Bio 7a David Brainerd

I spoke last night in Rugby Evangelical Church on David Brainerd 1718-1747, the first in their current series of Monday night church history addresses (currently being organised by Mike Iliff, who it was nice to meet in person only knowing him from Genevanet). I'm going to do a shorter version next week at the Evangelical Library but I thought I might begin to share a little of what I've learned here.

When I began this project I'd never looked properly at Brainerd's life though I knew quite a bit about him that I'd picked up various places so I started by writing down what I already knew.

He was an 18th Century American of Reformed beliefs who was a missionary to Native Americans (Red Indians as he would have called them). He was a man of great earnestness and prayer I knew and was aware that he was expelled from Yale College for making disrespectful remarks about a tutor. I also knew that he died from tuberculosis before he had reached the age of 30. I also knew that his name is associated with that of the great Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), in whose home he died.

There are about seven facts there so let me confirm and qualify the first two here
1. American? Yes, we can say Brainerd was an American, although dying as he did in 1747 he lived before the Declaration of Independence and so, like many of his contemporaries, he thought of himself chiefly as English. The struggle between the colonial powers of England, France and Spain raged throughout his lifetime.

He was born near Haddam, Connecticut, on April 20, 1718 and grew up there before going to college in Yale. In the rest of his short life he must have traversed over 12,000 miles on horseback but it was all in that vast north eastern sector of what we now know as the USA.

2. Reformed? He was brought up in the English Puritan Congregationalist tradition of his parents. Converted in his early twenties, he served the Lord in connection with chiefly Presbyterian churches and societies. He went through a prolonged period of conviction before his eventual conversion and was greatly affected by the period of revival known as the Great Awakening (1739-1745). This is the revival associated with the names of Edwards, Whitefield (1714-1770) and other Reformed worthies such as the Tennents. This revival of puritanism, though bitterly opposed, had a real impact on a populace that had previously been increasingly devoted to nominalism in the churches and scepticism in the colleges.

Brainerd once described a true Christian in these terms (See the Yale Edwards Vol 7, p 483 or here):
1. He has a true knowledge of the glory and excellency of God, that he is most worthy to be loved and praised for his own divine perfections (Ps 145:3)
2. God is his portion (Ps 73:25) and God's glory his great concern (Mat 6:22)
3. Holiness is his delight; nothing he so much longs for as to be holy, as God is holy (Php 3:9-12)
4. Sin is his greatest enemy. This he hates for its own nature, for what it is in itself, being contrary to a holy God. And consequently he hates all sin (Rom 7:24; 1 Jn 3:9)
5. The laws of God also are his delight (Ps 119:97; Rom 7:22). These he observes, not out of constraint, from a servile fear of hell; but they are his choice (Ps 119:30). The strict observance of them is not his bondage, but his greatest liberty (Ps 119:45)

One would also like to think that the significant missionary zeal seen in his life was a product of Reformed convictions. It is important to recognise the role of post-millennialism in Brainerd's thinking. His missionary zeal can be traced in part to his belief that by means of missionary work the millennial kingdom is brought in. He once wrote (20/05/42) 'My soul was concerned not so much for souls as such, but rather for Christ's Kingdom, that it might appear in the world, that God might be known to be God in the whole earth.'