Commandment Keepers and Christ’s Coming
By R. A. Morton
It has been some time since I became connected with those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. Six years' investigation has confirmed me in the belief that their teachings are in harmony with the Bible, their only discipline. They believe that the sinner must repent toward God and have a special faith in Christ before he can be justified. They believe that God's law is the eternal rule by which the justified sinner must measure his conduct. They realize the awful condition of the world, in that more than a billion of its inhabitants are breaking the law of God as often as the holy Sabbath, the seventh day of the week, comes to them. They believe that the Saviour is soon to appear with the holy angels to take vengeance on this careless and lawless generation. They believe the various lines of prophecy, of which too many are willingly ignorant, unmistakably show that this great event is near at hand. The signs Christ gives of his immediate coming have already appeared, and are read and known by all who prayerfully seek light from the Holy Scriptures. Dan. 12 : 10. They are seen in every movement of society. They are engraven in unmistakable characters upon a fallen church. They come forth from the halls of fallen justice. In short, they are emitted from one vast volcano of crime and corruption and borne upon every breeze, so that he who will may look up and behold the Lord's tokens abroad in the land. “None of the wicked shall understand, but the wise shall understand.” This people are engaged in proclaiming the most solemn message the world ever heard, because it is the last. When it shall soon have done its work; when the sheaves of good are gathered in, and the door of mercy is closed, then the careless, the unconcerned, the scoffing world (2 Pet. 3 : 3, 4), will be involved in one common ruin. Youth, manhood, and old age alike must bid farewell to every trace of hope, and die, drinking the cup of the wrath of a long-offended God, which is filled up in the seven last plagues. Rev. 15 : 1; 16 : 1. Thus ends probation. The dark stream of sin leaves the shores of time and empties into eternity. Solemn thought! Thousands in the youthful halls of pleasure; thousands listless and lustful; thousands filled with covetous avidity in the various avocations of life; thousands wearing the mantle of Christian faith; all, all will soon behold with untold grief, the Son of man on the throne of his glory to execute judgment upon the ungodly. 2 Thess. 1 : 6-10. Six thousand years God has been manifesting his attributes to mankind. The last generation may know his dealings in the past and avoid the awful consequences of unbelief. They may know that he warned the antediluvians119with fewer evidences of impending destruction than those with which he is warning this last generation, of his soon coming. They know he warned Sodom and “condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that should after live ungodly.” This generation have his dealings with man for 6000 years. They have the fulfillment of various lines of prophecy, with numerous other scriptures now in fulfillment, all of which show the day of the Lord near at hand. Now to reject this last solemn warning; to refuse to keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus and enter the pearly gates of the New Jerusalem, is to tread under foot the mercy and righteous government of him who sent his dear Son to open a cleansing fountain for all sin. Very justly, then, may God soon close the door of mercy and let fall the vials of his wrath upon the scoffer and unbelieving, and thus vindicate his holy and immutable law. “Blessed are they that do his (the father's) commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.” Rev. 22 : 14.