Book report #3, John Paton, missionary to the New Hebrides

Dear Readers;

We are now up to my most recent required reading (though not most recent reading) is John G. Paton, Missionary to the New Hebrides; An Autobiography.   As guessed by the title it is an autobiography.  It is 212 pages long, and divided very unevenly into ten chapters.  It is not repressed by any "politically correct views," that is none of today's.  

 

The first chapter, covering his family history and early life was rather slow, and was rather boring wading through.  The most interesting highlight from it concerned how his grandfather escaped death at the hands of the "pirate of the seas" John Paul Jones.   A different view then one usually hears of that individual.

 

Fortunately the book picks up in speed and interest from the second chapter.  By the third chapter I was not needing to be told to read it before other books.   This in fact was my favourite chapter, concerning his evangelism amongst the Catholics and other characters of the Scottish town.

 

In the fourth chapter he goes into the main thrust of this book, his missionary interests.  He was accepted into his church's missionary wing, and was sent to the South Seas.  He describes in latter chapters that this was not the ideal, relaxing, no-worries, mission field that some of you might be thinking.  Mainly the weather was nice, except for the worst hurricanes in anyone's memory hitting the island after he arrived.  The food was good except there was a fair chance of getting a poisonous fish (which in fact killed off at least two of his helpers).  Then the natives of the islands were friendly, except they were cannibals, entirely perfidious, utterly treacherous, and they thought it a virtue to be able to lie and get away with it (sounds like a few politicians I have heard of).   

 

He worked under some of the hardest circumstances I have heard of in the field, included but not limited to mosquitoes, malaria, diarrhea, consumption, the death of his newborn son, the death of his wife, the critics' insults for these two previous things,  a hurricane flattening his house and destroying much of his other work, the knowledge of previous missionaries being killed, the enmity of the heathen witch doctors, the enmity of most of the chiefs, the equally disturbing result of treachery by supposed friendly chiefs, constant and blatant thievery of almost everything he had, the enmity of the equally pagan European sandal wood traders, their thievery of his boat, and lastly almost daily threats to his life.  The list could easily be extended.  To the world this is of all things strange, a man who willingly stayed at his post despite all this, despite over five times being offered free passage else where.  

 

The thing that in hindsight seems most to have destroyed his work was the evil influence of the sandal wood traders, and it well seems that they were a worse lot then the cannibals that Paton had gone to witness to.  

 

I hope this does not spoil it, but he survives all of their attempts to kill him.

 

 

 

 

Josephus; Thrones of Blood

This second book read and reported on by Timothy Young, age 17.  

Dear Readers;

The book on topic is Josephus; Thrones of Blood; A History of The Times of Jesus 37B.C. To A.D. 70.   It is the hacked down edition meant for the mythical creature of the common man.  It is 231 pages long, divided into sixteen chapters and prologue.

Generally it achieves the translators goal of being able to be read by the common man.  In other words the simpler words are chosen rather then words of complexity even when it does great damage to the general flow of the history.   

It somewhat picks up as it goes along, becoming more interesting towards the beginning of Agrippa's maneuvering through Roman court life.  As a history book it is an ideal source, however it is not, for the average person, a real page turner.  

It really gets interesting once the Roman governor Florus arrives.  After doing something that was bad enough to know he would be in trouble he decided to save his career by inciting the Jews to revolt.  It is amazing how short sighted some politicians were back then isn't it?  It is also surprising how much it took for the Jews to be rallied up into revolt, but eventually he succeeded in his goal.  

After the rebellion was begun however there was no particular leader, and Jerusalem was ruled by robber/assassins who generally ruined whatever chance there had been of holding the city.  They also fought in the temple constantly, destroying most of the supplies that possibly could have aided in the siege, so that at the beginning of the siege already the poor of the city were starving.  With this great disadvantage it is entirely unsurprising that the city fell.  The siege is unlike the last five or six sieges that I have studied in that the defenders had no commander-in-chief, and no discipline.  The walls of Jerusalem were capable of holding out forever against the army in front of them had it not been for for the three above mentioned factors, and of course the fourth that God had decided to judge that city.  

The siege was well conducted only from the outside point of view.  The defenders of Jerusalem were, from the sound of things, well deserving of their fate.  A simple reading of the book will convince the unprejudiced of that.  In short one finds oneself siding with the Romans the moment Florus and company have left the scene. 

GEORGE MÜLLER

Note:  Guest appearance from Timothy Young, by coercion.  He is doing a series of book reports on books he is reading, also by coercion, but I think he's enjoying them too.  

My Dear Reader,

 

This is a report on a book recently read titled George Müller of Bristol.  It is a 462 pages long, counting everything from preface to the last appendix.  It has 24 chapters of good length (good is around ten pages each my opinion).   It has 13 appendixes labeled from "a" to "n".  The author of this doorstopper is Arthur T. Pierson who met Mr. Müller in the latter's later life.

 

It was written very shortly after the subject's death in 1896 on March 10th. (coincidently this report is being written on the 119th anniversary of this date) The edition I got a hold of might very well be from the first patch printed in the USA, however in perfect discordance to the usual habit, it has no date of printing and thus this a guess.

 

In the first chapter the author covers briefly the childhood, teenage, and early twenties of George Müller.   George Müller was born as any one who reads Wikipedia can ascertain on the 27th of September in 1805 in Prussia.   His father was a tax collector and they were comparatively well to do. 

 

His father showed favoritism towards him over his brother which was detrimental to the early family.  He was undisciplined and quickly became a proficient liar.  His father gave both boys amounts of money which they wasted, and when questioned simply lied about.  When caught and punished they did not reform, but only evolved more elaborate methods of cheating or robbing their father.  He not only stole his father's money, but even went after government money under his father's care.   

 

Despite this, for some strange reason his father sent him to a cathedral school for training to enter university so that he could be a pastor in the Lutheran Church. Now this sheds considerable light on the state of the German church in the 1800s if a boy who was well known to be a thief, cheat, and able liar should be selected for a pastor.  

 

His habits did not dissipate because of the this separation, but seemed to grow only the faster, so that when his mother lay dying it was discovered that their fourteen year old son was drunk in the streets.  Her death did not even rouse his conscience which seems at this point to have been well near dead.  He entered training for confirmation and was not changed at all by this.  Indeed when his father gave him money that was customarily given for the confirmation he stole eleven twelfths of it.  This is not usually counted to be a sign of true repentance.   As to the rest of his school life, university, and pre-conversation life he carried on in the same general path. 

 

He and a group of others similar to him by a dint of exceptional lying got a hold of a number of passports and visited Switzerland in attempts of indulging their sinful passions more fully.  When this was done the group returned to Germany.  One of their number felt guilty and determined to reform and invited George to the meeting.  George was there saved.

 

He was there it seems, truly converted.  In 1826 he began to think of mission work after reading missionary journals (a good way of starting) and was beginning to go that way when he was somewhat distracted by a girl.  To say somewhat is actually a little of an understatement, for he almost seemed to shut down all his prayer and any other sign of being a Christian during this period.  At the end of six weeks however this changed with his younger brother going to Poland to be a missionary amongst the Polish Jews.  This shocked George into the right way, for his brother had been comparatively wealthy, and had all the more reason to stay in Germany then he.

 

After that he determined to go to England (After much prayer as was the course from this point of his whole life).   He was there challenged on the subject of baptism, and after an private study of the Bible he determined that it was, "of all revealed truths, not one is more clearly revealed in the Scriptures-- not even the doctrine of justification by faith-- and that subject has only become obscured by men not having been willing to take the Scriptures alone to decide the point."

Shortly after this he also determined to cease taking a fixed salary from that point onward.  On October 7th 1830 he married a Miss Mary Grover (Spoiler:  the author does not spend much longer on the subject then I just did.) 

 

In 1835 he opened an orphanage which is considered by many to be his main life work.  His main difference fromn others of the time though was this, he asked of no man (or woman) anything, except orphans at first.   He was extremely careful that he did not let himself or anyone that worked with him ask money of anyone.   George Müller was one of the two men who gave much of the impetus to what is called faith missions.  Hudson Taylor was inspired by him to go to China with the same mindset that he would not ask of any man for money, but solely rely on what God gave him in answer to prayer.

 

From 1875 he took less of the lead in the work in the orphan houses, and instead went on missionary journeys on every inhabited continent except South America, and for the next seventeen years of his life he continued speaking in them.   Recall this, he started at the age of seventy, and continued into his late eighties.   From his tours alone he would have been remembered as a great man, but this after a full life's work!  For the last six years of his life he returned to his home in England, and continued preaching to the Sunday of that week and giving out the hymns on the Wednesday night prayer meeting of the week that he died.

If a man is to be judged by his funeral, George Müller did very well for a man who had not one hundred English pounds to his name.  Tens of thousands of people lined the route of the procession.  They then stopped at Orphan House number three (of five) and had a service.   After this the procession made for Bethesda where there was a second service, where there was standing space only.  Nearly eighty carriages followed the procession to the cemetery where he was laid to rest.   This is very impressive when one considers that this was only four days after his death. 

 

Though he died then at a goodly age, his works have continued to this day.  His work amongst the orphans is what he is best remembered for, but this is not his only work.   He served from 1836 roughly in connection with the church as the senior pastor/elder.   His missionary efforts are at least as great as many others of that century, and much greater then many of this century.  His yearly Reports are one of the strongest proofs of the effectiveness of prayer that has existed.  His secret-- it does him injustice to call it that, for he proclaimed it broadly-- was his prayer.   If the saying, "a man is only what he is when on his knees" is true he was a giant rarely matched throughout all church history.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cousin Capers

 For a long time I've wanted to take the 2 biggest little cousins camping, imagining they would be thrilled to sleep in a tent. 

 Our tent hadn't been used since the Zambia trip in 2013, but the boys remembered how to set it up.  One thing to note here, we went camping at the camping area on the end of our street.  Taking a 3 year old means I'm not going to outer Mongolia.  We were about 2 blocks from her house, and 3 blocks from our house which, I know, is a little weird, but it worked! 

 Josh was SUCH a big help.  Notice the solar snowman he's holding to give that Christmas ambiance we needed.  I think Daniel kind of got conked with it, hence the agonized face.

But we did it!  We cooked sausages and marshmallows over the fire Josh made, we played lots of games of Concentration/The Memory Game in the tent, and we went to the playground.  We read 6 new picture books--Daniel liked the one about inventions the best--and we even slept a little!  My air mattress went pancake flat, so I crawled onto Connie's foam mattress.  Daniel started on a mattress and ended up on the ground.  I loved the way Connie woke in the morning--with a huge smile, delighted to still be in the tent.

Another thing on the to-do list was cousin pictures and we did it!  Gloria had the 3 Yarmouth Youngs dressed in orange, so our 3 big kids got into some shade of orange too and ...

 we did it! 

 Nathanael slept through last year's picture so this is his first time to appear in the cousin collection.
He's next to Josh, Connie, Evangel, Daniel, and the inTIMidating Tim. 

 Notice the fancy footwork on 5 out of 6 coordinated Youngs. 

Children are a blessing from the Lord!  and the fruit of the womb is His reward!  We are so thankful for these guys, and so happy to share them with my thousands of readers  :-)  especially the 3 grandmothers and aunts of these guys.  Merry Christmas!