JOEL C. ROGERS by Joel C. Rogers

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 8, 1910

JOEL C. ROGERS

By Joel C. Rogers

NYASALAND.— Do the believers in the message realize that its warning voice is rapidly nearing the uttermost parts of the earth? During the past week, with our prophetic charts hung up before heathen from Portuguese Central Africa, we have been giving a course of simple lectures on those three messages which first stirred your hearts to their depths a few years ago. We have been longing to go into that expanse of darkness in Portuguese territory, where men and women are still caught and driven and sold as beasts of the prairies. Restrictions hedged the way. Now God is sending some of these people to our stations. One faithful young man from that region has been with us three years. Soon, if able, we hope to send him back, with the two or three helpers, to definitely open my work. Let your prayers go with Peter Masula. “Masula” means, in the native tongue, “opening.”

You say: “How nice that is! Our missionaries can sit at their stations, and the Lord sends them people to teach.” Indeed the Lord always does his part. But the missionary has a part of his own. In this case of Peter, for two years he was among the stubborn, untamable, resisting ones. How many times have my wife and myself with groanings prayed over him and others like him! If we did not sometimes see answers to prayer like this, the burdens would be too heavy to bear. Probably there is not naturally a more stubborn, proud human being born than the heathen African. Heathenism in Africa is a system of brute rule that begets pride and stubbornness in their basest form.

Next to the blessed privilege of meeting with our dear people, which we may not enjoy, is the knowledge that their prayers ascend for us. This cheers us in lonely, busy burden-bearing, and your prayers reach us in the form of God's unmeasured power and peace, even in times of confusion and unrest. Keep the channel open. Do not omit prayer for your missionaries from your daily program. We often wonder why we hear so little of volunteers moved by the mighty Spirit to devote themselves to definite fields for mission work. Central Africa must have volunteers. At this end we are praying for such workers. “The harvest is great.”