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Adventism On The Move5: South Africa
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Nov. 9 - Adventism On The Move5: South Africa

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Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. Matt. 6:20, NIV.

Some treasure seekers find more than they are looking for. So it was with William Hunt who while prospecting for gold in California in the 1870s had accepted the Sabbath through J. N. Loughborough.

Years later Hunt, by then searching for diamonds in South Africa, met two Dutch farmers who had independently become convinced through Bible study that Saturday, the seventh day, was the Sabbath.

The meeting really seemed to be accidental but the eye of faith might call it providential. George van Druten, one of the farmers, came across Hunt while on a Saturday afternoon stroll. But he noticed something strange about this prospector. Instead of working his claim the man was reading his Bible. And thus it was that two Sabbathkeepers met in the diamond fields of South Africa.

Hunt put van Druten and another independent Sabbathkeeper by the name of Pieter Wessels in contact with the Seventh-day Adventists in America. The two South Africans fired off an appeal to Battle Creek for a Dutch-speaking missionary. With their request they sent the sizable sum of L50 (the better part of a year's salary for a laborer) to finance the voyage.

Someone read their "Macedonian call" before the 1888 General Conference session. It so moved the delegates that they spontaneously rose and sang the doxology. The next July a missionary party of seven under the leadership of I). A. Robinson went to Cape Town. Meanwhile, the South Africans raised up a body of some 40 believers on their own.

The South African mission took a turn for the better after the discovery of diamonds on the farm of Johannes Wessels, Pieter's father. Made a millionaire overnight, Father Wessels invested heavily in the Adventist program in his homeland. Before long the young church had a publishing house, a college, a sanitarium, and other institutions.

It seems more than accidental that two of the handful of Sabbathkeepers should meet in the midst of a South African diamond field. God was leading His people. And the good news is that He still does.

 

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Talk and act as if your faith was invincible. The Lord is rich in resources; He owns the world. Look heavenward in faith. Look to Him who has light and power and efficiency(COL 147).
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