p. 27 | China's Awakening by J. N. Anderson

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Oct 30, 1907

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 33, No. 44.

China's Awakening

By J. N. Anderson

By Superintendent J. N. Anderson

Our Opportunity.

IN common with all the other nations of earth, China and the entire Chinese world is being mightily shaken. In the light of God's revelation it is not difficult to see who is the Author of this shaking, nor is it hard to discover its purpose and end. "Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which can not be shaken may remain." Heb. 12:26, 27; Joel 3:16. These great winds of strife which to-day are sweeping over humanity are indeed but the clashing of the opposing forces of good and evil. The very physical earth, as if in sympathy, is racked with eruptions, temblors, convulsions, while the face of nature is swept with the "besom of destruction," causing the whole creation to travail and groan in pain. To the thoughtful student of God's word the answer to all this is, "This is the day of the Lord's preparation."

High Tongan Type of Man and Woman. Elaborately Dressed.

For centuries, and even millenniums, China has, in strange solitude, lived the life of a recluse, self-satisfied, absorbed heart and soul in the ideas and ideals of the remote past. This pleasurable dream is now of the past, and the erstwhile sleeping China is not, as some would believe, walking in her sleep, but fully aroused and conscious of being out of joint with the times and in desperate need of something. She fears for her political and national existence. A deep-seated spirit of unrest pervades the masses, and in many instances it is taking on the aspect of determined hostility to the present ruling authority, if not to all law and order. A feeling of self-sufficiency and independence swells the bosoms of the rising generation, especially the student class, manifesting itself in a pronounced dislike for Old China and the foreigner, tho not the ideas and methods of the foreigner. Never before in all her long history was China so open and accessible as at the present time; and beyond a peradventure, there is no other single large missionary field that presents so great a door of opportunity, and justly urges equal claims upon the people of God in the home lands. It is not indeed that China is consciously holding out her hands to welcome the salvation of Christ, but rather that she is dissatisfied with what she now has, and so is anxiously casting about for something, hoping that almost anything will be for the better rather than the worse.

It is in such an hour of large opportunity as this that "the children of light" have a solemn duty to discharge. Are we not the salt of the earth? and is not this great door of entrance God's unmistakable call to His own people to arise and enter? Is it not the command of our ascending Lord of perpetual obligation until the end of the world? What higher motives do we wait for? Does not the fact of our possessing and knowing the message of redemption make us responsible bearers of this message to those who are in the power of the evil one? And does not the love of Christ constrain us? Where are the young men and women who, deliberately and in the fear of God counting the full cost of this enterprise, and trusting in the eternal faithfulness of God, stand ready to weigh out the price in self-sacrifice and humble service? Who are saying with the apostle Paul, "So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the Gospel"?