p. 7 | The Gospel of Peace Amidst War

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 28, 1913

The Gospel of Peace Amidst War

By William Ambrose Spicer

ANOTHER good missionary report comes to us from Mexico. Usually it would be but an ordinary report of progress. But with the news we have lately had from outlying portions of Mexico, it is especially cheering to hear that the work of giving the message of the Lord's soon coming goes right forward in that country, despite troubled conditions in some parts. Soon after his return to Mexico City from the General Conference, Elder G. W. Caviness reports:—

I baptized six here in Mexico City two weeks ago. Brother J. Robles writes from Monterey that eight are ready there to go forward in baptism, and others are interested in studying the message. Their meeting room will not hold the congregations, nor can he and the lady Bible worker give all the Bible readings that the people ask for. Brother J. A. P. Green has taken a company of six canvassers to Puebla, where they are having splendid success.

This is indeed good news from Mexico. May more settled conditions soon prevail in all parts of that distressed country.

But more and more it is borne in upon us that the distressful conditions described in the last-day prophecies are coming upon the world very rapidly. Our work has spread out into nearly all lands; and now it is pretty certain to mean hardship and hindrance to our work wherever war and tumult break upon the world. Once a war in the Balkans had a far-away sound to our ears, save as we saw events leading on toward the gathering Armageddon. Now it has meant to us in the last year scores of our own brethren in trial, and many of them in peril, with the regular conduct of the work sadly interrupted. What the new emergence of conflict in southern and central China may be meaning to our brethren there and to their work, we shall doubtless learn erelong.

Peace is being taken from the earth; and we shall know to the full, no doubt, the meaning of the warning given years ago by the spirit of prophecy, that the work we have not done in times of peace will have to be done amidst the times of war and upheaval that the sure word of prophecy tells us will close the history of the nations. The angels are holding back the elements. We see it plainly. These gusts that blow here and there, threatening to break into the whirlwind of strife that the prophet saw coming up from all the coasts of the earth, are checked and held in. The threatened storm that the nations are preparing for does not break. “Now, just now, is the time to work for foreign missions.” And it is true of home missions as well. Everything in the world cries to us, “Now, just now.”

But while the gathering storm-clouds bid us hasten on, it is good to know by these experiences that come that even amidst war and revolution God's work will move forward to victory.

W. A. S.