History focus for August 9

A short focus on a person or event associated with this day in History.

Adoniram Judson -

Adoniram Judson was born August 9, 1788 in Malden, Massachusetts. He grew up in a loving Christian family in Plymouth. He attended Providence College with the hope of becoming playwright. While at Providence College he and some friends adopted the philosophies of Deism. He and his college friends prided themselves in free-thinking. They believed that there was a God, but this God was uninvolved in the lives of mere humans.

 

Adoniram explained his beliefs to his parents. His parents dearly loved the Lord and were very upset, and horrified at his thinking. His father tried to reason with Adoniram, but the well educated Adoniram deftly trampled each of his father's arguments. His mother tearfully tried to change his thinking. Adoniram had no way to oppose his mother's tears and prayers for her wayward son.

 

The young Adoniram began a tour of the New England States around his home in Plymouth. One evening during his travels Adoniram found a local inn and asked for a room. The house was nearly full. There was just one room left and the inn-keeper hated to give it to anyone because the man in the next room was very sick and possibly dying. Adoniram took the room feeling he was so exhausted that nothing could keep him awake. But Adoniram could not sleep. He couldn't shake the thought that the man in the next room was dying and he might not be ready. Alone in the midnight hours, he discovered the shallowness of his own philosophy. If God wasn't involved in individuals' lives, why did it matter if one was "ready" to die or not? He wondered what his college friends would think if they could see him now. He especially wondered what the clear-minded, intellectual, witty Jacob Eames would say about his fears.

 

In the morning Adoniram was still wrestling with these thoughts. He wondered how he, himself, would face death. He knew his parents would welcome death as a step into glory. He wondered if the dying man was a Christian. Adoniram quickly dressed. He asked the innkeeper about the sick man in the room next door. He was told that the man had died. Sadly, he inquired as to the name of the man. He was told by the innkeeper that it was a young man from Providence College by the name of Jacob Eames.

 

Adoniram was stunned. Jacob was one of his friends from school. He was the one who had convinced him that God isn't involved in the lives of human beings. Adoniram was severely shaken. His clever philosophies were irrelevant now. They were of no comfort to him. If the Bible was true after all, then Eames was desperately lost. Adoniram knew in his heart the Bible was true. Adoniram could not continue on his journey. He turned home to Plymouth. There Adoniram Judson finally dealt personally with God. He repented of His sins and realizing that Jesus Christ's death on the cross was for his sin, he asked Him for forgiveness.

 

This incident changed the life of Adoniram. He knew that God was a loving God. He knew that God was involved in the lives of all people. He could no longer accept the thought that people could die without knowing Christ. In 1812 Adoniram married. That same year he and his wife sailed to Burma. Adoniram was the first missionary from the United States to a foreign country. Adoniram spent nearly all of his remaining 38 as a Baptist missionary to Burma. He was a prisoner during the Anglo--Burmese War from 1824 to 1826. Following the war he continued his missionary and literacy work in Burma. Judson translated the entire Bible into Burmese by 1834. This was followed by a Burmese--English dictionary in 1849.

 

Sources: Deism Won't Do | Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia

© Phillip Bower