Matthew 18:1-4
April 15, 1916 – Joanna Patterson Moore died in Selma, Alabama. The doctor who ministered to her reported that she repeated continually, “God’s blessed book, the Bible,” and then entered the land of that book – heaven. Thousands, both black and white, attended her funeral that was held in the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Joanna was born on Sept. 26, 1832, the sixth of 13 children in Clairton County, Pa. Her father was an Episcopalian and her mother a Presbyterian. Joanna was thankful that she was taught the basics of the Christian faith but about the age of nine while reading a children’s book, she came under conviction and called upon the Lord Jesus Christ to save her. However, she did not share her experience until the age of twenty when she attended a Baptist revival meeting and made a profession of faith, but because her father objected she delayed her baptism for a year. At her church she heard a missionary challenge from Sewell Osgood who was on furlough from Burma. After moving to Illinois in 1858, the death of her father, and attending the Rockford Girls’ Seminary, she believed that God was calling her to assist the liberated slaves in the south. The American Baptist Home Mission Society gave her a commission but no salary. The Sunday school class of a Baptist church pledged $4 per month and the government offered her transportation and provided her with a soldier’s rations, and the thirty-one-year old “missionary” went. In Nov. 1863 she landed on Island # 10 in the Mississippi River. Miss Moore established a network of churches, schools, and families that reached to every corner of the American South. Condensed by Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: pp. 206-08. [CF: Walter Sinclair Stewart, Later Baptist Missionaries and Pioneers (Philadelphia: Judson Press, 1928), 1:119.]
No comments:
Post a Comment