190 – July 08 – THIS DAY IN BAPTIST HISTORY PAST

 

His heart remained in Burma

Rev. and Mrs. J.G. Binney sailed in Nov. 1843 to Burma to open a training school for the Karen a Baptist training school to prepare native men for the gospel ministry. They were sent out by by the Triennial Convention in Philadelphia.

When the need became apparent, because of the successful evangelism of the Karen people in Burma, for a training school for native ministers, The Triennial Convention turned to J.G. Binney as the man to head up such an effort. To Dr. Binney this was a dream come true. He and his wife Juliette sailed in Nov. 1843. A school was opened in Maulmain with thirteen adult students, all converts from heathenism. After five grueling years, Mrs. Binney’s health broke and they were forced to return to the States, where Dr. Binney pastored for a brief period, and then became President of Columbian College, but his heart was still in Burma.

They sailed again for Burma in 1859. The school was now moved to Rangoon and opened with 80 students. Dr. Binney carried the full load as he preached, translated, and published. Strength weakening, he was again compelled to leave Burma.

On furlough his health improved and he began to pastor a church in Savannah, Georgia. Joseph Getchell Binney was the third child in a rather affluent family in Boston, having been born in Dec. 1807. He contracted whooping cough at the end of his first year that affected him the rest of his life.

His father, through a foolish business move lost his modest wealth and left the family, not to return until the death of Joseph’s mother when he was ten, when his grandmother moved in to take his mother’s place.

He was saved at twenty, united with the Congregational church, entered Yale to prepare for missionary service, and became a Baptist upon examining the subject of “baptism” in studying for a debate. He was baptized in 1830. On July 9, 1877, he resigned his church that he might return to his first love.

However, he never made it back, and he died on Nov. 26, and was buried in the Indian Ocean.

Dr. Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History Vol. I: Cummins/Thompson, pp. 281-82.

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125—May 04 – This Day in Baptist History Past

Slavery, an American Tragedy
The issue of slavery in America was doubtless the most divisive issue ever to confront our nation. The matter was many faceted, for it was surely a social and moral problem, but simultaneously it projected itself in the political, economic, and religious arenas as well.  Baptists in the South had initially grown among that portion of the population that was in the lower economic class, and these were surely non slave-holders. This accounts for the fact that the Baptists in the Southern states provided much of the opposition to slavery that existed.
Agitation among the Baptists was stimulated by the British brethren after the English Parliament passed legislation to eliminate slavery in the British West Indies. In 1835 British Baptists sent two “fraternal delegates” to the Triennial Convention which was held in Richmond, Virginia.
These brethren . . . were introduced also for the first time, to first-hand information concerning
the American number-one problem — slavery.  Dr. Cos, one of the British delegates, preached
in the First Church on the Sunday morning preceding the opening of the Triennial Convention.
On that afternoon he went again to the First Church, where he witnessed with amazement                               and emotion, the great numbers of colored worshipers present. As this group clasped hands and          sang, their bodies swaying in the rhythm of the music, the Englishman’s enthusiasm broke the     bounds of traditional British reserve. He asked permission to speak to them; he clasped their hands; he saw with his own eyes the over ruling Providence of God in using the channel of slavery to bring these sons and daughters of Africa the light of the gospel.
Step by step the pressures mounted to abolish slavery, and on May 4, 1843, Baptist abolitionists met in Tremont Chapel (Boston) to organize a mission society which would support both foreign and home missionaries and would be “separated from all connection with the known evils of slavery.” The die was cast, and Baptists, like all other Americans, would be divided and experience the terrible results of the Civil War.
Dr. Dale R. Hart: Adapted from:  This Day in Baptist History Vol. I: Cummins Thompson /, pp. 181-182
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115 – April 25 – This Day in Baptist History Past

An Exciting Missionary Adventure

The die was cast on April 25, 1844, when Richard Fuller, prominent pastor from Charleston, South Carolina, presented a resolution at the Triennial Convention to restrict its action to missions and not to become involved in the problem of slavery.  From 1814 until 1845, missionary efforts had been primarily made through the Triennial Convention, but in 1845 the split between North and South occurred.  However, Baptist associations in various states had formed small, independent mission agencies as well.  Richard Henry Stone, born in Culpeper county, Virginia on July 17, 1837, he was sent as a missionary by a Georgia association to serve the Lord in Africa.  He united with the Salem Baptist church in Culpeper County and answered the call of the Baptists in Georgia for a missionary to Africa, he and his wife Susan sailed out of Baltimore on November 4.  They were three months on the journey, and landed at Lagos.  They disciplined themselves to learn the Ijayte language, but with failing health, the couple was forced to return to the States.  Mr. Stone then joined the confederate army, and served as a chaplain with the 49th Georgia, Benning’s Brigade.  In 1867, with the completion of the war, Mr. Stone returned to Africa and Lagos for two years.  The last twenty years of Mr. Stone’s life were spent in Virginia and Kentucky where he supported his family by teaching.  Mr. stone died on October 7, 1894, and he was buried in the Fairview Cemetery in Culpeper.

Dr. Dale R. Hart adapted from:  This Day in Baptist History III (David L. Cummins) p.p.  239   –   241

362 – Dec. 28 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

 

The isolation of love

 

 1871 – Issachar Jacob Roberts, but known by his first two initials I.J., died in Upper Alton, Illinois. No one should be surprised that it was of leprosy, having ministered to the lepers in China for many years. I.J. was born in Tennessee on Feb. 17, 1802, and at the age of nineteen was converted and baptized. He then entered into studies at Furman institute in S.C. to prepare for the work of the ministry and was ordained in Shelbyville, TN, on April 27, 1827. He then settled in Mississippi, where he owned property worth thirty thousand dollars. Being burdened for the mission field of China, in 1836, he sold his property and formed a missions’ agency called the Kentucky China Mission Society, but not having enough funds he applied for and was accepted by the Triennial Convention on Sept. 6, 1841. Still it wasn’t enough, so he made saddles in China. Fearing that leprosy was contagious, Roberts found himself isolated from his fellow missionaries, in fact he wrote in his diary, “I feel very lonely, the missionaries seldom come to see me; and Brother Pearcy, to whom I applied for board, thinks we can love each other better apart.” The next seven years he spent ministering between Macao and Hong Kong. In 1844 he established a church in Canton. Leasing a lot, he built a chapel and mission house. He also purchased a floating chapel and maintained worship there. One of his journal entries read, “Preached before breakfast to eighteen lepers.” A Chinese mob assaulted his house, and sank his “floating chapel.” He left the TC in 1846 and the Southern Baptists started supporting him. He left them in 1852. [This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: 2000 A.D. pp. 711-12. G. Winfred Hervey, The Story of Baptist Missions in Foreign Lands (St. Louis: C.R. Barns Publishing Co., 1892), p. 523.]   Prepared by Dr. Greg J. Dixon

 

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293 – Oct. 20 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

His schools received no federal funds

 

1823 – The Triennial Convention, meeting in Washington, D.C., made mention in their report, that Duncan O’Bryant was the missionary-teacher at the Tensawattee Baptist School, where he had a total enrollment of twenty-eight students, among the Cherokees in Georgia. O’Bryant was born in the late 18th century in S.C. By 1820 he had moved to Habersham County, Georgia with his wife Martha Whitehead. Under the influence of a Franklin County Baptist preacher named Littleton Meeks, he became burdened for the Cherokee Nation. As the Cherokee removal under President Jackson progressed, O’Bryant maintained schools in three different sites with nearly two hundred children in attendance. He said that the “…greater part were able to read the Word of Life, and to write a fair hand…” During 1830-31 O’Bryant had a circuit of four preaching points including the Tinswattee Baptist Church. There were a large number of Cherokees in these congregations, and, on some occasions, U.S. troops who had been called in because of the turmoil and violence of those times. On Jan. 27, 1832, O’Bryant left Georgia to go west, where he settled in the northeast part of Oklahoma territory. He soon gathered the remnants of his congregation into the Liberty Baptist Church and reopened his school without receiving federal funds. He died of malaria at the age of forty-eight on August 25, 1834, and was survived by his wife and ten children. He escaped the trail of tears in 1838-39. [Robert G. Gardner, Viewpoints of Georgia Baptist History (Atlanta: Georgia Baptist Historical Society, 1988), 2:42. This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: Greenville, S.C. 2000 A.D. 573-75.]   Prepared by Dr. Greg J. Dixon

 

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279 – Oct. 06 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

Thirty shots but none hit him

 

 1846 – Eugenio Kincaid, along with others, laid the foundation for the University of Lewisburg (now Bucknell University) in Pennsylvania. He had gone to the area because his heart was burdened for missions, having been turned down by the Triennial Convention for service in Burma. Instead he planted a number of churches in the interior of Penn. He grew up in a Presbyterian family in Wetherfield, CT. and was gloriously saved and baptized while attending Baptist evangelistic meetings. He was in the first class of the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institute in New York and thrilled when Luther Rice came to challenge the students in the cause of missions. By May of 1830 the TC believed he was ready and he and his wife sailed for Burma in May of 1830, by way of Calcutta, and arrived in Burma after four months, only four years after the jailing of Judson. 1831 was quite significant, 100 soldiers were converted but his dear wife also died because of the climate. In less than a year the Lord gave him another companion, one Barbara McBain, the daughter of a British military officer. He traveled 700 miles up the Irrawady River. At times he and his crew faced robbers and one time he sent his men on and stared the fiends down just as a Burman boat came into view. On the way back he was captured by boatloads of armed bandits, thirty gunshots were fired but none hit him. He was told to sit down but he refused as 70 men surrounded him with spears. For six days they debated on executing him, but he was able to escape and make it back to Ava. He ended his life in retirement on a farm in Girard, Kansas. [Lewis Edwin Theiss, CenTennial History of Bucknell University 1826-1946 (Williamsport, Pa.: Grit Pub. Company. Press, 1946), pp. 25, 45. This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: Greenville, S.C. 2000 A.D. 547-49]

 

Prepared by Dr. Greg J. Dixon

 

 

190 – July, 09 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

His heart remained in Burma

 

When the need became apparent, because of the successful evangelism of the Karen people in Burma, for a training school for native ministers, The Triennial Convention turned to J.G. Binney as the man to head up such an effort. To Dr. Binney this was a dream come true. He and his wife Juliette sailed in Nov. 1843. A school was opened in Maulmain with thirteen adult students, all converts from heathenism. After five grueling years, Mrs. Binney’s health broke and they were forced to return to the States, where Dr. Binney pastored for a brief period, and then became President of Columbian College, but his heart was still in Burma. They sailed again for Burma in 1859. The school was now moved to Rangoon and opened with 80 students. Dr. Binney carried the full load as he preached, translated, and published. Strength weakening, he was again compelled to leave Burma. On furlough his health improved and he began to pastor a church in Savannah, Georgia. Joseph Getchell Binney was the third child in a rather affluent family in Boston, having been born in Dec. 1807. He contracted whooping cough at the end of his first year that affected him the rest of his life. His father, through a foolish business move lost his modest wealth and left the family, not to return until the death of Joseph’s mother when he was ten, when his grandmother moved in to take his mother’s place. He was saved at twenty, united with the Congregational church, entered Yale to prepare for missionary service, and became a Baptist upon examining the subject of “baptism” in studying for a debate. He was baptized in 1830. On July 9, 1877, he resigned his church that he might return to his first love. However, he never made it back, and he died on Nov. 26, and was buried in the Indian Ocean.

 

Dr. Greg J. Dixon: adapted From: This Day in Baptist History Vol. I: Cummins/Thompson, pp. 281-82.

 

 

130 – May-10 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

Why Tarriest Thou?

 

 At the close of the Triennial convention in May of 1814, Richard Furman on his way home to Charleston, S.C., stopped in the Nation’s Capitol.  He happened to meet an acquaintance, Mr. James Monroe.  Mr. Monroe said, “and you were the young preacher who fled for protection to the American camp, on account of the reward which Lord Cornwallis had offered for your head?”  It seems that young Furman was not only a warm-hearted Baptist preacher, but an ardent advocate of the Revolutionary War.  Everywhere, on stumps, and in barns, as well as in pulpits, he preached resistance to Britain.  Colonel Monroe insisted that reverend Furman preach in the Hall of Congress.  All the elite, including the President and Cabinet Ministers, would be present, for Colonel Monroe had circulated the early efforts and eloquence of the young preacher.  Furman chose for his text, Acts 22:16, “And now, why tarriest thou?  Arise and be baptized.”  He enjoyed great freedom as he spoke, and his voice rang out as in days of old.  His earnestness caught the imagination of his audience and everything built as with a grand crescendo.  Catching the spirit of the hour, he rose to the grand climax of his presentation.  His clear stentorian voice rang out, “And now, why tarriest thou?  Arise!  And be baptized.”  At the word “ARISE,” several of his august audience seemed electrified and rose from their seats, as if alarmed at their past sinful hesitation.  This Mr. Monroe, Colonel Monroe, soon after became President James Monroe of the United States.  Reverend Furman later contributed greatly to the constitutional change, which ended the established church (i.e. state/church) in South Carolina.

 

 

Dr. Dale R. Hart, adapted from: This Day in Baptist History III, (David L. Cummins) p.p.  270   –   272

 

 

120 – April 30 – This Day in Baptist History Past

 

Who Will Go?

 

The work among the Karens in Burma is a thrilling account of missionary sacrifice and faithfulness. George Dana Boardman and his wife were appointed by the Triennial convention on April 30, 1823, in Washington, D.C., and they pioneered that rapidly expanding ministry.  God’s blessing rested heavily upon their efforts.  By 1910 the work among the Karens had grown to 50,000 members in 774 churches.  The Missionaries often looked to a range of mountains where a notorious savage tribe existed.  The missionaries wandered how they might reach the wild tribes who were known as Brecs, who lived by plunder and known to be fond of uncooked meat and blood, the tribes were greatly feared.  During an annual assembly of the Karen churches, an appeal was made to evangelize the Brecs, one of the national Karen evangelists bowed his head, evidently in prayer. Finally standing he said, “I am sorry for the poor Brecs, who know nothing of God, or his law to men.  I am very unhappy because no one goes to them with the great tidings.  If my church will give me leave, I will go.”   . . . “God delivered me form the mouth of a bear, and also from death when, crossing a swift stream . . . He also saved me from the mouth of a tiger.  He will be with me in this work, no matter how difficult.”   The national evangelist made his way to the range of mountains and to a village where the most wicked of all of the Brecs lived.  Here he was met with spears and knives of the angry Brecs.  He pulled out his Bible and hymnbook, he read scripture and then began to sing, literally for his very life.  Soon his voice in song calmed the angry hearts of those wild men.  The reception was so great among the Brecs that the national evangelist remained some time proclaiming the gospel.  In a few short years a church was established in the village.  Other villages responded, and churches and even schools were formed.

 

Dr. Dale R. Hart adapted from: This Day in Baptist History III (David L. Cummins) p.p. 250   –   251

 

 

361 – Dec. 27 – THIS DAY IN BAPTIST HISTORY PAST

(In) five years 502 people were added to the church
December 27, 1869 – Dr. Baron Stow ended his sojourn here on this earth and took his place as one of the most outstanding Baptist preachers of any generation. Stow was born a country boy on his father’s farm in New England in 1801. It was apparent that Baron, like Samuel was listening to the voice of God as a young child. Near his home there was a boulder that he used as a pulpit to preach the gospel to his boyhood friends. After preparation for college in Newport, New Hampshire, Stow entered Columbian College in Washington, D.C., in 1822. He sat under outstanding professors, and as a good student he finished the course in three years. Following a time as Editor of the Triennial Convention’s periodical Columbian Star, he became pastor of the Baptist church in Portsmouth, N.H. Soon the growth was such that they had to build a new house of worship. After five years he answered the call to pastor the Baldwin Place Baptist Church in Boston where his ministry was even more fruitful. At the close of 1837 he preached a remarkable sermon from Prov. 27:1 – Boast not thyself of tomorrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. More than one hundred people were awakened to conversion. The year 1838 opened with a powerful revival, and during the next five years, 502 people were added to the church on profession of their faith in Jesus Christ. Stow was also most concerned for the cause of missions world-wide. He preached and wrote concerning world evangelism to stir up fellow believers to respond to the mandate of their Lord. Toward the end of forty years of ministry illness forced him from the pulpit several times before he finally had to hang up the Sword of the Spirit for the final time.
Dr. Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History Vol. I: Cummins Thompson /, pp. 542-43.