# Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1906_S44
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

44 Proceedings of the twenty-first convention

His witnesses proclaimed the great deeds of God in many languages, up to this very day mission has also been carried on in the Christian Church. The fire that was kindled in the hearts of the disciples has sparked out into all lands. "Their sound is gone out into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world." In all tongues and languages of the globe the Gospel is preached, from all peoples men have been drawn into the Church of God and now bow their knees in the name of Jesus.

But the command of the LORD is not yet fulfilled. A great multitude still waits for the message of salvation. There is still much to do. Time hastens. We do not know how near the return of the LORD is, but the signs multiply which point us to the word: "And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come." The ways to the heathen world are opened, the doors are being unlocked. The LORD urges us to work while it is day. Christendom must put its pounds to usury before the LORD comes. And many in Christendom have understood this demand. More and more messengers are being sent out. The lands of Christendom vie with one another, and in them the church bodies, and as far as the Name of the LORD is known, one also understands His command, which suffers and tolerates no limitation, one knows that the swift ships and the railways and the wires of the telegraphs which encircle the world are not only there for merchants and worldly purposes, but that the LORD calls: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature!"

Out of this knowledge and this obedience the work of the Negro Mission of our Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference [Synodalkonferenz] also arose 29 years ago, the work to strengthen us in which and to fill us with new zeal we are assembled here today.

Mission work is difficult work. In mission there are many difficulties and all sorts of sad experiences and disappointments. But that has not come to be so only since yesterday and the day before; it has always been so in mission. The holy Apostles, the very first missionaries, experienced this abundantly.

St. Paul lets us see this as in a picture when he writes thus in 2 Cor. 11:23–28: "In labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep (of the sea). In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness; beside those things that are without,