Foreign missions in 1949 are somewhat different from the times of the apostle Paul. They are even different from conditions thirty-five years ago. The world has gone through tremendous changes, and it would be most unwise to ignore these facts. True, there are fundamental principles that will continue as long as missions will do their part in winning the world for Christ. But a long list of new problems have appeared in our days which we cannot neglect if we wish to do our work successfully.
My first foreign field was Hungary. I was called there from Germany in 1922, after but a single year's experience in the homeland. It was a real mission field—new country, new people, new language, new mentality, and new customs. When we were called to go to Iran (Persia) at the end of 1929, we passed our medical examination under a famous physician in Budapest. And what did he ask us right at the beginning? "Can you stand hunger, thirst, privations?"
He had the same conception about missions which we read about in those inspiring old stories of Carey, Moffat, Livingstone, and others. To him, a missionary had to fight lions, escape from cannibals, negotiate with an African chief, and return on Rickenbacker's raft to the homeland. Even though some of these things may be in the program, they are no longer essential to identify him as a representative of foreign missions.
There will always be the human aspect when accepting a mission call. "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house." Once the boat has left, bearing you away from the shores of your homeland, adventure gives way to stern and sober realities; perhaps no one speaks your language, and you are confronted with all sorts of problems. The words parents, friends, and home take on another meaning. I have seen young men and women give in and give up when homesickness leaped upon them with overwhelming force.
People do the strangest things under emotional strain. During my third Christmas away from home, in Budapest, the other workers were together with their families, while I had rented a very small room in an apartment belonging to an elderly lady. It was cold, inside and out. Down I went to the street, the snowflakes dancing around me. But in the houses everywhere I could see the lighted candles on the Christmas trees, just as in the clays of my childhood. I could not help but weep a little in those empty streets.
Later on, my father lay dying, but I could not go to him on account of my work. And then followed the death of my mother, but I could not go to bury her. Some nationals wanted to kill me because of my Bible teaching. I have conducted the Lord's supper at midnight in Hungarian villages where meetings were forbidden, having the windows covered with blankets because of the police. I have baptized in frozen streams on dark winter nights, while the police were after us. I have suffered hunger, thirst, and extreme heat in the jungles of Brazil, and was laid low with typhoid fever, malaria, amoeba, and jungle fever. Yet that is about the same as happened to the apostle Paul, according to his report in 2 Corinthians 11:23-28.
What, then, is different in missions today? You may begin to be conscious of the difference when you try to get your passport and the visa for the country of your destination. It takes months, and sometimes you do not even get what you need, and the customs sometimes seem to you to be a kind of legalized robbery. And it may be that your wife will be very unhappy because somebody has broken into your freight boxes and stolen all those precious things which she was counting on to make your little nest more homelike.
In the past, European and American missionaries as a whole were respected persons, with some social standing. They were "sahib," or "bwana." Today in all parts of the world, there is tremendous race consciousness. The colored races have come to think that they have been exploited by the white man, who even today is retaining the best positions. The day of accounting is near, and the missionary is a foreigner.
In one country in the Middle East the government has closed all schools and institutions of higher learning that formerly belonged to missions. You can hardly understand what that means. The state is throttling the greatest evangelistic agency in many countries. The modern missionary has to face this problem.
With the first world war came a tremendous wave of nationalistic awakening. Ni Yankes, ni Rusos, ni Iudios (neither North Americans, nor Russians, nor Jews) is written everywhere in the cities of a certain South American country. That does not constitute simply a threat. The government there has set teacher salaries at two to three times more than we pay our teachers in our schools. We do not have money to pay them, but the government offers a solution. It informs us that they will pay up to two thirds of the total payroll in our River Platte (Colegio Adventista) in Puiggari. But that means that the government will take over what is now the molding place for our ministry. That would be a difficult problem for Paul, even as it is for the modern missionary.
I gave our brethren of the Religious Liberty Department a number of leaflets which I brought from Argentina. They had been distributed by "Catholic Action" and the clergy against all non-Catholic churches. In that land where the constitution guarantees religious liberty and the president of the nation in his public utterances puts emphasis on this point, Protestants are now denounced as fifth columnists, and declared guilty of treason against the government and the fatherland. This is but another problem of modern missions.
We Adventists have some special teachings of our own that make us just as distinct as the Sabbath we regard with religious conviction. There is noncombatancy, for instance. We had a young brother in the army in Brazil several years ago. He tried to get his Sabbaths free, and was encouraged by one of our ministers of Japanese origin. A simple pastoral letter from this minister was enough to convict our worker of high treason, and to thrust him into prison for a number of years. Loyalty to God may mean that any Adventist—but even more so, a missionary—will be convicted of treason or crime against the country.
-What shall we do? How shall we teach? What advice shall we give when the government is Communist, Fascist, Socialist, Catholic, or antireligious ? We are not only to teach the Bible. We must guide the children of God through a welter of philosophic systems—political and nationalistic concepts that are contradictory and antagonistic to each other. Can we not rightfully ask with the apostle, "Who is sufficient for these things ?" It is a problem of modern missions.
And what about money? I started in the work in Germany in 1921, just when the inflation began. I went through the inflation in Hungary and received a monthly salary of four million korona. In Persia we lost half our money when the United States changed its money from the gold to the silver standard.
Then we went to Brazil, and now at present I have the same experience in Argentina. Paul had some problems with the collection for the church in Jerusalem. Our denomination has many more problems as a world-wide organization, and we missionaries have a large share in them. We have to balance budgets and make the best of it if there is not enough money. Even inflation is an inevitable part of the program in modern missions.
Influence of the Homeland
There is no doubt about it that the homeland exercises a tremendous influence upon• foreign missions. Not only does the material contribution matter, but our members in mission fields are looking for guidance in moral and religious conduct by those who have sent the message to them. Through visitors from abroad, through the workers and lay members who come to visit the States, through new missionaries, and sometimes through second-hand reports a continuous influence is being exerted upon the mission church.
"What have they seen in thine house ?" was the question Isaiah directed to King Hezekiah, and it may well be we could ask the same question today. Seventh-day Adventists have changed considerably, not in doctrine, but in their way of living and in their relationship to the world. There might be a difference of opinion as to whether the former or the present way of thinking is correct, but the fact remains that one can feel the influence of this change in the fields abroad. The more and more liberal use of cosmetics, the use of ornamental wedding rings, attendance at movies and theaters, and worldly dress are some of the items we could well consider.
Although we try to lift high the standard of Christian ideals before our churches in our mission fields, this question is often raised: How do you expect us to be so strict in all things, when in the homeland they do this and that? This makes us feel that in this respect our hands are not always strengthened by our brethren at home, and I wish that they would reconsider some of the old ways and walk therein.
Yes, brethren, the influence of some at home has become a problem of modern missions, and it is your duty to help us, in already grave perplexities, to give a solid foundation to the work of salvation in foreign fields.
I thank God, however, that I have been able to give twenty-seven years of service to this cause. When I was looking for a text that would express my sentiments, I remembered the words of Paul in Romans 11 :13 : "Inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office." Or as in some other versions, "I glory in my office." Yes, were I young again, and once more had to make my decision and choose my work, I would say, "Lord, I want to be a missionary."
