When Heaven Opens, the Warriors Run
Long before the warriors came, there was a closet in Scotland.
It was a small room in a small house. A poor stocking-maker's home in Dumfries with eleven children inside.
The father went into that closet three times a day. He shut the door and prayed.
The walls were thin. The children could hear him.
They could hear him say their names.
One of those children was a boy named John.
When John Paton was a young man, he told his family he was going to the New Hebrides.
The South Pacific. The cannibal islands.
People begged him not to.
"Mr. Paton," one elder said, "the cannibals — you'll be eaten by cannibals!"
John answered: "Mr. Dickson, you are advanced in years. Your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave, there to be eaten by worms. I confess to you that if I can but live and die serving the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by cannibals or by worms."
When the day came, his father walked him down the road.
At the edge of the village, the old man stopped. He laid his hands on his son's shoulders. He prayed one last prayer over him.
Then he said, "God bless you, my son. Your father's God prosper you, and keep you from all evil."
John never forgot the look on his father's face that morning.
He sailed for the islands.
Within a year, he was burying his wife and infant son with his own hands.
The graves were on the island of Tanna. The dirt had not yet started to feel like home. There was no one there to grieve with him. He stood over them alone.
He later wrote: "Whensoever Tanna turns to the Lord, and is won for Christ, men in after days will find the memory of that spot still green — where with ceaseless prayers and tears I claimed that land for God."
He could have left. Anyone would have understood.
He did not leave.
The night the warriors came to kill him, John Paton sat inside a wooden mission house with his second wife, Margaret.
Outside in the darkness, the chief and his men were waiting. They had decided. They had gathered. They were going to burn the house down before sunrise.
There was no boat to leave on. No help to call. No walls thick enough to stop spears or fire.
So John and Margaret did the only thing left to do.
They knelt down on the floor.
And they prayed.
They prayed all night long.
Maybe John remembered the closet that night. Maybe he remembered his father's hand on his shoulder. Maybe he remembered the prayer that had echoed over him at the edge of the village years before — "Your father's God prosper you, and keep you from all evil."
Maybe he just prayed.
When dawn came, John pulled himself up off the floor and looked out the window.
The clearing was empty.
Not a footprint. Not a torch. Not a single warrior.
The army that had come to kill him had simply vanished.
A year passed.
In that year, the chief of that very tribe came to faith in Christ.
One afternoon, John finally asked him the question that had been sitting in his heart for twelve months.
"That night you came to kill us. Why did you turn back?"
The chief looked surprised.
"Who were all those men you had with you?"
John blinked. "There were no men with us. Only my wife and me."
The chief shook his head and insisted. His warriors had seen them with their own eyes.
Hundreds of big men. Shining garments. Drawn swords. Standing all around the house.
You do not attack a mission station that is already being defended by an army.
It is the same thing the prophet Elisha saw in 2 Kings 6, when his servant panicked at the sight of the Syrian army surrounding their city.
Elisha prayed: "LORD, open his eyes that he may see."
The young man looked up. The mountainside was full of horses and chariots of fire, all around them.
"Those who are with us are more than those who are with them."
— 2 Kings 6:16
John Paton lived another forty-eight years.
He outlived two wives. He buried his first child in the dirt of a hostile island. He had warriors come for his life more times than once.
But he also saw the chief of Tanna kneel.
He went to a smaller island called Aniwa and translated the Bible into a language that had never been written down. He lived to see the whole island come to faith.
The boy who heard his name prayed in a Scottish closet became the old man whose name was prayed back.
God watches over His children.
Not always quietly. Not always quickly. Not always the way they expect.
But He watches.
The closet in Dumfries was answered on a wooden floor in the New Hebrides.
The graves on Tanna were answered when the people of Tanna started carrying Bibles.
The warriors at the door were answered before they ever raised their spears.
Whatever you are walking through tonight — God is watching.
He is watching over His children.
He is watching over you.
You may never see the army at the perimeter of your life. But it is there. He sent it. He keeps it there.
When heaven opens, the warriors run.
You are not alone.
A true story from the life of John G. Paton, Scottish missionary to the New Hebrides (modern-day Vanuatu). 1858.
Bolivar Church · #WhenHeavenOpens
