 | David Brainerd 01Description: He was only 29 when he died...his gravestone simply says, "A faithful and laborious missionary to the Stockbridge, Delaware and Susquehanna tribes of Indians." But in truth David Brainerd's life sacrifice reached out and touched the whole world, challenging more people into Christian service than perhaps any other man that ever lived. The mere mention of the name, Brainerd, automatically triggers the mind to think of dedication in a way that perhaps has never been equaled. He would travel 15,000 miles on horseback. One small compelling book -- David Brainerd's Journal which he kept from June 19, 1745, to June 19, 1746, plus his diaries of his days before and after this time are still used of God today to inspire and convict the Christian world in the matter of Christian service.
|  | David Brainerd 02Description: John Wesley said, "Let every preacher read carefully over the life of David Brainerd," and distributed his life story to all his societies. F. W. Robertson, Ion Keith Falconer, Robert Murray McCheyne, A. J. Gordon, Francis Asbury, Jim Elliott, Thomas Coke, William Carey and Henry Martyn all were motivated to service through Brainerd, amongst others.
|  | David Brainerd 03Description: By almost every standard known to modern missionary boards, David Brainerd would have been rejected as a missionary candidate. He was tubercular -- died of that disease at twenty-nine -- and from his youth was frail and sickly. He never finished college, being expelled from Yale for criticizing a professor and for his interest and attendance in meetings of the "New Lights," a religious organization. He was prone to be melancholy and despondent.
|  | David Brainerd 04Description: Suffice it to say, it is not surprising to read then of the miraculous interventions of God on Brainerd's behalf, and of the mighty ministry and the unbelievable revivals he experienced among the iniquitous, idolatrous Indians in those short years. A volume such as this prohibits more than only mere mention of some of those supernal, supernatural scenes: "I have now baptized, in all, forty-seven persons of the Indians. Twenty-three adults and twenty-four children...Through rich grace, none of them as yet have been left to disgrace their profession of Christianity by any scandalous or unbelieving behavior" (Nov.. 20, 1743). What pastor or evangelist reading this can say the same?
|  | David Brainerd 05Description: His Diary and Journal are a brim with ministries and miracles that were akin to the acts of the Apostles. The Life and Diary of David Brainerd ought to be read -- and read often -- by God's people. It will do something for you spiritually. You will be convicted, challenged, changed, charged. It has had life-transforming effect upon many, motivating them to become missionaries, evangelists, preachers, people of prayer and power with God.
|  | David Brainerd 06Description: Brainerd died in 1747 in the home of Jonathan Edwards. His ministry to the Indians was contemporary with Wesley, Whitefield and Edwards as they ministered to the English-speaking people during the period called in English and American history, the "Great Awakening." Brainerd's centuries-spanning influence for revival is positive proof God can and will use any vessel, no matter how fragile and frail, if it is only sold out to souls and the Saviour!
|  | David Brainerd 07Description: A frail young man, with sad, lustrous eyes and face so blanched that he seems to be the palest of the palefaces, is engaged on a serious and dangerous mission. Having heard of a tribe of particularly ferocious Indians living in the dense forests of the region known as the "Forks of the Delaware," he is on his way to tell them of a loving Saviour. Coming at sunset in sight of the smoke of their campfires, he decides to spend the night in the woods and to proceed in the morning. Little does he realize that several red men, with wolfish eyes and as silent as serpents, have followed him for hours. As he builds a fire, the Indians steal away to their encampment to tell the startling news that a white man is in the woods nearby. "Let us go at once," says the chief, "and kill this paleface, whose people have taught us to drink firewater and then, while we are drunk, have taken our baskets and skins and even our lands for almost nothing."
|  | David Brainerd Preaching to the Indians 02Description: As the warriors silently draw near, they see the white man on his knees, praying most fervently that the Indians might come to realize that the great God of the universe loved them and sent His Son to save them. While he prays, a rattlesnake squirms up to him, lifts its hideous head, flicks its forked tongue close to his face, and then, for no apparent reason, glides away into the darkness. And so does the chief, followed by his men.
|  | David Brainerd Preaching to the Indians.Description: When the young missionary enters the Indian village early the next morning, he receives a much more cordial welcome than he had anticipated, for not until later does he learn of the strange events of the preceding night. When the people gather around him in an open place among the wigwams, he opens his Bible, reads from the 53rd chapter of Isaiah and tenderly tells the sweet story of how God sent His Son to die on the cross that He might take away the sin from people's hearts and make them good children of the Heavenly Father. At the close of his message there are tears in the eyes of many of his auditors.
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