The Karen Apostle Ko Thah-Byu
The First Karen Christian BY REV. Frances Mason revised by H.J. RIPLY
History also by Missionary George Boardman 10-8-08
God who sees the future and the past of every man, woman and child, saw His choice among many. A man who was about 50 as the missionary Adoniram Judson told about this individual speaking about his hopeful enquirers says, ‘the second is Maung Thah-pyoo, a Karen by nation, imperfectly acquainted with the Burman language, and possessed of very ordinary abilities. (In other words to look at this man with an evil temper and who had killed several people; degraded among a people who characterize themselves as “a nation most debased among the debased; he was a poor man, and a slave to the Burmese, until Mr. Judson set him free.
The word Maung is a Burman title of respect applied to middle aged men. Ko is a similar title applied to elderly men. Pyoo and Byu are the same just spelled differently. He was a faithful and successful missionary under the mighty hand of God to arouse the Karen nation to Christianity. As Apostle Paul, he was a distinguished man in the hands of his Lord. He never stopped from the day he was baptized until his death always seeking some Karen village to preach to them the Good News. He is an example of what God can do through a very ordinary man when wholly committed to the Lord Jesus Christ.
He married a young woman who became a Christian, and Ko Tha Byu was baptized by missionary George Boardman on May 16-1828. A Karen missionary named Sau Quala tells us what the Karen were like as Ko Tha Byu was sent to them with the knowledge that the white man had come with the ‘BOOK’ that their forefathers had told them about--- the one true God.
The Karen were poor and scatterd every where. When they fell among the Siamese, the Siamese made them slaves. When they fell among the Burmans, the Burmans made them slaves. The Burmans made them drag boats, cut rattans, collect dammer, seek bees’ wax, gather cardamoms, strip bark for cordage, clear away cities, pull logs, and weave large mats. Besides this they demanded of them presents of wild yams, tubers, ginger, capsicum, elephants tusk, rhinoceros’ horns, and all the various vegetables that the Burmese eat.
The women had to hide and blacken their faces or they would be dragged away to be prostitutes. The men were compelled by the Burmese to guard forts, to act as guides, to kidnap Siamese and go from one place to another until many dropped dead in the midst of the jungle. Beside this they were beaten, arms twisted behind them, boxed with the fist, days with out end. Persecution of the Karen was unspeakable. Yet they had hope that one day the white man would come and they prayed beneath the bushes, though the rains poured on them, or the mosquitoes, nats, leeches, or horseflies bit them they still prayed, “If God will save us let him come speedily.”
(No one but the Jews can understand what these people went through. Repeatedly through all their history I have studied they call themselves the older brother and the white man their younger brother. This means that they were Jews of the Old Testament, and were first called to serve God before salvation came to the Gentiles the younger brother. Jesus himself said that Salvation is of the Jews. (John 4:22)
Mr. Boardman had followed Adoniram Judson from America to Burma and he was the one God chose to work with Ko Tha Byu in the beginning of their ministry to the Karen. He kept notes that could be written as their history. Ko Tha Byu began like a brush fire tirelessly going from village to village to share the good news. This good news is related here.
About the end of September, before the rains had fully closed, George Boardman wrote in his diary, “we started again to visit the eastern Karens.” A Karen, Maung Sekke, who was his guide over the mountains writes, “Teacher Boardman preached to me the words of God, and I understood a little, but not fully: Ko Tha Byu taught me in Karen so that I understood perfectly. In Tshiekku the people listened and then Maung So and Maung Kya asked for baptism.” These two men have been valuable assistants for many years. When they had heard of a Karen man and his wife who had come down from Maulmain, I asked his name and was told Ko Tha Byu. Then I asked what has he come for? “To preach the words of the God that made the heavens and the earth.” So I went to Tavoy to hear; and after I heard Ko Tha Byu preach to me, I said to him, ‘Brother, truly it is the word of God.
(Do you sense that the message was from their teachings of their own people who taught through their songs about the one true God? He began where they understood from their own teaching and then progressed to their Saviour.)
One of Ko Tha Byu’s companions named Sekkee who had been a guide to Mr.Boardman, had gone to preach among some new settlements. Ko Tha Byu got sick, he was an old man by now, and he stayed with a Karen while Sekkee went a bit farther to tell other settlements about the good news. Upon returning Ko Tha Byu was better enough to continue the journey back home. The man he stayed with had become the first baptized in that village and later was a pillar in their church.
In another story of Ko Tha Byu some had traveled to where a shrine had held the Burman people, (and I suppose some Karens as well). Since Ko Tha Byu was an old man some of the party had left him to rest. On returning they found him surrounded by a large crowd of Burmans, whose attention seemed to be riveted on his flashing eyes, less apparently from love, than from an indescribable power, that may best be compared to the fascinating influence of a serpent over a brood of chickens. The first sentence I heard was “Your god was a black kula.” (or that is a black foreigner.) If ever a man hated idolatry, observed one of the brethern, Ko Tha Byu did.
So it was through the whole journey, he would be reaching out to the Karens no matter how tired or worn he was, but if no Karens were around, he would attack the Burmans and their idolatry unmercifully, utterly heedless of ridicule, that they would sometimes heap upon him, for being an ignorant hill tribe Karen.
Mr. Boardman has recorded the following specimen of his preaching. “Ko Tha Byu had been describing the folly and hurtfulness of worldly things and worldly tempers, and proceeded to say, “A worldly man is never satisfied with what he possesses. Let me have more houses, more lands, more buffaloes, more slaves, more clothes, more wives, more children and grand-children, more gold and silver, more paddy and rice, more boats and vessels; let me be a rich man. This is his language. He thinks nothing so much as of amassing worldly goods. Of God and religion he is quite unmindful. But watch that man.
On a sudden his breath departs, (DIED) and he finds himself deprived of all he possessed and valued so much. He looks around and sees none of his former possessions. Astonished he exclaims, where are my slaves? Where are my buffaloes? I cannot find one of them. Where are my houses and my chests of money? What has become of my rice and paddy that I laid up in store? Where are all the fine clothes, that cost me so much? I can find none of them. Who has taken them? And where are my wives and children? Ah, they are all missing. I can find none of them. I am lonely and poor, indeed. I have nothing! But what is this?” Then the preacher here enters upon a description of the sufferings of the soul that is lost; after which, he represents the rich man as taking up this lamentation, O what a fool have I been! I neglected God, the only Saviour, and sought only worldly goods while on earth, and now I am undone. (Based on Luke 16:19-31)
While the old man was preaching in this strain, every eye was fixed on him, and every ear attentive. Then he followed with, “All in this world is misery, sickness and pain, fear and anxiety, wars and slaughter, old age and death, abound on every hand. But hearken! God speaks from on high; Children, why take ye delight, and seek happiness, in that low village of mortality, that thicket of briers and thorns? Look up to me; I will deliver you, and give you rest where you shall be forever blessed and happy.
These simple sons of the jungle said, “If the Woon-gee (Burmese magistrates) should issue an order to cut off heads, then let them cut off : they believed in Jesus; and if they should be killed, they would go where Jesus is and be happy. What a message for today! This man, like Apostle Paul, still speaks today.
