The Birth of Modern Missions

David Brainerd was born on April 20, 1718, in Haddam, Connecticut, 43 years before William Carey was born in Paulerspury, England. Brainerd became a missionary to the Indians in New England but died at the age of 29. He spent the last 19 weeks of his life in the home of the great Jonathan Edwards in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Edwards was so deeply moved by the missionary labor and faith and courage of young Brainerd that he edited and published his Life and Diary in 1749. Forty years later a young English pastor, William Carey, was stung by the story of Brainerd's sacrifices as a young missionary.

When he was 31 years old, Carey published a little book entitled, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use means for the Conversion of the Heathens. Repeatedly in this book he refers to the great example of Brainerd. A year later, as he sailed to India in 1793 on the Kron Princess Maria, Carey wrote in his journal about how the sermons of Jonathan Edwards were giving him strength. For example: June 24, 1793—"Saw a number of flying-fish. Have begun to write Bengali, and read Edwards' Sermons and Cowper's Poems. Mind tranquil and serene . . . "

Carey's book, plus his own amazing 40-year career in India have immortalized him as the "father of modern missions." And the reason that I point out his connection with Edwards and Brainerd is to show that the great era of modern missions was born in the soil of sovereign grace. It was born in the hearts of men and women who believed in the doctrines of unconditional election and predestination and effectual calling and definite atonement and the perseverance of the saints—the great truths that we have been teaching for the past four weeks from Romans 8:28-30.

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