Life Sketches of Ellen G. White

Fields White Unto the Harvest

As the workers in the Australasian colonies and in the islands of the Pacific kept advancing into new territory, there came to them a deepening conviction that every effort possible must be put forth to train many laborers for the harvest. LS 370.2

“All about us,” declared Mrs. White on one occasion in 1898, while attending a wonderfully inspiring camp meeting in the newly formed Queensland Conference, “are fields white unto the harvest; and we all feel an intense desire that these fields shall be entered, and that the standard of truth shall be raised in every city and village. LS 370.3

“As we study the vastness of the work, and the urgency of entering these fields without delay, we see that hundreds of workers are needed where there are now but two or three, and that we must lose no time in building up those institutions where workers are to be educated and trained.” The Review and Herald, March 28, 1899. LS 370.4

And as the Australasian Union Conference Committee studied anew, in the light of the opening providences of God, their duty to occupy new territory, they “recognized the school, the sanitarium, and the food factory as three agencies working in harmony for the education and training of home and foreign missionaries, who should go forth prepared to minister to the physical, mental, and moral needs of their fellow men.” In her report to the readers of the Review of this advance step on the part of her brethren in Australia, Mrs. White wrote: “We all feel that the work is urgent. There is no part that can wait. All must advance without delay.” LS 371.1

At times through the years of toil spent in raising up a strong constituency in Australasia, and in establishing centers where the youth might be trained as workers for God, Mrs. White and her associates caught glimpses of what the future had in store for that portion of the broad harvest field. The pioneers in that field,—Elders Haskell, Corliss, Israel, Daniells, and others,—had early recognized the possibility of raising up workers there who should be able to enter the surrounding islands of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia. But late in the nineties, when the various branches of the cause of present truth,—publishing, educational, and medical,—were becoming well established, and many youth were being raised up as workers, the brethren in charge of the Australasian Union Conference saw more and still more clearly the opportunities for service with which they were surrounded. LS 371.2

These possibilities of the future were outlined at length by Mrs. White in communications addressed to the leaders of the cause of God who were assembling in General Conference early in 1899. “Our brethren have not discerned that in helping us,” she wrote to them concerning the value of maintaining strong training centers for workers in Australasia, “they would be helping themselves. That which is given to start the work here, will result in strengthening the work in other places. As your gifts free us from continual embarrassment, our labors can be extended; there will be an ingathering of souls, churches will be established, and there will be increasing financial strength. We shall have a sufficiency not only to carry on the work here, but to impart to other fields. Nothing is gained by withholding the very means that would enable us to work to advantage, extending the knowledge of God and the triumphs of truth in regions beyond.” General Conference Daily Bulletin, 1899, p. 131. LS 372.1