A Burning Shame by A. T. Pierson

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 4, 1903

A Burning Shame

By A. T. Pierson

THE church of Christ, with forty millions of members in her Christian and Protestant communions, and with eight or ten millions of pounds sterling in the treasuries of British and American Christians alone, at the opening of the twentieth century of the Christian era, with all the couriers that God has put at her disposal, has not once yet carried the proclamation of her King to the ends of the earth; and there has not been one generation since Christ ascended, in which every human soul could be said to have had even one hearing of the gospel message. I solemnly affirm before God that this is a burning shame to the Christian church—that we have no right to talk about having done our duty, that we have no ground for indulging in the language of self-gratulation, that we have no right to speak of our fidelities, to dwell on our successes, or to think of the generosity of our gifts. This is all a most contemptible and contemptuous treating of the Lord our God. There is not the slightest practical difficulty in reaching the whole world—the race that now exists on this globe, the very generation of which we are forming a part—with the gospel, if the church would but awake to her duty.—A. T. Pierson, D. D.