DISTRESS OF NATIONS

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 7, 1861

DISTRESS OF NATIONS.

MEN will often use the very language of Scripture, and yet reject the conclusions to which those very scriptures lead us. Especially is this the case in the present perilous and exciting times. Men know that, according to scripture prediction, there is upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity. They acknowledge it in so many words. But instead of perceiving that according to the authority of God's word this state of things is to be followed by the coming of the Son of man in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory, they side off upon a conclusion more in accordance with the feelings of the carnal heart, and assert that all these commotions are for the overthrow of despotism in religion, in society, and in the State, and for the ushering in of the millennium. So thoroughly have people become indoctrinated with such teaching, that it is to be feared that nothing less than the very glory of the coming Son of man will dispel their darkness. Though the following paragraphs fall into the same channel, they are valuable as giving a condensed view of the present state of the nations. We copy from the N. Y. Independent:

"We are so absorbed in the affairs of our own country that we have scarcely time to read the foreign news. But with famine in India, the threatening aspect of affairs in Syria and throughout Turkey, the foreshadowed alliance of France and Russia against England and Austria, revolution imminent in Hungary, Victor Emanuel determined upon possessing Rome, there is every indication that this will be a year of commotions in the earth and distress of nations, almost without parallel since the beginning of the Christian era.

"Without attempting to apply to passing events specific predictions in the word of God, we cannot fail to see in those events the hand of divine providence marshaling forces for the overthrow of despotism in religion, in society, in the State. The grand historic-o-prophetical symbols of the Old and New Testament are self-repeating, and we in our day are as much called upon to study the signs of the times, to watch for the coming of the Son of man, and to be ready for every sign of his appearing, as were the christians of the first century, as well be those of the last day of earth and time. Let us work and pray, and pray and work, till Christ's kingdom shall fully come."

To the foregoing the following may also be added: "It seems, and it is, a noble privilege to live and work in times like the present, so full of action, power, history; so signal and unique, and so pregnant with great destinies. It is not given to every generation to see and to assist the opening of the gates of a new era. The great crises in world-history only come at long intervals. We have all perhaps felt that in some respects our revolutionary fathers had the advantage of us; as having the opportunity to foster and unfold certain elements of heroism to which the times of calm prosperity are less propitious; as having the opportunity to shed a more evident and eminent influence over future years than has been possible for us. But now at last, all on a sudden, we see and feel that we of all who have lived thus far upon this continent are called to act in the most momentous and critical period of its history; that we are at the point where prophecy converges most swiftly toward its accomplishment, and where all the trumpets foreshown in the Apocalypse seem to be sounding at once on the air, all vials to be poured out together on the lands; where too the future courses of this nation, so long and wondrously prospered and blessed, and now so suddenly and strangely aroused by unanticipated insult and peril, are to be marked out and decided! 'We are living, we are dwelling, in a grand and awful time!' No truer lines were ever penned or ever sung."