I was very inspired to be asked to speak upon David Livingstone, and on other times I'll deal with other great men of God, such as Robert Moffat. But today, David Livingstone. What would David Livingstone say to us today, if he was here? Let's turn the Word of God to Isaiah. Actually, before we do that, can I have you sing a very popular hymn? This was David Livingstone's favourite hymn, it was Robert Moffat's favourite hymn too. It is considered the most popular hymn of the greatest century of missions. The 19th century the Greatest Century of Missions, this hymn was so well known that they could sing it without notes because people knew it off by heart. And they say more people were inspired to go into the mission field through this hymn in the Greatest Century of Missions than any other. From Greenland's icy mountains. If you've never sung it before, it's very easy to learn. For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. From Greenland's icy mountains, from India's coral From many an ancient river, from many a palmy plain, they call us to deliver their men from error's chain. Waft through the spicy breezes, low soft oceanoids are, Only man is wild. Invade with lavish kindness the gift of God of straw. The heathen, in his blindness, bows down to wood and stone. And he whose souls are lighted, Can we two men be knighted, the land of life denied? Salvation, O Salvation, the joyful sound proclaim, Till earth's remotest nation has learnt Messiah's name. Waft, waft ye with the story, and do ye water strong, till like a sea of glory, it sheds from dawn to dawn. The Lord of Exhamblation, the Lamb forsaken, Amen. Thank you. What would David Livingston say to us today? Let's hear the word of God as it's found in Isaiah chapter 6 verse 8. Also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us? Then I said, here am I Lord, send me. One of those who went was David Livingston. He put feet to his faith. Dr. David Levickson is an example of excellence. His life, his legacy, his literature continue to speak to us today. And the challenge of David Levickson is most relevant for our times. So if Dr. David Levickson was here today at Morrison, what would he say to this congregation, to us? We do not need to guess. We have his writings and his statements published available. We can know exactly what David Livingstone would say to us today. It's what he said to the people of his generation. The salvation of men ought to be the chief desire and aim of every Christian. All men have the right to hear God's Word. No nation ought to hoard the Word of God like a miser. We're not called to be buckets, we're called to be hosepipes, channels, not just receiving God's blessings but passing them on. Freely receive, freely, freely give. Too much has been given, much is required. Can the love of Christ not carry the missionary where the slave trade carries the slave trader? People say that some areas are inaccessible. He was told darkest Africa is inaccessible. And Livingston pointed out, well the slave traders reach those villages, why can't we reach them with the gospel? Think of all the people in the world who heard the gospel of COVID-Kelt and the Salvation by Vaccination COVID-Kelt during the lockdown lunacy. If Coca-Cola and the COVID-Kelt can reach every village, then why can we not get the gospel to everybody on the planet? a mission wrote to him saying, do you have a good road to where you are? If so, we have young men who want to come and join you. And the mission wrote back, if you have men who will come only if they know there's a good road, I don't want them. I want men who will come even if there's no road at all. He wrote to his sisters, we must be uncommon Christians, that is, eminently holy and devoted servants of the Most High. Let us seek that selfishness be extirpated, pride banished, unbelief driven from the mind. Every idol dethroned, everything hostile to holiness and opposed to the divine will crucified. That holiness to the Lord may be engraved on the heart and evermore characterize our whole conduct. This is a letter to his sisters. Do you write letters like this with such spiritual impact to your communications, whether it's social media, texting, whatever? Is this what you're communicating to your brothers and sisters? Levinson wrote, we still have a debt of gratitude to Jesus, and there is no greater privilege on earth than after having our own chains broken off, to go forth and proclaim liberty to the captives, the opening of prison to them who are bound. Dr David Livingston was inspired by an optimistic view of the future. Like most of the mysteries of the 19th century, Livingston held to an eschatology of victory. He wrote, discoveries and inventions are cumulative, filling the earth with the glory of the Lord. All nations will sing his glory and will bow before him. Our work and its fruits are cumulative. We work towards a new state of things. Future missionaries will be rewarded by conversions for every sermon. We are their pioneers and helpers. Let them not forget the Watchmen of the Night, who worked when all was gloom and no evidence of success in the way of conversions chairs our path. David Levinson many times ministered for weeks and months and even years without the joy of a single convert. And when he had some converts, some of them turned away and back to it again. And he was very discouraged, but he looked forward to the time when there would be conversions to every sermon. They, speaking about us, will doubtless have more light than we, but we serve our master earnestly and we proclaim the same gospel that they will do. In his diary he wrote, a quiet audience today. The seed is being sown, the least of all seeds now, but it will grow into a mighty tree. It is as if it were a small stone cut out of a mountain, but will fill the whole earth. Thinking about the biblical parables, about the stone which the builders rejected as worthless, that it will grow to be a mountain that will fill the whole earth. And he is looking to the day when the kingdom of God will spread throughout the whole world. We work for a glorious future which we are not destined to see, the golden age which has not yet been but will yet be. We are only morning stars shining in the dark, but the glorious morn will break, the good time coming yet. The dominion has been given by the power of commerce and population unto the people of the saints of the Most High. This is an everlasting kingdom, a little stone cut on the mountain without hands, which will cover the whole earth. For this time we work. By different agencies, the great ruler is bringing all things into a focus. Jesus is gathering all things to himself, and he is daily becoming more and more the center of the world's hopes and of the world's fears. When David Davidson set foot in Cape Town back in 1841, there were only 5 million Christians in the whole continent of Africa, most of those up in Egypt, Coptic Christians, and in Ethiopia, or what was then called Abyssinia, with a very small amount of Christians at the Cape of Good Hope. Today, there are over 500 million people in Africa who claim to be Christians. In fact, the latest statistics are 680 million. This includes 150 million Protestants, 50 million Anglicans, 140 million Charismatics, 60 million Pentecostals, 100 million Independents. And to a large extent, that is the fruit of work of people like C.T. Studd, David Levickson, Robert Moffatt, Mary Schleser, faithful missionaries who sowed the seed. And David Levickson had to plough stony ground. He sowed gospel seed that produced this great harvest. We are benefiting today from what generations of faithful missionaries did back, especially in the 19th century. Psalm 22 tells us, all the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before Him. For the kingdom is the Lord's, and He rules over the nations. Remember, the Great Commission commanded us to make disciples of every nation. And the word our Lord used was ethni, when He spoke in Matthew 28 of the Great Commission. Make disciples of every ethni, every ethnolinguistic people group. Ethni is the Greek word from which we get our word ethnic from. Biblically, a nation is an ethno-linguistic people group of a shared faith. So the Lord is not saying make disciples of every country, but of every nation, of every people group, of every linguistic group. There are 212 countries represented in the United Nations. Of course, they're neither united nor nations, but nevertheless, that's unfortunately confused people who think, well, that's a nation. China's not a nation. China's an empire. There are over 1,300 languages just in Indonesia. So when we think of the Great Commission, you consciously think, well, we've got a missionary in Nigeria. There are 140 different language groups in Nigeria. Sudan's got 144 language groups just in Sudan. South Sudan has 27 language groups. The Nuba Mountains has 50 language groups. When we think of making this South Asian nation, the Lord's been with every ethnic, every ethnolinguistic people group, all the families of the nations of the earth. The life and legacy of David Livingstone changed my life. As a new Christian, I was converted in 1977. I came from a completely secular, humanist family. We never went to church, ever, not even on Christmas. We never read the Bible. We never prayed before meals. We never even prayed when someone was sick. My family is thoroughly secular. Never went to Sunday school. And when I was converted, 3rd of April 1977, I was the first priest in my family, and I was the youngest. You can imagine all the family rolling their eyes at this religious fanatic, the youngest, the baby of the family, coming in and giving everyone a Bible for Christmas, and them all rolling their eyes and frustrated at this irritating younger brother, or younger son in some cases. But I imbibed many of the presuppositions and tendencies of church in the 1970s. I read a late, great plaintiff. There's a new world coming. Satan is alive and well in Plaintiff. We're watching films like A Thief in the Night and A Distant Thunder, all date-setting rapture fever type of things. And I was obsessed with the end times. I was convinced that we were living in the last days, the last hours, the last minutes. I was saved. I loved the Lord. I was enthusiastically involved in evangelism, but my understanding of biblical doctrine was actually quite shallow. I embarked the prevailing prejudice against Calvinism. I was convinced we were living in the lost days. Therefore, I could not at that time consider marriage or children. There wasn't enough time. I could not allow myself to be distracted by such worldly matters as family and raising children. That's what I thought at the time. I needed to devote my last few days on earth to snatching souls from the fire. The rapture was coming shortly before the end of that year. I took bets with people that the Lord was going to come before the end of that year, 78, 79, 80, 81. I was completely closed to the idea of theological training. What's the point? The Lord will have come before I finished my studies. Better to stand afield, winning souls in these last few days remaining. Then I read The Puritan Hope, Revival and Interpretation of Prophecy by Ian Murray, published by Banner of Truth, who produced so many great books. This book informed me that all of the pioneer missionaries of the 19th century missionary movement, they were all Calvinists and all post-millennial. Well, I had no idea what post-millennialism was. I couldn't even spell it. But when I read that the father of modern missionaries, William Carey, and the best friend Africa ever had, David Livingston, that they were both reformed and post-millennial, I determined I must read up on these matters. And these are some of the first edition books on Livingston that we have at our Livingston House in Rondebosch. Earlier I'd read a thin, modern biography on David Livingston, but it didn't seem too extraordinary, because like most modern books, it had been sanitised. All controversial, politically incorrect details had been omitted. The modern, censored version of Levickson's life did not mention the ravages of the Islamic slave trade, which David Levickson confronted, documented, and fought against. It left out his Calvinist convictions and his post-millennial eschatology of victory. Why confuse people with complicated things like that? The modern biographies left out the fact that David Levickson carried a six-barreled revolver and a double-barreled rifle. the best and most advanced weaponry available in the 1840s. But why bring up that? His violent confrontations with Islamic slave traders and his bold initiatives to set thousands of captives free were also apparently deemed too controversial to include in modern, sanitised, abridged versions of Livingston's life. However, I've always been something of a bookworm, and I have a love for history, and finding most of the books available in the average bookshop today to be quite shallow and predictable. In fact, the average Christian bookshop in this country is so shallow, it's just a waste of your time. It's terrible. I've developed a preference for scouring through second-hand bookshops, finding rare old first editions of these missionaries and pioneers. And these books you will not find in the average Christian bookshop, you can be sure. These are books you'll only find in a secondhand bookshop. When I was reading Livingston's missionary travels, I was traveling through much of his footsteps in the province of Tet in Mozambique and in the Zambezi Valley in 1989. And that's when I, in the medical team I was leading, was captured by Russian forces, imprisoned in SNASP security prison in Meshava in Maputo. And it was interesting to read what Livingston was saying in the 1850s in Tit and Zimbezi Valley could also be describing Zimbezi in the 1980s. dead bodies floating down the river, slave traders, oppression, burning crops, burning villages, scenes of massacres. He was describing what the Islamic slave trade was doing in that area in the 1850s. But I could see what the communists were doing in the 1890s was pretty much the same. What I learned from the writings and the exemplary life and the extraordinary legacy of David Livingstone transformed my life and my ministry. So what did I learn from David Livingston? I learned from David Livingston the importance of discipline. He was disciplined in reading and in exercise. He was self-controlled. Livingston abstained from alcohol for life. He was temperate. He was a teetotaler. He was duty-orientated. He was hardworking. Livingston's work ethic is a rebuke to all of us. From age 10, he worked 14 hours a day, six days a week, walking an average of 34 kilometers a day. in a cotton mill, much of this in a crawling, stooping position amongst or under machinery or bouncing over it. He was a fit of threader. He would have to connect the broken piece of thread on the machines. Now imagine the tremendous physical training this was for his later transcontinental expeditions. He did all this, these 14-hour workdays, in the esteemed heat and humidity considered essential for the production of thread. I mean, this was real preparation for his work in Africa. And David used his first week's wages to purchase a book on Latin. Now what did you spend your first week's wages on? Now I know my first week's wages was when I was 17 years old, I'd just finished matric, and my first job at Old Mutual. I bought a suit, and by the way, the suit, along with shoes and a tie, was less than 20 rand in total. Just telling you what the currency was like then. And I bought a black briefcase and a black umbrella. So that's when I spent my first week's wages, at age 17. David Livingston, at age 10, purchased Rudiments, Rudiments of Latin, a book on Latin. I don't think there's anyone here who spent their first week's wages on a book in Latin. Now, less than 10% of the children who worked at a copper mills ever learned to read or write. By the way, this picture is completely imaginary. There was no table for him to read on with a candle that his mother could open another door to see. They had a one-roomed home, and the floor would be filled with the mattresses. There were seven of their family living in a one-roomed apartment. about 25 feet by 15 feet. There's no way they could have had this table in the middle at night while everyone was in bed. So this is just a bit of magic. But the point is, is mother to take away his candles sometimes at midnight to force him to sleep and to stop breathing. David not only learned to read and write, he taught himself Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Every night after work he'd attend a night school from 8 to 10 p.m., and then at home he'd study off until midnight, and each morning began at 5.30 a.m. when the bell rang and everyone in the tenements had to get ready to work at the cotton mill. His work day began at 6 a.m. Now before I go on, I should mention that before David Livingston was 10, because his mother kept him out of full-time work until he was 10 so he could spend more time reading, and so he was about 9 years old and he was reading by the banks of the river. where he heard a girl scream, and there was a little girl who was having an adventure with her baby brother, a toddler, and they were rowing a boat, and she had lost the oar, and the boat was being sucked in towards the paddle wheel, the mill, which had crushed the boat and doubtless killed these two children. David Lewison, without hesitation, plunged into the icy river and rescued the little girl and her toddler brother. And he never said a word about it, never wrote about it for the rest of his life. The only reason we know this is because in the attic of London Mystery Society was found a while ago a letter by his father, because David Livingston's father, Neil Livingston, was asked to do a testimonial on his son. And he mentioned that later that day, the parents of the children came to the home to thank them for what their son had done. We wouldn't even know that this happened if it had been left up to Livingston. It's only because that letter's been discovered we even know that it isn't. But it gives you something about the person. While he was studying medicine and theology, he would walk from Blantyne to Glasgow, refusing every offer of a ride on a horse and horse paths passing by. He preferred the four-hour walk, often in the snow. I mean, this is Scotland. It can be very icy winters. In order to strengthen his muscles for his chosen career and missions, he knew he'd need to be fit, so he didn't allow himself the luxury of taking a lift. He just kept walking. I mean, imagine that. Monday morning, walking from Glenside to Glasgow, every Friday, every Saturday night, walking back to, because they didn't have five-day workweeks, the study weeks were six-day workweeks. Saturday night he'd walk back to his home, so that he'd be ready for church on Sunday. He didn't want to get weak and soft, he carried on walking. David Livingston never accepted charity. I've heard people say Livingston received a bursary. I don't know where such impulsivity comes from. People assume, oh, we can't study without a bursary today, so he must have gotten a bursary. There was no such thing, and he wouldn't have accepted charity anyway. Although being brought up in the poorest of circumstances, where his family of seven was forced to live in a single room, this room, 10 feet by 14 feet, no electricity, no plumbing, no running water in the whole building. And the mattresses for the children was kept under the parents' bed, and it was pulled out at night, so there was no way they could be having him sitting in the middle at the table in that nice picture before. David Lewison worked. He saved up enough money to put himself through both medical school and theological college. David Lewison was the first worker from the Cotton Mills to receive a university education, and nobody gave it to him. He earned it, he passed it with high honour. He received his doctorate from the Royal Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons, November 1840. He was ordained as a Congregational Minister, 20 November 1840. Against all odds, he had achieved far more than anyone would have thought possible for someone born in such a poverty-stricken, disadvantaged background. This is his – I've had people say this is the home of Livingston. Well, not quite. His family had one room on the top floor. There were 30 families living in this tenement. So to call this David Livingston's home is a bit foolish. The only water available for all 30 families was this water pump in the courtyard. And so every drop of water they needed for cooking, washing. preparing anything, a drinking, had to be carried in buckets by David or his brother up those circular metal stairs to the top floor tenement room. And David Livingston did not wait for someone else to open up Africa. He didn't wait for somebody to invent a four-wheel drive vehicle. He didn't wait for people to build the roads and the bridges. He drew the first maps of the Zambezi River. He didn't have an attitude of entitlement. David Livingston had a Protestant work ethic. And just look at this map. He did this map from the ground. He didn't have a GPS, he didn't have drones and all of that sort of thing, of course. We take our GPS maps and our satellite images, and this map is accurate. Livingston drew this map on the ground following the river, normally walking along the side of the river. The first map of the Zambezi River, drawn by missionary David Livingston. When Livingston came to Africa, the people were unbelievably ignorant about Africa. Africa was a dark continent. These are some ancient maps of Africa. And it's embarrassing. It's ludicrous. It's funny. The people assumed, by the way, that Africa and India were joined. Many people in Europe thought Africa and India were basically the same place. And these are actual maps of Africa at the time Livingston arrived. that most people thought that the source of the Nile River lay in South Africa, that the mountains of the moon were actually in where the Transvaal is today. And because of that, if you go to the Kruger National Park today, you'll read that they say the Nile Crocodile. Well, the crocodiles in Kruger Park were obviously not Nile crocodiles, but they were called Nile crocodiles because people assumed that the Limpopo was part of the Nile and this is part of the source of the Nile. People literally came to Saletkin and thought, this is where the Nile starts. Sebastian Cabot's map of the 16th century, the mountain of the moon, in this case, firmly centred on what today is Zimbabwe, and even a 1522 map. This is the kind of map that they had, detailed map, in the day-to-day of Livingston. Most of the hinterland of Africa was open, blank, absolutely unexplored territory or unknown written across it. Now, the average scientist and geographer in the 19th century was convinced the hinterland of Africa is one big desert. And David Livingston is the one who filled in the map and showed, no, the hinterland of Africa is not one big desert. There's lots of rivers, lakes, mountains, plateaus. And he filled in the gaps and showed that, in fact, the hinterland of Africa is very different, and no, it's not a big desert. And you can see all those trans-Africa journeys, how he mapped it. At one time, coming back from Angola, after walking from Cape Town, Now, we mentioned about how far Kuruman is from Cape Town, 1,300 km. It took Livingston three months by boat to come from England to Cape Town in 1841. And then it took him four months, and he didn't go by oxcart, he actually walked alongside the oxcart. Again, he didn't want to get weak. So it took him four months walking. In fact, it was from what today is Port Elizabeth up to Curriman, four months by foot walking alongside the oxcart. Oxford to get there. So we can be kind of impatient, but imagine three months to get to Cape Town from England by boat and then four months to get to your mission station where you're starting your work by foot. So after he'd walked across from Cape Town, because he's put his family on board ship in Cape Town to go back to Scotland to be cared by the family, his extended family, and then he started his first great missionary journey walking from Cape Town across Northern Cape, across Botswana, across Zambia. to Luanda and Angola, and from there he walked across Angola and Zambia, across Zimbabwe, and across Mozambique to the Indian Ocean. On his way back from Luanda, and he could have gotten a boat in the forerunner ship in Luanda and been at home in England a few months. Instead, he decided he couldn't leave his guides and his porters, who were carrying all the different taxes they needed to cross the different tribal boundaries, he couldn't leave them in Portugal, controlled territory, Portuguese West Africa, because they might be enslaved. All European countries banned slavery in 1815, but not Portugal. And so he's afraid for the safety of his guides. And so his guides and porters, he brought all the way back across Africa. And on the way back from Luanda, he followed the Zambezi River and started to see this massive plume of smoke. And he asked the villagers, what is that? Musi oyetanya, the smoke that thunders. What makes the smoke to thunder? Djinn, spirits. And so What's there? Nobody knows, nobody's been there. Now, I've heard people laugh at the idea that Livingston discovered Victoria Falls. I said, well, of course all local people knew about it. Well, maybe not. He certainly was the first to sketch and measure and name it and make it known to the world, but he might have been the first person to see it because he found such massive concentrations of wildlife there. It was like a wildlife sanctuary. The animals there had apparently never been hunted, and so huge herds. And Livingston hired a canoe that he could go down this rapidly fast-flowing river. And then he stopped at what today is called Livingston Island, just as well. It would have been pretty bad if he hadn't stopped there. And then he crawled out onto the edge. This is Livingston Island. He crawled out to the edge, and he was prepared. He let down a weighted stone, a weighted rope, and he measured how high Victoria Falls was, 310 feet. Gives you another perspective from Livingston Island. Now, can you imagine? And he said, angels at creation must have gazed at such sights in flight. And there you get a better view. Livingston Island, and he measured 310 feet. Here's a sketch. In fact, he's quite right. He says 310 feet deep. That's what it is. 310 feet. I don't know how he measured the width. 1,860 yards. It's more than a mile wide. And sure enough, it is 1,860 meters wide. How did he do that without the GPS? I mean, it's not like he could have paced it out. It's a waterfall. And then he measured how many paces, 400 paces between this board to the other, and all his observations are accurate. Not only that, he produced a sketch. This is from the first edition of Lennox's Travels. There is no raised position or hill that you can get this perception from. Now it's hard enough for those of you who sketch to sketch what's there. To sketch what you cannot see, to project himself up to a height that he cannot be at, to give a bit of a depth perception, that's pretty skilled sketching. And you can see he's quite right, that's what it is. And then he sketched this as well, which again, there's no elevation that you can get this perception. But to show people the situation, he projects himself to a height that he couldn't be at, to show you the gorges that come from Victoria Falls. And that's what it is. He's accurate. And that just shows the discipline and a gifting that's amazing. But this is the main falls, Rainbow Falls. This is Devil's Cataract. I remember going to Victoria Falls at age 12, and just shortly before that, in 1972, an entire American film crew had gone over Devil's Cataract. Gone, finished. They must have got some great footage on the way over, but that's just the end of that film. The entire crew, director, producer, film cameraman, the whole lot, they got too close to the edge, just showing how dangerous it was with Livingston or this canoe, getting close to Livingston Island for his first measuring expedition. But this motorboat was not as skilled as Livingston. They went over and that was the end of that American film crew. Victoria Falls is magnificent. Now maybe Livingston wasn't the first to see it, but he certainly was the first to make it known, to name it, and to measure it, sketch it, and make it known to the world. So on the anniversary of this event, on the 16th of November 1955, a hundred years after Livingston had discovered and named Victoria Falls, People of northern Rhodesia and southern Rhodesia came together on the southern Rhodesia side and unveiled this magnificent statue, which we all know, and this is the traditional figure. It just shows the quality of workmanship too, this vision of this brass statue of David Livingstone with his hiking stick and his Bible in his hand. And this is still there, been there since 1955, 16th of November. To achieve what David Levickson achieved, David Levickson was decisive. He was goal-orientated. He was inflexible. Reformed theology put doctrinal steel in his backbone. He was a man of integrity. He was a man of his word. He has Levickson's signature. He meant what he said. He said what he meant. He walked thousands of miles across difficult and dangerous terrain to return his porters to their village. When he could have gotten on the boat that Lewandan had gone back to England and his family, he chose to retrace the steps and then to follow the whole of the Zambezi River all the way to the Indian Ocean. And what Livingston achieved, absolutely extraordinary, but a man of his word. He couldn't just abandon his porters. He took another two years to cross back the continent that had almost killed him on his first time across, because he wanted to ensure the safety of his porters and his guides. David Livingston understood the power of prayer. He had Holy Spirit fire in his heart, in his soul, and in his mind. He prayed and sang the Psalms daily. He knew the Psalms off by heart. He had great love for God's creation, for nature and for wildlife. His books are filled with intricate sketches, fascinating details of animals and vegetation, describing the hippos and the waterbuck. and the bibab tree, and the different tools that people would use. He sketched, like, the toka hoe, and the double-handed angola hoe, and the different types of body piercing, and tattoos, and ankle bracelets, the different hairstyles, strange beards, strange musical instruments. He's got all kinds of details, the New Moon dances and so on, how the Bushmen would fill empty ostrich eggs with water and put tufts of grass on top and bury them in the sand, so they've got water available in these difficult areas to cross in the semi-desert areas. He saw massive herds. Before hunters had wiped out so many of these great herds, he saw Africa when it had more than 20 times more wildlife than we have today in the continent. And imagine walking across a continent with all kinds of wildlife around. Not a zebra crossing, but a giraffe crossing. Tallest animals in Africa can cross a river no matter how deep without much problem. The vultures, the buffalos, buffalos are pretty dangerous. Crocodiles, hippos, don't cross a hippo in the water. How elephants use their snorkels crossing the rivers. And the leopards, cheetahs, fastest animals in the world, engineered for speed, intelligent design in action, and the magnificent lions. Now, we know that David Livingstone was attacked by a lion once, but to be fair, he started the fight. He shot the lion before the lion attacked him. In his 26 years walking across Africa, he was only attacked by a lion once, and that's when he attacked the lion first. So he showed lions aren't just out there trying to attack you, and he said the stupidest thing he ever did was pick a fight with a lion. You know, lions have rights of way. And he did this because the chief wanted a lion's skin, I'm sure, and lied to him that the lions were attacking their goats, which is highly unlikely with the amount of wildlife around. Why would a lion settle for a goat when he can get impalas and springboks? And so David Livingston went out with his musket and he shot at this lion, and the lion, with a musket around his shoulder still, tore into Livingston and picked him up like a dog picks up a rat and shakes it. And Livingston observed, like, his details are quite intricate, saying it's amazing he felt no pain initially. He thinks that this is the mercy of the creator, the shock that an animal must feel. when they are caught by a predator. It's a mercy that, in fact, even if you come off your bicycle or something and you graze, you don't feel the pain immediately. And so he's observing all these different things and very objective about his own experience of having his shoulder crushed by a lion. He said whenever the weather was cold, he was reminded of the stupidest thing he ever did. You don't pick a fight with a lion. And, of course, the magnificent elephants, the largest animals in the world. And Livingston also observed what nobody believed at the time. There's snow at the equator. There you are in Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya. They have snow in the middle of summer at the equator. And people just discount it. What a liar. How can you trust what these missionaries say? It's impossible. You can't have snow at the equator in Africa. And yet we know it's true now. We've got photographs. But as the first people to report this, the earliest missionaries were discounted and their support was sabotaged because people didn't believe their account. But yes, there's snow at the equator in Africa. And David Levickson was inspired by post-millennial eschatology of victory. Eschatology means study of the last things. He had a vision of victory. He had a kingdom vision. David Levickson understood the greatness of the Great Commission. He worked to comprehensively fulfill the Great Commission, ministering to body, mind, and spirit. As a medical doctor, he ministered to the body. As a teacher, he ministered to mind. And as a preacher of the gospel, he ministered to the spirit. Here's a lovely stained glass window at Livingstonia in northern Malawi showing David Livingston sowing the seed of the word of God. And this he did. Wherever he went, he used his medical knowledge, his training and tools to be able to heal bodies. He used his breadth of reading and learning and his deep faith and knowledge of the Holy Scriptures to enrich and to empower the people of Africa. And here's a point. We don't know that Livingston ever used a translator. I don't see any evidence of it in all the books I've studied. David Livingston acquired the languages. He was patient. He would sit with his notebook, and he'd observe and learn the words. And he preached in China. He preached in Chichero. He preached in the languages of the local people. And somehow or another, he acquired the languages well enough to be able to communicate to the people in their own language. I mean, that's how patient he was. That's really the gift of tongues. When you get to the flyer leaf, if I can call it that, of his book Missionary Travels, he puts a tsetse flyer, not the lion. He puts a tsetse flyer. And as he said, the biggest obstacle to the spread of the gospel in Africa is the tsetse flyer. If you ever see a picture or a painting of David Livingston riding on a horse, you know it's fiction. Horses couldn't survive in the Hansel and Gretel because tsetse flyers wiped them out. When I was getting my bush training in religion schools, we'd be sent off for a week each year to the game reserves, and the game manager would train us in survival. And we got stung by a tsetse fly. Remember how painful it was to be stung on the knee by a tsetse fly. And the game manager said, praise God for tsetse flies. And I mean, what is there to thank God for tsetse fly? He says, without the tsetse fly, you wouldn't have game reserves. Tsetse flies make farming impossible. And so every great game reserve in Africa happens to be where the great game reserves are. Etosha, Pan, Freedom National Park, Wanky Game Reserve, and so on. Where the tsetse flies make agriculture impossible, that's where the game reserves are. And so praise God for tsetse flies indeed. Well, Livingston pointed out a whole lot of things. Has anyone here been ever stung by a mosquito? I'm sure most of us have. Well, was it a male or female mosquito? Did you notice? No, I'm not that observant either. What David Levickson was, David Levickson noticed you could be stung by mosquitoes any time of the day, but you can only get malaria if a pregnant female mosquito stings you between about 11 at night and about 5 in the morning. He was that precise. As long as you're under your mosquito net, From the midnight hours to the early hours of the morning, you won't get malaria. You might get stung by a mosquito, but you won't get malaria. Because only the pregnant mosquito can give you malaria, and they will only lay their eggs basically around the midnight hours. So if you stand your mosquito net, you won't get malaria. Not only is David Levickson the first to identify mosquitoes as the cause of malaria, he's the first to diagnose the cure, the treatment, quinine. Now that's quite a story too. He was decades ahead of medical science at the time. The average scientist assumed that malaria was caused by bad air. Look at the word, malaria, bad air. So when Lewis said mosquitoes cause malaria, the scientists scoffed at him, you know, fake news. What do you know? How could an insect cause malaria? It's caused by bad air, look at the etymology of the word, malaria, bad air. Solution to malaria, high ceilings. And so when I grew up in Malaysia, we had very high ceilings. The idea was let the bad air rise to the ceiling so that you don't get malaria. Malaria swamp fever was another term they'd use. Well, Livingston said quinine was the solution, and that's how he survived 26 years in the field. Many missionaries died within two years of arriving in West Africa from malaria. The average life expectancy of Michigan in Africa in the 1800s was eight years max, but in West Africa it was two years. They were dying of malaria in under two years. But Livingston, because this boat had lost a foremast in a storm crossing the Atlantic, they put in a dria de genera to get a new foremast in the forest, in the Amazon jungle. Now the sailors were looking for a new tree that could be used as a foremost to repair the ship. Livingston was doing his normal geology type of searching around and taking clippings of plants and documenting things, and he brought a clipping from a quinine bush in Brazil over to Culeman, planted it, and later found that the quinine tree was the perfect solution to malaria. And so, even when I grabbed this with what you saw, Livingston's rouser, dealing with malaria, Livingston's rouser, quinine roused you from malaria. And so this was, so how about that? Here's a machine, so observant, he could tell that that was a pregnant female mosquito that gave malaria, and he also worked out through experimentation what was the cure. Actions speak louder than words. David Livingston teaches us that actions speak much louder than words. He is described as a man of resolute courage. Fire, water, stone wall would not stop Livingston in the performance of any recognized duty. Indeed, he did not let swamps, rivers, deserts, or mountains prevent him from opening up Africa for the gospel. David Lewis was determined to make a difference. The Great Commission was his supreme ambition. Christ's last command was his first concern. He wrote, I hope to be permitted to work as long as I live, beyond other men's line of things, and to plant the seed of the gospel where others have not planted. I'm a missionary heart and soul, he wrote. God had an only son, and he was a missionary and a physician. A poor, poor imitation of him I am or wish to be. In his service, I hope to live. In it, I wish to die. In fact, he died with his boots on. He did not stop working. He didn't retire. I shall open up a path into the interior, or I will die trying, or I'll perish. May God bless us and make us blessings even unto death. Shame upon us missionaries if we are to be outdone by slave traders. Battling rains and chronic discomfort and rust and mildew and rot, totally drenched, fatigued, laid low by fever countless times, Livingston continued to persevere across the continent and trials tested the tenacity of the travel-weary team. Often, Levickson endured excessive, unnecessary suffering and deprivation, hacking his way through dense jungle on foot because lack of funds prevented him from affording the luxury of a canoe. I would not have thought a canoe a luxury when you're exploring the Zambezi River. These privations, he wrote, I beg you to observe, are not sacrifices. I think that work ought never to be mentioned in reference to anything we can do for him, who though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor. The challenge of Livingston rings out to us today. Can that be called a sacrifice, which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather, it is a privilege. David Livingston emphasized that sacrificial service is more powerful than eloquent sermons. We need to put feet to our faith. What we say is not as important as what we do. Livingston also alerted the world to the cancerous storm of the Islamic slave trade. It was the missionary explorer David Livingston whose graphic descriptions brought the ravages of the East African slave trade to light. In his missionary travels and narrative of an expedition to the Zambezi, he exposed the horrors of the slave trade. Two of the women had been shot the day before for attempting to untie their tongs. One woman had her infant's brains knocked out because she could not carry her load and the baby. A man was dispatched with an axe because he had broken down with fatigue. Those taken out of the country are but a very small section of the sufferers. We never realised the atrocious nature of the slave traffic until we saw it at the Fountainhead. There truly Satan has his seat. Besides, those actually captured, thousands are killed and die of their wounds and famine, driven from their villages by the internecine war waged for slaves, with their own clansmen and neighbors, slain by the lust of gain, which is stimulated, be it remembered always, by the slave purchases of Cuba and elsewhere. David Livingston taught that you cannot be neutral in the battlefields of life. He had the courage to confront evil. His fearless faith fought the good fight of faith, and he set many thousands of captives free. Submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee from you. David Levitson is an example of extraordinary patience and perseverance. He overcame every obstacle walking across the continent of Africa. He walked from Delgo Bay, what today is Port Elizabeth, all the way up through Paraphranet, which he said is the prettiest town in Africa. He stayed in the Andrew Murray home, and he went up to Curriman, which Robert Moffatt had established, in what is today the Northern Cape. He walked across what is today Botswana, all the way back across the Cape Colony to Cape Town, to place his family on a ship to return to Britain. He was criticised for taking his family into the field in Botswana, where everyone got sick and one of his daughters died. Then he was criticised for sending his family back to Britain where they could be safe while he walked across the continent. Then his wife joined him for his second missionary journey and she died in Zambezi, in Mozambique. Mary Moffatt, who married David Livingston, is buried in Mozambique. He is criticized for taking his wife on a second missionary journey. So whatever he did, he is criticized. He walked from Cape Town, across the whole of the Cape province, across Bodice de Botswana, Zambia, Angola, to the port of Luanda. He walked from the Atlantic Ocean, across the continent of Africa, crossing Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, the Indian Ocean. and this is the cross-section that he produced of the continent, documenting it's not one flat desert in the middle, and all kinds of details of the topography. Now how did he get the elevation? Every day he would When he was boiling water for tea or soup or whatever it was, he would have his thermometer in and measure at the precise point that the water boiled to calculate the elevation. And so, extraordinary how accurate his geological observations were in his maps. He came back, he explored on the second missionary journey much of the Zambezi River, the Shiri River, the Rivuma River. He walked across what is today Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. Yes, in all these things we are more than conquerors to him who loved us. I can do all things through Christ who strengthened me. On his third great missionary journey, which by the way nobody saw him off for, when he came back for the first missionary journey, he was received with great crowds and acclaim and invited back in palace for tea with the Queen, given great rewards all over England, the Royal Geographic silence on. Nobody welcomed him back from his second missionary journey because he had too many deserters who came home saying Livingston's impossible, you can't work with him. He had the dream team of some of the greatest minds and talents in Victorian Britain join him for the second missionary journey, and they all gave up and left at some point. Dr Kirk, his own brother, people one after the other, they left. Livingston was very popular with the Africans, but no European ever managed to work with him. They said he was impossible in his high standards. And so when he got back after his second missionary journey, he was yesterday's hero, nobody welcomed him, and when he left on his third missionary journey, nobody saw him off at the docks, nobody waved at him as he went on a ship and went over the horizon. And if it wasn't for the American journalist Henry Morton Stanley, we wouldn't know much about his third missionary journey, because the British had basically written him off. And on his third great missionary journey, he walked across the whole length of Tanzania and much of Mozambique and Malawi, Zambia, Congo, Burundi. He finally died on his knees in prayer in the province of Luapula in northern Zambia. In his 30 years of dedicated missionary service, he walked from coast to coast across what are today 12 vast countries. He walked across a continent that did not yet have roads or bridges or purified water. I shall try to hold myself in readiness to go anywhere, provided it be forward, he wrote. David Livingston teaches us the power of the printed page. It was books that he read, such as Practical Christianity by William Wilberforce, which channelled much of his life and dedicated labours to eradicate the slave trade and to open up Africa for the Gospel. Livingston wrote missionary travels, the Zambezi expedition, and his journals, which inspired generations of missionaries to dedicate their lives to winning Africa for Christ. And this included Mary Schleser. Livingston's steadfast example inspired Mary Schleser, another Scotswoman. And by the way, the Scots people will be very angry if you call them English. The Scottish are Scottish. They might be part of the British Isles and Great Britain, but they're not English. English are a totally different tribe from the Scots. and Robert Moffat Mary Stess was Scottish. She devoted her life to Calabar because her two elder brothers wanted to follow Levinson into Africa, and both her elder brothers died. So she took their place, and she came out, and she has a very effective missionary in Nigeria, what then was called Calabar. And then Peter Cameron, who launched the African land mission, also was inspired by Levinson. Peter Cameron had returned from African failure after his first mission. When he went to Westminster Abbey, he saw the tomb of David Livingstone. He read, other sheep I have which are not of this fold. Them also must bring, they shall hear my voice. And when he read that, he was rebuked, he was inspired, and he resolved to return to Africa. Now, perhaps you've seen Westminster Abbey in like the coronation or the marriage of Prince William and Catherine, you notice that the red Matt has got one big open area. That's the tomb of David Livingston. I've been there, and David Livingston's got the premier spot, so to speak, in Westminster Abbey. And all these famous processions have to walk past this memorial to David Livingston. the British arts most, I mean that's quite amazing, all in such humble circumstances to a Scottish poor working class family and greatly honoured in Britain's greatest church. Livingston knew the power of the Prince of Page and of public speaking to it. He focused on the universities as strategic for mobilising reformers and missionaries to fulfil the Great Commission. Livingston saw rivers not so much as obstacles but as God's highway to reach Africa for Christ. All communities need access to water, so rivers are a strategic artery which missionaries can utilise to fulfil a great mission. Livingston believed in leadership training. His vision was actually to establish a Bible college for Africans, for the Africans to be trained as evangelists, as teachers and as missionaries to disciple the nations. But that just discounted the London Missionary Society thought he was hopelessly unrealistic, and they dismissed this. The life legacy of David Livingston has taught me the importance of discipline, exercise, reading, a Christian work ethic, temperance, meaning being a teetotaler, abstaining from alcohol, self-control, self-denial, and to be duty-orientated. His reformed theology has put some doctrinal steel in my backbone. He taught me the importance of being a man of my word, a person of integrity, most important, a student of God's word. But his post-millennial eschatology of victory has inspired me. We're not working at uncertainty. The Lord who gave us the Great Commission will ensure that it is fulfilled. It's only that changing my eschatology from end times rapture fever to being a post-millennial Christian that convinced me of the need to go to theological college and to get married and have children, and the importance of raising children in the fear of the Lord. God's promises and God's power are fully sufficient to empower His Church to fulfil His Great Commission. The Lord who gave us the Great Commission will enable us to fulfil it, enabling us to make disciples of all nations, to teach obedience to all things that He has commanded. And David Livingstone's comprehensive vision of fulfilling the Great Commission, ministering to body, mind and spirit, establishing schools, clinics, hospitals and churches. This has raised the standard for missionary service for all of us. It is a rebuke to religious tourism. I think a lot of what goes on today in the name of missions is nothing other than religious tourism, sadly. And actions speak louder than words. Sacrificial service is more powerful than eloquent sermons. We must put feet to our faith. We must recognize that we are in a world war of worldviews. And this picture reminds us of diamonds. David Livingston, in the 1840s, in Curriman, walking these areas, he found diamonds lying on the ground. He picked them up. He knew exactly what they were. He was well-studied in geology. He just threw them in the bush, and he said nothing about them. And later, when he met with Henry Morton Stanley, the famous American journalist, with Dr. Livingston, I presume. Henry Morton Stanley was just the person to ask when David Livingston said, tell me the news, what's going on in the world? So he told him about the Suez Canal, and how you can travel through the Mediterranean Sea into the Indian Ocean, a shortcut to India. General Grant is now President of the United States. The Pacific Railroad across the continent of America is being completed. Prussia has defeated Denmark and France in war. First transatlantic cables have been laid. You can have immediate communication between Europe and North America. And diamonds have been discovered in South Africa. And Livingston nodded and said, I was wondering how long it would take them. What do you mean? Stanley learned. Livingston knew about the diamonds. Well, why didn't you say anything about it? We were trying to reach the people of the gospel. If the miners came in with their bars and brothels and vice, gambling and so on, it would have destroyed the Toronto people before we could even get the gospel in. No, he had found the pearl of great price. He wasn't going to get distracted by diamonds. Why didn't you take some diamonds and sell them in Scotland and then that would have funded some remission of it? I couldn't do that, he said. The quality of diamonds was so high. He knew these people would tear the country apart to find these diamonds. He said not a word about it. Imagine that. He had the pearl of great price. He wasn't going to get distracted by diamonds. He picked up diamonds and threw them in the bush and didn't say a word about it for 20 years. Absolutely amazing. That just reminds us of the priority. You know, when God gives you something important to do, don't allow yourself to get distracted. Living in deep trust of Islam is a threat to faith and freedom. You cannot be neutral. Confront evil. Fight the good fight of faith. Be bold. Be brave. Be courageous. Be patient. Be steadfast. Persevere. Don't give up. Overcome every obstacle. Obstacles are not there to stop us. Obstacles are only there to be overcome. Go forward in the faith. Never forget the power of the printed page. Invest in books. Invest in your mind. You know, many people spend more money on their feet than they spend on their brain. Think how much people spend on shoes versus how much they spend on books. So what's more important, our feet or our brain? And so, Livingston reminds us, invest in books, invest in your mind. Read. Teach your people to love reading. Readers make leaders. A reading Christian is a growing Christian. Don't forget the schools, the colleges, and the universities. They are strategic. We must disciple the next generation to be faithful to God's word and effective in God's service. Think strategically about how to reach a nation of Christ. Make your life count for eternity. In the words of C.T. Studd, the great pioneer, quickly became pioneer missionary to India, you only have one life. It will soon be past. Only what's done for Jesus Christ will last. or in the words of William Carey, expect great things from God, attempt great things for God. So what would David Livingston say to us today? I beg to direct your attention to Africa. I know that in a few short years I shall be cut off from that country which is now open. Do not let it be shut again. I go back to Africa to try to make an open path for commerce and Christianity. Will you carry out the work which I have begun? I leave it with you. Also, I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send, and who will go for us? And then I answered, here am I, Lord, send me. Well, unfortunately, the new uninspired version is, here am I, Lord, send my sister. Because today, the 85% of missionaries in the world today are women. And praise God for them. But where are the men? Normally back at home playing video games, sorry to say. But no, it doesn't say, here am I, Lord, send my sister. It says, here am I, Lord, send me. Our frontline mission, SA.org website's got a lot of articles, details, audio and visual presentations, including on David Livingston. And I've got a chapter on David Livingston in the book, The Greatest Century of Missions, which you should have in the library here. I've just produced a new tract, What Would David Livingston Say to Us Today, which has the text of today's presentation. It's on your literature table. You help yourself and you've got the notes. If what I said was too fast and you want to go back over any of it or pass it on to someone else, we need to put feet to our faith. Our vision is Africa for Christ. I've got a website of livingstonfellowship.co.za just with Bible studies and articles, audio and vision, including all kinds of tracts like this available digitally and other discipleship resources in different languages. And we have a Livingston 200 website as well, with links to the museums and the writings of Livingston, all accessible, completely free. We've even got a social media Facebook page for Dr David Livingston, and our mission house in Cape Town is called Livingston House. There are monuments all over Scotland on one of the greatest suns, showing the seed of the word of God. This is the worst monument to David Livingston. It's very bad public relations for lions. It makes the lion look like the aggressor, and you don't even have the rifle or the musket of David Livingstone in the statue. So this is real slanderous accusation against lions. Lions are not out there trying to just attack people. This makes it look like Livingstone was attacked, unprovoked, whereas he actually drew first blood, to be fair. It's an impressive monument, but it's a very dishonest one. In Ujugi, in Tanzania, you see a monument to where Henry Morton Stanley met David Livingston, 10 November 1871, and uttered those famous words, Dr Livingston, I presume. Zambia's produced stamps commemorating Livingston chasing the Muslim slave traders out of the country, and Zambia's got a monument to where Livingston died on his knees in prayer. And his followers determined that his heart belongs in Africa, so they took his heart out and buried it under a tree that now has fallen down, but this is the monument. And so this is where they commemorate where Livingston died, up in Zambia. Well, wood from that tree under which his heart was buried, was taken to Christchurch in Zanzibar. This is the island that used to be the slave terminus for the Arab slave trade. And they built this church, Christchurch, over the very monument, over the very slave market where they used to auction the slave people. And they put a cross on the altar where the auction block used to be that came from wood from the tree under which his heart was buried. There's much one can read about David Livingston. We've got these books at Livingston House, first editions, all as part of our study centre there. It's an amazing life, and there's so much we can learn from all of these great missionary pioneers. When I went to Livingston in Zambia, the town of Livingston, on the 200th anniversary of the birth of David Livingston, we saw eight monuments of David Livingston just in the one town of Livingston. There's also a town called Livingstonia in Malawi. And this monument was set up in 2005 on the Zambian side commemorating Livingston's discovery of Victoria Fort 150 years before. At Livingston Airport, they've got a monument to David Livingston and two of his followers, whom he rescued from slavery and who faithfully followed him the rest of his life, and even carried his body to the coast when he died. You can go in some strange place in Africa now, have historic tree, David Livingston rested on this tree. His impact throughout Africa is huge. So in 2013, on the 200th anniversary of his birth, we launched the Livingston childhood events, and from Livingston house, we sent out a mission team that went through the 12 countries Livingston worked in, but we cheated, we drove. And when I've got missionaries complaining about the bad roads, I say, listen, we drive where Livingston walked. And we did film evangelism, distributed three and a half tons of Bibles and books in the countries commemorating 200 years of David Levickson. And there was such enthusiasm throughout Africa in 2013 for the legacy of David Levickson. And they serve as a choice. He's the most popular person in African history. We did a survey years ago where the majority of people across all over Africa, 20 different countries, voted David Livingston the greatest African of all time, the best friend Africa ever had. And in November 2013, we had a missions conference at Victoria Falls, which was super, super hot. This is the David Livingston teacher training coach. And we had televised national TV in Zambia, living in China, commemoration service. People offering to hold an umbrella over me. I said, I don't think I can do that. And people said, take your suit jacket. And my suit was so wet, if I jumped in the Zambezi, I couldn't have got any wetter. Just from sweat, I was absolutely soaked through. But I said, I don't think I can honor David Livingston not wearing a jacket and tie. He wore a suit walking across Africa. I can't do less to commemorate him on that day. And this is a Church St. Andrews in Livingston, which is commemorating David Livingston, Presbyterian Church in that area. And we put together a whole missions conference, which had people coming from around the world, as far as from America and Nigeria, to take part in this event. Livingston's shoes. You know, when I think how quickly my boots fall apart climbing up and down Table Mountain, and then you think, there must have been a workmanship for the shoes back then. He had to repair it, but he used the same shoes walking across Africa. We should have better workmanship for the boots and shoes we have made these days. So if you want to read more about Livingston, get the book or take the track that's at the back today. Let's close in prayer, Shalom. Let's be silent for a moment and just seek before the Lord what is God saying to us through the life of David Lewis and these scriptures and principles that have been shared this morning. What does God want me to do? Is there a sin I need to confess? Is there a command I need to obey? Is there a commitment I need to make? Is there a prayer I need to pray? Lord God, we want to thank and praise you for your love and for your mercy. We want to thank you, Lord God, for examples of excellence. Thank you for missionaries like David Livingstone. We pray, Lord God. that you may make us more brave and bold for you, more faithful to your word, more effective in your service. May you, Lord God, mercifully and graciously help us to win our generation for you. Help us, Lord God, to run the race, to finish the race, to fight the good fight of faith. Help us, Lord God, to be faithful to you. We look forward, Lord God, that we may one day hear, well done, good and faithful servant. Lord, may none of us be those who will hear, depart from me accursed. I never knew you. Lord, we pray. Speak to us. Guide us to what you want us to do. We pray this in Jesus' precious and holy name. Amen.