Monday, September 10, 2018
Isaiah 55:10-11 For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST CONTINUALLY DEFEATS DEATH AND BRINGS LIFE
Robert Thomas was ordained on June 4, 1863, in a little church in Hanover, Wales. The next month he and his wife were sent to Shanghai, China, by the London Mission Society, where his wife died soon after they arrived. In 1866, after having evangelized for a few months in the southern part of Korea, Thomas traveled on the American ship, General Sherman, up the Taedong River, which runs from Namp'o on the Yellow Sea northward past P'yongyang, the capital of what is now North Korea. In a shallow part along the river, the ship was grounded on a sandbar. Korean soldiers on shore, not having seen many vessels of this type on the river, became suspicious and scared, perhaps thinking there were foreign soldiers on board. They boarded the ships waving long knives at the passengers and crew and started killing many of them.
When Thomas saw that he was going to be killed, he held out his Korean Bible to them and said in the Korean language, "Jesus, Jesus." His head was cut off and thrown into the river. Though some may say his mission voyage was a failure and a waste of a young life, God does not perceive things the way we do, and His ways are not our ways.
Twenty-five years after Thomas' death, an American visitor stayed at a small guest house in the area where Thomas was killed, and noticed strange wallpaper in the main room. The paper had Korean words and numbers printed on it. When he asked the owner of the house about it, the owner told him about Thomas being killed there, and said that he had taken the Korean Bible that Thomas held out to the soldiers and used the pages to cover his walls. For twenty-five years, he said, many had come to his house to "read the walls" where Thomas' Bible was preserved.
