Don't Be Deceived

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 18, 1878

Don't Be Deceived.

China is the devil's land. Containing one-fourth of earth's population, its millions are debased, godless, atheistical, and destitute of moral sense. Modern Protestantism thinks to win these millions. But while to-day the ratio of her missionaries is as one to the whole State of Massachusetts, it is not so with Rome. She has ten missionaries in China to our one, and spends ten dollars there to our one. The 120 missionaries on this hard soil have just told the world that the three native Christians there in 1840 have increased to nearly 13,000 in 1877—all Protestants. This is deemed very hopeful. But alas, inexorable figures assert that during the past five years Rome's missionaries in China and India have taken into her folds 165,522 of these pagans, of which army 11,600 were adults. Where is ground for boasting? Why deceive one's self? If a millennium is coming for China, the signs indicate it to be a Romish one. The early church, and Luther, and Calvin, and Knox knew better than does our Protestantism. They did not expect a converted world before the Lord comes again.