When God Went To Hawaii

When God Went To Hawaii

Some go to Hawaii for more than the scenery.

TITUS COAN was converted at a Charles Finney revival in western New York State. After graduating from seminary in 1834, he went as a missionary to Hilo, Hawaii, then known as the Sandwich Islands. Having a burning desire to bring revival to Hawaii, he applied himself vigorously to learning the native languages of Kau and Puna and by 1836 was fluent enough to preach in both.

Coan’s official responsibility was to train teachers and oversee about two dozen schools. But Titus Coan’s vision went far beyond teacher training. His prayer was that Hawaiians would come to Christ, and he determined to take the gospel directly to the people himself. In November 1836 he gave his students a long Christmas vacation and went on a walking tour of the island, ostensibly to visit the schools for which he was responsible. Each time he came to a village, he preached. As he had hoped, crowds of people gathered to hear him, and he was able to preach in three to five villages a day.

When Coan reached the Puna region, large crowds gathered to hear him. In the largest city he preached ten times in two days. Many wept as they came to understand that Christ had paid the penalty for their sins on the cross. Each time Coan finished his message, the crowds, instead of leaving, would follow him to the house where he was staying. They would crowd in, hanging on his every word, until the house could hold no more. At eleven at night he would insist that everyone go home, but they would be back as soon as the cock crowed the next morning.

A particularly stunning conversion in Puna was that of the high priest of the volcano. In addition to the idolatry, drunkenness, and adultery associated with his priesthood, he also was a murderer. Yet upon his conversion, he became a man filled with zeal for God. His sister, the high priestess of the volcano, though initially hostile to the gospel, put her faith in Christ after seeing the change in her brother.

When Coan returned home to Hilo after a month, he found a heightened interest in the way of salvation. People who had heard him preach in their villages in Kau and Puna now came to Hilo to hear more. In some cases, whole villages would come. The population of Hilo grew to ten thousand as people moved there just to hear Coan preach. On Sundays the two hundred-by-eighty-five-foot building would be packed, with hundreds more listening outside. The Hawaiians decided on their own they needed a bigger church and in three weeks built a building large enought to hold two thousand.

On one occasion a young man came intending to disrupt the service by making people laugh during the prayers. Instead, he suddenly fell unconscious and had to be carried out. Several hours later when he came to, he confessed his sin. Before long he became a member of the church he had tried to disrupt.

A year into the revival tragedy struck. A tidal wave hit the island during an evening prayer service. About two hundred were swept out to sea. Only thirteen drowned, but the survivors lost almost all of their possessions. Yet after the tidal wave the church continued to grow.

In spite of thousands of conversions in 1836 and 1837, the church’s membership didn’t grow until 1838 and 1839. The slow growth reflected a flaw in missionary Coan’s methodology, not disinterest on the part of the new converts. Coan would record the date of each conversion and then wait months before recontacting the person to ascertain if the conversion was real. Only then would the person be invited to join the church. It wasn’t until July 1, 1838, that the first converts were finally baptized and received into the church. On that stirring day 1,705 were baptized. By 1853 fifty-six thousand of the seventy-one thousand native Hawaiians were professing Christians.

Reflection

Titus Coan’s zeal for reaching the Hawaiians for Christ influenced everything he did. Do you have zeal for seeing those around you come to Christ? What can we learn from Titus Coan’s life to help us reach our friends and relatives for Christ?

How can they believe in him if they have never heard about him?

Romans 10:14