A Greeting From Russia by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 11, 1908

A Greeting From Russia

By W. A. S.

THE following address from our brethren in Russia to the brethren in America has been in the hands of workers and church elders as one of the last week of prayer circulars of mission-field news, but it has never been published in the REVIEW. These words from the Russian believers, on the occasion of the organization of the Russian Union Conference, should be read by all:—

The undersigned delegates to the Russian Union, assembled in Riga, Oct. 24-29, 1907, to the Seventh-day Adventist General Conference at Washington, D. C.

Psalm 133, Greeting. We rejoice that during the last twenty-one years Almighty God has so blessed the humble efforts of his children in this vast empire, with its one hundred forty millions of people, speaking one hundred languages, that it is now possible, in harmony with the recommendation of the General Conference Committee, meeting in Gland, to organize a new mission field, two local conferences, and a union conference, the union composed of three conferences and three mission fields, with a membership of twenty-five hundred.

We most heartily thank the brethren in America and throughout the world for their generous aid and sympathy in former years, when we suffered persecution and imprisonment and banishment for the faith, and we assure them

of our loyalty to the third angel’s message, and promise them our hearty co-operation in spreading the gospel of the kingdom in time to come; and, as the youngest in the sisterhood of union conferences, we ask them still to remember us in their prayers and offerings, that we may be true to God in all, so that his work may go forward as never before—“not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord.”

J. T. BOETTCHER, DANIEL ISAAK, H. J. LOEBSACK, H. K. LOEBSACK, D. P. GAEDE, J. SPROHGE, O. WILDGRUBE, L. R. CONRADI, and forty-seven others, representatives at the organization of the Russian Union Conference.

In twenty-one years our cause in Russia attained its majority. A rugged growth it had indeed; for until recently the believers endured imprisonment, exile, and all manner of persecution. Nothing could turn the onward march of the advent message; and now, with liberty to develop, unhindered by proscription, the truth is being spread abroad in European and Asiatic Russia. Now, taking even as never before, is the time to help with means and workers, that our brethren in Russia may develop school and evangelistic enterprises quickly to carry the message through the vast empire while there is liberty to work.

W. A. S.