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A Warning Voice

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 15, 1875

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 45, No. 3.

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A Warning Voice.

By Cotton Mather

BY DR. COTTON MATHER, A. D. 1700.
He was the most learned minister of his day in New England. He preached at the North Church in Boston. He was born 1663, lived sixty-five years, and died in 1728—the same year in which Dr. Whitby, the originator of the common theory of the world's conversion, died. Dr. Mather's “publications amount to 382, some of them being of huge dimensions.” The following extracts are from his Latin preface to a work called “Student and Preacher, Directions for a Candidate for the Ministry,” addressed to all such in Great Britain and New England. See The Voice of the Church, p. 255.
O YE souls, too much longing after and cleaving to the earth, and savoring only earthly things, awake at last. Awake ye, and, being roused now by the seventh trumpet of God, arise to the work of God, and the day; and attend to the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Hear these things, all nations; all ye inhabitants of the globe, hearken; for the Lord God has spoken to every people; he calls the whole earth.
Verily, our God shall come, and shall not keep silence; a fire shall consume before him, and there shall be a very stormy tempest round about him. The Ruler of the world returning to us, will send forerunners, who shall show his approach and the speediness of his coming. And before the very great and very greatly to be dreaded day of the Lord come, he will send Elias, or men endued with his spirit and power, who, with a loud voice, shall show themselves sons of thunder concerning the Lord hastening to us.
It behoveth any servant of God who would be named a vigilant, and not a drowsy, servant, to perform this office of Elias. And were the power granted to any Elias, of uttering through a mighty trumpet a voice that might be heard throughout all the regions of the whole globe, he would surely with this alarm summon us from our lethargy.
The second advent of the Lord Christ, which must be expected for the destruction of Antichrist, and perdition of that fourth empire, which he will abolish at his own illustrious coming, is next and immediately to be expected.
But it is not to be wondered at if there be very few who would believe such a preacher, and if a complaint should accompany the clangor and labor of the trumpeters. Lord, who believeth our report?
For 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 spirit and manners and endearments of this world?
We are now in midnight darkness, wherein the church sleeping is to be roused at each ear with that outcry, than which nothing is more seasonable, “The Bridegroom cometh!” But that clamor, the Bridegroom cometh, repeated even a thousand times for the waking of but one soul among ten thousand, will effect hardly anything. The cry is made scarcely otherwise than as in the ears of the dead, after the most vehement repetitions of the same thing.
When I should wish to stir up my brethren, who are in a deep sleep, with these messages and admonitions, to shake off this soft and indeed lethargic and deadly slumber, I know that I shall appear to my friends 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.
But this word of God is in my mind like burning fire shut up in my bones; nor can I any longer forbear, but must again and again denounce this doom to the earth, sufficiently prepared for the fire, and a sorceress condemned to the flames.
Yes; though some Nero should command me to be burned in the flames, I will not cease to preach and foretell, with an earnest voice, the dissolution, renewal and purification of the world by fire.
But O, ye sinners in Zion! let horror come upon you. O, ye hypocrites! let trembling seize you. Who of you shall be able, or who shall dare, to dwell in the burnings of that fire, in which God, the Judge and the Avenger, will purge indeed this our earth, and introduce that new earth?
In that day, how terrible! how dreadful! according to the divine oracles, which are never to be called in question, the heavens shall pass away with a noise, the elements shall melt with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are done on it, shall be burnt up. O, how terrible will be that great day of the Lord, of which not only predictions in the books inspired by God do everywhere sound and resound, but the rumor also hath penetrated to the pagans and troubled the Stoics themselves; that there should be a time, when the sea, the earth, and the palace of heaven, seized by the flames, should burn, and the globe's prodigious mass be in strong convulsions!
Very many indeed own that when the Roman beast, which now deceives and enslaves the nations, shall be slain, the body of that beast is to be delivered to the burning of fire, and therewith to be destroyed. But they augur that this fire will be altogether metaphorical, and rave of painted fires only—a wonder if not feigned also. A most vain surmise this! What! and even the second coming of the Lord will become, by-and-by, metaphorical also, and must be resolved and vanish away into I know not what mystical dispensations! Away with such dotings of drivellers!
Noah of old, the preacher of righteousness, warned the wicked of his age of that deluge, concerning which, with what great commiseration could the venerable patriarch answer the unbelieving scorners! “Miserable men! know that not any metaphorical waters shall overwhelm you! At length, and presently, ye shall feel literal waters—fatal to you. Yet a little while, and your groans shall be heard from the waters that must be literally understood and inflicted.” Nor will it be otherwise in these our last days. Good God, for what times hast thou reserved us!
Scoffers they are, who think that all things are forever to continue as they were from the beginning of the creation, and fancy that they can lurk under their metaphors, and hide themselves in the obscurities of figures from the sight of him who sitteth on the throne.
There are very many good men, to be numbered, not indeed with scoffers, but yet with sleepers, and such as lull others to sleep, who, by improper and excessive allegorizing, darken and injure the truth. And I could wish most humbly to advise, or request, and solicit these dear, beloved brethren in Christ, that, being taught by second thoughts, they would persist no further in bringing with their charms the spirit of slumber on those sitting weary on the grass. Would that some Nepos indeed might arise, to confute these allegorists, before the event does it for them!
But the event will perform this! Yea, a deluge of fire will do it. That day of the Lord is near, and hastening apace—a day of fury, a day of anguish, a day of devastation, and the greatest devastation too; a day of the sounding of the trumpet. All this earth will be consumed in the fire of his zeal; for he is about to make a speedy conclusion with all the inhabitants of this earth.
All things being now accomplished that were to precede the destruction of Antichrist, and the thousand two hundred and sixty days being finished that were to be allowed that adversary, the end is at hand; lo! it is near; that period is nearly present; yea, and the age is already begun in which the most importunate prophet will perceive the Redeemer granting his request, and shall arrive in his turn at those things for which blessed is he that waiteth. That term of days is almost present, and not to be deferred. The delay of the end is neither to be sought nor wished for any longer in the prayers of the church.
No; but come, Lord Jesus, come quickly! Why delayeth thy chariot its return? Why linger the driving of the chariots?
Although forewarned by these prophecies, and other of the like kind, in the divine code of both Testaments, truly we are little forearmed, but rather buried in a profound sleep; and therefore that day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night. The church is shortly to be gathered.