p. 4 | Incentives to Earnest Prayer by W. A. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 24, 1907

Incentives to Earnest Prayer

By W. A. S.

ANOTHER good word comes to us from out of the troublous times in Russia. Our brethren report that the minister of the interior has recently informed our people and notified the governors of the provinces that Seventh-day Adventists are to have the same liberty to publish and preach in the empire that the Russian Baptists have been granted. Well may those who have worked and waited and prayed for this in Russia thank God and take courage.

Changes are rapidly taking place. There is a stirring of the depths in all the world. These things are a call to prayer that the word of the Lord by this advent message may have free course and be glorified in every unwarned field where the enemy has tried to shut out the light. As “prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God” for

Peter, the angel struck off his fetters and opened prison doors. As believers in Corinth prayed, Paul found deliverance in Asia Minor.

The situation in Turkey just now is a call to earnest prayer that the way may be more fully opened there for the preaching of the message of Christ’s soon coming. The Protestant religionists in that land have refused to acknowledge us as Protestants. On this account the Sabbatarians, as the government calls us, are without recognition, and hence our workers have often been hailed before magistrates, and sent here and there.

We surely ought to pray that all that our faithful workers have suffered because of this hostility of professed Protestants may soon be turned to the advantage of the truth.

Let us have it understood that wherever the reports show that special difficulties exist or barriers block the way, to that very point the earnest prayers of believers will be directed. The whole history of the work of God bears witness that effectual fervent prayer “availeth much.” Definite results follow.

Amid the waking up of the nations, and the turnings and overturnings that we are witnessing to-day, this message of the judgment hour is to sound louder and louder.

In France, the great upheaval that has come to the Catholic Church must work out somehow to the hastening forward of the message. In old Spain barriers that once would have shut our workers out are weakening. The door of access ought to swing wider open. The cable from Madrid brought this significant message last week:—

Against the opposition of the court, King Alfonso to-day authorized, the opening of a Protestant chapel in connection with the palace, for the benefit of Princess Henry of Battenburg, mother of Queen Victoria, of Spain, who is the King’s guest.

Our brethren in the East report that China is being “stirred to the very depths.” All about us multiply the evidences that intensity is taking hold of every element. Never had the church greater incentives to earnest, united, and definite prayer.

W. A. S.