The Witness to All Nations by William Ambrose Spicer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 31, 1907

The Witness to All Nations

By William Ambrose Spicer

A New York correspondent writes: “Will you kindly answer through the columns of your paper to what extent Matt. 24: 14 has been fulfilled?”

The text is: “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.”

It is evident that we can trace the progress of world-wide evangelization in a general way only. The Lord has many agencies at work, and his Spirit is dealing with hearts everywhere. He alone can know when the witness is borne that leaves without excuse those who resist the drawing of his Spirit.

But we can watch the progress of the visible witnesses. Wherever the Bible goes, the witness is being borne. The Scriptures, in whole or in part, it is estimated, are now translated into languages making them accessible to ninety-five per cent of the people of earth. Copies of the printed Scriptures are going out through Bible societies alone at the rate of about seven millions a year. Tibet and Abyssinia have been the closed lands, but missionaries are in their borders. Wide stretches of Africa and Asia are without missionary agencies, but every grand division of peoples and tribes has somehow been brought within the range of the witness to the gospel.

All these activities are agencies for the fulfilling of Matt. 24: 14. The mighty power of God is seen in this marvelous spread of missions in this generation. But the final phase of the witnessing is what interests us most deeply. The gospel of the kingdom, as the end draws near, means the good news of the soon-coming kingdom and the special message of preparation to meet the Lord. All these missionary activities have been hastened forward under God to prepare a quick way for the final proclamation of the everlasting gospel as described in Rev. 14: 6-14. The message, “Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come,” is to go also to every nation, tongue, and people, and then the prophet sees the Son of man coming, according to Christ’s own promise of Matt. 24: 14.

This advent movement rose in 1844, when the hour of his judgment began. It is being preached by voice and literature in every language of Europe, including that of Iceland, and our workers are found in every country save Servia, Montenegro, and Greece. Definite steps are now being taken to place workers in Greece, and Servian believers on the Hungarian border are planning to get into Servia.

In Asia, while our work but fringes the vast continent, it nevertheless has a foothold in all the great divisions of territory, as India and Ceylon, Burma and the Straits Settlements, China, Japan, and Korea, representing nearly half the population of the world, and day by day new witnesses are drawn into service as the message spreads. We hear of them in Manchuria, in Turkestan, Central Asia, and in the Euphrates Valley. We know of no representative in Persia.

In Africa the message is being preached in the colonies and provinces of the south, Rhodesia, Nyassaland, German East Africa, Uganda (or British East Africa), Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast on the west, and Algeria and Egypt on the north. And now workers have been appointed to Abyssinia.

We have no representatives at work in Colombia and Venezuela, South America, but the West Indian Union is planning that this shall not long be the case. Then, as workers are placed in Guatemala, Salvador, and Nicaragua, every country of the New World will have its witnesses.

The Australasian Union Conference is continually annexing new territory in the island fields of the Pacific and the East Indies. There are few general groups as yet unentered among the islands.

Thus the review of the field of our work is a review of the whole habitable earth. There are wide gaps indeed in the missionary line of the advent message. The situation calls upon us to pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers. No one can make estimates for future progress by anything of the past. The Lord, who can do the work of a thousand years in a day, is the one pledged to finish the work and cut it short in righteousness. For our sakes he calls us to service with him, and lays the burden of going into all the world upon us. When once the witnesses are planted in every part of the world, as the Lord would have them stationed, how quickly he can allow crises to break upon the world, and his Spirit convict of sin and bring hearts to a decision in all the earth. The very greatness of the task is an inspiration to our missionaries in the midst of the populous unwarned fields, for it is just such a mighty work as the Lord delights to do.

A review of what our eyes can see shows that the fulfilment of Matt. 24: 14 is rapidly drawing to a conclusion. “Then shall the end come.”

W. A. S.