God's Hour by Rev. F. G. Clark

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 10, 1863

"God's Hour."

By Rev. F. G. Clark

THE following is a good description of the commotions and omens of the times in which we live. Only false institutions and false religions are not falling, but taking a deeper root, and weaving themselves still more securely into the hearts of men. All these changes and convulsions are not omens of a temporal millennium, as men seem blindly trying to persuade themselves to believe, but just the reverse. It is indeed a "strange way" of "reaching the long-expected Sabbath of the world," if these things are tokens of such a Sabbath as the world is expecting. Wickedness running riot, and evil men and seducers waxing worse and

worse, is indeed a strange evidence that the world is all the time growing better and better; just as the ceasing pulse and glazing eye of the dying man, would be a strange evidence that he was overcoming disease, and rapidly recovering his health and strength. Oh that men would read aright the fulfillment of God's prophecies! nor follow the leadings of the blind guides, who under the strange infatuation of a still stranger delusion, will affix to the very tokens of coming wrath, their siren song of Peace and Safety.

U. S.

We live in the world's crisis. God is doing in the earth just what he has promised to do before his kingdom can come. Prophecy is marching with stately tread into the vestibule of glorious fulfillment.

God is shaking the world, that false religions and false institutions may fall. If these things were not shaken, we could not hope as now we do. Unless we turn infidels, we must believe that God is on the throne, and that he still rules the world. If he does indeed govern, then as the divine husbandman, what preparations he is making for great things to come! By terrible things in righteousness he is answering our prayers. He is making his glory to pass before us as he did of old to Moses and to Elijah. We are still in the cleft of the rock. We hear the earthquake and the wind; the mountains are rent, and the rocks fly in pieces; and the still, small voice is yet to come. We have long prayed, in the language of the prophet, that the Lord would judge among the nations, and rebuke many people; that they might beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks. But God is answering us as we little thought. His ways are strange, indeed, for reaching the long-expected Sabbath of the world. The sword is to-day a plowshare, tearing up the earth's packed surface, turning out the subsoil, to be mellowed and harrowed against the great planting, and the greater harvest yet to come.

The world never felt such thrills and throbs. Creation groans audibly, travailing in pain, until the great redemption comes. Never were such changes going on. Opinions are shifting; errors are dying by sudden paralysis; truth is crystallizing and asserting its power. We are lost in the mist of the great agitation, and stunned with the noise of struggling elements.

God has not become bewildered, if we have. He calmly watches the ripening of his purposes, the hastening of his kingdom. This hour of human despair is God's hour of mighty working. Let us believe it. He is plucking his right hand out of his bosom to do his own strange work on the earth.

Let us rise to an appreciation of the sublime and the glorious which are blending themselves with all that is terrible in this hour. God is opening iron doors, whose creaking rings round the globe. He is prying over systems of iniquity which have defied the storms of ages. He is forcing the gates of heathen nations, and rallying his church to press in and occupy the land. He calls us to go with the gospel—to pour truth upon the startled conscience of the earth. This great command is being thundered out of heaven, and echoed along the earth, and screamed from the battle-field. This is no time for a timid, faltering faith. Now let the church launch out upon the waters, for God is in the storm.

The ark is safe. These convulsions will lift it to its Ararat.

Ah, could we but see God's plans, how greatly would we wonder! We are among the mountains of Lebanon, we hear Hiram's woodmen felling the trees, and his stone-cutters hammering the great stones; but we do not see the silent progress of the temple at Jerusalem. But still the work goes on, and Christ's kingdom waxes vaster and vaster. Truth is shaking its lion mane, and is putting on omnipotence. Let us be calm. Let us rally to the privileges of faith, and to the labors of Christian love.—Rev. F. G. Clark.