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Adventism On The Move12: Easter Asia

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Nov. 16 - Adventism On The Move12: Easter Asia

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Many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. Matt. 8:91.

Abram La Rue (1822-1903) is one of the truly fascinating people in an Adventism casted with a fair number of picturesque individuals. Having amassed a fortune in the gold fields of California and Idaho, by the 1880s he had managed to lose it and was working alternately as a sheepherder and woodchopper when the Adventist message took hold of him.

Immediately after his conversion, La Rue, who was short on neither boldness nor enthusiasm, requested a mission appointment to China from the General Conference. But given the fact that he was both a new convert and had reached retirement age, the leaders declined his offer, suggesting he go as a self-supporting Adventist to one of the Pacific islands.

After sprinting through a term at Healdsburg College, La Rue worked his way to Honolulu in 1883 or 1884. His success there led the denomination to send W. M. Healey to Hawaii to organize the church in the islands.

By 1888 the exuberant pioneer was off to Hong Kong, where he set up a seamen's mission and for 14 years did colporteur work. He concentrated on the many ships in the multinational harbor, but during his Hong Kong years La Rue managed to fit in missionary tours to such places as Shanghai, Japan, Borneo, Java, Ceylon, Sarawak, Singapore, and once even to Palestine and Lebanon. Needless to say, he sold books and tracts wherever his ship stopped. In his spare time he also arranged to have the first Adventist tracts published in Chinese.

Meanwhile, back in California, W. C. Grainger, one of La Rue's early converts, had become president of Healdsburg College. But inspired by his mentor, he was soon off under official appointment to Japan. There in league with a former student of Japanese descent, T. H. Okohira, he established a foreign language school to teach English through Bible reading to university students. In that move Grainger began a mode of evangelism that has been productive in the Far East to the present day.

One of the lessons of the La Rue story is that God can use "old" people to spread His message. The good news is that life for God is not over at retirement.

 

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The Holy Spirit will take the things of God and show them unto you, conveying them as a living power into the obedient heart. Christ will lead you to the threshold of the Infinite. You may behold the glory beyond the veil, and reveal to men the sufficiency of Him who ever liveth to make intercession for us(COL 149).

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