Experiences in Greece

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Jul 1, 1909

Experiences in Greece

[June 5, Prof. W. E. Howell, who, has been laboring in Greece, gave the following interesting experience.]

GREECE is a name that is familiar to every Seventh-day Adventist, because of the prominence that country has in the great field of prophecy. It is also a familiar name to our college students, because of the remarkable place it has occupied in the field of history, art, and philosophy. It is a small country, but not of such a character as is generally believed in these times. I am surprised to find how general a lack of knowledge there is about this little country.

The whole eastern half of the Mediterranean is essentially Greek. There are some ten or eleven million Greeks all together. The countries of Turkey, Palestine, Egypt, and the northern shores of Africa as far west as Algiers, are all familiar with the Greek language.

But the Greeks are an easy-going people. They have few resources. Many have gone to other parts of the world. It may be surprising to some of you that in this country there are 200,000 Greeks. On the steamer on which we came were 1,000 more who landed in New York only a short time ago. The Greeks have also migrated to South America, Australia, and the islands of the Pacific Ocean. In this country there are few cities of any size where you do not find some Greeks.

When we took up missionary work in Greece, we thought to use the Bible as a basis of that work. The Greeks pride themselves upon the fact that theirs was the prevailing language in the known world at the time that Christ was here. Our Saviour did his teaching mainly in the Greek language. The New Testament was written in the Greek language. The apostles did their work mostly in this language, and now the spiritual pride of the Greeks has grown to that extent that they regard everything as a false substitute that does not have the original text of the Greek New Testament. They consider that it is something that must not be tampered with in any way. And so, as there exists in Greece a close union of church and state, they have agreed that no translation of the original text of the Greek New Testament shall be made in other languages for circulation in that country.

The British and Foreign Bible Society had made a translation of the Bible into modern Greek some forty or fifty years ago, and for a number of years they had freedom in circulating that Word; but a situation developed in 1901 that led to the taking of this action by the Holy Synod, compelling the Bible Society to cease the sale of the Bible in the modern Greek. It is also forbidden to persuade any member of the Greek Church to join any other.

Now just a word about the work we shall have endeavored to do in Greece. My family and I went there about two years ago. We studied the language and started the work. Greece is fallow ground, and has been so for centuries. We had a representative there years ago, who remained but a short time. There has been no other worker there, so far as I know. In printing our literature in modern Greek we take extracts from the Bible. We have just put through an edition of 3,000 of the tract, “The Way to Christ.” We have manuscript ready for several other tracts, and also the first two chapters of “Steps to Christ,” and part of the third chapter, and if God gives me strength, I shall not rest until the whole of “Steps to Christ” is in modern Greek, ready to be printed.

After we had been in Athens for nine months, a letter came one day addressed “To the Seventh-day Sabbath-keeping Missionary in Athens,” and by God’s providence that letter came to me. It proved to be a letter from a Greek brother away up in the mountains of Albania, across the line from the independent country of Greece, yet in the old Greek territory. Albania and Macedonia are still largely Greek. This brother was seeking for light. He had learned some of the principles of Protestantism through the efforts of Brother Baharian and others. Through reading a small tract on the Sabbath question, printed by Brother Baharian in Constantinople, he had accepted the Sabbath before he knew that there were any other Sabbath-keeping people except the Jews. He said that for about two years after the truth came to him, he hesitated to obey it, but one Sabbath, when he was going out to his work, conviction fell upon him so strongly that he went back home, and told his wife that he could not work any more on the Sabbath. It was several years more, however, before he could convince her that Saturday was the Sabbath. I sat down and prepared my first Bible reading in Greek, and wrote my first Greek letter. We corresponded for some time, and finally I went up to see him. I had some very interesting experiences, I can assure you, but suffice it to say that I found this brother and his wife and five children observing the Sabbath faithfully, and willing to receive all the light we had time to give them.

I might just add this: We have been accustomed to speak of the Greek language as a dead language. Brethren and sisters, don’t do it any more. The Greeks are not a dead nation, and theirs is not a dead language.