The Message in China by A. C. Selmon

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 9, 1911

The Message in China

By A. C. Selmon

CHINESE reverence for literature would naturally emphasize the importance of the printed page in any effort to place before the people the message of salvation. The special message that this denomination has been called to give to the world is based at all times upon the plain statements of Scripture, and historical facts used to show the fulfilment of the prophetic outline. The necessity for a wide distribution of printed matter is evident. To meet the need along this line, tracts and pamphlets are being issued, also a monthly paper, the Signs of the Times. This paper is filled from month to month with the message of salvation. The growth in circulation, together with the work it has already accomplished, testifies to its usefulness. In 1908 the average circulation was only three thousand copies a month, but at the present time the regular issue is over twenty-five thousand a month, the circulation having doubled in the last five months. It is a means of bringing many to a knowledge of the everlasting gospel.

An idol-worshiper in one of the interior provinces, through reading a single issue was led to turn from idolatry; and securing a copy of the Bible, he studied it with the help of one of our colporteurs. He has left off his idolatry, his wine, and his tobacco, and now is an earnest God-fearing man. He is teaching his heathen neighbors the better way, with the result that several are anxious to turn from idolatry to the worship of the true God.

The key-note of all our literature is the gospel as the message of life to the dead, as the gift of immortality in soul and body, and this to a people whose only hope of a future life is bound up in the degrading Buddhist doctrine of transmigration, and the loss of individual being. It must be evident to all that men do not change their gods except for better ones. And it must be confessed that by the orthodox teaching as heard from the majority of the missionary body in China, the natural force of the gospel is abated. Some converts are persuaded, but the masses are not convinced nor alarmed nor won by a love that passeth knowledge. The proof of this is seen in the present universal move on the part of practically all missions in the East to establish and promote educational work. This is a tacit admission that it takes something besides the gospel message as they are preaching it to convert the Orientals. The orthodox teaching as it is preached and printed in China fails in presenting God's love for man in such a way that the Chinese are led to believe in a real and personal God. Intelligent Chinese refuse to believe that a god who will punish the creatures of his own hand with unspeakable punishment in a never-ending hell, is a god of love. They can only think of him as a being more cruel than the king of hell that is set forth in their own religions. In a land of fatalists, and among a people the great mass of whom are able to eke out only the barest kind of existence amid conditions of filth and misery, the orthodox teachings fails in the production of either hope or fear. This comes about through not teaching the sublime truth of Christ’s coming to judge the nations, as the next great event in the history of the world. Through the heralding of this message in China, we have seen the resistance of the heathen vanquished. The message, “Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come,” leads the lukewarm and backslidden Chinese Christian to repent and seek forgiveness.

Such is the message that is needed in China to-day to compel attention and to break down the opposition of the stolid, haughty, philosophic Chinese, and such is the message that we are striving by God’s help to proclaim throughout the length and breadth of this great empire.

A. C. SELMON, M. D.