The Call of the Hour

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Mar 2, 1911

The Call of the Hour

To us, we know, the call of the hour is to hasten the witness of this last message to every nation and tongue. There is no other call, no other business under the third angel's message. And the situation in the world, with its open doors and its gathering storms, cries to us to bend every power to the work.

The following summary of the findings of the First Commission of the Edinburgh World's Missionary Congress, shows how the situation appeals to the missionary bodies of the world. And to us these things should mean more than to any other people:—

1. The commission, after studying the facts, and after taking counsel with the leaders of the missionary forces of the church at home and abroad, expresses its conviction that the present is the time of all times for the church to undertake, with quickened loyalty and sufficient forces, to make Christ known to all the non-Christian world. It is an opportune time. Never before has the whole world-field been so open and so accessible.

It is a critical time. The non-Christian nations are undergoing great changes. There have been times when the church confronted crises as great as those before it now on certain fields; but never before has there been such a synchronizing of crises in all the world.

It is a testing time for the church. Nothing less than the adequacy of Christianity as a world-religion is on trial.

This is a decisive hour for Christian missions. The call of Providence to all our Lord's disciples, of whatever ecclesiastical connection, is direct and urgent to undertake without delay the task of carrying the gospel to all the non-Christian world.

2. The utter inadequacy of the present missionary force to discharge effectively the duty of world-wide evangelization is evident. The present mission staff in the foreign field is not sufficient even to compass fully the work already in hand; much less is it prepared to accomplish any adequate expansion. On almost every field the efficiency and lives of the workers are endangered because of this effort to accomplish a task altogether too great for their numbers. The present status in some fields represents practically a deadlock; in many other fields there is no evidence of notable progress.