p. 10 | The Prison a Place of Deliverance by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 11, 1912

The Prison a Place of Deliverance

By W. A. S.

THE story of our work in Turkey has more than once furnished illustrations of God's power to overrule the imprisonment of his servants to the salvation of other prisoners who perhaps only thus could have been reached.

At the Friedensau council, Elders Z. G. Baharian and A. M. Buzugherian told of the blessed experience in ministering the Word within prison walls. In Rome of old the apostle Paul rejoiced that even by his bonds the name of Christ had been made known, and some even in Nero's palace had found salvation. Elder H. F. Schuberth, president of the East German Union Conference, makes the following report:—

A few weeks ago I visited in Hungary, near Budapest, a man in a prison who wanted to be baptized. He had been keeping the Sabbath in prison for quite a while, being released from work for that day. Perhaps you will wonder how he came to embrace the truth in prison. Two brethren in Canada—a Rumanian and a Servian—sold their farms, and came to Hungary to bring the truth to their relatives. On the Hungarian border the police arrested these brethren, and put them in prison, thinking that they were land-agents to persuade people to go to the United States. Being in the prison forty-five days, our brethren preached the truth; and about twelve wanted to begin to keep the Sabbath. The inspector of the prison did not know how to help himself, so he kept transferring the Canadian brethren from one prison to another, thinking in that way to kill this movement. The man I visited was one of those who had thus received the truth; another man has already been baptized, and served his time. The one I recently baptized is an educated Servian, a fine man, formerly a higher officer of the police, being thoroughly converted. He will come out of prison in a few months.

Do not these experiences show the wondrous delivering hand of God? The Christian may never know just what is the road of highest service. In bonds or free, he is the Lord's and always on duty. Joseph, innocent and mistreated, might have wrapped himself up in prison with his own troubles; but when he saw two other men downcast in trouble, his kindly heart saw the way of service, and he said, “Wherefore look ye so sadly to-day?” That kindly service was the gate to liberty and to royal honors in the land of Egypt. And the same faithfulness in the court of the king that had characterized his life in prison made Joseph a witness to the living God before all the empire.

W. A. S.