Belting a Continent by William Ambrose Spicer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 16, 1906

Belting a Continent

By William Ambrose Spicer

Our ship is waiting at Pernambuco, the most easterly large port in South America, and the first and last port of call for the European and South American mail-boats. As one travels along the coast line of Brazil, he is impressed with its extent.

Pernambuco is over two thousand miles from Rio Grande, in southern Brazil, where we first touched as we began this visit to our Brazilian mission stations. And still the coast line of this republic runs on nearly another two thousand miles, to the Guianas on the north.

Our South American Union brethren are anxious to find the workers and the means by which to establish the work at commanding points along these coast lines. The believers are thoroughly committed to the work of surrounding the continent on Gideon’s battle plan. We are to “belt the world” with this message, and the only way to do that is to belt all these continents with mission stations.

The States of Bahia and Pernambuco ought to have at least one worker each, putting out the literature. Such seed sowing would surely bear fruit. This town of Pernambuco is a large one, claiming over two hundred thousand inhabitants. There is a busy cotton- and sugar-growing country round about it, and the harbor, or lagoon, inside the coral reef, is full of shipping.

Other Protestant societies have missions here, and a good many Bibles are sold in the country. But the State of Pernambuco has been one of the most hostile in Brazil to the work of Protestant missions. This was the ancient capital of Brazil. When the Dutch, two hundred and fifty years ago, took Brazil from the Portuguese, the rough old Dutch Reformed conquerors set in to forcibly convert the Catholics. They bitterly persecuted the priests, and apparently were as cruel as the Catholics themselves. When later the Portuguese reconquered the country, the priests set in to pay up old scores by a policy of revenge, and the Bible Society agents testify that this bitter, revengeful spirit has seemed to continue to this day.

On round the coast toward the Amazon are towns with from ten to forty thousand population. The Bible colporteurs tell many an interesting story of blessed experiences along this coast. Para, at the mouth of the Amazon, capital of the State of the same name, is a busy city of one hundred thousand people, with a large trade with Europe. Foreign commercial influence has had a liberalizing tendency, and the manager of the Bible Society’s work writes that more Bibles, proportionately, have been sold in this Amazon region than in any other part of Brazil.

There are people in those parts for whom we must do something at an early day. If only we can get the Portuguese literature of the advent message scattered through these regions, the leaven will work, and we shall find witnesses springing up, and the work spreading. A thousand miles up the Amazon is the town of Manaos, with a population of forty thousand.

Beyond Brazil are the Guianas. We have a good work in British Guiana, have barely touched Dutch Guiana, and so far as I know have done nothing for French Guiana. Venezuela is unentered, unless just recently our East Caribbean Conference brethren have been able to carry out their long-desired plan of sending a worker there. Colombia is unentered. Some one ought to be there by all means, before many seasons pass.

With Venezuela, Colombia, and French Guiana entered, we could mark down every land in South America as “entered” territory. Then with a few long gaps filled in, we would have a thin and long-extended line surrounding the Neglected Continent, as Gideon’s three hundred surrounded the camp of the Midianites.

It is an idea to pray and work for. It is not so distant from realization, either, as the Lord blesses the work. Our line extends now from Ecuador on the equator, down the west coast to the Straits of Magellan; for let it be noted that now this truth is represented by a Scandinavian brother in Punta Arenas, the southernmost city in the world.

Along the east coast the message is represented from Bahia Blanca, in southern Argentina, to the southern point of the State of Bahia.

There are some long gaps to be filled in, but the surrounding of South America with our missions is not so far off, after all. And only think that about

twenty-five years ago we did not know of a single Sabbath-keeper in all the continent! Now there is a strong union conference in the field, working away courageously to complete the “belting” of the continent with the light of the message.

W. A. S.

Pernambuco.