Unsung Missionaries

Great story, av1611jim! Praise the Lord for what He has done through these missionaries.:godisgood:

 

Thanks for sharing, Brother Jim. Your friend sounds like one of God's choicest treasures.:saint:

 

Fascinating! Brother Jim, you have a wonderful heritage. And your grandmother was certainly an unsung missionary hero! :thumbs: :thumbs:

 

Check out this story of four unsung missionary martyrs to North Korea, of all places! The world is not worthy of such missionaries.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52608

 

The Double Veteran Missionary

The Double Veteran Missionary

Nathan Brown (1807-1886)
By John R. Himes​

Imagine spending years of your life in India translating the Bible with pioneer William Carey, only to have to return to the homeland because of illness. Then imagine a fruitful ministry in the United States, including writing an effective book against slavery. Then imagine once again answering the call to the mission field of Japan at age 65, when you will translate the very first New Testament into the Japanese language. You have just imagined the amazing life of Nathan Brown!

Brown was a “haystack” missionary, one of the young Baptist men who dedicated himself to the Lord at Williams College as a result of the famous “haystack prayer meetings.” He seems to have become a member of the very first missionary society in America, the “Society of the Brethren.” started by the students in a dorm room.

After finishing his training at Williams College in 1827 (where the “Nathan Brown Prize in History” is dedicated to him), Brown first went to Burma, but shortly after that ended up in Assam, India. There he wrote the first grammar of the Assam language, and then finished his translation of the Assamese NT in 1850, whereupon he had to return to his homeland because of ill health. Back in the States, he joined the Abolitionist Movement, preaching sermons against slavery. He wrote an influential book opposing slavery, Magnus Maharba and the Dragon, a satire. (An excerpt can be read at: http://www.geocities.com/oregeopeter/maharba.htm)

In 1868 Brown got to know some Japanese students at Bridgeport Academy and Princeton. He then wrote another satire criticizing the materialism of America as seen through the eyes of the Japanese students. In answering the call to go to Japan, Brown prayed for three things: to serve the Lord for at least ten years in Japan, to be able to translate the first Japanese NT and to plant one church. God answered all three prayers!

Brown joined Jonathan Goble in Japan in 1873. The two of them founded the first ever Baptist church in Japan on March 3, 1873, in the hilly port city of Yokohama, where Commodore Perry’s famous black ships had shocked the nation of Japan into modernity. Within four months the two men had baptized their first convert, and the church was completely Japanese within four years! This is an astonishing record for the time, since Christianity was still technically outlawed on pain of death.

What is so amazing about this second trip of Brown to the mission field is that Brown then not only learned Japanese from scratch at age 66, but became fluent in it and eventually translated the entire New Testament into the language. The Japanese written language is considered by some scholars to be the most difficult in the world because of its use of thousands of Chinese characters (giving multiple pronunciations of them while Chinese usually only has one), as well as two separate syllable alphabets.

Brown renewed his Bible translation career on the committee of the Moto Yaku (“Original Translation”), but split with it amicably because of the insistence of the other missionaries on translating directly from the KJV instead of the original languages, and also transliterating “baptism” instead of translating it with a word meaning “immersion,” a stand he had learned from William Carey. Thus, he elected to translate his own NT with the help of Tetsuya Kawakatsu.

Interestingly enough, Brown’s goal was to get the Bible into the hands of the common man, so he innovated in two ways. First of all, he translated into the colloquial Japanese dialect used by the common citizen of the Kanto Plain rather than the classical Japanese used for all written documents in that era. Secondly, he elected not to use the difficult Chinese characters called kanji. (To this day the knowledge of several thousand kanji is considered necessary for a good education.) Instead, Brown elected to use the hiragana alphabet, usually used only for word endings.

Brown’s translation was reprinted several times. A revision of it by a missionary named White using the kanji characters was printed in 1886, and in 1894 Kawakatsu published his revision of Brown’s New Testament. In the meantime, the Moto Yaku was a poor enough translation that a revision was brought out in 1917.

Brown died in Yokohama in 1886 after having spent his life for Christ both in helping to stamp out slavery in the American homeland and on two different mission fields. He was truly an unsung hero of the faith!

Main sources: A History of Christianity in Japan, by Otis Cary, 1909; The Bible and Its Translation in Japan, byAkira Izumida, 1996.

 

You likee my missionaries, I getee you more! The next one I want to do is the Sikh evangelist-missionry, Sundar Singh. :jesus:

Anyone else have another contribution?

 

On second thought, I think I'll pass on doing a complete story on Sundar Singh (1889-1929), the evangelist-missionary of India. I have found that he was quite controversial, being a mystic, what with his visions and his approval of the heretic Swedenborg. He supposedly trusted Christ through seeing a vision of Him as a teenager. He also told many strange, hard to believe stories from his travels, such as spending time with a 300-year-old Christian hermit. Still, he is a fascinating character who evidently had a real love for Christ and a burden for missions.

One strange aspect of Singh's story is that he claimed to often be in touch with a secret society of Christians throughout India called the Sannyasi Mission. The members of the mission were said to travel throughout India as secret believers in Christ, trying to prepare Indians for the day when they could be open Christians without persecution from the Hindus.

There is a parallel to the Sannyasi Mission in Japanese history, the Kakure Kirishitan ("Hidden Christian") movement. These people were Catholics from the work of Francis Xavier and his followers in 17th century Japan, but when Christianity was outlawed and viciously persecuted, they went underground while their fellow Catholics were dying for the name of Christ. A woman in my church in Yokohama once said she admired these people, but I immediately was compelled to say, "How much better would it have been if they had stood up for Jesus Christ bravely, and suffered for Him!"

Singh called himself a Christian Sadhu (Indian holy man), and wandered about India proclaiming Christ. He especially loved Tibet, and once a year took an evangelistic trip there. He never came back from his final trip to Tibet, and was assumed dead at that time.

Here is a website devoted to him: http://www.sadhusundarsingh.homestead.com/files/introduction.html

Read some of his writings at: http://www.plough.com/ebooks/pdfs/WisdomSadhu.pdf

 

Check out this blog about a pastor's trip to Japan to visit Baptist Mid-Mission missionaries and pastors.
http://somethinggreater-japan.blogspot.com/

The men mentioned are all friends of mine, some of them dear friends, and they are certainly unsung missonaries and pastors. I went to college with Bro. Nobby Tajima and Bro. Joe Mita, and taught in Bible school a couple of the Japanese pastors mentioned. (They turned out much better than their teacher, and I truly mean that! Japanese pastors are my heroes for their dedication and tremendous sacrifice.) All of the men mentioned in the blog are godly, faithful men. I wish I could set up a Baptist Board tour to take you around to meet each and every one of them. May God greatly reward them. :saint:

 

Thanks so much for the concern, Gwen. We were just looking at the tornado damage on the Japanese news. It was at a town several hours from us, up on the coast, which we have driven through before. Very tragic and shocking, since tornados are quite rare here in Japan--unlike typhoons, which occur ever year like Florida with its hurricanes.

Please keep reading this thread. I want to write this week about Pastor Kamidate, a church planter up here I preached for this past weekend, and maybe about Dr. T., a Japanese medical missionary over somewhere in a Muslim country which I will not name. :type:

 

Victorious Pastor

Victorious Pastor

by John R. Himes​

It was 1943, and Kamidate (kah-me-dah-teh) San was sure Japan would win the war that year. So he ordered that his baby boy, the all important first born son and his heir, be named Katsutoshi (kah-tsu-toe-she), meaning “Year of Victory!” Pastor Kamidate, a church-planting pastor in the city of Kitami on the Japanese island of Hokkaido, always smiles when he tells the story of his birth, amused by the historical irony.

The Kamidate family was founded by one of the many Meiji or Taisho Era soldiers sent north by the reform-minded government of Japan to settle the wild island of Hokkaido around the end of the 19th century. In those days, other than the port city of Hakodate, little could be found on the large island except for the tribes of the Ainu people, and the abundant animal population, including bears, dear and foxes.

The samurai tradition was strong in the family, and Pastor Kamidate loves to tell the stories. His grandmother, a girl from over the mountains, married through an arranged marriage, and never met her husband-to-be until she came down the mountain for her wedding day. His grandfather was fond of his samurai sword, and loved to wave it around after he had enough “sake” (sah-keh) rice wine in him, to the everlasting consternation of the family members. Everyone breathed a deep sigh of relief when the oldest son proudly took the sword with him as he left to join the Imperial Army—and then lost it somewhere on the battlefield!

Thus young Katsutoshi grew up in a very traditional family, and to this day he loves being Japanese, and can quote the ancient sayings and poems of this beautiful culture. However, as he approached the age of twenty he began to doubt the traditional religions of Buddhism and Shinto. Coming to Christ through an independent Baptist missionary up here on Hokkaido, he now has a great love and appreciation for America and her missionaries, and for how General Douglas MacArthur so wisely helped his country back on her feet after World War Two.

After his salvation he ended up down south on the main island of Honshu attending the church of the Mino Mission, a strong Fundamentalist group known for its stand against the idolatrous emperor worship mandated by the government. Even Christian churches were commanded to have a picture of Emperor Hirohito set up in the sanctuary, and then to bow to it and worship him before their own worship service. (Thus it is that the habit of coming late to the service became ingrained in many faithful Christians of the day as a way to avoid idolatry!) Eventually he made it back to his home island and began planting a church, selling the famous Sayama type of green tea to make ends meet.

This past Saturday I boarded an express train and traveled three hours over and through the mountains to the city of Kitami to preach a special two day evangelistic meeting for Pastor Kamidate. He had passed out 2000 leaflets and put up posters around the city, some of which had been vandalized. It was wonderful to see his family, very special people. Though he is in his 60’s, Pastor and Mrs. Kamidate are raising three adopted daughters, Megumi (“Grace,” a high school junior), Madoka (“Window of Song,” a sophomore) and Ai (“Love,” a second grader). Adoption is a very rare thing in Japan, but the Kamidates have defied all tradition in this instance.

We went out to eat, just the two pastors as is the custom in this country. Pastor Kamidate was so gracious to me, and the conversation glorified God. At one point we discussed a situation involving another Japanese pastor, and Pastor Kamidate gave wise and spiritual advice.

After the meal we headed for the church building, which he recently purchased and renovated with his own time and money. When it came time for the first service, Pastor Kamidate was worried that no one would come except for his family and a Japanese missionary family currently off the field and working with him. Several of his regulars had already called and said they could not make it. What joy flooded his face when two ladies, retired high school teachers who are acquaintances, walked in the door of the church. I have never seen my friend so excited! He guided them into the new kitchen to show it to them, jumped over to me and whispered, “The Gospel! In the message!” meaning they were lost.

Thus it was that these two ladies, in church for the very first time in their lives, heard the precious story of how God loved them and Christ died for their sins and rose again. God gave me a freedom in preaching that is always a joy to feel, and I ignored my notes and preached a completely new message! The ladies did not trust Christ that day (it was all too new), but I know that Pastor Kamidate will continue the friendship and gently guide them to Christ.

For twenty years Pastor Kamidate has been praying for a missionary to come to Kitami to work with him. In spite of the fact that early in its history Kitami had a large population of Christians and was the home of a very successful Presbyterian missionary, there are now no missionaries in this city of 112,000. Would you go help Pastor Kamidate if God called you?