The Moravians Who Took Him at His Word

In 1732, two young men from a tiny Christian community in Herrnhut, Germany, did something the established church considered insane. Johann Leonhard Dober and David Nitschmann sold themselves into slavery in the Danish West Indies so they could share the gospel with enslaved Africans whom no missionary could otherwise reach. As the ship pulled away from Copenhagen's harbor, Dober reportedly called back to weeping friends on the dock: "May the Lamb that was slain receive the reward of His suffering."

They were Moravians, followers of Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf, and within two decades their small community of six hundred people had sent out more missionaries than the entire Protestant church had sent in two centuries. They went to Greenland, Suriname, South Africa, and the Tibetan border. Many never returned. Some died within months of arriving.

What drove them was not recklessness but a plain reading of Christ's final command. Jesus said, "Go and make disciples of all nations." The Moravians simply believed He meant it — and that His promise to be with them "to the very end of the age" was not poetry but a guarantee sturdy enough to stake their lives on.

The Great Commission was never meant to be admired from a distance. It was meant to be obeyed — by ordinary believers who trust that the One who sends them also goes with them.