Power in the Book

Dr. Wolff traveled in the most uncivilized countries without protection, enduring hardships and surrounded with countless dangers. He was starved, sold as a slave, condemned to death three times, attacked by robbers, and sometimes nearly died of thirst. Once he was stripped of all his possessions and left to travel hundreds of miles on foot through mountains, snow beating in his face and his bare feet numbed by the frozen ground.LF 151.4

When people warned him against going unarmed among savage, hostile tribes, he said he was “provided with arms”—“prayer, zeal for Christ, and confidence in His help.” “I am also provided with the love of God and my neighbor in my heart, and the Bible is in my hand.” “I felt my power was in the Book, and that its might would sustain me.”^{4W. H. D. Adams, In Perils Oft, pages 192, 201.}LF 151.5

He kept on working until the message had gone to a large part of the populated world. Among Jews, Turks, Persians, Hindus, and other nationalities and races he distributed the Word of God in various languages, and everywhere he announced the Messiah's coming.LF 151.6

In Bokhara he found an isolated people who held the doctrine of the Lord's soon return. The Arabs of Yemen, he says, “are in possession of a book called Seera, which predicts the second coming of Christ and His reign in glory; and they expect great events to take place in the year 1840.” “I found children of Israel, of the tribe of Dan, ... who expect, with the children of Rechab, the speedy arrival of the Messiah in the clouds of heaven.”^{5Journal of the Rev. Joseph Wolff, pages 377, 389.}LF 151.7

Another missionary found a similar belief in Tatary, an area in Eastern Europe. A Tatar priest asked him when Christ would come the second time. When the missionary answered that he knew nothing about it, the priest seemed surprised to find such ignorance in a Bible teacher. He stated his own belief, based on prophecy, that Christ would come about 1844.LF 151.8