580
The Great Controversy
In 1814 the American Baptist Missionary Union was formed. The
Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions was formed in 1837.
“In A.D. 1800, ... the overwhelming majority of Christians were
the descendants of those who had been won before A.D. 1500.... Now,
in the nineteenth century, came a further expansion of Christianity. Not
so many continents or major countries were entered for the first time
as in the preceding three centuries. That would have been impossible,
for on all the larger land masses of the earth except Australia and
among all the more numerous peoples and in all the areas of high
civilization Christianity had been introduced before A.D. 1800. What
now occurred was the acquisition of fresh footholds in regions and
among peoples already touched, an expansion of unprecedented extent
from both the newer bases and the older ones, and the entrance of
Christianity into the large majority of such countries, islands, peoples,
and tribes as had previously not been touched....
“The nineteenth century spread of Christianity was due primarily
to a new burst of religious life emanating from the Christian impulse....
Never in any corresponding length of time had the Christian impulse
given rise to so many new movements. Never had it had quite so
great an effect upon Western European peoples. It was from this
abounding vigor that there issued the missionary enterprise which
during the nineteenth century so augmented the numerical strength and
the influence of Christianity.”—Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of
the Expansion of Christianity, Vol. IV, The Great Century A.D. 1800 -
A.D. 1914 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941), pp. 2-4.
Pages 327, 329. Prophetic Dates.—According to Jewish reckoning
the fifth month (Ab) of the seventh year of Artaxerxes’ reign was from
July 23 to August 21, 457 B.C. after Ezra’s arrival in Jerusalem in the
autumn of the year, the decree of the king went into effect. For the
certainty of the date 457 B.C. being the seventh year of Artaxerxes, see
S. H. Horn and L. H. Wood, The Chronology of
Ezra 7
(Washington,
[691]
D. C.: Review and Herald Publishing Assn., 1953); E. G. Kraeling,
The Brooklyn Museum Aramaic Papyri (New Haven or London, 1953),
pp. 191-193;
The S.D.A. Bible Commentary 3:97-110
(Hagerstown,
MD: Review and Herald Publishing Assn., 1954, 1977).
Page 335. Fall of the Ottoman Empire.—The impact of Moslem
Turkey upon Europe after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 was as
severe as had been the catastrophic conquests of the Moslem Saracens,