A Sharp Sword Sheathed in Burma

For six long years in Rangoon, Adoniram Judson preached, translated, and pleaded — and won almost no one. By 1818, he had exactly zero Burmese converts. His wife Ann suffered from tropical fevers. Friends back in Massachusetts questioned whether the mission was a waste. Judson himself wrote that he felt like a man "calling out in an empty cathedral."

Then came the Anglo-Burmese War. Judson was thrown into Ava's death prison, bound in fetters, hung by his ankles at night. For nearly two years, Ann smuggled food to him and hid his half-finished Burmese Bible translation inside a hard pillow, which the guards thought too worthless to steal.

When Judson finally emerged — gaunt, scarred, grieving Ann's death — he might have echoed Isaiah's Servant: "I have labored in vain; I have spent my strength for nothing." But he kept translating. He kept preaching. He kept sharpening the sword God had been forging since before his birth.

By the time Judson died in 1850, there were over 100 churches and 8,000 baptized believers across Burma. His Bible translation remains the standard text in Myanmar to this day.