A Challenge to Seventh-day Adventists by J. L. Shaw

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Nov 2, 1911

A Challenge to Seventh-day Adventists

By J. L. Shaw

J. L. SHAW

The great pagan cities of India, with their teeming multitudes of unwarned people, present a challenge to the faith of Seventh-day Adventists to-day. Into thousands of these strongholds of idolatry nothing more than one or two of our tracts, a paper, or a few books in the English language have found their way. Like brutes, deaf to God's message for this time, these people are hastening on to Christless graves.

For eight years and more the mighty city of Madras has been making its appeal for help to our people. Six years ago when we visited this populous and influential center of south India, our hearts were burdened with its silent cry of need, and we decided to send an appeal to the Mission Board and believers in the home land. Any lover of present truth seeing this city, with its beautiful parks, its wide extended area, many beautiful buildings, and hundreds of thousands of people going to and fro upon its streets, can but cry out for help. It is marvelous how these people have gotten hold of the English language. Everywhere we found people able to understand and speak English. We remarked at the time, “What an argument for help is this foremost Anglo-Saxon city of India!” No message of the Lord's soon coming has yet been borne by us within its borders. Lovers of the faith must know about it; and with what knowledge we had, the need was presented through our papers.

Four years passed by, and again we found ourselves at the home of a Seventh-day Adventist sister in Madras, the only representative of our people in the city. She had accepted the truth in Calcutta, and had come one thousand miles south to bear her witness for it. She told us of people who wanted to know more of the truth, and urgently entreated us for help, and wished us to promise to have a minister sent out provided she could raise money from interested friends for his transportation. Her petition for help for Madras was entered at the last General Conference, but no help has come, and now a lone canvasser in repeated letters continues the unanswered Macedonian call for help.

In Calcutta, the largest city in India, with a population of over a million, we have a small English church. For four years there has been no minister to continue the good work begun several years before. At the time of the last General Conference so great was the need of the English work in Calcutta, and so urgently did the little English church there press its claim for a minister for that city, that it appeared to us the most urgent and immediate call in the entire mission field. The call was therefore registered, and the Mission Board has made frequent and earnest efforts to find a man, and yet no one has been found.

The number of people who can be reached through the English language in India is continually increasing. The large cities are great centers of English thought and training, and yet our force of ministerial help for English work is depleted. There is no minister to proclaim the advent message to English-speaking audiences. In these cities and in all this land, with millions of people knowing English and able to help support our vernacular work, there is not one minister preaching the message in the English language. We ask with all earnestness, Is not such a condition a matter of concern to our ministers and our believers in other lands? It appeals to us as a very challenge to our faith. Are there not God-fearing ministers in more favored places at home who will respond to the need for English work in India?