David Brainerd
When news reached a notoriously ferocious tribe of American Indians that a very pale “paleface” was travelling alone in their direction, a group of warriors set out immediately to find and kill this uninvited intruder. Tracking their way silently and swiftly through the deep forests they knew so well, it was not long before they found him. The white stranger had set up a makeshift tent and was inside it. They crept up, their dark cruel eyes fixed mercilessly on their unsuspecting victim.
They could see the tall paleface was on his knees. As they waited the signal to attack, an even deadlier enemy made its presence felt. They watched with mixed feelings and bated breath as a rattlesnake slithered right up to the kneeling figure. It reared its vicious head and flicked out its forked tongue almost in his face. They waited for it to strike. Instead, to their amazement and for no other reason, it recoiled as though it had seen something they couldn’t and retreated swiftly through the undergrowth.
The Indians shook their heads in disbelief and moved away just as silently as the rattlesnake had. Out of earshot, their leader voiced what all felt “The Great Spirit is with this paleface.”
Unaware of the deadly enemies that had come so close, David Brainerd kept praying. The next day he boldly rode into the Indian camp. To his astonishment the whole tribe came out of their wigwams to welcome him with reverence and awe.
In his short lifetime, (he died at the age of thirty), David Brainerd would see thousands of Indians won to Christ. He prayed intensely, witnessed fearlessly, laboured sacrificially and left behind a legacy, unequalled by anyone, anywhere in the mid 1700’s in America.
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