David Livingstone
"[I am] serving Christ when shooting a buffalo for my men or taking an observation, [even if some] will consider it not sufficiently or even at all missionary."
With four theatrical words, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"âwords journalist Henry Morton Stanley rehearsed in advanceâDavid Livingstone became immortal. Stanley stayed with Livingstone for five months and then went off to England to write his bestseller, How I Found Livingstone. Livingstone, in the meantime, got lost againâin a swamp literally up to his neck. Within a year and a half, he died in a mud hut, kneeling beside his cot in prayer.
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The whole civilized world wept. They gave him a 21-gun salute and a hero's funeral among the saints in Westminster Abbey. "Brought by faithful hands over land and sea," his tombstone reads, "David Livingstone: missionary, traveler, philanthropist. For 30 years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize the native races, to explore the undiscovered secrets, and to abolish the slave trade." He was Mother Teresa, Neil Armstrong, and Abraham Lincoln rolled into one.
Highway man
At age 25, after a childhood spent working 14 hours a day in a cotton mill, followed by learning in class and on his own, Livingstone was captivated by an appeal for medical missionaries to China. As he trained, however, the door to China was slammed shut by the Opium War. Within six months, he met Robert Moffat, a veteran missionary of southern Africa, who enchanted him with tales of his remote station, glowing in the morning sun with "the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary had been before."
For ten years, Livingstone tried to be a conventional missionary in southern Africa. He opened a string of stations in "the regions beyond," where he settled down to station life, teaching school and superintending the garden. After four years of bachelor life, he married his "boss's" daughter, Mary Moffat.
From the beginning, Livingstone showed signs of restlessness. After his only convert decided to return to polygamy, Livingstone felt more called than ever to explore. During his first term in South Africa, Livingstone made some of the most prodigiousâand most dangerousâexplorations of the nineteenth century. His object was to open a "Missionary Road"â"God's Highway," he also called itâ1,500 miles north into the interior to bring "Christianity and civilization" to unreached peoples.
Explorer for Christ
On these early journeys, Livingstone's interpersonal quirks were already apparent. He had the singular inability to get along with other Westerners. He fought with missionaries, fellow explorers, assistants, and (later) his brother Charles. He held grudges for years. He had the temperament of a book-reading loner, emotionally inarticulate except when he exploded with Scottish rage. He held little patience for the attitudes of missionaries with "miserably contracted minds" who had absorbed "the colonial mentality" regarding the natives. When Livingstone spoke out against racial intolerance, white Afrikaners tried to drive him out, burning his station and stealing his animals.
He also had problems with the London Missionary Society, who felt that his explorations were distracting him from his missionary work. Throughout his life, however, Livingstone always thought of himself as primarily a missionary, "not a dumpy sort of person with a Bible under his arms, [but someone] serving Christ when shooting a buffalo for my men or taking an observation, [even if some] will consider it not sufficiently or even at all missionary."
Though alienated from the whites, the natives loved his common touch, his rough paternalism, and his curiosity. They also thought he might protect them or supply them with guns. More than most Europeans, Livingstone talked to them with respect, Scottish laird to African chief. Some explorers took as many as 150 porters when they traveled; Livingstone traveled with 30 or fewer.
On an epic, three-year trip from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean (reputedly the first by a European) Livingstone was introduced to the 1,700-mile-long Zambezi. The river was also home to Victoria Falls, Livingstone's most awe-inspiring discovery. The scene was "so lovely," he later wrote, that it "must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight."
Despite its beauty, the Zambezi was a river of human misery. It linked the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique, the main suppliers of slaves for Brazil, who in turn sold to Cuba and the United States. Though Livingstone was partially driven by a desire to create a British colony, his primary ambition was to expose the slave trade and cut it off at the source. The strongest weapon in this task, he believed, was Christian commercial civilization. He hoped to replace the "inefficient" slave economy with a capitalist economy: buying and selling goods instead of people.
The ill-fated Zambezi expedition
After a brief heroic return to England, Livingstone returned to Africa, this time to navigate 1,000 miles up the Zambezi in a brass-and-mahogany steamboat to establish a mission near Victoria Falls. The boat was state-of-the-art technology but proved too frail for the expedition. It leaked horribly after repeatedly running aground on sandbars.
Livingstone pushed his men beyond human endurance. When they reached a 30-foot waterfall, he waved his hand, as if to wish it away, and said, "That's not supposed to be there." His wife, who had just given birth to her sixth child, died in 1862 beside the river, only one of several lives claimed on the voyage. Two years later, the British government, which had no interest in "forcing steamers up cataracts," recalled Livingstone and his mission party.
A year later, he was on his way back to Africa again, this time leading an expedition sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society and wealthy friends. "I would not consent to go simply as a geographer," he emphasized, but as biographer Tim Jeal wrote, "It would be hard to judge whether the search for the Nile's source or his desire to expose the slave trade was his dominant motive." The source of the Nile was the great geographical puzzle of the day. But more important to Livingstone was the possibility of proving that the Bible was true by tracing the African roots of Judaism and Christianity.
For two years he simply disappeared, without a letter or scrap of information. He reported later that he had been so ill he could not even lift a pen, but he was able to read the Bible straight through four times. Livingstone's disappearance fascinated the public as much as Amelia Earhart's a few generations later.
When American journalist Henry Stanley found Livingstone, the news exploded in England and America. Papers carried special editions devoted to the famous meeting. In August 1872, in precarious health, Livingstone shook Stanley's hand and set out on his final journey.
When Livingstone had arrived in Africa in 1841, it was as exotic as outer space, called the "Dark Continent" and the "White Man's Graveyard." although the Portuguese, Dutch, and English were pushing into the interior, African maps had blank unexplored areasâno roads, no countries, no landmarks. Livingstone helped redraw the maps, exploring what are now a dozen countries, including South Africa, Rwanda, Angola, and the Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire). And he made the West aware of the continuing evil of African slavery, which led to its being eventually outlawed.
We Murder with Words Unsaid
Never since have so few words haunted me. In the dream, I sat in a balcony before the judgment seat of God. Two magnificent beings dragged the man before the throne. He fell in terror. All shivered as the Almighty pronounced judgment upon him. As the powerful beings took the quaking man away, I saw his face â a face I knew well. I grew up with this man. We played sports together, went to school together, were friends in this life â yet here he stood, alone in death. He looked at me with indescribable horror. All he could say, as they led him away â in a voice I cannot forget â âYou knew?â The two quivering words held both a question and accusation. We Know A recent study reports that nearly half of all self-professed Christian millennials believe itâs wrong to share their faith with close friends and family members of different beliefs. On average, these millennials had four close, non-believing loved ones â four eternal souls â that would not hear the gospel from them. What a horror. âHow then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?â (Romans 10:14). Incredibly, the eternity of human souls, under God, depends on the instrumentality of fellow human voices. Voices that increasingly will not speak. But what about the rest of us? How many people in our lives â if they stood before God tonight â could ask us the same question? Weâve had thousands of conversations with them, spent countless hours in their presence, laughed, smiled, and cried with them, allowed them to call us âfriendâ â and yet â havenât come around to risking the relationship on topics like sin, eternity, Christ, and hell. We know they lie dead in their trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1â3). We know that their good deeds toward us cannot save them (Romans 3:20). We know they sit in a cell condemned already (John 3:18). We know they wander down the broad path, and, if not interrupted, will plunge headlong into hell (Matthew 25:46). A place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. A place of outer darkness. A place where the smoke of their anguish will rise forever in the presence of the almighty Lamb (Revelation 14:10â11). âAnd they will not escapeâ (1 Thessalonians 5:3). We know. We Say Nothing More than this â much more than this â we know who can save them. We know the only name given among men by which they must be saved (Acts 4:12). We know the only Way, the Truth, the Life (John 14:6). We know the one mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2:5). We know the Lamb of God who takes away sins. We know the power of the gospel for salvation. We know that our Godâs heart delights to save, and takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 33:11). We know that Jesusâs atoning death made a way of reconciliation, that he can righteously forgive the vilest. We know he sends his Spirit to give new life, new joy, new purpose. We know the meaning of life is reconciliation to God. We know. But why, then, do we merely smile and wave at them â loved ones, family, friends, co-workers, and strangers â as they prepare to stand unshielded before Godâs fury? What do we say of their danger, of their God, or of their opportunity to become his children as they float lifelessly down the river towards judgment? Too often, we say nothing. How Christians Murder Souls I awoke from that dream, as Scrooge did in A Christmas Carol, realizing I had more time. I could warn my friend (and others) and tell him about Christ crucified. I could shun that diplomacy that struck so little resemblance to Jesus or his apostles or saints throughout history who, as far as they could help it, refused to hear, âYou knew?â I could cease assisting Satan for fear of human shade. My friend needs not slip quietly into judgment. And my silence needs not help dig his grave. I could avoid some of the culpability that Spurgeon spoke of when he called a ministerâs unwillingness to tell the whole truth âsoul murder.â Ho, ho, sir surgeon, you are too delicate to tell the man he is ill! You hope to heal the sick without their knowing it. You therefore flatter them. And what happens? They laugh at you. They dance upon their own graves and at last they die. Your delicacy is cruelty; your flatteries are poisons; you are a murderer. Shall we keep men in a foolâs paradise? Shall we lull them into soft slumber from which they will awake in hell? Are we to become helpers of their damnation by our smooth speeches? In the name of God, we will not. God said as much to Ezekiel. âIf I say to the wicked, âYou shall surely die,â and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your handâ (Ezekiel 3:18). Paul, the mighty apostle of justification by faith alone, spoke to the same culpability of silence: âI testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of Godâ (Acts 20:26â27). Am I an Accomplice? We warn people in order to save their lives. Paul did not allow his beautiful feet to be betrayed by a timid tongue. He âalarmedâ men as he âreasoned about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgmentâ (Acts 24:25). The fear of people-pleasing did not control him â lest he disqualify himself from being a servant of Christ (Galatians 1:10). Now today we are not first-covenant prophets, or new-covenant apostles. Many of us are not even pastors and teachers who âwill be judged with greater strictnessâ (James 3:1). But does this mean that the rest of us will not be judged by any strictness? Do not our pastors and teachers train us âfor the work of ministryâ (Ephesians 4:11â12)? Should I appease my own conscience by merely inviting others to church, hoping that someday they might cave in and come and there hear the gospel? My pastor did not grow up with my people, live next door, text them frequently, watch football games with them, and sit with them in their homes. But I did. And as much as some of us may throw stones at âseeker-drivenâ churches, the question comes uncomfortably full circle: Do I shrink back from saying the hard truth in order to win souls? Is my delicacy cruelty? My flatteries poison? Am I an accomplice in the murder of souls? If Not You, Then Who? Recently, a family we care about nearly died. They went to bed not knowing that carbon monoxide would begin to fill the home. They would have fallen asleep on earth and awoke before God had not an unpleasant sound with an unpleasant message startled them. We, like the carbon detector, cannot stay silent and let lost souls slumber into hell. If they endure in unbelief, let them shake their fists at us, pull pillows over their ears, roll over, turn their back to us, and wake before the throne. If we have been unfaithful â where our sin of people-pleasing and indifference abound â grace may abound all the more. Repent, rise, and sin no more. Mount your courage and ride like Paul Revere through your sphere to tell them that God is coming. When the time comes to speak, tell them they stand under righteous judgment. Tell them they must repent and believe. Tell them that Jesus already came once. Tell them he bore Godâs wrath for sinners. Tell them he rose from the dead. Tell them he reigns over the nations at the Fatherâs right hand. Tell them that, by faith, they may live. Tell them that they can become children of God. If we, a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his people left here after conversion to proclaim his excellencies (1 Peter 2:9) will not wake them from their fatal dream, who will? God, save us from hearing those agonizing words, âYou knew?â Article by Greg Morse
