The Ends of the Earth

1^st Wave "To the Coastland!"

1600 a.d. - 1815 a.d

1601

First ordination of Japanese priests.

1606

Japanese Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu bans Christianity.

1624

Persecution intensifies in Japan with 50 Christians being burned alive in Edo (now called Tokyo).

1625

Vietnam expels missionaries.

1627

Alexander de Rhodes goes to Vietnam where in three years of ministry he baptizes 6,700 converts.

1628

Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples established in Rome to train "native clergy" from all over the world.

1631

John Eliot the puritan missionary from England, arrives in Boston. He became known as the ‘Apostle to the Indians’ (Native Americans).

1633

German Lutheran Church sends Peter Heyling as first Protestant missionary to Ethiopia.

1656

The 1st Quaker Missionaries arrive in Boston.

1660

Christianity is introduced into Cambodia.

1663

John Eliot's translation of the Bible into one of the Algonquian languages is published (the New Testament came out two years earlier). This Bible was the first complete Bible to be printed in the New World.

1714

New Testament translated into Tamil (India).

1718

Bartholomew Ziegenbalg constructs a church building in India that is still in use today.

1723

Robert Millar publishes A History of the Propagation of Christianity and the Overthrow of Paganism advocating prayer as the primary means of converting non-Christians.

1724

Yongzheng Emperor bans missionary activities outside the Beijing area.

1728

Institutum Judaicum founded in Halle as first Protestant mission center for Jewish evangelism.

1731

Birth of the Moravian Mission movement.

1732

The Moravian send Missionaries to the West Indies, then to other parts of the World.

1735

John Wesley goes to Indians in Georgia.

1737

Rev. Pugh, a missionary in Pennsylvania with The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, writes home to London to say that he had begun ministering to blacks. He noted that the masters of the slaves were prejudiced against them becoming Christian.

1743

David Brainerd starts ministry to North American Indians.

1745

David Brainerd, after preaching to Native Americans in December, wrote about the response: "They soon came in, one after another; with tears in their eyes, to know, what they should do to be saved. . . . It was an amazing season of power among them, and seemed as if God had bowed the heavens and come down ... and that God was about to convert the whole world."

1746

From Boston, Massachusetts a call is issued to the Christians of the New World to enter into a seven-year "Concert of Prayer" for missionary work.

1747

Jonathan Edwards appeals for prayer for world missions.

1750

Jonathan Edwards, preacher of the First Great Awakening, having been banished from his church at Northampton, Massachusetts goes as a missionary to the nearby Housatonic Indians.

1758

John Wesley baptizes two African-American slaves, thus breaking the skin color barrier for Methodist societies.

1759

Native American Samson Occom, direct descendant of the great Mahican chief Uncas, is ordained by the Presbyterians.

1766

Philip Quaque, first non-European ordained priest in the Church of England returns to Africa supported as a missionary.

1770

John Marrant, a free black from New York City, begins ministering cross-culturally, preaching to the American Indians. By 1775 he had carried the gospel to the Cherokee and Creek Indians as well as to groups he called the Catawar and Housaw peoples.

1778

Theodore Sladich is martyred while doing missionary work to counter Islamic influence in the western Balkans.

1782

Freed slave George Lisle goes to Jamaica as missionary.

1783

Moses Baker and George Gibbions, both former slaves, leave the U.S. to become missionaries in the West Indies.

1787

William Carey is ordained in England by the Particular Baptists and soon begins to urge that worldwide missions be undertaken.

1791

One hundred and twenty Korean Christians are tortured and killed for their faith. It began when Paul Yun Ji-Chung, a noble who had become a Christian, decided not to bury his mother according to traditional Confucian custom.

1792

William Carey publishes 'An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to use means for the conversion of the heathen.'

1793

Baptist Mission Society Founded.

1795

London Missionary Society Founded.

1806

Haystack Prayer Meeting.

1807

First Protestant missionary to China, Robert Morrison, begins work in Guangzhou.

1812

First American foreign missionary, Adoniram Judson, arrives in Serampore and soon goes to Burma.

1814

First recorded baptism of a Chinese convert, Cai Gao.