A Missionary Awakening

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 12, 1907

A Missionary Awakening

God will leave no agency idle that can be used for the advancement of his kingdom. Wherever a consecrated hand is stretched out for seed to sow or for a sickle to help in the harvest, these will be supplied. There is a significance in the movements that are springing up in some of the evangelical churches among the lay membership. They are banding together to work for their associates who are unacquainted with Christ, and also for the support of missions and individual missionaries in foreign lands. The fact that they do not know all the truth for this time must not be taken as an indication that God can not and does not use them to reveal himself to those in darkness. Many of these workers, those at least whose hearts are fully in God's service, will yet find their way into the full light of God's last message; and many of those who have found Christ through their instrumentality will follow their example in this regard. Concerning this movement a religious exchange says:—

As never before in modern times the laymen of the Protestant churches are being stirred. Truly, this is of the Lord. The call has gone out summoning them to special activity in behalf of the coming of the kingdom. They are beginning to realize, as never before, their opportunity and their obligation. The Holy Spirit is giving them to see that, along with the preachers and pastors, they, too, have a special work to do for the world's evangelization; that Christ has commissioned them to go out into the highways and byways of this on-rushing world, as it is being swallowed up of commercialism, and persuade and compel their unsaved associates to come to Christ. If any tangible proof were needed that this impulse is of God, it is had in the spontaneity and wide-spread character of the movement.

These movements among those who have not yet learned what God's closing message is should stir us to greater activity in making it known to them and to the world at large.