First missionary to China
A
bram La Rue was a mariner, gold prospector, colporteur, and missionary who pioneered the Adventist work in Asia. Not much is known of his childhood. He was born in New Jersey, United States, on November 25, 1822, and was the only member of a large family of French immigrant farmers known to survive.
La Rue traveled the world as a seaman until he was about 50. Then he went to Idaho and California to mine gold. He amassed a considerable fortune, but a raging fire reduced it to ashes. This loss created an existential crisis for La Rue. In 1873, he became a Christian and moved to the mountains of northern California, where he worked as a woodcutter and shepherd.
La Rue hadn’t been there long when a Seventh-day Adventist colporteur left some tracts with a local preacher. The recipient wanted nothing to do with Adventism, so his wife passed the literature on to La Rue. La Rue studied the Advent message, accepted it, and spent the next eight years sharing it with others in his community.
In 1876, a teacher named W. C. Grainger moved into the region. La Rue shared literature with Grainger and he became a Seventh-day Adventist. Later, Grainger, then president of Healdsburg College (Pacific Union College) encouraged La Rue to attend a Bible study course at the school. La Rue enrolled at the age of 60. He loved the Advent message, and his passion to share it with Asia, especially China, burned like fire in his bones.
La Rue asked church leaders to send him as a missionary to China, but the Foreign Mission Board didn’t have enough money to do so. Concerned about him traveling so far and having to learn a difficult language at his age, they suggested he instead go as a self-supporting missionary to a Pacific island.
La Rue followed their counsel and went to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), then an independent kingdom, on August 28, 1884. He supported himself by selling Adventist literature and health food. By 1885, 13 people were ready for baptism.
In October 1886, La Rue traveled to San Francisco to attend the California camp meeting. There he restocked his supplies of literature and health food and asked again, unsuccessfully, that the church send him to Asia.
While La Rue distributed literature in the port, a sea captain offered him a free trip to Hong Kong. La Rue gladly accepted, and on March 21, 1888, the 66-year-old boarded the Velocity. When asked about his experiences with the Foreign Mission Board relating to his being in Hong Kong, La Rue would say jovially, “I have just kept within the borders of my commission.”
The strategic significance of Hong Kong made it particularly influential for sharing Adventist literature. La Rue’s primary work was to reach people who passed through the port, especially those who spoke English. He shared literature with ship captains and their crews and asked them to distribute tracts when they reached their destinations. The work was difficult and initially yielded little fruit, but La Rue wasn’t discouraged. He wrote, “I suppose that Hong Kong is one of the hardest places in the world in which to accomplish anything with the third angel’s message.” Then added “. . . The seed is being sown all over the Orient, and the Lord will take good care of the results.”
La Rue accompanied captains to several destinations throughout Asia, including Shanghai and Guangzhou in mainland China, sharing literature wherever he went. Although he never learned Mandarin, he had tracts translated to share with the Chinese.
In 1889, La Rue visited Japan. Stirred by seeing thousands without knowledge of Jesus, he arranged for the first Adventist literature to be translated into their language. He also shared the desperate need for missionaries with his friend Grainger from Healdsburg College. Grainger himself became a pioneer missionary to Japan.
Aging and in declining health, La Rue requested missionaries to carry on his work. In 1901 he wrote: “I am very sorry that I have to give up the ship work, but I am so nearly worn out that I am obliged to do it.” In response, the church sent J. N. and Emma Anderson and Emma’s sister Ida Thompson. They were the first commissioned missionaries to China.
La Rue died in Hong Kong on April 26, 1903. After his death, missionary John E. Fulton recalled that “Brother La Rue never was known as a great preacher or a great administrator or a great leader in any other sense other than that he was a great follower of the Master, but he left his influence in the hearts of men.”
Although La Rue went to China as a self-supporting missionary, the church embraced him as their own. Its statistical reports from the 1890s regularly state that they had one missionary in China. Ever the visionary, La Rue saw opportunity for Adventist mission and seized it. He loved his church and longed for missionaries to claim Asia for Jesus. He went alone and paved the way for others to follow.