Mrs. White Attends Swiss Conference

The second annual meeting of the Swiss Conference opened that night. This conference was one of the first officially organized in Europe. It had been formed the year before at a general meeting in Bienne. There ministers had gathered from France, Italy, Germany, and Romania, as well as Switzerland, and though the conference was called “Swiss,” it actually included the churches in all these countries. One hundred and twenty-five delegates had been present for the organizing meeting in Bienne, but when Mrs. White rose to address the 1885 session on Friday, she was surprised and delighted to see nearly 200 believers before her. “A more intelligent, noble-looking company is seldom seen,” she reported to Review readers. “Although gathered from different nations, we were brought near to God and to one another by our eyes being fixed upon the one object, Jesus Christ.”—The Review and Herald, November 3, 1885.EGWE 59.1

The interest among the delegates was keen as they listened for the first time to the Lord's messenger. Her first address was a heartwarming and inspiring one: “I have been deeply interested this morning in listening to the reports of labor from the various fields,” she began. Then she reminisced a little, observing how similar these reports sounded to the ones she had heard when the work was just beginning in America. She was sure that the workers in Europe felt as they had in America when new converts accepted the message: “One soul who embraced the truth was regarded of more value than mountains of gold. We wept and rejoiced, and could scarcely sleep.”—Historical Sketches of the Foreign Missions of the Seventh-day Adventists, 147.EGWE 59.2

Then, alluding to the report made of the work in Italy by A. C. Bourdeau earlier in the meeting, she said:EGWE 59.3

“The Piedmont valleys have been spoken of. From the light that I have had, there are, all through these valleys, precious souls who will receive the truth. I have no personal knowledge of these places; but they were presented to me as being in some way connected with God's work of the past.”—Ibid.EGWE 59.4

Then she went on to assure the representatives of other countries in Europe that “there is a great work yet to be accomplished in all the fields from which we have heard reports” (Ibid.).EGWE 60.1