From Here to Forever

Power in the Book

Dr. Wolff traveled in the most barbarous countries without protection, enduring hardships and surrounded with countless perils. He was starved, sold as a slave, three times condemned to death, beset by robbers, and sometimes nearly perished from thirst. Once he was stripped and left to travel hundreds of miles on foot through mountains, snow beating in his face and his naked feet benumbed by the frozen ground. HF 224.4

When warned against going unarmed among savage, hostile tribes, he declared himself “provided with arms”—“prayer, zeal for Christ, and confidence in His help.” “I am also provided with the love of God and my neighbor in my heart, and the Bible is in my hand.” “I felt my power was in the Book, and that its might would sustain me.”⁴ HF 224.5

He persevered until the message had been carried to a large part of the habitable globe. Among Jews, Turks, Parsees, Hindus, and other nationalities and races he distributed the Word of God in various tongues, and everywhere heralded the approach of the Messiah. HF 225.1

In Bokhara he found the doctrine of the Lord's soon coming held by an isolated people. The Arabs of Yemen, he says, “are in possession of a book called Seera, which gives notice of the second coming of Christ and His reign in glory; and they expect great events to take place in the year 1840.” “I found children of Israel, of the tribe of Dan, ... who expect, with the children of Rechab, the speedy arrival of the Messiah in the clouds of heaven.”⁵ HF 225.2

A similar belief was found by another missionary in Tatary. A Tatar priest put the question as to when Christ would come the second time. When the missionary answered that he knew nothing about it, the priest seemed surprised at such ignorance in a Bible teacher, and stated his own belief, founded on prophecy, that Christ would come about 1844. HF 225.3