Most people might not realize just how much the efforts of missionaries have governed the column of human progress. Whether it is hospitals and good health, schools and better education, or sound doctrine and civil liberty—those who carry the gospel to distant lands have left their mark on history. Missionary work has done more for the advancement of civilization than any other human endeavor!
Literacy is one of the finest demonstrations of this truth. Everyone reading this article (or, for that matter, anything written in either English or German) owes a debt of gratitude to a missionary. His name was Ulfilas (311-382 ad). Historians are a little unclear on all the particulars of his life. However, the best evidence would suggest that he came out of Cappadocia (in modern-day Turkey).1 During the 4th century, the Goths were a warlike people who regularly raided territory in the Roman Empire. This included jaunts into Central Anatolia, where Cappadocia was located.
At some point, Ulfilas and his family relocated to the region north of the Danube River and the home of the Goths.2 It is uncertain as to whether or not they initially went there as refugees. It is clear, however, that Ulfilas developed a heart for the Gothic tribe and set about the task of translating the Bible into their language. There was one enormous problem, though: they did not have a developed written form of their language. At best, they used some Runic characters (i.e. symbols) that provided a limited written style to the language.
Ulfilas needed to create a Gothic alphabet—and he did exactly that. Borrowing letters from both Greek and Latin, he constructed an alphabet that closely aligned with sounds from this early Germanic tongue.3 For the first time in history, the Gothic language was placed into a written character-based form.4 It is this language that largely served as the foundation for what would eventually become the German that is spoken in the world today.5 As a Germanic language in its own right, English is considered a descendant tongue from that which was spoken by the Goths along the Danube.6
Ulfilas translated most of the Bible into Goth. Evidence exists that he placed much of the New Testament and huge portions of the Old Testament in written form.7 Imagine that! The first time the parent tongue of both German and English was placed in written form was as a result of Bible translation work.8
Here is where the story gets even more interesting. Did you know that the early church considered Ulfilas a heretic? Historians will note that he was an Arian.9 In other words, he believed that the Lord Jesus Christ was a created being and not the Lord God Himself. Yet within a short period of time, the Goths were accepting the Bible as God’s Word, but rejecting Ulfilas’s beliefs regarding Christ—based on what they were reading in the Scriptures.10 They clearly saw a Bible that presented Jesus Christ as “God manifested in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16). Talk about an illustration of Hebrews 4:12 in action: “The Word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword.”
It is not just English and German that owe their written form to the work of missionaries. This same story could be told many times regarding numerous languages.11
Have you ever heard of the Cyrillic alphabet? It is the one used by the Slavic peoples, including the Russians. It is named after Cyril (827-869 ad). He and his brother, Methodius (815-884 ad), were missionaries from Thessalonica who went to Moravia (located in the Czech Republic today). Their hope was to reach the Southern Slavs with the gospel. They encountered much the same problem as Ulfilas: a language with limited written characteristics. In response, Cyril devised a new alphabet based heavily on Greek characters.12 The Bible was the first book ever penned using the Cyrillic alphabet. Once again, a huge swath of the world’s population owes its literacy to missions and Bible translation efforts. How ironic is it that at the height of the Soviet Union’s power, the atheistic state was using an alphabet crafted to share the gospel of Christ?
Beyond literacy, the same could be said of education in general. The world has been educated on the backs of and from the books of missionaries. Many of the first schools and colleges were founded by missionaries and their societies as they brought forth the message of Christ. Most of the Ivy League colleges within the United States had their founding as a seminary or Bible school.13 Dartmouth College was founded by Eleazar Wheelock, a Puritan minister, as a mission station for reaching and training Native Americans.14 If there were any doubts about this, just take a look at the Dartmouth Shield. 15
In the seal, the Word of God shines down on the school as it reaches Native American children with the gospel truth. The Latin motto Vox Clamantis in Deserto means, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness.” This is taken straight from John the Baptist’s quotation in John 1:23.
The earliest modern colleges and universities founded in India, China, Japan, Korea, the Middle East, and Africa were invariably the products of 19th century educational missions.16 Lucknow Women’s College of India was the first women’s college in all of Asia. It was founded by Isabella Thoburn, a Methodist missionary from Ohio.17
You could make a strong case that the entire field of cultural anthropology would not exist if it weren’t for British Missionary Societies in the 17th and 18th centuries. But that is a subject for another time.
In Isaiah 55:11, God makes this declaration: “So shall My Word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” As missionaries have gone forth bringing the Scriptures to a lost and dying world, they have been used by the Lord to transform the eternal destinies of men and women, boys and girls. But in so doing, they have also been used by the Lord to drive the advancement of all human society. Our very language and education prove it!
endnotes
1 www.newadvent.org/cathen/15120c.htm
2 www.earlychurch.org.uk/ulfilas.php
3 http://bit.ly/17Xfngn
4 http://bit.ly/1gT1XnE
5 www.anglik.net/englishlanguagehistory.htm
6 Ibid
7 www.newadvent.org/cathen/15120c.htm
8 http://bit.ly/1gT1XnE
9 www.newadvent.org/cathen/15120c.htm
10 www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc4.i.ii.xvi.html
11 D. James Kennedy, What if Jesus Had Never Been Born? (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1994), p. 41.
12 http://bit.ly/15mgok3
13 http://bit.ly/1aZiMMR
14 http://bit.ly/14zXu6F
15 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_College
16 http://bit.ly/18l8RRq
See also, Dana L. Robert, Christian Mission: How Christianity Became a World Religion; (Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), p. 50.
17 http://bit.ly/18l8RRq
See also, Ibid, p. 37.