The Last Days | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 17, 1868

The Last Days.

It has been a query with many how it could be said at the commencement of this dispensation, that the kingdom of Heaven was at hand, the last days had come, the end of all things was near, &c., when nearly nineteen hundred years were to elapse before the final consummation. A passage from a sermon by Samuel Minton, M. A., London, sets forth, we think, the true light on this point. He says:

“Such words as ‘short,’ ‘nigh,’ and ‘at hand,’ are relative terms, the meaning of which varies according to the standard of reference; the moon would be said to be very near the earth, while Calcutta would be called a long way off from London. The mistake in question arises from supposing these expressions to have been used with reference to the earthly lifetime of any individual Christian, instead of with reference to the dispensational life of the church; it is the fact of her having entered the last dispensation of grace before entering into her glory, that the Holy Ghost declared the Lord to be at hand, and the end drawing near, in accordance with the Old Testament language so often quoted in the New, which calls the whole of this dispensation ‘the latter days,’ the ‘last days,’ or the ‘last time.’ On the same principle the expression used by Paul (1 Thess. iv, 17; 1 Cor. xv, 32), are to be interpreted, ‘we,’ having reference to the church which will be alive at the Lord’s coming, in contrast to ‘they,’ those members of it who will then be in their graves.”