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Our Keynote

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 3, 1903

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 80, No. 9.

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Our Keynote

By Arthur G. Daniells

“THE return of Christ to our world will not be long delayed; let this be the keynote of every message.”—“Testimony for the Church,” Vol. VI, page 406.
Seventh-day Adventists are proclaiming a definite message. They are carrying on a world-wide movement. That message, that movement, has a keynote. What is it? It is this: “The return of Christ to our world will not be long delayed.”
The keynote in music is “the fundamental tone of a movement to which its modulations are referred, and with which it begins and ends.”
The fundamental truth in our message to-day is that Christ is coming, and that his coming shall be delayed no longer. This is the truth to which every part of our great movement should conform. This is the truth with which the whole movement began, is to continue, and will finally end.
Eighteen hundred years ago the message we are giving to-day, the movement we are carrying forward in the world, was revealed to John in the Isle of Patmos. The scene presented to John is recorded in the tenth chapter of Revelation. It is deeply impressive.
A mighty angel came down from heaven. He was clothed with a cloud. A rainbow was upon his head. His face shone as the sun, and his feet were as pillars of fire. He placed one foot upon the sea and the other upon the land. He held in one hand a little book open, and lifting the other hand, he sware by him that liveth forever and ever, “that there should be delay no longer.”
The reason given why there shall be delay no longer is that “in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished.” The mystery of God is the gospel. It is to be finished during the first part of the sounding of the seventh trumpet. When it is finished, Christ will come. When, therefore, the seventh trumpet begins to sound, the fact can be proclaimed to all the world that the return of Christ will not be long delayed.
No more solemn declaration has ever been made to the human family than this. No more solemn time in the history of the church has ever been experienced. The responsibilities that now fall upon the people of God are the greatest ever placed upon them.
The seventh trumpet began to sound in 1844. It is to continue to sound until Christ comes, and still on through the thousand years, until the wicked shall be finally destroyed, sin itself forever blotted out, the earth restored to its first glory, and the kingdom of Christ established under the whole heaven. Rev. 11:15-18.
In the days of the sounding of the seventh trumpet, even in the beginning of those days, the mystery of God, the gospel, shall be finished. Rev. 10:7. This is the reason given why there shall be delay no longer. We have now been living in the days of the voice of the seventh angel fifty-eight years.
It was at the very beginning of the sounding of the seventh trumpet that the great threefold message of Rev. 14:6-12, as a complete, last-day message, came to light. It was then that it began to be preached as the last gospel call to the world to prepare to meet God. Thus when the hour came for the gospel to be finished, a closing message was discovered in the Word. The time and the message came together.
When this message shall have been preached in all the world, to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, then the earth will be lightened with the glory of God, and then the gospel will be finished, and the end will come.
What a mighty, world-wide movement is here revealed! Think of what will be required to do the work that will fully and accurately fulfill these prophecies. God’s people, under the leadership of Christ, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, must be the living agencies by which this work will be done in the earth.
All true Seventh-day Adventists believe that the day of the Lord’s preparation has come; that the signs of the end are all fast fulfilling, and that the advent message is to be given to all the world in this generation. They believe that the hour has struck for the mystery of God to be finished, and that to them is committed the solemn responsibility of giving the last warning message to the world that will finish the gospel work, and bring the end.
This is our work. Let us take hold of it in earnest, and finish it. “What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not.” Jonah 1:6.
“The return of Christ to our earth will not be long delayed; let this be the keynote of every message.”
This is indeed our keynote. It is the fundamental truth of our world-wide movement. It is the truth to which all we do must conform. It is the truth with which this movement began, and with which it will surely and speedily end. Praise God for the prospect.
A. G. DANIELLS.