Under Pressure by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 1, 1906

Under Pressure

By W. A. S.

THERE is a current in God's providences running so strongly toward mission fields that it keeps the home field under pressure all the time to respond to the calls. But wherever representatives of the home fields gather, they give testimony that it is a blessed pressure.

This forward impulse is manifested on all occasions. The recent council in Washington was called for the purpose of giving representatives of the conferences opportunity to study special institutional calls, and to plan for the raising of the $150,000 fund. But it was really a missionary council. The teachers gathered at College View last summer for an educational convention. They had it, and a good one; but after all, it was a missionary convention. The end and aim of every effort in this cause is the hastening of the message to all the world.

During the recent Washington council of the General Conference Committee and conference presidents, seventeen married couples and seven single persons were invited to fields outside of the United States.

Few as these will seem, spread out through the world, it means no small addition to our missionary force to be appointed at one sitting of a council called for another special work.

It means a large addition to our financial responsibilities also, and one which every church-member ought to bear upon his heart between now and the week-of-prayer offering in December, on which so much depends in the support of missions.

The fields to which these new recruits are invited are Canada, Japan, Egypt, Turkey, India, Jamaica, Trinidad, Central America, Danish West Indies, St. Andrews Island (Colombia), Hayti, South Africa, Syria, and Latin Europe.

As delegates testified, it is a blessed pressure that drives us outward toward the needy fields. But it is a pressure that gives no one rest who is really a part of this cause. The intensity that fills heaven in these closing hours is now throbbing through every fiber of the living church. That is the way it is to be, according to Isaiah's prophecy of the closing work:—

“I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence, and give him no rest, till he establish, and till he make Jerusalem a praise in the earth.” Isa. 62: 6, 7.

It is a restful restlessness, however. No one who hears the trumpet call or sees the sword coming can find rest save in ceaseless, prayerful activity in the work of the Lord. W. A. S.