All in the Message Preached by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 7, 1907

All in the Message Preached

By W. A. S.

As the third angel’s message is preached in the mission fields, we see not only Sabbath-keepers springing up, but educational, publishing, and health enterprises following on.

The preacher goes into some distant land with only his Bible. Our numbers and institutions in the home field have no influence there to draw the people. He preaches the message. Men and women turn to the Lord and begin to keep the Sabbath. They realize that they are a part of a united world-wide advent movement, raised up in fulfilment of prophecy.

They are ready to put their means into schools for the training of workers. People who, perhaps, had never learned to read, begin to study; for they must know how to read this message for themselves. All this is in the preaching that is preached.

The desire to spread the truth brings a realization of the need of literature, and the publishing work is started. People who never would have thought, before this message came to them, of investing in such a thing as a printing-press, gladly sacrifice to put their means into producing the literature. The preaching of the message has done the work.

The preaching also revolutionizes habits of living. People who had perhaps never given a thought to the religious duty of caring for health, as a talent lent of God, abruptly turn from life-long customs. Intoxicating drinks, tobacco, and flesh foods forbidden by the Scriptures are immediately discarded, with such reform as to the whole question of diet and health as to very generally cut off the use of any kind of meat as a common article of food; this, not as a matter of commandment, but as a matter of privilege and duty to follow the cleanest and most wholesome and healthful way of living. The preaching of the message does this work among the people to whom it goes.

And then comes the interest in health and temperance work and appreciation of its benefits, that lead poor people to give of their means to bring out nurses or physicians, and to start sanitariums for the teaching of health principles, and the helping of the sick.

This is what the preaching of the message does in every land. In the very preaching are schools, printing-presses, sanitariums, and all the facilities that Providence has called into being to swell the cry of the advent warning. It is a wonderful message that the missionary carries into new fields and new communities. And the thing that builds up and maintains all the work is the preaching of the truth of God for these last days.

W. A. S.