David Livingstone is one of the greatest Christian missionaries of the modern era. He sacrificed all his being to reach the interior of Africa with the Gospel of Jesus. From 1848 to 1870, Dr. Livingstone struggled virtually alone, against the stultifying tide of conventional Anglo-centric missions, and the momentum of religious convention and complacency.

As is often the case in the history of missions, now, generations later, the outlandish mavericks, such as he was, are lauded and celebrated as acting upon a prescient and divine vision, while all his contemporaries who flowed along in the safety zone of acceptable norms have been totally forgotten.  Jesus alludes to this principle of human behavior in Matthew 23:29.  We tend to extol the virtues of Gospel champions of the past, who, as our young contemporaries, we would have been more likely to eschew.  You may recall other examples of this, such as John Bunyan, the Wesleys, Watchman Nee, George Muller, William Carey, and Bruce Olsen.

David Livingstone employed many tactics in trying to help the unreached people of Central Africa, such as medicine, agricultural improvement, laboring to stop slavery, and encouraging social reform.  Through all this his singular goal was to bring them all to fellowship with God through Jesus, to save them from eternal hell.  He wrote to his father back in England, “I know that the Gospel is the power of God; the great means which He employs for the regeneration of our ruined world.”

In his signature biography, published by Moody Press, the author noted about Dr. Livingstone,

“Meanwhile, amid all his countless labors, Dr. Livingstone’s mind was constantly busy with the scientific aspects of Africa, and the great problem of its evangelization.  Three things appeared to his mind essential to the successful solution of this problem, and he urged them constantly upon the mission directors.  They were:

1) The vigorous pushing forward of the work into the unreached interior.

2) The employment of native Gospel ministers.

3) The establishment of a training school where such workers might become qualified.”

Unfortunately, his vision for reaching Africa languished upon his passing, for, as Florence Nightingale wrote for his epitaph, “Dr. Livingstone stood alone.”

Today, in longing to reach India with the Gospel, we find his vision from 140 years ago to be still true.

This time, however, the doors for such a work are swinging slowly open, and a swelling army of trained evangelists is starting to march on the 500,000 villages yet unreached; daring to die, so that India’s lost may have a chance to live.  At present, our only major obstacle, besides the ubiquitous dearth of passion for the lost, is the need to finish these last two sections of the Training Center roof.