This is the second in a series of three articles examining the significance and implications of Seventh-day Adventism 's belief in a soon-coming Saviour. The first, which appeared in April, pointed out that the mainspring of historic Adventism was not merely the belief that Jesus will return one day, but rather the belief that He will come soon—almost immediately. Millerism was clearly founded on an imminent return of Jesus. Adventism in the decades following 1844 gave urgent voice to proclaiming an imminent return, and the Adventism of the first half of the twentieth century was still resonant with imminence.
Now, however, we must ask ourselves, Dare we believe, as our spiritual forefathers did, that the return of Jesus is "at the doors"? Or do we lack the evidence on which to base a faith in imminence? Can Adventism still boldly profess an attitude of intense expectancy, with the coming of Jesus a century overdue, or have other urgencies replaced the ' 'mainspring''? —Editors.
Millerism's sense of imminence sprang from the conviction that Scripture itself had set a time for Jesus to return in glory. Miller found in Daniel 8:14, "unto two thou sand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed," the key to understanding the very year of Jesus' return! His intense study of the prophecies led him to the year-day principle and on to the date of 457 B.C. as a peg for the beginning of the 2300-day period. He constructed a system of prophetic interpretation that Adventism has generally used even to this day. Ellen White saw that angels "repeatedly visited" Miller as he applied himself to an understanding of things that had not heretofore been understood and taught (see The Story of Redemption, pp. 356, 357).
When Miller finally came upon the conviction that Christ would come sometime during 1843, a flood of power and determination to warn the world was eventually let loose. This urgency flowed from him until in time he would rather tell his message than eat or sleep. As new leaders were added, the same contagion flowed from them arising from the conviction that God had spoken a life-and-death message to His servants and through them to the world. Thus the movement was driven on by this urgency to its inevitable and dated climax.
The enormity of their urgency only compounded the massiveness of the disaster when 1843 and 1844 came and went without the coming of Jesus. The infectious faith displayed just a few weeks prior to October 22 now turned into bitter despair for many. Some left the faith, never again to profess Christianity; others found a scriptural logic in^ the great Disappointment and proceeded to experience a rekindled hope and a new structure of faith (see The Great Controversy, pp. 343-354). They shortly understood that God had called them to "prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues" (Rev. 10:11). Thus arose the most significant and responsible phase of the great Second Ad vent Movement, destined to finish God's great work on earth.
There seems to be no evidence that the great Disappointment damaged the believers' sense of imminence during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Those camp meetings rang with all the assurance of a soon return that Millerism expressed in previous years. Those issues of the Advent Review and Sabbath Herald offered all the urgency for an almost immediate return of Jesus as did the Millerite publications in the years before 1843, without setting dates. The stately ship of God's growing people seemed guided by a steady hand from above in the form of a developing prophetic, gift in their midst, and this voice reinforced the sense of imminence and provided additional urgency to go forth and warn the world of a still soon-coming Saviour.
The Saviour did not return to earth in that century. By 1911, the Adventist Church had grown to 100,000 believers. The hope of an almost immediate return still burned brightly. As World War I raged across Europe, Adventists felt that it might evolve into earth's final great war. But peace was signed, and the church continued its witness, until, in 1939, a far more horrendous conflagration burned in two war zones—World War II. Surely this must be the end! But four decades later the Lord has not yet come. Adventism still lives in expectancy, and we see new reasons to believe that His coming is "at the doors."
Some feel that the whole matter of our Lord's delay has had a tendency to destroy the church's sense of imminence. If He did not come in the mid-nineteenth century because of a decadent church, why should He come now? Is the church any more prepared? What will we say to the world if, after two more decades pass, we hang up calendars reading "2001," and Jesus has not yet come? Will we still be professing imminence? Perhaps we should not deny that the truth that verily is our "mainspring" needs clarification lest it become a major silent problem to an ever increasing number of Adventists. An Adventist's response to God is inextricably linked to his belief in the coming of Jesus. Herbert E. Douglass has made a significant contribution to the answers many Adventists need in his recent book, The End (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1979).
Where, then, is the evidence upon which new converts and seasoned church members alike may build a logical and precious faith in the coming of Jesus as an event that is "even at the doors"? Is such a faith commendable? Is such a faith possible in Adventism's historical context? The nonreligious world finds its refuge in science and humanism, and the liberal church in philosophical and nonliteral views of Scripture. In what can Bible-believing Adventists, with their hoped-for Advent more than a century overdue, find refuge?
Adventism's entire heritage—Scripture, Spirit of Prophecy, and history—plants the imperative of imminence deeper and deeper in the soul of this church. While around us the winds of sophistry and despair batter the world (and to some degree our own ranks), we may find refuge in the knowledge that every resource in the church's arsenal is calculated to preserve that mainspring of urgent expectancy of her coming Lord that has characterized every generation of Adventism to this hour. Even as Peter's trenchant logic shreds the scoffer's platform of disbelief (see 2 Peter 3), so the Adventism of today is a continuing witness to an imminent re turn.
Today, Adventism, under God, is abundantly able to prepare the world for the coming of Jesus. We have the historic influence of Millerism's experience, the subsequent miraculous formation of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and the counsels from the prophetic gift that are designed to carry us through to the coming of Jesus. And all of this body of truth speaks of a continued sense of imminence. Never for a moment are we to believe that Jesus' coming is not at the very door! The counsel "We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget ..." was never more appropriate. In our day we will see the enemy's attempt to weaken the walls of the church by at tacks from within. It is for us to take our bearings from our historical context and face the future with our total energies and priorities dedicated to finishing God's great work and making possible the great event.
Dare we believe that the coming of Jesus is truly "imminent"? The answer is a thousand times Yes! Dare we espouse the same degree of urgency and single-mindedness that our spiritual forefathers did and not fear the sting of continued disappointment? The answer is ten thousand times Yes! And for the following reasons:
First, the closer we come to an ideal communion relationship with God in prayer and Bible study, the greater consciousness we will have that God's redemptive plan is progressing according to His will and that Jesus will soon re turn. Depth of personal experience in spiritual things creates great assurance. As the Bible is studied as it ought to be, we become assured of the true quality of God's promises and know that we are living in times when God longs to send Jesus. This is the basic way in which God leads His people.
Second, Scripture and the Spirit of Prophecy writings portray so much evidence of God's plan that the student may know without doubt the times and sea sons. Scripture appeals to us to "hasten his coming" and to become a part of the answer instead of the problem. The Flood, prototype of final judgment, teaches clearly that all things will continue, but that God will nevertheless keep His promise (see 2 Peter 3:7-9).
Third, the "waymarks" point unmistakably to this conviction. Believers a century ago sang:
"Look for the waymarks, the great prophetic waymarks,
Down through the ages, past the kingdoms four.
Look for the waymarks, the great prophetic waymarks;
The journey's almost o'er."—F. E. Belden, 1886
The signs that the Prophetic Word has given us to look for have been boldly heralded by Adventists for a century and a half as the basis for an attitude of expectancy. The Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy list at least thirty such signs of the times. Evangelists have preached them and earnest Christians have seen their times through these windows. Of these "waymarks" certain ones seem to be speaking to us today with unprecedented eloquence. They give the believer abundant evidence that the coming of the Lord draws near. The following seem especially meaningful:
1. The moral decadence of civilized peoples. During the 1970's, there was an especially rapid decline in morals and in historic values, including disintegration of the home. Widespread among college and university students is rejection of marriage as the established way of mating. What was once branded immorality is now the "LTA" (Living Together Arrangement). Television programming has accepted certain once-taboo words and employs them in most programs. Sex outside of marriage is not only accepted in TV programming, it is the "in" thing. The national morality in America seems typified by Watergate and Chappaquiddick, and authors revel in heretofore unknown biographical scoops on the moral weaknesses of otherwise great leaders.
2. All people in expectation. Christopher Lasch, in his book The Culture of Narcissism (W. W. Norton and Co., Inc.), published in 1979, says that most people now think about the "sense of an ending," or a world-ending catastrophe, and that in this climate they are turning inward, grasping for pleasure and self-indulgence as never before.
The question of whether the world will end in fire or in ice, with a bang or with a whimper, no longer interests artists alone. Impending disaster has become an every day concern, so commonplace and familiar that nobody any longer gives much thought as to how disaster might be averted.
It is the waning sense of historical time, in particular the erosion of any strong concern for posterity, that distinguishes the spiritual crisis of the 70's from earlier outbreaks of millenarian religion. —The Book Digest, July, 1979, p. 33.
3. The ebbing quality of life on Planet Earth. Three processes are making future prospects for life on earth dismal: overpopulation of the planet, exhaustion of natural resources, and pollution and destruction of mankind's natural environmental life-support systems.
The Club of Rome, a community of scientists concerned about these three processes and the future of life in our world, stated in 1970 that if the over population problem were not solved by 1975, it would become irreversible, and by the end of the twentieth century overpopulation would cause hundreds of millions to die yearly of starvation. The life style of everyone on earth would be affected, and those at the bottom of the economic totem pole simply could not survive.
Isaiah saw that the earth " 'will wear out like a garment and its inhabitants die like flies'" (Isa. 51:6, N.I.V.).* John saw that Jesus would come to destroy " 'those who destroy the earth' " (Rev. 11:18, N.I.V.).
Mankind still places his trust in a scientific answer for all future energy needs, and somehow believes that there are yet to be discovered limitless re sources of energy for the future. The problem is that he does not have them now, and the needs are here. The petroleum and gas, along with other necessary earth substances, are not replaceable, and one day soon they will be used up. As population soars and resources dwindle, a crisis nears that science can not answer.
4. Satan's supernatural activity. ' 'The wrath of the dragon," a term with which Adventists are familiar, is seen with ever-increasing explicitness.
Satan has control of all whom God does not especially guard. He will favor and prosper some . . . and he will bring trouble upon others. . . .
While appearing to the children of men as a great physician who can heal all their maladies, he will bring disease and disaster, until populous cities are reduced to ruin and desolation. Even now he is at work. In accidents and calamities by sea and by land, in great conflagrations, in fierce tornadoes and terrific hailstorms, in tempests, floods, cyclones, tidal waves, and earth quakes, in every place and in a thousand forms, Satan is exercising his power. He sweeps away the ripening harvest, and famine and distress follow. He imparts to the air a deadly taint, and thousands perish by pestilence. These visitations are to be come more and more frequent and disastrous. —The Great Controversy, pp. 589, 590.
Ellen White did not envision that time would last until 1980, or she might have been permitted to see the vast development of our world in this "borrowed time" era. Perhaps she would have seen such disasters as the Tenerife crash of two Boeing 747's, the DC-10 crash at O'Hare, and the terrible crash at San Diego. She might have seen the drug culture in America, wrecking the lives of millions of youth; the political nightmare of our day; the development of two superpowers, each with the capacity to destroy life on earth within hours; the tenuousness of international peace, with its sword of Damacles still dangling by a single hair over the lives of millions; and submarines plying the underwaters of the world's oceans, holding enough atomic warheads to bathe civilization in flames hotter than the sun at a moment's notice!
5. The rise of the occult, Satanism, and spiritualism. Years ago books on these and kindred subjects were practically forbidden and were difficult to find. But today, there is such a proliferation of reading material on the occult sciences that modern bookstores have whole subdivisions of titles, just as they have for history or science. Since The Exorcist, sequel-type movies, books, and plays have been plentiful, and people crave knowledge of these things. In America, evidence continues to appear that thousands of witches and tens of thousands of Satan worshipers exist and can be found in most cities and towns.
6. Resurgence of the Papacy. During the past decade, the world power of the Papacy has been steadily shrinking. Dwindling numbers of candidates for the priesthood and for the convents and monasteries, giant losses in attendances at mass, closing of significant institutions, and the weakening of that voice from Rome that has in past centuries been so powerful in world affairs—these and other evidences have spoken of a weakening Papacy. However, the accolades, fanfare, and dramatic resurgence of honor and power afforded Pope John Paul II as he visited Mexico, Ireland, the United States and other countries in 1979 are painting a different picture. No less a voice than that of Billy Graham has declared that Pope John Paul II is the most influential man of the twentieth century, and is more able to bring peace than any other leader! America, once the bastion of Protestant concepts, has opened its doors to the Pope in an unprecedented demonstration that gives deep concern to stalwarts of the separation of church and state.
Scripture has unmistakably called for this resurgence. It is but the beginning of a consolidation of power that will have profound effect on the religious life of hundreds of millions.
7. Revival of Islam. Recent international events have dramatically under scored the truth that Islam is not dead. Bible students have long pointed to the necessity of the awakening of the millions of Islam, that "the way of the kings of the east" might be prepared (Rev. 16:12). As this mighty giant awakens and solidifies the millions in the Arab world, to take their place among the traditional powers, we again see the pageant of prophecy unfolding before our eyes.
Dare we believe that our Saviour might return almost immediately? Most definitely! Never before in history has the church had more evidence to believe that "yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry" (Heb. 10:37). The Adventist Christian senses the very footfalls of the coming King. Let us in this late hour know that the hope of all Adventists, from 1818 to 1980, is about to materialize in our very generation!
