The Head and Front of Present Truth.
We talk much of the present truth. There are many who dearly love the theme. There are many who greatly rejoice in it. It is meat in due season to the household of faith. It is always an appropriate subject for the little flock to dwell upon. Many can testify to its life-giving power when the veil of tradition is lifted and the windows of the mind are first opened to its cheering light. When a person has long wandered amid the indefiniteness of popular theology, with no special truth pressed home upon the conscience, and no definite idea of his own or the world's position in the fulfillment of prophecy; when the fog is suddenly cleared away, and he beholds on one hand, like a beacon light, some startling prophecy in process of fulfillment, and perceives on the other, some new truth towering up before him with its imperative claims, and begins to see in clear outline his position on the stream of time, the nearness of the end, and the rocks and breakers that endanger his course, how he wakes to new life! How the word of God becomes a new book to him, filled with new beauties and new harmonies; and how he starts up with glowing heart, to adapt himself to the new development of truth, heed its injunctions, walk in its light, and press to the prize that gleams like a newly risen star, in a full blaze of glory just before him! Such is the nature and the work of present truth. But what do we mean by present truth? We mean by it, prophecies that are now fulfilling. We mean truths which have been developed in the course of time, and which show us the position we occupy in the great chains of prophetic events, now hasting to their accomplishment. We mean the duties which are now especially incumbent upon the church. We mean the interpretation of those symbols, which represent bodies of men, and organized governments which are now on the stage of action, fast fulfilling their part in the great drama. And we mean the solemn events that immediately follow all these prophecies and symbols. And the "present truth" as we view it, presents an imposing array of these. This will at once appear, if the reader will for a moment fix his mind upon the chart, with which it is presumed that most of the readers of the Review are familiar, and briefly recapitulate the prophecies there illustrated. We have passed through, in prophetic fulfillment, the great image of Dan. ii. That is, the symbol is fully developed. The prophecy is, of course, not completed, as the Stone has not yet smitten the image upon its feet, and dashed it to shivers; but it stands ready and only waiting for that event. The same may be said of the prophecy of Dan. vii. The lion, bear, leopard, and Roman beast in its pagan and papal form have all been developed as matters of history. So of the prophecy of the ram, he-goat, and little horn, in the eighth chapter. But there are other events of more recent development which stand forth in the foreground of present truth. These are the three messages of Rev. xiv, 9-12; the sanctuary; the prophecy of Rev. xiii, 11-17; and, Rev. xi, 18. In the prophecy of Rev. xiv, we have reached the third message, and there we now are. That solemn messenger is on his way, bearing to the world its last offers of mercy, and uttering the most terrific warning that ever issued from the court of Heaven. Parallel with this message, a flood of light on the glorious subject of the sanctuary, has risen upon us. In the prophecy of Rev. xiii, we have reached the two-horned beast, which we now behold before us, rapidly developing himself, and preparing with all the speed of the railroad and telegraph, to accomplish the part assigned him. And in the prophecy of the trumpets, commencing in Rev. viii, continuing through chap. ix, and resumed again in chap. xi, 19, we have reached the sounding of the seventh, the last angel in the series. As the front rank of present truth, we have therefore these four impressive scenes: The third angel giving the last message of mercy to the world, our great High Priest consummating the work of salvation in the most holy of the sanctuary above, the two-horned beast making ready for the conflict, and the seventh angel blowing his trumpet of woe upon the inhabitants of the earth! And what scenes more important, more momentous and thrilling can be presented before us! What can be more calculated to stir our hearts to their utmost depths. Mark the very next event that is to succeed each one of these scenes: Immediately following the third angel, comes the Son of man on the white cloud with the sickle of the reaper in his mighty hand. He comes to reap the harvest of the earth, and gather the wheat into his garner. In the sanctuary the accounts of six thousand years are being settled up. The cases of all the inhabitants of the earth are passing in final review; and when its work is done, it is done for eternity! Beyond that work we see only the final decisions of everlasting life, or eternal death that pass upon the righteous and the wicked. The two-horned beast in the very midst of his brief career is to be cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone. He is cast alive: no other government is to succeed this one; and the scene does not wait till this has reached a state of decrepitude and old age, but it goes into destruction, in the very height of the vigor and power to which it had so suddenly risen; and who shall say that it has not already reached that stage of its development. And in connection with the sounding of the seventh angel we behold a variety of scenes which mark the transition from this dispensation into the glorious one to come. With what peace and joy and heavenly anticipations, does he who has a good hope through grace, contemplate these things and mark how near is the consummation of the blessed hope. Reader, if you have hitherto been careless on these important themes, let these things arrest your attention. Of one thing be assured, you will be aroused either by these events, or those which are to follow; but if not till then, you will only awake to behold that salvation gone which you might have shared, and meet the destruction which you might have avoided. Which shall it be? If you now treat with indifference the third angel's message, you cannot treat with indifference Him who follows, on the great white cloud, with the sharp sickle in his hand, and from whose presence the wicked will pray for the rocks and mountains to bury them forever. If you are unconcerned now in the work going forward in the heavenly sanctuary, you will not be unconcerned as you hear with terrible anguish, the fiat which will soon go forth as the result of that finished work: "He that is holy, let him be holy still; and he which is filthy let him be filthy still." If you take no interest now in the part which the two-horned beast is to act on the page of prophecy, you will see ere long that your true interest did call upon you to escape that lake of fire into which he is finally cast. And if you care not now for the sounding of the seventh angel, your carelessness will cease, when the wrath of God, which he announces, begins to fall, without mixture of mercy, on the heads of the wicked. Therefore heed now the voice of warning and mercy. The Spirit says, Come; the bride says, Come; and they who have heard—heard the voice of truth, and see the storm approaching, are bidding you come, into the ark of safety. Brethren, are we awake to these things, as their importance and solemnity require? May the Lord warm up our hearts with a new love for the present truth, fire us anew with its zeal, and baptize us with its spirit; that when the announcement made by the great voices in Heaven, under the sounding of the seventh angel, becomes true in fact, and the kingdoms of this world become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, we too, may be the Lord's, folded in safety under his sheltering wings, and so heirs of the everlasting kingdom, which he shall then establish.