The Great Second Advent Movement: Its Rise and Progress

How Can These Prosper?

Looking at the situation when, in 1846, Elder Joseph Bates began to write that first book, the first ever issued on the Sabbath question by Seventh-day Adventists, with twelve and one-half cents as the only available means he had in the world, and being called upon to spend that before his first day of writing had expired; and looking again at Elder James White printing his first little sheet, Present Truth, with money earned by mowing in the hay field, and sending out the paper free to all who would read, and talking of that as a message that was to go to the ends of the earth,—looking at these small beginnings, one might, in the language of the people in the days of Amos, inquire, “By whom shall Jacob arise? For he is small.” ⁷ Contrasting that with the situation in 1905, when the publication of the truths of the message is being accomplished in twenty publishing houses, located in various parts of the world, often pressed to their utmost capacity to supply the demand for reading matter, we can indeed say, Behold, “an open door” that no man as yet has shut. GSAM 464.3

Of those in earlier times who supposed the work could never succeed, we may say, in the words with which the prophet Zechariah reproved those who thought to hinder the work of God in the rebuilding of Jerusalem, “Who hath despised the day of small things?” ⁸ Of the things which appeared like mountains of difficulties in their way, the Lord said by the prophet,— GSAM 465.1