The
first American missionary sent overseas was Adoniram Judson, who arrived in Burma
(Myanmar) in 1812, and died there thirty-eight years later in 1850. During that
time, he suffered much for the cause of the gospel. He was imprisoned,
tortured, and kept in shackles. After the death of his first wife, Ann, to whom
he was devoted, for several months he was so depressed that he sat daily beside
her tomb. Three years later, he wrote: “God is to me the Great Unknown. I
believe in him, but I cannot find him.”
But
Adoniram's faith sustained him, and he threw himself into the tasks to which he
believed God had called him. Eventually, Judson remarried and his family
ministered in Burma for seven years and not a single convert was made. Finally,
after seven years of labor one man gave his life to God.
He
also worked feverishly on his translation of the Bible into the Burmese
language. He completed the New Testament first and then he finished the Old
Testament in early 1834. One by one the Burmese gave their lives to Jesus and
several families ended up surrendering to Jesus because of the Judson’s work.
Because
of this the Burmese government began to persecute Judson, which coincided with
an debilitating affliction that he contracted. However, the day came when he
could no longer continue the work of the Gospel and the Burmese, seeing how
sick Judson was, sent him on a boat back to America, but Judson ended up dying
on the journey and his emaciated body was cast into the sea.
During
Judson’s lifetime he ended up translating the Bible into Burmese and his wife
translated it into Thai. What Judson never knew was that long before he ever
arrived in Burma there was a story of Burmese folklore that was often told:
“One day there will come a man from a different land. He will bring a book containing
the Truth that will set us free.”
Statistics
are unclear, how many professing Christians there were in the country when he
died, but there were certainly no churches to speak of.
At
the 150th anniversary of the translation of the Bible into the Burmese
language, Paul Borthwick was addressing a group that was celebrating Judson's
work. Just before he got up to speak, he noticed in small print on the first
page the words: “Translated by Rev. A. Judson.” So Borthwick turned to his
interpreter, a Burmese man named Matthew Hia Win, and asked him, “Matthew, what
do you know of this man?”
Matthew
began to weep as he said, “We know him—we know how he loved the Burmese people,
how he suffered for the gospel because of us, out of love for us. He died a
pauper, but left the Bible for us. When he died, there were few believers, but
today there are over 600,000 of us, and every single one of us traces our
spiritual heritage to one man: the Rev. Adoniram Judson.” [1]
But,
here is the great irony, Adoniram Judson never saw it in his lifetime! And that
will be the case for some of us. This is what Paul had in mind when he wrote to
the Galatians, “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will
reap, if we do not give up (Gal. 6:9).” We may be called to invest our lives in
ministries for which we do not see much immediate fruit. However, by faith we
must trust that the Lord of the harvest who oversees our work will ensure that
our labor is not in vain. -DM
[1] Julia
Cameron, ed., Christ Our Reconciler (Downers
Grove, IL: Inter Varsity Press, 2012), 200-201.
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