Is Jesus really coming soon?

When my mother was about 10 years old, she made a remark to her mother about "when I grow up and get married." Her mother said, "Oh, honey, you'll never get married. Jesus will come before that."

That was about 1915. Today my mother is a grandmother and will probably live to be a great-grandmother.

The Adventist pioneers who came out of the Great Disappointment expected that Jesus would surely come by 1860. It would have stretched their imaginations to the breaking point to think that He would postpone His coming till 1900. Yet today we are bumping the year 2000. Nearly 150 years have passed since the Great Disappointment, and we're still waiting.

Is Jesus really coming soon?

The Seventh-day Adventist movement was built on the premise that He was. From the very beginning we have believed that God raised us up for the specific purpose of warning the world of His soon coming. We call ourselves "the remnant church" God's last church on earth. Ellen White identified us as "John the Baptists" whose primary mission is to prepare the world for the second coming of Jesus.

But how long can you keep on being "John the Baptist"? How long can you keep warning the world about something our forefathers thought would happen more than a century ago? How long can you keep on believing you're the remnant when it looks as though you're turning into the whole bolt of cloth?

Is Jesus really coming soon?

The signs of the times persuaded our pioneers that He was. The stars fell in 1833. That was "12 years ago" in 1845, but it's more than 150 years ago today. The Dark Day happened in 1789 more than 200 years ago now. Lisbon crumbled in 1755 almost 250 years ago. These signs fired our pioneers to preach the Adventist message around the world. Yet here we are, still waiting. The signs that fired the pioneers seem like relics in a museum of antiquities.

Is Jesus really coming soon?

I say "Yes! A thousand times, Yes!"

The very delay that causes us so much distress is one of the best signs that His coming is near. "But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, 'My master is staying away a long time,' and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of (Matt. 24:48-50, NIV).

The delay is the greatest of all signs that Jesus' coming is almost here.

It's easy to point to the past 150 years and say "Our pioneers never dreamed that they would see the end of their century. Who are we, almost at the end of the next century, to suppose we won't see the end of ours?"

I can't argue with that kind of logic. I can only point you to Scripture and say, "It will be over when you least expect it." I can only tell you that I feel terribly concerned because I believe that we don't have another 25 years left on this earth—that in fact we may not have an other 10.

That's faith, not logic.

Yet my faith is informed by certain signs. Not the Lisbon earthquake. Not the Dark Day or the falling of the stars. Few people are much impressed by those signs anymore. The signs that impress me are happening now, and I'd like to share them with you.

Rise of the papacy

For more than a century Adventists have predicted that the political power of the Roman Catholic Church would take a quantum leap forward at the end of time, just before the second coming of Christ. The deadly wound was still hemorrhaging when we began saying that in the mid-1800s. The world laughed.

But consider this.

In 1979 Pope John Paul II visited the United States and received a tumultuous welcome. A million Americans a large percentage of them Protestants attended the public Mass that he conducted in Philadelphia.

In the early 1950s Harry Truman pro posed sending an ambassador to the Vatican. American Protestants protested loudly, and the president quickly backed down. But in 1983 President Reagan drove the Vatican ambassadorship through the Senate, and American Protestants barely whimpered.

Still, there was the other giant in the world that hated all religion, Catholics included. But in 1989 the giant crumbled, and now the Soviet Union has established limited diplomatic relations with the Vatican.

At the end of 1989 the Vatican helped to resolve the Panama crisis.

Has the political power of the papacy grown? Listen to this: "At the start of his papacy's sixth year, Pope John Paul II stands firmly in the limelight that has surrounded him since his surprise election on October 16, 1978. ... The 63- year-old pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church has won high marks as a bold spokesman for peace, justice, and human rights. Says a top American prelate in Rome: 'On a worldwide level, John Paul has established himself as an outstanding leader whose opinions count.' "

No, that wasn't an Adventist talking. That was a U.S. News and World Report article published on the eve of John Paul's sixth anniversary as pontiff of the Catholic Church.¹

For more than a century Seventh-day Adventists have been preaching that the political power of the papacy would take a quantum leap forward at the end of time. Through most of those years our preaching seemed to be fantasy. But I want you to notice that the political power of the Vatican has exploded in just the past 15 years.

Rise of spiritualism

For more than a century Seventh-day Adventists have predicted that spiritualism would dominate the world scene just before the second coming of Christ. That seemed preposterous in the mid-1800s. To most Americans the Fox sisters were a household joke. The rest of the world hadn't even heard about them.

In 1929 Richard Niebuhr wrote: "It is vain to look for salvation to an Eastern faith, whose thought-forms are strange, whose spirit is foreign, whose ideals and ideas are in radical opposition to the philosophy and the interests of the modern world.... The realistic observer of social life, while acknowledging the aesthetic beauty of an Oriental creed, knows that the day is too far spent, the working day of the West too far advanced, for the realization of such a new dawn of Eastern light."²

During my college days in the mid- 1950s, I still remember wondering how sane, rational, scientifically minded Americans would ever fall for something as mystical, as esoteric, as crystal balls and seances in dark back rooms.

But consider this. In 1969 a Gallup poll reported that one American in five believed in reincarnation. Today the New Age movement has popularized Eastern mysticism all over America. Al most every bookstore has a New Age section. There are 600,000 New Age channelers in America alone. Shirley MacLaine and other celebrities have helped to popularize such spiritualistic practices as channeling and astral projection.

Many well-known business executives, scientists, and journalists are now advocates of New Age ideas and practices. Says MacLaine, "I've seen leading bankers and doctors and executives visiting psychics for advice. I sit in on these channeling sessions where they ask the soul entities about economics, the stock market, projections for world depression, and OPEC."³

New Age belief is perhaps the fastest-growing religion in the world today. It has taken over the spiritual direction of millions of Westerners who have given up on traditional religion.

For more than a century Seventh-day Adventists have been preaching that spiritualism would take a giant leap for ward at the very end of time. Through most of that time our preaching seemed to be fantasy. But I want you to notice that the New Age has exploded in the Western world particularly in the past 15 years.

Rise of the New Right

For more than a century Seventh-day Adventists have predicted that church-state separation in America would come to an end, to a great extent through the insistence of conservative American Protestants, and that America would thereby become a persecuting power.

So foolish did this idea seem 100 years ago that the Rev. Theodore Nelson, writing in the introduction to D. M. Canright's Seventh-day Adventism Renounced, said: "Nothing can be more absurd than their [ Adventists'] interpretations of current events, and, especially, their belief that our general and state governments are about to be converted into engines of religious persecution and despotism. . . . Such a change would be a greater miracle than for God to grow a giant oak in an instant."⁴

As recently as 1960 John F. Kennedy was forced to take a vow of support for the principle of church-state separation to appease nervous Protestants.

But consider this: the new Religious Right has declared open war on America's foundational principle of separation of church and state. Writing in Jerry Falwell's Fundamentalist Journal, author Paul Henry said: "Contrary to contemporary belief, the 'separation of church and state,' as defined by recent United States Supreme Court decisions, is not in keeping with the beliefs and desires of the framers and ratifiers of the Constitution. . . . Their [First Amendment] did not mandate separation in 1787; it does not authorize it now."⁵

During an interview on CBS television some years ago, a reporter asked Dr. W. A. Criswell, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, what he thought of the idea of church-state separation. The Texas pastor shot back, "I believe this notion of the separation of church and state was the figment of some infidel's imagination."⁶

Thomas J. White, a little-known but determined parochiaid zealot, attacks the religious neutrality of America's public schools, calling them "godless." He openly attacks the wall of separation be tween church and state, charging that it is "like the Berlin Wall in that it destroys freedom." ⁷

Several years ago I had a conversation with Dr. John Wood, director of Baylor University's Department of Church and State in Waco, Texas. Dr. Wood told me that he believes the principle of the separation of church and state in America is doomed. "It is not a question of whether that principle will be abrogated in America," he said, "but only when."

President Reagan made three appointments to the Supreme Court that will have a lasting impact on that institution. Already the Court's liberal rulings on abortion are changing. What is not so well known is that the Court's liberal rulings on church and state are also likely to change in the next few years.

William Rehnquist, chief justice of the Supreme Court, is openly hostile to the American principle of church-state separation. Writing his dissent in the 1985 Wallace v. Jaffree case that over turned Alabama's moment of silence in public schools, Mr. Rehnquist said: "The 'wall of separation between church and state' is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned."⁸

For more than a century Seventh-day Adventists have been preaching that church-state separation would come to an end in America, opening the way for legislation enforcing Sunday as a national day of rest and worship. We do not see Sunday laws in America yet, but the precursor to those laws the destruction of the principle of separation of church and state by America's New Right Protestants is rapidly taking shape. Through most of our history our preaching about an end to separation of church and state seemed to be fantasy. But I want you to notice that the New Right has exploded in America, especially in the past 15 years.

I ask you, When the three major predictions about end-time events that Adventists have been preaching for nearly 150 years have exploded in the past 15, is it time to back down and say "My Lord delayeth His coming Jesus isn't coming soon after all" ? Is this the time to say "We must not be the remnant church after all. John the Baptist and the Elijah message were a figment of Ellen White's overactive imagination"?

I say no! A thousand times, no!

Yet there's more.

I believe that during the last half of 1989 God gave us another dramatic sign of the nearness of His coming: The Communist empire in Eastern Europe crumbled. That event jolted me out of my sleep. Suddenly I realized that the final movements really will be rapid ones.

And I'm not alone. My work puts me in touch with Seventh-day Adventists all over North America, and everywhere I go, wherever I call on the phone, I find that Adventists recognize Eastern Europe as a powerful sign. This is not an organized movement. No charismatic preacher has mesmerized this church into thinking of events in Eastern Europe as a sign of the end. It's spontaneous. It's as though we all saw it at once, and we all caught our collective breath, and we all said, "Oh!"

I cannot point you to a particular verse in either Daniel or Revelation and say "Eastern Europe fulfills that prediction." It's more subtle than that. It's the spontaneous, collective recognition of Eastern Europe as a sign of the end that persuades me the Holy Spirit is at work, trying to wake all of us up.

The week after the Berlin Wall was breached, the world's political leaders speculated that the two Germanics would probably unite sometime in the twenty-first century. By the end of the year speculation had advanced to permit German reunion by the end of the twentieth century. Today it looks as if it could happen by the end of this year.

At first we wondered whether Communism would fall in Czechoslovakia. Suddenly it had. Then we wondered whether Communism would fall in Hungary, and suddenly it had. Then we wondered about Romania, and suddenly Communism fell there.

The world's political leaders do not understand what happened. But Seventh-day Adventists do: God showed the world that He is in charge of history. The final movements will be rapid ones because God will be in charge.

The day is coming in the very near future when God will take charge of His church with even greater power than what we saw in Eastern Europe. Very soon we will see this message explode. Not because of anything we do in our own power, but because of what God will do through us and in spite of us. I can't prove that. I believe it.

Our response

Is Jesus really coming soon? There isn't a shadow of doubt in my mind. I have a sense, a feeling, that the 1990s will bring tremendous changes in our world that we may celebrate the turn of the millennium in the New Jerusalem.

What should be our response to these developments of the past 15 years and of the past 15 months?

Above all else, we must pray that God will empower us. Our greatest need is for the Holy Spirit to come on us in latter rain power, to cleanse us of sin, and work through us for the finishing of His work. Often my wife and I pray, "Lord, show us what we need to know in order to be ready for the end of time."

I realize that many of our people are asleep, especially in the Western world. Fortunately, not all are. What do you think would happen if every Seventh-day Adventist who is alert to the meaning of current events joined in a massive prayer effort, pleading with God not to postpone His return another half century. What would happen if each one of us got on our knees and said, "Lord Jesus, it's time. I may not be ready, but I want to be ready. Make me ready. Please come now.''

I believe God would answer those prayers. I invite you to join me in praying that prayer.