Origin and History of Seventh-day Adventists - Adventist Archives

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Origin and History
of
Seventh-day Adventists
VOLUME FOUR
FRONTISPIECE
PAINTING BY CHARLES ZINGARO(cid:9) © BY REVIEW AND HERALD
In response to the gospel commission "Go ye into all the world"
the church today is seeking men and women from "every nation,
and kindred, and tongue, and people" and bringing them to the
Saviour and His message for this last generation.

Origin and History
of
Seventh-day Adventists
A revision of the books Captains of the Host
and Christ's Last Legion
VOLUME FOUR
by
Arthur Whitefield Spalding
REVIEW AND HERALD PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION
WASHINGTON, D.C.
1
COPYRIGHT © 1962 BY THE
REVIEW AND HERALD PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 62-15140
(OFFSET IN U.S.A.)
CONTENTS
Chapter (cid:9) Page
1. Africa (cid:9) 7
2. South America (cid:9) 41
3. Inter-America (cid:9) 70
4. Moslem Lands (cid:9) 83
5. China (cid:9) 117
6. The Far East (cid:9) 159
7. Southern Asia (cid:9) 187
8. The First World War (cid:9) 221
9. The Second World War (cid:9) 249
10. Christian Servicemen (cid:9) 275
11. Garrisons of Christ (cid:9) 303
12. The Young Guard (cid:9) 327
13. Advance (cid:9) 357
5

CHAPTER 1
AFRICA
THE African continent, site of some of the most ancient
civilizations and haunt of some of the crudest barbarism,
is divided, by history and culture as well as race, into
distinct if coalescing parts. North Africa, bounded by the
Mediterranean Sea on the one side and the desert on the other,
and boasting in its eastern part the prodigy of the River Nile,
has emerged, as the product of conquests and overlapping
civilizations, essentially Arabic. Middle East Africa, astride the
equator, is largely saved from torrid climate (save on the
coast) by its elevation in the Abyssinian Plateau and the Ru-
wenzori Mountains and by the presence of the great lakes of
Africa. Middle West Africa, lying lower and containing the
great river systems of the Niger and the Congo, is largely dense
jungle, in which dwell some of the most needy of the Negro
peoples. These sections occupy the great bulk of the continent.
Below them lies South Africa, typically a high plateau, which
ranges from well-watered, fertile lands to veriest desert. The
Zambesi, flowing east, and, lower down, the Orange, flowing
southwest, are the principal river systems. This land, once oc-
cupied by tribes savage and warlike, with only the barest rudi-
ments of civilization, has within three centuries, by invasion
of white peoples, been largely transformed, like North Amer-
ica, into European forms of civilization, culture, and religion.
Africa is a continent of the tropics: though its Mediterranean
lands are geographically in the north temperate zone, the
topographical features induce a tropic or subtropic climate;
while at the south only the tip of the continent is in the
temperate zone and occasionally experiences a touch of winter.
Christian missionary enterprise has taken cognizance of
the differences in race, language, culture, and environment.
There is an early form of Christianity, much corrupted, in the
7
PHOTO BY J. P. SUNDQUIST
More than 400 lepers live at this Mwami leper colony in North-
ern Rhodesia. Dr. Peter Peach is here paying one of his periodi-
cal visits to the women's section. Remarkable results have come
from improved methods of treating this dread disease.
8(cid:9) Origin and History
Coptic Church of Egypt and Ethiopia, and other branches of
Christianity are represented by smaller numbers. But all North
Africa, having in the seventh century succumbed to the Arab
conquest, is dominated by the Moslem religion. For the rest,
Christian missions face the worst heathen conditions—animism,
fetishism, voodooism, witchcraft, and the social distortions,
vice, injustice, and cruelties which go with debased religion.
Polygamy is common in both Arabic and pagan lands; slavery
and the vicious slave trade had their last stronghold here.
After exportation of slaves to America was outlawed by the
United States in 1808, and slavery was given its death blow by
the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, the Arab slave traders
continued the traffic to the Eastern marts; this traffic was
stopped, save for a small trickle, only in the late nineteenth and
the early twentieth centuries by the combined efforts of Euro-
pean nations.
The vices and violences of heathenism offer a sufficiently
stout resistance to evangelization; yet because they are the
product of ignorance, they fall and fail before the assault of
enlightened and ministrative Christianity. On the other hand,
religious systems like Mohammedanism, Buddhism, and degen-
erate Christianity, which have some philosophical foundations,
are entrenched much more strongly against the gospel. The
battle for truth and righteousness takes on different com-
plexions in heathen countries and in lands more civilized and
sophisticated. In Africa, Mohammedanism and spurious Chris-
tianity have ever proved more formidable than rank paganism,
and progress in their territories has been comparatively slow.
Let us take a look at the beginning of the twentieth century.
In South Africa the work of Schmidt, Vanderkemp, Moffatt,
Livingstone, and their successors had, after long and painful
sowing, begun to bear fruit. Fifteen Christian denominations
were operating, two hundred thousand natives being full con-
verts or adherents under instruction. The great island Mada-
gascar likewise saw the earnest seed sowing, some of the harvest,
and the bldod of martyrs. On the West Coast there was like-
Africa(cid:9) 9
wise activity, with many sacrifices and deaths, yet with triumphs
for the cross. In East Africa, Mackay and others upheld
Christ's banner in the lake region. North Africa, by virtue of
its Mohammedan character, was linked to the always difficult
mission to the Moslems of the East; only in Egypt was there
appreciable progress, and that far less than in Africa below.'
The Seventh-day Adventist message reached South Africa
in 1887, as related in the first volume of this work. In January,
1908, with two conferences of European people and four mis-
sions among the natives, the South African Union Conference
was formed. W. S. Hyatt was elected president, followed in
1908 by R. C. Porter. The membership was not large, about
700 when organized, and in 1908 a little more than 800. It was
a period of seed sowing, by literature, preaching, teaching, and
medical work, with industrial elements in the missions, which
by the latter date had increased to six. From 1913 to 1920
W. B. White was president, followed by B. E. Beddoe.
The work in South Africa naturally divided itself into two
concerns: first, with the white people—and that in two lan-
guages, English and Afrikaans; the second, with the native
peoples who had yet to be Christianized. The latter work,
beginning nine years after the initial efforts among the Euro-
pean population, grew in extent and intensity, supported both
by the small South African constituency and by the larger, more
affluent homeland of America, and later by the European
constituencies.
By 1919, with a thousand white members in the one union,
containing three local conferences, and with twelve native mis- •
sions in two unions, the field was formed into the African
Division, with headquarters at Claremont, Cape Province.
The first president was W. H. Branson; from 1930 to 1941
J. F. Wright was president; and from 1942 on, C. W. Bozarth.
At first this organization was called the African Division.
While its occupied territory embraced only the southern part
of Africa, and not all of that, it was thought that its progressive
extension might come to include all or most of the continent.
10(cid:9) Origin and History
But as North, East, and West Africa began to be entered by
the European Division Conference, and afterward by its suc-
cessors the Southern, Central, and Northern European divi-
sions, it was recognized that the Mediterranean and East and
West Coast approach prescribed separate administrations from
that of the Cape, and in 1930 the appellation was changed to
Southern African Division, the name it has ever since retained.
At the times of their organization and until 1928 the South
African Union and the African Division contained only the
political units then controlled by the British, plus the Congo;
but the sphere of operations of the division was gradually
extended, until today it holds all African territory on the
north-south axis; that is, the long southward thrust of the
continent—everything south of French Equatorial Africa on
the west, the Sudan, and Ethiopia on the east. Thus it con-
tains about one third of the area and one half of the popula-
tion of the continent.
The institutions of the division, at its inception, were a
college, schools in the several missions, a publishing house, and
two small sanitariums. The initial school, which became Clare-
mont College, was first located at Claremont, a suburb of
Cape Town, in 1892; in 1919 it was removed to Ladysmith,
Natal, and soon renamed Spion Kop College. In 1927 this was
removed to a country location at Somerset West, Cape Prov-
ince, where it received the new name of Helderberg College,
and this has continued to the present time the chief training
school of the division. The presidents or principals of Clare-
mont were successively E. B. Miller, J. L. Shaw, W. A. Ruble,
C. H. Hayton, C. P. Crager, W. H. Anderson, and W. E. Straw;
of Spion Kop, J. I. Robison, U. Bender, and E. D. Dick; of
Helderberg, Milton P. Robison, G. E. Shankel, and W. E.
McClure.
The health work was early represented by a sanitarium
established by the Wessels family, in which Mrs. N. H. Druil-
lard, who was treasurer of the conference, secretary of the tract
society, and auditor, also in her spare time lent a hand as nurse.