It was a treat to have Darman come into our mission station at Yagoua one day in 1929. He is one of the most remarkable Africans I have ever known… Like many others of his village, he went to Nigeria to work in the tin mines to make money. He got work and stayed there a few years. He made enough money for clothes for himself and his wife and gifts for his friends when he returned home. But, he came back with more than that. In Nigeria, he learned to read Hausa by reading the Hausa Bible. In that way he learned to know the Bible, thus accepting Christ as his Savior.
Being saved himself, he wasn’t satisfied to leave the others in darkness. Coming back to his village, he gathered a group of young men and boys around him and taught them to read. In teaching he explained to them the truth of the Bible. Almost the entire group received the saving knowledge of Christ, and they, in turn, taught their brothers and sisters. It was not long before a considerable group believed.
At first the village people left him alone with his teaching and preaching. But, as soon as the older ones realized that his teaching was a new religion, they made opposition, wrought in accusation, against him to the leaders of the village, as well as to those representing the government. He was soon brought into court and put in prison. The accusations against him were, of course, not true. But he had no one to defend him and explain his case so he was kept in prison.
That did not prevent him from preaching the gospel. In and out of prison, to the prisoners as well as the guards, he witnessed like Paul of old for Christ, and a number of them were saved. This went on for some time. He was accused and condemned to prison – occasionally freed again – only to be accused once again. But he was always happy and content for the privilege he had in witnessing for Christ in prison.
I visited him a number of times and tried to set his case straight before the government. The last time I went to visit him I met him on the way. He was coming to see me in Yagoua, and I was on my way to Bongor to see him. When I saw him I immediately noticed his downheartedness. He told me all that had happened and that he now was at liberty. I said to him, “Darman, if you are at liberty and you are vindicated before the government, you should not be downhearted, but happy about it.”
He then replied, “Mister that is true, I am free; I am at liberty to go back to my village and teach. But the captains of the prisons and the guards realized that the reason for my strength and courage wasn’t in me but in the Book I have been reading continually - the Bible. So they thought that the only way they could discourage me and keep me from teaching was to take the Bible from me. So here I am a free man, but the source of my strength and happiness has been taken from me. I may go back to my village and teach the boys and young men about Christ, but without the Bible how can I teach?” He was almost at the point of weeping.
Living until he was a middle aged man, Darman’s occupation, like the majority of the men in his village, was fishing. Along the rivers where they fished were lots of tsetse flies, which carry the contagious disease of sleeping sickness. During his time as a fisherman, he came in contact with this disease and in a few years, he passed away. He is gone, but his message and influence of life lives on. He is remembered to this day as the evangelist that brought the gospel to Djouman. Many today praise God for his life.
Freedom, without God’s word, felt like bondage to Darman. I know that I don’t appreciate the easy access I have to the Bible on my nightstand. While hardly a day goes by that I don’t read from it – I get hungry and thirsty for the nourishment God’s Word offers me – I’m certain I don’t treasure it the way Darman did. Perhaps, because I’ve never had to go without it... If you are not a follower of Christ, you likely can’t imagine how “alive” this book can be. You probably can’t imagine how it is actually God’s relevant Word to people today, and that He uses it daily to speak personally to His followers all over the world.
While Grandpa doesn’t say...I suspect, and hope, that Darman was able to get his hands on another copy of the Bible.
In the next post, Grandpa looks at God’s orchestration in “the story behind Darman.”
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