p. 19 | Watch | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 13, 1864

Watch.

AMID all the "distresses and perplexities of nations," we believers have a blessed hope, "even" as Paul expresses it "the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ." There are many children of God—and I wonder at their blindness—who are looking only for a more copious effusion of the Holy Ghost than at any former period, and not for the coming of Jesus

Now, believers in Jesus, cherish what was Paul's blessed hope—the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no millennium beforehand. I never wrote what I more firmly believed. There is no millennium before the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. None; for "distress and perplexity of nations" continue till "the Son of man comes in a cloud with power and great glory." None; for the adversary (Luke xviii, 1-8) continues to oppress the widow—the church—till "the Son of man cometh." None; for the man of sin is destroyed by the brightness of the Saviour's advent (2 Thess. ii, 8). None; for, as Isaiah says in a memorable passage, (chapter xxvi, 18, 19,) "No deliverance," worthy of the name, "shall be wrought on the earth" —no deliverance of the earth from its sin and miseries—till "thy dead men shall live"—O church of the living God—"till the earth shall have cast out her dead;" and we know that the dead in Christ shall awake and arise "at his coming." 1 Cor. xv.

Brethren, the "coming of the Lord draweth nigh;" its precursors are thickening around us.