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When the Hour Struck

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 22, 1908

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 85, No. 43.

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When the Hour Struck

By W. A. S.

There were displayed the patience and precision of eternity in the development of this advent movement. For nearly nineteen centuries after Rev. 14:6-12, was written, no one saw such a movement as that described; no one heard the message of the judgment hour already come. But when the hour came, in 1844, there sprang forth the movement.
Coming up from Brazil to Europe, I had as fellow passenger a genial Brazilian pastor of a Rio de Janeiro church. In a serious and yet kindly way he suggested that we ought not to work in Rio, where there were other Protestant pastors, but should go into the interior. I assured him we were pushing into the interior, and would preach the closing message of Revelation 14 everywhere in Brazil. He believed the last days had come, and that the coming of the end was a doctrine to be preached.
“Now,” I said, “if you and your fellow pastors would preach this message of Revelation 14, we would gladly leave the work in Rio, and pass on to other fields.”
“I think we are preaching it,” he said.
“Are you preaching that message, ‘Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come’?”
“I believe I am,” he earnestly replied.
“Well, when did it come? When did the hour of judgment begin?”
The pastor was at loss to know what to answer, and said that really he had never studied the book of Revelation. It was obvious that he could not proclaim the message of the judgment hour when he had not studied its import, and was unable to tell when it was due to the world. And so it is with the pulpit in all the great churches.
That is exactly why this advent movement has been raised up—a people keeping the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, carrying to every nation and people the message of the judgment hour and the coming of the Lord. This movement fulfils the prophecy, and is the only movement in the world that does, or that even professes to do so.
W. A. S.