As director in a needy portion of the mission field and pastor of the local church, I found myself facing a situation which alarmed me, due to the spiritual listlessness, apathy, and lethargy existing among the churches in my territory. So apparent and widespread was this condition that I was amazed, bewildered, and almost disheartened; for in going to the mission field I had expected to contend with the powers of darkness in extending the light of the gospel, but I had not anticipated that our own churches would be found in such a state as to make them positive and absolute deterrents in the wheel of spiritual life and progress. As I sought the Lord most earnestly for guidance in meeting the great need in the spiritual life of our own people, and surrendered myself entirely to be led by the Holy Spirit, a wonderful experience came not only to me but to those who had lost the spiritual vision, and marvelous results are apparent.
These results were not immediately apparent, however, but extended over a period of two years. During the year 1928 the wooing Spirit, in answer to prayer, gripped some hearts, and prepared the way for the deeply spiritual messages brought to us by Elder I. H. Evans and Elder Meade MacGuire at the time of our annual meeting in January of 1929. At this meeting, and during a series of studies which followed, which were designed to point out where we are in the tide of the third angel's message and our duty as believers in that message at this present hour, God answered prayer and breathed upon us the life of the Spirit. It was then that our blurred vision became clarified, the spiritual paralysis disappeared under the influx of spiritual life, and indolence gave way to dynamic Christian activities. The results attending the work of revival and reformation which went forward under the ministration of the Holy Spirit are too wonderful for words. Never have I experienced such power among God's people.
According to the program of the Spirit of prophecy, after the revival comes the latter rain and then the loud cry. Experience demonstrates that this is the order of God's program. Hearts are melted under the preaching of the message for this time, and this is accompanied by the power of experienced victory over sin in the life of the messengers. Supposedly hopeless people are being converted, and the transformed lives and characters molded during the revival and transformation period still bear the impress of the divine Architect. The work is abiding and permanent, and the activities of our members correspond to their inward experience. Prayer meetings and Bible studies are held everywhere in the homes of the people, and our prayer and praise meetings, which fall on two different days, are real times of refreshing, when God comes preciously close to us. Our people are truly grateful to the Lord for having brought them out of the land of Egyptian bondage into the Spirit-filled atmosphere of Canaan.
I believe we are on the threshold of the portal leading to stupendous spiritual experiences, and that God is waiting for us, His ministers, to sanctify ourselves wholly, that He may through our sanctified labor arouse the people and sanctify them in this solemn day of atonement, and seal them by His Holy Spirit unto the day of redemption.
A Far Eastern Director.