p. 16 | Report from J. N. Loughborough

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Apr 6, 1911

Report from J. N. Loughborough

By John Norton Loughborough

My last report was dated Dec. 22, 1910. Since that time the Lord has given strength for some labor in this precious cause. December 24 I was again with the new church at Galt, nine miles from Lodi. On December 31 I conducted the ordinance service with the Lodi church. January 6-17 I was with Brother G. A. Irwin at Los Angeles, in an institute for the ministers and workers in the Southern California Conference. Here I attended twenty-seven meetings, speaking in eight of them. The talks of Brother Irwin on the church, and its order and management, were most timely. On the second Sabbath our workers were all assembled for the whole day by ourselves. Brother Irwin conducted a reading on unity, the answers to all questions being read from the Testimonies. This was followed by a prayer and testimony meeting. It was a precious occasion. We were of one mind, and the Lord came very near.

On Sabbath, January 21, I gave two talks in our meeting-house on Laguna Street, San Francisco, on the topic, How We Know That the Gift of Prophecy Among Seventh-day Adventists Is a True Gift. January 23 to February 8, for fourteen mornings, I spoke to the students of the Lodi Normal Academy. In the meantime I spoke one Sabbath to the Lodi church, and conducted one funeral service.

From February 9-19 I attended our harmonious conference at Fresno, which has already been reported in the Review. It was indeed an interesting occasion to me. I looked back to 1899, when there were but three Sabbath-keepers west of the Rocky Mountains,—namely, Sister Morehouse, residing near Pendleton, Ore., and Brother and Sister Maxson, at Walla Walla, who became Seventh-day Adventists when the message was preached in that place.

In 1868, when Elder D. T. Bourdeau and I came to California, we found fewer than twelve persons who professed to keep the Sabbath, and several of those never joined our churches. Now, with all our mistakes, we can only say, as we look about us, “What hath God wrought!” Including British Columbia, we see, west of the Rocky Mountains, three union conferences, with over fifteen thousand Seventh-day Adventists; three colleges, one an organized medical college; several academies and intermediate schools; scores of church-schools; and five sanitariums under conference control, besides several under private management, but in harmony with the work of the third angel’s message. What a work might be done by all these believers and institutions if wholly consecrated to the advancement of the message!

With the coming in of March we have had much cold, rainy weather, but I have tried to improve the time in some important writing, and in reading about six thousand pages of the Testimonies. In this course of reading and study of the past I watched carefully to see how many predictions made by the Lord through Sister White had been accurately fulfilled. I was led to this by a statement made in a manuscript Testimony dated April 24, 1903, which reads as follows: “Soon every possible effort will be made to discount and belittle the Testimonies of God’s Spirit. We must have in readiness the clear, straight messages that since 1846 have been coming to God’s people.” I thought: “Surely the predictions which have been literally fulfilled must be among the straight testimonies.” The Bible places the fulfilment of prophecies as proof of the source from which they come. “Produce your cause, saith the Lord; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob. Let them bring them forth, and show us what shall happen: let them show the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come. Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods.” Isa. 41:21-23; see also chapter 48:3-7. Again: “The prophet which prophesieth of peace, when the word of the prophet shall come to pass, then shall the prophet be known, that the Lord hath truly sent him.” Jer. 28:9. “Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not?” Lam. 3:37. For one who carefully reads the Testimonies, and sees the scores of predictions that have been accurately fulfilled, there is a rich feast.

J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH.