European Convulsions

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 4, 1866

European Convulsions.

Dr. Wm. Leask, editor of an able English monthly entitled, The Rainbow, in his August number thus speaks concerning the convulsions now agitating Europe.

It is not too much to believe that the state of the world at the present time is disposing many thoughtful men to look a little more closely into the Holy Scriptures. If so, they will find that revelation has a great deal more to do with this world than is generally imagined. It has long been assumed that if we know the way of salvation and are prepared for Heaven, we have secured the chief if not really the exclusive object of revelation. Men have been spoken to as if the great work of life was to learn how to die; they have been addressed as “immortal souls,” and the business of the pulpit has been to fit them for a disembodied state and an immensely distant Heaven. The world we live in, that by right of inheritance, by ransom, and by unfailing covenant, belongs to Jesus Christ our Lord, and upon which creative beneficence has lavished wondrous beauty and grandeur, has either been referred to as a thing of no permanent consequence, or ignored entirely as unworthy of mention when the gospel of salvation was the topic of discourse. Those grave systems of theology, from which the ministry generally, consciously or otherwise, draws its inspiration, are so much taken up with the relative positions of law and grace, and their scientific arrangement, that they have no time to tell us of the bright future of the very world where law and grace have both been manifested. We are not going to talk disparagingly of any of the weighty topics of systematic theology, nor is it possible for us to overstate the importance we attach to the salvation of a single individual; but we believe, and therefore must teach, that the priceless book which reveals Jesus as seeking the lost, and shepherding the flock, also reveals him as the chosen and anointed King, destined to rule the nations that are now and have so long been distracted, torn, and plagued by the sword and fire of horrible war. Creation groans, being burdened.

Human governments are all conspicuous and disastrous failures,—a fact which declares as plainly as a fact can, that the divinely appointed Ruler of humanity has not yet received his scepter from the Ancient of Days. “Men’s hearts are failing them for fear, and for looking after those things that are coming on the earth.” Many students of prophecy—and some of the most cautious of them in the pages of this magazine—have pointed to the present year as one likely to bring forth events of the most startling character. That 1866 would not come without at least unprecedented European convulsions was foreseen and declared. Already the correctness of the data on which this conclusion was founded is placed beyond doubt; but there is more to come, for the horizon darkens and the complications increase as we move onward.

We beseech men not to deceive themselves any longer with the notion that either art, science, commerce, diplomacy, or the preaching of the gospel, or all united, will bring about a peaceful millennium, either to the world or the church. That day comes not until the Lord Jesus returns from Heaven to earth to rule the world in righteousness. Every prediction bearing on the time of the end admonishes us that the period of that return is near. We speak without the slightest hesitancy when we say that mighty and marvelous changes are at hand. Assuredly, if Christians saw a thousandth part of the issues involved in the pre-millennial coming of their beloved Lord, they would do all in their power to make that glorious, yet terrible fact known—glorious to his friends, terrible to his foes. We are doing our utmost both to herald the dawn and sound the alarm, but we should have a host of willing helpers if the truth on this great subject were generally known. There is no mission in existence at this moment so important as that on which we are engaged. We speak emphatically and advisedly.

“THE COMING OF THE LORD DRAWETH NIGH.” Brethren! help us to proclaim that.