The Closing Year and the Closing Doors by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 3, 1908

The Closing Year and the Closing Doors

By W. A. S.

EVENTS of the closing days of 1908 have a message for every true Seventh-day Adventist. They should give point to our prayers this week of prayer, and lead to a larger annual offering than ever before.

Things are not going on over the world just as ever aforetime. The crisis we have talked about is visibly closing in, and our work is affected by it. Already the preparations for war and the open talk of an outbreak of hostilities in the Balkans next spring make the way of our workers there more difficult. If the gathering winds are not once more held back and quelled, it means the closing of many a door of opportunity in Europe, and great trouble and perplexity for our laborers and people.

For years we have had comparative quiet, and the Lord has wonderfully opened doors in these regions of Europe. But workers have been few and means limited. We pray God for yet a little more time; but how can we pray in faith for yet more time without dedicating our service and our means for the enlargement of our meager forces?

Now Turkey is wide open. We ought, as Elder Conradi has said, to have a hundred workers there to make up lost time. No one but the Lord can tell when the outbreak of war in southeastern Europe, or some new development, will swing shut these doors. Now is the time to act.

For years the way has been open in Persia. We have never set foot in that great country. And now there seems a chronic state of turmoil coming on. How long must Persia wait for the advent message?

After trying long to hold back the acknowledgment, the British authorities are constrained to admit that India is in

a far more dangerous state of unrest than in the days before the sudden outbreak of the great Mutiny of 1856. The doors are closing, and we have so much yet undone, so many languages and peoples unreached.

So, too, China, with all the Orient, is astir. As truly as we have a message for the world, the doors so long wide open are not long to be held.

True, our work will not stop even amid the tumult of great world-changes. Whatever comes, the message is to be carried to all peoples. But we shall know to the full the meaning of that warning that the work not done in times of peace will have to be done amid great trouble and sorrow in times of tumult.

The angels have been holding the winds. Even for the heavenly powers it has meant the putting forth of earnest effort, so ripe is the world for the final harvest of destruction. But the cry still goes up, Hold, hold, till we have sealed the servants of our God. And to this advent people is committed that sealing message of Sabbath reform. As the angels check the winds of strife, and hold open these doors, they must look to this people to see us enter. It means a call right now to get into the unentered regions. It means increasing our forces in the mission fields where we have but a foothold.

There is nothing else to live for, nothing else worth while, no other purpose for means beyond the necessaries of life, than to press this message on at home and abroad. Pray for the largest annual offering from our own people that we have ever had. The Thanksgiving effort must not lead any to overlook the annual offering, in which we ourselves bring the gifts for missions. From all the four quarters of the earth comes the call for an advance.

W. A. S.