David Brainerd
(1718-1747)
“I felt an intense desire to spend every moment for God. God is unspeakably gracious to me continually. In times past, he has given me inexpressible sweetness in the performance of duty. Frequently my soul has enjoyed much of God; but has been ready to say, ‘Lord, it is good to be here.’ ”
—David Brainerd
More Online Resources
Life and Diary of the Rev. David Brainerd
Edited by Jonathan Edwards
Biography and Links on Wikipedia
In this era of modern hospitals, it is almost impossible to imagine bringing into your home a sick young man dying from tuberculosis, weak and spitting up blood, thus exposing your entire family to his disease. However, even today you might take that risk if you had the consecration of a Jonathan Edwards and the dying young man was David Brainerd.
By most standards, David Brainerd (1718-1747) seemed to be a failure in ministry for most of his life. As a young student at Yale, which was founded as a school to train Christian ministers and still functioned in that capacity in his day, Brainerd was converted to Christ in the midst of a controversy between “Old Lights”—professors who wanted to keep the Church as it was—and “New Lights”—those who were eager participants in America’s First Great Awakening.
Brainerd privately criticized a Yale professor and someone reported it to the authorities. Since a rule had been passed forbidding criticism, it resulted in his humiliating expulsion, even though he was at the top of his class. Despite his repentance and requests for reinstatement, plus the intervention of Christian leaders, his expulsion stood.
However, Brainerd’s experience fueled the founding of other Christian colleges like Princeton that could accommodate the zeal of “New Lights.”
David suffered greatly from sickness and frequent depressions, but he also had a genuine desire for intimacy with God and a driving sense of destiny. He spent days and weeks traveling the countryside—praying, searching his soul, and crying out to God for the salvation of Native Americans. He also kept an intimate spiritual diary. In August 1745, after years of keeping his hope alive, he was rewarded with a spiritual awakening among the Native Americans at Crossweeksung near Trenton, New Jersey. First his interpreter and his wife were saved, and then Native Americans came from miles around to hear him and were converted.
He established a Christian community and school for children and adults. The Lord gave him two more years to disciple them before he went to Edwards’ home in Massachusetts to die.
Highlights of his life and ministry
In the two and a half centuries since Brainerd’s death, his personal journal, edited by Jonathan Edwards, has inspired major Christian leaders like John Wesley and William Carey, who reached nations with the Gospel.
In 1769, Eleazar Wheelock (a Congregationalist) read Brainerd’s diary, went to the Iroquois and Algonquin tribes and founded a school to educate them that he later moved to Hanover, New Hampshire. He named it “Dartmouth.”In 1817, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, an interdenominational outreach organized by Congregationalists, founded the Brainerd Mission. Many Cherokee were converted and built model communities, but in 1830 they were driven off their land by President Andrew Jackson. Thousands were forced to march to Oklahoma in the “Trail of Tears” where 4,000 died. However, Oklahoma descendants of the Cherokee people include the world-renowned Christian ministers Oral Roberts and Kenneth Copeland.
Only God knows how many people worldwide have found Christ and become dedicated disciples of Jesus through the tears of David Brainerd whose vital communion with God took him on a Trail of Hope.
