The Reward of the Slain Lamb

On August 21, 1732, two young Moravian men named Leonard Dober and David Nitschmann boarded a ship in Copenhagen, bound for the Caribbean island of St. Thomas. They went to share the gospel with enslaved Africans — and they were willing to sell themselves into slavery to do it. Their sendoff from the Herrnhut community in Saxony was marked by a single phrase that became the Moravian motto: "May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of His suffering."

Over the next decades, that tiny community of six hundred believers sent more missionaries than all Protestants had sent in the previous two centuries. They went to Greenland, Suriname, South Africa, Jamaica, Labrador. Many died within months of arrival. They buried their colleagues in foreign soil and kept preaching.

Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf, their leader, never envisioned a European gospel. He envisioned exactly what John saw in Revelation 7 — a great multitude no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne in white robes, crying out, "Salvation belongs to our God and to the Lamb!"

The Moravians understood something profound: the seal of the living God was never meant for one people alone. Every missionary grave they dug was an act of faith that the Almighty's harvest would be as vast and diverse as John's vision promised. They spent their lives so that the multitude might be complete.