{"id":39645,"date":"2017-09-25T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-09-25T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/unknown-missionary-fought-corrupt-king\/"},"modified":"2017-09-25T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-09-25T00:00:00","slug":"unknown-missionary-fought-corrupt-king","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/unknown-missionary-fought-corrupt-king\/","title":{"rendered":"Unknown Missionary Fought a Corrupt King"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In his book <em class=\"citation\">A Selfish Plan to Change the World<\/em> Justin Dillon relates the courage of a missionary couple who stood up against corruption:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>In the late 1800s, Leopold II, the King of Belgium, started colonizing the Congo, a land rich with natural resources, such as rubber. At the same time, the demand for bicycle and car rubber was starting to spike. Within a few years&#39; time, Leopold was enslaving millions of men, women, and children through brutal armed force to do the labor-intensive work of harvesting the rubber.<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>The pressure to fulfill the impossible rubber quotas fell on a brutal police force&mdash;the Force Publique. To prove that the bullets Leopold provided were being used to kill unproductive slave workers, Leopold required a severed hand or foot for every victim. So the soldiers stockpiled baskets of hands and feet to account for the bullets.<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>It was a barbaric situation, but no one dared to rebel, except a mild-mannered British missionary couple named John and Alice. Both felt a divine calling to this place to bring the love of Christ. But they also could not ignore the violence against people they loved. So Alice had a brilliant idea&mdash;she grabbed her Kodak Brownie camera and started taking pictures, documenting the atrocities. She captured images of right hands cut off by Force Publique sentries. She documented mass graves. She filmed tribesmen shackled together.<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>This young woman with no professional photography skills started collecting images in order to topple an evil king she had never met. Alice and John had no plan, strategy, certainty, or guarantee of success. In fact, her actions increased her chances of dying in the Congo. But news about the atrocities started to reach Europe.<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Churches. Town halls. University lecture halls. Parlors. Halls of government. There wasn&#39;t a room that Alice wasn&#39;t willing to bring her magic lantern show to. The people who came to witness her images and stories were moved by this fearless woman. Her story spread quickly, making its way into the writings of Mark Twain. Political and social pressure started to build against the mad king&#39;s maniacal exploits. King Leopold II would ultimately be responsible for the deaths of close to ten million people, but his stranglehold on the people of Congo came to an end. And it all started with an unknown missionary and her cheap camera and a lot of courage.<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[405,411],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3389,3512,3621,3695,3701,3731,3903,4316,4480,4569,4628,4849,4995,5005,5191],"tax_ctp_topics":[388],"class_list":["post-39645","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-adversity","tax_ctp_tags-boldness","tax_ctp_tags-circumstances","tax_ctp_tags-corruption","tax_ctp_tags-courage","tax_ctp_tags-danger","tax_ctp_tags-evil","tax_ctp_tags-justice-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-missionary","tax_ctp_tags-oppression","tax_ctp_tags-persecution","tax_ctp_tags-risk","tax_ctp_tags-slavery","tax_ctp_tags-social-action","tax_ctp_tags-trial"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Unknown Missionary Fought a Corrupt King - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/unknown-missionary-fought-corrupt-king\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Unknown Missionary Fought a Corrupt King - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In his book A Selfish Plan to Change the World Justin Dillon relates the courage of a missionary couple who stood up against corruption: In the late 1800s, Leopold II, the King of Belgium, started colonizing the Congo, a land rich with natural resources, such as rubber. 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