A Man With a Burden

Apolo Kivebulaya was a courageous and tenacious African pioneer in the dark forests between the Semliki and Ituri rivers. He first learned of Christ through Alexander Mackay when a boy of 13, but not until 1895, when he had reached 31, was he baptized. Then, with all the intensity of his nature, he answered the call to preach among the Toros, which a great church council extended to him. This field was 200 miles away. To reach it, 75 great papyrus swamps had to be crossed, most of them unbridged, and some with very deep water. Lions and other wild creatures abounded.

Apolo covered the distance in ten days, quickly mastered the language, and began preaching, The king directly abolished slavery, ordered all fetishes destroyed, outlawed witchcraft, and proclaimed his country a Christian land.

The call of the regions beyond, however, rang in Apolo’s ears. He determined to move on to the country west of the mighty Ruwenzori range. The Toro king tried to dissuade him. “It was so cold on the mountains that the very blood would harden.” Apolo was not daunted. Off he went, and though one companion was overcome and refused to budge farther, he himself finally clambered to a lofty ledge from which the green forests stretching “Congo-ward” were visible. It was a trackless land, the home of wild beasts and wild men. But to it he started, having spent a little more than a year in his mission to the Toros.

The Mboga people, among whom he now ventured, resented his denunciation of their sins and declared him a kill-joy who would deprive them of all pleasure. When he baptized his first convert, a woman, the storm broke. Witchdoctors pressed the king to drive him out. They burned the thatched cabin over his head, thinking that he would perish in the ashes. Then a strange thing occurred. Apolo, praying within, and his persecutors outside all heard a voice calling: “Do not set fire to Apolo’s house: he is My servant. He has come to do My commands.” Frightened at this, the marauders broke in the door and dragged Apolo to a place of safety.

The king ordered him to return to Toro. “I told him that God had sent me to Mboga and that I could not leave unless ordered. He threatened me with death.”

“Go tell your master,” replied Apolo to the courier, “that God’s messengers were often killed in days gone by, but it did not stop other messengers taking their place. I cannot leave.”

So they bound him and laid on him the terrible lash. His broken and bleeding body was thrown to the hyenas, and a great beer festival was held to celebrate the banishment of “the Book” forever.

Although left for dead, Apolo recovered and later came back to the village. There was but one disciple, a weak and despised woman who had followed the track of those carrying off the body, and searching, she found it. She nursed the wounds and for weeks dressed them, feeding her teacher and bringing him back, first to life and then to consciousness. One serene Sunday morning he was again seen at the village, beating the drum in summons to the preaching. A revival followed. The king himself was converted and knelt before Apolo, asking for his forgiveness. After weeks of strenuous effort the king learned to read the Book and was baptized with the name of Paul.

In later years the Mboga Christians have been stirred by Apolo to evangelize the Pygmies of the great forest. These little creatures, of whom Herodotus wrote centuries before Christ, are looked upon with superstitious dread by other Africans. There is something elfish about them that aroused African fears. But Mboga volunteers have overcome this repulsion and are going among them preaching. The Pygmies are at least theists and in the center of their little villages build a hut which is uninhabited and which is dedicated to the great God, the Creator of forest and men. Mboga volunteers also went among the cruel and treacherous Balega, who had often raided them, and to the Bakobi and Baguku. Among these, Mboga teachers were placed, and Apolo visited them constantly, covering hundreds of miles yearly in his journeys. He always had a class of from 20 to 30 young men in training, and as soon as one came in from the forest for rest and teaching, another was sent to take his place. An immense field was thus opened up by the Mboga church. Mboga Christians out of their poverty supplied all the funds to support the teachers and in addition built both churches and schools.

Apolo was a man of prayer and a man of faith. When considering a matter beyond his depth, he would say quite naturally, “This beats us: let us pray about it,” and down on his knees he would go, asking his Father for guidance. He was a man of wisdom and sense who saw under the surface of human nature. He was a man of devotion who remained single in order to spend and be spent to the last ounce of his strength building up the little churches in remote forest clearings.

He was a man of heart, which has not been the marked trait of Central African life with its butcheries and tortures. No women through the centuries have suffered more than African women, and it is common enough now for them to experience unendurable ill treatment of body and soul from those who own them. Apolo built a hut near his own home where any such could find refuge. These he fed and encouraged until some more favorable prospect opened to them. This kindliness made a profound impression on the savage tribes who think of women as chattels to be discarded at will and left to die of want.

Apolo no longer trudges through the deep forests or fords African swamps, the care of all the churches on his shoulders. But hundreds are able to say, “I am of Apolo,” and hundreds more in the future will doubtless owe their knowledge of Christ virtually to this great Baganda Christian.

“In the old days,” writes the Rev. A. P. Lloyd, “I have found scattered copies of Scripture, along with the bones of faithful carriers, who died of thirst and privation in attempting to bring the Word of God to their people.” Of Apolo Kivebulaya’s work he says: “I have been astonished at the tremendous extent of his work in the dark forests and across the plains, down among the Wamba, and many other tribes. To my surprise, I found among the Wambas great schools and churches filled with keen readers. I saw teachers who had been trained by him, yet he had had no training himself though he knew his Bible from end to end. He has left a version of the Gospels in the Pygmy language which is soon to be published.”*

“…not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise…” (1 Cor.1: 26b-27a)

Is this not a challenge to our lives? Are we not just a little bit “confounded” as 1 Corinthians says? Let us seek the face of God that we may feel and beat with the same heartbeat! Oh, that our lives would be poured out in the same passionate way! Nothing, absolutely nothing else matters, but that He might be glorified!

“Only one life, twill soon be past;
Only what Christ does through me will last.” (quote revised)

*Article used by permission of Harvey and Tait Publishers from the book Protestant Saints by E.B. Gordon.