p. 143 | The End of this World by Dr. J. A. Seiss

California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists · Oakland, Cal. · Mar 11, 1875

The End of this World.

By Dr. J. A. Seiss

LUTHER once said, “The ways of God are like a Hebrew book, which can only be read from the end backwards.” His meaning was that we cannot rightly understand this present world without first taking in the final outcome. It is only the conclusion that clears up the darkness and uncertainty which prevail till then. And if we would not hopelessly err in our whole philosophy of things, we must take particular account of the end, and settle ourselves firmly in what God has revealed concerning the grand finale; for the doctrine of the last things in the key-stone is the arch of the Christian system, without which the whole fabric must tumble to pieces.

Reminders of that approaching end are again plentiful about us. On all sides there are symptoms and pre-intimations of it. Both the church and the civil years are drawing to a close. The fallen and withered leaves, and the scattered snowflakes gathered upon them, the shutting down of our windows, and the lighting up of our hearth-fires, the moan of the wind around our dwellings, and the frosty pendants that weep by the fountains, tell how rapidly the year is verging to the dead of winter. And all our church lessons for the season point forward to the sounding of the last trump, and the end of the world itself.

To many these are not welcome things. But what avails the shutting of our ears to them, if still the end must come, and every day, and hour, and heart-beat, is bringing us nearer and nearer to it?

Rather let us give ear that we may hear, and open our eyes that we may see what Almighty God hath purposed, and will most surely bring to pass.—Dr. J. A. Seiss.