A Pioneering Agency by William Ambrose Spicer

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

A Pioneering Agency

By William Ambrose Spicer

The railway is one of those agencies for hastening on the gospel work which came into being as the years were drawing near for the advent message to go quickly to every people of earth. Still it is opening up out-of-the-way regions of earth.

The other day Brother A. Stahl, of Bolivia, sent us a snap-shot photo of track-layers at work on the plains of Bolivia, marking his photograph, “Preparing the way for the message.”

Elder W. H. Anderson writes from the Pemba headquarters of the Northwest Rhodesia Mission, above the Zambesi River:—

The railway now extends into the Kongo State from this side, and I shall try to take a trip up there this winter, and see what the chances are for an opening in that field.

Brother O. H. Maxson, secretary of the Peruvian Mission, sends a copy of the Inca Chronicle, of Peru, giving an account of cruel slavery among the Indians of the upper Amazon River. He adds:—

We are praying that God will open the way for something to be done to help these helpless people. I suppose not much will be done to better their conditions until there is railway connection with Iquitos. As it is now, there are the Andes to cross and several days’ travel by horse to reach this region, and we know how long it took in the United States to rid the Western plains of the “bad men.”

So in Africa and Asia and in South America, regions beyond civilization and difficult of access are being opened by the rapid progress of railway development. It is being pushed forward by commercialism, but at the same time these remarkable world-opening and pace-making achievements have come just at the time for the last gospel message; and we see in it all the direct hand of Providence supplying agencies for the hastening on of the message.

W. A. S.