Jamaica

Jamaica appears as a place where persecution and political change alter the prospects for Christian mission. The book presents the island’s opening to missionary work after the abolition of enslavement in the West Indies as a providential reversal: conditions that had brought suffering to Christian disciples give way to an opportunity to preach the gospel to people injured by enslavement.

Persecution and Change

The account recalls recent suffering among the disciples of Jesus in Jamaica. Their houses of worship had been pulled down, their property pillaged, and some had been imprisoned or murdered. These details establish the obstacles that missionaries faced and the vulnerability of local Christians; the passage does not identify the perpetrators or describe the incidents further.

The author then marks a sharp change in the island’s circumstances. Jamaica, previously associated with the disciples’ suffering, is described as open to missionary labor, with several missionaries having entered what the author calls a ripe field. The change is set alongside the abolition of the cruel system of enslavement in the West Indies, which the book treats as a new opening for preaching among those harmed by it.

Missionary Significance

Jamaica serves as a concrete example in the book’s wider account of obstacles to gospel proclamation being removed. The author attributes both the island’s new accessibility to missionaries and the change following abolition to providence, describing the ruler of heaven as having opened the door. In this interpretation, political and social change is not separate from religious history but becomes part of the means by which missionary work can proceed.

The passage gives no further account of Jamaica’s geography, society, or the subsequent results of the missionaries’ work. Its focus is the contrast between the disciples’ recent persecution and the newly available opportunity to preach, and the place that contrast occupies in the author’s providential reading of history.