The Signs of our Time by James White

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 11, 1875

The Signs of our Time.

By James White

THESE are fast times. More history is now made in one year than was made in the days of our grandfathers in ten. The world is moving rapidly. And there is a general expectation that some great event is at hand. Some still persist that we are soon to enter upon the golden age, and that the dawnings of the temporal millennium are even discernible; and they console themselves with the delusive hope that this is the next great event. But the plainest facts, both of prophecy, and in the history of the church, especially for the last thirty years, are against the supposition that the world will soon be converted. Apostasy, infidelity, and crime, mark the course of the nominal churches for the last thirty years, as they have rapidly glided down to, and onward with, the world in the broad way to ruin.

That which constitutes a sign of the times, in a scriptural sense, must be a matter of prophecy. The prophetic pencil gives a sketch of what shall take place in the political and religious world near the end. Time shows the fulfillment. The student of prophecy compares the prophetic sketch with the facts of the history of our time, and, finding a perfect agreement, he knows that the end is nigh. The apostle Paul has given a perfect photograph of our time in these words:—“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof; from such turn away.” 2 Tim. 3:1-5.

Perils in matters of religion and morals are upon us. The last days have come. The present condition of the religious world constitutes a sign of the end. And the moral stupor and blindness on the part of the nominal churches as to the real condition of things is alarming. The mass of professors of the Christian faith are rapidly passing to the fatal point—“When they shall say peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them”—and they seem wholly unconscious of the fact.

The slumbering churches who are dreaming of peace and safety and future glory for the church in this mortal state are saying in the language of the prophet, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths.” “And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruninghooks; nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Micah 4:2, 3.

This is a prophecy of the popular sentiment of the church in the last days. Please turn and read Micah 4:1-5, and note the fact that this is just what the popular churches are saying, and that, too, at the very time when the nations are making the grandest preparations for war the world ever knew, in fulfillment of the word of the Lord by the prophet Joel: “Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles: Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up. Beat your ploughshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears; let the weak say, I am strong. Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord. Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about.” Joel 3:9-12.

These two prophecies, by two of the prophets of God, Micah and Joel, both point to the same time, and yet they are directly opposite. One speaks of peace, and the other, of war. But the word of God is not yea and nay, by any means. The attentive reader will see that one is a prophecy of what men would say in the last days, while the other is what God says would be just before the last great day of battle.

Modern spiritualism, which had its birth only twenty-seven years since in the little village of Hydesville, N. Y., already embraces its millions, and boasts of its giant strength. Its bold apostles laugh at the sober wisdom of the great of past time, and the credulity of the good who have suffered for Christ; and very knowingly talk of progress. Progress, indeed! But which way? It will amount to quite a sum in the end whether, with the blessed Bible in our hands, and the Spirit of God upon our hearts, we progress toward Heaven, or whether we, under the influence of the spirits of darkness, put the Bible away from us, and banish God, Christ, the Judgment, and the reward of the pure and the good from our thoughts, and make rapid progress toward perdition. This ism, deceptive in its character, flattering in its promises and hopes, terrible in its tendencies, and powerful upon the minds of those who fully yield to it, is fearfully described upon the Sacred Page, as constituting a sign of the near approach of the day of God.

The spirits of spiritualism are described in Rev. 16:14, 15, as the “spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.” The coming of the Son of God and the Judgment of the great day constitute the great events of the near future. And the world-wide manifestations of demons whose visitations are in the names of the dead, are among the most prominent signs of our time.

That the second coming of Christ is to immediately follow the deceptive power of spirit manifestations is plainly affirmed by the inspired Paul. When speaking of Christ and of his coming, he says: “Even Him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie; that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” 2 Thess. 2:7-12.

The mass of spiritists have cast aside the Bible, and, feeling free from the restraint of the word of God, they have fast fallen into moral corruptions. But there are a few who may be called Christian spiritists, who are restrained for the present by the Christianity of the Sacred Scriptures. These are exceptions, while the majority are the rule. The word of God speaks in unrestricted terms of the rule. After Paul in his epistle to Timothy gives a photograph of our times, in his description of those who have a form of godliness in the last days, in which he speaks in general terms of eighteen distinct sins, he speaks more definitely of those who fall under the power of this most terrible ism in these words: “For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth; men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further; for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was.” 2 Tim. 3:6-9. Their day is coming. Their manifestations were to be just before, and a sign of, the end. Their career is short. The end will come when they shall proceed no further.

The apostle Jude distinctly describes this corrupt state of things just prior to the coming of Christ and the Judgment of the great day, when the Lord shall punish this blaspheming people for their ungodly speeches and deeds: “But these speak evil of those things which they know not; but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves. Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Korah.”

“These are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear; clouds they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.”

“And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men’s persons in admiration because of advantage.”

And the apostle Peter, looking forward to the moral corruptions of our times, faithfully describes the spirit and conduct of the mass of modern spiritists in these burning words: “But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you; whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.”

“Having eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin; beguiling unstable souls; a heart they have exercised with covetous practices; cursed children.”

“These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved forever. For when they speak great swelling words of vanity they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error. While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption; for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.”

“For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them. But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.” 2 Pet. 2:1-3, 14, 17-22.

These closing words of the apostle deserve especial notice. They speak of the most terrible apostasy of which men have been guilty. They had once escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord; but like the filthy dog, and the swine, they accept, in turning from the Christianity of the Bible to

the corruptions of spiritism, that which they cast off, and from which they were washed when they first gave themselves to the Lord. And to what immeasurable depths some of these have sunken below common sinners! “It had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness.” J. W.