find this young man there

instead of his uncle.

The next night he stayed in a small village inn where he had

never been before. The innkeeper apologized that his sleep might

be interrupted because there was a man critically ill in the next

room. Through the night he heard comings and goings and low

voices and groans and gasps. It bothered him to think that the

man next to him may not be prepared to die. He wondered about

11Ibid., p. 193.

12Ibid., p. 42.

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himself and had terrible thoughts of his own dying. He felt fool-

ish because good deists weren’t supposed to have these struggles.

When he was leaving in the morning, he asked if the man next

door was better. “He is dead,” said the innkeeper. Judson was

struck with the finality of it all. On his way out he asked, “Do

you know who he was?” “Oh yes. Young man from the college

in Providence. Name was Eames, Jacob Eames.”13

Judson could hardly move. He stayed there for hours pon-

dering the death of his unbelieving friend. If Eames were right,

then this was a meaningless event. But Judson could not believe

it. “That hell should open in that country inn and snatch Jacob

Eames, his dearest friend and guide, from the next bed—this

could not, simply could not, be pure coincidence.”14 His conver-

sion was not immediate. But now it was sure that God was on

his trail—like the apostle Paul on the Damascus Road—and there

was no escape. Months of struggle were to follow.

The Path to Marriage

He entered Andover Seminary in October 1808 and on December 2

made solemn dedication of himself to God. The fire was burning

for missions at Andover and at Williams College. (The Haystack

Prayer Meeting had taken place in August 1806 near Williams

College, and two from there had come to Andover.)

On June 28, 1810, Judson and others presented themselves

to the Congregationalists for missionary service in the East. He

met Ann Hasseltine that same day and fell in love. After knowing

13Ibid., p. 44. The source of this story is oral reports from family members recorded in Francis Wayland, A Memoir of the Life and Labors of the Rev. Adoniram Judson, D.D., 2 vols.

(Boston: Phillips, Sampson, and Co., 1854), 1:24–25.

14Anderson, To the Golden Shore, p. 45.

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Ann for one month, he declared his intention to become a suitor

and wrote to her father the following letter:

I have now to ask, whether you can consent to part with

your daughter early next spring, to see her no more in this

world; whether you can consent to her departure, and her

subjection to the hardships and sufferings of missionary life;

whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of

the ocean, to the fatal influence of the southern climate of

India; to every kind of want and distress; to degradation,

insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death. Can you

consent to all this, for the sake of him who left his heavenly

home, and died for her and for you; for the sake of perish-

ing, immortal souls; for the sake of Zion, and the glory of

God? Can you consent to all this, in hope of soon meeting

your daughter in the world of glory, with the crown of righ-

teousness, brightened with the acclamations of praise which

shall redound to her Savior from heathens saved, through

her means, from eternal woe and despair?15

Her father, amazingly, said she could make up her own mind. She

wrote to her friend Lydia Kimball:

I feel willing, and expect, if nothing in Providence prevents,

to spend my days in this world in heathen lands. Yes, Lydia,

I have about come to the determination to give up all my

comforts and enjoyments here, sacrifice my affection to

relatives and friends, and go where God, in his Providence,

shall see fit to place me.16

Between this engagement and the marriage, Judson made a trip

to London to seek support from the London Missionary Society.

15Ibid., p. 83.

16Ibid., p. 84.

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Instead of support of that sort, he discovered the kind of support

he would need far more. The ship he was on, the British Packet,

was taken by a French ship, L’Invincible Napoleon, and Judson

was made prisoner with the crew. He was taken to Bayonne,

France, and put in prison.

In this helpless situation for a twenty-two-year-old American,

Judson learned of a kind of provision he would need again and

again in Burma. Amazingly, a man from Philadelphia snuck

Judson out of the prison by bribing the guards. He made his way

to London and made his futile effort to solicit the support of the

London Missionary Society. He left on June 18, 1811, and arrived

in New York August 7 from a journey that seemed pointless—

except for this: He always “regarded his detention in France as a

very important, and, indeed, necessary part of his preparation for

the duties which afterwards devolved upon him.”17

Adoniram and Ann were married six months later on February

5, 1812, and sailed for India fourteen days later with two other

couples and two single men18 divided among two ships, in case

one went down.

The Path to India and the Baptist Way

The voyage to India took 114 days. On the journey, Judson had

been studying the issue of baptism and was becoming convinced

from Scripture that his views on infant baptism were not biblical.

In India, he and Ann lived for a short time with William Carey. In

this context, Judson settled his views and became a Baptist. Ann

followed, as did one of the single missionary men, Luther Rice.

17Ibid., p. 93

18Luther Rice, Gordon Hall, Samuel and Harriet Newell, Samuel and Roxana Nott.

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This was a heart-wrenching and life-threatening decision at

several levels. Ann expressed the internal doctrinal and emotional

struggle for both of them:

I . . . must acknowledge that the face of Scripture does favor

the Baptist sentiments. I intend to persevere in examining

the subject. And [I] hope that I shall be disposed to embrace

the truth, whatever it may be. It is painfully mortifying

to my natural feelings, to think seriously of renouncing a

system which I have been taught from infancy to believe

and respect, and embrace one which I have been taught

to despise. O that the Spirit of God may enlighten and

direct my mind—may prevent my retaining an old error, or

embracing a new one!19

Moreover, they had been sent out by a Congregational board.

Their support would very likely not be continued. And perhaps

worst of all was that this change split the group of missionaries

who went out together. They loved each other, and as Ann said,

“We are perfectly united with our brethren in every other respect,

and are much attached to them.”20 But how would they plant

and structure a church when their views on baptism differed

so much? Ann captured the situation and the cost with these

words:

Thus, we are confirmed Baptists, not because we wanted to

be, but because truth compelled us to be. We have endeav-

ored to count the cost, and be prepared for the many severe

trials resulting from this change of sentiment. We anticipate

the loss of reputation, and of the affection and esteem of

many of our American friends. But the most trying circum-

19Anderson, To the Golden Shore, pp. 144–145.

20Ibid., p. 144.

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stances attending this change, and that which has caused us

most pain, is the separation which must take place between

us and our dear missionary associates. . . . We feel that we

are alone in the world, with no real friend but each other,

no one on whom we can depend but God.21

As with all events under God’s merciful providence, this painful

circumstance had some remarkably positive effects. The Judsons

and Rice knew that someone would need to go home to make

official the departure from the Congregational oversight and seek

support from the Baptists. Rice was single, and it made sense for

him to return. He entered New York harbor in September 1813.

From that time until he died in 1836, he became a stateside advo-

cate for Baptist Missions. He never returned to join the Judsons.

His labor gave cohesion to the Baptist movement in America and

gave support to Baptist missions abroad.22 His influence was

extraordinary.

The story would be very different for Adoniram and Ann

Judson. After a time in India, they chose to take the risks of ven-

turing to a new field. They arrived in Rangoon, Burma, on July 13,

1813.

The Beginnings of Their Sufferings

There began a lifelong battle in 108-degree heat with cholera,

malaria, dysentery, and unknown miseries that would take two

of Judson’s wives, seven of his thirteen children, and colleague

after colleague in death.

21Ibid., p. 146.

22Largely owing to the untiring advocacy by Luther Rice for Baptist unity and missions, Baptists met for their first national gathering at Philadelphia in May 1814. It was called “The General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in United States of America, for

Foreign Missions.”

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The first news from home arrived two years later on September 5,

1815. They had died to the nearness of family. Adoniram would

never see his mother or father or brother again. He would not

return for thirty-three years. “Missionary time” in those days was

very slow. It was a world of difference from today. If someone was

sick enough, the typical remedy to save the life was a sea voyage.

So a marriage or the entire work could be put on hold, so to speak,

for three to six months as someone was sent out to sea.

Or it could be longer. Eight years into their mission, Ann was

so ill that the only hope was a trip home. She sailed on August 21,

1821. She returned on December 5, 1823, two years and four

months later. And when she arrived, Judson had not heard from

her for ten months. If you are married and you love your wife,

and you are both called to the Great Work, this is the way you die

day after day for a greater good and a greater joy.

One of the joys was seeing some of God’s goodness in the

dark providences. For example, when Ann was recovering in

the States, she wrote a book titled An Account of the American

Baptist Mission to the Burman Empire. It had a huge influence

in stirring up recruits and prayer and finances. This would have

never happened without her sickness and two-year absence. But

most of the time, God’s wise purposes in their pain were not that

clear.

The Price of Breakthrough

Through all the struggles with sickness and interruptions, Judson

labored to learn the language, translate the Bible, and do evange-

lism on the streets. Six years after they arrived, they baptized their

first convert, Maung Nau. The sowing was long and hard, the

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reaping even harder for years. But in 1831, nineteen years after

their arrival, there was a new spirit in the land. Judson wrote:

The spirit of inquiry . . . is spreading everywhere, through

the whole length and breadth of the land.” [We have dis-

tributed] nearly 10,000 tracts, giving to none but those

who ask. I presume there have been 6000 applications at

the house. Some come two or three months’ journey, from

the borders of Siam and China—“Sir, we hear that there is

an eternal hell. We are afraid of it. Do give us a writing that

will tell us how to escape it.” Others, from the frontiers of

Kathay, 100 miles north of Ava—“Sir, we have seen a writ-

ing that tells about an eternal God. Are you the man that

gives away such writings? If so, pray give us one, for we

want to know the truth before we die.” Others, from the

interior of the country, where the name of Jesus Christ is a

little known—“Are you Jesus Christ’s man? Give us a writ-

ing that tells us about Jesus Christ.”23

But there had been an enormous price to pay between the first

convert in 1819 and this outpouring of God’s power in 1831.

In 1823, Adoniram and Ann moved from Rangoon to Ava,

the capital, about three hundred miles inland and further up the

Irrawaddy River. It was risky to be that near the despotic emperor.

In May of the next year, a British fleet arrived in Rangoon and

bombarded the harbor. All Westerners were immediately viewed

as spies, and Adoniram was dragged from his home. On June 8,

1824, he was put in prison. His feet were fettered, and at night

a long horizontal bamboo pole was lowered and passed between

the fettered legs and hoisted up until only the shoulder and heads

of the prisoners rested on the ground.

23Anderson, To the Golden Shore, pp. 398–399.

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Years later when his wife was dealing with deep darkness in

her own soul, he recounted to her that he kept his sanity dur-

ing the prison months partly by reciting repeatedly the lines of

William Cowper,

Beware of desp’rate steps; the darkest day

(Live till tomorrow) will have passed away.24

As horrible as the conditions were in prison, Judson was spared

his reason. He could still think through the possibilities of how

this would all work out for the advancement of the gospel. He

said to a fellow prisoner named Gouger,

Here I have been ten years preaching the gospel to timid

listeners who wish to embrace the truth but dare not, and

beseeching the Emperor to grant liberty of conscience to

his people but without success, and now when all human

means seem at an end, God opens the way by leading a

Christian nation to subdue the country. It is possible my

life will be spared; if so, with what ardor shall I pursue

my work! If not—his will be done. The door will be opened

for others who would do the work better.25

Ann was pregnant, but she walked the two miles daily to the

palace to plead that Judson was not a spy and that they should

have mercy. She got some relief for him so that he could come

out into a courtyard. The prisoners got vermin in their hair amid

the rotting food and had to be shaved bald. Almost a year later,

they were suddenly moved to a more distant village prison, gaunt,

with hollow eyes, dressed in rags, crippled from the torture. There

24William Cowper, “The Needless Alarm, Moral” (1794).

25Anderson, To the Golden Shore, pp. 333–334.

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the mosquitoes from the rice paddies almost drove them mad on

their bloody feet.

The daughter, Maria, had been born by now, and Ann was

almost as sick and thin as Adoniram, but she still pursued him,

with her baby, to take care of him as she could. Her milk dried

up, and the jailer had mercy on them and actually let Judson take

the baby each evening into the village fettered and beg for women

to nurse his baby.

On November 4, 1825, Judson was suddenly released. The

government needed him as a translator in negotiations with

Britain. The long ordeal was over—seventeen months in prison

and on the brink of death, with his wife sacrificing herself and

her baby to care for him as she could. Ann’s health was broken.

Eleven months later she died (October 24, 1826). And six months

later their daughter died (April 24, 1827).

When the Darkness Does Not Lift

While he was suffering in prison, Adoniram had been sustained

with hope and with a spirit deeply submissive to the providence

of God. We heard it in the words to his fellow prisoner: “It is pos-

sible my life will be spared; if so, with what ardor shall I pursue

my work! If not—his will be done. The door will be opened for

others who would do the work better.”26 But now that his wife

and daughter were gone, darkness began to settle over his soul.

Then in July, three months after the death of his little girl, he got

word that his father had died eight months earlier.

The psychological effect of these losses was devastating. Self-

doubt overtook his mind, and he wondered if he had become a

26Ibid., p. 334.

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missionary for ambition and fame, not humility and self-denying

love. He began to read Catholic mystics like Madame Guyon,

Fenelon, and Thomas à Kempis who led him into solitary asceti-

cism and various forms of self-mortification. He dropped his Old

Testament translation work, the love of his life, and retreated

more and more from people and from “anything that might con-

ceivably support pride or promote his pleasure.”27

He refused to eat outside the mission. He destroyed all letters

of commendation. He formally renounced the honorary Doctor

of Divinity that Brown University had given him in 1823 by writ-

ing a letter to the American Baptist Magazine. He gave all his pri-

vate wealth (about six thousand dollars) to the Baptist Board. He

asked that his salary be reduced by one quarter and promised to

give more to missions himself. In October 1828, he built a hut in

the jungle some distance from the Moulmein mission house and

moved in on October 24, 1828, the second anniversary of Ann’s

death, to live in total isolation.

He wrote in one letter home to Ann’s relatives, “My tears

flow at the same time over the forsaken grave of my dear love

and over the loathsome sepulcher of my own heart.”28 He had

a grave dug beside the hut and sat beside it contemplating the

stages of the body’s dissolution. He ordered all his letters in New

England destroyed. He refused to return a legal document his

sister needed unless his demand were carried out. He retreated for

forty days alone further into the tiger-infested jungle and wrote in

one letter that he felt utter spiritual desolation. “God is to me the

Great Unknown. I believe in him, but I find him not.”29

His brother Elnathan died May 8, 1829, at the age of thirty-

27Ibid., p. 387.

28Ibid., p. 388.

29Ibid., p. 391.

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101

five. Paradoxically, this proved the turning point of Judson’s recov-

ery, because he had reason to believe that the brother that he had

left in unbelief seventeen years earlier had died in faith. All through

the year of 1830, Adoniram was climbing out of his darkness.

Recall that it was 1831—the next year—when he experienced

the great outpouring of spiritual interest across the land. “The

spirit of inquiry . . . is spreading everywhere, through the whole

length and breadth of the land.”30 Is that a coincidence? Or is

that a God-ordained pattern for spiritual breakthrough in a dark

and unreached place?

A Finished Bible and a New Wife

Central to his missionary labors from the beginning, and espe-

cially at this juncture in his life, was the translation of the Bible.

Judson knew the original languages and worked from the Greek

and Hebrew. Four years after he arrived in Burma (May 1817),

he had completed the Gospel of Matthew, and then began work

on a Burmese dictionary.

Now in these years without a wife and children, he confined

himself to a small room built for the purpose of being able to

devote almost all his energy to refining the New Testament

translation and pressing on with the Old Testament. At the end

of 1832, three thousand copies of the completed New Testament

were printed. He finished the Old Testament on January 31,

1834, and wrote on that day:

Thanks be to God, I can now say I have attained. I have

knelt down before him, with the last leaf in my hand, and

30Ibid., p. 398.

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imploring his forgiveness for all the sins which have pol-

luted my efforts in this department, and his aid in future

efforts to remove the errors and imperfections which neces-

sarily cleave to the work, I have commended it to his mercy

and grace; I have dedicated it to his glory. May he make his

own inspired word, now complete in the Burman tongue,

the grand instrument of filling all Burma with songs of

praise to our great God and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.31

With the first draft of the Bible in Burmese complete, it seems

as though God smiled on these labors with the favor of a new

wife. Three years earlier, another missionary in Burma named

George Boardman had died. His widow Sarah stayed in Burma

and became a legend in her own right, pressing into the interior

with her baby George.32 In February 1834, Judson received a let-

ter from Sarah. On April 1, he left Moulmein for Tavoy resolved

to court her. On April 10, they were married. Judson wrote in

his journal about their two departed spouses and their new love:

Once more, farewell to thee, Boardman, and thy long-

cherished grave. May thy memory be ever fresh and fra-

grant, as the memory of the other beloved, whose beautiful,

death-marred form reposes at the foot of the hopia tree.

May we, the survivors, so live as to deserve and receive the

smiles of the sainted ones who have gone before us. And at

last may we all four be reunited before the throne of glory,

and form a peculiarly happy family, our mutual loves all

purified and consummated in the bright world of love.33

These were to be some of his happiest times in Burma, but not

without pain, and not to last much more than a decade. “She

31Ibid., p. 411.

32Ibid., p. 402.

33Ibid., p. 414.

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103

was a blue eyed beauty and he at 47 had a full head of hair with

no gray and was strong and healthy and was coming it seemed

into a season of peace and joy with Sarah.”34 She would bear

Adoniram eight children. Five of them would live beyond their

childhood.

After marriage to Sarah, Adoniram gave himself to the revi-

sion of the Old Testament and, for a season, preached seven

messages a week, one on Sunday morning and one on the other

evenings of the week.35 Sarah was a gifted partner and knew

the language better than any but Judson himself. She translated

Pilgrim’s Progress during these years before her untimely death.

Another Wife Given Up in Death

After bearing eight children in eleven years, Sarah became so ill

that the family decided to travel to America in the hopes that the

sea air would work healing. They set sail April 26, 1845, with

their three oldest children and the intention of leaving them for

education in the United States when they returned. They left

the three youngest behind, one of whom died before Judson

returned.

Judson had not been to America now for thirty-three years

and was only returning for the sake of his wife. As they rounded

the tip of Africa in September 1845, Sarah died. Adoniram

recorded her dying on the ship in tender detail:

Her mind became liable to wander; but a single word was

sufficient to recall and steady her recollection. On the eve-

ning of the 31st of August, she appeared to be drawing near

34Ibid., p. 417.

35Ibid., p. 418.

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to the end of her pilgrimage. The children took leave of her,

and retired to rest. I sat alone to the side of her bed during

the hours of the night, endeavoring to administer relief to

the distressed body, and consolation to the departing soul.

At 2 o’clock in the morning, wishing to obtain one more

token of recognition, I roused her attention, and said “Do

you still love the Savior?” “O, yes,” she replied, “I ever love

the Lord Jesus Christ.” I said again, “Do you still love me?”

She replied in the affirmative by a peculiar expression of

her own. “Then give me one more kiss,” and we exchanged

that token of love for the last time. Another hour passed,

life continued to recede, and she ceased to breathe. For

a moment I traced her upward flight, and thought of the

wonders which were opening to her view. I then closed her

sightless eyes, dressed her, for the last time, in the drapery

of death; and being quite exhausted with many sleepless

nights, I threw myself down and slept.36

The ship dropped anchor at St. Helena Island long enough to

dig a grave and bury a wife and mother and then sail on. This

time Adoniram did not descend into the depths of depression as

before. He had his children. But even more, his sufferings had

disengaged him from hoping for too much in this world. He was

learning how to “hate his life” in this world (John 12:25) without

bitterness or depression.

He had one passion: to return and give his life for Burma. So

he planned for his stay in the States to be just long enough to get

his children settled and find a ship back. All that was left of the

life he knew in New England was his sister. She had kept his room

exactly as it had been thirty-three years earlier and would keep it

that way to the day she died.

36Ibid., p. 440.

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105

He landed Wednesday, October 15, 1845. His first wife’s

book An Account of the American Baptist Mission to the Burman

Empire and the publishing of the Memoir of Mrs. Ann Judson by

James Knowles in 1829 had been read by hundreds of thousands.

Adoniram Judson was a celebrity. Countless parents had named

their children after him. He had been the topic of thousands of

sermons. His homecoming was a sensation.

God Planned Another Marriage, But Not a Long One

Judson’s stay in the States did not go according to plan. To

everyone’s amazement, he fell in love a third time, this time with

Emily Chubbuck, and married her on June 2, 1846. She was

twenty-nine; he was fifty-seven. She was a famous writer and

left her fame and writing career to go with Judson to Burma.37

They arrived in November 1846. And God gave them four of the

happiest years that either of them had ever known. On their first

anniversary (June 2, 1847), she wrote,

It has been far the happiest year of my life; and, what is in

my eyes still more important, my husband says it has been

among the happiest of his. . . . I never met with any man

who could talk so well, day after day, on every subject, reli-

gious, literary, scientific, political, and—nice baby-talk.38

They had one child. Things looked bright, but then the old sick-

nesses attacked Adoniram one last time. The only hope was to

send the desperately ill Judson on a voyage. On April 3, 1850,

37Emily’s pen name was Fanny Forester. She had “skyrocketed to literary fame” with a chil-

dren’s book called Charles Linn and another book, Trippings in Author Land. When Judson met her he said, “How can you reconcile it with your conscience to employ such noble talents in writing so little useful and spiritual as those sketches I read?” He resolved that she should write Sarah’s memoir and that she should be his next wife. Ibid., p. 454.

38Ibid., p. 391.

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Filling Up the AFFlictions oF christ

they carried Adoniram onto The Aristide Marie bound for the

Isle of France with one friend, Thomas Ranney, to care for him.

In his misery, he would be roused from time to time by terrible

pain ending in vomiting. One of his last sentences was, “How few

there are who . . . who die so hard!”39

At 4:15 on Friday afternoon, April 12, 1850, Adoniram

Judson died at sea, away from all his family and the Burmese

church. That evening the ship hove to.

The crew assembled quietly. The larboard port was opened.

There were no prayers. . . . The captain gave the order. The

coffin slid through the port into the night. The location was

latitude 13 degrees North, longitude 93 degrees East, almost

in the eastward shadow of the Andaman Islands, and only

a few hundred miles west of the mountains of Burma. The

Aristide Marie sailed on toward the Isle of France.40

Ten days later, Emily gave birth to their second child who died at

birth. She learned four months later that her husband was dead.

She returned to New England that next January and died of

tuberculosis three years later at the age of thirty-seven.

The Burmese Bible was done. The dictionary was done.

Hundreds of converts were leading the church. And today there

are about 3,700 congregations of Baptists in Myanmar who trace

their origin to this man’s labors of love.

A Plea to Be a Part of What Judson and Christ Died For

Life is fleeting. In a very short time, we will all give an account

before Jesus Christ, not only as to how well we have fulfilled our

39Ibid., p. 504.

40Ibid., p. 505.

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107

vocations, but how well we have obeyed the command to make

disciples of all nations.

Many of the peoples of the world are without any indigenous

Christian movement today. Christ is not enthroned there, his

grace is unknown there, and people are perishing with no access

to the gospel. Most of these hopeless peoples do not want fol-

lowers of Jesus to come. At least they think they don’t. They are

hostile to Christian missions. Today this is the final frontier. And

the Lord still says, “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the

midst of wolves. . . . [S]ome of you they will put to death. You will

be hated by all for my name’s sake. But not a hair of your head

will perish” (Matthew 10:16; Luke 21:16–18).

Are you sure that God wants you to keep doing what you are

doing? For most of you, he probably does. Your calling is radical

obedience for the glory of Christ right where you are. But for many

of you, the stories in this book are among a hundred things God is

using to loosen your roots and plant you in another place. Some of

you he is calling to fill up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ,

to fall like a grain of wheat into some distant ground and die, to

hate your life in this world and so to keep it forever and bear much

fruit. Judson wrote to missionary candidates in 1832:

Bear in mind, that a large proportion of those who come out

on a mission to the East die within five years after leaving

their native land. Walk softly, therefore; death is narrowly

watching your steps.41

The question is not whether we will die, but whether we will die

in a way that bears much fruit.

41Adoniram Judson, “Advice to Missionary Candidates,” Maulmain, June 25, 1832, http://

www.wholesomewords.org/missions/bjudson4.html; accessed 05-21-08.

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C o n C l u s i o n

T h i s m o m e n Ta ry a f f l i C T i o n

f o r e T e r n a l G l o ry

The position we are in at the beginning of the twenty-first cen-

tury is one that cries out for tremendous missionary effort and

great missionary sacrifice. Patrick Johnstone writes in Operation

World that only in the 1990s did we get a reasonably complete

listing of the world’s peoples. For the first time, we can see clearly

what is left to be done.

There are about 12,000 ethnolinguistic1 peoples in the world.

About 3,500 of these peoples have, on average, 1.2 percent

Christian populations—about twenty million of the 1.7 billion

people in these groups, using the broadest, nominal definition of

Christian.2 Most of these least reached 3,500 peoples are in the

10/40 window3 and are religiously unsympathetic to Christian

missions. That means that we—the body of Christ, from the

West and from the Global South4—must go to these peoples with

1The term ethnolinguistic is used to designate people groups categorized by ethnicity and language, in distinction from the term geopolitical that has reference to peoples categorized according to political and geographic boundaries.

2Patrick Johnstone, Jason Mandryk, eds., Operation World (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2001), pp. 15–16.

3A term representing a huge swathe of territory from the west coast of Africa to the eastern edge of south Asia and from 10 degrees north to 40 degrees north. You can see a map of the

region and keep up with the ever-changing picture of unreached peoples at http://www.joshua

project.net/10-40-window.php.

4 Global South is a relatively new term that tries to capture the reality that a map of the “sta-tistical center of gravity of global Christianity shows that center moving steadily southward, from a point in northern Italy in 1800, to central Spain in 1900, to Morocco by 1970, and to a point near Timbuktu [in Mali, West Africa] today [2006]. The Southward trajectory will continue unchecked through the coming century” (Philip Jenkins, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006], p. 9). In other words, without an astonishing spiritual awakening and reformation to reverse the trends of the past century, the centers of vitality and influence and mission sending will increasingly Filling Up.10465.i04.indd 109

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the gospel. There is no indigenous church capable of evangeliz-

ing its own people in these groups. That’s what it means to be

unreached. Where a faithful indigenous church exists, the role of

outsiders is humble partnership and helpfulness. But that is not

the case for these unreached peoples. Reaching them, as Jesus

commands, will be dangerous and costly. Some of us, and some

of our children, will be killed.

The Lure to Leave the Hardship

The temptation under these circumstances will be to give up.

This has always been the case. Sitting in my comfortable study in

Minneapolis, it is too easy for me to plead for perseverance in suf-

fering for the sake of the nations. I pray that I am always willing

to be endangered for Christ and his kingdom. I know that mine,

for now, is a relatively secure ministry. But others have given the

plea for perseverance more authentically than I. Here is the way

Adoniram Judson put it in a letter that he wrote to missionaries

on June 25, 1832:

Beware of the greater reaction which will take place after

you have acquired the language, and become fatigued and

worn out with preaching the gospel to a disobedient and

gainsaying people. You will sometimes long for a quiet

retreat, where you can find a respite from the tug of toiling

at native work—the incessant, intolerable friction of the

missionary grindstone. And Satan will sympathize with you

in this matter; and he will present some chapel of ease, in

which to officiate in your native tongue, some government

situation, some professorship or editorship, some literary

move from the traditional points of power in Europe and America to South America, Africa,

and Asia.

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111

or scientific pursuit, some supernumerary translation, or,

at least, some system of schools; anything, in a word, that

will help you, without much surrender of character, to slip

out of real missionary work. Such a temptation will form

the crisis of your disease. If your spiritual constitution can

sustain it, you recover; if not, you die.5

God knows there are times to flee and times to stand. As John

Bunyan said, “There are few rules in this case. The man himself

is best able to judge concerning his present strength, and what

weight this or that argument has upon his heart to stand or

fly.”6 Bunyan, who spent twelve years in prison, when a simple

pledge not to preach would have provided his freedom, has writ-

ten compassionately and biblically about the tension between

flying for safety and standing to suffer. To the question May we

try to escape? Bunyan answers,

Thou mayest do in this as it is in thy heart. If it is in thy

heart to fly, fly: if it be in thy heart to stand, stand. Any

thing but a denial of the truth. He that flies, has warrant to

do so; he that stands, has warrant to do so. Yea, the same

man may both fly and stand, as the call and working of God

with his heart may be. Moses fled, Ex. 2:15; Moses stood.

Heb. 11:27. David fled, 1 Sam. 19:12; David stood. 24:8.

Jeremiah fled, Je. 37:11–12; Jeremiah stood. 38:17. Christ

withdrew himself, Luke 9:10; Christ stood. John 18:1–8.

Paul fled, 2 Cor. 11:33; Paul stood. Acts 20:22–23. . . .

There are few rules in this case. The man himself is best

able to judge concerning his present strength, and what

weight this or that argument has upon his heart to stand or

5“Advice to Missionary Candidates by Adoniram Judson,” http://www.wholesomewords.org/

missions/bjudson4.html; accessed 05-17-08.

6John Bunyan, Seasonable Counsels, or Advice to Sufferers, in Works, Vol. 2, ed. George Offor (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1991, reprinted from the 1854 edition published by W. G. Blackie and Son, Glasgow), p. 726.

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fly. . . . Do not fly out of a slavish fear, but rather because

flying is an ordinance of God, opening a door for the escape

of some, which door is opened by God’s providence, and the

escape countenanced by God’s Word. Matt. 10:23.

If, therefore, when thou hast fled, thou art taken, be

not offended at God or man: not at God, for thou art his

servant, thy life and thy all are his; not at man, for he is but

God’s rod, and is ordained, in this, to do thee good. Hast

thou escaped? Laugh. Art thou taken? Laugh. I mean, be

pleased which way soever things shall go, for that the scales

are still in God’s hand. 7

My hope for this book is that our hearts and minds have been

shaped more deeply by the work of the Spirit so that when the

crisis comes, we will be guided more by the ways of God and less

by the worldly assumptions of security and comfort.

How Likely the Crisis of Martyrdom?

Indeed, I pray that the backbone of our courage would be steeled

by these stories of faithfulness so that when the necessity of mar-

tyrdom comes, we would be ready. How likely is that crisis? It

depends on where you live and where you are willing to go.

Each year David Barrett, Todd Johnson, and Peter Crossing

publish their annual “Status of Global Mission, Presence, and

Activities, AD 1800-2025.” One of the most sobering items

in this seventy-nine-item report is called “Average Christian

Martyrs per Year.” The global number for 2008 was 175,000.

That’s 479 Christians every day who lost their lives as a result of

being a Christian.

These are not martyrs who die at their own hands like so

7Ibid.

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113

many jihadists who kill others as they kill themselves. That is not

the way of Jesus. Followers of Christ do not kill in order to spread

the gospel about Christ who died so that his enemies could live.

Christian martyrdom is not suicide. But it is willingly accepted if

necessary.

Judson loved life and cherished three wives and all his chil-

dren. He exercised faithfully to preserve health and life. He told

missionary candidates, “Beware of that indolence which leads to

a neglect of bodily exercise. The poor health and premature death

of most Europeans in the East must be eminently ascribed to the

most wanton neglect of bodily exercise.”8

Paton faced down fierce opposition at the risk of his life again

and again, but also chose to flee from hundreds of crazed enemies

by hiding in a tree and finding a boat to get off the island of

Tanna. He was not eager to die. He wanted to spend his long life

evangelizing the New Hebrides. And he was granted his heart’s

desire. He was eighty-two when he died.

Tyndale did not want to die. He was only forty-two. He had

not yet married. He was in a foreign land. His cause was just. He

was a promising scholar and preacher. But when the decision was

rendered that he would be burned, he accepted it as the will of

God. He was imbued with the spirit of 1 Peter 4:19: “Let those

who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful

Creator while doing good.”

This was the pattern for thousands of frontline peacemakers

from the earliest times to this very day. For example, on July 17,

180, in one of the Roman provinces of Africa, six Christians were

put on trial for refusing to render full homage to the Emperor,

8“Advice to Missionary Candidates by Adoniram Judson,” http://www.wholesomewords.org/

missions/bjudson4.html; accessed 05-17-08.

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even though they kept the laws and paid their taxes. Their names

were Speratus, Nartzalus, Cittinus, Donata, Secunda, and Vestia.

They were being tried by proconsul Saturninus along with others.

The dialogue of their last hours was recorded:

The proconsul Saturninus said: “Have no part in this mad-

ness.”

Cittinus said: “We have none other to fear save the Lord

our God who is in heaven.”

Donata said: “Give honor to Caesar as unto Caesar, but

fear to God.”

Vestia said: “I am a Christian.”

Secunda said: “I wish to be none other than what I

am.”

The proconsul Saturninus said to Speratus: “Do you

persist in remaining a Christian?”

Speratus said: “I am a Christian.” And all were of one

mind with him.

The proconsul Saturninus said: “Do you desire any space

for consideration?”

Speratus said: “When the right is so clear there is nothing

to consider.”

The proconsul Saturninus said: “What have you in your

case?”

Speratus said: “The Books, and the letters of a just man,

one Paul.”

The proconsul Saturninus said: “ Take a reprieve of thirty

days and think it over.”

Speratus again said: “I am a Christian.” And all were of

one mind with him.

The proconsul Saturninus read out the sentence from his

notebook: “Whereas Speratus, Nartzalus, Cittinus, Donata,

Vestia, Secunda, and the rest have confessed that they live

in accordance with the religious rites of the Christians, and,

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115

when an opportunity was given them of returning to the

usage of the Romans, persevered in their obstinacy, it is our

pleasure that they should suffer by the sword.”

Speratus said: “Thanks be to God.”

Nartzalus said: “Today we are martyrs in heaven: thanks

be to God!”

The proconsul Saturninus commanded that proclamation

be made by the herald: “I have commanded that Speratus,

Nartzalus, Cittinus, Veturius, Felix, Aquilinus, Laetantius,

Januaria, Generosa, Vestia, Donata, Secunda be led forth

to execution.”

They all said: “Thanks be to God!”

And so all were crowned with martyrdom together, and

reign with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit for

ever and ever. Amen.9

How the Death of Martyrs Blossoms

How likely is the crisis of martyrdom today? Perhaps a better

question is: How important is martyrdom today? How impor-

tant is suffering for the sake of taking the gospel to the nations?

George Otis Jr. shocked many at the Second Lausanne Congress

on World Evangelization in Manila in 1989 when he asked, “Is

our failure to thrive in Muslim countries owing to the absence of

martyrs? Can a covert church grow in strength? Does a young

church need martyr models?”

Fittingly he concludes his book The Last of the Giants with a

chapter entitled “Risk Safety.”

Should the Church in politically or socially trying cir-

cumstances remain covert to avoid potential eradication

9“The Martyrs of Scilli in Africa Proconsularis, 17 July 180,” in J. Stevenson, ed., A New Eusebius: Documents Illustrative of the History of the Church to A. D. 337 (London: SPCK, 1968), pp. 41–42.

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by forces hostile to Christianity? Or would more open

confrontation with prevailing spiritual ignorance and

deprivation—even if it produced Christian martyrs—

be more likely to lead to evangelistic breakthroughs?

Islamic fundamentalists claim that their spiritual revolu-

tion is fueled by the blood of martyrs. Is it conceivable

that Christianity’s failure to thrive in the Muslim world

is due to the notable absence of Christian martyrs? And

can the Muslim community take seriously the claims of

a Church in hiding? . . . The question is not whether it is

wise at times to keep worship and witness discreet, but

rather how long this may continue before we are guilty of

“hiding our light under a bushel.” . . . The record shows

that from Jerusalem and Damascus to Ephesus and Rome,

the apostles were beaten, stoned, conspired against and

imprisoned for their witness. Invitations were rare, and

never the basis for their missions.10

Otis would have agreed with Gregory the Great (pope from 590

to 604) when he said, “The death of the martyrs blossoms in the

lives of the faithful.”11

None of this is without divine meaning and design. God saved

us by the suffering and death of his Son. It is his pattern to send

this message of salvation to the world by displaying a realistic

picture of those sufferings in the suffering of his servants. The

reason for this pattern is to make clear to us and to the world

that the surpassing and successful effect of this mission belongs

to God and not to us. Paul shows us this divine purpose through

his own life:

10George Otis Jr., The Last of the Giants: Lifting the Veil on Islam and the End Times (Grand Rapids, MI: Chosen Books, 1991), pp. 261, 263. This account of George Otis at Lausanne is

based on my own notes from being there and hearing him. I recorded this also in Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 2003), p. 273.

11Quoted in Joseph Tson, “A Theology of Martyrdom” (an undated booklet of The Romanian

Missionary Society, Wheaton, IL), p. 1.

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117

We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that

we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had

received the sentence of death. But that was to make us

rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. . . .

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that

the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. . . .

“My power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians

1:8–9; 4:7; 12:9).

In the end, the message, the method, and the final outcome of

missions will all work together to make us humbly dependent on

God, and to show God graciously powerful to save. If we must

suffer along the way to put Christ’s sacrificial love on display, it

will be a small price for the inheritance to come. “I consider that

the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with

the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18). “This light

momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of

glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17).

Walk Softly to the Nations

Therefore, we may receive Adoniram Judson’s final counsel with

peace. After observing that “a large proportion of those who

come out on a mission to the East die within five years,” he

says, “Walk softly, therefore; death is narrowly watching your

steps.”12

Indeed, death is watching our steps. We are as fragile as a

flower that fades. Let there be no triumphalistic swagger. No

cocky self-assurance. Let us accept humbly that we are “a mist

12“Advice to Missionary Candidates by Adoniram Judson,” http://www.wholesomewords.org/

missions/bjudson4.html; accessed 5-17-08.

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that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14).

And let us resolve to set our faces like flint on the path of obedi-

ence and never turn back. And with a full grasp of the possible

cost before us, and with full courage because of Christ, let us walk

softly to every unreached people that remains.

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s C r i P T u r e i n d e x

Genesis

10:17-18

19-20

1:3

10:23

112

4:9

10:24-25

11:19

82-83

Exodus

16:3

24:14

2:15

111

26:41

26:75

Numbers

28:18-20

6:24-26

28:19-20

80-81

28:20

1 Samuel

19:12

111

Mark

24:8

111

10:45

Psalms

Luke

22:27-28

2:8

34:18-19

9:10

111

44:22

9:23

11:49

Isaiah

21:12-18

42:6

21:16-18

107

52:15

21:17

53:5

John

Jeremiah

1:1

12:24

13, 35

37:11-12

111

12:25

13, 104

38:17

111

15:13

15:14

Daniel

15:15

3:17-18

15:20

18:1-8

111

Matthew

5:4

Acts

6:9

1:8

10:16

19, 107

13:47

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120

Scripture Index

17:28

Colossians

20:22-23

111

1:24

9, 15, 21-24

Romans

1 Timothy

1:5

2:5

2:14

6:12

7:4

8:18

117

2 Timothy

8:35

2:7

35-36

8:36

15:20-21

17-18

Hebrews

1 Corinthians

7:27

9:12

13:1

9:26

15:10

10:14

15:31

11:27

111

2 Corinthians

13:3

13:5

1:8-9

117

4:4

James

4:7

117

4:14

118

4:10-12

4:17

117

1 Peter

11:23

11:33

111

4:19

113

12:9

117

Revelation

Galatians

5:9

15, 17

3:13

6:10-11

6:17

6:11

Philippians

2:27

2:29

2:30

3:8

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P e r s o n i n d e x

à Kempis, Thomas, 100

Donaldson, James, 25

Abraham (Aneityumese servant), 61-

Donata, 113-115

62, 68, 69, 74, 78-79

Dusgate, Thomas, 45

Anderson, Courtney, 85, 88-95, 97-

100, 102-106

Eames, Jacob, 90, 91

Arundell, Thomas, 44

Edwards, Jonathan, 87

Athanasius, Bishop, 41

Eraclius, 9

Augustine, Aurelius, 9

Erasmus, 29, 36-42

Bainham, James, 45

Fenelon, François de Salignac de la

Bale, John, 44

Mothe, 100

Barrett, David, 86, 112

Forester, Fanny, 105

Barth, Karl, 42

Foxe, John, 30, 44, 48-49, 52

Barton, Elizabeth, 46

Frith, John, 45, 52

Bayfield, Richard, 45

Bell, Ralph, 57

Geddie, John, 54

Bellamy, Joseph, 87

Gordon, Mr. and Mrs. G. N., 65,

Bent, John, 45

77, 79

Bilney, Thomas, 45

Guyon, Madame, 100

Boardman, George, 102

Bunyan, John, 111

Hall, Gordon, 93

Calvin, John, 8, 42

Harding, Thomas, 45-46

Carey, William, 85, 93

Harris, James, 53, 58, 77

Chubbuck, Emily, 105-106

Harrison, Eugene Myers, 87

Cittinus, 113-115

Henry VIII, King, 27-29

Cook, James, 53

Hewet, Andrew, 46

Coverdale, Miles, 32

Hulse, Erroll, 87

Cowper, William, 98

Cromwell, Thomas, 27

Inglis, John, 54

Crossing, Peter, 112

James, King, 32

Daniell, David, 27-35, 37-44, 46-48, Jerome, St., 44

50-52

Johnson, Todd, 112

de Quiros, Fernandez, 53

Johnstone, Patrick, 86, 109

Jones, Emrys, 37

Dennis, Lane, 11

Judson, Abigail Brown (mother),

Dickson, Mr., 58

89, 96

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122

Person Index

Judson, Abigail Brown (sister), 100,

Paton, James, 70-73

104

Paton, Janet, 72-73

Judson, Adoniram, 9, 13, 16, 18, 26, Paton, John G. , 9, 13, 16, 18, 26,

85-107

53-83, 113

Judson, Adoniram (father), 87, 88,

Paton, Margaret, 55, 56-57

96, 99, 110-111, 113, 117

Paton, Mary, 55, 59, 60

Judson, Ann, 85, 88, 91-95, 96, 97,

Paton, Peter Robert Robson, 60

98, 99, 100, 105

Patterson, George, 54

Judson, Elnathan, 96, 100

Philips, Henry, 48-49

Judson, Emily, 88

Piper, John, 41, 116, 119

Judson, Ephraim, 90

Piper, Noël, 11

Judson, Maria Elizabeth Butter-

Piper, Talitha, 11

worth, 88, 99

Poyntz, Thomas, 48-49

Judson, Roger Williams, 88

Judson, Sarah Boardman, 88, 102-

Ranney, Thomas, 106

104

Rice, Luther, 93, 95

Roberts, Alexander, 25

Kimball, Lydia, 92

Kowia (Tanna chief), 68

Secunda, 113-115

Speratus, 113-115

Latomus , 49

Stevenson, James, 115

Latourette, Kenneth Scott, 54

Luther, Martin, 27, 28, 34, 38, 39,

Tertullian, 25

Tewkesbury, John, 45

Tson, Joseph, 15, 116

Machen, J. Gresham, 41

Tunstall, Cuthbert (Bishop), 31, 32,

Mandryk, Jason, 86, 109

Mathis, David, 11

Twain, Mark, 39

More, Thomas, 27-28, 33, 39, 40,

Tyndale, William, 9, 13, 16, 18, 26,

45, 46, 47

27-52, 113

Moynahan, Brian, 33, 44, 51

Mozley, J. F., 50

Vaughan, Stephen, 27-29, 48

Murray, Iain, 18

Vestia, 113-115

Vincent, Martin, 23

Nartzalus, 113-115

Nau, Maung, 96

Walsh, John, 29, 30

Neil, Stephen, 25-26

Wayland, Francis, 91

Nettles, Thomas J., 87, 88

Williams, John, 53, 58, 77

Newell, Harriet, 93

Wolsey, Thomas (Cardinal), 32

Newell, Samuel, 93

Wycliffe, John, 31, 44

Nott, Roxana, 93

Nott, Samuel, 93

Offor, George, 111, 112

Otis, George, Jr., 115, 116

Owen, John, 41

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s u b J e C T i n d e x

10/40 window, 86, 109

Cool courage in the face of torment,

25-26

Aborigines, 54

Courage

Affectionate and zealous ministry, 23

from joy, 79-80

Affliction, means of missionary fruit-

to die, 65-66

fulness, 9-10 see also Suffering

to face mortal enemies, 62-65

Agape, 47

Courtesy toward enemies, 26

Always singing one note, 27-28, 41

Ambition, holy, 17

Damascus Road, 91

Atonement, 42

De copia, 36-37

De Haeretico Comburendo, 44

Banner of Truth, 13, 18, 54, 57, 111

Death of a child, 60, 88

Baptist, 86, 87, 93-95, 100, 106

Deeper way of doing missions, 20

Baptized with the blood of martyrs,

Deists, 90-91

53-54

Depression 89, 104

Bible first, then biography, 15-16

Divine aim of Paul’s apostleship, 17

Bible, 13, 15, 21, 2-29, 31-36, 37,

Doctrines of grace, 73, 86, 87

Dying like a seed, 13

42-44, 46-50, 89, 96, 101-102,

106, 109 see also Scripture

Ekklesia, 47

Biography, 15

English phrases we owe to Tyndale,

Blood of the martyrs as seed, 24-26

33-34

Blood, 8, 13, 15-17, 20-21, 24-25,

Epaphroditus, 22-24

39-40, 42-43, 45, 52-53, 73, 77,

Erasmus and Tyndale,

79, 99, 116

alike, 36-38

Buddhists, 86, 89

different, 38-41

Burma Baptist Convention, 86

Erasmus’ Greek New Testament, 29

By His Grace and for His Glory

Ethnolinguistic, 109

(Nettles), 87

Evangelism, 96

Exercise, 113

Calvary method, 15

Exomologeo, 47

Calvary Road, 14, 20

Extending Jesus’ afflictions to others,

Calvinism, 73-74, 87

Cannibals, 53-54, 56, 58-59, 68-69

Christ see Jesus

Fever, 55, 60, 61-62

Church in Philippi, 23

Filling up the afflictions of Christ,

Closed country, 85

15-16, 21-22, 24

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124

Subject Index

Frenchmen, 8

Holy ambition, 17

Friends pursue a common cause, 83

Holy Spirit, the, 8, 17-18, 74, 115

Fruitful life, 13

How missionaries “complete” what

Fury of Thomas More, 44-46

is lacking in Jesus’ afflictions, 22

Geneva Bible, 32

“In deaths oft,” 13

Global South, 109

In-your-face spiritual moxie, 58

Glory of God, 10, 16, 18, 39-40, 50-

Infant baptism, 93

51, 64, 74, 76-78, 82, 87-88, 92,

Infanticide, 56

102, 107, 109, 117

God,

Jesus, 9-11, 13-15, 17, 19-21, 24-

design of in the cross, 17

25, 50, 55, 57-58, 60-61, 63-70,

glory of, 10, 16, 18, 39-40, 50-

74-83, 97, 102, 104, 106-107,

51, 64, 74, 76-78, 82, 87-88,

110, 113

92, 102, 107, 109, 117

being an extension of, 15

has appointed our pain, 10

died once for all, 21

invincible purpose of in history,

final command of, 17

16-17

friendship of, 83

painful path of to reach all

infinite value of his afflictions, 22

peoples, 14-15

makes no mistakes, 76

plans of for the nations of the

personal fellowship with, 80-82

world, 16-18

resurrection of, 39, 58

providence of, 31, 87-92, 95-96,

Jihadists, 113

99, 112

Joshua Project, 58n18, 109n3

sovereign wisdom of, 76

Joy, 11, 26, 42, 59-60, 79-80, 96,

sovereignty of, 42n43, 74-76

103

spreads the gospel by suffering,

Judson’s letter to Ann’s father, 92

9, 14

Justification by faith alone, 18, 43,

Gospel, the, 8, 13-19, 37, 39, 40,

45, 47, 49

42, 43, 51, 52, 54-57, 68, 72, 80,

98, 101, 107, 110, 113, 113

Lausanne, 115-116

heart of, 15

Leaving certainty for uncertainty, 59

power to convert the hardest

Life is fleeting, 106-107

people, 68

Life-and-death sickness, 61

spread by suffering, 9, 14

Lightning bug to lightning bolt,

Great Bible, 32

38-40

Great Commission, the, 80

Lollards, the, 31, 44

Great Planner, 83

Gutsy forthrightness, 63

London Missionary Society, 53-54,

92, 93

Hating your life in this world, 13

Loneliness, 60

Haystack Prayer Meeting, 91

Lure to leave the hardship, 110-112

Heaven, 16, 17, 20, 26, 33, 68, 71,

Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses, 40

75, 77, 79, 92, 114-115

Heaven’s worship, 17

Marks of the cross, 24

Hell, 42, 45, 51, 91, 97

Marriage, 91, 92, 96, 103, 105

Hiding our light under a bushel, 116

Martyrdom, 9, 14, 15, 20, 25, 33,

Hindus, 86

77, 78, 112, 113, 115, 116

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Subject Index

125

Metanoeo, 47

Regeneration, doctrine of, 74

Minneapolis, 110

Rejoice see Joy

Missionary awakening in Scotland,

Resurrection of Jesus, 39

Risking all with Jesus, 78n66

Missionary sufferings as strategic, 21

Romania, 15

“Missionary time,” 96

Muslims, 86, 115, 116

Satisfaction see Joy

Scripture, 14, 28, 30, 41-44, 46, 52,

“Near-rabid hatred” for Tyndale, 28

57, 81, 87, 93-94

Notable Christian writers in our

Second Great Awakening, 18

day, 40

Second Lausanne Congress on World

Evangelization, 115-116

“On the burning of heretics,” 44

Seed that died a thousand times, 85

Operation World, 86, 109

Series title, 9

Orphanages, 56

Sheep in the midst of wolves, 19

Sin, 21, 26, 42

Pain, 10, 14, 29, 45, 51-52, 60, 67,

Son of God see Jesus

76, 88, 94-96, 102 see also Suf-

South Sea Islands, 54

fering

South Seas, 57, 72, 75

as path to triumph, 14

Sovereign grace, 36, 39, 42-43

Passion for Jesus’ fame, 26

Sovereignty of God, 42n43, 43, 74-

Passion of the Lord of the nations,

76, 87, 88

Spirit of God see Holy Spirit

Paton in the tree, 82

Spreading the gospel by suffering,

Paul,

9, 14

divine of apostleship of, 17

“Status of Global Mission, Presence,

scars of, 24

and Activities,” 112

Penance, 47

Suffering, 5, 8, 10, 13-15, 19-22,

Persecution “for a witness,” 19-21

24-26, 29, 43, 48, 50-52, 57, 78,

Personal fellowship with Jesus,

86, 89, 92, 104, 107, 111, 113,

80-82

115-117

Pilgrim’s Progress, 103

as strategy, 20

Prayer, 11, 26, 44, 59, 63, 65, 70-

ours add nothing to Jesus’ aton-

72, 76-78, 80-81, 86, 96, 106

ing work, 21

Presbuteros, 47

ours for propagation, 15

Propagation, 15

Propitiation, 15

Taking up our cross daily, 14

Providence of God, 31, 87-92, 95-

Tears of blood to bless the world,

96, 99, 112

13-26

Purgatory, 47

Temptation to give up, 110

The “closet,” 70

Redeemer, only one, 21

Thesis of this book, 21

Reformation in England, 34-35

Times to flee and stand, 111

Reformation, the, 18, 27, 30, 34-35,

Torture, 29

46, 73, 87, 109

Two ways of dying, 35-36

Reformed faith, 43, 46-48

Tyndale’s “crescendo,” 31

Reformed theology, 43, 46, 47, 48,

Tyndale’s last words, 52

54, 67, 73, 74, 87

Tyndale’s one note, 27-28, 41

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126

Subject Index

Unreached peoples, 21, 26, 85, 101,

When the darkness does not lift,

109, 110, 118

99-101

Widow sacrifice, 56

Vernacular Bible, 27, 28

Wisdom, of God, 76

Very first New Testament in English,

Word of God see Scripture

Worship, 16-17, 54, 56-57, 64, 66,

Vilvorde Castle, 49

70, 77-79, 116

Vulgate, 31

“Walk softly,” 107, 117, 118

What is lacking in Jesus’ afflictions,

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