As It Is in All the World by William Ambrose Spicer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 6, 1915

“As It Is in All the World”

By William Ambrose Spicer

LANDING for the first time in South Africa, I hear from the lips of the brethren the same note of courage and devotion that rings in the testimony of believers in “the blessed hope” in all the world.

With us in America, these earnest times had led to increasing missionary activity and a revival in every department of soul-winning work. In passing through England I saw evidences of the same experience there. Now, after a ten-thousand-mile journey, I find exactly the same awakening blessing from God, and a feeling among the believers that the Lord is hastening his coming. Plainly the great Captain of our salvation is moving the world-wide ranks forward in close step with one another. The call of his providence that stirs our hearts in America is sounding in the hearts of the brethren and sisters here. As I have mingled with them these few days at the Cape, the words of the apostle have come again and again to my mind: “The word of the truth of the gospel; which is come unto you, as it is in all the world; and bringeth forth fruit, as it doth also in you, since the day ye heard of it.” Col. 1: 5, 6.

Wherever one finds the remnant church, keeping “the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus,” it is one folk—“our people”—the same people the world over.

This region of the Cape peninsula, as we have all known by report, is truly a beautiful spot. Within a few hours of landing I had looked down from the slopes of Table Mountain upon one of the most beautiful scenes the earth affords. But to me the most beautiful sight of that first landing day was the view of the faces of the brethren and sisters in their Wednesday night prayer meeting, glowing with love and devotion to the Lord Jesus, as some of the earlier believers told of the ever-increasing preciousness of “the blessed hope” to their hearts.

True, it was the same scene presented wherever those of “like precious faith” come to the prayer meeting, with the promised Presence “in the midst,” and that is why it was so glad a sight at the end of a long journey. It is a reminder of the meeting that will come at the end of the journey of the Advent people. In the words of old Samuel Rutherford, we may voice the bright anticipation and determination of our hearts,—

“The King there in his beauty, Without a veil is seen; It were a well-spent journey, Though seven deaths lay between.”

The faces of our brethren and sisters in South Africa are set Zionward, and they send their greetings to the believers in other lands.

W. A. S.

Cape Town.