WHAT’S OLD IS NEW AGAIN
ANNE PACKARD
The Methodist Church has laid upon my shoulders many responsibilities, but it has also given to me a great many honors. Perhaps no man ever stood seeking admission at the bar of an Annual Conference with so little to offer as credentials of his worthiness for the work of the Ministry. But in great kindness, the South Georgia Conference received me “on trial” in 1909. From that humble circuit to which I was sent in that year, I have traveled a worldwide circuit and had the privilege of being the “Ambassador” of Methodism upon almost every continent of the earth. “My Personal Testimony” by Bishop Arthur J. Moore
Arthur Moore would have liked to have had an impressive education including college degrees, but there wasn’t even a high school in his hometown. How great was his faithfulness?
Arthur Moore would have liked to have been a missionary to Korea, but instead was appointed to a seven-church charge in McIntosh County with a horse for transportation and an abandoned home as a parsonage. How great was his faithfulness?
Arthur Moore was appointed to Travers Park in San Antonio, and his first act as senior pastor was to construct a new sanctuary with the church meeting in an open-air tabernacle while it was being built. How great was his faithfulness?
The Methodist Church elected three new, young bishops in 1930 during the height of the Great Depression, despite there being no funds for their salaries. How great was its faithfulness?
Bishop Moore attended the 1934 General Conference prepared to leave the episcopacy but instead accepted all of the foreign work of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South with the exception of Latin America. How great was his faithfulness?
Bishop Moore voted for mandatory retirement of bishops due to age knowing his mentor, Bishop Candler, would be forced to retire. How great was his faithfulness?
Bishop Moore flew from Belgium to the Belgian Congo to minister while World War II was being declared in Europe. How great was his faithfulness?
To return home from the Belgian Congo, Bishop Moore rode a train three weeks to Johannesburg, South Africa and then sailed with a Japanese fishing boat in the south Atlantic while German U-boats patrolled the sea and sank ships. How great was his faithfulness?
He returned to China three days after getting home and traveled to the remote regions outside of Shanghai to see how the common people were faring with the Japanese invasion. How great was his faithfulness?
During World War II, when isolationism dominated the country, he led the Bishops’ First Great Crusade to raise funds for the Methodist missionary program and raised the equivalent of more than three million dollars. How great was his faithfulness?
The first two countries that donated to the Bishops’ Great Crusade to save the missionary program were China and Korea. How great was their faithfulness?
Bishop Moore agreed to lead the Methodist Church Board of Missions in 1940 despite a recent unification within the church and an ongoing world war. How great was his faithfulness?
Bishop Moore was instrumental in creating the Upper Room devotional magazine, printing 100,000 copies of its first edition. The copies sold out quickly. How great was his faithfulness?
Bishop Moore took Mrs. C.C. Sapp, the first female delegate from the South Georgia Conference, to the General Conference meeting in 1940. How great was their faithfulness?
Bishop Moore was not elected chairman of the Board of Trustees of Lake Junaluska Assembly so he created Epworth By The Sea Conference Center. How great was his faithfulness?
We are being asked to meet for the 2022 South Georgia Annual Conference meeting in Columbus in June. How great is your faithfulness?
God hath sent the eternal in our hearts. He makes the seen and the unseen one. He bridges the gulf between a world that now is and the eternal world of abiding beauty. We are neither guests of a night nor captives of a cruel world, but children in the family of God. That broken sepulcher in Joseph’s garden assures us that God hath set the light of immortality in our hearts and not even death can put it out. Our Christian faith is never so confident, never so triumphant as when it proclaims the everlasting life. We march, not toward a setting sun, but toward the light of morning; the light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day. This life and the next are one and what God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
The light that falls upon my pathway is the Light of Eternal Morning. Arthur J. Moore
Anne Packard serves as Conference Historian and director of the Arthur J. Moore Methodist Museum on St. Simons Island. Contact her at director@mooremuseum.org.
