St. Patrick - The Christian Batman

Him...without all the ridiculous clothing.

Saint Patrick is one of my all time greatest heroes.  Don't be fooled by the Catholic idolatry of the man, he was a Christian hero of the faith through and through, and would have never condoned all the worship of him.  The man was the Elijah of his day!  

I always use his story as an example of what a missionary should be like when I teach on missions in YWAM.  He really was (aside from Jesus of course) the ultimate example of a missionary.

For those of you who don't know anything about St. Patrick other than that you are supposed to wear green on his day, Patrick was not Irish first of all, he was a British-Romeo missionary to Ireland.

There are whole books written on his life, so I am not going to attempt to do more than show you the extremely impressive highlights.  If anyone's life should be a movie, it's this guy.

Imagine this:  Patrick was just a kid living like any other in Britainia when Irish pirates came and kidnapped him.  He lived as a slave for years until God miraculous showed him how to escape, which he did.  He returned to Britainia where he decided to become a minister, and eventually a missionary to the very people who enslaved him during his childhood. 

At first nobody would send him.  Back in those days people didn't just run off to missions because they felt called.  They waited through long, arduous red tape while years went by and they twiddled their thumbs hoping the more important people to make a decision about him.  So he waited.

The first guy they sent was killed in Ireland, so guess who got invited to take his place?  That's right, Patrick!  

Undaunted by the last guy's end, he went anyway, and his life there is one crazy story after another.

Here are some of the highlights:

1.  There was an infestation of deadly snakes all over Ireland, through prayer he drove them all off the island.

2.  The Druidic religion that is seen in all kinds of role playing games, where they control nature and worship trees and fairies, that came out of Ireland, and was the main religion of the nation.  Until Patrick arrived.  God used Patrick to evangelize the entire nation of Ireland, and almost completely eradicated the Druids and their religion (that task was completely fulfilled by his disciples after he died).  How?  Well, I'll tell you one of the stories in a moment.

3.  Read this excerpt from Wikipedia about Patrick:   "During his evangelising journey back to Ireland from his parent's home at Birdoswald, he is understood to have carried with him an ash wood walking stick or staff. He thrust this stick into the ground wherever he was evangelising and at the place now known as Aspatria (ash of Patrick) the message of the dogma took so long to get through to the people there that the stick had taken root by the time he was ready to move on."

You want to hear how he annihilated the Druid religion?  First, some background for this story.

The kings and Druids all worshiped several horrible gods, and there was a particular festival called Beltine which was a big feast, and the king would go to the top of a hill called Slayne and make a giant bonfire in worship of their gods.  

Patrick saw this as a great evangelism opportunity.  He didn't go out and hand out tracts, or pray for people.  Instead he got there before anyone else, and started his own big bonfire to Jesus in defiance of the all the kings and false gods.

Needless to say, the king, named Laeghaire, was furious.  So he got a couple of his Druid priests and soldiers together and scaled the hill, set on killing Patrick for his defiance. 

Read this from Jesus Freaks: Revolutionaries:

"When the chariots arrived, Patrick was summoned before the king.  The king ordered Patrick's bonfire extinguished, but no matter what his soldiers did, the fire refused to be put out.  Patrick gave a bold testimony for Jesus before them and refused to be silent.  When Laeghaire commanded his soldiers to execute Patrick to quiet him, confusion descended on them, and they attacked one another.  When the two Druid priests then turned their vehemence on Patrick and Jesus' name, one fell and cracked his head on a rock, while the other somehow fell into the fire and perished.  One version even records that when the king himself pulled his sword to slay Patrick, his arm froze as stiff as a statue and stayed that way until he knelt in surrender to Patrick...."

After this happened that king (there were several in Ireland at the time) gave Patrick free reign in his country, and allowed him to preach wherever, whenever, and however he wanted.  And that is just one of his encounters.

Oh, and the reason why the clover, or shamrock is the thing you always see with Patrick is not because of Ireland itself.  He was so clever that he used the three leaf clover to explain to the Irish how God could be three in one.

Even though March 17th is celebrated as his day of death, nobody actually knows when he even died!

All I can say about these things:  Attempt great things for God, He might just let you freeze the king's arm.