The End of the World by H. Wren

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 3, 1875

The End of the World.

By H. Wren

BEFORE hearing directly upon the subject, I had made up my mind to something like a conclusion that the end of the world must be near from a process of reasoning somewhat as follows: All things are governed by laws; and great events do not come to pass by accident; though their causes may often be unobserved.

This law applies to God in all his actions, and to all the movements of history, as much as to those matters which constitute the materials of science. Nothing takes place in history until history is ready for it; and God will perform no act—not even the least, certainly not such a one as the destruction of the human race—until the proper time has come for that act to be done.

What condition of the affairs of this world would indicate that its destruction might not be out of keeping with that fitness of things which reason always requires for its assent? Such a condition would appear likely to be that in which God could prevail on no more of the inhabitants of the world to keep his law nor persuade them to accept of his mercy; and when sin had become enthroned to such an extent in terrestrial affairs that he would be virtually excluded from a place among men.

Such a condition appeared to me to be well nigh reached in the history of the present times. God seems to have made the circuit of the world seeking to establish his laws and to lavish his mercies. He began far in the East, at the very spot where the race began its westward course around the world. He pleaded with men there until they reached a point where they did not like to retain him in their thoughts, and he gave them up to themselves; then to the west directed his course, in search of men who would be willing to retain him in their minds, and his last efforts have been and still are being made on the extreme verge of the world to which revolution and migration have driven men. For three hundred years he seems to have almost exhausted even divine love and power in Western Europe and America, and at last the people of these lands appear to have become weary of him, and turned, or are about to turn, from him. Where shall he go when once the western world joins the Orient in a universal rejection of his authority and mercy? Will he return to the Old World? There does not seem to be good reason to believe he ever returns to a nation when once he has abandoned it. Will he visit some new and rising empire to sow the seeds of truth in soil not preoccupied? There is no such a rising empire; no new people is forming on the face of the earth; and there is no room for any to form; the world is full; the end is reached geographically; and neither men nor God can find a place in this world for further empire. Breathless we sit and think. What next? A point is reached where a conflict seems not improbable. Will God retire from the earth and leave it in undisturbed possession of his enemies, or will he seize, by an act of power, a world which he cannot induce, by goodness and mercy, to obey him? Reason here adopts the conclusion that he will, in such a crisis, justify the shout of universal intelligences, “The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth,” which inspiration teaches is to rise almost amid the very fires of the last day. H. WREN.

Knox Co. Mo., May 23, 1875.