In the Southern States
[
Testimonies for the Church 7:56, 57
(1902).]
I have a message to bear in regard to the Southern field. We have a
great work to do in this field. Its condition is a condemnation of our
professed Christianity. Look at its destitution of ministers, teachers,
and medical missionaries. Consider the ignorance, the poverty, the
misery, the distress, of many of the people. And yet this field lies
close at our doors. How selfish, how inattentive, we have been to our
neighbors! We have heartlessly passed them by, doing little to relieve
their sufferings. If the gospel commission had been studied and obeyed
by our people, the South would have received its proportionate share
of ministry. If those who have received the light had walked in the
light, they would have realized that upon them rested the responsibility
of cultivating this long-neglected portion of the vineyard.
God is calling upon His people to give Him of the means that He
has entrusted to them, in order that institutions may be established in
the destitute fields that are ripe for the harvest. He calls upon those
who have money in the banks to put it into circulation. By giving of
our substance to sustain God’s work, we show in a practical manner
that we love Him supremely and our neighbor as ourselves.
Let schools and sanitariums now be established in many places
in the Southern States. Let centers of influence be made in many
of the Southern cities by the opening of food stores and vegetarian
restaurants. Let there also be facilities for the manufacture of simple,
inexpensive health foods. But let not selfish, worldly policy be brought
into the work, for God forbids this. Let unselfish men take hold of this
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work in the fear of God and with love for their fellow men.
The light given me is that in the Southern field, as elsewhere, the
manufacture of health foods should be conducted, not as a speculation
for personal gain, but as a business that God has devised whereby a
door of hope may be opened for the people. In the South, special
consideration should be shown to the poor, who have been terribly
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