SABBATH SCHOOL MOVEMENT

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25859, 19 July 1949, Page 2

SABBATH SCHOOL MOVEMENT

SEVENTH DAY ADVENTISTS’ WORK The Sabbath School is a sleeping g u ant v lyinfi at the threshold of the church. If aroused, harnessed, and trained, he will fill the church with people, and set them to work,” said L L Ta i ylo l’ secr etary of the Sabbath school department, south New Zealand conference of Seventhday Adventists, in an address in Christchurch marking the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the cnurch s Sabbath school department. Pastor Taylor said that Sabbath schools were conducted by Adventists for 25 years before a separate department was organised to care for 600 schools that were functioning 70 years T°’ da -V there 14,263 Adventist Sabbath schools. 772 of these being in Australia and New Zealand. Sabbath school lessons were provided in the languages of 227 of 281 land areas of the world. A total of 685 languages and dialects were being used in teaching the Sabbath school lessons each week.

“The members of Seventh-dav Adventist Sabbath schools in all the world last year gave £1.080,155 towards the support of medical, educational, and evangelical missionary work,” Pastor Taylor said. It took 25 years for the Sabbath schools to raise their first £250,000 for missions. Contributions from the Sabbath schools in New Zealand and Australia during 1948 amounted to £43,084. Since the close of World War 11, Adventists had added 13 new ships and five reconditioned ships to their mission fleet in the South Pacific. Sabbath school offprings had been used to help purchase these vessels, were valued at more than £lOO,OOO.