Public evangelism as carried on among English-language people in North America generally differs widely from the evangelistic approach made to foreign-language people in this world division. There is one exception to this rule—the work for the Spanish-speaking peoples.
It is important that we take note of the tremendous field in which work must be done for the peoples of other languages in this land. For example, there are in the United States 22 million people who read, speak, think, and write in some language other than English as their mother tongue. Add to that 8 million in Canada and we have a total of 30 million. Most of the work done among these people is on a personal contact method. The people of other languages must be sought out practically on the basis of the one-by-one method. Some are gathered in through radio and Bible correspondence school activities. This type of evangelism has none of the glamour or publicity that public evangelistic efforts for English-language people have. But these people must be reached with the third angel's message. God's people will be considered negligent if these are passed by as being of little or no account.
The work of evangelism among 5 or 6 million people using the Spanish language in the United States is an exception. There are large concentrations of these people in the Greater New York City area and in the Southern California and Texas and Texico conferences.
Recent experiments in the field of Spanish-language public evangelism in the Southern California Conference have proved that this method of soul winning can be just as successful when conducted along right lines as are similar soul-winning endeavors in the English-language fields. Thanks to the South American Division, especially the Austral Union, for their willingness to allow Evangelist Salim Japas to remain in the United States for a period of time after the General Conference session in 1962, for the purpose of demonstrating evangelistic methods used in South American cities. The report that follows, written by one of our outstanding pastor-evangelists in the Spanish work in North America, Samuel Weiss, is indeed thrilling. The methods used in reaching people whose religious background is usually Roman Catholic, are new, but the evidence proves that the third angel's message can be made acceptable to people of all languages and persuasions when presented in the right way.
Upon the conclusion of his work in California, Elder Japas spent a week or so with the Spanish - language workers of the Greater New York Conference, instructing them in the technique of reaching the masses in that great mission field. The results of this added assistance to the North American Division will be manifest in the closing months of 1963, inasmuch as one of our Spanish evangelists is now using a similar evangelistic approach in one of the densely populated Spanish-language areas of New York City.
God's messenger wrote the following years ago, but it is just as applicable today as it was when first written:
"It is well that those in responsibility are now planning wisely to proclaim the third angel's message to the hundreds of thousands of foreigners in America. God desires His servants to do their full duty toward the unwarned millions of the cities, and especially toward those who have come to these cities in our land from the nations of earth."—Evangelism, pp. 569, 570.
