THE SIGNS OFFICE by James White

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 12, 1876

THE SIGNS OFFICE.

By James White

The report of the California Camp-meeting and annual Conference, given in this week's REVIEW, decides in our mind the destiny of the Signs Office. We had done all we could to build up that office by our labor, means, and influence upon those who had confidence in our judgment and integrity. But a spirit of fault-finding, the most unreasonable and cruel we ever witnessed, sprung up in selfish hearts, and diffused itself more or less among nearly all. The influence of this work of Satan frustrated our plans, and made it necessary that we should leave California and labor where the people would receive our testimony, and could be benefited by our counsel, until our people in that State should come where we could help them.

It is proper here to state, that there are noble souls and true, in California, who have taken no part in saddening the hearts and weakening the hands of those who labored hard and sacrificed much to build up the cause. But for want of experience most of these precious souls were warped more or less at the very time we needed their full sympathy and help. But thank God for evidences of returning sanity throughout the entire camp, and for the lesson (though bitterly learned), which will be of great value to the young cause on the Pacific Coast. Although one year has been more than lost in the building up of the Signs Office, yet with this instructive lesson, the friends are now rallying to redeem the past; and we again confide in them to fully co-operate with us in making the Signs Office a complete success.

The good report of this week, over the signature of one in whom all our eastern people have confidence, one who in his youth has nobly stood for the right under great discouragements and perplexities, will brush from the saddened hearts of our willing eastern people all doubts and discouragements as to the success of the Pacific S. D. A. Publishing Association, and the Signs of the Times.

We here repeat, what we have frequently stated, that the REVIEW is our church paper. As such, all our people on the Pacific, who are able to take both papers, should subscribe for the REVIEW. The SIGNS will be the leading paper for the Coast, and yet will be our pioneer sheet wherever the English language is read. Will all our Tract and Missionary workers rally at once for the SIGNS OF THE TIMES?

Mrs. W. and the writer determine that no ordinary circumstance shall deter them from carrying out the work they commenced a year since, and from which they were driven only by the work of Satan through those who gave themselves up to murmuring. God has a work for us to do with our pens. And we ask the T. and M. Societies to give a circulation of 10,000 copies this side the Rocky Mountains. Mrs. W. will give her life sketches in the new volume of the SIGNS, which will commence the first of December; and we purpose to give in that volume the great facts relative to Christ in the Old Testament, the Sabbath in the New, the connection between the law and the gospel, baptism, and redemption.

The SIGNS is offered to our people east of the Rocky Mountains, who take the REVIEW also, at $2.00 a year. When paid for by friends of the cause, to send to their unbelieving friends, and by T. and M. Societies, the price will be, postage paid, $1.50 a year. There is no time to lose. The T. and M. Societies should put themselves in working order at once.

J. W.