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The Midsummer Offering

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 14, 1906

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 83, No. 24.

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The Midsummer Offering

By Allen Moon

THE collection that will be taken June 30, is for foreign mission purposes, and I feel certain that our people will deal liberally with this cause on this occasion, as they have in the past.
Foreign mission work has reached large proportions as compared with what it was a few years ago. As we are living in the last generation,—the generation that will witness the preaching of this gospel of the kingdom “in all the world for a witness unto all nations,” it is important that we do aggressive work. New fields must be entered, and new stations established in the countries already entered; and there is no end in sight, as yet.
In some of the older mission fields the work has reached a stage where it is either wholly or in part self-supporting; and some countries, like Germany, that a few years ago were regarded as mission fields, are now not only self-supporting, but contribute considerable sums annually toward the work in other lands. This, by no means, is calculated to rob us in the home land of the privilege of contributing more and more for the accomplishment of the work of the Master in the dark corners of the earth.
The offering should be a liberal one, in view of the fact that the treasury of the Mission Board is about empty, and the time from midsummer until the annual offering has for years been the most trying, on account of the fact that the offerings are small during that period. It is not a very comfortable position to occupy to be in a strange land, among a people of strange language, being regarded with suspicion by all around you, and then have your support fail, and to receive a letter from the Mission Board saying we have no money, and can not send any this quarter. Yet, just that has occurred in the history of the Seventh-day Adventist mission work. A good brother who sacrificed his life in India wrote to the Mission Board: “Your letter makes the cold chills run down my back, even in this torrid climate.” But, thanks be to God, this was not since our people were made thoroughly acquainted with mission work, and a more thorough system of contributions inaugurated; and by divine help, let us say it shall not be so again. The Lord has not only permitted us to receive a knowledge of his truth, but he has permitted us to live in a land of the greatest prosperity on the face of the earth. Since the power to get wealth is the gift of God, why should we not pray that God would endow us with wisdom and power to acquire some of this vast wealth, and then when he gives it, we could do no less than to place it in the hands of the Foreign Mission Board to extend the mightiest movement ever witnessed among men. But let us remember the words of the Saviour: God can not entrust us with great things, even in answer to prayer, unless we are faithful in small things.
ALLEN MOON.