The Millennium | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 28, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 41.

The Millennium.

THERE are some who too fondly anticipate a millennium. There is a lack of information on the progress of Christianity. The facts are misstated daily in pulpits all over the country. Ministers hesitate to present the worst side, for fear of causing discouragement. They create hopes that are never to be realized. We are not at the dawn of the millennium. Compared with the work to be done, the past is nothing. Our children’s children for ten generations to come must labor harder than we are doing to accomplish the conversion of the world. The world’s population is 1,500,000,000. Of these, Christians number less than a third. Half of that third belong to the Roman Catholic Church. The Protestants number 113,000,000. They are divided into 500 sects. And this number of their strength includes, also, all the thieves, ex-convicts, the debased, besotted, the speckled and streaked in Christendom. . . . Before us we have the great problem—the 1,100,000,000 of pagans to convert to Christianity. That is the solid rock that looms up in our path. Look at it; see what work has been done in 1800 years, and how much is yet to be accomplished. In India, after more than a hundred years of mission work, we have 600,000 native converts and 2,000,000 Christians among 260,000,000 heathens. Can we remove that solid bowlder that is as old as the hills? . . . It is a big loaf to be leavened, and it has been a long time working. . . . Our Methodist Church we think the most divine and ineffable. We boast that we are going to conquer the world and we come from our palaces and princely farms and subscribe fifty cents a head for the undertaking. [“That’s so, that’s so,” replied several voices.] It is a burning disgrace, that excites pity and disgust. Here have we been our own board of twelve Bishops and forty laymen incubating for a week. Now we find that our nest was filled with rotten eggs, and a world is waiting to be conquered. I’ll say no more.—Bishop Foster, before the Methodist Missionary Conference, November 9, 1885.