Birth: 24-06-1792
Home Calling: 23-10-1825
Native Place: Massachusetts
Country: United States of America
Place of Vision: Palestine, Asia Minor
Pliny Fisk was a pioneer missionary on behalf of the ‘American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) to the first Palestine Mission. Although Fisk was religiously a Christian, his heart was far away from God. But, at the age of 16, he began to have questions of the afterlife and consequent fears. This phase brought him to his knees resulting in his conversion. After being born again, he felt a strong desire to bring others to Christ, which developed into an interest in missions. Then he entered Andover Theological Seminary, where he became a founding member of the Palestine Mission.
Palestine then was under the strong influence of Catholics and Mohammedans. Many protestant institutions found it to be a perilous place to start a mission and a hopeless enterprise. After careful deliberation and fervent prayer for divine guidance, Pliny Fisk and Levi Parsons presented themselves to ABCFM to establish an evangelical mission in the Holy land. Fisk sailed for the Middle East in 1819 and first settled in Smyrna. While he learned Hebrew and Greek, he toured the Seven Churches of Asia and prepared himself to meet the needs of the people. In Jerusalem, he extensively spoke to the Jews, the Greeks, the Rabbis, and the Mohammedans convincing them of the truth of Jesus and distributed Gospel tracts. Despite there were no visible converts, he continued with the evangelical work.
After the sudden death of Parsons in Egypt, Fisk briefly took over the Egypt mission and then again returned to Jerusalem. Despite the physical attacks, burning of Christian literature, and conspiracies of Catholics and Mohammedans, Fisk deemed it worth suffering them all for Christ. Fisk later moved to Beirut in 1824 to establish a mission station where he contracted a fever and died when he was only 33.
Fisk lived to see only a handful of converts. But a spark is good enough to ignite the entire forest. Later many followed in the footsteps of Fisk that resulted in the Jews finding the true Messiah.
