January 31  Prisoner Bates

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Matt. 6:34.

It took me quite a bit of living before I finally understood that verse. The New International Version puts it more plainly: "Each day has enough trouble of its own."

Young Bates certainly would have agreed with that. His adventures beween 1807 and 1809 were but a small foretaste of the difficulties he would yet face.

A major turning point in his life took place on April 27, 1810. That evening a press-gang consisting of an officer and 12 men entered his boarding house in Liverpool, England, and seized him and several other Americans and dragged them at sword point as "recruits" for the British navy in spite of their documents declaring that they were United States citizens.

To us such treatment may reside at the edges of our imagination. But those were different times. Britian was in the midst of a death struggle with Napoleon, and its navy needed men. Because of low pay, filthy living condition, poor rations, and customary floggings, it was almost impossible to gain enough recruits. By the beginning of America's war with Britain in 1812 the British navy contained approximately 6,000 Americans.

Seventten-year-old Bates would spend the next five years (1810-1815) as a "guest" of the British government, serving about half of his time as a sailor in the Royal Navy and the other half as a prisoner of war. His experiences indicate the tough stuff the young man was made of. At the outbreak of the War of 1812 the British urged the 200 Americans in Bates' squadron to fight for them against the French. Only six, including Bates, declined. His principle-based refusal cost him dearly.

On one occasion, in a conflict with the French fleet, all of the Americans except him, Bates reported, assisted the British. For his intrasigence a British officer knocked Bates to the floor and ordered him put in leg irons. Bates responded tha he was free to do so, but that he would not work because he was a prisoner of war. At that point the officer notified Bates that when the action began he would have him "lashed up on the main rigging for a target for the Frenchmen."

That spirit of independence and determination would characterize Joseph Bates for the rest of his life. And it is that principle-based and courageous approach to life that made him the forceful sort of person who would put his energeis into building a movement on the ruins of Millerism.

May his tribe increase. God needs Joseph Bateses in every congregation.