Three Signs of the Approaching End.
1. THE Scriptures very distinctly tell us that the period of Christ's Second Coming shall be a period of abounding apostasy, skepticism, and wickedness. I need not repeat the passages on this point. "As it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man." (Luke 17:26). As Milton says, "The first peculiar sign of the Second Advent will be an extreme recklessness and impiety, and an almost universal apostasy." And what a distressing agreement to this do we find in the characteristics of the present times! Look at Christendom itself. About one half of those who profess and call themselves Christians are wrapped up in the foul embrace of Popery, where it is the fashion, if not the law, to put aside the Scriptures as dangerous, to trust to the word of the priest for forgiveness, to pray to Mary as the great intercessor, to adore the Pope as the viceregent of God, to hold for doctrines the mere commandments of men, and to look for admission into Heaven through human works. The millions in the Greek and Oriental Churches are scarcely any better in regard to what concerns the vital matters of evangelical godliness. And still further. Look at the moral and religious condition of the nations at large, even those that are called enlightened and Christian. See how crime flourishes and infidelity vaunts itself. What are our secular newspapers but registers of depravity, avarice, ambition, lawlessness, and sin? See the inefficiency of law or gospel to restrain the violence of passion, or to keep under the brazen iniquity which rears its head aloft on every side. Behold your crowded infidel clubs, your besotted revolutionary combinations, and your hardened and daring propagandists of falsehood, treason, and all forms of social disruption. See with what readiness people, reputed intelligent, take up with the lowest delusions, and stand forth as the abettors and defenders of some of the foulest emissions of hell, such as universalism, spiritualism, etc. Behold how even great men, professed theologians, editors, professors, lecturers, and men in high places of influence, adopt, advocate, and preach theories of pretended science and philosophy which unsettle the very foundations of piety and faith. What contempt for Christianity and calloulness to its great truths do we encounter. And may we not conclude that "God will not, cannot, suffer this wicked world much longer"? 2. Another sign of the Saviour's Second Coming is to be found in great revolutionary troubles, political perplexities, and vast national agitations. The Saviour himself and all the prophets have taught us this. And never have the universal political heavens been so shaken as in our day. When were human politics so confused, contradictory, and threatening as now? Look at them from one end of the world to the other. Who among the great ones of the earth can tell where he stands? Behold the strange alliances, the deep, sudden, and mysterious antipathies, the unforeseen combination of events, and the unknown tendencies of mighty inscrutable movements, which have been manifesting themselves all over the world in these last days. Who can tell what shall be next? If it is war, who knows where it will end? If it is peace, who is sure that it will not prove the prelude to war? In either case, mighty dangers everywhere threaten. Democracy, republicanism, autocracy, and military despotism have about equal chances, and neither has any rational hope. As things now are, no conceivable human arrangements can steer clear of the mighty maelstrom which seems to have drawn all the nations within the circle of its awful whirl. Men of wisdom, men of Ahithophel astuteness, are at their wits' end, and the prudent and the far-sighted are growing wild with amazement and fear. With all that can be done, things refuse to bend to any mortal control. The ship answers no more to the helm. There is not a government on earth that is not quaking with commotion. Everything is moving, but whither, politicians cannot tell. (Haggai 2:7). 3. A third sign of the nearness of the end is a stir and inquiry among many respecting Scripture prophecy, leading to the conviction that Christ is at hand. This is set forth in two passages, the one in Daniel, the other in the Lord's prophecy in the twenty-fifth of Matthew. The passage of Daniel, 12:4, is, "O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." That is, in the period of the end, as Michaelis interprets, "many shall give their sedulous attention to the understanding of these things;" or, according to an old marginal note in an old English Bible, "many shall run to and fro to search the knowledge of these mysteries." Dr. Gill thus explains the passage: "Towards the time of the end appointed, many shall be stirred up to inquire into these things delivered in this book, and will spare no pains or cost to get a knowledge of them; and, with the blessing of God upon them, the knowledge of this book of prophecy will be increased, things will appear clearer and plainer the nearer the accomplishment of them." Luther's rendering of it is as follows:— "And now, Daniel, shut up these words, and seal this book, until the last times; when many shall come over it, and find great understanding." Coke, Clarke, Henry, and Duffield understand the passage in the same way and concerning the same period of the end—"The wise shall understand." And as the result of all this inquiry and enlightenment on the subject of prophecy, the Saviour tells us that "then shall the kingdom of Heaven be likened unto ten virgins which went out to meet the bridegroom, and there was a cry made, Behold, the Bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him." (Matthew 25:6). And how evidently and significantly has this mark of the end been manifesting itself within the last fifty years! Though the multitude still turn from prophecy as from a sealed book, yet what a stir, anxiety, and study has it awakened in many earnest minds! By some in every denomination, and in every Christian country, the subject is being studied and agitated. Everywhere there are men of God proclaiming the great doctrine of Christ's speedy coming. In England, in Scotland, in France, in our own country, in Germany, in Norway, in Russia, in India, in the isles of the sea, the cry has been raised, "BEHOLD, THE BRIDEGROOM COMETH; GO YE OUT TO MEET HIM!" Never, never, since the days of the early Christians, has there been so much earnest longing, expecting, preaching, believing, and praying upon the subject of the nearness of Christ's coming. The interest, the study, and the faith are by no means as general as they should be, but general and intense, enlightened and earnest enough to warrant us in saying that this sign of the end has appeared.—J. Seiss, D. D., Philadelphia.