The Year in the Mission Fields by William Ambrose Spicer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 21, 1907

The Year in the Mission Fields

By William Ambrose Spicer

W. A. SPICER

(Reading for Friday, December 20)

The sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry-trees was the signal to David’s army to go forward to assured victory, the Lord himself going before them. There is a sound of a going in all our mission fields to-day.

Thirty-three years ago, only, the first missionary of the third angel’s message was sent abroad. Every year since there has been a spreading forth of the bounds of our work until now a year’s growth represents a decided moving forward of the lines in every continent.

FIRST BUILDINGS, KALOMO STATION, N. W. RHODESIA

To us the sound of a going in the mulberry-trees is the Macedonian cry for help and the sound of the message as our workers are crying it out to many peoples and tongues. Every review of progress, every glance at the situation, calls us to arouse and go into the work as never before. Every year the signs of the final triumph are multiplied on every hand.

"Awake! again the gospel-trump is blown, From year to year it swells with louder tone, From year to year the signs of wrath Are gathering round the Judge’s path; Strange words fulfilled, and mighty works achieved, And truth in all the world both hated and believed."

New countries have this year been entered by the messengers, and new tongues have been added to our missionary list. It has been a year also of counseling and organization of forces in the fields, with consequent increase of efficiency. The first really representative general councils have been held in the West Indies, Japan, China, India, and Europe.

The occasion of the European meeting was the spring council of the General Conference Committee in Switzerland. From north and south and east and west, the European workers came in, fresh from the field of conflict, courageous in the work, and not a note of retreat was to be heard. Twenty years ago there were a thousand Seventh-day Adventists, all told, in Europe. To-day there are over a thousand laborers there, engaged directly in the work. Last week of prayer we told of progress in Russia in spite of restrictive religious laws. This year our hearts have been electrified

by the glad news that an imperial edict has swept away restrictions and granted Seventh-day Adventists liberty to freely propagate and practise the faith. This has come like a call from heaven to three thousand Sabbath-keepers in Russia, urging them to spread abroad the message more vigorously than ever, while liberty is theirs.

Up to this year, in the kingdom of Bavaria, our work was carried forward amid special trials. But it moved forward. Religious meetings, with singing or praying, were forbidden. Our Nuremberg church-members had been fined as high as twelve dollars each for attending a service. Still they met in one place and another, and sometimes in the shelter of the woods. And their love for the truth but grew brighter and brighter. They prayed for deliverance. Suddenly this year, action was taken by the government, and the local authorities notified our people that they were free. Our brethren could scarcely believe it. No more police watching, none to forbid them to sing and pray together! No wonder they sang and prayed, then sang and prayed again, praising the Lord, when first they opened a meeting with none to molest or to make them afraid.

In Austria, where it is not allowed us to have public meetings, or even to give away religious literature, ways are found for carrying the work forward. About seventy-five believers have already been gathered out there. One way of working has been to put an advertisement into the newspapers, inviting correspondence from any who were seeking for truth and for information regarding the signs of the times and coming events. Pathetic and heart-stirring responses were received to these advertisements, showing that in the darkest Catholic communities hearts are longing and praying for light. These interests are followed by interviews, or literature ordered sent in by mail from Hamburg.

From a Saxon family, in the inner part of Transylvania, came the message to our Hungarian workers: "Come over and help us. There is a great work to do among us. We have already begun to keep the Sabbath."

The new Northland Mission has been organized in Scandinavia, to carry the truth to the inhabitants of the extreme north, including the Laplanders, some of whom are already rejoicing in the truth. Now work in Greece is opened, and in Servia, also. Every country in Europe is now entered by our work, except that very small principality of Montenegro, which is hardly counted a separate country.

Last week of prayer we rejoiced to learn that about four hundred Catholics had embraced the truth in Europe during the previous year. Now our brethren estimate that fully five hundred Catholics took their stand with us last year. It is marvelous. Only by the mighty power of God in the message of the judgment hour can such results be accounted for. Showers of blessing are falling on dark lands in this time of the latter rain.

There are about four hundred Seventh-day Adventists in Asiatic Russia, and now the brethren talk of organizing a Siberian mission. Russia itself is to be organized into a union conference.

OUR NEW (LEASED) TRAINING-SCHOOL AT SINGAPORE

In the far East, the general meetings for Japan and China showed most encouraging progress. But the dominant note of those gatherings was a cry for help to enter the whitening fields. There is no evading the issue. Province after province in vast China must be entered. The little groups standing amid millions upon millions of souls can never be left without a steady column of reinforcements going out to join them. Providence plainly opens wide before us the way into the Chinese empire right now when it is awakening from the sleep of centuries. Pray, brethren, pray, and give for China’s millions.

The Australasian Union has opened Java, and by this time it may be a work is begun in wild Borneo also. A young man on the way to the cannibal tribes of Borneo found the truth in Singapore, and stopped for a time to become fully instructed in it. The canvasser has put books into Siam, and in northern Sumatra a young Battak man accepted the truth a little time ago, and appealed to us in the words: "This message ought to go to my people." Now comes the message that in his country, which is closed to our missionaries from without, six persons are keeping the Sabbath. A general meeting in the Fiji Islands, attended by one hundred seventy-five Sabbath-keepers, marks a new era of development in the Pacific. The Fiji churches voted to look after themselves, and to give their native teachers to the work in the regions beyond. It is the same spirit everywhere.

In India the work has been spreading into the north, and the new mountain mission is established in the Himalayas. Settled workers have also been located in the Tamil-speaking territory of the south, and on the Bombay side, in the west. The first church was organized this year in Burma, those Burmese believers being ready to throw aside tobacco smoking, betel-nut chewing, and the wearing of jewelry just as in every land the truth works reformation in all the habits of life. The third angel’s message is to get a people ready to meet the Lord, body, soul, and spirit sanctified to his service.

New developments brighten the outlook in darkest Africa. The first church is organized on the West Coast, in Sierra Leone, and a school work established that is to train young workers already having a knowledge of a number of the languages of the West Coast tribes. They should have a school building and a school man at once. A new station is projected in Rhodesia, north of the Zambesi; the Uganda country is opened by the British Union station on the northern shore of Lake Victoria Nyanza; the German brethren are opening a new station on the southern shore of the lake; and the first baptisms have been reported from Algeria, in the north of Africa. To crown the year in the African advance, two Scandinavian missionaries are away in the interior of the Italian Red Sea colony, working and studying to get into Abyssinia, that land of ancient Sabbath-keeping. But, O, how great the need of men to extend the line in Africa, and of means to follow the opening providences of God!

South America reports a new state, a great country entered. A year ago the laws of Bolivia prohibited Protestant missions. Within the year the constitution has been revised, and the country opened. A brother in Chile, praying that God would send some one to Bolivia, was himself impressed to go, and now three workers are there, and the first Sabbath-keepers are reported, converts from Catholicism. Not only in Spanish, but in two Indian languages, they are beginning to publish the message in Bolivia. The first church was this year organized in Peru, and the Chile Mission has become an organized conference. The State of Bahia, in Brazil, has been entered, and the first baptisms have been administered there.

In the West Indian Union the country of San Domingo has been opened; and Sabbath-keepers are already reported. The first baptism of Cuban believers gladdens our hearts in reviewing the year, and the first baptisms among the Spanish people of Honduras are reported. Efforts were made to add Nicaragua to our entered fields in Central America, but revolution drove our workers back.

We have not forgotten that over one hundred souls took their stand for the truth in Jamaica on the Sabbath following the Kingston earthquake. The judgments of the last days—earthquakes, famines, pestilences, and floods—in many of the mission fields have been warning men to prepare to meet the Lord. These things coming upon the

earth, and the rapid progress of the third angel’s message through the world, are signs that this old earth has nearly run its course.

"Thus bad and good their several warnings give Of his approach, whom none (unsaved) may see and live: Faith’s ear, with awful, still delight, Counts them like minute-bells at night, Keeping the heart awake till dawn of morn, While to her funeral pile this aged world is borne."

Surely, it has but a little way yet to go. While never did the vastness of the work so appeal to us, we have seen evidences of God’s power to do a quick work. He is only waiting for us to give every source of strength and of means to the service. When the disciples brought all they had of loaves and fishes, his blessing quickly multiplied it to feed the multitudes. In Korea, where we had done no seed-sowing, he has shown how quickly the message may be spread. We have there upward of five hundred Sabbath-keepers, in a dark corner of Asia that we had scarcely thought of five years ago.

Then there is Turkestan, until recent times one of the little-known regions of earth. We had no thought a year ago of any short road into such a place.

Now what do we hear?—A brother appeared at one of our meetings in the Transcaucasus, South Russia, saying that he was a delegate from Seventh-day Adventist groups of believers in Turkestan, who wanted a worker sent among them. Now we hear of believers and baptisms in Samarkand and Tashkend, in the very heart of Asia, and of Sabbath-keepers scattered along the Chinese frontier of Siberia right away to the Pacific. Truly the Lord is at work in his world. Away beyond our furthest efforts, he is flinging the blazing brands of truth into the darkness, and the light is kindling.

Our Australasian brethren entered Java. No sooner had they arrived, than a Sabbath-keeping missionary met them, offering to turn over a mission in the interior, where a number were observing the Sabbath. In India, as we plan to enter a new region, the Tamil country of the south, the word comes that about five hundred Sabbath-keeping Tamil-speaking Christians call for us to come among them. What we shall find is yet to be ascertained, but such a call is one to stir all hearts.

These things show how a divine power cleaves the way as our feet touch the margin of the great sea of peoples to be warned. God is able to do the work. But we are far behind his providences.

The fields where the harvest is being gathered must have facilities to care for it. Training stations must be established. Hardy, consecrated workers must volunteer to go. They are volunteering. Every soul that believes this message must give for missions, and pray to God for help to find ways of earning and saving more to devote to the closing work.

The work will be done; that is sure. China’s eighteen provinces will be warned. We are in only four now, and only beginning in those. But the Lord is in charge. All the great continents will be warned. But the people who will be ready when the Lord appears will have devoted their lives, their children, and their means unreservedly to the work. Everything save the necessaries of life is called for, and every business should be consecrated to the cause of God. What is our need to-day?—Hearts truly converted and unconditionally surrendered, laborers for the closing harvest, and more money than a week of prayer ever yet sent into the mission fields.

These are the things that ninety thousand Seventh-day Adventists ought to pray for unitedly at this time. Our hope and our life are wrapped up in the carrying of this message to all lands. The pressure is tremendous in the fields. In some parts our missionaries are literally falling under it, and help must be sent forward. Yet the courage of the conquering cause of God fills the hearts of the workers. They see evidences that the Lord is pouring out his Spirit upon all flesh. The other day letters came in from missionaries in three widely separated quarters of the earth—China, Africa, Central America—all speaking of experiences of the latter rain.

From China: "As we see these manifestations of His power, we can but feel that the time of the ‘latter rain’ has indeed come."

From West Africa: "It is a shower of the ‘latter rain.’"

From Central America: "It seems to me that everywhere there is the moving of the Holy Spirit on the hearts of men."

Thank God for it; the time of the latter rain has come. The long, dark night is nearly past. "The Lord hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God."