p. 512 | Fifth Meeting

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 29, 1913

Fifth Meeting

May 18, 10 A. M.

W. T. KNOX in the chair.

Charles Thompson led the Conference in prayer.

The following additional delegates were seated from the North Pacific Union Conference: Dr. W. B. Holden, Dr. J. Reith, M. H. St. John, O. A. Johnson, J. E. Graham.

W. T. KNOX: The first order of business will be the report from Elder Evans, vice-president of the Asiatic Division of the General Conference.

Elder Evans then submitted the following report:—

The Asiatic Division of the General Conference

Territory

The countries embraced in the Asiatic Division of the General Conference are Japan, Korea, China with her dependencies, Formosa, Hainan, Indo-China, Siam, the Federated Malay States, the Straits Settlements, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines. This territory covers the southeastern portion of the great continent of Asia with the adjacent islands east and south, most of the countries being contiguous, except the island fields.

A territory so vast and extending from the far north to below the equator gives a variety of climate, reaching the two extremes. The Asiatic Division of the General Conference constitutes the most densely populated portion of the earth, having a population of some 625,000,000, or more than one third of the entire population of the globe.

Religions of the Orient

The religions of the people of the Asiatic Division are as complex and mysterious to the foreigner as the languages. The majority of this vast population are heathen, as judged from the Christian standpoint. Confucianism, Buddhism, Shintoism, and Mohammedanism are the great religions permeating the masses of the people, while there are still devil-worshipers, animism in all its multiplicity of deities, and all shades of heathenism descending down the ages from ancient Bible times.

Until very recently the masses of these peoples lived secluded from the Western nations who had come under the influences of Christianity, and knew nothing of civilization save what they saw about them. They were content with their condition. The last century was the day dawn to the East, and the leaven of progress and unrest has

been working in various ways, till today the Orient is a restless, surging mass of dissatisfied humanity. The majority of the people are not yet aroused; but seeing the foreigner, hated as he is, leading the way in all advancement, power, and wealth, the people, through their leaders, are seeking enlightenment, and are stretching forth their hands to the Christian nations for help.

Not a few, especially of the more educated and influential class, believe the ancient religions are unable to save the people from stagnation and the countries from national death. They see with amazement what an uplifting influence the Christian religion has had on the character and conditions of the people, and they desire the results which they see in Europe and America, and are seeking the means to attain these ends.

In the East the doors which but a few years ago were closed to the foreigner now stand ajar, and the nations are waiting to be taught by the Westerner both the Word of God and modern science.

Four Years of Progress

In our new field the work of giving the message to this people has made some progress since the last session of the General Conference. I have no statistical report of the work at that time, hence shall confine my remarks to a statement of how the work stands at the close of 1912. In the Asiatic Division at the present time we have 21 ordained foreign ministers, 4 ordained native preachers, 12 foreign licentiates, 50 native licentiates, 17 foreign Bible women, 29 native Bible women, 54 colporteurs, and 110 other workers, as teachers, chapel boys, printers, etc., making a total corps of 298 workers under pay. This does not include the wives and families of our missionaries, but simply the heads of families and the single workers on the pay-roll.

We have 40 churches, with a membership of 1,157. There are 62 companies of believers not yet organized into churches, with a membership of 388, and a scattered membership numbering 341. This makes a total of 1,886 Sabbath-keepers; and many more pretend to be keeping the Sabbath and reckon themselves as belonging to the Adventist denomination, but they are probationers and not ready for baptism.

The total native tithe paid last year, as reported from the various fields, was $2,148 gold. In addition to this the foreign missionaries pay a tithe on their salaries. The fields did not report this amount.

We have 104 Sabbath-schools, with a membership of 2,743. The Sabbath-school donations aggregated $1,073. Of this, $937 was donated to missions, the balance being used in supporting local Sabbath-schools.

Our Publishing Work

We have no record of the number of papers distributed, but our book sales amounted to $1,810, and we received from the sale of magazines $4,914.

We have three printing plants in successful operation, one each in China, Korea, and Japan. In China and Korea we have suitable buildings erected for our printing work, and Japan has funds on hand for building as soon as title to the land can be secured. Of course the outfits in these plants are crude and the machinery not of the best; but they answer for our work, and with this small beginning we hope to print much literature laden with truths for these times.

The Philippines greatly need a small printing outfit to enable them to do their own printing. This is equally true of the Malaysian mission field. These small printing plants create centers, give permanency to the work, and also give the denomination a standing among the people. It will not require a large outlay to equip these fields, and once such little plants are fitted up, they will place those carrying on the work in a position to do better service than heretofore. At present we are compelled to have our literature printed by those who are opposed to our work in the Philippines, while the Malaysian field is getting most of its literature printed in Australia.

The combined monthly circulation of our missionary periodicals in the Asiatic Division is over 70,000 copies. The Chinese magazine, Signs of the Times, takes the lead, with a circulation of 64,000 copies a month. Considerable literature has been brought out in some of the leading languages. The Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Malaysian fields, and the Philippines are each year making progress in the preparation of standard literature.

We have not demonstrated in the Asiatic Division that bookselling can be made a success. We are anxiously waiting for a bookman to arrive in China, when we purpose to make an effort to see to what extent printed books can be sold among the Chinese people. We believe that in all these fields we shall be able to sell books bearing on the message, if we can sell them at a moderate price, and to this end our committees are working. They are putting forth their best efforts to get proper translations of some of our standard works in a condensed form, that we may give the people the message through our literature.

Homes for Our Missionaries

We have six dwelling-houses in Korea, five of which were provided out of the $300,000 Fund. A printing plant and a chapel were also provided out of this fund. In China we have already built nine foreign-style houses, ten Chinese houses, one semiforeign house, and our printing plant, and have under construction in China eight foreign houses and a central training-school. Surely this is a good start in providing homes for our workers in the East, and Japan has funds on hand to provide most of its workers with accommodations such as they require. I am sure I voice the sentiments of every worker in the East when I express to our brethren and sisters throughout the world our hearty thanks for the liberality they have shown in supplying us with these homes.

Our Educational Work

In China we have six schools under foreign supervision; in Korea, two; and in Japan, one. In addition to these we have about twenty church-schools in operation, and are establishing more as rapidly as we can secure competent teachers.

In China, Japan, and Korea we are conducting what we call training-school work, where young people whom the brethren believe to be promising are taken and given instruction and training for some time, with the hope that they will become strong workers in the cause of God. Of course these schools are as yet far from what we hope to make them; but a beginning has been made that gives promise of greater things as the work progresses. In these training-schools we plan to receive only bona fide church-members of our faith, who are recommended to us by the native brethren who know them best. In this way we hope to bring into our work many young people who have experienced a real conversion of heart, and who, by being in touch with and under the instruction of consecrated foreign men, may become efficient workers in giving the message to their own people. Already Korea has sent out from their school several evangelists, who are now in the field doing good work for the Lord.

We are planning in most of the fields in the Asiatic Division to prepare a goodly number of native women to enter upon Bible work, and to teach in our church-schools. Up to the present time we have not been able to fill the many calls that come to the superintendents of the various fields for this class of workers.

In China we have over three hundred students in our schools, which are conducted by foreigners; in Korea, there are about seventy; in Japan, about thirty. In both China and Korea we are planning this season to erect suitable buildings for a central training-school, and we expect to have them ready for the opening of the next school year. This will greatly increase our facilities for doing good work in this line.

The Philippines are greatly in need of facilities for conducting a training-school, and this is almost equally true of the Malaysian field. The Philippines have quite a number of promising young people who would make efficient workers for the Lord if they could be properly trained for such work. It can hardly be expected that these young people who come out of Catholic and Protestant church-schools, or from the public school, will be able to go into the field and do good work in this cause. We must have training-centers where they can be taught the truth by consecrated men who believe this message. In this way we hope to build up a strong working force among our natives in each field. At the present time there are no school facilities in either the Philippines or the Malaysian field, and these fields will never be as strong as they should be until they have their young people in training for the work of the Lord.

The Vastness of the Work Before Us

When one travels through the vast area of the Asiatic Division and sees the millions to be warned of the soon-coming doom of the world, it takes faith to believe that the warning can be given in a single generation. One thing is most encouraging, and that is the open doors everywhere waiting for the missionary to enter. There is not a country nor a province in the whole Asiatic Division whose doors are not wide open for the missionary, and the Macedonian cry reaches far and wide, “Come over and help us.”

Nowhere is the message preached by consecrated evangelists but persons accept the truth and give themselves to this great and closing work. In not a few places men and women will travel

long distances to find those who can teach them the Word of God. Through reading the printed page they have become interested in present truth, and are thus led to seek for further light. Instead of waiting indifferently for some one to come to them who can teach them, they go in search of believers in the message, and earnestly urge them to come and give instruction in the doctrines which we believe.

In the province of Hunan a party of eleven traveled three weeks to reach a Bible institute. They had come on foot and by rowboats more than three hundred fifty miles. When they reached the institute, the meeting had closed. They refused to leave the place until they had been instructed in the Word of God. No foreign worker has yet visited this little company of believers. Still they are holding on to the truth, and last fall they sent several of their number a thousand li to attend our general meeting.

In the great empire of China we have undertaken work in only seven of the eighteen provinces, to say nothing of the four dependencies. In the western part of China is one province with a population of seventy million, in which so far as we know not a foreigner who believes this message has ever put foot. Yet this very province is one of the great provinces of China, having a larger population than any country in Europe outside of Russia, and only thirty-one million less than the population of the United States. For four years we have been hoping and planning each coming year to enter this promising field, but so far we have been unable to send a worker.

In the province of Shan-tung, with a population of thirty-eight million, the one province in China that bears the name of a healthful climate, we have not a single worker. Here the population is so dense that it averages 68.5 persons to the square mile, and still no worker has ever entered this field. So we could name province after province in the great Chinese field where no foreigner is at work, and where we have done nothing in giving this message to the people.

Other boards are rushing their workers into these fields by the hundreds. Last year the mission boards sent between nine hundred and a thousand new workers to the Chinese field. They realize the importance of the present as a strategic time for opening up work among China’s millions, and surely it is time that our people threw a strong force into China to seize the vantage that is presented under existing conditions for giving this truth to that great nation.

The Need for Additional Workers

Our workers in the East are carrying heavy burdens. We have not a man who is not loaded beyond his physical strength; and yet when he sees unentered doors, with groups of people beginning the observance of the Sabbath and importuning for help, with no one to go, it seems imperative that he should work beyond his strength in order to reach these out-of-the-way places where believers have already begun to spring up. In every one of these fields we are so short of help that we cannot lose nor move a man without creating a condition that we know not how to remedy. The other day a leading officer of the General Conference wrote me, “If one man cannot do the work, why can you not give him help?” forgetting that every man is already loaded to the limit of his working strength, and that there is no man to go without creating another need as great as the one we tried to relieve.

Not only is China in need of additional workers, but so also are Japan, the Philippines, and the Malaysian field. We can never expect to make our work in Japan a success without a new force of workers. It is impossible for us to handle our work in that field under existing conditions. We must have young men sent to this field who will learn the language and be able to preach the truths of this message in the vernacular of the people.

Japan is a most promising missionary field. Last year it is reported that the Protestant missionaries reaped a harvest of more than six thousand souls there. They report that there has never been a time since Protestantism entered Japan when the promise was so great for an abundant harvest of souls as at the present. We are wholly unable to meet such conditions with the corps of workers we now have in Japan.

We ask for at least six families to go to Japan, learn the language, and give their lives to this great work. We must have young, well-trained men who can meet the conditions, and who will give their best endeavors to studying the Japanese language, until they can preach this truth in the vernacular of the people. In this country every condition invites the worker to enter,—a polite, pleasing people, a healthful climate, favorable conditions under which to live, and open doors, with liberty to preach the message everywhere.

The same pressing conditions appeal to us in the Philippines. We made a great mistake in not entering the Philippines years before with a strong corps of laborers. Already Brother Finster and his colaborers have demonstrated that missionary work can be made a success in the Philippines, and we must have more workers sent to this needy island field. We have seen that wherever the consecrated worker goes he finds a whitened harvest ready for the sickle.

The East Indies

We find the same condition in the East Indian field. It is certainly most astonishing how God has gone before in that island field and planted the standard of truth in islands where the foreigner has never done any work. A Chinese brother was sent to the island of Borneo from Singapore, and already there are more than thirty believers in this message, earnestly pleading that we send some one to instruct them more fully in the truth.

The opportunities to preach this message are so great that it almost staggers our faith when we see what could be done with consecrated workers, and we have none to send. Surely the Lord is calling us to this great work. It seems that he can no longer wait our planning and our hesitancy, but plants his own standard in these heathen lands, calling upon his people to follow where he leads. He sort of thrusts us into these fields, and wherever we go the harvest is white.

The country of Siam is ready for the message; and Indo-China, with its thirty millions of people, is waiting for some one to enter and preach the truth.

Our Appeal

Is not the opening of these long-shut doors a call of God to enter and proclaim the truth for this time? What means the almost universal Macedonian cry from these age-benighted heathen lands if the Spirit of God has not gone before and prepared the way for the worker to follow? For eighteen long centuries after the Master commanded his disciples to go into all the world and make Christians of every nation, these doors were closed to the preaching of the gospel. Now, since the rise of this message in 1844, these doors have been opening one by one, and the cry rings to all the world, “Come over and help us.”

We appeal to our young men and women, to the brave, the strong, and the hopeful, in behalf of these whitened fields, and ask for help. We appeal to those who are willing to follow in the footsteps of the Master, Christ the Son of God, who left all that he might save some, who beggared himself that he might enrich us, that they send the best to these needy fields, that a harvest of souls may be gathered for our coming Lord. To those who hear the voice of God calling them to some of these needy fields, we say, Welcome, a thousand welcomes, to these lands of need and promise.

In behalf of 25,000,000 human beings in the Asiatic Division who annually are dying without the least ray of hope in God, some of whom would believe could they but hear, we ask for help. We ask it in behalf of the 625,000,000 living souls who within another quarter of a century will be numbered with the dead. We ask it in behalf of the workers already in the field, whose hearts are breaking with the great work before them, and whose strength is not sufficient for the reaping. We ask it in the name of the Lord, whose coming is delayed by our failure to quickly do the work committed to this people. We ask for help in your own behalf, that the work may speedily be finished, and we go home to rest and glory when the work is done.

I. H. EVANS, Vice-President.

Following this excellent and comprehensive report by Elder Evans, two interesting letters were read, one from Brother F. E. Stafford and the other from Elder R. F. Cottrell. Both letters spoke of the earnest demand existing for additional workers and help in the great needy Oriental field. Reports were rendered of the Central China Mission by F. A. Allum, of the East China Mission by Dr. H. W. Miller, of the South China Mission by Elder W. C. Hankins. We regret that we cannot reprint in the columns of the REVIEW the excellent experiences related. They are necessarily crowded out to give space to the more general and comprehensive reports that must receive first consideration.

The sixth meeting was held May 18, at 2:30 P. M. Elder J. P. Anderson presented an interesting report of his work among the Hakkas in south China. This was followed by a good report from C. L. Butterfield, of the Korean Mission. The closing part of the hour was occupied by Elder G. F. Jones, who gave a report of the progress of the work in the Malaysian mission. The publication of these reports in the REVIEW must also be deferred for the present.

The seventh meeting of the Conference

was held May 19, at 10 A. M. After the opening prayer the following persons were seated as delegates: C. L. Stone, L. D. Randall, C. M. Snow, P. P. Adams, and L. C. Christofferson in place of Dr. J. D. Shively, who was detained at home. The name of S. E. Wight was added to the committee on finance.

The secretary read a memorial regarding the further organization of the European Division of the General Conference, which was presented to the General Conference Committee last autumn. The memorial and the response of that committee were referred to the committee on finance.

At this meeting Elder O. A. Olsen presented the report of the North American Foreign Department, which was printed in the REVIEW of last week. After Elder Olsen’s excellent summary of the work of this department, more detailed reports were presented of the German work in North America by Elders G. F. Haffner and J. H. Schilling; of the Swedish work in North America by S. Mortenson; of the Danish-Norwegian work in North America by L. H. Christian. Following the report of Elder Christian the meeting adjourned.