p. 3 | Editorial by W. W. P.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 18, 1907

Editorial

By W. W. P.

Editorial Letter

Jottings from the Editor's Note-Book

CHRISTIANIA, where the annual conference for Norway was held, is almost directly north of Hamburg, and the journey occupied two nights and one day. The difference in the length of day at the two places is very marked. In fact, it could hardly be said that there was any night at Christiania. The sun did not disappear below the horizon until past nine o'clock, and then the twilight continued until the dawn of day. This was my first experience of this kind, and as the meeting was held at the time when the days were the longest, it was just the time to see the night transformed into day.

The meetings of the conference were held in the hall occupied by the Christiania church, and I found a pleasant and comfortable home at the health home conducted in the building adjoining the publishing house and owned by that institution. The attendance on the part of our people was the largest in the history of the conference; and at some of the services, evenings and on Sunday, many strangers were present, and the large hall was so full that it was necessary to place seats in the aisles. Several ministers of other denominations and other Christian workers attended some of the meetings, and seemed to be deeply interested.

I was pleased to meet at this gathering several whom I had known in America, just among them being Elder O. A. Johnson, the president of the conference, and Brother Jenson, the foreman of the printing-office.

A report of the proceedings of the conference will be furnished for the REVIEW, and so I will not need to write particularly of that part of the meeting, but will refer in a general way to other features. Brethren L. R. Conradi, J. C. Raft (the president of the Danish Conference), M. L. Andreason, from America, and C. C. Jenson, who had just returned from America, and I, did the public speaking, Brother Raft acting as interpreter for those who could not use the Scandinavian language.

In my teaching I tried to present the fundamental principles of this gospel message as a personal experience, showing what it means at this time to believe in Christ for salvation, and why just such a message is needed in this last generation to meet the needs of this time. We have no new gospel to preach, but in this message is the fulness of the gospel of Christ our sacrifice, our substitute, our surety, our High Priest, and our coming King. The final and supreme effort is now being made to pervert this gospel, and to hide from view the true Saviour, the Mediator whose ministry can alone avail for us in this hour of God's judgment. Man's words have been substituted for God's words, and a false philosophy, in which is no salvation from sin, has been put in place of the genuine gospel of Christ, and thus humanity has been cut off from divinity, and left to the buffetings of Satan. By such teaching as this the Christ of the Scriptures has been displaced by a merely human Christ, and the God of the Bible has been set aside for the god of science, and the revelation of God has been eclipsed by the so-called discoveries of men. There is therefore the greatest need of a message in which the true Christ shall be proclaimed, which shall call upon all to worship the true and living God, and which shall set forth in a true light the revelation which God has made of himself. Such a message is the threefold message of Revelation 14, in the light of which the whole Bible is now to be interpreted, and the true understanding of which will save us from the deceptive doctrines which are now flooding the world.

Only the divine mind, which foresaw just the condition of things in this last generation, could have outlined in so few words the setting for this message which must be preached in all the world in order to leave the people without excuse in the day when the Son of man will be revealed. The very wording of this message is in itself a divine testimony to its genuineness, and if it is carefully followed, it will give color to all our study and teaching of the Scriptures.

There was a good response to this presentation of the truth, and many seemed to see more clearly than ever before the real meaning of this message, and why it must be proclaimed to all the world in this generation.

The day after the conference closed, I met with the workers and such others as could attend, and we gave special study to the way in which the words of the three messages in Revelation 14 should guide us in our teaching of the Word of God. I hope that what we learned will be an inspiration to these workers in their future experiences.

We left Christiania in the evening after the close of our work, and arrived in Stockholm the next morning, where we remained two days before proceeding to the meeting in Finland. This gave me the much-needed opportunity to do some writing, which I was glad to improve, and also the privilege of seeing something of the city. Stockholm has some fine buildings, both public and private, among the former being the new parliament building recently completed at an expense of eight million kroner, or between two and three million dollars.

Our boat to Finland was delayed on account of the fog, so that we missed our connection at Abo, and were compelled to spend the night in this the most northerly city which we visited on our trip. The glow of the setting sun was still in the west when we retired, and it was possible to read without artificial light at any time during the night. In this place we were reminded, by the presence of Russian soldiers, that Russia had taken full control of Finland. From what the American consul told us in Hamburg we expected that the same regulations concerning passports applied now in Finland as in Russia proper, and we had prepared accordingly at considerable additional expense, but we found this unnecessary, as no request was made for passports during our stay in the country.

The general appearance of that part of Finland through which we went on the train was not particularly attractive, but we found Helsingfors, where

meeting was held, a much prettier city than I had anticipated. There was a general air of thrift and enterprise, which I had hardly expected to find from what I had read of the way in which Finland had been oppressed by Russia. We saw at a distance the fortress where one of the most serious mutinies of the recent revolution had taken place, and visited the hill from which our brethren saw the battle which resulted in the surrender of the mutineers and the capture of some of their Finnish allies. Of our meeting I will write in my next letter. W. W. P.