p. 16 | Signs of the Times, Vol. 43, No. 1. (1/4/1916)

Earlier text: THE DAY BREAKS

Our Representatives

UNITED STATES AND CANADA

Alabama Tract Society, Room 316, Lyric Building, Birmingham, Ala.

Alberta Tract Society, 502 17th Ave. West, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Arizona Tract Society, 417 W. 5th St., Los Angeles, Cal.

Arkansas Tract Society, Box 14, Little Rock, Ark.

British Columbia Tract Society, 1708 Maple St., Vancouver, B. C., Canada.

California Bible House, 537 25th St., Oakland, Cal.

California-Nevada Missionary Society, 341 E. Lodi Ave., Lodi, Cal.

California Tract Society, Northwestern, 537 25th St., Oakland, Cal.

California Tract Society, Southeastern, 417 W. 5th St., Los Angeles, Cal.

California Tract Society, Southern, 417 W. 5th St., Los Angeles, Cal.

Central California Bible House, Box 1304, Fresno, Cal.

Chesapeake Tract Society, 1611 10th St., Baltimore, Md.

Colorado Tract Society, Eastern, 1112 Kalamath St., Denver, Colo.

Colorado Tract Society, Western, 122 S. 8th St., Grand Junction, Colo.

Connecticut (See New England, Southern).

Cumberland Tract Society (Eastern Tennessee), 404 Tremont St., N. Chattanooga, Tenn.

District of Columbia Tract Society, 708 McLachlan Bldg., Washington, D. C.

Florida Tract Society, Room 11, Yowell-Duckworth Block, Orlando, Fla.

Georgia Tract Society, 169 Bryan St., Atlanta, Ga.

Greater New York Tract Society (See New York).

Hawaiian Tract Society, 767 Kinau St., Honolulu, H. T.

Idaho, Northern (See Upper Columbia Tract Society).

Idaho Tract Society, Southern, Room 327, Sonna Bldg., Boise, Idaho.

Illinois Tract Society, Northern, 3645 Ogden Ave., Hawthorne Sta., Chicago, Ill.

Illinois Tract Society, Southern, 304 W. Allen St., Springfield, Ill.

Indiana Tract Society, 521 E. 23d St., Indianapolis, Ind.

Iowa Tract Society, Nevada, Iowa.

Kansas Tract Society, Room 615, Butts Bldg., cor. First St. and Lawrence Ave., Wichita, Kan.

Kentucky Tract Society, Box 398, Nicholasville, Ky.

Louisiana Tract Society, 810 Jackson Ave., New Orleans, La.

Maine Tract Society, 75 Grant St., Portland, Me.

Manitoba Tract Society, 418 Lansdowne Ave., Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Maritime Tract Society, Can. Pub. Assn., Oshawa, Ont., Canada.

Maryland (See Chesapeake Tract Society).

Massachusetts Tract Society, 607 Tremont Temple, Boston, Mass.

Michigan Tract Society, East, 426 Trumbull Ave., Detroit, Mich.

Michigan Tract Society, North, 510 Petoskey St., Petoskey, Mich.

Michigan Tract Society, West, 1214 Madison Ave., Grand Rapids, Mich.

Minnesota Tract Society, 336 E. Lake St., Minneapolis, Minn.

Mississippi Tract Society, 932 Union St., Jackson, Miss.

Missouri Tract Society, 203 Franklin St., Clinton, Mo.

Montana Tract Society, 411 S. Black Ave., Bozeman, Mont.

Nebraska Bible Supply House, 905 N. California Ave., Hastings, Neb.

Nevada (See California-Nevada Missionary Society).

New England Tract Society, Northern, 136 N. Main St., Concord, N. H.

New England Tract Society, Southern (Rhode Island and Connecticut), 51 Whitmore St., Hartford, Conn.

Newfoundland Tract Society, Box 217, St. Johns, Newfoundland.

New Hampshire (See Northern New England).

New Jersey Tract Society, 200 Columbus Ave., Trenton, N. J.

New Mexico Tract Society, Box 727, Clovis, New Mexico.

New York Tract Society (Greater), Room 902, 32 Union Square, New York, N. Y.

New York Tract Society, Eastern, 317 W. Bloomfield St., Rome, N. Y.

New York Tract Society, Western, 527 Garson Ave., Rochester, N. Y.

North Carolina Tract Society, 234 Summit Ave., Greensboro, N. C.

North Dakota Tract Society, Drawer N, Jamestown, N. Dak.

Ohio Tract Society, Box 8, Mount Vernon, Ohio.

Oklahoma Tract Society, Box 644, Oklahoma City, Okla.

Ontario Tract Society, Box 308, Oshawa, Ont., Canada.

Oregon Missionary Society, Western, 508 E. Everett St., Portland, Ore.

Oregon Missionary Society, Southern, 1164 Military St., Roseburg, Ore.

Pennsylvania Tract Society, Eastern, 4910 Arch St., Philadelphia, Pa.

Pennsylvania Tract Society, Western, 7155 Mt. Vernon St., Pittsburgh, Pa.

Rhode Island (See New England, Southern).

Saskatchewan Tract Society, Room 103, Willoughby-Sumner Block, Saskatoon, Sask., Canada.

South Carolina Tract Society, 1208 Calhoun St., Columbia, S. C.

South Dakota Tract Society, Drawer 586, Watertown, S. Dak.

Tennessee, Eastern (See Cumberland Tract Society).

Tennessee River Tract Society (Western Tennessee), 509 Cole Bldg., Nashville, Tenn.

Texas Tract Society, North, Box 15, Keene, Texas.

Texas Tract Society, South, Box 755, San Antonio, Texas.

Texas Tract Society, West, Amarillo, Texas.

Upper Columbia Tract Society, College Place, Wash.

Utah Tract and Bible Society, 776 E. 6th South, Salt Lake City, Utah.

Vermont (See Northern New England).

Virginia Tract Society, 2705 W. Main St., Richmond, Va.

Washington Missionary Society, Western, 228 S. Brannan St., Auburn, Wash.

West Virginia Tract Society, 124 Marion St., Fairmont, W. Va.

Wisconsin Tract Society, 305 Ruh Bldg., Fond du Lac, Wis.

Wyoming Tract Society, Crawford, Neb.

Above is a list of our authorized agencies and depositories, and we invite you to communicate with them if you wish to secure any books or periodicals advertised in this journal.

OUR foreign tracts are put up in envelopes, price 25c each. They are obtainable in Arabic, Armenian, Bohemian, Bulgarian, Chinese, Danish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and many other languages. Address your Tract Society.

Clarence C. Hall Passes Away

JUST as we are closing up this issue of the paper, a cablegram from Japan announces the sad intelligence that Brother C. C. Hall is dead. The cablegram gave no particulars.

The last mail from Japan brought cheery letters from Brother Hall, telling of his earnest activities in the work in which he was engaged. Therefore we conclude that his death must have been very sudden.

He was a young man of great promise; for although he was only in his thirtieth year, he had had a wide range of experience that had specially qualified him for useful labor in that needy field of Japan.

When he was a boy, just coming toward manhood, it was his privilege to spend three years in Jamaica when his father was there in charge of that mission field. The mother died, and was buried in Jamaica. The father returned to the States, and was again married, but he also died in 1904.

On returning from Jamaica, Brother Hall connected with the Pacific Press, and was with us for some twelve years. He became proficient in the printing work; and when an urgent call came from the Foreign Mission Board, something like two years ago, for a young man and his wife with experience to go to Japan, Brother Hall and wife volunteered their services.

Sister Hall, who had also been connected with the Pacific Press, in the periodical department, was peculiarly fitted to render valuable assistance to her husband.

Our Foreign Mission Board readily accepted these trained young people; and on March 20 of 1915, in the vigor of young manhood and womanhood, they, with their two bright little children, sailed from San Francisco for Japan. Brother Hall was made secretary and treasurer of our Japanese mission, and manager of our mission press in that field. These duties, of course, filled his hands and his heart with earnest labors. Elder Porter, in charge of our Asiatic Division, reported that Brother Hall was more than making good in his work. And all concerned were happy in the bright prospects that were before him and his good wife, as manifested in the development in usefulness that they were showing in that growing and needy field.

Brother Hall leaves a wife and two children, four brothers, and two half sisters, as well as other relatives and a host of friends, to mourn his loss. One of his brothers, H. H. Hall, for more than twenty years has been the efficient manager of our book department in the Pacific Press. Another brother, Prof. A. E. Hall, is a successful teacher in our Pacific Union College. E. W. Hall is farming near Hanford, California; and J. M. Hall is connected with the Pacific Manifolding Book Company in a suburb of Oakland, California. The half sisters, Nellie and Pearl, are with their mother in Kansas City, Missouri, where she is engaged as one of our Bible workers.

The announcement of Brother Hall’s sudden death not only brought deep sadness to his intimate friends who had been so long associated with him in the Pacific Press, but the people generally in this community where he was so well and favorably known, expressed their deep sorrow. The warmest sympathy is extended to the young widow and the dear little children.

Sunday as a Political Issue

By Editor

For more than half a century, the people who publish this paper have been teaching the world that the matter of Sunday would yet become much more than a mere religious question. We have affirmed that it would also become the center of a political issue around which some of the strongest controversies of the ages would rage. Our warrant for teaching this has been the prophecies of the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of Revelation. These chapters, as set forth in the recent articles by A. R. Bell, without question forecast a sharp and strong religious controversy.

The “beast” and his “image” are brought before us in the thirteenth chapter; and as announced in the fifteenth verse, they demand worship, and threaten the death penalty upon all who will not yield. Against this worship which is demanded under penalty in this way, the strong messages of the fourteenth chapter are sent. These messages which give their warning against this beast and image worship, as announced in the twelfth verse, develop a class of people who have “the patience of the saints,” and also they “keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” This shows very clearly that the commandments of God are the great issue in the controversy; and these commandment keepers who are developed under the message are Christians, for they have “the patience of the saints” as shown in “the faith of Jesus.”

THE QUESTION IS SIMPLE ENOUGH

There is no reason why any one should get into the dark over this question. The commandments of God and what they teach is one of the plainest things presented in the Bible. No other portion of Scripture was given in such a strong, majestic manner as were the commandments. All the rest of the Bible was presented by inspiration when the prophet was alone with God, wrapped in holy vision. But not so with the Ten Commandments. God in person came down upon Mount Sinai and delivered them, with the most sublime and awful majesty and grandeur, into the hand of Moses.

Those commandments, therefore, stand out as the clearest, the strongest, the most striking part of the sacred Word. And the message of the fourteenth of Revelation, which warns the world against the great apostasy of the “beast” and his “image,” gives as a distinguishing characteristic of those who accept it that they have “patience,” they “keep the commandments of God,” and have “the faith of Jesus.”

SUNDAY IN PLACE OF THE SABBATH

Sunday, by many well meaning people, is thought to take the place of the Sabbath commandment, which requires in the plainest and the most specific language the observance of the seventh day of the week. And we believe and have taught that Sunday, which has been cast upon the world as a rival of God’s Sabbath, will form the very center of the worship demanded by those who will pronounce the death penalty upon all who refuse obedience. Thus the issue is squarely joined. Will we take what God plainly commands in His word, or will we yield to what churchmen have wanted, regardless of any command from Jehovah?

We are living in a time of great intellectual light. The present age is marked by the spirit of religious freedom for which earnest men have so strongly contended in Germany, in England, in Switzerland, in Holland, and elsewhere in Europe, as well as in the great liberty-loving United States. The spirit of freedom is so clearly marked in this time that men have thought that our interpretation of this prophecy of Revelation 13 and 14 could not be correct.

But many of the theories of men are being reversed in these days. For instance, those who told us, three years ago, that this world would never have another great war, have had their theories shattered all to pieces by the roaring cannons, bursting bombs, and spitting machine guns of Europe. And out of this controversy in Europe is coming up a condition in the world the like of which has never been faced in all its past history. A religious despotism that will reach every part of our globe is sure to be developed as the only thing in the minds of men that can successfully grapple with the fearful situation.

Now, wise men and women, instead of looking to this religious despotism for relief, will stand in the light of the clear prophecies of the Word which have predicted it, and will see with unmistakable vision what is coming, and stand with God in these momentous and thrilling times.

POINTING TO RELIGIOUS DESPOTISM

If we were asked for definite things that are pointing in the direction of the development of this usurpation of religious power, we have only to point to Protestantism, which is so strongly decaying that it no longer protests, and in that very thing is opening the way for the fulfilling of the prophecy which announces the world supremacy of the papal hierarchy just before the close of time.

And this decaying Protestantism not only opens the way for religious despotic power again to reign supreme through the papacy, but it in itself becomes an active agency.

Thoughtful men are distressed over the fact that our Protestant federations are not seeking so much for the power of the Holy Ghost as a great working force in the hearts of men, but they are seeking for political power to compel politicians to obey their behests. And everywhere do we find the question of Sunday as a rival of the Sabbath coming to the front.

SOME SPECIFIC EXAMPLES

On another page of this issue, Elder Horton tells of the Sunday bills that have already been placed before Congress, and also calls attention to the efforts that are being made to restrict freedom of speech through the enactment of law that will not allow a person to criticize a religion to which he is opposed. These are certainly very significant tendencies. No Congress has convened within the last twenty-five or thirty years but that it has been persistently urged to pass some kind of Sunday legislation. And what is true of the federal Congress is quite as true of the legislatures in the several states, some of them having as many as twenty-five or thirty various kinds of Sunday laws urged upon them during a single session.

Going Forward in Faith

THE Christian who does not hang back will go forward.

ELDER J. E. FULTON, AND ELDER C. M. SNOW AND WIFE AND DAUGHTER