Momentous Changes by W. A. S.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 17, 1902

Momentous Changes

By W. A. S.

REMARKABLE changes are all the time taking place in the great mission fields,—changes that are signals to us to make haste to send forward the laborers. As plainly as though we could see the hand of God visibly swinging back the doors, the way into the populous fields is being opened.

Twenty years ago, and less, Hunan, in China, was the headquarters of opposition to missionary influence. No settled mission stations were allowed. Itinerant missionaries had been able now and then to scatter some seeds of truth. But the walled province, with its sixteen million souls, was emphatically one of the few territories still beyond the missionary frontier. As such it was the subject of much prayer and earnest planning among those upon whose hearts lay the burden of China's millions.

It was so recently that this condition obtained that I was the more surprised a few days ago to learn of the changed situation reported by Dr. Griffith John, of the London Missionary Society. He says of a tour just taken in Hunan:—

In the Heng-chow district we have at least five thousand candidates for baptism. In the city itself we have a beautiful congregation of Christians, and in the whole prefecture we have between twenty and thirty congregations. It is a marvelous work, extending to the Canton province in the south, and to Kwang-si in the west. I am thankful to say that at Chang-Sha (the capital of Hunan) we now have a little church. A congregation of between twenty and thirty believers meets regularly for worship, and during this visit I baptized six most promising young men.

God is using many consecrated agencies to open up the great closed lands, preparatory to the proclamation of the third angel's message to the ends of the earth. It is too bad that we are so far behind in China that we have not been able to act a part in some of these recent triumphs of missionary endeavor. However, we may watch the signs of the Lord's speedy coming in the progress of missions, with all thankfulness, and with hearts aglow with enthusiasm to join now in pressing into every dark corner of the earth.

The most striking signs of the times are not to be found in the daily record of increasing wickedness and disaster. God's truth is marching on. The light of the coming dawn is breaking over this dark earth of ours. But all these gladdening signs are calls to us to be up and doing, like men watching for the break of day.

W. A. S.