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A Mighty Movement

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park, Washington, D. C. · May 23, 1912

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 89, No. 21.

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A Mighty Movement

By Mary A. Steward

MARY A. STEWARD
THE religious and even the secular papers have long been ringing with the reports of great deeds done, great meetings held, great numbers of converts made, in the religious world. Thousands, it is claimed, have sometimes been "converted" in a single night or at one meeting. We have read of the efforts of the traveling evangelists; of the society that has put a Bible into every room of large hotels; of the interest awakened in many lands in the study of the Scriptures. These have undoubtedly accomplished a great amount of good.
And now comes the Men and Religion Forward Movement, a force so vast and so potent that it bids fair to sweep the world in its path. It seems significant that this is a movement by men and for men. Usually the men consider themselves too busy to attend to the demands of religion, and turn over the responsibility in that line to their wives and daughters.
A late number of the Christian Herald deplores the coming of heathenism to our shores, — Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Hinduism, Vedantism, Bahaism. The converts to these cults are reported to be numerous, and nearly all women! Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle are among the large cities wherein temples to heathen deities have been erected.
Surely "intensity is taking possession of every earthly element." It is not by faith but by sight that we behold the intensity that has taken hold of the powers of the seen and the unseen world.
Mighty movements are under way, great organizations are effected, and are doing their work in the world,—a work that will make more and more difficult the giving of the message that God has sent us for the world. "We have no time to lose. . . . The passage from place to place will soon be hedged with dangers on the right hand and on the left. Everything will be placed to obstruct the way of the Lord's messengers, so that they will not be able to do that which it is possible for them to do now. . . . Soon it will be more difficult than we can imagine."
Satan is surely mustering his forces to hold the world in his grasp. And we are asleep! No wonder Isaiah called to us in thunder tones, as he saw the picture of this time, "Ho!" "Awake, awake!" "Arise, shine!" Our light has come, but we heed it not. Our eyes are heavy with slumber. Hearing the commotion around us, we open them a little, and try to rise, but Satan breathes over us a whiff of his opiate, and we sink back into apathy again.
As yet the forces of Seventh-day Adventists are too feeble to attract the attention of the world; but when we shall at last awake to our obligations, and begin to give the warning in its fulness, we shall soon feel the hand of oppression laid heavily upon us.
Because these dangers do not yet touch us personally, we are content to sit by our cheerful fireside, idly dreaming the hours away — precious hours of probation. In vain do the warnings fall upon our ears; in vain does the Lord plead with us to proclaim this gospel of the near advent in the cities and towns. And meanwhile Satan is taking the world under our very eyes. His army is already in the field, and is planting his banner on many a high place where we should have been long ago.
O that God would send the impetus of a mighty belief of his word for this time into the hearts of his people! Why do we not heed the ringing calls to go into the cities, and go now, before they are all bound up in the meshes of Satan's nets? Where are the men who, like the prophet of old, shall feel the fire of God shut up in their bones, and who can not keep from crying the woes that are surely coming?
Great organizations already committed to definite religious movements are working with all their power to accomplish results which they believe to be for the betterment of the world, but which we know are the devices of Satan to fasten men and women in his snares, and prevent them from listening to the message when it shall come to their ears.
O why is the message so tardy? Why wait the wheels of His chariot? Why linger the feet of those who must carry the news of this salvation to "every nation, kindred, tongue, and people"?
Send forth thy light, O Lord; let the fire be kindled in the midst of thy modern Israel, that shall cause them to throw off the effect of Satan's opiates, and rouse to action.
"Pray that the mighty energies of the Holy Spirit, with all their quickening, recuperative, transforming power, may fall like an electric shock on the palsy-stricken soul, causing every nerve to thrill with new life, restoring the whole man from his dead, earthly, sensual state to spiritual soundness."
Sanitarium, Cal.