The October Offering by S. N. Haskell

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 3, 1907

The October Offering

By S. N. Haskell

COULD our people see the importance of this offering at this particular time, gifts would be made sufficient to carry the work through to the kingdom. There are times in the cause of God when a move counts a hundredfold more than at any other time. It is in the time of a crisis. There have ever been times when those in touch with heaven took decided action, and God responded by a lasting blessing, so that for generations God regarded the descendants of the men who risked all for the honor of God at those times. Phinehas, the son of Eleasar, the son of Aaron, rose up on a certain occasion, and jealous for God, smote the son of a prince in Israel, of the chief house of one of the tribes; and because of this God said, “Behold, I give unto him my covenant of peace.” It was in a time of crisis when God’s honor was at stake. Num. 25: 1-15.

If we ever do anything for the South, it must be done quickly. Not a month passes but in some portions of the South the work is passing into a condition where no effort from the North can reach the colored people. This has been the case for several years. We can not do at the present time what could have been done a short time ago. A crisis is here. Whoever steps into this crisis will find he is on the Lord’s side as verily as was Phineas, and many others spoken of in the Bible.

While we were attending the institute for colored teachers in Huntsville, Ala., and they were being shown how they could help build their own schoolhouses and warn their own people, their eyes lighted up, and in a few minutes’ time they took over six thousand copies of the

Bible Training School to sell among their own people. Thus the truth will be placed in at least six thousand families in the South. A great and good work has been done by the Southern Missionary Society, and now the colored people themselves are rising up and placing the truth before their own people. To us it is a providence of God. It says in no uncertain tone that “the last call” is being carried to the colored race.

As surely as the signs of the times spoken by the Lord point out this time; as certainly as the spirit of prophecy has marked the time of great light and power coming to God’s people, in connection with the work in the South; so surely we are in a crisis immediately preceding the closing of probation. Who will not want now, just now, to step in and bear some part in this crisis? These times are fraught with tremendous results. Large donations will be very acceptable now, and shall we not make them? Soon no one will have an opportunity to give for the work among the colored people in the South. This October offering should be the largest by far that has ever been made. We as a people should redeem the past failures and do our duty. Much has been said and much more might be said to show that now is the time to help this part of the field. It is the foreign field at our own doors. My heart was stirred at the Huntsville meeting, and I felt that I would not leave a stone unturned as far as it lay in my power to help this people, pitied and loved by the Lord. May the Lord God of Israel help each and every Seventh-day Adventist to step in now and have a part in this branch of the fast-closing work.

S. N. HASKELL.