While being a missionary may not outwardly seem dramatic or lucrative, its drama is enacted in human hearts, and its riches appear in the inexhaustible grace of the God the missionary serves.
Throughout history, some notable missionaries have served with distinction through evangelism, church planting, and raising up other godly missionary workers. Others have been like God’s shooting stars: used brilliantly for a brief time and then martyred into the presence of the Lord.
Dr. Raphael Thomas was like the first missionaries mentioned above. He served long and faithfully, in joy and sorrow, in a variety of ministries. His story deserves to be told to this generation, especially because his life and experience encapsulate so much of what it is to be a missionary. He was a man of passion and vision. He loved his God, and he loved his people. He made sacrifices many would be unwilling to make for the sake of the people of the Philippines. He initiated fruitful ministries, and the fruit from those ministries continues to flourish.
Planting a Seed for Medical Missions
Twelve-year-old Raphael Thomas and his father listened intently to the speakers at Dwight L. Moody’s Northfield Conference in 1885. The challenges from the Bible were spiritually enriching, but the young man’s imagination was captured by the messages of missionary statesmen who were passionate about worldwide evangelism. One can only imagine the conversations of this serious young man and his pastor father, Jesse B. Thomas.
The seed planted in Raphael’s heart at the conference began to bear fruit when he was a student at Harvard University. He gradually recognized that his desire to become a medical doctor was only a piece of a much greater plan God had for his life. He became the volunteer president of the YMCA branch at Harvard, developing a lively and lifelong passion for preparing students to serve the Lord.
After completing his coursework at Harvard Medical School, and later his internship, Raphael concluded his intellectual preparation for missionary service by graduating from Newton Theological Seminary in 1904. His sights had been set on China or Japan, but in April 1904, a chapel speaker from the Philippines challenged Dr. Thomas to consider the needs of the people of that country. After graduation, he was appointed by the American Baptist Missionary Union as a missionary doctor to the Philippines.
Raphael was one of the first Baptist missionary doctors to serve in the Philippines after the end of the Spanish-American War. As such, his presence in the island villages and highlands drew crowds of sick and injured nationals and opened doors for the gospel within their communities. His itinerant ministry was in conjunction with his work with a Presbyterian doctor in a hospital in Iloilo.
His own family members were among those he treated for difficult illnesses experienced in the islands. Winifred, his first wife, died in the Philippines after giving birth to a beautiful baby girl, also named Winifred. He and his second wife, Norma, daughter of former missionaries to India Norman and Lucy Waterbury, later experienced the death of their young daughter. Sadly, missionaries frequently experienced the death of family members due to exposure to diseases, lack of extensive medical care, and opposition from their spiritual enemy.
Establishing ABWE: A Mission Founded on Evangelistic Outreach
Dr. Thomas served as an appointed missionary of the American Baptist Foreign Missionary Union/Society from 1904 to 1927. His ministry encompassed a wide range of roles: he was a surgeon, hospital administrator, itinerant preacher and medical practitioner, founder of a Bible school, teacher, evangelist, discipler, writer, and correspondent.
His burden for the lost in the Philippines, and his desire to broaden the extent of evangelistic outreach to outlying areas, brought him to a crisis in his relationship with the mission board. Sadly, the Thomases and several of their colleagues saw no acceptable road to reconciliation with the board, so they left the Philippines.
Upon their return to the US, a group of influential Baptist friends met with them and proposed forming a new board, subsequently named The Association of Baptists for Evangelism in the Orient (ABEO). The board was established in 1927, and Norma Thomas’ mother, Mrs. Lucy Peabody, was asked to serve as its first president. Dr. Thomas went back to the mission field desiring to begin a Bible college in Manila and to enhance the ministries of the already-established Doane Bible Institute in Iloilo. In the process, dormitories were to be built and churches planted. With the collaboration of faithful colleagues who had left the American Baptist Board, alongside many new ABEO missionaries and Filipino colleagues, the ministries flourished.
Dr. Thomas served as the Philippine Field Executive Director for the fledgling mission but, because of injuries from an auto accident, other health issues, and some doctrinal and practical differences on the field, Dr. Thomas and Norma left the Philippines in the early 1930s.
After that, Dr. Thomas devoted himself to representing the mission in churches and to a project that was dear to his heart. He desired to see Baptist money used for Baptist missions. He therefore approached pastors of Northern Baptist churches who were unhappy with the doctrinal drift of the Northern Baptists about the possibility of cooperating together to support missionaries and raise funds for use in missions organizations like ABEO—which was soon renamed Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE) after it began missionary endeavors in other parts of the world.
From his cozy home in the small town of Georgetown, Massachusetts, Dr. Thomas submitted dozens of articles to newspapers, both before and during World War II, serving as an expert on the situation in Asia. He proved an astute observer and predictor of eventual outcomes in the Asian sphere of the war.
Raphael maintained regular correspondence with Dr. Harold Commons, the next president of ABWE, along with family members and colleagues, until the end of his life. He went home to be with the Lord in 1956, and his dear wife Norma followed18 years later.
While those who have known the Thomases and the details of their lives and ministries are gone, their names live on in the histories of schools, churches, and families in the Visayan islands of the Philippines and in greater Manila.
Editor’s Note: If you would like to read more about the lives of Dr. Raphael Thomas, his family, his colleagues, and their legacy, please purchase a copy of Mediko: The Life and Legacy of Dr. Raphael Thomas, Medical Missionary to the Philippines by Jim Ruff. Printed copies and eBooks are available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and WestBow Press.
