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June 28 - In Search of Proper Education-3

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I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go. Ps. 32:8, NASB.

Seventh-day Adventists had taken an important step forward in the adoption of Bell's school in 1872 as the first official denominational school. But the leadership knew tha tthey had to do more. If for no other reason, they required some way to prepare ministers. Up into the early 1870s a young person desiring to become a minister merely watched how the older ministers did things and went out to do the same.

By 1873 James White, the spark plug for every Adventist advance, realized that the denomination needed to do something toward the training of leadership "Probably there is no branch of this work," he told the 1873 General Conference session, "that suffers so much at the present time as the proper education of men and women to proclaim the third angel's message." The situation demanded "more sanctified education in the ministry! My heart rejoices to know that the Spirit of God is moving upon men of education to come into our midst to take hold of the [educational] work.

But it wasn't only the preparation of ministers that called for a larger educational vision. The denomination was also being eased into the realm of foreign missions. Thus J. N. Andrews could write in 1873 that "the calls that come from cannot do this in our present circumstances. But we can do it if the Lord bless our effort" in upgrading the Battle Creek school. "We have delayed this effort too long. The time past cannot be improved, but the time still remaining can be improved. . .Men of other nationalities desire to instruced concerning" the Second Advent.

The leadership had come to see that they must establish a college, which they would do in 1874. Just before the opening of that institution, General Conference peresident George I. Butler penned that "we see a great work before us. . .We see the time coming when scores and hundreds of missionaries will go from this land to other lands to sound forth the message of warning." To that end the proposed college needed to educate not only ministers, but translators, editors, and others who could forward the message of the third angel.

Vision is never static. God leads His people one step at a time. When we grasp one level of need, He pushes us to see the next. So it is in every aspect of live lived for Him.

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The work of the sower is a work of faith. The mystery of the germination and growth of the seed he cannot understand. But he has confidence in the agencies by which God causes vegetation to flourish. In casting his seed into the ground, he is apparently throwing away the precious grain that might furnish bread for his family. But he is only giving up a present good for a larger return. He casts the seed away, expecting to gather it manyfold in an abundant harvest. So Christ's servants are to labor, expecting a harvest from the seed they sow(COL 64).
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