During eleven years of holding meetings every Sunday in the Los Angeles Biltrnore Theater I met a great many of the world's wealthy people, who through the decade made several visits to Los Angeles and made it a point to attend the meetings whenever possible. Scores of those whose interest was first awakened at the Biltmore Theater have, on returning home, made contact with the Adventist Church, and quite a number have eventually joined the movement.
Every summer while visiting six or eight of our camp meetings in Eastern States I enjoy the thrill of meeting some of these influential people, who are now enthusiastic Seventh-day Adventists. There is every reason to believe that during the twenty-five years that I have been doing evangelistic work in the Los Angeles area there have been several hundred thousand out of-State people who have attended the meetings and were favorably impressed, if not fully enlightened, by the truth they heard. Only in eternity will the far-reaching results of continuous evangelism in large tourist centers be fully known.
Although we all know that short efforts in average-sized cities do a great amount of good, there is no doubt in my mind that centrally established, continuous evangelistic work should be carried on in many of the large, world-famous tourist centers.
The messenger of the Lord says that Jesus chose Capernaum to be the center of His evangelism because it was a tourist center through which crowds continually passed. These moving multitudes carried His message to other centers, thus laying the foundation for the evangelism of the apostolic church.
I believe that the more permanent and continuous type of evangelism, while doing much to build up the local work and prevent apostasy, is playing an even more important part in helping, in a larger sense, to cause the earth to be lighted with the glory of the threefold message.
At the close of an inspiring service in the Biltmore one Sunday, the manager of a large department store came up to express his appreciation of the program. As he gripped my hand he remarked earnestly, "After observing your year-in-and-year-out evangelistic work here I have come to recognize it as the advertising department of your church, where you let the world know of all the good things you folks have to offer and what your denomination is doing about it in the world today."
What he said was echoed by others. Our evangelistic program is really a publicity venture. And continuous publicity is what brings results. Continuous evangelism is also necessary in the large centers of earth because the populace is continually changing. In the city of New York, for instance, it is claimed that 41 per cent of the residents change their postal addresses every year. We certainly need the evangelistic center being established there. And we should pray that soon we will have many more established evangelistic centers in well-located and strategic places.
