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THE RAPIDITY OF IT

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 27, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 9.

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THE RAPIDITY OF IT.

By T.

FOUR minutes and seven seconds after the death of Queen Victoria a telegram announcing the fact was in the Examiner office in San Francisco. In seventeen minutes after the message reached the office, a special edition of the paper was off the press, and the newsboys on the streets were crying, “Special edition of the Examiner, telling all about the death of the queen.” This message had to be transmitted from the Isle of Wight, where the queen died, to London, thence under the Atlantic Ocean to New York, and then flashed all the way across the American continent to San Francisco.
In the War of 1812 the battle of New Orleans was fought after peace had been declared between the two nations. But the means of communication were so slow that it took a number of days to get the message announcing it to the generals in the field. How different are things to-day! The whole world seems to be in the same neighborhood. And we can know of things in the farthest corners of the globe just as they are happening, the same as we know the things of our own town.
The Lord has a great object lesson for us in all this. He has a message to give to the world in regard to the second coming of His Son. The time is at hand for that message to be given, and He says that it shall be preached in all the world. Do you not see how He has stirred men to invent things and get them in place so that this message can be given in an incredibly short time? And how thrilling is the thought that the sublime event of His coming is right at hand! How good it is for Him to have all these things so prepared that every one may know of the signs that are fulfilling day by day to herald His coming!
He has foretold in His Word the things that the various nations of earth would be doing in the last generation. He has told what would be the condition of society. He has told of the storms by land and sea. Now how could we know of all these things, and see them as signs of the coming Saviour, were not the telegraph and the printing-press connecting every community on the face of the earth? How wonderful are all these things, and how absolutely do they fit the prophetic Word! And by the combined concurrence of it all we may know of a surety that the reign of sin is at an end, and that the Master will soon appear. Let us be ready; for it is the most joyous event of the ages. T.