If you’ve ever read a fantasy book or watched a fantasy film, you’ll know that a common trope is that the protagonist is often the prophesied ‘chosen one’. They are called to stand up as a hero and save their people because it was ‘written in the stars’ before they were born, or promised by an old seer, or revealed in a dream. Yet this idea of destiny is not confined to fantasy! Shakespeare plays with it in his histories and tragedies, and there’s a hint of it in the Bible, when Mordecai tells Esther “And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14, NIV)
Olaudah Equiano was born to a destiny. The elders in his African tribe believed that he was fortunate, or lucky, and that he would ‘speak with a loud voice’ and be great. This ended up coming true, because God also had a destiny in mind for him, as he does for all his people, and it did involve great things. Yet, as is often the case when God works, it came about in the most unexpected of ways. God was determined that Equiano come to love him, and he pursued him despite adverse circumstances and in the face of many obstacles.
Captured by slave traders and torn from his family, Equiano was one of the 12.5 million Africans who were shackled and transported through the notorious Middle Passage, only to be sold into slavery upon their arrival in the West Indies. Purchased by a British naval officer, Equiano considered himself fortunate to have escaped the harsh conditions of the plantations. In the Navy he was taught seafaring alongside free men, fought in battles, and spent hours determinedly cultivating not only his English, but also as many other skills as he could learn.
Equiano desired to be free, and indeed, freedom seemed waiting on the horizon. For when his ship stopped on English soil, his master, who called himself a Christian, had taken him to church. Having been baptised himself, Equiano soon learned that Christians were called to love other people. As a result, he was confident that having served his master obediently for many years, he would soon be released.
Yet in a time of wide–spread racism and cultural Christianity, such a hope was not to be. Sold by his master to a passing ship’s captain, Equiano soon landed back at the place he thought he’d escaped – the tropics, with their searing heat and harsh conditions. It would have been easy to give up hope, but something was changing in Equiano’s heart. He found the ‘white man’s God’ more alluring than the creator–god he’d grown up worshipping, and longed to find out more about him. As he worked for his new master, trading goods between the islands and the American colonies, he began a trade venture of his own. Penny by penny he saved up to buy a Bible, and only then began working towards buying his freedom.
When, after many trials and disappointments, Equiano became a free man, he sang praises to God. The brutality of many of the white ‘Christians’ he’d met had not succeeded in subduing his faith. Not yet.
Free now, Equiano pursued advantage and adventure. He learnt to cut hair, play the French horn, travelled across the Mediterranean, and even went on an exploration expedition to the Arctic. Yet all this excitement, instead of fulfilling him, struck fear into his heart. Each time he faced death (and sea voyages in the 18th Century were perilous) he was forced to contemplate his eternal future and was riddled with doubt.
Was he good enough to get into heaven?
Equiano, free in body but not in spirit, began doing his best to make sure. He attended church several times a day, he read the Gospels, he spoke to other Christians, he spent hours walking the streets to avoid the swearing company of his housemates, and finally he begged a ship’s captain to take him to Turkey, so he could become a Muslim instead! All to no avail – God had planned something better for him.
At last in 1774, on a voyage he hadn’t wanted to go on, Equiano sat reading his Bible, when the truth struck him with life–altering force. He would never be good enough to get into heaven and that’s why he needed Jesus’ perfect life to take away his sins! All the time he thought he had been chasing God, God had actually been chasing him, and nothing could steal him out of God’s faithful hands. Overcome, Equiano opened his arms and embraced the grace of the gospel.
At last in 1774, on a voyage he hadn’t wanted to go on, Equiano sat reading his Bible, when the truth struck him with life–altering force. He would never be good enough to get into heaven and that’s why he needed Jesus’ perfect life to take away his sins! All the time he thought he had been chasing God, God had actually been chasing him, and nothing could steal him out of God’s faithful hands. Overcome, Equiano opened his arms and embraced the grace of the gospel.
It changed his life.
Every voyage, every conversation, every business venture became an opportunity to share the wonderful news of salvation. Equiano found himself battling racism in the Americas as he tried to start a new humane plantation; encountering the devil’s wiles as he shared the gospel with an Indian prince; and political machinations and greed as he fought to establish a re–settlement in Sierra Leone for poverty–stricken Africans in England. Time and time again his plans fell through, but Equiano continued to seek out how God would have him spend the life he had been given.
In 1789 he sat down to write his memoir: The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. It’s a story of slavery and salvation, racism and redemption, and Equiano worked tirelessly to promote it. As the campaign to end the African slave trade continued, spear–headed by Wilberforce and Clarkson, Equiano’s book became a powerful resource. Its first–hand account of the horrors of slavery, and the depravity of men who called themselves Christians changed the heart and minds of many readers.
Yet Equiano wasn’t to live to see this societal transformation. In 1792 he married Susannah Cullen and had two daughters, but by 1797, Equiano, his wife and his eldest daughter had all succumbed to illness. He was only in his fifties, but he died certain of his eternal destiny, one which his God had decreed before the creation of the universe.
Today it is Equiano’s written legacy which speaks with a great voice, and – in God’s graciousness – fulfils the prediction given by his pagan elders. It remains a challenge to all of us, for, as Equiano himself said, ‘what makes any event important, unless by its observation we become better and wiser, and learn “to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before God?”’
