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Adventism On The Move6: Rhodesia
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Nov. 10 - Adventism On The Move6: Rhodesia

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Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world. Rom. 10:18, RSV.

It was one thing to begin a mission among European immigrants in South Africa and quite another to herald the Advent message to the indigenous peoples of the great African continent. A first step toward that broader mission took place in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

In 1894 the General Conference, at the urging of the Wessels family, decided to try to obtain a mission station in Matabeleland in the territory north of South Africa. This was just after the British had crushed the powerful Matabele tribe.

Named Rhodesia after Cecil Rhodes, empire builder and premier of the Cape Colony of
South Africa, it was a land fresh to European influence. A. T. Robinson and Pieter Wessels received a sealed envelope after the close of what they feared had been a rather unsatisfactory meeting with Rhodes. The Adventists were more than a little surprised to discover that the letter granted them more than 12,000 acres near the town of Bulawayo.

Obtaining the grant had actually been the easy part in developing what would become the Solusi Mission. One challenge to the Solusi project came from North America, where A. T. Jones spearheaded an attack on those who would accept government favors and thus blur the boundary between church and state. According to Jones and the other editors of the Sentinel of Religious Liberty, the missionaries had "sold themselves for a mess of African potage." If the denomination was inconsistent, Jones asserted, that fact would soon get around to its enemies and would weaken the Adventist argument against those who would Christianize America through such things as Sunday laws. The influential Jones even got the 1895 General Conference session to vote to deny the gift on the basis of separation of church and state.

On the other side of the ledger was Ellen White, who wrote to the General Conference leaders from far-off Australia, recommending that Jones and others read the book of Nehemiah. "The Lord," she penned, "still moves upon the hearts of kings and rulers in behalf of His people, and it becomes those who are so deeply interested in the religious liberty question not to cut off any favors, or withdraw themselves from the help that God has moved men to give, for the advancement of His cause" (Lt 11, 1895).

 

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When with earnestness and intensity we breathe a prayer in the name of Christ, there is in that very intensity a pledge from God that He is about to answer our prayer "exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think." Eph. 3:20(COL 147).
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