On this day William Ward was commissioned to become the Lord’s printer in India, primarily helping William Carey. But this little vignette is not about William Ward. It is about a Baptist missionary on the Island of Java. I have read that there are more professing Christians on Java than anywhere else in the Muslim world. The reason for this is God’s blessings on the ministry of Gottlob Bruckner.
Bruckner was born in 1783 south of Berlin, Germany. The Lord saved him, and he joined a Protestant church in the city. That church heard about the missionary efforts of Carey and prayed for him regularly. Through that testimony Brother Bruckner felt called to become a missionary. After studying with his pastor, he went to Holland for additional training, being forced to learn the Dutch language. When the Napoleonic wars made it impossible to sail to the orient from the Netherlands, he and two associates were smuggled to Denmark, to Sweden and then to England, with the hopes of going from there to India. There Bruckner was forced to learn a third language – English. Finally, on January 1, 1814, he and his friends set sail for India, but a hurricane nearly destroyed their ship, and they limped into South Africa with no means of going farther. Eventually a ship arrived with intentions of sailing to Indonesia, and the three men bought passage. After being twice attacked by pirates, the ship finally sailed into Jakarta.
Soon Bruckner was called to pastor a Protestant church in the city of Semarang, and he married the daughter of a prominent man of the city, settling into an easy religious life. But at that point the Lord sent Thomas Trowt, a Baptist from England, and the two preachers became friends. Trowt clearly proved that Bruckner had not been baptized or properly ordained, because he was not in one of the Lord’s churches. On March 31, 1816 Gottlob Bruckner was immersed as a testimony of his faith in Christ, and he was immediately put out of his church. Six months later Thomas Trowt died of a fever, and no new Baptist missionaries were sent to replace him.
Bruckner then picked up the work of translating the New Testament into Javanese. One day a letter arrived from India. William Carey wanted to review the Javanese New Testament with a desire to have William Ward print it, if it was acceptable. In 1828 Bruckner left Java with his two sons, not realizing that he wouldn’t return for three years, and that one son would die in India.
Javanese is an entirely different language from what Ward knew and for which he had printer’s type. Publishing the testaments and tracts was a time-consuming and tedious business, but eventually it was completed and Bruckner once again sailed east. Their ship and its precious was almost sunk by a typhoon, but it mattered not because upon arriving in Jakarta, soldiers confiscated all the tracts and nearly all the testaments. But Bruckner pressed on as best he could with the help of the Baptists in India and the blessings of the Lord.
To the end of his life, Evangelist Bruckner saw very few results from his preaching. He died in 1857 and there was no church and there were no Baptists who could take up his work. Eventually, Christians from other denominations came to Java. They took up the scriptures that this Baptist missionary had prepared, and it is hoped that many of those professing Christians of Java today are “saints indeed.”