08/12/2026
"THE KING OF THE CANNIBALS!" (Charles Spurgeon's salute to John Paton)
In last Sunday’s sermon, I told you a little bit about my favourite missionary, John G. Paton (1824-1907), who served the Lord in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu). I hope that was enough to whet your appetite to learn more about him.
Here are a few other resources I highly recommend:
1. Easy Version: I was first introduced to John Paton from a book written by John Piper titled, "Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ." You can actually download the chapter on Paton for FREE by clicking the link below. It’s only about 30 pages, so it’s not a long read at all!
https://www.desiringgod.org/books/john-g-paton
2. Middle Version: If you want a fuller biography, then read Paul Schlehlein’s book, "John G. Paton: Missionary to the Cannibals of the South Seas." It’s 208 pages and is an excellent introduction to Paton’s life and ministry.
https://a.co/d/0gWTxToA
3. Hard (but BEST) Version: If you really want to dive in and learn about Paton, then you have to read his autobiography, "The Autobiography of the Pioneer Missionary to the New Hebrides." It’s over 500 pages long, but every page is filled with stories of God’s grace and wondrous works. It’s a hard read in terms of length, but a very hard book to put down.
https://a.co/d/0bYkFypJ
Here’s another quote from John Paton that will go down as another one of my all-time favourite quotes. He wrote these words after an incident where he was surrounded by cannibals. They encircled him and kept urging one another to strike the first blow or fire the first shot:
“My heart rose up to the Lord Jesus; I saw Him watching all the scene. My peace came back to me like a wave from God. I realized that I was immortal till my Master’s work with me was done. The assurance came to me, as if a voice out of Heaven had spoken, that not a musket would be fired to wound us, not a club prevail to strike us, not a spear leave the hand in which it was held vibrating to be thrown, not an arrow leave the bow, or a killing stone the fingers, without the permission of Jesus Christ, whose is all power in Heaven and on Earth. He rules all Nature, animate and inanimate, and restrains even the Savage of the South Seas.”
The autobiography of John G. Paton contains everything necessary to make it a missionary classic. Born into a Christian family near Dumfries in 1824, Paton's early years were marked by a struggle against poverty. He was self-educated, and the training ground for his life's work was the slums of G...
