WHAT GOOD MEN EXPECTED

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Mar 15, 1887

WHAT GOOD MEN EXPECTED.

Matthew Henry says of Christ’s coming:—

“In general he will find but few good people, few that are really and truly good; many that have the form and fashion of godliness, but few that have faith.”—Com. on Luke 18:8.

Martin Luther, just before his death, writing on the prophetic periods of Daniel in his German Bible, says:—

“About the consummation of these periods, this gospel will be shut out of all the churches, and confined to private houses.”

When one of Martin Luther’s guests remarked that the world might continue fifty years, he replied:—

“Pray God it may not exist so long; matters would be even worse than they have been. There would rise up infinite sects and schisms, which are at present hidden in men’s hearts not mature. No; may the Lord come at once, for there is no amendment to be expected.”

Dr. Gill, commenting on the signs of Christ’s coming, says:—

“Which yet will be observed by a few, such a general sleepiness will have seized all the professors of religion.”—On Rev. 3:20.

Mr. Hartly, a learned and sensible churchman, has remarked as follows:—

“There are many prophecies which declare the fall of the ecclesiastical powers of the Christian world; and though each church seems to flatter itself with the hope of being exempted, yet it is very plain that the prophetical characters belong to all. They all have left the true, pure, simple religion, and teach for doctrines the commandments of men.”

Dr. Cotton Mather says:—

“When the Lord shall come, he will find the world almost void of true and lively faith (especially of faith in his coming); and when he shall descend with his heavenly banners and angels, what else will he find almost but the whole church as it were a dead carcass miserably putrefied with the spirits and manners and endearments of this world. . . . When I should wish to stir up my brethren, who are in deep sleep, with these messages and admonitions to shake off the soft and indeed lethargic and deadly slumber, I know that I shall appear to them a vain dreamer, a sort of Lot, and that they will treat me as one in jest or sport, and as a man in the falling sickness, seized with I know not what enthusiasm; and that sleep may hold them in still more pleasing fetters, they will make use of, as it were, sleepy medicines, a diversity of commentaries on certain prophecies as not yet fulfilled.”—Famous Latin Preface.