Adoniram Judson, Part 2

Ed and Iram Judson lived a life of adventure and suffering, but he didn't want to talk about himself. He wanted to talk about Christ and the power of the Gospel to change lives. Everybody wanted to meet the first American missionary to now return some 20 years later with stories of distant lands and great disease and prison shackles and all that stuff. Congregations were somewhat disappointed that instead of talking about his adventures, he most often simply wanted to whisper the Gospel. Judson loved and lived the Gospel.

He lived a life of adventure, danger, and suffering. And that was coupled with an incredible fruitfulness for God. It's only natural that when people met him, they wanted to hear stories of God's grace. They wanted to learn more about how God worked through his life and ministry.

But Judson didn't want to talk about himself. He wanted to talk about Christ and the power of the Gospel to change lives. His incredible example is our theme today here on Wisdom for the Heart.

Stephen Davey continues through his series, Legacies of Light. This is the conclusion to a message he began last time called Adonarm Judson. On the same day he presented himself to the Congregational Mission Board, he met a young woman named Anne Hasseltine. And over the next few weeks, they quickly fell in love.

Adonarm was clear about his life's goal. His letter to Anne's father is revealing. I'm going to read some of it to you.

It reveals his passion for the lost and it's almost prophetic in detail. The letter reads, by the way, dads, imagine some young man wanting to marry your daughter and his proposal sounding like this. 1800s English and I quote, I have now to ask you whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring to see her no more in this world.

That's a period for me. Think about it. Listen, whether you can consent to her departure for a heathen land, her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of a missionary's life, whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean, to the fatal influences 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 perishing immortal souls for the sake of heaven and the glory of God? Can you consent to all this and the promise of meeting your daughter in the world of glory with a crown of righteousness, brightened by the acclamations of heathen now saved through her means who will there be praising her savior? How's that for a proposal? Man, imagine, I'd like to take your daughter away from you to a heathen land where she'll probably suffer every deprivation and more than likely a violent death.

You could see, thank you in this young man, no holds barred, this is what I'm going to do, this is where we're going to go, this is what matters most. Anne's father said yes and so did she. In a way, Anne, her father, mother, really we're all saying the same thing to God just in different ways, here am I, bury me. Two weeks after their wedding, they are on a ship bound for India. The voyage would last four months and I want to bring up one thing because it creates problems and again shows you a little bit of their character. It's going to create problems with their congregationalist supporters back home and their family. Remember his dad is a congregational pastor. You see, during this voyage, they spent a lot of time ransacking the book of Acts, the gospels, studying the word on subjects related to church planting and they came to the conclusion that salvation should precede baptism and they also concluded that baptism, correctly understood, literally translated, could only mean immersion. In that voyage, they changed their entire view and their affiliation, which means, and by the way, this is no small thing, they departed from America as congregationalists and landed in India as Baptists. Now the problem was there was no American Baptist missionary board. He's the first missionary from America. So they effectively declined, walked away from all of their support and their supporters. I bring that issue up because it reveals something about them early on, both of them, their willingness to confront their religious past, their willingness to potentially upset their families, their willingness to lose all their financial support, all for the sake of biblical conviction, which reveals quite a bit about the mettle of their character that will be put to the test. Adnarm and Ann Judson were baptized by immersion soon after landing in Calcutta, India by the son of William Carey.

Felix was his name with whom they stayed when they arrived. They would trust God and frankly never look back. Now the good news was when news reached America of their changed position, Baptist churches rallied, evidently they were a little slower than the congregationalists, and they created the American Baptist Missionary Union and promptly began supporting them. Now there were other changes ahead for them. They expected to settle in an area where they were not allowed when they arrived. They had to move several times and eventually they settled on an area known as Rangoon, Burma, just north of Thailand. There they would spend the next 10 years of their lives attempting to learn the Burmese language. They had to learn it without a teacher, without a grammar, without a dictionary, without any other believers, without a church, without any help. Adnarm had to learn, and his wife Ann, by literally creating his own Burmese grammar. See how God wired him at three to prepare him for what he would be doing at 23.

So he would spend several years creating his own grammar, learning the language. It would take six years of study before he was able to preach his first sermon. Finally, seven years after arriving, Adnarm led the first Burmese individual to faith in Jesus Christ. Now think about it, seven years before one convert to Christ.

I mean that doesn't really sell all that well to the supporters back home, does it? But they stayed with it. Part of the problem was in Burma converting from Buddhism was punishable by death. Little wonder it would take Judson 12 years before he had 18 people baptized and in the church.

Twelve years, 18 people. On one occasion Adnarm and another missionary traveled to see the emperor of Burma to petition for freedom to preach and for people to convert without losing their lives or being threatened of the loss of their lives. He not only disregarded their request but he threw the gospel tract that Adnarm had written to the ground after reading only a few lines. In the meantime, Roger William Judson, their little boy died at eight months of age. Back in their home region, Ann Judson continued serving along with her husband. He had been able to befriend the wife of the political leader in Rangoon, sort of like the governor in our culture, and begin to make inroads. Before long a printing press arrived and materials that Adnarm had translated into Burmese were now being printed by the thousands.

Still no real fruit but they were now coalescing into printed materials that they could distribute and they were being distributed. It included a full and complete translation of the Gospel of Matthew. Eventually Adnarm would complete the entire New Testament into Burmese. About the time he finishes this translation, war breaks out between England and Burma and all of the English missionaries are immediately suspected of being spies for the British government.

There was trouble in the air. Five years after baptizing their first convert, on June 8, 1824, Burmese officials suddenly broke into their home, threw Adnarm to the ground, tied him up and dragged him away to prison. He was placed in a prison building with a hundred other inmates, male and female.

They were all lying on the floor, their feet in stocks and iron chains, weighing 14 pounds. In fact Adnarm would wear the scars of those chains for the rest of his life. At night, he records, a bamboo pole was passed between the prisoners shackled feet and then hoisted up by pulleys so the prisoners literally hung upside down at a height which allowed their shoulders to rest on the ground while their feet were pulled above their heads all night long. After some time, Adnarm was moved to a cage that once housed a lion, not high enough to stand, not broad enough to lie down.

During this time, Ann delivered their daughter Maria. She would walk to that jail every day bringing Adnarm food that she would beg the jailer to pass along to him because the prison supplied no food. Inmates simply starved to death. Soon she became ill and unable to nurse her baby. Finally, if you can imagine this, the jailer had mercy on them and actually let Adnarm take the baby each evening into the village and beg for some nursing mother to give their baby milk. Finally, suddenly, Adnarm was released from prison almost 2 years in there. He was evidently needed to translate between the English and the Burmese.

They found a use for him. By the time he returned home, Ann was dead. A few months later their little Maria died. A few months after that he received news that his father had also only recently died as well and he was crushed by it all. It just all bore down on him. He entered a deep depression.

It would last nearly 3 years. He dropped his translation work. He retreated from anything that might promote any sense of happiness or pleasure. He refused to eat with those outside the mission station. He renounced his honorary doctorate that he had been given from Brown University.

He gave all of his savings away to the Baptist Mission Board and asked that his salary be reduced. He then built a hut some distance from his mission compound deep in the jungle, dangerous, and alone where he moved in. He even dug next to the hut an open grave where he expected to be buried and he would sit in that grave for hours contemplating the decaying of his own flesh. He would write in his journal though and on one occasion during this time he wrote these words of utter spiritual desolation. He said and I quote, God is to me the great unknown.

I believe in him but I cannot find him. He subsisted on a little rice each day and he actually spent his days reflecting and he would even pray for some sign that God had forgiven him for all sorts of imagined failures for not living up to his calling, for not being a more humble missionary, for getting caught up with the pride of his commitment for accepting the accolades that he had received from others and on and on. The turning point came and it was surprising it was actually a letter informing him that his brother Elnathan had died at the age of 35. But ironically this became the first step out of depression because Adoniram had been praying, had prayed for 17 years specifically for his brother's salvation but to no avail. However the letter informed him that not only had Elnathan died but Elnathan before dying had trusted Jesus Christ for salvation. And that was sort of this puff of wind in his sails that moved him back to the mission compound. He picked back up his translation work and the next year 1831 was the beginning of an incredible outpouring of spiritual interest that he had never seen before. Is it possible that God in his timing waited until this seed had truly died, buried. But now the refreshing work of God's Spirit was enabling him, breathing new life back into him and ironically a great harvest is about to begin.

It starts out slowly at first but it's already seen as different. Part of what God did for him 8 years after Ann's death was bring to him another bride. Adoniram married a widow of a long time missionary partner in Burma.

Instead of going back to the States she decided to stay there. They married, had several children, the family grew and as it grew the church grew. On September 1835 he completed the Old Testament translation of the Bible into Burmese and he also baptized the 100th member of the Burmese Baptist Church.

These when he started out had been his goal. He wanted to translate the Bible into Burmese and he wanted to baptize 100 converts who trusted in Jesus Christ and they were now accomplished. He was rejoicing, he was thrilled. His wife Sarah's health began to decline. They decided to go home to America to recover for her and to raise awareness of the mission that God was indeed establishing.

It was taking root. There were now 100 believers. Sadly she would die en route to America and be buried on an island while Adoniram and their three oldest children continued on. When they arrived in Boston Adoniram much to his surprise was greeted as a celebrity. Newspapers covered his arrival at every move. Everybody wanted to meet the first American missionary to now return some 20 years later with stories of distant lands and great danger and disease and difficulty and prison shackles and all that stuff. Since Adoniram was actually suffering at the time with a lung problem he could only talk in a whisper through an assistant. In addition he hadn't spoken English for nearly 20 years and he had a hard time he said putting three sentences together properly. In fact he had written to his board before his arrival and he said to them and I quote do not expect me to make public addresses for in order to become an acceptable and eloquent preacher in a foreign language I had deliberately abandoned my own. He had literally stopped speaking English. Congregations and gatherings you know in the eastern part of America were somewhat disappointed that instead of talking about his adventures he most often simply wanted to whisper the gospel and talk about Christ. He had truly died to self. While in America he met a woman with a rather well-known literary career under way and they fell in love. She agreed to be his wife and leave her career comforts of home for a hundred and eight degree weather, disease, difficulty.

She too became one more seed to say here I am Lord bury me. They arrived back in Burma and that's when the work literally exploded. Adonir began a ministry with a group of people called the Karen's a people group a large ethnic group there in the country that was still following traces of Old Testament truths. Really interesting to study some of this amazing preservation of truth through oral traditions. In fact they had handed these down for centuries. They called them the traditions of the elders.

Adonir and Judson by the way had no idea no idea. It's as if God had reserved his encounter with the first Karen a people group member until now. But their traditions included for instance listen to these the story of a creator God who created man and then a woman from that man's rib. They also believed in a devil who tempted them into sinning. They believed in a Messiah who would come one day to the rescue. They were actually living with the expectation of a messenger who would come to deliver news of the Messiah and deliver to them news from a sacred parchment roll. And here comes Adonir Judson just perfectly timed by the Lord while he had once spent years sitting in a public hut he had built praying that someone would accept his invitation to come in and inquire about the gospel.

Now in one winter alone when they returned six thousand people came to their home to inquire and ask for material. Some would travel three months from the borders of China and arrive saying and I'm reading what he was writing quote sir. We hear that there is an eternal hell. We're afraid of it.

Do give us a writing that will tell us how to escape it. Others came from the north saying we've seen writings that tell of an eternal God. If you are the author referring to his tracks that by now had been distributed that far if you are the author please give us more so that we can know the truth before we die. If you can imagine this beloved in one year alone Adonir Judson and his team baptized more than one thousand converts 12 years to reach 18 people in one year over a thousand that buried seed is now bearing a harvest of fruit.

Truly amazing. After several years of fruitful ministry his health began to fail and he was now 61 years of age he had been through so much when he had arrived in his early 20s he had hoped and prayed for a hundred believers soon after his death at the age of 61 there were more than two hundred thousand Christians and hundreds of churches in fact one out of every 58 Burmese citizens had accepted Jesus Christ for the last one hundred and fifty years by the way since his death every dictionary and every grammar written in Burma is based on the work of Adonir Judson. His Bible is still the most popular premier translation for the Burmese people.

All of that he did alone buried. On the day he baptized his first convert he had waited seven years to see it happen he had written in his journal these rather audacious words I love this he says and I quote oh may this baptism prove to be the beginning of a series of baptisms in the Burman empire which shall continue in uninterrupted success to the end of the age. And guess what it's still taking place there are now nearly four thousand evangelical Baptist congregations which include one point nine million people in that country and counting and they all trace their spiritual lineage to the legacy of Adonir Judson. On April 3rd 1850 he boarded a ship for a voyage he hoped would help him recover his strength instead he became terribly ill and eight days into the voyage he passed away listen to this simple conclusion the crew gathered in silence as they wrapped his body for burial at sea no family or friends on board and after a few words by a captain who didn't believe the gospel his body was lowered into the Indian Ocean without even a prayer I don't think that would have mattered to Adonir Judson he had died long ago and his welcome into the presence of his eternal savior would have been wonderful to see a seed a kernel of wheat surrendered sacrificed buried but even to this day bearing fruit. We can observe a lot of truths from this man's life but I'm going to give you three statements very quickly number one serving Christ does not eliminate potential suffering serving Christ does not eliminate potential suffering secondly willingness to suffer is often the key to spiritual fruit willingness to suffer is often key to spiritual fruit number three what matters most is a life surrendered which effectively says no matter where you are no matter where I am what matters most is that we are saying Lord here am I bury me there's a marble slab outside a Baptist Church in the town where he was born Malden Massachusetts placed there in memoriam that says all that I believe that Adonir Judson would care to have said and I close with what that slab declares.

Reverend Adonir Judson born August 9 1788 died April 12 1850 Malden his birthplace the ocean his grave converted Burman's and the Burmese Bible his monument his record is on high. I hope you were encouraged and challenged from today's lesson. This is Wisdom for the Heart the Bible teaching ministry of pastor and author Stephen Davey. You can send Stephen a note if you address your email to info at wisdom online.org. You can call us today at 866-48-Bible or 866-482-4253. When we come back next time we're looking at the life of Fanny Crosby. Join us for that here on Wisdom for the Hearts. you