Why Such Marvelous Developments in These Times?—What Is Their Significance?—The Early Days of Christianity Showed No Greater Workings
By LEE S. WHEELER
God’s work in the earth is progressive; and only by the light of His prophetic word and the unfolding of events can His great purposes become clear to our limited understanding. Jesus, in the noted prophecy of His second coming, said that immediately after the great tribulation, the sun would be darkened, the stars fall from heaven, and a rapid succession of events in the earth prepare the way for His glorious appearing. Matt. 24: 29.
TO REACH ALL THE WORLD
Among the evidences of the approaching end of all things, clearly observable in the earth, and mentioned by the Saviour, was the preaching of the gospel in all the world for a witness to all nations. Verse 14.
Joel also predicted the signs in the heavens before the great and dreadful day of the Lord, and said that God would then pour out His Spirit upon all flesh—that is, all nations. Joel 2: 28-32. It appears from this that a great awakening, attended by unusual manifestations of the Holy Spirit, was to mark the proclamation of the gospel at this period.
DATE OF “TIME OF THE END”
In the prophecies of Daniel and John, the epoch of the great tribulation is given as 1,260 prophetic days, or years, which corresponds with the age of papal repression and persecution between A. D. 538, when the pope attained ecclesiastical supremacy in the west, and the overthrow of that supremacy by the wars of France in 1798,—a period of exactly 1,260 years. See Dan. 7: 25; Rev. 12: 6, 14.
During that time, the ascendancy of the church over the states of Europe was such as to impose an enthralling censorship over all the affairs of education and advancement, and effectually retard the spread of the gospel and the evangelization of the nations. The expiration of this prophetic period was to introduce a new era, called in the prophecy “the time of the end” (Dan. 12: 4), and marked by great and decisive changes in both the political and the religious world.
Pointing to the revolutionary events in government, the prophecy said, “They shall take away his dominion [that of the papacy], to consume and to destroy it unto the end” (Dan. 7: 26); and speaking of the wonderful movements for the dissemination of truth, it was predicted, “Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” Dan. 12: 4.
That the great political upheavals which appeared before and about the year 1798, and paved the way for religious emancipation, and for the diffusion of enlightenment over Europe, America, Asia, and Africa, were providentially related to those higher spiritual influences which then began to move upon the hearts of men and turn their thoughts toward a perishing world and the Judgment day, we cannot doubt.
Here dates speak volumes. Methodist missions began in 1786; the Baptist Missionary Society was founded in 1792; the London Missionary Society in 1795; the Church Missionary Society in 1799; the London Religious Tract Society in 1799; the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804; the first American missionary society in 1810; the American Bible Society in 1816.
NEVER BEFORE SUCH A CLUSTER
“No such cluster of mighty missionary agencies has ever arisen in so short a period. Those closing years of the eighteenth century formed a watershed, from which the river of life began to flow forth to the heathen world.”—John Telford, B. A., in “Man’s Partnership with Divine Providence,” page 223.
According to reports of the late Edinburgh Missionary Conference, there are now a thousand missionary organizations in Christendom, nearly all the outgrowth of the past century. In 1800, the Scriptures had been translated into sixty-six languages; now they are read in more than five hundred. Then the annual contribution to missions was about one hundred thousand dollars; now it exceeds thirty millions. One hundred years ago, there was not one Christian hospital or trained Christian physician in all the great non-Christian world; now there are over seven hundred. There was at that386time not a single Protestant Christian in Japan, only one in China, and but few in India, the continent of Africa, the Mohammedan countries, and the island fields. Over these vast regions darkness reigned supreme.
Morrison, the apostle to China, after seven years of labor, baptized his first native convert in 1814, the gospel seed taking root the same year that his New Testament was issued in the Chinese tongue.
AN OPEN BIBLE ON HIS CAPSTAN
Japan did not awaken from its seclusion and open its long barred doors to the world until 1853, when Commodore Perry entered the gates of the Sunrise Kingdom, and laying an open Bible upon the capstan of his flagship, sent the message of the hundredth psalm over the waters of Yedo’s bay to a nation waiting in its chrysalis state for God’s time of transformation.
It was as late as 1887 when the first seven men were baptized in Korea. The ceremony had to be performed in secret; but now there are three hundred thousand Christians in the little Hermit Kingdom, an average of one convert for every hour since the missionaries entered the country. So vigorous has been the growth of the gospel among this noble and peaceful people, that John R. Mott, after his recent tour of the country, exclaimed, “I came away from Korea believing that if Christianity were to die out in America and Europe, it exists with such vitality in Korea that it would ultimately spread from there to our shores and reëstablish itself.”
Since the days of Livingstone, Africa has been stretching out her hands to God; and now Uganda, the land of missionary romance, is yielding eight thousand converts a year. India’s artistic, cultivated, and conservative paganism, so long unresponsive to the Christian appeal, is now breaking down everywhere, and whole communities are embracing the gospel.
NOTHING LIKE IT BEFORE
There is something wonderfully impressive about this great wave of divine power and grace now moving over the world and agitating the nations; especially so because it was scheduled to arrive at this hour in human history in preparation for the end.
“Not even in the early days of Christianity,” says Mr. Mott, of the Student Volunteer Movement, “were such sudden and striking results achieved as have accompanied the efforts of missions in Asia and Africa during the last decade. . . . Unquestionably it is a time of rising spiritual tide. God seems to have done a hundred years’ work within the last five years. The Christians now living in Western lands should have a realizing sense that this unparalleled world situation affords not only the greatest opportunity the church has ever known, but also, so far as they are concerned, their best and their only opportunity.”
“The work which centuries might have done, Must crowd the hours of setting sun.”
