p. 101 | Untitled article by R. F. Cottrell

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 21, 1869

THE CLOSING MESSAGES.—NO. 6.

By R. F. Cottrell

It may be objected that the proclamation of 1844 was not sufficiently extensive to be a fulfilment of the prophecy. Where was not the sound heard? Perhaps it was more extensive than you are aware. It was more extensive than the mission of John the Baptist; and yet he fulfilled important prophecies as the harbinger and herald of the first advent. His field of action was where the religion of the Bible was best known. And so the special field of these messages should be in the very heart of Christendom.

These flying angels, as we have inferred thus far, being a portion of symbolic prophecy, represent messages of truth to be proclaimed in the world according to God’s chosen mode of speaking to men, that is, by preaching. And he has chosen that men, not angels, should be the visible instrumentality; and he has promised to adhere to that instrumentality to the end of the age. “Go ye,” said Jesus, addressing himself to his disciples, “into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” “And, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” Inasmuch, then, as the angel of Rev. xiv, 6, 7, has a message of the gospel to preach, though literal angels may have the oversight of the work, it seems evident that the visible agency will be men. And that the angels fly in the “midst of Heaven,” doubtless represents the fact that the messages take their rise, and do their most prominent work in the most enlightened Christian country on the earth—just such a country as the United States, to which the proscribed and persecuted of so many so-called Christian nations have fled for the enjoyment of freedom in the worship of God. The “midst” of these symbolic heavens, the enlightened and Christian portion of the earth, is the special field of this angel; but the voice of his message reaches to “every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.”

But let us inquire as to how far the sound of this message was heard.

An English writer, Mourant Brock, thus remarks:

“It is not merely in Great Britain that the expectation of the near return of the Redeemer is entertained, and the voice of warning raised, but also in America, India, and on the continent of Europe. In America about three hundred ministers of the word are thus preaching ‘this gospel of the kingdom’; while in this country, about seven hundred of the Church of England are raising the same cry.”—Advent Tracts, Vol. II, p. 135.

Dr. Joseph Wolfe traveled in Arabia Felix, through the region inhabited by the descendants of Hobab, Moses’ father-in-law. In Yemen, he saw a book, which he mentions thus:

“The Arabs of this place have a book called SERAÏAS, which treats of the second coming of Christ, and his reign in glory!” In Yemen he spent six days with the Rechabites. “They drink no wine, plant no vineyards, sow no seed, live in tents, and remember the words of Jonadab, the son of Rechab. With them were children of Israel, of the tribe of Dan, who reside near Terim in Hatramawt, who expect in common with the children of Rechab, the speedy arrival of the Messiah in the clouds of heaven.”—Dr. Wolfe’s Mission to Bokhara.

The “Voice of the Church,” by D. T. Taylor, speaks as follows concerning the wide diffusion of the advent sentiment:

“In Wurtemberg there is a Christian colony numbering hundreds, who look for the speedy advent of Christ; also another of like belief on the shores of the Caspian; the Molokaners, a large body of Dissenters from the Russian Greek church, residing on the shores of the Baltic—a very pious people, of whom it is said, ‘taking the Bible alone for their creed, the norm of their faith is simply the Holy Scriptures’—are characterized by the ‘expectation of Christ’s immediate and visible reign upon earth.’ In Russia the doctrine of Christ’s coming and reign is preached to some extent, and received by many of the lower class. It has been extensively agitated in Germany, particularly in the south part among the Moravians. In Norway, charts and books on the advent have been circulated extensively, and the doctrine received by many. Among the Tartars in Tartary, there prevails an expectation of Christ’s advent about this time. English and American publications on this doctrine have been sent to Holland, Germany, India, Ireland, Constantinople, Rome, and to nearly every missionary station on the globe. At the Turks Islands, it has been received to some extent among the Wesleyans. Mr. Fox, a Scottish missionary to the Telegoo people, was a believer in Christ’s soon coming. James MacGregor Bertram, a Scottish missionary of the Baptist order at St. Helena, has sounded the cry extensively on that island, making many converts and pre-millennialists; he has also preached it at South Africa, at the missionary stations there. David N. Lord informs us that a large proportion of the missionaries who have gone from Great Britain to make known the gospel to the heathen, and who are now laboring in Asia and Africa, are millenarians; and Joseph Wolfe, D. D., according to his journals, between the years 1821 and 1845, proclaimed the Lord’s speedy advent in Palestine, Egypt, on the shores of the Red Sea, Mesopotamia, the Crimea, Persia, Georgia, throughout the Ottoman empire, in Greece, Arabia, Turkistan, Bokhara, Afghanistan, Cashmere, Hindoostan, Thibet, in Holland, Scotland and Ireland, at Constantinople, Jerusalem, St. Helena, also on shipboard in the Mediterranean, and at New York City to all denominations. He declares he has preached among Jews, Turks, Mohammedans, Parsees, Hindoos, Chaldeans, Yeseedes, Syrians, Sabeans, to Pashas, Shieks, Shahs, the kings of Organtish and Bokhara, the queen of Greece, etc., and of his extraordinary labors, the Investigator says: ‘No individual has, perhaps, given greater publicity to the doctrine of the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, than has this well known missionary to the world. Wherever he goes he proclaims the approaching advent of the Messiah in glory.’ R. F. COTTRELL.