Missionary stories: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly
By Elizabeth Prata
I was surfing around social media and came across a ‘Suggested post’ on Facebook that extolled the virtues of the book “Christy” by Catherine Marshall. I remember reading that book as an older teen, and then again as an adult post-salvation.
As a teen, I hadn’t realized it was a missionary book, written in 1967 by the missionary’s daughter Marshall about her mother’s time in the mountains teaching the impoverished children of Appalachia. Her mother was Leonora Whitaker. Though many of the scenes were taken from her mother’s life and times in the mountains in 1912, several weren’t related to her life but were accurate to the times in general. That is why the book is listed as a novel and not a biography.
It takes some doing for an author to write a book of faith and the unsaved person not to notice or be bothered in spirit by the theology inside the book.
Christy has a number of false theologies it introduces. There’s mysticism, Quakerism, direct revelation, biblical errancy, social justice, moralism, and more. I reviewed it at my link below.
The issue got me thinking about missionary biographies. There are wonderful missionaries of the true God, and there are wayward missionaries who spread false doctrine to the unfortunate recipients. Here are some missionary biographies I can recommend. Reading about them is inspirational.
One thing the missionary bios show is God’s forward providences in a future missionary’s life, that the future missionary cannot envision at the time they are living it, but hindsight when we read about them afterwards, shows His care and precision in raising up those whom He has marked for this ministry.
Here are some missionary biographies or autobios I recommend-
Gladys was a Cockney maid in a British Lord’s house. She used to rue the day that she was created so short with such black hair. But she found after salvation and when she arrived in China, that her size and coloring allowed her to blend right in with the Chinese around her! She was less intimidating and the Chinese people warmed up to her faster.
Gladys Aylward The Little Woman. Blurb- “With no mission board to support or guide her, and less than ten dollars in her pocket, Gladys Aylward left her home in England to answer God’s call to take the message of the gospel to China. With the Sino-Japanese War waging around her, she struggled to bring the basics of life and the fullness of God to orphaned children.”
The scene where John leaves his beloved dad, likely never to see him again (he was going halfway around the world from Scotland to Vanuatu) made me cry.
Thirty Years with South Sea Cannibals: Autobiography of John G. Paton. “John G. Paton’s accounts of evangelism among the South Sea Cannibals are extraordinary, but what sets this book apart is that it contains one of the finest testimonies of multi-generational love and devotion between a father and son found outside the Scriptures. In this autobiographical account, Paton describes how his father’s love and training prepared him to endure bitter hardship, to persevere against unspeakably difficult circumstances, and to resist sin. Because of his father’s faithful example, Paton was able to love and lead to Christ the very people who tried to eat his wife and child.“
BTW this one is John MacArthur’s favorite missionary book and one of his top books of any kind. I’m reading it now and it is just so well written!
William Carey by S. Pearce Carey. “A beautifully written biography of the ‘father of modern missions’. S. Pearce Carey’s compelling pages convey the very atmosphere of that extraordinary period of missionary advance. This life of Carey is structured around a series of remarkable events, always unplanned and unexpected, which opened the way to undreamed of achievements. Carey and his colleagues overcame mountainous obstacles to become the most productive church planters and Bible translators of all time. No other work compares with this moving treatment.“
I haven’t read the book but I did see the movie. What a commitment those 5 men made! If you never knew about the strange occurrence at the end. The Waodani who speared Elliot and the other men claimed to have heard strange music, and light-figures floating above the trees. Mincayani, the man who speared Elliot, told Elliot’ son that he saw his father ‘jump the great boa’, others interpret the scene to say it was angels bringing the missionaries home. Scene here. Story here.
Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot by Elisabeth Elliot. “It is the life and testament of Jim Elliot, as told by Elliot’s widow, author and evangelist Elisabeth Elliot Gren. Shadow of the Almighty is the true account of Elliot’s martyrdom, along with four fellow missionaries, at the hands of Ecuador’s Huaorani Indians. About this important and enlightening book, Eugenia Price writes, “It proves that Jesus Christ will bring bright creativity out of any shadow which might fall across any life and any love.” A story that has inspired Christian readers for more than half a century, it poignantly recounts a tragic event that was presented from Huaorani perspective in the 2006 feature motion picture, End of the Spear.“
We serve a great God. He raises up men to be husbands and lead families in obscure corners of the world, some He raises up to be preachers to teach His word to the people, others He raises up to be evangelists who travel to far flung places and bring the word then return. And still others are missionaries who go to a people or tribe and live among them as a witness to preach and teach.
We do not know the stories of most of the people Jesus raises up. We simply live our lives under His wing and then pass away to heaven. We can learn their stories of service in heaven. But of the ones we do know about because their deeds have been recorded in books, let’s honor them and the great God who raised them and see their witness on this side of the veil even long after they have passed on.
