Mission Notes

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Nov 12, 1903

The varied population of Hawaii makes it an interesting missionary field. The Orient has been pouring in its throngs until there are seventy thousand Japanese and thirty thousand Chinese. Besides these, there are Portuguese, Swiss, Danes, Norwegians, Belgians, Spaniards, French, Russians, Porto Ricans, and Africans, until twenty-three nationalities are counted—all needing the gospel.

One of the needs in New Guinea is industrial missions. Before their conversion the men engaged in war, while the little labor necessary for the production of food was left to the women. But now that war is abolished, the men are idle. The Christian who could go among these people and show them how to develop the resources of the country would open up an avenue that would mean the saving of many of the men. At present those engaged in commercial industry are largely traders, whose attitude is really antagonistic to Christianity.

There is no reason why the evangelization of this world should not be attempted and accomplished in our generation. If Ahasuerus could twice send out a proclamation to every subject in his vast kingdom, extending over five million square miles, and do it inside of a year, even with the slow “posts” of his day, what may not fifty million Protestants do, scattered from the rising to the setting sun, and from pole to pole, with the Bible translated into more than four hundred tongues; with steamships and railways that can carry us at from twenty to sixty miles an hour, and with all the new facilities for the work that make this the unique era of history? . . . The end of the age is drawing near. The earth is depopulated and repopulated thrice in a hundred years, and every second marks a birth and a death. Darkness and death are abroad, and we have the Light of life; a world-famine, and we have the Bread of life. God is calling, man is calling; the past is luminous with lessons, the future luminous with its possibilities. The church should dare great things for God, and hope greater things still from him! . . . As we confront this work, we need a new vision and revelation, both of opportunity and responsibility. If Christ is the light of the world, so is his church. The highest privilege of a believer is to receive, reflect, and transmit the glory of God as revealed in Christ through the gospel, which, practically, will never shine in the hearts of men except through believers as mirrors or transmitters of God’s grace.—A. T. Pierson.