If Any Man – The Adoniram Judson Story
In an epic story of great sacrifice, Adoniram Judson went from being the valedictorian, son of a minister, and hardened atheist, to becoming America’s first missionary to Asia. He spent 37 years in Burma, where he led the conversion of thousands, and suffered the burying of two wives and six children. He is the man that today’s Burmese people compare to our Martin Luther King JR., because of his great suffering for them. He sacrificed everything to a cause bigger than himself, and eventually became a great man by making himself small.
Though he possibly could have been the fourth president of the United States, a great Professor or the Pastor of the largest Church in Boston, Adoniram Judson died April 22, 1850 and was buried at sea, just off the coast of India, with a funeral having only an audience of a few crew members and one friend. Naturally, born in Massachusetts on August 9th, 1788, his spiritual birth happened when he laid down his life to serve Jesus Christ; never looking back. During the Anglo-Burmese War, he spent twenty-one months in prison. From 1845-1847, after thirty-four years in Burma, he took his only furlough to his native land. Returning to Burma, he spent his remaining years working on his English-Burmese dictionary. When Adoniram had set sail from Salem, his original goal, if he was to consider his mission a success, was to plant a Church of one hundred believers, and to hopefully translate the entire Bible into Burmese. Although he had waited six long years for his first convert, not too long after his death there was recorded twenty-one thousand Christians in Burma because of his work, along with a complete Burmese Bible that they still use today. Even after the death of six children and two wives, his profession remained to “finish the call.”
