The Agencies of God

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 4, 1910

The Agencies of God

It seems a part of the divine purpose that in the day of the Lord’s preparation, in the period when there is to be carried to all the world in a short space of time the warning message of the last great judgment, agencies should be prepared whereby this work may be made possible. To the point are the following words from an address given by Dr. Naphtali Luccock, as printed in the Northwestern Christian Advocate of May 25:—

All lines of progress are converging in these days. More than a century and a half ago, Sir Isaac Newton made a prophecy almost as startling as his announcement of the law of gravitation. “I believe,” he said, “from the study of God’s Word, that in the future he will greatly accelerate the movement of converting the world, and accomplish the

work suddenly. But I am convinced, also, from the study of the Word, that before that comes to pass, there will be a marvelous increase in the speed of transportation on the earth. I believe that, in the providence of God, though the method now be entirely hidden, men will yet travel on the earth at the rate of fifty miles an hour.” The world laughed at him; an increase of speed from eight to fifty miles an hour was utterly beyond the frontier of its thought. The keen and caustic Voltaire said, in bitter scorn: “One can see how stupid the old Bible is, in that it has addled the intellect of Sir Isaac Newton, the most acute on the earth, until he talks like a fool. He says the time will come when a man will be at one point on the earth’s surface at the beginning of an hour and fifty miles away at the end of it. Absurd! unthinkable!” But this day the prophecy of Newton is fulfilled before our eyes, both as to the rate of transportation and communication and as to accelerated missionary movements.

Says the prophet Nahum: “The chariots shall be with flaming torches in the day of his preparation. . . . They shall seem like torches, they shall run like the lightnings.” Prepared to hand are the agencies of God. The railroad train, the steamship, the telegraph, the telephone, the printing-press, the mail service,—all these, and other means, have been brought into existence for the giving of the last message. Let us utilize these agencies to the utmost in the fulfilment of the great commission.