Life Incidents, in Connection with the Great Advent Movement, as Illustrated by the Three Angels of Revelation XIV (Volu — Part 92

“It has usually been the fact that, as soon as the doctrine of the Lord’s speedy coming has been presented in any place, the clergy, in the course of one or two weeks, would begin their attacks from the pulpit. The usual argument has been--

“1. ‘Of that day and hour knoweth no man;’ yet these men profess to know the very time when the Lord is to come. Yes, they profess to know more than the angels, or even the Son of God himself.

“2. The Lord cannot come until after the millennium, during which the whole world is to be righteous, and the lion eat straw like the ox, &c.

“3. The Jews must be brought in, and restored to Palestine, before that day comes.

“4. It is to come as a thief, as a snare, &c., on all them that dwell on the earth. But now there are so many who are looking for it, that it cannot come as a snare.

“5. It cannot come now, because there are so many learned and holy ministers and Christians, that if it should come now, it would take them by surprise. The Lord will not come without their knowing it.

“6. The world is yet in its infancy; the arts and sciences are just beginning to come to maturity, and fit the world to live, and it cannot be that the Lord will come now and destroy it all.

“7. Then again there is so much waste land to be occupied in the western country, land which has never yet been cultivated at all, that it is not at all reasonable that the Lord should destroy it all before it has been improved.

“8. But the great argument, the one which has proved the most effectual, has been, that this vision of Daniel viii has nothing to do with the coming of Christ, or setting up of God’s everlasting kingdom. It simply refers to Antiochus Epiphanes, and his persecution of the Jews, and desecration of the temple, some 160 odd years B. C. Thus we have the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, for which the Saviour taught his people to look, about two hundred years before the instruction was given.

“To the foregoing might be added a number more of the same class, _professedly_ drawn from reason and Scripture, but none of them more formidable than those already recorded. Do you smile, gentle reader, at the idea of calling these arguments? Yet, you may be assured that each of them in turn has been urged by grave men, calling themselves doctors of divinity.