By Elder Sterling W. Sill
Conference Report, April 1966
Contents:
- The “Knowledge Explosion”
- Moses Foresaw History
- Second Coming of Christ Foreseen
- Signs of His Coming
- The Gospel Shall be Preached For a Witness
My brothers and sisters, I appreciate very much this privilege of having a part with you in this great general conference of the Church. As important ideas are held up before our minds, we are helped to follow more fully that divine instruction that “man shall not live by bread alone.” (Matt. 4:4.) It is desirable at all times that we should live by the word of the Lord, but this applies particularly to us, as our age is the most important and the most exciting that the world has ever known. Our forefathers lived on a flat stationary earth and plowed their ground with a wooden stick. But we live on an earth of power steering, jet propulsion, and atomic power, and we need personality and character qualities to match the times. Great events are now taking place at breathtaking speed in fulfillment of the word of the Lord to Daniel, twenty-five centuries ago. Concerning our day, he said, “But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, . . . even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be icreased.” (Dan. 12:4.)
The “Knowledge Explosion”
Certainly the knowledge explosion of our day furnishes a literal fulfillment of this prophecy before our own eyes. It is interesting to remember that George Washington rode to his inauguration in a chariot drawn by horses, but two thousand years earlier, Julius Caesar had gone to his Roman capital in exactly the same way. Little or no change had taken place in all of that long period. When I was born, the Wright Brothers had not yet made their famous maiden 60-foot flight at Kill Devil Hill. During the first part of our century we had no guided missiles, no space travel, no automobiles, no radios, no television, no movies, and no atomic bombs. And most of the world’s work was then still being done by the muscle power of men and animals. However, the ancient prophets have known a great deal about our age of miracles for many centuries.
Moses Foresaw History
Moses was permitted to see the history of our earth from its beginning to its end. (Moses 1:8.) Much of the writings of Isaiah concerns our own day, though he seemed a little bit surprised when he looked out of his window into the future and exclaimed: “Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as the doves to their windows?” (Isa. 60:8.) Foreseeing our day, the prophet Habakkuk said, “Their horses also are swifter than the leopards, and are more fierce than the evening wolves: and their horsemen shall spread themselves, and their horsemen shall come from afar; they shall fly as the eagle that hasteth to eat.” (Hab. 1:8.) And Nahum gives a clear mental view of one of our night scenes when he said: “. . . the chariots shall be with flaming torches in the day of his preparation, and the fir trees shall be terribly shaken.
- "The chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall jostle one against another in the broad ways: they shall seem like torches, they shall run like the lightnings."
(Neh. 2:3-4.)
The important world events all seem to have been foretold. The people of Noah’s day were warned about the flood, and God made known to Sodom and Gomorrah that their evil would draw a rainstorm of fire and brimstone from heaven. Jesus warned Jerusalem of its impending doom and foretold his own death. He announced the apostasy from God and foretold the dark ages that would follow the Savior’s rejection.
Second Coming of Christ Foreseen
But one of the most important events on the divine timetable of the world’s future is the glorious second coming of Jesus Christ. This will probably be the most momentous happening ever to take place in the history of the world. The most often mentioned event in the entire Bible is that wonderful, yet awful experience that we will have when Jesus Christ shall come to judge our world. There are many important gospel doctrines mentioned in the Bible only briefly and some not at all. The new birth is mentioned in the Bible nine times; baptism is mentioned 52 times, repentance is mentioned 89, but the second coming of Christ is mentioned over 1,500 times in the Old Testament and 300 times in the New Testament. If God thought this subject that important, he must have wanted us to do something about it. The Holy Bible forecasts events before they happen, and much of our history has actually been written down before it occurred. The Bible accurately predicted Christ’s first coming in every detail, hundreds of years n advance. It revealed that he would come from the tribe of Judah (Mic. 5:2; John 7:42), that his birthplace would be Bethlehem (Mic. 5:2; John 7:42), that he would be born of a virgin (Isa. 7:14), that he would flee into Egypt (Hos. 11:1; Matt. 2:15), that he would heal the sick, that his own people would reject him (Isa. 53:3), that he would be betrayed by a friend and sold for 30 pieces of silver, that he would take upon himself the sins of the world and be crucified with sinners (Mark 15:27; Isa. 53:3-12; Luke 22:37), that his sides would be pierced (John 19:37, Zech. 12:10), that he would institute a universal resurrection and that he would personally rise from the dead the third day (Hos. 6:2; Luke 9:22.)
This same Bible also foretells that he will come to the earth a second time, though in a different manner. The first time he came as a man of sorrows who was acquainted with grief (Isa. 53:3), but the second time he will come as the mighty God (Isa. 9:6). He came the first time as the Prince of Peace (Isa. 9:6). He will come the second time as King of kings and Lord of lords (Rev. 17:14). He came the first time to atone for our sins; he will come the second time to judge those sinners who have not repented. The Apostle Paul says, “. . . the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels,
- "In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ."
(2 Thes. 1:7-8.)
Malachi says, “. . . and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple…
- "But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth?"
(Mal. 3:1-2)
And we might ask ourselves, who indeed?
According to the divine plan, our earth has been allotted a mortal or temporal existence of seven thousand years, patterned after the seven days of creation. The first four thousand years began with the fall of Adam and ended at the birth of Christ. But 1966 more years have come and gone since that time. Therefore, on the divine calendar we are now living in the late Saturday evening of time. This glorious second coming of Christ is scheduled to usher in the earth’s Sabbath of a thousand years, known to the prophets as the millennium. During this period Christ will reign personally upon the earth. However, before this can happen, the wicked will be destroyed by fire and Satan will be bound. At Christ’s coming a great number of very exciting things are going to take place. He is not coming alone; as Paul says, he will come with his mighty angels. (See 2 Thes. 1:7-8.) At his coming a great many of the faithful dead will be resurrected and caught up to meet the Lord in the air. And some of the righteous who are hen living upon the earth will be changed from mortality to immortality in the twinkling of an eye to join that impressive company in the air. Certainly this is something to look forward to. (See 1 Thes. 4:13-17.)
At the time of Adam’s fall, a curse was placed upon the earth, and since then it has existed in its fallen or telestial state. For nearly six thousand years it has brought forth thorns, thistles, and noxious weeds, while crime, corruption, war, and sin have flourished upon its face. But at the second coming of Christ, the earth will be cleansed by fire. It will then be renewed and receive its paradisiacal glory as it is raised to the status of a terrestrial sphere.
On the last Tuesday of the Lord’s life, his disciples came to him and said, “. . . what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world?” (Matt. 24:3.) Jesus warned them of the great wickedness that would exist upon the earth and the deception of false teachers. He said, “. . . then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.
- "And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold."
(Matt. 24:10, 12)
At that time Jesus said some rather uncomplimentary things about us. He said, “. . . as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” (Matt. 24:37.) Apparently Noah’s day was quite a day; some of its chief characteristics were the people’s lack of preparation and their disbelief in God. As in our own day, the antediluvians thought that the heavens were sealed and that God would never again reveal himself. It must have sounded a little bit ridiculous to them when on a warm cloudless day Noah prophesied that a flood would come and destroy their entire society if they did not repent, but we are in a similar situation. And even though the combined sins of Sodom Babylon, and ancient Rome all glare at us from our own newspaper headlines, yet we are far from changing our ways. Instead, many people of our day are contending for a type of behavior that condones alcoholism, immorality, and a wide variety of deviations from God’s laws.
Signs of His Coming
As one of the signs that would precede his coming, Jesus said that there would be wars and rumors of wars, and an awful hate would exist among people. He said, “For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.” (Matt. 24:7.)
Dr. Carl Joachim Hambro, late president of the League of Nations, said that in World War I alone, thirty-five million human beings died of starvation and epidemics. But that is only a drop in the bucket compared to the possible horror and mutilation of present-day war. We can now drop concentrated fire on a nation and literally roast its population. War doesn’t solve a single human problem, and yet the one place where our generation excels most is in its ability to make war. Modern war is undoubtedly the most highly developed of all of our sciences. Even a horrible kind of destructive cold war now seems to have become a fixed part of our unfortunate way of life. But sinful, unstable man now holds in his hands the ability to destroy everything upon the earth in just a few hours. Our failure has been that while we have perfected weapons, we have failed to perfect the men who may be asked to use them. But still there is no letup in our evil. Like the ancients, we can discern the face of the sky, but we fail in rading the signs of the times. This has always been one of the world’s most serious problems.
The Gospel Shall be Preached For a Witness
On the Mount of Olives the Lord also foretold another event that would precede his glorious second coming. He said: “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.” (Matt. 24:14.) Angelic messengers with authority from God have been sent to the earth in our day to restore the simple principles and ordinances of the gospel that fulfill this prophecy. The Church of Jesus Christ has again been established upon the earth, built upon its necessary foundation of apostles and prophets. (See Eph. 2:19-20.)
In obedience to God’s command, the world has also been given three great volumes of new scripture outlining in every detail the simple principles of the gospel of Christ. These modern scriptures add many additional prophetic statements to those of the Old and New Testaments, warning us to make ourselves ready for this tremendous event that is now at our doors. May God help us so to do, I humbly pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
