‘If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature.’
2 Corinthians 5:17 KJV
Nothing in history compares to what has been accomplished by Christian missionaries. Over one hundred years ago, a writer returning from a trip around the world discovered that missions and missionaries were being bombarded with criticism in the London newspapers. So he wrote a letter to the papers defending missions. In it he said that the transformation of wild savages in the isles of the South Seas was something to behold, and that to make light of this was a heinous crime: ‘In a voyager, to forget these things is base ineptitude; for should he chance to be at the point of shipwreck on some unknown coast, he will most devoutly pray that the lesson of the missionary may have preceded him.’ The author of that letter was none other than Charles Darwin. And after his return from his around-the-world trip he was transformed. Consider the Papuans, one of the aboriginal tribes of New Guinea. Missionaries from Holland began to work with them, and in 1860, the first fruits of the New Holland Mission were seen when a man named Nathaniel Pepper, one of the aborigines, accepted Christ. Some years later, when thousands had been converted, the Papuan school won first prize in academic competitions among the twelve hundred colonial schools in New Holland. Quite a feat! Sceptics may have built a few leprosariums, hospitals and orphanages, but by far it’s been the followers of Jesus Christ who have made the greatest impact on this world.
