THE student of prophecy and history will never despise the day of apparently small things. He will measure events, their worth, their power to persist, by the principles which permeate them, and their hold upon the human heart.
All great, good, and right movements find their source in the heart of the Infinite, and are adapted to the needs of humanity. Always they will accomplish God's purpose and perform His work. The majority of men may reject them, yet there will ever be enough in every country and in every age to vindicate the wisdom, justice, and mercy of God in the movement.
Every false movement is to a greater or less extent either the perversion or the counterfeit of the true. Such movements originate with Satan, and are carried out either by his devotees, or by mistaken and professed followers of God, who believe they are doing God service while they are Satan's tools to frustrate God's purpose. They are adapted to man's natural lusts, ambitions, aspirations.
To understand these movements we must study the great principles involved, and which take hold of the springs of human nature for evil or good. We must learn their origin or source. We must test them by the unchangeable law of God.
The great movements of God all center in Christianity, which in all ages is the life of God sent down unto a sinful, dying world to save men. It takes hold of the motives, purposes, and affections of the heart of him who submits to its scheme, and changes them after the fashion of the Divine Man. Whatever reform stops short of this is of the human, and is temporal and ephemeral. While good men are often connected with these reforms, they are used of the devil to lead souls from the true. In many cases it is the temporary good, and the better hiding the best.
Satan has ever endeavored to oppose this work. He has perverted its principles, poisoned its life, counterfeited its forms and methods, set aside its Book for the tradition of men, and usurped the throne of its Author that he may act in the place of God.
Christianity will close its work in the world with a great and solemn message of reform and recreation. That great Threefold Message of power, life, protest, and warning is found in Rev. 14: 6-14. It will result in the development of a class which God calls "saints," who "keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." Verse 12. That message of the everlasting Gospel goes to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people. Verse 6. It will be preached in all the world "as a witness unto all nations." Matt. 24: 14. It will not convert all nations, but it will give opportunity to all to accept or reject. Then will Christ come.
Opposed to the work of God, carried by a comparatively "little flock," is the work of the apostasy—perversion, and confusion. In these latter days this great system, if such it may be called, centers in the Papacy, which has set up another standard than that of God's word, another gospel than that of simple faith in Jesus Christ.
It is evident that the work of God must ever be characterized by missionary movements, missionary propaganda, till every soul is warned. It is also evident that this will be more manifest as we near the end. Therefore it is not surprising—it ought to be the natural thing to expect—that great efforts will be put forth to train missionaries and send them forth in the closing years of the work.
These things point the reason why the Seventh-day Adventist people, in proportion to their numbers, are sending out more missionaries into the dark lands of earth, and are giving more per capita for foreign missions than any other religious denomination, the Moravians not excepted. And this is nothing of which to boast, nor is it mentioned here in praise or boasting; it is recorded as mere fruitage which ought to be borne, the fact which ought to exist even in greater measure.
To enlarge these operations and make them more effective, important steps have been taken. First, a training-school for foreign missionaries is inaugurated in Washington, D. C. Rather, the training-school there has been dedicated to that one purpose. It will take the best in all their other schools, the consecrated young men and women of ability, in school and field, and give them the most thorough and quickest preparation possible to fit them for the foreign field to which God has called them. This will encourage other schools, encourage those called to the work, and furnish many more workers to carry God's everlasting good tidings to the world.
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Two Significant Movements.
Similar, yet Different.
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Secondly, a special young people's department has been formed by the General Conference Council for the purpose of enlisting under Emmanuel's banner an enthusiastic, devoted army of missionary volunteers, who will rapidly develop in work in the home field talents which will fit for labor in the great fields beyond. These are mighty factors in the closing, rapidly closing, work of God.
Right at this time, unknown each to the other, so far as we know, precisely similar movements are developing in the Roman Catholic Church in America. The recent great meeting of the American Federation of Catholic Societies at Indianapolis developed that a special school is being organized and is in operation at the Washington University of that church, to especially prepare priests in the quickest manner possible for missionary work among Protestants and in the world. Further, the Young Men's Catholic Union has been organized after the plan of the Y. M. C. A., in order to bring into the organization, and also the Catholic Church, all the young men possible. They hope much from these movements. They expect these centers of propaganda—colleges and organization—will tell greatly for the church.
Reader, in which of these two movements do you want a part? The one will give to the world "the everlasting Gospel," which makes men obedient to God, and followers of Christ; the other will still further spread—tho carried by honest men—the gospel of apostasy, the perversion of God's law, the tradition of men, and the union of Church and State.
These are significant movements; who will heed them?
