THE SECOND ADVENT

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 4, 1880

THE SECOND ADVENT.

SAYINGS OF EMINENT MEN.

Hon. H. Montague Villiers, rector of St. George, Bloomsburg, Eng., says:—

“Whatever blame may be attached to myself or to my brethren in the ministry, for enforcing the duty of serving God on other grounds than those which the Scriptures have laid down, this, at any rate, must be clear,—the apostle considered the second advent of the Lord worthy of the greatest prominence in his ministry; and if this be clear, I am free to confess that I am ignorant how any one can venture to neglect this important subject. It does appear to me to be great presumption to omit a topic so scriptural, and still more presumptuous to maintain that any other topic is better calculated to warn the sinner to walk close with his God. When I reflect that there are special blessings to those who look for his coming, and special warnings to those who say, ‘My Lord delayeth his coming,’ I cannot but feel that it is my duty prominently to set forward the doctrine of the second advent.”—Lectures during Lent, 1843.

Stephen Tyng, D. D., of New York City, says:—

“Jesus will reign in visible glory among his saints upon the earth. . . . He has now, as regards his visible presence, gone to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return. When the appointed hour arrives, the Son of man shall appear in his glory, and all his holy angels with him. . . . To this blessed kingdom of the Son of God multiplied prophecies of the Scriptures bid us look forward continually; and it is our blessed privilege to live in unceasing expectation of the happy day when angel voices shall thus announce unto his waiting Zion: ‘Thy God reigneth.’”

Hill, in his “Saints’ Inheritance,” says:—

“In the great view of the Saviour’s personal reign on a regenerated earth as the final and everlasting abode of his redeemed, I rest with confidence and delight.”

Edward Winthrop, M. A., rector of St. Paul’s church, Norwalk, Ohio, says:—

“The second coming of our Lord in power and great glory, in the sense of a visible and personal advent, has always been a cardinal doctrine in the faith of the church, and is inserted as such both in the Apostles’ and in the Nicene creed. . . . This was, from the earliest times, the hope of the church. This personal and visible advent of the Saviour is at the resurrection of the saints; but the resurrection of the saints is anterior to the millennium, and therefore the advent also is anterior to the millennium.” “As we are rapidly approaching the great crisis of this world’s history, it becomes us, in a devout and prayerful spirit, carefully to note the signs of the times.”