p. 44 | BATTLE CREEK by James White

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 10, 1876

BATTLE CREEK.

By James White

The beautiful little city of Battle Creek, Michigan, is to us the dearest spot on earth. There is the largest church of Seventh-day Adventists in the world. And that people claim us as their pastor, though we are not with them ten Sabbaths in a year.

We have recently received by the kindness of Eld. Uriah Smith a Church Directory of the Seventh-day Adventists of Battle Creek, in sheet form, containing thirty-seven names of local Elders, Deacons, Trustees, Clerk, Treasurer, Sexton, and Committees on Church Discipline, Relief, and Homes for Students. At the head of them, the printer has made prominent the name of their absent Pastor. Bro. Smith writes that copies of this Directory, neatly framed, are placed in the house of worship and in the College building.

We have spent twenty years of the best of our life helping build up our institutions and the church at Battle Creek. We have had severe trial, painful sickness, and almost overwhelming discouragements at that place. And to no people have we preached so plainly as to the church at Battle Creek. And yet they cling to us, and urge upon us positions in our institutions and in the church there, which we have neither ability nor time to fill.

The great want among our people at Battle Creek has been men who could discern the work of God clearly, resist the spirit of error firmly, and sustain those who have labored to raise the standard of truth and holy living. It was this want that seemed to make it necessary to call men from several States, in the hope that they would supply the lack that has long been felt.

But our people generally have no just ideas of the work to be done at our Michigan head-quarters, and of the trials to be borne. And most of those who came to Battle Creek as helpers failed to do the work necessary to be done there, and some of them became tools in the hands of Satan to distract the cause, and weaken the very hands they had come to strengthen.

In this condition of things the Lord came to the rescue of his cause in a wonderful manner. He has seemed to give those who have been unfaithful in that church a chance to redeem the past, and has greatly blessed their efforts. The church at Battle Creek has never stood so well as now in unity, firmness for the right, and freedom of spirit. In this they are throwing safeguards around our school and other institutions, and are exerting a powerful influence which will tell wonderfully upon the cause.

The weaknesses of our people at Battle Creek have enfeebled our cause everywhere. Want of confidence in the work at head-quarters is most destructive to confiding faith in the hearts of our people everywhere. But now that the ranks are closing up, and a united and powerful effort is being made to hold the fort at Battle Creek, confidence will be restored.

Our labors last September were wonderfully blessed of the Lord. We left that people with feelings of attachment such as we had never before felt, and we are happy to learn that the great work then commenced has proved genuine and enduring.

That which gives hope and confidence for the future of our Battle Creek people, and which is a most interesting feature of the work there, is the fact that those who had formerly failed to come up to the work and fill their proper places, are redeeming the past, and are now standing firmly for the right. There is much to be done at Battle Creek. There are many places of responsibility to fill; these are by no means all claimed by the old members of the church there. Some from other places are occupying important posts of duty, and there is room for still others. One thing is very generally admitted, that it is not an easy task to hold the fort at Battle Creek, and that our head-quarters is a very poor place for unconsecrated and selfish men.

Under the present policy, while our brethren there stand in the counsel of God, our College and other institutions located there will flourish, and will be the means of accomplishing the great good that Heaven designs they should. Under the existing state of things, our own people everywhere should have the fullest confidence in the men who manage our institutions at Battle Creek. In view of their renewed consecration to the work and their very arduous labors at this time, it would be cruel to withhold any degree of confidence from them. Having borne a very plain testimony through the REVIEW, relative to the Battle Creek church, in times past, when suffering under feebleness, resulting, in part at least, from discouragements, now that God has lifted both us and that church up by his power and love, we regard the foregoing as just and highly proper. God bless the church at Battle Creek, and make it like a city set upon a hill. J. W.