Robert Moffat

A Light to South Africa - The Missionary (Part 2)

Conversion 

In 1817 Robert Moffat wanted to set out for the kraal, or village, of the Namaquas.   However, the political situation in the country was such that he was prevented from moving there and setting up his mission work.  However, a German missionary requested Moffat to come to visit the Namaquas area and visit the chief, Afrikaner, a blood-thirsty butcher who had three years earlier been converted. That conversion has been considered one of the great accounts of the grace of God on the mission fields.

Jager Christian Africaner was an outlaw who became a Christian leader of his people after he was converted.  He was a chief of the Oorlams (Khoi) people.  His father, Klaas, was a cattle farmer and headman of the Oorlams people in the Witzenberg district near Tulbagh.  He was gradually driven from his land by white farmers, his livestock dwindled and, unable to retain his inheritance, in about 1790 Klaas Africaner and his family moved to the farm of a Dutch farmer named Piet Pienaar at Hantam, near Calvinia.  They worked as herdsmen and shepherds, protecting the farmer's livestock from attacks by the San.  Pienaar gave them guns to protect the herds and often accompanied them on the punitive expeditions.  Campbell, the London Missionary Society missionary, wrote in 1815 that the plundering expeditions they carried out for the farmer taught the Africaners how to survive as outlaws.

In 1795 Jager Africaner succeeded his father as chief of clan.  He was in charge of the family when the quarrel with Pienaar came to a head a year later Pienaar was an overbearing man who did not understand or respect the Khoi people.  When he ordered Africaner and his followers to go on an expedition that they knew would end in disaster they refused to obey.  They were summoned before the farmer.  An argument followed, either about the expedition or about wages, and Pienaar knocked Jager to the ground.  Titus Africaner, his brother, could not stand by and watch and he fired a gun at the farmer, killing him.  Campbell's account reports that the farmer's wife and child were also killed. The Africaner clan now became outcasts, on the run as murderers.  They took the cattle and the firearms belonging to the farmer and hurried north to the Orange River.  They eventually crossed the Orange River and settled in Great Namaqualand.

Africaner, now an outlaw, proved a formidable cattle raider among the frontier Boers.  He had as his enemies both the farmers in the Cape Colony and the Namaquas, among whom he was an unwelcome settler.  He managed to strike terror into them all until at last Governor Dundas at the Cape offered a large reward for his capture.

After a number of years Africaner met the missionary Christian Albrecht.  By this time Africaner was tired of life as an outlaw and had settled in Africanerskraal in what today is Namibia.  Africaner lived in peace until 1810 when he attacked the London Missionary Society mission station at Pella and returned to his old way of life raiding and plundering.

Albrecht persuaded Africaner to accept a German missionary, the Rev. Johannes Ebner, for his clan. In June 1815, Ebner baptized Jager and his family and from then on Jager became known as Christian.

Two years later the Rev. Ebner took Robert Moffat, from the London Missionary Society, to visit Africaner.  A farmer they passed on the way warned them of the desperate character of the man they were going to visit.  He told Moffat that he was taking his life in his hands by going near Africaner.

At first Africaner was cool and reserved towards Moffat.  Ebner quarreled with the chief's brother and left Africaner's clan to work among the Bondelzwarts people, who had invited him to be their missionary.  Moffat was left alone with the clan.  Gradually a strong personal friendship grew between Moffat and Africaner.

Africaner took a keen interest in what the missionary taught, attended the worship services and learned to read the Bible and write.  His way of life was so changed that in 1819 Moffat persuaded Africaner to accompany him (dressed as a woman to avoid being killed) to Cape Town for a meeting with the governor.  Africaner was wary at first because he knew that there was a price of 1,000 rix dollars for his head.  On the way to Cape Town Moffat spent the night at the home of a farmer named Engelbrecht, who was amazed to see that he was still alive after visiting the outlaw.  As nothing had been heard of the missionary, people feared that the outlaw chief had ordered his death.  Africaner was introduced to the farmer who raised his eyes heavenwards and said in amazement: "O God, what a miracle of thy power! What cannot thy grace accomplish!'

The governor, Lord Charles Somerset, was so impressed when he met Africaner that he granted him amnesty and gave him a wagon worth 80 pounds.   Lord Somerset was so impressed as to what the Gospel could do, that he granted Moffat permission to go into the hinterland and begin his mission work! 

The door to the interior was now open to the Gospel’s advance!  

(Part 3 soon to follow)

Robert Moffat

A Light to South Africa - The Missionary (Part 1)

When I think of Robert Moffat, I am reminded of the Scripture in Zechariah 4:10, which says, "For who despises the day of small things?"

It seemed a small thing to some godly men in a southern Scotland church when a boy about four years old, from a home of poor but pious parents, knelt at an altar to pray.  His decision was despised by the elders as one who was too young to understand. Thank God, one unnamed, unknown-to-us brother bothered to kneel in prayer with "Robbie."

Robert may well have been converted to Christ then -- if not, it was the commencement of a chain of events that led to his conversion and to the opening of doors of evangelism to the uncharted depths of the continent of Africa.  Never through one man has a longer shadow for the Gospel been cast in Africa than the one Robert Moffat cast.


The Man

Robert Moffat (1795-1883), missionary was born at Ormiston, East Lothian, [Scotland] on December 21, 1795. His father was a customhouse officer; the family of his mother, Ann Gardiner, had lived for several generations at Ormiston.

In 1797 the Moffats moved to Portsay, near Banff, and in 1806 to Carronshore, near Falkirk. There, in the home, Robert received much of his religious training where his mother Marjory taught him from the Bible and the Westminster Larger and Shorter Catechisms.   She also read him many stories of the Moravian missionaries, their triumphs, tragedies and the unfinished missionary work of the church in Greenland and the East Indies. [Ed. The Moravian church grew out of the church that Cyrill and Methodius translated the Bible for in the late 4th century.]

Robert went at an early age to the parish school, and at age four went to the altar to pray and accept Christ as Savior. When he was eleven was sent, with an elder brother, to Mr. Paton's school at Falkirk. In 1809 he was apprenticed to a gardener and during his apprenticeship he attended evening classes, learned to play a little on the violin, and took some lessons at the anvil.

Call To Missions

It was when Robert was in his mid-teens in 1811 that his family moved, due to his father being transferred to Inverkeithing.  At the end of 1813 Robert began to work as an undergardner for Mr. Leigh Smith of High Leigh, Cheshire and it was there where his spiritual convictions were confirmed.  And it was on a walk from High Leigh to Warrenton that another event occurred which would engineer him into evangelism in Africa. He saw a sign announcing a missionary meeting.

On such a small thing as a poster, God prompted the heart of the youth to purpose to become a missionary. Moffat attended the meeting and there is evidence he got the message for shortly afterward he contacted Rev. William Roby, the Methodist preacher in Manchester, became a member of the Methodist Church and was soon recommended to the London Missionary Society.

One thing that impressed Robert is that his boss, Mr. Smith had two sons who had became missionaries. They also had one daughter Mary who Robert grew to love. During one of his stays at Dukinfield that Robert became engaged.

Mary was born in 1795 at New Windsor and had been educated at the Moravian school at Fairfield, and had also formed strong religious convictions. As she grew up, her parents had no objection to Mary’s brother becoming missionaries, but her parents at this time objected to the match with Robert if it meant her becoming one too.  Her parents would have consented to their marriage if they had been willing to remain in England, but they could not bear to think of their only daughter's crossing the seas to a land like Africa.


In the summer of 1816 Robert was accepted by the London Missionary Society as a missionary, and on September 30, 1816 he was set apart for the ministry work of church planting in the Surrey Chapel, London. And it was during the summer of 1816 that Robert decided he wanted to marry Mary and take her with him to South Africa. However, due to Mary’s parents objections Robert decided to head to South Africa and trust the relationship to the Lord. Robert knew that the Lord had called him there and it would be no small matter for the Lord to resolve the issue of his love for Mary.

In October of that year he embarked in the ship Alacrity, Captain Findlay, for South Africa, and arrived at Cape Town on January 13, 1817. At the age of twenty-one, Robert reached South Africa. Robert was destined for Namaqualand, beyond the border of the colony, but permission to go there once he arrived was temporarily refused by the governor for political reasons, and so Robert went to Stellenbooch to learn Dutch.

(Part 2 soon to follow)

John Wycliffe

The Man With The Long Shadow

After arriving at Oxford University at the age 16, John Wycliffe began to apply himself to the study of grammar, dialectics, and rhetoric. 

Instruction was in Latin which he excelled at.  He loved to learn and took every opportunity to read, although books were hard to come by.   

After take great pains to get a copy of the New Testament he was dismayed as he read it.  He discovered that God was a stranger to him. 

"All my life, I've talked about God, professed to worship him, learned much about him.  But to know about God is not to know him."  

Expressing great fear and even horror he wondered what he must do.  As he searched the Scriptures and reflecting on the teaching of Aristole, his teacher he concluded:

"Aristotle may teach me many truths, but the ultimate Truth I must turn to is the One who said, 'I am...the Truth.'  To this Book [the Bible] I must give my best effort, testing all other truth by it."

With few exceptions, John Wycliffe remains one of the greatest of the ancient church fathers due to his stand for the Truth of Scripture.  His life stands as a bright light in the dark and foreboding time of a church which was just emerging from the dark middle ages.   He cast a long, good and great shadow over the church by working to get Scriptures into the hands of his countymen in their own English language.  This marked the beginning of the great reformation that was to follow just a few hundred years later by Martin Luther.     

It is no wonder that John Wycliffe is called the Morningstar of the Reformation and that he cast such a long shadow for the English speaking people.