p. 173 | The Judgment Hastens by J. Cross

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · May 31, 1877

The Judgment Hastens.

By J. Cross

MULTITUDES of honest Christian people are in error concerning the nearness, the nature, and the duration, of the day of Judgment. It is generally placed far in the unknown future, and regarded as a mere judicial proceeding, similar to that of an earthly tribunal, begun and ended in a day. And the blind guides teach their willing hearers and readers that the world is destined, by a gradual improvement, under gracious spiritual influences and higher forms of civilization, to glide into the kingdom of Christ; and that the earth, by the constant increase and diffusion of gospel light, converting the nations to Christianity, is to be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. And the blindly-guided love to be deluded by such soothing strains, forgetting the Master's warning of the midnight approach and the startling summons; and they will not believe that the nations are ripening for doom, and that treasures of wrath are accumulating against the dreadful day; nor can they understand that anti-Christ and infidelity must perish in storms of mingled fire and blood, and all tyrannous thrones of men go down in an earthquake such as never yet rocked the globe, before the full establishment of Immanuel's universal and everlasting reign.

And shall we continue to charm the popular ear with songs of millennial joys, when the Judge is even now at the door? Shall we still congratulate the church on her prospective gentle transition into the Canaan of perfect peace and righteousness, while there are seas of blood and continents of flame between her and the promised land? Shall we talk of long ages of tranquility and triumph on this miserable earth, where Satan reigns supreme and sin riots in unlimited license, while the dire prelude of vengeance is thundering over the nations, and the signal-trump of Armageddon is summoning them to the last conflict? Awake, awake, ye heralds of my God, and let the warning thrill the drowsy world—“Fear God, and give glory to him, for the hour of his Judgment is come!”

The omens are everywhere—natural omens, and political omens, and ecclesiastical omens—omens commercial, and omens mechanical, and omens scientific and literary—omens in the heavens above, and on the earth beneath—in the air, and on the sea; the Moslem trembles for his approaching doom; and the hoary Mystagogue of the seven hills reels blindly toward the brink of the unsounded gulf; and men's hearts are failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth; and falling thrones, and dissolving empires, and anarchy and revolution threatening all rule, and Anarchy with crimsoned hands and clotted hair shrieking through the visioned future—all are heralding Him “who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom.”—J. CROSS, D. D., in Banner of the Church.