It Gladdens Our Hearts by William Ambrose Spicer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 25, 1907

It Gladdens Our Hearts

By William Ambrose Spicer

NOTWITHSTANDING the comparative smallness of our numbers and limited resources, it is marvelous to all how our missionary enterprises are spreading through the earth. We are doing no more than a fraction of what might be done, it is true, and the Spirit of God appeals for the surrender and consecration of every soul and every resource. But God is wonderfully blessing the efforts that are made.

We hear of the advance of the message in many parts and through many witnesses. The public press abroad and the missionary journals bear constant

testimony to the fact that the message God has given for the last days is in evidence in mission fields away beyond anything that would naturally be expected from our numbers.

We are only beginning in Portugal, yet the very foremost newspaper and illustrated journals are advertising our work. In a recent Baptist missionary journal a correspondent in Spain reports that “the sixth-day Adventists” are reaping results there. He means to refer to our work, only just beginning, but forcing a degree of attention altogether out of proportion to the staff at work. It is according to the promise, “One man of you shall chase a thousand.” The truth of this message, preached by only one or two in a dark land, has power to set thousands to talking about the Sabbath and advent doctrines, and the message sounds out as though many were preaching it.

The stand taken by young men loyal to the Sabbath in their military service has caused the newspapers of Germany to advertise the work of Seventh-day Adventists through all the German-speaking world. A French pastor in Tahiti, Society Islands, tells the readers of the Missionary Review of the World:—

The Mormons and the Adventists have come direct from America. They do not unfold at once the whole of their strange doctrine, but go where they hope to find some people whose piety is not very enlightened, and whom they can trouble and frighten. They lay great stress upon what they call vital points, such as the baptism by immersion, or the Mosaic Sabbath, and they affirm that to overlook them means eternal death. Their converts are, however, almost wholly from the malcontents, who have thus the pleasure to take their revenge without becoming Roman Catholic. Awful temptations everywhere face our people. Drinking, gambling, immorality—all things which are so hard to repulse for a non-converted Tahitian! Is it not a shame to say that many white people openly encourage these things?

We are thus mentioned with the Mormons, but the reference to the Sabbath truth shows that the conversions to the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus wrought by this message are bearing witness in the South Seas. One thing the pastor will find it difficult to harmonize. He suggests that converts to this message are among people “whose piety is not very enlightened,” while at the same time he bewails the spread of the drink habit among his people. Yet, he must know that not a user of intoxicants, or even of tobacco, can be found among our people in the Society Islands.

These are but examples of the testimony that is being borne continually. This message of the Lord’s coming is spreading through all the earth. Some say one thing and some another about it. But all the world is yet to be talking about the most solemn and important message ever committed to mortals to carry. Truly we are called to loyalty and devotion and faithfulness in such a time as this. W. A. S.