Bio 8h Thomas L Johnson

Ministering back in England and in America
By the time Johnson reached England he was feeling much better but was told that a return to Africa would mean dire consequences for his health. ‘I remember nothing more trying in all my life’ he wrote later, unless it was the conviction of sin he knew when he first sought the Lord. It was a devastating blow and without his dear wife Johnson felt very much alone. Old friends rallied round. The Wigneys welcomed him into their home for a while and Alfred Baynes of the BMS was a great help, as were others. He lodged for a little while in Southampton with another family. His prayer now was ‘Since I cannot labour in Africa, please, Lord, let me do something for Africa’. This prayer too was answered.
On August 4, 1880, he sailed from Liverpool to New York. Kind words from Spurgeon were again a comfort to him, ‘If you don’t get on, let us know. We will not forget you.’ From New York he headed for Chicago, again receiving many kindnesses from different people. His old pastor Mr de Baptiste had arranged for him to speak at the Wood River Association in Jacksonville, where he urged on his fellow African-Americans the needs of Africa. There and at three further associations in Missouri decisions were made to go ahead in outreach to Africa. At this time Johnson also published a 64 page booklet telling of his time in Africa and the great needs of that continent. Most importantly on October 12, 1 881, at Olivet Baptist Church, Chicago at a Baptist General Association of Western States and Territories it was resolved to form an African Mission to promote the sending of ‘coloured brethren’ to preach in the Congo.
Until then, the year 1881 had been taken up with raising funds for the Chicago church, following the rebuild necessitated by the great fire of 1874. Then on July 28 Johnson remarried. The bride, another African-American, was Miss Sara Artimeco McGowan. God later blessed them with a little girl, Ruth. They proceeded to honeymoon on the SS Spain and in England where Johnson also engaged in missionary work. In March 1882 the news came that he had been appointed as missionary and financial agent of the BGAWST. He now moved from Manchester, where he had been based, to London and began on an exhausting round of missions and meetings throughout the British Isles, with the aim of evangelising the lost and stirring believers to missionary endeavour.
On his first visit to Scotland in 1884 he took a mission for W Y Fullerton in Airdrie. He went from there to Hawick. A black man was still a novelty in those days and he mentions some young people there going to check his bed clothes in the morning to see if the black had come off! In Ireland the following year children even took fright at his dark appearance. By far his worst treatment, though, came back in the Southern States of America, on visits there over the next few years. After 1884 various laws were passed in the Southern States discriminating against African-Americans. Nothing shows the stupidity of racism more than the fact that when he wore a red fez, as he sometimes did, and appeared African he was treated with great respect, but once it was discovered that he had been a Virginian slave the rules were all against him. He sought to identify with his people as much as he could and urged them to abandon all idea of using arms. ‘Go and seek God in prayer, as thousands of us did in the old slave days’ was always his counsel.
There were several trips back and forth across the Atlantic in the remaining years of the century. With his new wife’s assistance he launched a magazine The African mission Herald in October 1888. We get some idea of the esteem in which Johnson was held, especially by his own people, when we note the enthusiasm among many for him to be appointed US Consul to the fledgling African State of Liberia. It did not come to that but he was referred to as ‘a man of marked ability and national reputation ... highly endorsed by men of the old and new worlds.’
Health considerations led him to resign from the mission in July 1889. It was not an easy decision. Certainly there was no lessening of his desire to do good for Africa. He wrote ‘Africa for Christ shall be my theme. Africa for Christ, who reigns supreme.’ After a little while he went back to pastoring Union Park church, Chicago, thus uniting a divided congregation. His health did not improve at first but after some months away in Denver, by this time about eight times bigger than when Johnson ministered there, things began to improve. This led to a fresh offer of work for the mission, to which Johnson readily acceded.
Like others he was particularly stirred at this time by the earnest appeals of Dr Henry Grattan Guinness (1835-1910) for the Great Soudan. Much less known and explored than the Congo region the Sudan region was the vast tract of open savanna plains between the Sahara to the north and the equatorial rain forests to the south. The term derives from the Arabic bilad as-sudan - land of the black peoples, and has been in use from at least the 12th Century. The northern reaches of the Sudan comprise the semi-arid region known as the Sahel. The Sudan extends for more than 3,500 miles west-to-east from Cape Verde on the Atlantic to the Ethiopian highlands and the Red Sea. Johnson’s great concern was to see the millions of Muslims and animists in the area won to Christ.
The mission appointed him to travel to Liberia again so in November, 1891 he returned again to England. Sadly, he had to leave his wife and daughter behind as Sarah’s health was not good. In England he met with Grattan Guiness and was at Spurgeon’s funeral in February, 1892. He recalled saying to someone then ‘God never makes a mistake’. The very next morning back in Liverpool he received a letter saying that his little daughter, Ruth, had suddenly died. She was just six and a half This was a great blow and no doubt contributed to the ill health that followed and caused him to postpone his planned trip to Liberia. Thankfully Mrs Johnson’s health improved and she was able to join him in July. They set up house in the London area, in Sydenham.
From Sydenham he travelled to the west country to lead evangelistic missions in association with the YMCA. He especially delighted in the children he met and loved to see them coming to trust in Jesus. After this the Africa trip was again postponed due to ill health. Johnson spent three and a half months of 1893 in hospital. Recuperating in a bath-chair in Bournemouth he found, he says, he had turned into a grumbler, quite forgetting the 56 years he had been kept out of hospital until then. When he was well enough his first sermon was on Romans 8:28! The rest in Bournemouth was greatly appreciated but following a mission in Ireland he fell ill again and once more felt compelled to resign his post with the African Mission.
We have already said that Johnson preached in all four home countries. Over the succeeding years of his life he knew health enough to conduct missions in Belfast, Bournemouth, Bristol, Clitheroe, Cork, Crewkerne, Croydon, Dublin, Edinburgh, Emsworth, Folkestone, Haywards Heath, Ilfracombe, Liverpool, Manchester, Margate, Reading, Southampton, Tewkesbury, Winchester and many parts of London. He also preached in the Isle of Wight, Isle of Man and on Guernsey. His travels in America had already taken him to at least 17 states, from Wisconsin to Louisiana, from Colorado to Maryland. With missions it was his policy not to make an issue of payment for his services but to demand that a week of prayer precede the week. He spoke of the Saviour not only in public but also took opportunities for personal witness even to complete strangers. His autobiogaphy gives several examples of apparently genuine conversions.
He and Mrs Johnson lived from the 1890s in Boscombe, Bournemouth. Old age inevitably brings with it the death of good friends. His autobiography notes the deaths of the widows from two families that had been such a help to him - Mrs Stroud Smith on a trip to Liberia, in December, 1893 and Mrs Spurgeon in October, 1903. In 1900 he accidentally knelt on a piece of coal which caused an injury that plagued him the rest of his days. In March of that year he was made a British Citizen. The following year, through the kindness of friends in Putney, a fund was established to provide for him in retirement.
His autobiography went through several editions. It was sold at meetings and by mail from his home. Aged 72 at the close of the seventh edition in 1909 he wrote
‘The hand of God has been with me down the years. He requires an appropriate return. I charge my soul as an unprofitable servant, reviewing all the opportunities and the advantages afforded me. He has kept my heart beating 70 times per minute, 4,200 per hour, 100,800 per day, 3,681,720 per year, and never losing sight of me, who am but one unit out of the 1,800,000,000 people in the world. O my soul, but for the blood of my blessed Jesus, where wouldst thou stand today? I have been to his feet as I have heard his voice saying, ‘Come unto me, and I will give you rest.’ And I have found that sweet rest. And so will all who come to my blessed Jesus.
I still wait his will in whatever word or way or work he gives to me, and look forward to that time of the glorious emancipation of the soul and of the body, too, from the present bondage of this life to the glorious assembly and church of the firstborn written in heaven,. To God be everlasting praise. Amen and Amen.’
Another eighth edition appeared before his death.
He also wrote a number of little booklets and leaflets bearing testimony, such as Out of darkness into light or how Jesus found me; God never makes a mistake; God knows all about it and, for children, Four fingers and a thumb a simple evangelistic tool. From 1910 onwards he was wheelchair bound and became a familiar figure around the streets of Bournemouth. For many local people he was the first black person they had seen up close. He became famous for saying ‘Shake hands - the black won't come off!’ Although he died in 1921, it is said that in Bournemouth the slave chains and whips that decorated his home and his Christian faith were remembered well into the 1980s.