p. 125 | Earth's Closing Hours by Cummings

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 19, 1867

Earth's Closing Hours.

By Cummings

We live in years into each of which is crowded the work of centuries. A day brings forth now more than a century brought forth in former times. Time rushes more rapidly as it nears its final fall. The future approaches us like a rising tide, and destinies solemn as the soul, Heaven, and hell, stretch out before us. Are we not called upon to ascertain clearly our relative position? What matters it that a Millennium comes, if we shall have no share in it? What avails it that its music shall be so sweet, its air so holy, its people so happy, and its translucency with glory so bright, if we shall have no part in it? There remaineth indeed a rest; but it is for the people of God. Is this our class? Do we belong to that consecrated family? Are we Christ's? This is the question of questions. Our whole interest is compressed in this. Oh, leave it not unsolved and unsettled. “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” “Look unto me, all ye ends of the earth, and be ye saved.” “Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.” “Lord Jesus, to whom can we go but unto thee; thou hast the words of everlasting life.”

Let me ask, therefore, when Christ shall come upon the lightning's wing or upon the eddying air, if you feel that you are prepared to meet him? to welcome him? to reign with him? Near, his advent is—all chronology, and prophecy, and history prove it—it is time, therefore, that we should set our house in order, and have our loins girt, and our lamps burning. Were I told that the end of this dispensation would come to-morrow, I would not say to the tradesman, leave your shop, or to the statesman, leave your cabinet, or to the lawyer, abandon your desk; but I would say to each and all, sit loose to all that is worldly; mingle not your affections with the transitory elements of earth; let your hand be here, but let your heart be in Heaven; let your treasure be beyond the skies, and your hope in glory. Like the eagle, touch the earth only to eat and sleep, and rise again as quickly as possible, and soar perpetually toward brighter realms, riveting your eye on a yet more glorious Sun. There is no obstruction to the upward flight of him who has Christ, the password of the universe. All things shall aid you, for God is with you; and when the gray wing of time shall have winnowed away things now seen, your eye, purified and strengthened, will gaze upon a universe clear with light and pure with Deity, no more to wane in age or wo—the Sabbath of the world's long week—the reign of the church's long-absent Lord.—Cummings.