Yesterday was the one hundredth anniversary of the death of one of my heroes, John G. Paton. Below is the introduction I wrote in 2001 to Vision Forum’s reprint of the autobiography of this giant of the Faith.

Almost five years ago, I was preaching on the importance of raising sons to be Christian men of vision when my friend Bill gave me an ancient, dog-eared edition of the book you are holding in your hands.

“This is the greatest missionary story ever written,” he said, “but that is not why you need to read the book.” Curious, I resolved to skim the opening chapters. Several hours and a bucket of tears later, with less than two hundred pages under my belt, I realized that I was perusing one of the most important books I would ever read. Since then I have carried a copy of this book with me to almost forty states and have quoted from it hundreds of times. When given an opportunity to preach on the subject of the family, it is often my practice to open the pages of this volume and read liberally from its content in the hope that others will get a glimpse of the beautiful vision for covenant faithfulness and biblical evangelism so magnificently communicated by the pen of this great Scotsman.

Missionary Patriarch is the true story of how a father’s faith and multigenerational vision would be used by God to transform a son into a persevering patriarch through whom tens of thousands would come to Christ. It is a tale of filial devotion, of trust in the sovereignty of God, of the beauty of the Bible’s covenant promises, of vision for the family, of love for the lost, and of unflappable, indefatigable courage in the face of adversity.

Originally published under the title John G. Paton: Missionary to the New Hebrides, we have renamed the book as a tribute to the man who embodied the very best of biblical patriarchy. Himself the progeny of a line of faithful fathers and a descendant of the Scottish Covenanters, Paton was a man of supreme vision and marked devotion to his father. (Paton drew from the example of the shepherding skills of his own father, to allow him to shepherd and become a father to generations of redeemed savages.) His bearded visage; his clear, but prophet-like Gospel preaching; his intolerance for compromise; his love for the worst sinner; and his legacy as an evangelist whose ministry is bearing fruit even now, almost one hundred years after his death, have rightly earned him the title “Missionary Patriarch.”

John G. Paton had the type of childhood we would associate with biblical training for spiritual greatness, a training which included: a multigenerational Christian heritage; the example of a remarkable Christian father; a happy home filled with daily devotion to God; a small, but highly personal local church distinguished for its “oneanothering” and piety; and a home-based education that transformed him into a genuine auto-didact, a quality that would serve him well for the rest of his life. Paton was thirty-three when he was ordained to preach in the New Hebrides, an island chain named by Captain James Cooke consisting of about thirty mountainous islands inhabited by heathens of the worst sort—violent, man-eating savages. After visiting the island and engaging in a skirmish with the natives in 1774, Cooke declared that “no one would ever venture to introduce Christianity...because neither fame nor profit would offer the requisite inducement.” But missionaries did come, many of whom were subsequently murdered by the islanders. Undaunted, Paton arrived in 1858, where twenty years earlier, the first missionaries to the island, John Williams and James Harris, were clubbed to death immediately upon disembarking their vessels.

Paton’s own trials as a missionary were epic. But through the worst he responded as a true Christian and patriarch. He dealt with superstition, with savagery, and with heartwrenching sorrow, ever-persevering with a Job-like trust in the sovereign will of God. With valor he faced circumstances difficult for modern American Christians to comprehend. Not only did he lose his wife and son within months of his arrival, but he actually had to guard their graves for days to prevent the natives from exhuming their bodies and eating them.

The ever-merciful Lord sustained me to lay the precious dust of my beloved ones in the same quiet grave, dug for them close by at the end of the house; in all of which last offices my own hands, despite breaking heart, had to take the principal share! I built the grave round and round with coral blocks, and covered the top with beautiful white coral, broken small as gravel; and that spot became my sacred and much-frequented shrine during all the following months and years when I labored on for the salvation of these savage Islanders amidst difficulties, dangers, and deaths. Whensoever Tanna turns to the Lord and is won for Christ, men in after-days will find the memory of that spot still green—where with ceaseless prayers and tears I claimed that land for God in which I had “buried my dead” with faith and hope. But for Jesus, and the fellowship He vouchsafed me there, I must have gone mad and died beside that lonely grave.

Of special interest to me is that through the darkest hours of his life as a missionary, the memory of his father served to inspire and motivate this remarkable man. Paton was an old man in his twilight years when he wrote the autobiography, but even then, his heart was full of gratitude and overwhelming love for his father. In what surely must be one of the most poignant and beautiful passages ever written on true love between a father and a son, Paton describes the day his father commissioned him to do the work of the Lord:

My dear father walked with me the first six miles of the way. His counsels and tears and heavenly conversation on that parting journey are fresh in my heart as if it had been but yesterday; and tears are on my cheeks as freely now as then, whenever memory steals me away to the scene. For the last half-mile or so we walked on together in almost unbroken silence...

His lips kept moving in silent prayers for me; and his tears fell fast when our eyes met each other in looks for which all speech was vain! We halted on reaching the appointed parting place; he grasped my hand firmly for a minute in silence, and then solemnly and affectionately said: “God bless you, my son! Your father’s God prosper you, and keep you from all evil!”

Unable to say more, his lips kept moving in silent prayer; in tears we embraced, and parted. I ran off as fast as I could; and, when about to turn a corner in the road where he would lose sight of me, I looked back and saw him still standing with head uncovered where I had left him—gazing after me. Waving my hat in adieu, I was round the corner and out of sight in an instant. But my heart was too full and sore to carry me further, so I darted into the side of the road and wept for a time. Then, rising up cautiously, I climbed the dyke to see if he yet stood where I had left him; and just at that moment I caught a glimpse of him climbing the dyke and looking out for me! He did not see me, and after he had gazed eagerly in my direction for a while he got down, set his face towards home, and began to return—his head still uncovered, and his heart, I felt sure, still rising in prayers for me. I watched through blinding tears, till his form faded from my gaze; and then, hastening on my way, vowed deeply and oft, by the help of God, to live and act so as never to grieve or dishonor such a father and mother as He had given me.

The appearance of my father, when we parted—his advice, prayers, and tears—the road, the dyke, the climbing up on it and then walking away, head uncovered—have often, often, all through life, risen vividly before my mind, and do so now while I am writing, as if it had been but an hour ago. In my earlier years particularly, when exposed to many temptations, his parting form rose before me as that of a guardian Angel. It is no pharisaism, but deep gratitude, which makes me here testify that the memory of that scene not only helped, by God’s grace, to keep me pure from the prevailing sins, but also stimulated me in all my studies, that I might not fall short of his hopes, and in all my Christian duties, that I might faithfully follow his shining example.

May God give us such fathers! May God give us such sons! John G. Paton died in 1907 at the age of eighty-seven. I have taken the liberty of including in this volume a tribute to him published in that same year by Arthur T. Pierson, who also likens Paton to a “patriarch.”

Once upon a time, Christian students around the world knew the story of John G. Paton. Today, not one in a hundred have heard of this great missionary. If we hope to raise happy and heroic sons and daughters, it is up to us to remind our children that God has given a “great cloud of witnesses” and we are to learn from their victories and losses, from their strengths and their weaknesses. Surely, John G. Paton ranks as one of the great men God has given to His Church.

I am personally grateful for the privilege of republishing this great work, and I hope untold thousands will be inspired by the legacy of heroism, fatherhood, and covenant faithfulness so beautifully communicated in this volume.

By His Sovereign Grace,
Doug Phillips
San Antonio, Texas,
September 2001