The Miracle of Pitcairn Island

Many, many years ago in the South Pacific, there was a mutiny on the British ship, H.M.S. Bounty. The mutineers went to Tahiti for supplies and while there, took men for their crew and women for their wives. Because they knew for a surety that it was not safe to stay there, Fletcher Christian, their new captain, set sail for the relatively unknown and uninhabited Island of Pitcairn.

After more than four months at sea they found the lonely island, gathered all they had, sank the Bounty, and began their new adventure. The group consisted of nine British sailors, six Tahitian men, ten Tahitian women, and a girl of fifteen. One of the Sailors discovered how to distill alcohol, and soon drunkenness corrupted the small island colony. Fighting among the men and women grew into violent exchanges and then death.

Eventually only one person of the original men that reached the island survived. When that one man, Alexander Smith, discovered the Bible and thoroughly studied it, he began to sense a need to lead the eleven women and twenty one children on the island to a better way of life. So he took the only Bible on the Island and began to teach the grand truths of God and His holy ways. Soon, the entire Island of Pitcairn was converted to Christ.

Though separated from the world, Pitcairn Island became a thriving, prosperous Christian community with no alcohol, no crime, no immorality, but in every way refined, and Christ-like. As a result of their intense studies of the Bible, the Pitcairners discovered in 1886 that Sunday sacredness was nowhere commanded in the Scriptures, but rather the keeping of the seventh day as the Sabbath. At first they were astonished, but they committed themselves to keep the seventh day holy. And so today all on Pitcairn Island gather to keep holy the Lord’s day.

The Bible, and the Bible only, was their rule of life, and so it should be ours. “Blessed are those who do His commandments, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and may enter through the gates into the city.” Revelation 22:14.