A European Leader’s Experience

Even at this late day there are living those who saw such things. Only recently, while attending meetings in Europe, one of our early leaders there, H. F. Schuberth, related to me an experience that was never on our record. “It has always been a great help to me,” he said, “when the work of the Spirit of prophecy has been attacked.” He was in charge of a local institutional work in the early years in Germany. He said:SPIAM 115.1

“It was about 1894. There was a little difficulty among the workers in the institution. It involved a plan of missionary work in the city, after work hours. I was leading out in a plan and urging it. One brother particularly fell out with the proposals, and others joined in. It was not of wrong intent, but it brought in a situation that greatly troubled me. It was bringing a spirit of separation into our meetings.SPIAM 115.2

“On a Sunday I asked different members of the office family to come to a meeting in the chapel on Monday evening for a special council. I felt we must somehow get the difficulties adjusted. Monday morning I went to my desk, and there was a letter bearing Australian postage stamps, with the name ‘E. G. White’ printed in the corner where the name and address card is placed. [Mrs. White was then in Australia.] I opened the envelope. In it was a message from Mrs. White, dealing with the very matters that had made the trouble in our institution. That night, at the meeting, I asked the workers, ‘When did I call this meeting?’ ‘Yesterday,’ they said. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘this morning I received in the mail a message from Mrs. White, from Australia. It deals with the very matter that I wanted to speak to you about.’SPIAM 115.3

“I read the testimony through, then spoke of my own relation to the counsel given in it. I said I was impressed by it that there were a number of things in which I ought to make acknowledgments that I had not handled matters just right in all things. At once the brother I had felt had made difficulty stood to his feet and took a fine Christian stand. One after another followed, and the Lord helped us fully out of all our difficulties.”SPIAM 115.4

“But had you written to Australia about your trouble?” I asked.SPIAM 116.1

“No, not a word,” he answered. “There was no time to write for any counsel. The whole difficulty had arisen since the letter was mailed in Australia. And this experience,” he added, “has always made me know that the Lord worked through that gift in a way beyond any knowledge that the human agent could possibly have had.”SPIAM 116.2

Others could still speak of similar experiences. But perhaps in the earlier years, when the cause was growing up and many new and untried ways had to be entered, these experiences were most numerous.SPIAM 116.3