A Neglected People by William Ambrose Spicer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · May 17, 1906

A Neglected People

By William Ambrose Spicer

THE most neglected by the Christian peoples, so far as missions are concerned, is the Moslem, or Mohammedan people. I believe we Seventh-day Adventists ought to pray for special help to know how to take up work for the Moslem races. Thus far we have done very little for them—just a little in Egypt and Turkey, with a few tracts in Arabic, and perhaps a slight effort in the East Indies. This message is to go to every tongue and tribe, and there must be some way of telling it to Moslem ears.

In his life of Raymond Lull, the first missionary to the Moslems, Dr. Zwemer, gives us the following statistics:—

According to recent and exhaustive statistics, the population of the Mohammedan

world is placed at 259,680,672. Of these, 11,515,402 are in Europe, 171,278,008 are in Asia, 19,446 are in Australasia, 76,818,253 are in Africa, and 49,563 are in North and South America. Three per cent of Europe’s population is Moslem; Asia has eighteen per cent, and Africa thirty-seven per cent. Out of every one hundred souls in the world, sixteen are followers of Mohammed. Islam’s power extends in many lands, from Canton to Sierra Leone, and from Zanzibar to the Caspian Sea.

He says that there are more mosques in Jerusalem than there are missionaries in all Arabia to-day. And if the way of approach is apparently barred in Moslem lands, because of bitterly repressive laws to keep converts from declaring themselves, there are more than one hundred and twenty-five million Moslems, we are told, under Christian rulers, where freedom of missionary effort is granted.

The message of the coming of the Messiah ought to appeal to Moslems. Their old-time recognition of Sabbath-keeping, as when Abubeker led his forces against the Eastern empire, and gave commandment to his followers not to hurt any who had the seal of God in their foreheads, ought to give them an interest in hearing a message from a people keeping the Sabbath of Abraham and the prophets.

Travelers have testified that Mohammedans are expecting the advent of a greater than Mohammed. It is a part of that general expectation of a coming One that has grown up in the hearts of millions in the heathen East.

Let us think more and pray more about this problem of carrying the message in Moslem lands. Somewhere there must be young people whom God will qualify to learn the Arabic tongue, in which so large a proportion of the Moslems must be reached. The missionary activity of the Moslems has carried their tongue widely through the world. A speaker at the London World’s Missionary Congress said:—

Have you any idea of the extent of the Arabic language? When the morning sun rises from the Pacific Ocean, eager eyes are straining from the minarets of China to catch the first beams of that sun; and as they rise out of the Pacific Ocean, the song goes up, “There is no God but God;” and that song is caught up and carried from minaret to minaret, across the whole breadth of China. It resounds in the valleys of the Himalayas; its echo is heard all over the plains of India. It sounds out in the islands of the Indian Ocean. It is caught up and echoed back across Persia, far along from peak to peak, among the mountains of Persia and Armenia and Nestoria and Lebanon. It is carried down into the great Arabian peninsula, and then it is taken up in the valley of the Nile. It is carried to the head waters of the Nile, the great lake region, and it sweeps across the Sudan and the Sahara, and not until the sun has set in the Atlantic are its last echoes overcome by the roar of the surf of that western sea. It is a language more extended over the face of the earth, and which has had more to do with the destiny of mankind, than any other except English.

Day by day missionaries of Islam are teaching their doctrines among the heathen in Africa, India, and other parts. Sunday after Sunday I have seen their preachers in the public squares of Calcutta, explaining the teaching to crowds of Hindus. It is a spreading, blighting influence, and it holds its subjects as in bands of steel. Yet the circulation of the Scriptures by Bible colporteurs is planting the leaven of the new life in many parts of the Moslem world. There are many encouraging signs. Let us pray for these peoples, and somehow yet we shall see the third angel’s message going in among them. W. A. S.