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

by George Croly

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.