Tarry thou till I come; or, Salathiel, the wandering Jew.

by George Croly

REASONS FOR THE BELIEF THAT CHRIST MAY COME WITHIN THE NEXT TWENTY YEARS

By ARTHUR T. PIERSON, D.D.

Is the day of Christ near at hand?

This question is attracting much attention as this new century begins, and wise men are watching for the morning star, which is the herald of the new dawn.

Imminence is a word used for the union of the certainty of an event with the uncertainty of its time. One text suffices to show that such imminence is, in the Scripture, characteristic of the Lord’s return: “Be ye also ready; for in such an hour as ye think not, the Son of Man cometh” (Matt, xxiv. 44). Such an exhortation excludes mere argument. The certainty of the event is assured, for “the Son of Man cometh;” the uncertainty of the time is conceded, for it is “in an hour that ye think not” or as verse 36 adds, “of that day and hour knoweth no man.”

In a broader sense, the word imminent is used to express the idea that the event is impending—nigh at hand. True, it may be unwise to attempt to fix the very “day and hour,” since these are declared to lie among the divine secrets. Yet it may be both possible and proper to observe carefully the signs which are to precede or accompany Christ’s reappearing, and even the mistakes of those who have made erroneous calculations as to the time may serve only to narrow the circle within which the truth is to be found. We shall therefore inquire briefly whether there is any reason to look for the speedy reappearing of the Son of Man, and, without committing ourselves to all the opinions which follow, we may state the grounds on which such conclusions have been reached by many devout students of the subject.

The appeal must, of course, be to the Holy Oracles, if we are to get any safe response. Seven signs hinted at in the Word of God may be selected, as prominent:

(1) A widespread witness to Christ, with (2) a widespread decline in godliness. (3) A marked movement among the Jews, with (4) the fulness of the Gentiles. (5) A singularly unresting state of society, with (6) a daring development of iniquity and (7) a confident sense of false security. These seven indications must be studied in the light of seven conspicuous passages of Scripture, such as Matt, xxiv., Luke xxi., Rom. xi., 2 Thess. ii., 2 Peter iii., 2 Tim. iii., and Jude.

It may be well to add that, if such conclusion hung upon any one of these signs alone, it might be more than doubtful; but, when all these unite, they serve as far safer guides; as a cable may be unbreakable, any one of whose separate strands would easily part under severe tension.

Thoughtful observers of events, who are at the same time prayerful students of Scripture, have come to feel that there is a manifold and remarkable preparation for the “Parousia” or personal coming of Christ; and that the existing state of both the church and the world seems to demand His coming as the only solution of the problems of prophecy and of history.

The present drift of society is toward anarchy, a drift that has been peculiarly rapid during the last quarter-century. Socialism, communism, nihilism, and the hot battle between capital and labor, monopoly and poverty, are the dominant facts and forces in this war, now being waged, with increasing violence and desperateness, against all government. There is also a strong drift in the church toward apostasy. Witness the advance of Romanism, ritualism, and rationalism, even in Protestant churches and communities. In society at large there is a corresponding advance of materialism, agnosticism, and infidelity; and the polite disguises of science, culture, and criticism do not hide the true features and forms which they clothe, but can not conceal.

Who can fail to see the trend of the Jews toward national rehabilitation and the colonization of Palestine, while at the same time the church is fettered by secularism on the one hand and skepticism on the other? Side by side with these signs there is the opening of the world to the Gospel, the world-wide circulation of the Bible in over four hundred tongues, the network of missionary societies wrapping the globe, and the uprising of Christian young men and women in an unparalleled crusade of missions. All these are like fingers all pointing in one direction—the Sunrise of the Ages.

Many other Scriptures, besides those already cited, startle us from our apathy, especially when we compare them. Take, for example, Matt, xiii. and Rev. ii.-iii. The seven parables in the former and the seven letters to the churches in the latter appear to correspond chronologically. In Matthew, the last scene shows the dragnet—the obvious metaphor for world-wide evangelization. In the Apocalypse, the last rebuke is to Laodicea—the self-deceived and self-sufficient church, that shuts in worldliness and shuts out Christ. When in history did those two conditions ever meet as they do now? On one hand a wealthy, self-satisfied, lukewarm Christianity, and on the other a casting of the Gospel net into the world sea, and gathering of every kind of fish! For the first time in this gospel age, ecclesiastical degeneracy and evangelistic activity curiously blending—fulfilling before our eyes our Lord’s paradox—world-wide witness side by side with love waxing cold!

One remark may be added as to the “times of the Gentiles.”

There is a remarkable consensus of opinion that it is from Nebuchadnezzar—the world king and head of gold—that the “times of the gentiles” date. His time was about 600 B.C. If the “seven times” or seven years, of Dan. iv. 25, represent, as is supposed, seven periods of 360 years each (or seven times twelve months of thirty year-days), then the full seven times from Nebuchadnezzar to the end would be 2,520 years, and reckoning from 600 B.C. this brings us to 1920 A.D., or thereabouts. These 2,520 years appear to be divided into two exactly equal periods of 1,260 years each, or “forty and two months,” or “a time, times and half a time” (i.e., three and a half of these prophetic years) (Rev. xi. 2, 3., and xii. 14).

As to the filling up of the 1,260 days of the latter half, the historic correspondences are so remarkable that at least ten different methods of computation seem to point to the same precise period—an interval of time lying somewhere between 1880 and 1920, the uncertainty of the exact time of the end resulting from the difficulty of fixing the exact date of the beginning. But it is this convergence of prophetic and historic times at some point within these forty years which has awakened such a widespread interest in the imminence of our Lord’s coming. And, surely, as our Lord has taught us, if it behooves us to observe the signs of the weather, we should not be indifferent to the signs on God’s greater horizon, which to watchful souls indicate the approach of the day of the Lord (Matt. xvi. 1-3).

Upon the ten different methods of computation referred to above, it may be well to expand a little, without committing oneself to the positions taken. No one, however, can appreciate the argument, whatever be its worth, who does not understand the numerical system which manifestly pervades the whole Word of God, and which constitutes a sort of mathematical framework upon which the whole written Revelation is constructed; and not only so, but this same numerical structure pervades also all the works of God in Creation, and all the workings of God in human history. Astronomy, chemistry, botany, biology, theology, all obey one mathematical law, and it must be a prejudiced mind that refuses to recognize this fact. The orbits of the planets and the spiral course of the leaf-buds on the trees, the proportions and dimensions of crystals, the octaves of sound and of color—these and many other operations, forces and forms of nature conform to strict mathematical laws. From Sirius down to the invisible atom there is a uniform system, and it tells of the one Designer and Creator. Once let this fact be admitted and it becomes no novelty to us to find evidences of similar mathematical precision in the periods of history. Let us, therefore, in conclusion, glance at the various positions taken by devout students of history and prophecy, and impartially survey the outlook from their points of view.

1. The first method of computation, already referred to, as fixing the present period as approximately “the time of the end” is known as “the times of the Gentiles,” seven times, or years, each consisting of 360 year-days, or a sum-total of 2,620 years. Of this period, Professor Totten, of New Haven, following the lead of the British Chronological Association, says:

“Nabopolassar shook off the yoke of Assyria, and, by thus assuming the crown of Babylon, commenced the ‘times of the Gentiles.’ His accession took place in the seventh civil (first sacred) month of the year 3377 A.M. The ‘times of the Gentiles’ therefore ran out 2,520 years thereafter, or in March, 5897 A.M. (A.D. 1899).”

Thus by another method of computing the times of the Gentiles, he arrives at the present period as at least the beginning of the end.

“Joshua’s Long Day was the last day in broad prophetic chronology which is to be wholly counted as solar time. Since that day, the millenaries have been ‘shortened’ to lunar years. The sum of the 2,555¼+ ‘long’ or solar years up to that day, and the 3,444¾+ ‘shortened’ or lunar years, from thence to the vernal equinox of 1899 A.D., is exactly 6,000, and accurately terminates the sixth millennary since creation.”

2. Secondly, the Sabbatic system, impressed on the whole face of Scripture history, affords, as many think, a very obvious key to the divine chronology. This Sabbatic system reaches back to Eden and characterizes the whole annals of the world. There was first consecrated the seventh day, then the seventh week, then the seventh month, then the seventh year, then the seventh seven of years—introducing the “jubilee”—then the seventh seventy of years, the Grand Jubilee. This number 7 × 70, or 490, appears in at least two conspicuous places, 1 Kings vi. 1, where, adding the ten years of the temple building to the 480, between the exodus and the beginning of the work, we have 490; and, in Daniel ix. 24, where again the seven sevens reappear, as the sacred typical number, between the exodus from the captivity and the building of the new spiritual temple of God under the Messiah. This number 490 is doubly a type of completeness: it is not only the product of 7 multiplied by 70, but of 7 times 7 (49), the interval from jubilee to jubilee, multiplied by 10—another sacred number. These jubilee periods must be obviously reckoned from the time of Moses, when the law of the jubilee first appears. And, counting the exodus from 2515 A.M., the full seven periods of 490, or 3,430 years, would bring us to 5945 A.M., or somewhere this side of the middle of the next century as its extreme limit; and, if the years are to be reckoned by the prophetic-year standard of 360 days (twelve equal months of thirty days each) the limit would be somewhere about 1898, so that by this method again the “beginning of the end” has already come.

3. A third method of computation, “The Millennial Standard,” is thought to point to the same approximate terminus. “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter iii. 8). This is regarded by many as another not very obscure hint as to God’s chronology, and they therefore reason that the predicted millennium or thousand years of Sabbatic rest, crowning the six millenniums of a world’s toil, can not be far off.

4. The fourth method of computation is “the historical.” The number 1,260 (“forty-two months,” “a time, times, and half a time”) is as we have already seen, conspicuous both in Daniel and in Revelation.

Those who accept the “historical” method of interpreting the Apocalypse believe that the beast and the false prophet represent the Papacy and Mohammedanism, or the crucifix and the crescent. They maintain that it is a curious fact, to say the least, that both these systems date from the period between 606 and 620 (the decree of Phocas and the first Hegira) as the terminus a quo, and, adding 1,260, they reach again a terminus ad quem somewhere between 1866 and 1886 as “the beginning of the end” of these systems, as world powers or kingdoms.

5. A fifth mode of computation is that of the “Antichrist Period.” The number, 666, is divinely given as the number of the lawless one (ὁ ἀνομος, ὁ ἀναρχος) who is to be revealed in the last week of years. This number, thus inseparably linked with the man of sin, in whom personally all the Antichristian systems of history are to “head up,” is thought by many to stand for the period of the race’s rebellion, and to be the symbolic number of perpetual unrest and incompleteness. There is a show of reason in this, for 666 is a repeating decimal that ever approaches, but never reaches, seven, the number of completeness and rest. Six times this number 666 gives 3,996, the grand crisis—the year of Christ’s birth, reckoning from creation; and again, reckoning from Abraham’s birth, as father of the faithful, brings us to the beginning of this century as a new crisis in history.

6. A sixth road by which the same terminus is reached is the “condition of world-witness” (see Matt, xxiv. 14, Mark xiii. 10). Christ distinctly stated that the Gospel must first be published among all nations, and preached as a witness to all nations, and then would come the END. With no little force many argue that there never was a period of such world-wide evangelism as now. Over three hundred missionary societies at work, about twelve thousand missionary workers, and nearly fifty thousand native helpers, engaged; the Bible translated into over four hundred tongues, etc., and “published to all nations.” It is also very noticeable that the motto of the present“crusade” is “The evangelization of the world in this generation!”

7. A seventh mode of computing is that of the Laodicean lukewarmness. By a comparison of Matt. xiii. 47-50 and Rev. iii. 14-22, it will be seen that the last state of the “kingdom,” previous to the end, is world-wide evangelism, as indicated by the dragnet; and the last state of the church is deep-seated apathy, as indicated by the Laodicean lukewarmness. And those who hold this view contend that both conditions are to coexist as the end draws nigh. They point us to the startling fact that never before has the church shown signs of such extensive evangelization on the one hand, and such extensive deterioration on the other. Many regard this latter as the “falling away,” which is to precede the end (2 Thess. ii. 3).

8. An eighth road seems to end at the same goal—it is the development of anarchism. The hints in the Epistles to the Thessalonians, 2 Peter, Jude, and the Apocalypse, it is contended, all agree in showing us that, as the end approaches, there will be a peculiarly lawless spirit prevailing—an uprising of an organized resistance to all authority in church and state, a combination of forces to supplant all government, and at the same time an arbitrary attempt to compel men to limit even trade and commerce by a certain “mark,” that alone authorizes one to “buy or sell” (Rev. xiii. 16, 17). Those who emphasize this as a sign of the end point triumphantly to the recent and unprecedented growth of communism, socialism, and nihilism; and to the simultaneous growth of trades-unions and protective organizations, monopolies and trusts, which restrict all trade or labor to their “mark.”

9. The ninth argument presented for the near approach of the end is Irredentism or the drift of the Jews toward Palestine, and the rehabilitation of their national life. This is, as the advocates of this view contend, “the blossoming of the fig-tree” (Matt. xxiv. 32, 33), which marks the end as “near, even at the doors.” Certainly there is something very startling in the modern movement known as “Zionism,” and which has developed within the last five years, summoning these great conferences of leading Jews to the European capitals. Never before has the national spirit of the Israelites had such a revival since Christ ascended.

10. The tenth line of argument converges at the same point, namely, the Spirit’s withdrawal. There is a mysterious passage in 2 Thess. ii. 7, where we are told that there is some great Hinderer, whose presence prevents the final outbreak of the Mystery of Iniquity, and who must be withdrawn before the end of lawlessness can come, in the “reappearing of the Lord.” The advocates of this view contend that, by every sign, the Spirit of God is shown to have withdrawn or to be withdrawing from the church as a whole. It is maintained by very devout souls that there is left, in the church at large, neither spiritual worship, spiritual faith, spiritual work, nor spiritual life; that altho these all exist, they exist in a few elect individuals, and not in the church as a body; and that, especially in the matter of administration—the specific office of the Spirit—He is displaced by the spirit of the world, as evinced by the worldly men and maxims, secular oratory, artistic music, worldly entertainments, etc., which everywhere prevail.

Whatever grounds, above presented, may seem untenable or unsafe, one thing seems undeniable: there is a convergence of signs upon this our day, such as has never indicated any previous period as the probable time of the end. For example, if the Hebrew means Rosh, Russia, and this nation is thus in prophecy indicated as the “head” of the last great movement of history toward world empire, how like a fulfilment are all the present movements of that empire—the trans-Siberian railway, the encroachments on China, etc.! And if universal anarchy is to be the last great development of society, when was there a time when, both in church and state, there was such a development of lawlessness (ἀνομια)?

Upon this subject we can no longer, within these narrow limits, expatiate. But it may at least stir up the thoughtful reader to individual search into the signs of the times. What are the indications above the prophetic and historic horizon? If the signs of the coming of the Son of Man are indeed to be seen, it may well incite us to be among the watchers who, while others yet sleep, are awake and looking for the dawn!