Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 11, 1916
Flood, Fire, and Typhoon in China
By Ross C. Porter
Great Destruction of Life and Property—Destitution and Suffering Follow
What Do Such Things Signify?
By ROSS C. PORTER
Elder Porter is president of the Asiatic Division of our work, and was in China during the time of her floods and typhoon. A single occurrence of the kind described in the following article would not in itself be significant or worthy of special note. The world in different places and at different times since the days of Job has been visited by occasional storms, floods, typhoons, earthquakes, and the like. But the very frequent occurrence of these things in all parts of the world in recent years, should awaken serious reflection. What is their significance? Thoughtful people will surely consider this question candidly.
ONE year ago, central and south China were visited by unprecedented floods, followed by almost famine conditions in portions of the flooded territory.
At the time of my visit to Canton, July 10, 1915, the rivers began rising again. A railway bridge was washed out between Canton and Hongkong, and we were compelled to return by steamer. This was but the beginning. The water continued rising until it was eight feet higher than at any previous time. The report of disaster and death that resulted is very conservatively given in the following statement by the Hon. Lau Chu-pak, of Hongkong:
"People only know just the beginning of what has happened. It is easy to talk of relief; but the destruction is so widespread, and many of the sufferers are so difficult to reach, that it seems almost a hopeless task, and one hardly knows where to begin. I do not think that many people in Hongkong realize that thousands of these poor folk are not to be got at all. They are shut away there in Canton, where they cannot be reached either on foot or in boats; in some cases completely shut off by the fire, in others by the narrowness of the streets and courts, which will not admit the passage of a boat.
VIEWS OF THE WORK OF THE STORM IN CHINA
"The scenes that the rescue parties have encountered are beyond description: bodies of women and of little babies floating here and there, wreckage washing in all directions, and rats — rats everywhere! You can't imagine it. One of my sons took out a couple of sampans loaded up with provisions for distribution, and he also managed to pick up a few drowning persons. He found a boy of about eight years tied to a plank, and very nearly dead from exhaustion; and in another place, he managed to drag an old woman of seventy out of the water. She said that she was literally the sole survivor of her family; husband, children, and grandchildren all drowned.
"All over the city, the position appears to be pretty much alike. On the native bund, every lodging house is full; in fact, there isn't standing room. And where are the people to get food from? You can form some idea of the depth of the water round about here, from the fact that the highest spot on the bund is now four feet deep.
WHAT THE FIRE DID
"As to the fire, I am afraid I cannot believe that the generally accepted account is exaggerated. At the very least, there must be two thousand houses already destroyed; probably the number will prove to be far greater when the official report comes in. It is quite true that the night before last, people thought that it had burned itself out; but during the night, the wind got up very gusty, and the flames spread worse than ever. The heat was so great that no one dared go near. I think the accounts of the looting and robbing must be very much exaggerated, though of course there is sure to be a certain amount of theft going on among a mixed population at such a time."18
THE TYPHOON AND ITS WORK
On July 28, there followed one of the worst typhoons at Shanghai that has been known in the history of China. Fences were leveled, telephone poles blown down, trees uprooted, small buildings demolished, and large factories unroofed. Vessels lying in the harbor broke from their anchorage, and ran down and crushed smaller vessels, killing the occupants. Many lives were lost.
How completely these extremes of natural phenomena proclaim that the earth is waxing old, and nearing the time when she will exchange her sin-stained garments of desolation, decay, and dissolution for glorified robes of Edenic purity and eternal glory and stability!
The following last-day forecast is most strikingly fulfilled: "With trumpets and sound of cornet make a joyful noise before the Lord, the King. Let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. Let the floods clap their hands: let the hills be joyful together before the Lord; for He cometh to judge the earth: with righteousness shall He judge the world, and the people with equity." Ps. 98: 6-9.
Thus the signs that herald the approach of the final Judgment and the second advent of Christ are rapidly fulfilling. The final Judgment will soon pass sentence upon all. Universal destruction, of which these temporal judgments are warnings, will soon sweep over the whole face of the earth. And "the mighty man shall cry there bitterly." Zeph. 1: 14. "Alas for the day! for the day of the Lord is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come." Joel 1: 15.
Reader, are you prepared to meet that day with the assurance that your sins are all pardoned, and you are a free child of the kingdom of God?
The Invisible Things
By Eliza H. Morton
THERE are things visible and things invisible. The unseen things are just as real as those which our eyes behold. Some of the invisible gases are deadly poison. The air is invisible, and yet its effects are often manifest in a way to prove that it is a reality.
ON THE HOUSETOP IN THE CHINA FLOOD
It might be termed a stretch of the imagination to affirm that there are invisible beings all about us, were it not for the testimony of God's word. The eyes of mankind have been dimmed by sin, and their ears made heavy. "We see through a glass, darkly;" but the time is coming when the vision will be cleared, and we shall "know as we are known." It is our privilege to endure "as seeing Him who is invisible."
ELIZA H. MORTON.
A LITERAL, ETERNAL HOME
By Tyler E. Bowen
Everything That Could Be Desired, Furnished with a Lavish Hand
Not a Sorrow Ever to Enter It — The Only Home
Really Worth Striving For
By TYLER E. BOWEN
WHEN Jesus comes, He comes to take His earthly children to their new home. That home is a city prepared for them in heaven. It is a real place. It is theirs. It was made for them. It has been planned by their elder Brother, who lived thirty-three years among them on earth. He has built for them that city up there. It is finally to become the capital of their earthly home, a thousand years and more hence. It has foundations, gates, streets, and mansions. It is large, — 375 miles on each side, — with three principal avenues running each way across it, each street 375 miles long without a break. These streets are made of pure gold. Gold is lavishly used, and without doubt it adorns the palaces within the beautiful walls inclosing the city. A river will flow through it — a river of life.
WRECKAGE FROM THE TYPHOON IN SHANGHAI, CHINA
The vines Adam and Eve once trained into their bower home are there. Trees adorn the place. Among them is the tree of life, transplanted by God from Eden itself. Adam's home, we understand, just as it was when he was driven from it, is within this city which God has built. After the fall, in order that there should be no immortal sinner, angels guarded the tree of life, until just before the Flood, when — so we believe — God transplanted the Garden of Eden to heaven.
Beautiful and enriched as only God and loving angels could make it, this home for the saved is almost ready for occupancy. There may be some finishing touches yet to be made, or it may be all done, finished and in waiting. However that may be, we have reason to believe that work has been going on upon it for about two thousand years; for Jesus said, "I go to prepare a place for you."
Upon the foundation stones are inscribed the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. Over the door arches are engraved the names of twelve sons, or immediate descendants, of the patriarch Jacob.
THE CITY PREPARED FOR EARTH
Everything goes to show that this city is constructed for this earth. Its very associations belong here. This being so, it will be brought down here. The word of God says so. "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth. . . . And I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven. . . . And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God." Rev. 21: 1-3.
Yes, God Himself shall be there, for the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it.
PEOPLE OF BAD HABITS NOT ADMITTED
Into this real city, built of all manner of precious materials — gold, and silver, and pearls, and such like — a very carefully selected company shall enter. There shall be no red light sections in the city. No saloons will occupy choice corner lots. No covetous, dishonest schemers will be able to procure locations in the business centers. No novel writers nor novel readers shall be there. No tobacco stores, nor places where cigarettes are sold, will be there. For it is written, "And there shall in no-wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life." Rev. 21: 27.
NO SABBATH BREAKING THERE
During the untold centuries, marked off by the revolutions of the earth upon its axis and around the sun, with the moon making its monthly circuits, thus measuring off the day, the night, the week, the month, the year, the Sabbath of the Lord shall be kept within these holy palaces.
The prophet Isaiah wrote: "For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before Me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain. And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before Me, saith the Lord." Isa. 66: 22, 23.
STREET OF CANTON, CHINA, DURING THE FLOOD
The Sabbath controversy will then have been settled. This Sabbath referred to as being kept week by week is God's Sabbath, not man's. All the inhabitants of the city worship together upon that day. It will be the same Sabbath God made back there in Eden, upon which He Himself rested; and in this city of which we are speaking, the same day will be observed that God blessed and set apart for the Sabbath in the beginning. He has blessed no other day, nor commanded3us to keep any other; consequently the Sabbath to be observed in that new earth will be the seventh day. All who pass through those gates will be willing to obey God and join heartily in worshiping Him upon the day He Himself chose in Eden for the Sabbath. There will be no policemen in that city to enforce Sunday laws. All this will be done away with the passing of the old earth, and of the old heaven encircling it.
The Bible makes plain that had the Sabbath been observed as God intended that it should be, the Jerusalem of David’s time, with the temple erected by Solomon within it, need not have been destroyed, but could have been built up to be the capital of the whole earth, and that it might have stood forever. See Jer. 17: 19-27.
A BEAUTIFUL COUNTRY ROUND ABOUT THE ROYAL CITY
Moreover, outside this wonderful city there will be homes — real homes — in which the redeemed of the Lord will peacefully dwell. “They shall build houses, and inhabit them, and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat: for as the days of a tree [evidently the tree of life is here meant] are the days of My people, and Mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands.” Isa. 65: 21, 22.
NO LAND SET OFF FOR HOSPITALS OR GRAVEYARDS
There will be no hospitals there. The services of the physician and the nurse will not be needed any more; for no inhabitant will say, “I am sick.” Death, sorrow, crying, and pain will have been destroyed in the day of the burning up of the old earth and her evil works.
Think, dear reader, of the infinite pains God is taking for us. How thoughtful to prepare such a home as this — a real home, as much so as this one in which we now live; like it, with only that left out which annoys and causes us sorrow; a place not so different that we should feel strange in it, but our old home fixed up; the same sun to shine upon it, although its light will not then be needed in the city, for the Son of God Himself shall furnish the light thereof; the same moon we now behold to shine on eternally; rivers and fields, gardens and vineyards, of our own; friends long lost, restored to each other. Surely our loving Father has omitted nothing that might contribute to the happiness of the nations of the saved, who shall bring their “glory and honor” into it.
Shall we cling to the perishable things we now see, thinking thus to retain our habitations here? Can we not believe what God says of His purpose concerning this old sin-cursed, blood-soaked earth, and also believe Him when He tells us of His purpose to create a new home for us? Within the reach of such an inheritance as this, shall we, like Esau, despise our heirship to it, and sell our birthright in it for a mess of pottage?
Let us not be so foolish as this, but count all else loss, that we may win Christ, and so become joint heirs with Him to this eternal home.
“We have heard from the bright, the holy land —
We have heard, and our hearts are glad;
For we were a lonely pilgrim band,
And weary, and worn, and sad.
They tell us the saints have a dwelling there,
No longer are homeless ones;
And we know that the goodly land is fair,
Where life’s pure river runs.
“They say green fields are waving there,
That never a blight shall know,
And the deserts wild are blooming fair,
And the roses of Sharon grow.
There are lovely birds in the bowers green;
Their songs are blithe and sweet;
And their warblings, gushing ever new,
The angels’ harpings greet.
“The King of that country, He is fair;
He’s the joy and light of the place;
In His beauty we shall behold Him there,
And bask in His smiling face.
We’ll be there, we’ll be there in a little while.
We’ll join the pure and the blest.
We’ll have the palm, the robe, the crown,
And forever be at rest.”
Filipinos Eager for Reading Matter
By Arthur G. Daniells
What a Few Earnest Men and Women, with Meager Facilities, Have Done Plans for Enlarged Publishing Equipment — Demands for a School, and the Preparations to Meet Them
By ARTHUR G. DANIELLS
FROM William Carey's activities at Serampur, India, to the present time, all progressive workers in mission lands have placed great value on the circulation of religious literature. Our leaders in the Philippines have not overlooked nor undervalued this important medium in the evangelization of the people. With but little previous experience in such work, and with very inadequate facilities, they have translated and printed twenty different publications, and have trained a good, successful company of colporteurs.
Our first mission printing house in the Philippines. It was in this little shed of a building that the immense work mentioned in Elder Daniells's article was accomplished.
This literature consists of tracts on twelve or fifteen different subjects, a monthly magazine having a sale of three thousand copies of each edition, and a number of books ranging from two hundred to five hundred pages, printed in editions of from three thousand to five thousand copies, in four different languages.
SMALL STAFF, BUT ENCOURAGING RESULTS
The writing and the translating required in the preparation of these publications have been a heavy burden on our small staff of workers in the Philippines; but the printing and the binding have been even more perplexing and wearing. The only building they have had for the printing office is twenty-one by twenty-four feet. Their printing outfit has been a small job press, a paper cutter, a small stitcher, and a limited quantity of poor type. The folding and the binding have been done under the mission home. As they were able to print but four pages at a time, and as they had a large quantity to produce, the little press was kept running from 5:30 A.M. until 9 or 10 P.M. every day except Sabbath. With these very limited facilities, they issued nearly three million pages of literature during 1914.
The work of training and directing the book and periodical sellers has been under the supervision of Brother Lanier, who has had the management as well of the printing, binding, and shipping of the publications. The responsibility of preparing all the matter for printing has fallen upon Brother Finster, the superintendent of the entire field.
Employees in our Filipino printing office, Brother W. E. Lanier, the manager of the publishing house, at the left.
HOW COULD THEY DO SO MUCH?
As we looked this work over, we marveled that these brethren could accomplish so much. We could hardly understand how our young men and young women could turn out such good appearing books and papers with such poor facilities. Our hearts were made to rejoice because we had such patient, painstaking, hard-working people in the field.
We felt that this situation should not be allowed to continue. A suitable building and an adequate printing equipment should be provided for this work. We have passed the experimental stage in this line of endeavor in the Philippines. We have a band of twenty successful workers who have demonstrated that the sale of our literature can be made self-supporting. They have proved that the people will buy our books and papers. The sales of our publications in these islands increased from $1,161 in 1913 to over $6,000 in 1914. This work is built on a substantial foundation, and we believe it will stand. We have no competition along this line. We have scores of active young people who will engage in canvassing as soon as we can provide the literature and give them the training.
NEW PRINTING PLANT TO BE SUPPLIED
After giving the whole question careful study, we decided to request our mission board to make an appropriation of ten thousand dollars for establishing a suitable printing plant in this field. This brought great joy to the hearts of our brethren in the Philippines. The request met with an immediate response on the part of the mission board. The money required to build and equip the plant was voted, the land was secured, and now the building is being erected, and the machinery, which is furnished by the Pacific Press, is on the way to be installed.
Another insistent demand in the Philippines is for a school in which to give our young people the education and training they4must have to become efficient workers in the cause of God. We have a large number of bright, active young people in this mission field, who are anxious to work for their Master. One third of the two hundred members present at the Sabbath services in Manila were young people ranging from twelve to twenty-five years of age. Many of these are fired with a desire to have some part in this closing work, and they give promise of being as successful as those who are now working. A good school is as great a necessity in the Philippines as in any other country; and from indications, it seems that the benefits of such a school will be as great there as anywhere else. From all that we saw, we believed it our duty to urge that money be secured for the establishment of a training school in the Philippines. All whose hearts beat in sympathy with such needs and advantages, will rejoice to know that ten thousand dollars has been appropriated by the board for this school. Our position here will be immeasurably strengthened when the school is in operation.
Colporteur class in the Philippine Islands, Brother Lanier, the teacher, at the left.
There are eight million people in these islands who, by recent changes in their country, are coming from great darkness into light. About eight thousand of these people are rejoicing in the message we have taken to them. This message brings such joy to the hearts of these new believers that they want all their people in the islands to hear it. The school and the printing press can be used to great advantage by them in giving the message to their fellow men.
We have reason to be deeply grateful to our heavenly Father for the work He is doing through our missionaries in the Philippines. The advancement made in our work in this field during 1914 shows what we may look for in the future if we make the use we should of the help the Lord is bringing to us. Last year our church membership here was doubled, increasing from three hundred to six hundred; the tithes increased from $657 to $1,453, the offerings from $75 to $189, and the book and periodical sales rose from $1,161 to $6,000.
Everything gives promise of similar growth the coming year. We in the home land should make every effort to keep step with the onward march of the cause in that encouraging field.
Contest Over Sunday in Oregon
By Hampton W. Cottrell
Appeal Is Made to the Courts for Relief—More Rigorous Laws Sought by the Initiative—Earnest Campaign Against the Invasion of Civil and Religious Rights
By HAMPTON W. COTTRELL
IN the case of the grocer charged with violating the Sunday law, which case was recently appealed from a lower court to the circuit court, Judge Gantenbein ruled the Sunday law unconstitutional, and declared an injunction against its enforcement in Multnomah County.
Another suit was brought before three United States district judges, one from each of the states of Oregon, Washington, and California, by a Portland corporation whose goods are sold throughout the state, asking for an injunction against Sunday closing in forty-seven counties of the state, on the ground of the unconstitutionality of the law. The hearing has been had. The injunction was not granted, and we await their decision relative to the constitutionality of the Oregon Sunday law.
WOULD BE MORE STRINGENT ON SUNDAY
The Rev. G. L. Tufts, of Berkeley, California, superintendent of the Sunday Rest League, is lecturing in various churches throughout the state, in the interest of a still more stringent Sunday law for Oregon, to be initiated at the next general election.
The North Pacific Religious Liberty Association, and also the similar organizations in Oregon and Washington, are awake to the situation, and are improving this opportunity to enlighten the people relative to the proposed further invasion of their civil and religious rights by the anticipated religio-civil initiative legislation. We are campaigning throughout the states of Oregon and Washington in the interest of the natural rights and liberties of all the people. Mass meetings have been held in three of the largest theaters in Portland, and in a theater or opera house in each of the following cities: Salem, Eugene, Hillsboro, and Forest Grove, in Oregon; and Tacoma and Seattle, Washington.
CROWDED HOUSES HEAR THE DISCUSSION
We have had crowded houses except at Portland, at which place we were obliged to hold the meetings at the unfavorable hour of eleven o'clock on Sunday morning. However, there was an attendance of two thousand people, who gave marked attention to Prof. C. S. Longacre, of Washington, D. C.; W. M. Healey, of San Diego; and Luther Warren, of Los Angeles, California.
Messrs. Longacre and Healey lectured also in Tacoma and Seattle. Mr. Healey is still campaigning with us, and arrangements are completed for lectures in four other theaters or opera houses in the near future. We plan on a continued campaign in the interest of the rights and liberties of every man, woman, and child.
A RELIGIOUS MOTIVE AT THE BOTTOM
The contention of the "National Reformers" who are promoting Sunday legislation, is that it is not for religious purposes, but for civic rest only, on behalf of the workmen in mines, factories, and shops. They tell us that these people are deprived of their right to rest on Sunday and to go to church.
However, such is not the case. Any one of them and every one of them could stop work once every week and rest on Sunday if he so willed. Their right to rest is not infringed, as matters now obtain; for they can rest or work, as they will to do, each for himself. In proof of this assertion, let us notice the body of seventh-day observers, a very conscientious people, taken from the factories, the mines, the shops, the banks, and the various other walks of life. They stop work every week when the seventh day arrives. They do not have to work on the day on which they desire to rest. Neither do they have to initiate a Saturday religio-civil law to compel themselves to rest on the day of their choice, or to compel people who rest on Sunday to rest on Saturday, or by civil enactment to force those who are not religious to act on Saturday as though they were religious.
Of a truth, many of the wives and mothers of our land are the people whose strength is overtaxed. They work from early dawn to the late hours of the night, with scrub brush in hand, or over the washtub, or at other unending tasks, that the souls and bodies of the children may be kept together, and that the unemployed husbands and sons may have the necessary food and clothes. Will this proposed "one-day-of-rest-in-seven" (Sunday) law remedy this direful condition, brought about because so many men have but two or three days' work in a week, or — as in many thousands of cases — for many months at a time have rest every day? Such men need work, not rest.
Speaking fairly and frankly, the men and women who are in bondage are not those who have regular employment in mines, factories, and banks, but those who have no employment. Then men should not legislate to bind people about with religio-civil laws, and thus wrench from free citizens one seventh of their time, which every man has a right to use as he may individually decide, in earning his living, or in seeking his own happiness or that of his family, or in religious worship, provided only that in either case he does not invade the equal right of any other person by so doing.
DESIRE A STATE-ENFORCED RELIGION
It is not civic rest our National Reformers are seeking, in their endeavor to secure a more rigorous Sunday law, but the enforcement, by civil law, of a sectarian religious idea of Sunday sacredness. They are well aware that such an idea cannot be sustained by Biblical authority. Thus they are compelled either to yield that point in their creed, or to appeal to civil law to enforce it. Their civic rest plea is a mere subterfuge, and some of the people are fully aware of this fact; but all the people should be informed of it before the legislation proposed crashes upon them like a great avalanche.
Every man and woman should arise in the might of right, and stand for the principle of natural liberty, resolute as an immovable rock, and calm as the North Star; for this is a God-given heritage.
Same Conditions, but a New Way
By C. L. Taylor
It is never safe to suppose that the same task, under apparently the same conditions, and surrounded by similar circumstances, is always to be performed in the same way. David found the Philistines spread abroad in the valley of Rephaim; and when he had asked God for instructions, God told him to go up and fight, and that He would deliver them into his hand. David was victorious.
Again the Philistines chose the same battle field — the same people came to the same place to fight the same enemy. The same task lay before David.
But David sought the Lord as before, asking for instructions. This time, he was told to follow an entirely different course. His new prayer brought new light. Victory came in a new way. God was glorified and David was blessed.
Past methods may have been good; but God has better ones for to-day, for him who prays. C. L. TAYLOR.
The Bigger Man
By Arthur D. White
An assistant instructor wished a small piece of furniture in his classroom moved, and he rang for the janitor to come and move it. A little later, the dean of the faculty wanted a larger, heavier piece moved, and he proceeded to move it. The assistant was the bigger man of the two—physically. The reader doubtless can complete the comparison. A. D. W.
