Advancing Ye Kingdom of Christ (a selection from The Providential Life & Heritage of Henry Obookiah)

 An illustration of the Thaddeus taken from a missionary map found in a New England inn. Source: A History of C. Brewer & Company Limited

In New England the brig Thaddeus became known as the Mayflower of the Pacific. The missionary voyage to the Sandwich Islands would sail into Hawaiian waters during the 200th anniversary year of the arrival in America of the ship Mayflower, the Pilgrims landing on Cape Cod in late 1620.

Pilgrim leader William Bradford, in his book History of Plymouth Plantation, the first book written in New England, quoted Pilgrim pastor John Robinson. Bradford, rather than seeing the Pilgrims as fleeing the Old World for religious freedom, portrayed Robinson as sending off the Pilgrims as missionaries. Bradford quoted Robinson:

(They had) a great hope & inward zeal they had of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some way thereunto, for ye propagating & advancing ye gospel of ye kingdom of Christ in these remote parts of ye world; yea, though they should be but as stepping-stones unto others for ye performing of so great a work.