In the Mission Field by GEO. F. ENOCH

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Nov 30, 1905

In the Mission Field

By GEO. F. ENOCH

THERE is, perhaps, no one in our ranks to whom the week of prayer appeals more strongly than to the toiler in the mission field. He has left home and friends, and the comforts of the home land, for customs and climes both strange and new, sacrificing all worldly ambition, to carry this gospel of the kingdom to all the world. Everything that points to a speedy realization of the Saviour’s wish that his people may be with him where he is, finds a ready response in his soul. To him the week of prayer and the annual offering are a barometer, gauging the missionary zeal of those left behind in the home land, foretelling whether during the year to come the burdens shall be lighter in mission lands, or whether a lack of funds will weigh him down with extra burdens.

In a recent religious gathering held there in Seattle, Wash., Secretary Patton, speaking as a missionary, in his report gave utterance to the following significant words:—

“Within five years the missionary situation of the world has been so transformed as to be hardly recognizable by those who studied the problem in the previous period. There has been nothing like this in history since the preparation of the Roman empire for the advent of Christ. We are in a new fulness of time. Once our missionaries labored ten years for a single convert; now one thousand converts await baptism in a single province in China.”

We as a people know the meaning of this great transformation. Divine agencies, in a marked manner, for more than five years have so changed the attitude of heathen lands toward the gospel message that other denominations are led to say that there has been nothing like it since the preparation of the Roman empire for the advent of Christ. It is even so. It is the preparation of the whole world for the realization of the blessed hope, the second advent of our Saviour.

This denomination has been separated from the world by the mighty cleaver of God’s truth, for this very fulness of time. The world is being prepared. It now behooves us, from the oldest to the youngest, to lay all on the altar of sacrifice, and sweep through the world with the last warning message, gathering out such as will be saved, and then shall the end come.

Those who have gone out in the mission field believe that the Lord will finish the gospel work, by raising up a people whose meat it is to do the Father’s will and to finish his work. Some will have to leave home, others must remain behind; but all will have the one meat. If they are working for a salary, conducting some business, or running a farm, all their income will be consecrated to the finishing of this work.

Had all this people done thus from the time of their separation from the world, there would have been in all the earth a mighty army, well sustained by those who remained at home, and we should now face a finished work. But it will come; we in the mission fields are certain of it. It may come sooner, or it may come later. It all depends on the attitude of those who read these lines. Let us make it sooner. We will look at the attitude of the people toward the week of prayer, and their response to the needs in the annual offering, as a gauge of their interest in the finishing of the work. How cheering it will be to hear of a good week of prayer, universal interest, enthusiastic, Spirit-filled meetings, and an unprecedented annual offering, showing a united people with hearts beating as one in the finishing of the work. Shall it not be so?

GEO. F. ENOCH, Editor of The Caribbean Watchman, of Bridgetown, Barbados.