Missions

“In attempting to bring ’light into the dwellings’, Jessup’s mission faced problems such as the strong Muslim suspicion of Christians, a hostile government and the corruption of the existing Christian sects.

“Lutheranism clings to God’s Written Word. Her motto is the Word of God, the whole Word of God, and nothing but the Word of God, not as a prescriptive letter, but as the power of God unto salvation.

“I received my first call into the largest mission field of the Northwest, in the State of South Dakota, far away from good old home. In September, 1892, I left home for my long journey.

“Why did I leave the ministry when I left the Congregational church? Because, in the first place, my New Theology and Higher Criticism had destroyed my faith in the perfect, divine authority of the Bible; and in the second place, they had destroyed my faith in the perfect deity of Christ.

“Sweet First Fruits is a… story primarily designed to give scope and opportunity for presenting to the Muslim reader the proofs of the Christian faith, the purity and genuineness of our Bible, its attestation by the Koran, and the consequent obligation on Muslims to obey its precepts.

“…if the character of a religious system can be ascertained by the rites which it imposes, and the practices which it sanctions, I should not hesitate to pronounce the mythology of Hinduism to be cruel and obscene.

“God has His own way of saving humanity and that His way of salvation is clearly marked out in His Word. Of this [The Reformed Christians] are sadly ignorant. It has not been explained to them.

“The Life of Dr. Passavant should have been given to the Church at least a decade ago… Such lives are lived for others. They are not over when those who lived them are gone, but being dead they yet speak.

Jack London credited My Dogs in the Northland as inspiration for his novel The Call of the Wild. “For years, with great dogs, I toiled and often with them was in great perils.

“I entreat you to read this little paper calmly from beginning to end. To read it thoughtfully, without prejudice, and undisturbed by the outcry made by people who are either deceivers themselves or deceived.

“What is this book? Its Hebrew name is הברית ההדשה (Heb’rith Hechedasha) or the New Covenant. It is a collection of twenty-seven writings, biographic, historic, prophetic, and a number of personal letters.

“Kamil’s history is a rebuke to our unbelief in God’s willingness and power to lead Muslims into a hearty acceptance of Christ and his atoning sacrifice. We are apt to be discouraged by the closely riveted and intense intellectual aversion of these millions of Moslems to the doctrines of the Trinity and of the divinity of Jesus Christ.

William Tisdall was an expert in Islam and the Koran, and fluent in Arabic, Persian, and other languages. One of his most valuable books is Islamic Objections to Christianity, which will be re-released later this year by The Lutheran Library.

“A single congregation can sustain an entire mission. There is no grander spectacle in the history of the whole Church, than this noble work of that one congregation of plain peasant Lutherans at Hermansburg…

“As one travels up and down the Berbice River there are two things that grow upon him. The first is an ever increasing appreciation of the beauty of that tropical stream, while the second is a knowledge of the vileness of degraded man.