p. 240 | Signs of the Times, Vol. 42, No. 15. (4/13/1915)

Earlier text: CHRIST AND THE SABBATH QUESTION

Summary of Progress for 1914

By H. G. Childs

A Good Showing of Prosperity — Directors, Officers, Managers, etc., for This Year

By H. G. CHILDS

Secretary Pacific Press Publishing Association

It will be of interest, we are sure, to many of our readers, to learn something more concerning the many items of interest in connection with the annual meeting of the association that publishes this paper.

The meeting was held in connection with the Bookmen’s Convention, as reported in previous issues. On this account, the attendance was larger than usual—not only from the association’s own field, west of the Mississippi, but representative men were present from farther east, as for instance, Elder I. H. Evans, president of the North American Division Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, Elders N. Z. Town, W. W. Eastman, and F. W. Paap, representing the general book and periodical work, and Mr. I. A. Ford, from the Review and Herald Publishing Association.

Western men are named in connection with the Bookmen’s Convention reports in late issues; therefore we will not take space to note them here, other than to say all were heartily welcome—ministers, bookmen, conference and missionary officers, and workers one and all.

The president and manager of the association presented a most encouraging annual report. He referred to the stirring times in which we live, the large opportunities for work, the hearty cooperation of the office and the field, and touched upon the finances of the institution, given more fully by the treasurer.

The sales of books, pamphlets, and tracts total $337,575.50, while the value of all publications sold, including periodicals, aggregated $471,126.44.

The manager referred to the branch offices and the prosperity that had attended each one of them.

His remarks on the prosperous evening school and lecture course for employees showed their value.

He touchingly referred to the death of one of the older employees who had served faithfully so many years, Mr. V. M. Donaldson.

Report of the Treasurer

From the treasurer’s report we glean the following items:

The year’s business showed a net increase in assets of $16,172.21, and a reduction of liabilities of $14,315.34. Notes payable accounts had been reduced over twenty-one per cent. A few years ago, the Pacific Press was a semi-commercial institution, depending for the larger part of its work upon commercial jobs. At that time, its interest-bearing debt ranged from $165,000 to $175,000, with an annual interest burden of about $8,000. In 1908 our work was reorganized, commercial work eliminated, and the present interest-bearing debt is but $46,110.99—a reduction of about seventy-five per cent.

In 1908, when the Pacific Press Publishing Company’s business was transferred to the association, the liabilities were $178,771.55—a sum equivalent to seventy per cent of the assets. But at the close of the year 1914, under the blessing of God, while doing His work wholly, the amount of liabilities, including $20,250.11 of special reserve funds, was $77,352.80, or only 24½ per cent of the assets—a reduction of 45½ per cent in the percentage relation of liabilities to assets. But if these special reserve funds, such as pension and relief, amounts invested in missions, etc., were not considered as current liabilities, the relation of liabilities to assets would be but eighteen per cent.

During these years, the assets of the institution have increased from nearly $244,000

to more than $312,000. The present worth has increased from over $21,000 to nearly $235,000.

Some time ago, the constituency voted to set apart an amount equal to five per cent of the total wages for a pension and relief fund. This is not from the wages, but is set apart by the institution out of its profits. Two and one half per cent is forwarded to the General Conference as our contribution toward the sustentation fund, the balance being our institutional sickness and emergency fund.

During these years since 1908, the association has been able to invest in publishing work for missionary purposes $15,563.05, with a substantial balance on hand for other needs in the great mission field. There has been sent to China, $1,012; Japan, $880; Korea, $945; India, $2,118; the Philippines, $360; South Africa, $1,500; International Publishing Association, College View, for support of foreign secretaries, $750; and miscellaneous additional donations of nearly $500.

In addition to this, for various funds there has been raised through the SIGNS OF THE TIMES and Our Little Friend, $1,159.51 during the past year.

The subscription book business during 1914 amounted to $252,215.60. Other books, including tracts and pamphlets, brought the aggregate to $337,575.50. The periodical business amounted to $142,354.82, making the aggregate retail value of publications sold during 1914, $471,126.44. The net gain of the institution during the year 1914 amounts to $32,142.12.

There was no change made in the board of the previous year. It is composed of the following: C. H. Jones, H. G. Childs, H. H. Hall, M. C. Wilcox, James Cochran, B. M. Shull, and W. E. Whalin. The organization of the board is as follows: President, C. H. Jones; Vice president, H. H. Hall; Secretary-treasurer, H. G. Childs. Mr. J. J. Ireland was again elected as auditor of the institution.

Managers and department heads were appointed by the newly elected board as follows:

General Manager, C. H. Jones.

Assistant General Manager, H. G. Childs.

Manager Book Department, H. H. Hall.

Assistant Manager Book Department, James Cochran.

Manager Periodical Department, James Cochran.

Assistant Manager Periodical Department, G. C. Hoskin.

Manager Kansas City Branch, S. N. Curtiss.

Manager Portland Branch, J. F. Beatty.

Manager Canadian Branch, J. M. Rowse.

Manager International Branch, F. F. Byington.

Circulation Manager International Branch, J. R. Ferren.

Art Director and Foreman of the Engraving Department, F. H. Gage.

Cashier, T. F. Culhane.

Book Editor and Literary Critic, M. C. Wilcox.

Editor SIGNS OF THE TIMES, A. O. Tait; Associate, L. A. Reed.

Editor Signs of the Times Magazine, L. A. Reed; Associate, A. O. Tait.

Editor Our Little Friend, Miss K. B. Wilcox; Associate, Mrs. Vesta J. Farnsworth.

Editorial contributors for the SIGNS OF THE TIMES: A. G. Daniells, M. C. Wilcox, I. H. Evans, J. E. Fulton, W. A. Spicer, G. B. Thompson, E. E. Andross, H. R. Salisbury, W. T. Knox, R. C. Porter, J. O. Corliss, W. T. Bartlett.

Publishing committee: H. H. Hall, C. H. Jones, James Cochran, M. C. Wilcox, F. H. Gage, H. G. Childs, A. O. Tait, L. A. Reed, E. L. McElhany, Dr. George Thomason, E. E. Andross, G. C. Hoskin.

Editorial committee: M. C. Wilcox, A. O. Tait, L. A. Reed, H. H. Hall, F. H. Gage.

In connection with the annual meeting, the regular yearly lunch, sometimes dignified with the name of “banquet,” was held in the office of publication. In the folding room the tables were beautifully arranged and spread by the sisters in the church and by a committee under the charge of the sisters, who certainly did splendid work. Nearly four hundred sat down to a most excellently prepared meal, accompanied with music by the Pacific Press orchestra. The company was composed of our visiting brethren, of conference officials and bookmen, the Pacific Press employees, members of the constituency, and visitors from the town. Very appreciative as well as earnest and instructive speeches were made at the table, and every one was pleased and happy at the good year that God had given the Pacific Press.

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SIGNS OF THE TIMES Mountain View, California

The Value of a Kind Word

“A MAN is miserably poor if he can not afford to give a kind word to his fellow man.”

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The Best Route to and from California

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BOOK NOTICE

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The old Syriac version of the conversation of Christ and the repentant thief which is cited at the beginning of this tract is interesting as respects the form of Christ’s promise to the thief: “Amen, I say unto thee to-day that with Me thou shalt be in the Garden of Eden.” This, coming from the oldest version of the Gospels yet discovered, shows clearly in what sense Christ’s words were understood by the early Christian translator. The main object of this tract is to emphasize a particular view of the symbolism of sacrifice in relation to Christ—that is, that when His blood is mentioned as our redemption, it is His life, the life we receive, that is meant. The practical need of appreciating this view is evident; but whether, as this tract teaches, it is the only one, the reader must settle for himself in the light of the Scriptures.

Combination Offer for Signs Publications

By Editor

Save 50 Cents by accepting our combination offer of $2.25 for the SIGNS of THE TIMES (weekly) and the Signs of the Times Magazine (monthly). May be sent to one or separate names and addresses. Address our depository in your state or SIGNS OF THE TIMES, Mountain View, California.

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PACIFIC PRESS PUBLISHING ASSN Mountain View, California

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Future of the Earth

By Editor

From Constantinople to ______ (?)

Will prophecy be fulfilled when the Turk moves from Constantinople? Do you think he will go to Jerusalem at once?

Perhaps you know. Does your neighbor? His knowledge may be very meager, and his understanding hazy. Help him to get out of the “I don’t know” class, by selling or giving him a copy of the Signs of the Times Magazine for May.

Here are other articles. Look them over, and act upon the good impulse that comes to you.

Future of the Earth

The Future War — Armageddon

Future of the Church

Future Read by the Present

Bondage of Religion

Some of our representatives are earning their living selling the Signs Magazine and taking subscriptions for it. Others, who devote but a few hours a week to the work, find it quite remunerative, educational, and healthful. If you can give some time each month to this work, let our depository in your state know about it at once.

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That you pay but 5c a copy for 5 to 25 copies of any one issue, and even less — 4c a copy — for 50 or more?

Sell 25 and earn $1.25, or sell 50 and earn $3.00.

Signs of the Times Magazine

Mountain View, California

“Holy Week”

From the earliest centuries, possibly from near the time of Constantine, there has been observed what is known as “holy week.” It is the week immediately preceding Easter Sunday. “Holy week,” as well as Lent and Easter Sunday itself, is an institution that has grown up within the papal church. The papal church believes that it is the one true church, and that all other religious bodies represent delusions and heresies. The papal church has been the great leader, in the Christian dispensation, in church-and-state religion. It has held that it was the one right and true church, and therefore was privileged to coerce the actions and the consciences of men by civil enactment.

During the Middle Ages, practically all the civil states were more or less under the dominance of the papal power, and did its bidding. But the Reformation produced the Protestant church. Protestantism taught the great lessons of freedom that are in the gospel. Protestantism taught the right of the individual to study and think for himself. It taught free salvation, and that the individual is responsible to God alone, and not to the church, for his faith and conduct. Protestantism did not ignore the church, for the church is one of the divinely appointed institutions, as the Bible plainly shows. But Protestantism gave the church its rightful place, and showed that God, through His Spirit and His word, was to lead the individual.

But Protestantism, as represented in the great masses of our churches, is shifting. It is drawing closer and closer to the papal power. They are becoming more and more blended into one spirit. Such incidents as the request of the “Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America” that “holy week” be observed, are very large straws that show the trend of the currents.

There are many people who are greatly alarmed about the growing influence of the papacy, and there is an abundance of ground for their anxieties. But equally alarming—yes, we might say, more alarming still—are the evidences which show that professed Protestantism is losing its bearings and is drifting mightily toward the papal church.

Those who are studying the prophecies of the Bible, know that just such a thing is coming. Indeed, we are on the eve of the realization of it. The thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of Revelation, as well as other portions of the Book, show that a religious despotism will come at the end of time, as the climax of apostasy. It will exercise, even to the pronouncing of the death penalty, the fiercest despotic powers of oppression and religious intolerance.

The leaders of religious thought combined, in the time of Christ, to fulfill prophecy by crucifying the Master on a Roman cross. We can see their mistake, and denounce their bigotry and blindness. But the leaders of the religious world are to-day repeating history by departing from the simplicity of the gospel truth, and rejecting gospel power, while they unite in again fulfilling the prophecies that mark the great religious despotism which is formed just prior to the appearing of Christ in the clouds of heaven.

If ever there was a time when men needed to seek God for spiritual enlightenment and for divine guidance, that time is now. We should study the prophecies of His word, so that we may not be, as were many of the Jews of old, among the apostates that would overthrow the true work of Christ and God. Those who remain in such a position, must meet the doom into which the blindness they have selected will plunge them; but as individuals, we should stand in the light, and reap the reward of the righteous, rather than to go down in destruction.

The Zeppelin Destroyer

THERE are persistent rumors that as soon as the weather settles this spring, Germany will invade England with a powerful fleet of Zeppelin airships. It is said that among the English people, this is not regarded lightly—that they consider it to be a very strong probability. Rigorous work is being done to meet the invaders should they come. Among the things in preparation is an airship devised by Mr. Thomas Rutherford Macmechen, which is to be known as the “Zeppelin destroyer.” It is smaller and much lighter than the Zeppelin, and can attain a very much greater speed, being able to sail at the rate of about seventy miles an hour. It will carry four men and can stay in the air for ten hours at a time, and can operate some seventy miles from its base of supplies. It will carry a torpedo gun, and by its greater speed, is designed to keep above the big Zeppelins and destroy them.

What terrors have grown up in modern warfare? Think of what it means to be invaded from the air. Think further what it means to have battle a mile above the ground in the air itself. Think of the horrors of such things.

Is it any wonder that the prophets, in describing the scenes of war that should lead up to Armageddon, characterized them as being under the influence of demons? And how vivid and intense is the language of Jeremiah as he views these scenes through which the world is now passing! He says: “My anguish, my anguish! I am pained at my very heart; my heart is disquieted in me; I cannot hold my peace; because thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war. Destruction upon destruction is cried; for the whole land is laid waste.” Jer. 4:19, 20.

Many people are concerned about the question as to who is right and who is wrong in this war, and who is responsible for it. But these things should be lost sight of, because of the most significant and important question of what the prophets have said regarding these conditions of war and what they mean to the world. We are standing before the great climax. Armageddon is not very far ahead, and we should be ready for the consummating scenes of the second coming of Christ that lie on just before.

Impressions of the Approaching End

GOD has strewn His word with prophecies of the second coming of Christ. These prophecies define conditions that will prevail. When the events appear that fulfill the prophecy, in the very nature of things there will come the mighty conviction upon each individual that the end of all things is at hand, that the judgment day is imminent, and that the second coming of Christ lies just before.

Not only are ministers of the gospel and writers in religious journals becoming awakened to the thought that a mighty crisis is hovering over the world, but even writers in the daily press are drawn aside to express some of the same thoughts and convictions. For instance, the following paragraph appeared in the Daily Journal of Newburgh, New York, under date of March 15:

“The mental condition caused among Americans by the war in Europe is interesting. One finds many persons in all places who believe the world is nearing its end. Such persons are by no means cranks. Many are careful students of history as well as of the Bible, and some of them have figured the prophecies of Daniel down to a point where they feel sure not only of the approach of the grand collapse, but of the identity of the principal characters who are to be conspicuous in the last days. One meets persons holding such views on the trains, in the banks, everywhere; and if one considers them sensible in all other things, they can hardly be regarded as lunatics in this. The religious faith of many persons calls for a grand breakdown of the world.”

It would be difficult to express in stronger or clearer language the general condition in the world. God has given His prophecies. He gave them for the purpose of convincing men of what was to take place. He desires that we know and believe. Said the Master, “I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe.” John 14:29.

As God, through the events of this time, produces convictions upon our minds as to their all-important significance, what will be our attitude? Will we fight our convictions, and plunge deeper and deeper into the world to drown our consciences entirely? or will we yield to the blessed influences of the Spirit of God, and through His word be guided into the great truth of His second coming? Will we learn to know that blessed hope, and be ready for the great and joyful day?

“The War and the Holy Land”

IN the midweek pictorial edition of the New York Times dated March 11, may be found a significant little article with the title “The War and the Holy Land.” The Christian Herald, in some of its “advanced proofs” sent out under date of March 17, has a couple of paragraphs under the caption “Palestine as an American State.”

These and many other writers recognize that when this war is over, Palestine will be prominent in the discussions incident to the settlement of territorial lines. There is a growing conviction, in the world, that Palestine once again is to become a great center of interest and political discussion. The men who are giving consideration to this topic do not, as a rule, make a special study of the prophecies. They are viewing the question almost wholly from the political standpoint. But the prophecies show that the great final war will be Armageddon, and Armageddon is located in the heart of Palestine. The political sentiments of the nations, and the religious sentiments of the last great apostasy, will form a great whirlpool of conflict that will rage about Palestine, and finally reach its climax in the Armageddon war.

We see how events are tending in that direction. How important it is that men should live with their Bibles; that they should study the pages of the sacred Book carefully; that they should seek the infallible guidance of the Spirit of God, which the Master has told us will guide us into all truth. If we do this, we may live above the fogs of political strife and religious bigotry. We may stand in the clear, strong light that God has abundantly provided for those who will walk in His paths.

Kurds and Turks

THE Armenian and Syrian Christians are just now menaced by the Kurds. Kurdistan is a tract of country lying partly in Turkey in Asia and partly in Persia, having an area of 50,000 square miles, a little larger than New York State. Its population is said to be 3,000,000. It is a mountainous country, inhabited chiefly by Kurds, nomadic and agricultural, of Indo-Germanic stock, but barbarous and savage. Their religion is a low form of Mohammedanism. They are nominally under Turkey and Persia, though really under their own chiefs; and at such a time as this, with Turkey at war, the Kurds break over all restraints, and rob and pillage and murder their ancient enemies the Armenians. Legally, Turkey is held to control them, but it seems almost impossible when she is fighting for her life. The attacks by the Kurds, however, ought not to be laid to the door of the Turks.

Ontario Youth Urge War-Time Liquor Ban

Two hundred and fifty delegates from the Ontario Young Manhood Association (numbering 75,000) waited upon the Hon. Mr. Hearst and other members of the Canadian cabinet and asked them to “stand sponsor for a government war measure abolishing the retail sale of liquor in the province during the continuance of hostilities, in order that the $50,000,000 which it now costs us to license the useless traffic may be placed to our credit when the war’s final bill of expense is presented for payment.” How can the government officials deny the request? Then, too, this sum is worth saving in time of peace.

International Christian Endeavor Convention

The Twenty-seventh International Christian Endeavor Convention will be held in Chicago, July 7 to 12. Some of the most renowned speakers of the world have promised to attend, including such well-known persons as the Hon. J. A. MacDonald, of Toronto; Dr. F. B. Meyer, of London; Dr. Royal Dye, of Africa; and “Billy” Sunday. President Woodrow Wilson and Secretary of State William J. Bryan have agreed to speak at the convention “provided affairs of state will permit their absence from Washington” at that time.

Billy Sunday’s Philadelphia Offering

WHEN “Billy” Sunday concluded his work in Philadelphia, on March 21, a committee turned over to him a draft of $51,136.85, “the result of the freewill offering Philadelphia gave him.” Large sums of money, particularly when they come into one's possession as the result of very short periods of service, become a great test of character; and it is to be hoped that Mr. Sunday will use the means coming into his hands in a way that will properly represent the Master he seeks to present to the people.