Coming Soon by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 16, 1902

Coming Soon

By Uriah Smith

Editorial

Pray

Pray earnestly. “Pray with the spirit.” “Pray with the understanding.” “With thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.” Pray the prayer of the publican, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Pray the prayer of Habakkuk, “O Jehovah, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make it known.” “The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest.” Let each one adopt the cry of the psalmist to the God of mercy, “Wilt thou not quicken us again: that thy people may rejoice in thee?” With confession, with repentance, with earnest appeal, let the annual season of prayer, December 20–27, be a time of waiting upon God for a renewal of his covenant mercies.

Act

WE have not finished with the matter when we have asked special blessings from God. The prayer of faith is followed by deeds of faith. “Prayer moves the arm of Omnipotence,” but God uses the arm of flesh as his helping hand in the ministry of his blessings. “We are laborers together with God.” Having earnestly asked God to revive his work in our midst, then we should open the way for him to do so both in our own experience and in the experience of others, by offering ourselves as the channel for his reviving blessing. When we do this in sincerity, for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, we shall at once find plenty of opportunities right at hand. When we have prayed the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers into his harvest, we should be sure to say, before the “Amen,” the “so let it be,” as did Isaiah of old, “Here am I; send me.” The prayers that are followed by consecration in active service in the very line of the requests are the prayers that are answered speedily and openly. The experience of manifested glory on the mountain top in prayer must be followed by the humble ministry of blessing in the valley below. The subject of the readings for the week of prayer is “SERVICE.” Let the week of prayer be a time of preparation for service. Pray and act.

Coming Soon

THERE is a good, old advent hymn, the first stanza and chorus of which run as follows:—

“How sweet are the tidings that greet the pilgrim’s ear, As he wanders in exile from home; Soon, soon will the Saviour in glory appear, And soon will the kingdom come. “He’s coming, coming, coming soon I know, Coming back to this earth again; And the weary pilgrims will to glory go, When the Saviour comes to reign.”

This is truly one of the “spiritual songs” in which we may speak to one another as a means of reviving our hope in the speedy return of our Lord. The hymn is Scriptural in its teaching. It simply takes the promise, “Behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me,” expresses the joy of the pilgrim wanderer in hearing the good tidings, and dwells upon them with a satisfaction which increases with each repetition. As the living creatures “round about the throne” find delight in repeating “day and night” their simple form of adoration, saying, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come,” so with perfect confidence in the fulfilment of the prophecies and that we are now in “the time of the promise,” we may constantly sing in our hearts— “He’s coming, coming, coming soon I know,”—and each repetition of the glorious truth will only make it seem the more precious. It is time that the advent message should become a part of our very being. There can be no hope more thrilling, more soul-inspiring, than that the Saviour will come in this generation. We can bend every energy to the work of proclaiming the message of warning and preparation “to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,” and that with the best of courage, when we know that this is the work which will bring us face to face with our Redeemer without passing through the grave. O blessed hope! Happy are they who lay hold upon it!

Forces at God’s Disposal

WHEN it comes to mercy and compassion, God swings into play the mightiest power in the universe; namely, his all-conquering love. “The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.” Rom. 2:4; John 3:16. So when judgments fall in the program of his procedure, he has agents, no less obedient to his bidding, to accomplish his word. “Fire, and hail,” says the psalmist, “snow, and vapors; stormy wind fulfilling his word.” Ps. 148:8. In the final outburst of his indignation against sin, he summons again the forces of nature: “And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, which hath power over these plagues: and they repented not to give him glory.” Rev. 16:8, 9.

The sun, which is a life-giving force, and in its ordinary operations sheds its benediction upon all nature, is here made the agent of God’s vengeance, under the most adverse conditions, to scorch men with fire. Under the cumulative action of these plagues,—the noisome and grievous sore, a bloody highway over the sea, fountains pouring forth blood for men to drink, and under the fourth plague the sun scorching men with abnormal heat,—while the holy angels continually bear testimony to the appropriateness and righteousness of God in these judgments, the evil hearts of men break forth in blasphemy against God; and they repent not, to give him glory. They are where, then, no influence to lead them to repentance can have any effect upon them.

Prominent agents of evil, which have wrought great wickedness in this world, now come in for their share in the plagues. The beast receives the fifth vial upon what constitutes the seat, or throne, of that organization, filling his kingdom with darkness, fit representation of the moral darkness which it had inflicted

upon the world, leading men to gnaw their tongues for pain, and augment their debt by blasphemy against God. The next victim is the king of the north, under the symbol of the great river Euphrates, the waters of which are dried up to prepare the way of the kings of the East, and the spirits of devils go forth to the kings of the earth to gather them to the battle of the great day of God Almighty. The seventh and last plague is poured out into the air, that universal element which envelops the whole earth. This prepares the way for the heavens to depart as a scroll when it is rolled together, for every island to be moved out of its place, and the apostate city of great Babylon to be divided into its three respective parts, and then sink in the great earthquake, and finally disappear under the influence of fire and earthquake and exceeding great hail. Then the voice from the temple in heaven is heard announcing the end of the great controversy with sin, in the language of three short words, “It is done,”—a voice sufficiently vigorous to shake heaven and earth, and remove everything which can be shaken. But in this fearful time we may adopt the language of the apostle: “Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.” Heb. 12: 27, 28.

Thus men are not beyond the judgments of God. He can reach them by any medium. He can make ill effects to flow from what are ordinarily our choicest blessings. From the sun he can pour upon us heat that is exceeding fierce. These are some of the agents that he has at his command. And he has engaged to employ them all in behalf of his people. He will carry on the work with his people till “the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” Isa. 35: 10. U. S.