Good Words in Hard Times
By W. A. S.
An interesting report comes to us from the Argentine Conference. We have read in the newspapers of the hard times in the Argentine Republic, shared by all the republics in the River Plate valley. Drought has consumed the harvests, and locusts have devastated regions, then came overflowing floods, bringing serious times generally. The great wheat plains of Argentina that ordinarily supply grain to Europe, have evidently fallen short of even the local needs, if we may judge by the news that came from Galveston, Tex., last week, reporting that an English merchantman had cleared for Buenos Aires with a cargo of wheat. All these conditions naturally affect the business that our brethren are engaged in in Argentina. However, the acceptance of this blessed truth in South America leads believers to count the interests of the cause of God first in their hearts and in their efforts. Evidence of this comes in a letter just received from Elder B. C. Haak, president of the Argentine Conference, who writes:— There is something about our financial condition that makes us feel that the God of Elijah is still caring for his work in the earth. We all thought that the last month would be the poorest, and that it would strain our resources to the utmost to keep things going, but to our surprise it was almost one of the best months that we have had since I have been here; and instead of its leaving our treasury empty, we still have a little on hand. This is the way it has been every month so far, and that, too, without any special call. We give God all the glory, for it is he that is doing it for us. O, if we could only trust him more and be more worthy of so much blessing! It makes us wonder where our dear people get the money, as there is almost a panic in the commercial world. Yet God's truth marches on. Elder Haak has recently gone to South America, having accepted the call to that field from Minnesota about the first of the present year. He has been visiting churches and isolated believers out over the wide area of the conference, in order to get a personal acquaintance with all our people. “Wherever I have been,” he says, “we have had a real spiritual feast, and my soul was watered as I, with God’s help, tried to minister to others. I find our people are just as responsive as they are in the States, and I have reason to believe that we have come to a place in our work here where we shall see more of the Spirit of God among us. When I think of our great cities that are waiting for the truth, and then think of the few workers that we have, I sometimes wonder how the work will ever be done here. But I know that God is in the work, and that he will in some way care for it and bring it to a glorious close.” Thus it is true in all the world that the fruitage of the third angel’s message is just the same. Men go to the ends of the earth, pioneering new fields where there is not a representative of the message. The word is preached, and there spring up believers with the same spirit that is found in the hearts of believers in the older fields. Churches are raised up, school enterprises are started, printing houses established, conferences and union conferences are organized, and we see duplicated in the far fields exactly what the message has built up in the homelands. It is all in the Book which the missionary carried with him across the sea. The word of God, which demanded the rise of this movement when the hour of the prophecy came in 1844, has in it all the essentials of God’s work for these last days. The preaching of the word develops every facility needed. It is the living word of the living God, with power still to bring forth that which he would have brought into being. And it is a truth that we may base our hope upon with all assurance, that just as the word brought forth the movement when the time of the prophecy came at the opening of this generation, just so that word will accomplish the finishing of the work. W. A. S.