Review of the World-Wide Field by William A. Spicer

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 13, 1909

Review of the World-Wide Field

By William A. Spicer

The Secretary’s Report

This must be but the merest outline of facts. The details of progress, stirring stories of the four-years’ advance, belong to the delegates fresh from the fields, who have gathered in literally from all the ends of the earth. They will tell us of opening and closing doors, of expanding boundary lines, of new tongues taking up the cry, “Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come.”

Four years ago how it thrilled our hearts to greet here thirty-two visiting representatives from other lands. Never had so many gathered at our General Conference, or from fields representing so vast a population. This year, however, we greet over one hundred delegates and fifty additional representatives from abroad. It is one token of the rapid flight of the message, an earnest that the day is soon to come when the great multitude that John saw, of all nations and tongues, will stand “before the throne.”

And as we of this country greet these workers from abroad in blessed conference, face to face, we are thinking of those they represent. Our hearts to-day are with the wives and workers left behind in distant mission fields; and we pray that God may use this Conference to send a message of cheer and comfort to all, and to give a fresh impetus to the work in every land.

It looks good to see the message go. These four years have been packed full of mercies and providences for missions. In real earnest, great union conferences abroad, as in Europe and Australasia, have been joining the American field in sending companies of missionaries into regions beyond their natural boundaries. During the quadrennial period three hundred twenty-eight missionaries have gone out from the older fields to other lands. It is an average of over eighty a year. Last year it was one hundred thirty-four.

Every year it has seemed as if the limit had been reached; that the pace at which the workers were going would have to be slackened, to allow the means to accumulate to care for work already in hand. But year by year the mission treasury, like the widow’s barrel of meal,

has seemed able to supply yet a little more. How it stands now the treasurer’s report will show. But certain it is that we must cry to God and to his people for help to respond to such Macedonian calls as never came to our ears before.

At the last General Conference we seemed to be fairly getting into formation for a systematic advance along the whole line of the dark Catholic and heathen lands. Since the rise of the message the advance generally had been along the line of least resistance. Logically, the truth of the Lord’s soon coming was proclaimed first of all among Protestant peoples. But a change came a few years ago. The last stage of the journey was before us. The pillar of God’s providence led straight into the dark regions of Catholicism and paganism. Through these, and then beyond, is the rolling Jordan and the promised land. Our missionary vanguard went in to spy out these waiting lands, and now their representatives return, every one of them with precious fruit of his labors. Hearts among Catholic peoples are responding in hundreds, and wherever the outposts have been planted amid heathenism, there is heard the song of praise for the light of the third angel’s message.

During these four swift years thirty-three new countries and island fields have been entered, counting the great provinces of China and India as separate countries, which they really are in their vastness of population and differences of language. Thirty-three new fields, thank God, and nearly every one in the great Catholic and heathen zones, representing a population of two hundred fifty millions newly brought within our missionary boundaries, with a score of new tongues thanking God for the “blessed hope.”

The message of Revelation 14 is flying in the midst of heaven. That good old Seventh-day Adventist phrase, “keeping pace with the message,” means much in these days. We must step fast to do it. Others than ourselves recognize the wide extent and rapid progress of this advent movement. We thank the New York Methodist Christian Advocate for its half-humorous and yet serious characterization of our missionary enterprise, in the words:—

“Its aim is avowedly to run the earth; and small though the denomination still is, it has its missionaries scattered through every region of the globe.”

We ourselves can scarcely keep watch of the advancing line of light. Daniel Webster, in the Senate, once described in words that became historic the vast extent of the British empire, “whose morning drum-beat, following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the earth with one continuous and unbroken strain.” Even so the voice of this message circles the earth to-day, following the sun and keeping company with the hours. Measure off on the map the fifteen degree spaces representing hours, and you will see that from the time the sun rises with the new day in the mid-Pacific, there is now no hour of the twenty-four in which its meridian is not touching regions in which the cry is being lifted. “Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come.” Well may the fact quicken our pulses, and drive us on with all the earnestness of our being. Before Turkestan was entered, this could not have been said; but God’s hand flung the blazing brand of truth into the heart of Asia, and the shining circle of the hours was complete.

There are brethren here representing organized work within the arctic circle. Others represent the extreme of the habitable earth to the southward. If the arms of our brethren in South Africa, Tasmania, New Zealand, and South America could be stretched forth as widely as their sympathies, their hands clasped across the seas would parallel the antarctic circle. With all the wide gaps to be filled in, we may pray with confidence,—

“Waft, waft, ye winds, His story, Ye waters onward roll, Till like a sea of glory It spreads from pole to pole.”

Two years ago the General Conference Committee council in Switzerland was like our General Conferences of a few years back. Eighty representatives assembled, their fields stretching from Iceland to Algeria, and from Portugal to Mt. Ararat. We thank God and our brethren in Russia for that signal flying from Ararat. The last message has reached the region where righteous Noah began anew the history of the human race.

The providence of God leads the way into these unwarned lands where the millions wait. Of the total net gain of sixteen thousand Sabbath-keepers during the four years, eleven thousand were gained in countries outside of the United States. The believers abroad to-day number thirty-two thousand five hundred, more than the entire world membership in 1891. The third angel’s message is a success. It wins its way in every land it touches.

The work must be kept strong in the older fields. They are to be bases of supply for men and means. But their own hope is in seeing the message carried quickly into every unentered region. There is no rivalry in this work, no antagonism of interests. No field can finish its work till all have finished it.

These delegates who have come in with needs that wring their hearts are not seeking advantage for their fields to the disadvantage of any other. We are all gathered as children round a father’s board. The stronger are not intent on getting the larger share of food, but are rather insistent that the little ones, the weaker members, shall be supplied. Even so we surround our Heavenly Father’s board to-day, and pray that famishing fields may have the bread of life.

A few years ago I stood one evening with Elder John Maas, of South America, in the plaza of Parana City, the park-like square in front of the ancient cathedral. A military band rendered a selection in a manner new to me. They were separated in groups amid the shrubbery about the square. From one side came a stirring strain, and then from another place came the answering notes. The martial music seemed to awaken answering and cheering chords from every side. Then, marching together, the entire band joined in the triumphant chorus of victory. So the word of cheer is passed from land to land in our work to-day. North America lifts the cry, and Europe echoes the strain. The continents respond, Asia and Africa, Australia, and South America, land answering to land, and the islands of the sea joining the glorious strain. “From the uttermost part of earth have we heard songs, even glory to the righteous.” And soon must come the united chorus of victory.

We have a right to rejoice in this thought only as we actually strip for the race. Measured by time, the work is nearly done; surveyed by what remains to be accomplished, it is but begun. With almost one accord, the newer fields that have been opened call now for facilities with which to train workers and develop resources. They have reached the point where they must have facilities. And the laborers are pitifully few, even where we have entered. There is more than one great country, with millions of people, where only one missionary, with a brave wife by his side, is holding the fort, looking to see if help is coming from this Conference.

On every side stretch the wide expanse unentered. There are the thirteen provinces of China waiting, with vast Mongolia and Tibet lying beyond. There are a score of principal languages, and scores of lesser ones, in India and Burma, silent in the third angel’s message. There are Persia and Arabia, in Asia, and Afghanistan, Nepal, and Siam, not to speak of lesser states, with never a worker. Most of the Dark Continent is a region unknown to us, and Madagascar is untouched. South America has its vast blank spaces on our map, with no settled worker in Colombia and Venezuela. There are populous Borneo and the Celebes, in the East Indies, and Dutch and German New Guinea, and smaller island groups whose darkness has not yet caught the gleam of Australasia’s torch.

Livingstone gave his heart to Africa when Moffat told him he had seen the smoke of a thousand villages rising in the morning air, with never a missionary among them. What shall we say to a thousand walled towns in China with no settled missionary of any society? We can carve out more than one square in Africa, a thousand miles on every side, with never a mission station. What does it mean to us that a thousand and more languages have not uttered a syllable of the third angel’s message?

There is no reason for discouragement, or for thinking in our hearts, “My Lord delayeth his coming.” The very greatness of the task brings courage; for it is a work that only God can do; therefore it will be done. We have not to ask how long it will take us to carry the message to every people, but how long will it take God to do it. The Lord will do it; but if we are to be saved when he does it, we must be found working as though we were to do it ourselves.

It is estimated that already the translated Scriptures, in four hundred fifteen languages, may be understood by ninety-five per cent of the people of earth. The Lord, who gave to John that vision of the last message flying to every nation and tongue, is able to finish the work and cut it short in righteousness.

He has wonderfully prepared the way. A few years before the hour of God’s judgment struck, in 1844, men were traveling about the world just as they did in the days of Abraham or Solomon, as fast as horse or sailing ship could

take them. But as the hour came for a message to be carried swiftly to all the world in one generation, the whole six thousand years of man’s history was changed, so far as locomotion is concerned. There came suddenly the steamship, the railway, the application of steam and electricity to locomotion, production, and communication. In these last days, for the evangelization of the world in this generation, it has been done.

“He hath made the deep as dry, He hath smote for us a pathway to the ends of all the earth.”

Changes have come within the decade that indicate the arm of the Lord made bare in the sight of all the nations. It is by no means our advent hope coloring our view and causing us to create evidences from our own heart’s desire. The secretary of one of the great missionary societies, said a little time ago:—

“Within five years the missionary situation of the world has been so transformed as to be hardly recognizable by those who studied the problem in the previous period. There has been nothing like it since the preparation of the Roman empire for the advent of Christ. We are in a new fulness of time.”

Thank God it is so. The fulness of time has come for the preparation for the second coming of Christ in power and glory. The finishing of the work is not to be deferred to another generation. “I have long time holden my peace,” saith the Lord; “I have been still, and refrained myself: now will I cry out. . . . I will lay waste mountains and hills. . . . I will bring the blind by a way that they know not.” We see the beginning of it. In these last four years three great kingdoms and one Catholic republic have removed legal barriers to gospel work, two of them with special decrees mentioning our own work and opening a wider path for the message. At the same time, we see other open doors threatening to fly shut. Again and again it has seemed that unwarned regions would be involved in tumult, and our brethren in needy fields be brought into close places. For many years we have watched the Eastern question narrowing down toward the final fulfilment of Daniel 11. But we have scarcely touched our part of the Eastern question, the proclamation of the advent message through the near and far East.

We have our orders, “Go.” And our Leader’s promise, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” This promise is carved over the portal of the magnificent new cathedral in Berlin. It seems hardly in place on the costly pile of marble. The promise better suits the tented field. “Go, . . . and, lo, I am with you.” Only by heeding the call to go does the church have the promised presence. Stay, settle down, neglect the regions beyond, and we lose him; for the Shepherd is seeking the other sheep. “Go, . . . and, lo, I am with you.” Every believer who is praying and giving and living only that the message may be carried to all the world, is obeying the great commission, whether his own work is in near or distant lands. But it is time to cut loose and devote every resource to service.

Laborers in destitute fields, with millions upon millions of unwarned souls about them, are convicted that the work is soon to close. From a point about ten thousand miles to the westward a brother wrote: “As we see these manifestations of his power, we can but feel that the time of the ‘latter rain’ has indeed come.”

From a lone station five thousand miles eastward, on the edge of a vast unentered region, a brother wrote: “It is a shower of the ‘latter rain.’”

From away southward, two thousand miles, came the word: “It seems to me that everywhere there is a moving of the Holy Spirit on the hearts of men.”

It has come—the time that we used to hear gray-haired pioneers talking about, when some of us were children. The message swells to a loud cry. The showers of blessing are falling. In this generation the gospel of the kingdom is to be preached as a witness to all nations; and “then shall the end come.” The advent people are nearing the journey’s end at last.

“Not far from home! O blessed thought! The traveler’s lonely heart to cheer; Which oft a healing balm has brought, And dried the mourner’s tear. Then weep no more, since we shall meet Where weary footsteps never roam— Our trials past, our joys complete, Safe in our Father’s home.”

W. A. Spicer.