March 25  Publishing The Message-2

Thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways. Luke 1:76.

Something about an exciting message makes people want to share it with others. That is especially true if the message is one of hope from God.

By 1849 the Sabbatarian Adventists, though few in number, were more than eager to spread their message through the printed page. Jame White had not only initiated the Present Truth to present the new understandings about the Sabbath and the third angel, but in the summer of 1850 he began publishing the Advent Review, a periodical that sought to impress the scattered Millerites with the forcefulness and truthfulness of the arguments and undergirding the 1844 movement.

White's approach had a plan behind it. If the Advent Review was to awake the disappointed Millerites to the truthfulness of the first and second angels' messages, the Present Truth urged them to accept the third. He combined the two periodicals into one in November 1950 and called it the Second Advent Review and Sabbath Herald (today known as the Adventist Review).

The Sabbatarians were convicted that they had God's last day message. We find their enthusiasm for their message and their willingness to sacrifice to publish reflected in the first general Adventist census in 1860. Taken by D. T. Taylor of the Advent Christian movement, the census found 54,000 Adventists of various types, of which about 3,000 were Sabbatarians. The remarkable thing about Taylor's numbers was the relative interest in publications by the different Adventist groups. The  larger bodies with nearly 20 times the membership of the Sabbatarians had a circulation list of only 5,000, whereas the smaller body had one of 4,300. Taylor went out of his way to point out that the Sabbatarians, "though a decided minority, are very devoted, zealous, and active in the promulgation of their peculiar views of Sunday and Sabbath."

And they were. They had a message for God's people at the end of time, and they knew it.

Their aggressiveness paid off. Membership growth among the Sabbatarians during the gathering time zoomed from about 100 at the end of 1848 to about 2,500 four years later. Others also, thanks to their publication ministry, began to see the logic of their message.

God still uses Adventist publications to spread His message. In this each of us can have a part through both our means and our prayers.

The revelation of Christ in your own character will have a transforming power upon all with whom you come in contact. Let Christ be daily made manifest in you, and He will reveal through you the creative energy of How word--a gentle, persuasive, yet mighty influence to re-create other souls in the beauty of the Lord our God(TFMB, 129).