All month long our contributors have written about the lives of Christian missionaries who followed Christ’s call to share the Gospel with the world. Stewards of God’s grace, pioneer missionaries spearheaded, lead the way, launched, explored, and blazed new trails for the Gospel. If you missed a post, don’t worry. This post contains links to all of the contributions to our #GospelTrailblazers series.

#GospelTrailblazers Posts

David Brainerd: Serving While Suffering

Of David Brainerd, Ali Shaw wrote, “God can use anyone. He can use someone who suffers intensely from mental health struggles. He can use someone with physical illness (or multiple physical illnesses.) Not only can He, but He does!

Counting the Cost: Jim and Elisabeth Elliot

Jaime Hilton shared Jim and Elisabeth Elliot’s legacy: “Elisabeth’s forgiveness and acceptance of the people who had killed her husband was a living example of God’s unconditional love which opened the door for these previously unreached people to know Jesus Christ.”

Love for the Lost: Samuel & Amy Zwemer

Samuel and Amy Zwemer were among the first to share the Gospel with the Muslim world. Sarah Gogerty wrote, “Because the Zwemers camped at the foot of the cross, they continually saw their need for and the glory of the Savior. I think it was this humble, worshipful posture that sustained them through decades of ministry.”

God Speaks Every Language: William Cameron Townsend

William Cameron Townsend turned from selling Bibles to translating them. Cheli Sigler shared his desire “to show them that God speaks every language.”

180 Degree Repentance: Bartolomé de las Casas

Jennifer Hong brought us the story of Bartolomé de las Casas, slave owner turned protector of the very people he enslaved. Fully repentant he said, “Christ wanted love to be called his single commandment. This we owe to all men. Nobody is excepted.”

The Faithful Example of Gladys Aylward

Kristee Ravan shared the story of Gladys Aylward. Enduring many trials to be faithful to God’s call on her life, “may we remember the example of Gladys, who stayed true to the purpose God had put on her life until the end.”

Live Out Your Calling

Nevertheless, each person should live as a believer in whatever situation the Lord has assigned to them, just as God has called them…. (1 Corinthians 7:17)

Thank you for joining us this month! You might not be a missionary, but it is our prayer that you will be encouraged to live out God’s call on your life.

The kids in my Mission Adventures class were riveted by the story I read. I couldn’t blame them! This missionary lady was about to walk–by herself–into a Chinese prison full of rioting prisoners armed with only prayer. It was crazy! She walked into a horrible scene. Blood was everywhere. Dead and dying men lay all around her. The really bizarre part of her story is that this missionary lady was a lowly housemaid, didn’t even finish her missionary course, and was almost too sick to even make it to China. But Gladys Aylward relied on the Lord more than herself and had a deep commitment to serving Him in China.

And then she was taken prisoner…

Gladys didn’t get discouraged.  She could have.  She was dismissed from missionary training school for not being able to learn Chinese well enough. She took a job as a housemaid in London, and her employer was an who had been to China and had many books on the country. He allowed Gladys to borrow them and she continued her education. Every week, she put a portion of her paycheck toward a ticket to China.

When she had finally paid enough to travel, her journey was anything but easy. Russia was at war, making it dangerous to travel through the country. Gladys couldn’t afford the expensive sea voyage around Africa, so she had to take the riskier train route through Europe into Asia. There came a point when the train couldn’t travel any further because of fighting on the tracks. Gladys had to walk back to the safety of the previous train station and nearly froze to death.

For a brief while, she was taken prisoner by the Russians who wanted to force her to work in a factory as a machinist. God provided an escape for her and she slipped out of Russia on a boat to Japan. Gladys didn’t get discouraged in any of this.  She kept looking for God’s plan.

How far did they walk?!

Gladys didn’t get overwhelmed. She once encountered a child seller. After exhausting all the possibilities of involving the authorities, Gladys bought the child herself. She named her Ninepence after the price she’d paid for her. Throughout her time in China, Gladys took in hundreds of children. She always had room for one more.

When the Japanese invaded China in 1938, there was trouble ahead. Bombs wiped out villages, leaving more orphans that Gladys gladly took in. When the area became more dangerous and the Japanese put a price on Gladys’ head, she and 94 children set out to walk more than 200 miles to the orphanage. I don’t even want to take ONE of my children into a store, and here’s Gladys with nearly 100 children trekking through war torn China.

She made her home there

Gladys didn’t waver or quit when things were challenging. When she first arrived in China, the missionary she was meant to work with, Mrs. Lawson, had assumed Gladys wasn’t coming–remember all the delays in Russia?–and had left the town they were to meet in. Mrs. Lawson had also never expected a London housemaid to ever save enough money to come to China. Gladys finally met up with her three weeks later after traveling by train, bus, and mule. She was surprised that Mrs. Lawson had a prickly temperament and wasn’t easy to get along with. But Gladys stuck it out.

Through all the turmoil and fighting in China, Gladys stayed. Even when she was personally wanted (in exchange for a reward of one hundred dollars), Gladys didn’t flee the country. She remained to encourage, cheer, and help her fellow Chinese friends and neighbors. She even became a Chinese citizen. When communism took over the country, and she was expelled, she didn’t return to the comforts of life in Great Britain. She stayed on in Taiwan with other Chinese expats and continued her work.  She died there, and beside her bed in a cradle was the newest orphan she’d taken in.

Follow the example of Gladys

Gladys Aylward didn’t get discouraged. She didn’t get overwhelmed, and she didn’t waver or quit. Can we say the same of our Christian life? We get discouraged when our prayers don’t seem to be answered. We get overwhelmed by the tasks of our day. We waver and quit when it just isn’t working. But we don’t have to.

The next time things get hard, may we remember the example of Gladys, who stayed true to the purpose God had put on her life until the end.

Bartolomé de las Casas.

I had never heard of this man when I signed up for a one hour Spanish course by the same name my first semester of college. It was just one hour. A light addition to my pre-med course load, just to keep me using Spanish regularly. It seemed nonthreatening enough. I was so wrong.

On the first day of class, I and three upperclassmen learned that Bartolome de las Casas was a Spanish priest who lived 1485-1566 and that we would be studying his original writings on the topic of slavery in the New World. If I thought reading Shakespeare’s English was complicated, well, 16th century Spanish was something else. It’s just as well that Dr. Garcia refused to sign my drop slip the second week of school. (Two of the upperclassmen had beat me to it, leaving me as one of two remaining students.) The reading for this one hour course was brutal, but the introduction to Bartolomé de las Casas was unforgettable.

No Small Change: Slave Owner to Protector of the Indians

Bartolomé de las Casas was among the earliest European immigrants to the New World, settling in Hispaniola with his father in 1502 and becoming a land owner and slave owner in the Spanish encomienda system. He differs markedly from other missionaries we have looked at this month in that his relationship to the people group he served was initially exploitative rather than bearing the Gospel.

Las Casas participated in slave raids and the active enslavement of Indigenous peoples during his early years on Hispanola, including the conquest of Cuba in the years following his ordination as one of the first priests in the Americas.  Years later he wrote, “What we committed in the Indies stands out among the most unpardonable offenses ever committed against God and mankind and this trade [in Indian slaves] as one of the most unjust, evil, and cruel among them.”

The words of visiting Dominican friars and Scripture began to affect his perspective. As he prepared for a Pentacost sermon, Las Casas was convicted of the injustices committed against the Indigenous people through the encomienda system and of his own participation in such atrocities. He responded by releasing ownership of his hacienda land and slaves and then traveling to Spain to advocate before King Charles V against the encomienda system of Indigenous enslavement.

Despite his clarity on the injustice of Indigenous enslavement, it was much later before he repented of initially advocating for the enslavement of Africans in place of Indigenous Americans. With time, he came to recognize that the enslavement of any people was wrong. In 1548 Las Casas wrote in Defense of the Indians, “Christ wanted love to be called his single commandment. This we owe to all men. Nobody is excepted.” 

Las Casas also argued against forced conversions, which were common in the Spanish colonial Americas. After writing a treatise on the subject, Bartolomé de las Casas led a group of Dominican friars into Guatemala in 1537 to bring the Gospel to native peoples peacefully, employing the use of Christian songs to introduce and teach the faith. In this way, a number of local chiefs came to Christian faith, and several churches began in the area.

180° Repentance

As a young college student wrestling with the Spanish of the 1500’s and some very sobering Church history, I discovered that the arguments between Las Casas and his opponents centered on the question of whether the Indigenous were “barbarians” and thereby “natural slaves,” or fully human. It was with grief and horror that I saw how such terms have been applied to people made in the image of God to justify exploitation.

Today, as I look more closely at Bartolomé de las Casas’s personal history and early years, I am struck by his life trajectory, from fully entrenched in the enslavement of Indigenous people to the first appointed “Protector of the Indians” under King Charles V. I marvel at the way God revealed truth to Bartolomé and walked him through a full (though not instantaneous) 180° repentance, personally rejecting his former ways, and then fervently advocating for the protection of the people he’d harmed. Over time, God further developed Bartolomé’s understanding of the value of every human life.

I wonder if you noticed the similarities between the life of Las Casas and that of English slave ship captain turned abolitionist John Newton. The Apostle Paul also comes to mind, as God carried him from violent persecution of early Christians to missionary to the Gentiles. Our God is all about redemption. What hope it is to see how fully his grace turns our lives around.

Psalm 130

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!
O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas for mercy!
If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
that you may be feared.
I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.
O Israel, hope in the Lord!
For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
and with him is plentiful redemption.
And he will redeem Israel
from all his iniquities.

Lord, expose and uproot sin in my life.
May I be grieved by what grieves your heart.
May I see injustice for what it is.
May my heart be supple and responsive to your conviction, obedient to your leading.
Soften my heart in repentance and fill my life with redemption as you did the life of Bartolomé.
May my life be marked by a love for the people whom you made and love.
Amen.

In lightning speed on a smartphone, multiple English translations of the Bible are at my fingertips. My bookshelves hold at least 3-4 Bibles per person in my household. I grew up singing “The B-I-B-L-E, yes, that’s the book for me” without ever thinking that there were people with no Bible in their mother tongue.

With an obedient heart, a listening ear and servant hands, William Cameron Townsend started a Bible translation movement. A Bible in the mother tongue or “heart language” increases the accessibility to the Gospel for many. A “heart language” is the language in which a person prays, dreams, and thinks.

Understanding Scripture in a language other than the heart language in which we think and experience emotion is “like trying to eat soup with a fork. You can get a little taste, but you cannot get nourished.  — William Cameron Townsend

An Obedient Heart

In 1917, while many of his peers were serving in World War 1, Cameron Townsend, followed God’s call to Guatemala. Cam’s mission was to share the Gospel and sell Spanish language Bibles, but he soon discovered that Guatemala was filled with people who did not speak Spanish. Instead, there were many tribal languages, many of which were spoken languages—not written ones. Working with the Cakchiquel tribe, Cam was asked, “Why doesn’t God speak our language?” Piercing Cam’s heart and mind, he sought to show them that God speaks every language.

The greatest missionary is the Bible in the mother tongue. It needs no furlough and is never considered a foreigner.  –William Cameron Townsend

A Listening Ear

Listening and adjusting to meet the needs of the Cakchiquel people, Cameron Townsend set out to learn the Cakchiquel language, teach the people how to read and write it, and faithfully translate the Bible from the original Greek and Hebrew into Cakchiquel. Did you catch all those steps? This process took ten years. Note that the translation was not from an English or Spanish Bible into Cakchiquel, but from the original Bible languages.

Servant Hands

With the Cakchiquel translation work complete, Cam (affectionately known as “Uncle Cam”) blazed a trail for further Bible translation. In 1934 “Camp Wycliffe,” named for John Wycliffe who translated the Bible into English, was born. This Bible translation training camp gave rise to two organizations at the forefront of Bible translation: Wycliffe Bible Translators and Summer Institute of Linguistics (now SIL International). Today people all around the world have access to the Bible in their “heart language” because of the trailblazing work of Uncle Cam. Meanwhile, 1800 languages await a Bible translation and the joy of knowing God’s Word and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Reading the Scripture in another language is like eating a banana with the skin on. Now the Scripture in my language is satisfying… like a sweet banana. I can’t get enough of it.                   –a woman from Asia

Pray for Bible Translation

Like the woman in the quote above, many people await to read a Bible that communicates the fullness of God’s Word. Join me in praying for the world to know that God speaks every language.

 

“The Cross of CHRIST is the searchlight of GOD.
It reveals GOD’s love and man’s sin;
GOD’s power and man’s helplessness,
GOD’s holiness and man’s pollution.”
–Samuel M. Zwemer, The Glory of the Cross

Having many Muslim family members and knowing how difficult it can be at times to share the Gospel with people of the Islamic faith, I was intrigued by the idea of learning more about the American missionary long designated as “the Apostle to Islam.” As I dug deeper into this man’s history–rich in theology and an unswerving commitment to an enormous percentage of the world’s population largely ignored and considered “unreachable” at the time–I also learned what an impact his wife made on their ministry and that, together, they showed the unfailing love of Jesus to the lost.

 

 

Consecrated to God

 

Samuel Marinus Zwemer was born in Michigan in 1867. Like his Old Testament namesake, Samuel was consecrated to service to the Lord from infancy (a fact Zwemer did not learn until years later). When he was almost 17 years of age, Samuel put his faith in Jesus Christ. Soon after, he became active in campus missions. While at seminary, he met with other students and an Old Testament professor who had been a missionary in Egypt. Their meetings began with planning a mission to Muslims, which ultimately led them to focus on Arabia–one of the most difficult regions to send and support Christian missions.

Because Muslims were viewed as extremely hostile toward Christians, Zwemer and his comrades could not find any American mission agencies to sponsor them (like our friend, David Brainerd). So, when Samuel was 21, they formed their own agency:  the Arabian Mission. He was often quoted as saying, “If God calls you and no board will send you, bore a hole through the board and go anyway.” Two years later, after his ordination, Samuel sailed to the Middle East to study the Arabic language, eventually settling in Basrah for six years.

 

God Sends a Helper

 

When an Australian mission sent two young women missionaries to Basrah, Zwemer was the one to teach them Arabic. Soon he and one of the women, Amy Wilkes, a trained nurse, fell in love and married. (The story goes that the Australian mission insisted that Samuel reimburse them for Amy’s travel expenses, since she would no longer be working for them, and from then on, Samuel would joke that he followed the Arabian custom of purchasing a bride!). Samuel was a prolific writer, but Amy herself authored three children’s books about the customs and life of Arab people.

Just before the turn of the century, Amy began the first girl’s school in Manama, by which she was able to reach into the homes of women in the community. Only three years later, the school went from a homeschool to meeting in a building; what began as an all-girls school expanded to boys, and the American Mission School still exists today.

Because of Amy’s medical training, the Zwemers also opened a mission hospital in 1903, but loss and suffering came on the heels of triumph. The following year, their two daughters, Katharina (seven) and Ruth (four), contracted malaria and died within a week of each other. Close to the school their family had founded and which they had attended, the girls were buried. On their tombstones were etched the words, “Worthy is the Lamb to receive riches.”

 

“Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.” –Revelation 5:12, KJV

 

An Unflagging Spirit

 

Through setback, heartbreak, and few victories in the way of converts, the Zwemers never faltered in the desire to see Jesus glorified through the salvation of the people of Islam. “What motivated the Zwemers was that they never stopped marveling at what Christ had done for them on the cross, and they wanted Muslims to experience the same” (Roger Greenway). In his lifetime, Samuel spoke in Egypt and numerous countries across North Africa, South Africa, Indonesia, and China, as well as across the United States.

As I studied Samuel’s life, what impressed me most was not his zeal, but the focus of his passion. Through all his days, he continued to tell other Christians that “to be a missionary to Muslims required a strong Christology and an overpowering emphasis on the unique work of Christ in the atonement and the resurrection” (Greenway). 

 

“The Cross is the centre of the universe and of history. It will yet witness the reconciliation of all things upon the earth or things in the heavens through His blood.” –Samuel M. Zwemer, The Glory of the Cross

 

Because the Zwemers camped at the foot of the cross, they continually saw their need for and the glory of the Savior. I think it was this humble, worshipful posture that sustained them through decades of ministry. Heaven was not just their home, it was a place to which they wanted to ensure they would continue to acquire neighbors. How fitting that when Samuel Zwemer died just before his 85th birthday, he was laid to rest in the only piece of land he ever owned on this earth:  his burial plot. Just like Abraham. “For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.” (Hebrews 11:10)

 

Greenway, Roger S. “Brief Biography of Samuel Zwemer.” https://www.zwemercenter.com/brief-biography-of-samuel-zwemer/

Larson, Dr. Warren. “A Lasting Legacy of Samuel and Amy Zwemer in Bahrain.” https://www.zwemercenter.com/a-lasting-legacy-of-samuel-and-amy-zwemer-in-bahrain/