Deliverances from Death on Tanna
By W. A. S.
It is to the mission fields that we turn for some of the most signal interpositions of God's providence in the deliverance of his children from danger. God has been preparing the great field for the finishing of his work in this generation. Out among savage peoples, men and women of God have been giving their lives to missionary service. And in our day, as plainly as in ancient times, fierce men with murder in their hearts, have heard the voice of God saying, “Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.” In this and other articles, I wish to bring together a few examples of divine interposition and deliverance in modern times. The Saviour, who went with Joseph into Egypt, who walked with the three Hebrews in the fiery furnace, who stopped the mouths of the lions, who turned the power of the sword, and put to flight the armies of the aliens, is still mighty to save, and we have his promise, as we take up the gospel commission, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”7 An assembly of warriors in this island of the cannibal New Hebrides had decided that John G. Paton, the missionary, was to be slain. Mr. Paton says:— Frenzy of excitement prevailed, and the blood-fiend seemed to override the whole assembly; when, under an impulse that surely came from the Lord of pity, one great warrior chief who had hitherto kept silent, rose, swung aloft a mighty club, and smashing it earthward, cried aloud:— “The man that kills Missi must first kill me; the men that kill the mission teachers must first kill me and my people: for we shall stand by them, and defend them till death.” Instantaneously, another chief thundered in with the same declaration; and the great assembly broke up in dismay. Again, the missionary says:— One day while toiling away at my house, the war chief and a large party of armed men surrounded the plot where I was working. They all had muskets. They watched me for some time in silence, and then every man leveled a musket straight at my head. Escape was impossible. My eyesight came and went for a few moments. I prayed to my Lord Jesus. I tried to keep on with my task, as if no one was near me. In that moment, as never before, the words came to me, “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do,” and I knew I was safe. Retiring a little, they took up the same attitude, and seemed to be urging one another to fire the first shot. But my dear Lord restrained them once again, and they withdrew. They came in the night to do their deadly work, but though armed with muskets, a little dog was used of God to frighten them away. God restrained them again; and next morning the report went all round the harbor that those who tried to shoot me were “smitten weak with fear,” and that shooting would not do. Again the story of life on Tanna tells of a baffled sorcerer who thirsted for the missionary's blood:— For weeks thereafter, go where I would, he would suddenly appear on the path behind me, poising in his right hand that same Goliath spear. God only kept it from being thrown, and I, using every lawful precaution, had all the same to attend to my work, as if no enemy were there, leaving all other results in the hands of Jesus. One day while Mr. Paton was seeking to escape unobserved from a savage mob, a warrior sprang from an ambush, and swinging his tomahawk, aimed a blow at his head. The missionary says:— Avoiding it, I turned upon him, and said in a firm, bold voice, “If you dare to strike me, my Jehovah God will punish you. He is here to defend me now.” The man, trembling, looked all about to see the God who was my defender, and the tomahawk gradually lowered at his side. With my eye fixed upon him, I gradually moved backward, and God mercifully restrained him from following me. Amidst such constant perils, Mr. Paton says:— Without that abiding consciousness of the presence and power of my dear Lord and Saviour, nothing else in all the world could have preserved me from losing my reason and perishing miserably. His words, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world,” became to me so real that it would not have startled me to behold him, as Stephen did, gazing down upon the scene. I felt his supporting power, as did St. Paul, when he cried, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” It is the sober truth, and it comes back to me sweetly after twenty years, that I had my nearest and dearest glimpses of the face and smile of my blessed Lord in those dread moments when musket, club, or spear was being leveled at my life. O, the bliss of living and enduring, as seeing “him who is invisible!” By such experiences have dark places of the earth been prepared for the closing message.