In mid-nineteenth century America, it took more than a mite of dependence to "keep Saturday for Sunday," and converts who agreed on the day of the week didn't necessarily agree on very much else. Their own leaders looked on them benignly as a fascinating "bag of buttons," all shapes and sizes, with "more different beliefs among them than heads or horns on any of the beasts in the Bible." [1]
To say that every member kept pace with all the others in a growing commitment to spread the third angel's message in all the world would be quite false. It was the sight of publications piling up at the press because so many members didn't care enough to buy them for distribution, that finally convinced James White that the church had gone Laodicean. And even after reports about the start in Switzerland, it was a long while before the church got in gear for its overseas role.
Constantly Ellen White called on the people to wake up and reach out. Make special efforts, she urged, where angels of God open the way! [2] Don't settle down in comfortable colonies! [3] Don't expect the light of truth to help you unless you "transmit it to others"! [4] Her words fell on many a dull ear.
Just the same, the news from Switzerland did stir interest. And so, even more, did the arrival of James Erzberger. James was a seminary student when he first heard about Sabbath keepers. To demonstrate his disdain for what he considered their legalism, he showed up at their Sabbath meeting in Switzerland in his work clothes. Late in 1868 Albert Vuilleumier baptized him. In June 1869 he arrived at the Battle Creek railroad depot. Unable to speak English, he held up an envelope marked, "J.N. Andrews, Battle Creek, Michigan."
At once the Whites welcomed him into their home. On the instant Willie, their son, Adeline Howe, their cook, and John Kellogg, the future physician, launched all-day-long English lessons. Within five weeks young Erzberger gave a talk in English. Within nine weeks he moved an Ohio camp meeting to tears with an appeal for Switzerland. In response Seventh-day Adventists collected what has been called their first foreign-missions offering ($76.00). [5] In a little more than a year Erzberger was ordained and on his way home.
Meantime, as we have seen, a "Missionary Society of Seventh-day Adventists" had been formed to raise money. The Review, furthermore, carried regular news now about the New England Mission, the California Mission, and the Swiss Mission. Yet there is grim reality in an 1870 editorial: "It appears that God is remarkably opening the way for the spread of the light. ... God is preparing the way before his people, even faster than they are prepared to respond." [6] (Emphasis supplied.)
Ademar Vuilleumier, a cousin of Albert's, came over. He attended school in Battle Creek. His presence must have made a difference. But when the General Conference in 1873 took up the needs of Switzerland, it took no action to send a man. "The fields are all white and ready for the harvest," James White pleaded energetically. "We must send men to Europe to establish the work there. The brethren in Switzerland have been calling, and are still calling for help. And we suggest that Eld. J.N. Andrews should be spared to accompany Br. Vuilleumier to Europe this fall." [7]
But it was not to be; not that fall, anyway. The year 1874 would be better. But, while we wait for the brethren to make up their minds, let us take another look at this man whom Elder White recommended and whom we have already met so many times.
John Nevins Andrews was born fifteen years before the 1844 disappointment in the little town of Poland, Maine (where, incidentally, two of Ellen Harmon's sisters went to live when they got married years later). In due course the Andrews family moved to Paris, Maine, accepted Miller's message, and after October 22 took into their home the Stowell family, who had sold their farm in anticipation of Christ's return.
This generosity of John's parents was well rewarded. Somehow or other a copy of T.M. Preble's tract made its way into their house. This was the little work, you remember, that led Joseph Bates to the seventh-day Sabbath.
Fifteen-year-old Marian Stowell saw it lying around and read it for herself. Impressed, she showed it to Oswald, her older brother. The very next Saturday the two of them observed the Sabbath--as well as they could, that is, since they were afraid to do it openly.
The following Monday, Marian offered the tract to seventeen-year-old John. He read it and asked. "Have your father and mother read this?"
"No," Marian replied, "but I have. Are you willing to keep the true Sabbath, John?"
The next weekend both families, youth and parents together, kept the Sabbath, holding a service in one of the rooms of their house.
They all shared their faith, of course, and soon seven other families were meeting with them. One of the girls in the group, Harriet Stevens, eventually became Mrs. Uriah Smith; another, her sister Angeline, eventually became Mrs. J.N. Andrews. [8]
In September 1849 a remarkable meeting was held for the believers who lived in Paris, Maine. The Whites, Joseph Bates, Stockbridge Howland, and several other early leaders attended. As prayer was offered, Brother Howland's face shone with heavenly light, the Spirit descended "something as it did on the day of Pentecost," and parents and children, confessing their wrongs, were united in understanding and love. The members of the Andrews family were there. John was so impressed with the evidence of God's leadership in the Sabbath-and-sanctuary movement that he exclaimed earnestly, "I would exchange a thousand errors for one truth."
Later Ellen White said that the blessing of God was poured out on this occasion especially for the sake of young John. "The Lord was bringing out Brother Andrews to fit him for future usefulness, and was giving him an experience that would be of great value to him in his future labors. [9]
Near the end of the following year, James White issued volume one, number one, of the Second Advent Review and Sabbath Herald. On its masthead, as a member of its three-man publishing committee, the name of J.N. Andrews appeared. It was a clear indication of the confidence White felt he could place in young John.
The printing office didn't tarry long in Paris, Maine, and neither did Andrews. Immediately he stepped into the field as a minister, sharing in the experience and sacrifices of the other "traveling brethren." After the Review office was located in Rochester, he spent part of his time there, where, with the other helpers, he often subsisted for days on little more than beans and mush while laboring beyond his limits. Other helpers also subsisted on the same diet while laboring beyond their limits, a circumstance which damaged the health of several and contributed to the death of Annie Smith.
In October 1851, while the Review was still in Saratoga Springs, he wrote from Cincinnati, "In the midst of tribulation and affliction my soul is joyful in God. I was never more deeply impressed with the importance of the work in which we are engaged, than at the present time. My heart is bound up in it, and in a work so sacred I would cheerfully spend and be spent. Souls are perishing, who may now be reached, the time for labor is short, the night in which no man can work is at hand. Shall we not then while the day lasts, do what we can, so that by any means we may save some?" [10]
He meant every word. If anything, he was too willing to spend and be spent. In a short time he came very near spending everything he had. This is why he retired for a while to Waukon; and that is where in 1856 he married Angeline.
Ellen White had said that God was fitting him up for usefulness; and useful to the cause he most certainly proved to be--preacher, student, writer, administrator, as well as pioneer missionary.
In 1855 he proved conclusively that the Sabbath begins at sunset and not at sunrise as a few of the Adventists had contended, or at six o'clock in the evening, as Joseph Bates and most of the others insisted.
His research three or four years later led to the practice of systematic benevolence. In 1861 there appeared a scholarly work from his pen entitled History of the Sabbath and the First Day of the Week, which, revised and republished, remained the standard Seventh-day Adventist work in the field until well into the twentieth century. It was said that Andrews could study in seven languages, and he claimed to have memorized the New Testament.
Andrews was a member of the committees which (in 1860) voted the name "Seventh-day Adventist" and (in 1863) organized the first General Conference. He served as the third president of the General Conference (1867 to 1869), and for a number of years he was an editor of the Review and Herald. In 1863 he went to Washington to explain to the government the Adventist position on military service.
Little wonder that Ellen White wrote of him to the Swiss in 1878, "We sent you the ablest man in all our ranks"! [11]
But that was long after he arrived! It's time now for the year 1874--a banner year in Adventist history.
On March 16, 1874, the Seventh-day Adventist Educational Society was incorporated, in preparation for the founding within the year of Battle Creek College, the first Adventist institution of higher learning.
On June 4, 1874, Signs of the Times was launched, paving the way for the founding of the Pacific Press the following year.
In August 1874, a joint camp meeting and General Conference was conducted in Michigan--the largest assemblage of Sabbath keepers, Uriah Smith observed correctly, to meet anywhere in the world for many centuries.
At this camp meeting-General Conference, James White argued again for someone to carry the third angel's message to the rest of the world. "Ours is a world-wide mission," he insisted.
Now on Wednesday, the first of April of this same memorable year, while the Whites had been living temporarily in Oakland, California, Ellen had received a most notable vision. Shortly thereafter she wrote it out, recording the words spoken to her by a heavenly Messenger:
"You are entertaining too limited ideas of the work for this time. You are trying to plan the work so that you can embrace it in your arms. ... [But] your house is the world." She named specifically Australia, Europe, and the islands of the sea as sites for intensive missionary endeavor. She prodded the leaders with this vital sentence: "You are to hold forth the word of life, that all may have an opportunity of receiving truth if they will." Picking up the words of the heavenly messenger again, she implored: "Never lose sight of the fact that the message you are bearing is a world-wide message. It is to be given to all cities, to all villages." [12]
Unlike some of her brethren, Ellen White never forgot the reason why the Seventh-day Adventist movement exists. Jesus has entered the most holy place to engage in the work of ridding His people forever of their sins. To encourage ultimate holiness, He stands by the ark shedding on earth the glory of Sabbath sacredness. But He will not stay there long, and when He leaves, every case will have been decided for weal or woe.
The message of the Sabbath, of loyalty to God based on a vital relationship with Jesus, must go to every living soul, so that everyone can have a chance to change his ways before probation's dose, and the onset of the seven last plagues, and Satan's cruelest attack in the time of trouble. "Not one" she wrote, "is made to suffer the wrath of God until the truth has been brought home to his mind and conscience, and been rejected. ... Everyone is to have sufficient light to make his decision intelligently. The Sabbath will be the great test of loyalty." [13]
On August 14, 1874, the General Conference responded at last to her appeals--and to those of her husband and the Swiss. Under the flapping canvas of a camp-meeting tent the historic action was voted that moved Adventism officially out of North America: "Resolved, That the General Conference ... instruct the Executive Committee to send Eld. J.N. Andrews to Switzerland as soon as practicable."
Andrews was ready. On September 15, one month later, he set sail from Boston bound for Liverpool on his way to Switzerland.
With him aboard the Cunard liner, Atlas, were Ademar Vuilleumier, his initial French interpreter, and his surviving children, Mary, aged twelve, and Charles, aged seventeen. Andrews had been seventeen when he accepted the Sabbath in Paris, Maine. Angeline had passed away in March 1872. Two infant children had also died. "He leaves nearly half his family in the silent grave," James White observed with compassion.
The absence of a wife and mother was to have dire results for the health of this missionary family, but Andrews had faced untold difficulties as a home missionary, and he was not to be deterred by any consideration as a foreign missionary. His children, too, were surrendered to the will of God.
Immediately on arrival, Andrews plunged into his work. He called a conference of believers and received a royal welcome. He traveled with Erzberger into Prussia to fellowship with a group of non-Adventist Sabbath keepers there. But the great burden on his mind was to publish a French Signs of the Times, Les signes des temps. Knowing that the French are not attracted to foreigners who torture their syntax, he bent every effort to master their language to perfection. He wanted no needless barrier between his message and the people. Mary and Charles joined him in this. After two years they were ready to enter into a solemn covenant, written out and duly signed, pledging to talk at home only in French. German they might use by exception if they wished. English must be reserved only for distress.
Home for the three was an apartment in the German-speaking Swiss city of Basel. Here Andrews more or less reproduced the early "Rochester model," using the apartment as a publishing office as well as a home. Andrews laboriously composed articles for his paper, or translated them accurately from the Review and the California Signs, Charles, just as laboriously, set the type, Mary, who learned to speak French like a native, helped read proof.
Pages of type were then trundled in a wheelbarrow to one of a succession of printers. Andrews had chosen Basel partly on its reputation for fine printing; but to his perfectionist eye, all the good printers were dishonest and the honest ones no good. Once he stopped a press fifty times during a single run to correct the pressman's sloppy work.
He begged Battle Creek for a press of his own and men to run it. James White launched a $10,000 fund drive but little came of it at the time.
It appears that Andrews was not assigned a regular salary but was expected to take his personal expenses out of the contributions that came on occasion from the States. For the man who pioneered systematic benevolence, this was ironic. Being a conscientious Christian, he was embarrassed to draw a penny beyond what he deemed absolutely essential. In practice, he drew rather less than was essential. For months one year he and his children ate barely more than bread, potatoes, Graham mush, a few grapes in season and occasionally some other fruit.
The parallel with Rochester was too exact in other ways also. By 1878, when Maude Sisley and the William Ingses had come over to help them, Mrs. Ings began to suspect that all was not well with Mary. Ominous word reached America that the missionary families feared "consumption" was fastening upon her.
Andrews was invited to the 1878 General Conference. He asked if he might bring Mary along--and promised he would pay her fare. He still had a little left from selling his home before leaving.
It was Mary's last trip. Even brilliant young Dr. Kellogg could offer no hope. Mary missed her mother and asked her father to sit with her. Dr. Kellogg warned him of the probable consequence; but Mary had gone willingly to Europe without a mother and stood by him like a brick, and he would not let her down.
Before the year ended, she passed away, at seventeen.
Andrews, who had entered a slow decline in health when his wife died in 1872, never recovered from his daughter's death. "I seem to be having hold upon God with a numb hand," he sighed shortly after.
God loved him in his loneliness. He gave Ellen White a message for him--that Angeline, Mary, and the two sleeping babies were safe in Jesus and would rise to live again. [14]
The following summer Andrews willingly retraced his steps. Charles was glad to see him! They devised new ways to attract the attention of the public, and the circulation of Les signes rose from five hundred to as many as five thousand. Even without Mary he had a staff of half a dozen now, and they had the use of a sunny, well-equipped type room. They were putting out tracts in German (for Erzberger) and in Italian, as well as in French. Les signes was going to addresses in fifty of the sixty-two districts (departements) of France, and to almost all the countries of Europe--Sweden, Austria, Hungary, Prussia, Saxony, Alsace, Belgium, Holland, England, Wales, Scotland, Italy, Sicily, and Spain--not to mention Switzerland, of course, and also Russia, India, Egypt, and both North and South America. [15]
Andrews traveled into Italy, Germany, England, and France, but the paper alone taxed his strength. He began to notice Mary's symptoms appearing in himself, one after another. As his condition worsened, the General Conference proclaimed a day of prayer and asked J.N. Loughborough, his convert from the Rochester days, to leave England (where he was doing evangelism) to anoint him. Andrews rallied for a while, but the end would come. In the summer of 1883 his elderly mother arrived from Waukon accompanying Elder B.L. Whitney, who had been appointed by the brethren to "assist him in. his feebleness."
Andrews's mind remained clear and his spirits hopeful in the Lord. He lay in bed, a living skeleton, dictating to his helpers almost to the last. He passed away at sunset on Sunday, October 21 1883, at the age of 54.
Standing at his grave in the Wolf Cemetery outside Basel, one can almost hear his voice repeating his own words: "Souls are perishing, who may now be reached, the time for labor is short, the night in which no man can work is at hand. Shall we not then while the day lasts, do what we can, so that by any means we may save some?"
Notes: