This Day in Baptist History

March 20, 1824 – Was the date on the letter from James Thomson stating that he expected that the entire New Testament would be translated into the Peruvian language within the course of a week. On March 1, he had written to the British and Foreign Bible Society that had sent him to Latin America, and told them that he thought it should be finished in three months. By 1826, after visiting and ministering in Ecuador and Colombia, Thomson returned to Britain to make a report of the accomplishment of those eight years. Sadly, he was never able to return to the field. Following his departure from Latin America, the Roman Catholic priesthood and the apathy of the people brought almost to naught the good work that the man of God had accomplished. Little information is known of the early years of Thomson. It is known that he was the first evangelical missionary to introduce the Bible in Latin America. He was sent by the Society that had been formed in England, by Joseph Lancaster, to establish popular schools that would use the Bible as the main textbook. Using the Bible as his basic unit of instruction, Thomson established a hundred Lancastrian schools in Buenos Aires with five thousand students before moving to Chile in 1821. Having seen this success, Argentina honored Thomson by granting him honorary citizenship, and Chile followed suit. As great as Thomson was, there was little lasting fruit of his labors because he did not leave local churches behind, in the N.T. pattern, given in the Great Commission at Mt. 28: 18-20. We must remember that the church “is the pillar and ground of the truth.”

Condensed by Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: pp. 154-56. [C.F: William Mitchell, “James Thompson and Bible Translation in the Andean Languages,” Bible Translator, July 1990, p. 341.]