What do the names William Carey, Adoniram Judson, David Livingstone, George Müller, Hudson Taylor, Jonathan Goforth, Amy Carmichael, Nate Saint, and Jim Elliot all have in common?
This answer is that they were all well-known missionaries from the past that made a significant impact on the nations of the world and whose lives are immortalized in their biographies.
William Carey (1761-1834)
William Carey is known as the father of modern missions. Carey was an English missionary to India who was a skilled linguist, writer and printer. He translated portions of the Bible into several languages.
Carey grew up in the Church of England but was saved while an apprentice to a shoemaker. He eventually joined the Baptist church and went to India as a Baptist missionary. As a self-motivated learner he taught himself Latin, Hebrew and Greek.
He founded the Baptist Missionary Society and was instrumental in influencing many other missionaries to the foreign field, particularly to India.
Adoniram Judson (1788-1850)
Adoniram Judson was a Baptist missionary who became the first North American Protestant missionary in Burma (Myanmar). Like other early missionaries, he was involved in translation work and church planting. He went to the field of India as a Congregationalist, but after much study of the Bible, became convinced that Baptist doctrine was more biblical. Because of anti-Western sentiment in India, he moved to Burma.
It took him 12 years to see his first 18 converts. By the time he died he had established 100 churches with over 8,000 members. The Baptist churches of Myanmar celebrate “Judson Day” each year to commemorate his arrival in the country.
David Livingstone (1813-1873)
David Livingstone was a medical missionary with the London Missionary Society. He was born in Scotland in 1813, but spent most of his life in Africa as an explorer and doctor. Coupled with his love for the Lord and desire to spread the Gospel, Livingstone used his understanding of nature and science to help him map much of southern Africa.
Livingstone never stayed long in any one place. He was driven to map the continent of Africa in preparation for the many missionaries who would come after him.
George Müller (1805-1898)
George Müller is known as a man of prayer who started orphanages and preached often about the need for missionaries around the world. In his lifetime his orphanage in England took care of more than 10,000 children. He was instrumental in promoting the idea of “faith missions.” This is where missionaries are not supported by a denomination but by individuals and churches. He believed in never asking anyone for support, but trusting God to lay it on the person’s heart to support the need.
Hudson Taylor (1832-1905)
Hudson Taylor spent more than 50 years in China as a missionary and is known for his respect for the Chinese culture. He was widely criticized in his home country of England at the time for dressing like the Chinese in his efforts to blend in while sharing the Gospel. This practice made him much more accepted by the people when he preached.
Hudson Taylor was trained as a physician and he worked as a doctor, evangelist and translator while in China.
He personally influenced hundreds of people to be missionaries in his lifetime. Many missionaries today attribute their introduction to the need for missions from reading biographies about Hudson Taylor.
Jonathan Goforth (1859-1936)
Jonathan Goforth and his wife went to China in 1888 as traditional missionaries. He soon found a need for short-term trips as an Evangelist. Instead of staying in one place and establishing a church and mission station, he traveled in various regions throughout China helping to encourage the believers and evangelize the lost.
Amy Carmichael (1867-1951)
Amy Carmichael was an Irish missionary who served in India for 56 years without ever returning to her homeland. Her primary work was with orphans in the southern region of India. She was influenced to consider a career in missions after hearing Hudson Taylor speak about the need for missionaries in China. She applied to be a missionary with the China Inland Mission (Taylor’s missionary group) but was eventually turned away because of her poor health. Many of her final 20 years of life was spent in bed due to illness and injury from a fall.
Nate Saint (1923-1956)
Nate Saint was a missionary pilot with the Missionary Aviation Fellowship (MAF) and helped make contact with the Waodani (or Auca) Indians in Ecuador. Eventually he and his companions were killed in their efforts to evangelize the tribe. However, through the efforts of Nate’s sister and the wives of the other men who died that day, the Auca Indian tribe came to know the Lord.
The short lives of men like Nate Saint may seem like a waste during the time of the tragedy, but God has a plan and works all things out to His glory.
Jim Elliot (1927-1956)
Jim Elliot learned the Bible from an early age and used it to direct his daily life. He is most remembered for his dramatic death (along with Nate Saint and three other missionary men) at the hands of the Waodani (or Auca) Indians. While their deaths were tragic, the response by the wives of these men towards the ones who killed them opened up their hearts to the Gospel.
And these are only a few of the better known stories of some of God’s choicest servants taking the Gospel to the ends of the earth.
It would be unthinkable to consider the great missionaries of the past without also discussing the Apostle Paul who was perhaps the greatest missionary of them all, aside from Jesus Himself.
Paul came to Christ on the road to Damascus and asked two of the most important questions anyone can ever consider (Acts 9:5, 6):
- “Who are you, Lord?”
- “Lord, what do you want me to do?”
In response to these questions God called Paul to missions among the Gentile people. It is because of his dedicated efforts that we enjoy the message of God’s hope even to this day.
We get a glimpse inside the missionary heart of this incredible servant of Christ when reading the opening verses of this letter to the Romans. It was most likely written from Corinth (Acts 20:2-3) during his third missionary journey and Romans 1:16-17 provides us the thesis of the book.
In these introductory verses Paul makes three statements that summarize the depth of his passion for the work of missions.
1. I am a debtor...expresses the weight of obligation he felt.
The phrase “I am a debtor (under obligation)” is actually placed at the very end of the Greek sentence for emphasis; the entire sentence builds up to this startling statement.
To say that you are in debt implies one of two things:
- You have borrowed something that must be repaid.
- You have been entrusted with something for someone else that obligates you to the one that gave it and the one for whom it was given.
It is this second sense that Paul has in view here. The saving message of Jesus Christ had been entrusted to him (and to all Christians generally) and now he is obligated to deliver it. (cf. 1 Corinthians 9:16-17)
Illustration:
A man stopped to get his car serviced and the attendant seemed especially happy, so he asked him about his upbeat mood. He responded, "I've just gotten all my bills paid and I'm out of debt."
The man congratulated the attendant for handling his resources well and then added, "I have no unpaid bills either, but I'm still in debt." Surprised by this, the young attendant asked him what he meant. The man went on to explain the Gospel story.
This man understood that he was under obligation to share the Good News of Jesus Christ. It was his debt to pay to those that did not know Jesus.
A Christian by the name of John Vassar was at a large railroad station when he saw a lady with a serious look on her face sitting by herself. He went over to her and began to talking with her only to learn that she was very unsatisfied with her life. He explained how Christ could change her life and urged her to trust Him. Although her eyes were filled with tears she did not believe on Christ that day. Just as he left, her husband came up and seeing the tears in her eyes demanded to know what was going on. She told him that a man had just been telling her about her need of the Savior. Her indignant husband said to her, "Why didn’t you tell him to go about his business?" To which she replied, "If you had only been here you would have seen that he was about his business."
This obligation Paul bore (we bear) crossed all boundaries of ethnicity, class, gender, culture, economics, education, etc. The Gospel is not for only one particular group of people, but for ALL people. (cf. Greek, barbarians, wise, unwise, Jew, Gentile)
2. I am ready...expresses the sense of anticipation he felt.
This is the picture of someone at the starting line waiting for the signal to begin the race. There is exhilaration, ambition and anticipation all wrapped up in the idea of Paul being “ready.”
On Paul’s part he was eager to go to Rome, but let’s not forget that he was also willing to stay put (Romans 1:13) until it was God’s will for him to go. Sometimes God calls us to go and sometimes He calls us to stay where we are and help others go.
And, listen to how he phrases his ambition: "As much as is in me..." In other words, “I can't do everything. I can't go everywhere, but as much as is in me, I am ready." Are we ready to say what Paul said?
Too often we focus on the wrong aspect of missions and see it as merely a plan that must be worked out or money that must be raised. But, missions is a passion more than it is a program. It’s a motivation more than it is a method. It’s a fire burning in your soul.
Missions is Jim Elliot going to the Auca Indians in Ecuador and saying, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." Missions is C.T. Studd saying, "Some want to live within the sound of church or chapel bell. I want to live and set up a rescue shop within a yard of hell."
What we desperately need is to be baptized with the ambition and eagerness of Paul. We need to be possessed by a passion for souls.
"One person with passion is better than forty who are merely interested." --Thomas K. Connellan
3. I am not ashamed...expresses the depth of conviction he felt.
At first glance this seems to be a curious statement by the Apostle Paul. There is no indication that he ever showed any sense of embarrassment or shame at any time about the Gospel he preached (Romans 9:33, 10:11; 2 Timothy 1:8, 11-12, 16).
After all, Paul had been imprisoned in Philippi (Acts 16:23, 24), chased out of Thessalonica (Acts 17:10), smuggled out of Berea (Acts 17:14), laughed at in Athens (Acts 17:32), regarded as a fool in Corinth (1 Cor. 1:18, 23), and stoned in Galatia (Acts 14:19). And, eventually he would have his head cut off as a martyr for Jesus Christ in Rome. That certainly doesn’t sound like the life of a man that is ashamed of his message or his Lord.
In actuality, this is a figure of speech called a litotes, which is an intentional understatement to emphasize the opposite affirmation. (ex. “not bad at all”)
Rome was the queen city of the empire, the place of poets and legislators, the scene of imperial grandeur. There was the magnificence of wealth and power that was on constant display. Paul came to this mighty metropolis with absolute confidence that the Gospel would meet the deepest need of the human heart. He was proud to preach the Gospel at Rome because he was convinced that the Gospel was the only solution to their sin problem.
It may also be true that Paul had in mind the negative view that some people held about the preaching of the cross. In 1 Corinthians 1:17-31, Paul lays out how some feel about the Gospel, but he never shied away from proclaiming the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He possessed a deep conviction that this message alone was sufficient to change people’s lives.
This “power” of which he speaks as inherent in the Gospel was not the destructive power of dynamite (Gk. “dunamis”), but the constructive power to make people new creations in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 1:18-20). And, he is careful to emphasize that this powerful Gospel is available to anyone that will believe!
Too often in our day it is not THE MESSAGE that gets primary emphasis, but our method. As a result, we rely more on “Madison Avenue” techniques than on the inherent power of the Gospel itself.
Illustration:
At one time there was a Mercedes Benz TV commercial that showed one of their cars colliding into a cement wall during a safety test. Someone then asked the company spokesman why they didn’t enforce their patent on the Mercedes Benz energy-absorbing car body, a design that was apparently copied by other companies because of its success. His reply, “Because some things in life are too important NOT to share.”
This must become the attitude of every Christian if we are going to effectively reach this generation and the next...if we’re going to reach the world with the Gospel.
Our silence in sharing the Gospel whether out of fear or shame is even leading our own nation to the brink of being a neo-atheist/agnostic culture. Listen to these statistics:
In 1900, there were approximately ten million Christians in Africa. By 2000, the number had grown to 360 million. By 2025, the best estimates say there will be 630 million Christians in Africa. The numbers are even more significant in Latin America and Asia. But by the middle of this century, if Christ has not returned, only one-fifth of the world’s Christians will be westerners. Most Christians will be people living in what we call the Third World.
Closing:
#1. We must make ourselves available to go to our non-Christian friends and tell them the message of the Gospel.
#2. We must help those that are going to international fields take the message of the Gospel to those who have never heard about Jesus.
