ADVENT.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume 24, Issue 12, 1 December 1934, Page 1

ADVENT.

THE END OF THE WORLD. (By the Editor.)

Not many days ago we were told m all seriousness— and not for the first time— that soon our Lord would return to this earth. It would not be later than 1936, and this time His advent would be heralded by dreadful and unmistakable portents m sky and earth. Further, He was coming again, not m Mercy, but m Wrath. Yes, wrath so unspeakable that only the very elect would be saved. They would be caught up "to meet Him m the air"; but the rest— millions, yea, and tens of millions of them, even all those who were not found m Him — would be remorselessly destroyed. The vials of Divine Wrath would utterly consume them and the whole earth. But enough! Perhaps that bald statement of a dreadful case will suffice to set us pondering on these things. SCRIPTURAL WARRANT ALLEGED. We are well aware that Holy Scripture is invoked m support of this' theory. There is not one jot or tittle of lurid apocalyptic writing — and there is a great deal of it — m the Bible, which is not wrested from its Biblical and historical context m order to give a form of words to this doctrine. Unfortunately, the brief space of one article does not permit the complete refutation of such a use of Holy Writ; we will merely content ourselves by declaring, with emphasis, that it is an unwarranted, un-Chris-tian, and even un-Scriptural inference, and that it ignores volumes of teaching m the Bible pointing m an entirely opposite direction. Perhaps some one will be led to examine the implications of the prayer our Lord Himself hath taught us: "Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done m earth as ft is m

Heaven." From that study one might well go on to see what Scripture has to say about the Golden Age of the Reign of God oh earth. That, of course, will mean the shedding of lots of prejudices, and a very definite re-' turn to the Bible and to the Gospel of Good News as given by our Blessed Lord. IS THE THEORY BELIEVED? It is quite possible that this article will call down vials of wrath upon the writer's head; nevertheless, before they are poured out, he will ask the advocates of the Cataclysmic Theory this question: Do they really and truly believe God is going to act this way — or m any manner approaching such diabolism? Let us put them to a simple test. Amongst the believers m this doctrine are many, not only good, but also quite rich, people. Well then, will those who confidently affirm our Lord's Return m power and wrath m 1936 or thereabouts, take from their private fortunes sufficient — and we will allow them a little over for emergencies— to last until then, and give the whole balance to Christian Missions, or evangelism, or other definitely Christian work? There is a story told of a wealthy merchant m a New Zealand city who went so far as to climb a hill m his neighbourhood one Easter morning, believing that the Parousia was due then. During the preceding week, however, he refused quite a generous offer for his business. Now let ifaith be shown by works, and if this terrible judgment is at hand, our obvious duty is to spend and give and labour to snatch souls from the burning — unless, alas! as some affirm, the number of the Elect is already made up. HISTORY AND THE THEORY. It is perhaps unnecessary to point out that the first Christians had to revise their ideas on the Parousia. The evidence is m the New Testament. But man has never .been content with our Lord's explicit declaration that "of that day and hour knoweth no man, no not even the

Son, but the Father only." In fact, some of these interpreters have said: "No, not the day nor the hour, but that does not preclude us from fixing the week, month and year!" Comment is superfluous, save to say that those who disagree with the theory would not dare to take such liberties with the Words of our Lord. Hence years have been fixed. Most ingenious calculations have been made, and AD. 1000, 1854, 1865, 1912 and 1929 were all proved from Daniel, Revelation, and, of course, the Pyramids, to be most assuredly the year of our Lord's Return. We will close this writing with some words on this point from- the late Dr. A. S. Peake's "Revelation of John," a work which all Christian people would do well to read. After showing the "repeated failures of the attempts to construct a prophetic almanac," Peake continues, "undaunted by disillusion, unwarned by failure, our own time still sees the calculators busy at work, their futile labours to receive at the hands of history their inexorable rebuke. It is still fresh m my memory how I heard one of the most prominent exponents fix the date of the Second Coming- April 11th, 1901, at three o'clock m the afternoon (N.B. — Jerusalem time!); and how with amusement I watched him wriggling forward to new positions as the preliminary events failed to make their punctual appearance, first, if my memory serves me rightly, to 1908, subsequently to the early twenties. All this was before the great European War, and certainly it is not surprising that this appalling catastrophe should have greatly encouraged our modern soothsayers" (p.p. 155, 156). On this great subject there have been, and will continue to be, wide divergences of opinion. The Church will still confidently affirm "We believe that HE shall come." But let us not seek to pry into the "times and the seasons," but rather listen more earnestly to the solemn words of our Lord, "Be ye therefore ready, for m such an hour as ye think not the Son "of Man comethr"