p. 7 | The Situation in the Mission Fields by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 30, 1911

The Situation in the Mission Fields

By W. A. S.

WITHIN two weeks we shall be in the midst of the annual season of special prayer and special gifts for missions. No reader of the mission-field reports need be told that the situation does call for united prayer and most earnest planning for the week of prayer offering.

First of all, the work in the mission fields, just as it stands to-day, presents an aspect that cheers and yet solemnizes the heart. In all quarters of the earth the boundaries of our work are being pressed forward by an irresistible power from on high. Beyond all the planning of the Mission Board, the work year by year enters new fields. And in the old missionaries continually at the end of their fields the growing work keeps our misresources. They cry for help; and, under God, their confidence is in this church of the advent people who are now to make the annual offering to missions.

Calls Still Waiting

Here are some of the calls that just now have to be denied, or delayed. In India’s list, presented at the recent General Conference Committee Council, it was decided that immediate response could not be given to the following requests: A man and his wife for the Hindustani work; a man and his wife for South India; a man and his wife for Bengal; and a man and his wife for the work among the Karens of Burma.

Concerning the call for the Hindustani man, Elder J. L. Shaw says:—

The Hindustani work on the plains is in a critical condition. After arousing considerable interest, gathering out several workers, and making some converts among the Hindustani people in the plains, Brother and Sister L. J. Burgess opened their school work in the Garhwal hills, and no man is available to give his time to the Hindustani work. Three or four sisters are working among the women, but a man is urgently needed to open up a mission station on the plains. So necessary is this call that it was voted by the India committee to request the Mission Board to send out such workers at once, so that they could be in the field by the end of the present year.

Concerning this same call Brother L. J. Burgess writes:—

If a new man is sent out at once, it means about two years before he will be able to do much work in the language. We will try to hold the fort, but if there should be much longer delay, it will require a great deal of courage to continue the struggle. If there is any urgent call from this field, this seems to be the one. I am confident that as soon as we get the Hindustani work on a proper basis, we shall see the message going throughout the breadth of this country with a rapidity that will be surprising. We shall be anxiously looking for news of a man to answer this call.

This Hindustani tongue is spoken by about eighty millions in India.

Of the call for the Karen workers for Burma, Elder Shaw says:—

This is the longest-standing unanswered call before the Mission Board from India. Request for a man and his wife to work among the Karens was first made six or eight years ago, and has been approved and sanctioned at every meeting since then.

Workers have, of course, gone to India since then; but in the conditions and needs of the work we have not been able to send sufficient helpers so that the brethren could assign a man and his wife definitely to the Karen work.

Elder H. H. Votaw, of Rangoon, Burma, who has urged the needs of the Karen people, whose traditions place them in an attitude of listening and inquiring for this advent message, writes:—

The burden of the Karen work is becoming such that I can scarcely bear it. I should say the fact that there is no Karen worker is my greatest burden. It is now about six years since I first began to write upon this subject, and still no one is at work among them. I feel sure they offer as good an opening as, if not the best one in, any heathen tribe in all the world. Why Seventh-day Adventists have done nothing for them I can not understand. If the fault has been mine, I mean to cast off the reproach and free myself. I fear that I have not been insistent enough. I have been afraid of adding to your burdens. But I serve notice that I mean to “storm heaven” and the representatives of God’s work in the earth in behalf of this long-neglected people.

“They Call Us”

So the cries come in, brethren and sisters; and from across every sea, in fact, “they call us to deliver.”

At the recent autumn council of the General Conference Committee, appropriations were made to send two English evangelists for the great cities of India, a call which the India brethren have long had listed; also to send a teacher and his wife for school work that can not be delayed; and one city Bible worker and a dispensary Bible worker, the latter needed in village work among the millions of Bengal, to take the place of one of our sisters who must turn aside with broken health to recuperate. These workers, it is hoped, will go in January.

The council felt the conviction that without largely increased gifts no further help for India could safely be planned for at this time. But this coming week of prayer season of giving will tell whether our workers in these needy fields who are “storming heaven” for help shall receive during 1912 some of the longed-for additional assistance. Qualified workers are awaiting the word to go.

Two new missionary couples are just entering China, and a China mission treasurer, and a stenographer and office assistant will soon be in the field. Our missionaries in China point to Sabbath-keepers

springing up beyond their power even to visit them, and ask for just a few more workers; but China’s appropriations are stretched to the limit of the possible until the mission income is increased.

So across in troubled but awakening China companies that are calling for instruction must still be told that we have not the workers to send; and doubtless again, in the language of one such company, they will answer, “What a pity! what a pity!”

Space will not allow even mention of other urgent calls that are listed in the Mission Board from all the four quarters of the earth. It is inspiring to see the stirring up of interest by this message in all the world. It is only with awe that we can watch the onward sweep of the advent movement, for we realize that the very hand of God is leading the way. The Lord is making bare his arm in the eyes of all the nations. And his stewards, or treasurers, are his people on earth. Hundreds of missionaries, battling away among the millions in far countries, will at this time look this way, and pray: “God bless the believers in the home lands, and prosper them in planning large gifts for the missionary cause.”

Every week of prayer finds thousands of new voices in the regions beyond joining us for the first time in thanking God for the third angel’s message, and lifting the advent cry a note higher. We are called to pray and give for a cause that is everywhere triumphing and winning souls from darkness to light. It is a wonderful work and a wonderful time, and we can never view the outlook without being aroused anew to yet more earnest endeavor. From the four quarters of the earth the voice of God’s providence cries:—

“Awake! again the gospel trump is blown; From year to year it swells in louder tone. From year to year the signs of wrath Are gathering round the Judge’s path; New wonders seen, and mighty works achieved, And truth in all the world both hated and believed.”

W. A. S.