Missionary to Burma

I recently took a trip overseas to modern-day, war-torn Myanmar and the city of Yangon, formerly Rangoon. I packed lightly—so lightly that I did my laundry in the sink each night and wore those clean clothes the following day—so I didn’t have much room for books. I did bring my kindle, though, and I also brought this small paperback biography that I’d found in my church library. I couldn’t think of a more fitting book to carry aboard that plane, a source of inspiration for the work that laid ahead.

Adoniram Judson’s story has been oft retold, so I’m sure there are good biographies out there and there are great ones. I’d consider this one “good,” as it’s just a cursory overview of his many trials, escapades, and victories as a missionary in Burma. I’m sure there are lengthier studies out there, but this short book was fit for my purposes, and I have to say I really enjoyed the review of this great man’s life.

Perhaps the most famous of all Judson’s experiences was his call back to Christ as a young man. Having pursued money and fame and power at the encouragement of a college friend, he fell into utter misery and, one stormy night, he found shelter in an inn where he spent the night in sleepless trouble. Another tenant at the inn lay dying, and through the sounds, Adoniram wondered how he’d failed at this life of pleasure-seeking. Undoubtably his college buddy was doing better at it than he, off galivanting somewhere in Godless joy!

When Adoniram awoke in the morning, however, and asked after the sick man, the innkeeper told him that the man had died in the night. A pity too, for the man was about Adoniram’s age. And when the innkeeper told Adoniram the dead man’s name, Adoniram was shocked into repentance and revival, for it had been the very friend he’d been contemplating—not off living a life of sinful ease but dying desperate and alone in a rented room!

With a life-changing experience like that, it’s no wonder that Adoniram Judson would be spurred on to serve God with his everything. And serve he did through some miserable years of suffering, imprisonment, and loss. The author writes this about his initial journey overseas:

After two days of violent seasickness in the airless, filthy hold, with no one to understand him if he asked for a drink of water, Adoniram questioned his whole errand. What was he, a refined, cultured, well-educated gentleman, doing here, treated like an animal, lying in a heap of dirty straw! He was Adoniram Judson, who had been offered at the biggest church in Boston. If only he’d accepted and forgotten this foolishness. In the midst of his lonely self-pity, he remembered God. His head reeling, his stomach lurching, he tried to pray. By the time the privateer docked and Bayonne, France, Adoniram was resigned, for God had given him an answer. This misery must be endured because God was preparing him for even greater torment ahead— in his service. (26)

He and his wife, Ann, were determined to serve God, even if in the most difficult of places. They had made a promise to God, and they were unwilling to go back on their word. And when I read this following paragraph, I can’t help but wonder if times and faith have changed, or if we modern-day believers are a great deal softer than the giant saints of old:

But Adam and Anne had promised God; they would not go back on their word. He would sail on any boat at all, going anywhere, unless it were headed for England or the States. Wherever he was taken, he would begin his mission. (41)

The Judsons were eventually drawn to serve the Buddhist peoples of Burma (present-day Myanmar). Of the Buddhists, the author writes:

They planned to meet Buddhism that declared there was no god to save, no soul to be saved, and no sin to be saved from, with a Christian truth that god was real, man was sinful, and that Christ had died on the cross to save anyone who would believe. (45)

Meeting the right people who would believe took a great deal of time. Judson and his wife both were peddling an illegal Gospel, and they eventually had to seek permission from the King himself to preach this dangerously heretical new religion. But eventually, they did find some converts among the native peoples, and as this group grew in their relationship with Christ, they also grew in their faith, much like the earliest churches we see in Acts. They begged Adoniram Judson:

“Stay until a little church of 10 is collected, and you have placed a native teacher over it. Then go, if you must. If there are 10 of us, the religion will spread of itself. The superiors cannot stop it. No, not even with persecution.” (62)

Such faith they learned from their missionary and teacher, for even he had to suffer separation from his own wife, Ann, for two whole years when a storm blew his ship off-course and he landed in a place from which he couldn’t travel. But he summarized this absence and his life’s purpose with these words:

“Life is short. Millions of Bermans are perishing. I am almost the only person on earth who has attained their language to communicate salvation.” Here it was—the reason that Adoniram fought against fever, persecution, loneliness. (63)

The more I read of this great pioneer missionary to a nation that now boasts a fairly large, at-least-nominally Christian population, the more I respect him for his courage and humility. And he appeared to stay on task throughout his life, even after losing wife and children, suffering imprisonment and other loss. Later in the book, we read about his time reporting to his churches back home:

One minister put it bluntly. “Brother Judson, I trust you’ll understand me. After your meeting tonight—Well, sir, to tell you the truth, the folks were expecting—They wanted a story.”

“That’s exactly what I gave them,” Adoniram replied. “Most thrilling story I can imagine, the story of salvation.”

“But they’ve heard that before. What they wanted from a man who has just come from the netherlands of Christianity—“

Adoniram broke in impatiently. “My business is to preach the Gospel of Christ. Not to tickle their fancies with amusing stories, however decently strung together on a thread of religion! Tell me—how could I—in the hereafter, I mean—face God’s charge: ‘I gave you one opportunity to tell them of me. You spent it painting your own adventures.'” (114-115)

What an inspirational thought! And what a humbling reprimand to those missionaries tempted to share their stories of arrogance (“Look what I’ve done!”) summarized with a meaningless, fluffy afterthought, “Praise God.”

I really needed to read this book on the plane, and I’m so glad I packed it. While I pray for peace in the political sphere, I pray also that work Adoniram Judson started would continue to bear fruit and that the Bible he translated (which is still in use today!) would continue to shed God’s glorious light into darkened hearts.

There may be opportunity for me to return to Myanmar in the coming years, and while I don’t know what I’ll read on the next flight, it may be one of those greater, lengthier studies of his life that I mentioned above. This man’s story can’t help but be worth it.

©2023 E.T.