Book Review - TO THE GOLDEN SHORE BY COURTNEY ANDERSON

Adoniram Judson, at age nineteen valedictorian of Brown College’s class of 1807, returned home to Massachusetts after an unsuccessful summer in New York City’s theater district.

Uncertain of his goal in life, although a successful author, he had little ambition in literature. And certainly no intent to follow his father’s career as a church pastor.

On his way home from New York, Judson chanced to stop at a small town inn over night.

The only remaining room was next to that of a very ill man.

The man caused no real disturbance, but Judson heard occasional moans, and people coming and going next door.

When paying his bill next morning, Judson casually asked about the man’s condition.

“He’s dead,” the inn-keeper said.

“Who was he?”

“Young man from the college in Providence. Name was Eames. Jacob Eames.”

Judson’s closest friend in college and a man with little or no belief in God.

His shock left no recollection of the next few hours, but he arrived home in mortal fear for his own soul.

He had only one question to ask himself, “How shall I so order my future as best to please God?”

Judson became the first American missionary to foreign lands.

In 1813 he and his wife Ann (“Nancy”) reached Burma (now called Myanmar), an Asian country with twice the population of the whole USA at the time.

Burma’s king ruled his Buddhist country with an iron grip.

Few Burmans dared express interest in Christianity.

Judson spent the first six years on translating the Bible into Burmese.

It’s a difficult language, letters like circles and half-circles, no spaces between words, and entirely different meanings depending on the spoken tone.

Yet both Adoniram and Nancy became fluent.

Nancy cultivated acquaintance with the Rangoon city governor’s chief wife.

Arrival of another missionary with a printing press made possible a much wider spread of the Gospel.

Judson’s first Burman convert to Christianity occurred six years after Judson’s arrival.

Rangoon was in turmoil, King Bodawpaya had died; the British government reacted with hostility to Burma’s incursions into India.

When young King Bagyidaw summoned the viceroy of Rangoon to Ava, the national capital 400 miles up-river, Judson obtained permission to accompany him and petition the King to permit publication of the Bible in Burmese. The new King expressed no interest.

In 1821, however, a new missionary and physician, Dr. Jonathan Price arrived.

His skill in removing eye cataracts caught the King’s attention, who then commanded Price’s appearance “at the Golden Feet.” in Ava.

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Original review on: http://www.shoshonenewspress.com