We Acknowledge This Book as God's Book by T. E. BOWEN

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 19, 1916

“We Acknowledge This Book as God's Book”

By T. E. BOWEN

T. E. BOWEN

Over in Madagascar, according to a report published in the August number of the Bible in the World, the people reverence the Bible. And this is true not only of the people on this island. Missionaries more and more are learning that the people regarded as heathen, whether in China, India, Africa, or in the islands of the sea, have a high regard for what the Great Book says.

We quote the following incident concerning the Malagasy Christians in Madagascar:—

“It is interesting,” says James Sibree, D. D., “to see what deference our

Malagasy Christians pay to the authority of the Scriptures. One of my brother missionaries had occasion to reprove rather severely a village congregation in his district for certain conduct which he considered very reprehensible; so a day was fixed on which he was to go and meet the people and show them in what they had been wrong. On coming to the little chapel, he found the members all assembled, and before commencing the meeting the native pastor stood up and said: ‘We know, sir, that you have come out here to reprove us for that in which you think we are blameworthy.’ Then, pointing to the open Bible on the pulpit desk, he said, ‘We acknowledge this book as God's Word; and if you can show us clearly from the Bible that we are wrong, we will confess our fault and try to amend. If you can give us only your own opinion, well, we will argue it out with you, for you are a man like ourselves, and you may be mistaken. But prove us to be at fault by this Bible, and we will submit to your reproofs.’ That pastor in a little village thus showed a manly independence which we can admire, but yet acknowledged the Book as ‘the judge that ends the strife.’”

We suppose the foreign pastor was able from the open Book of God on the pulpit desk to show those people their error; and most likely they acknowledged their wrong, and corrected their ways. But suppose, just for a moment, that he could not have found one word in that open Book to condemn their doings, what then? Would it not have been true that in such a case the people of that little chapel were entitled to their opinions equally with the pastor?

The reason Seventh-day Adventists in all their mission work teach the sacredness of the seventh day is shown in the fact that this is the day that that open Book proclaims throughout all its sacred pages to be the Sabbath of the Lord our God.