Seventh-day Adventists look for the eastern sky to brighten as never before. We long for those trumpets and violins like we have never heard music before. We watch for those angel paratroops to merge time and space as loved ones find mothers, fathers, spouses, children again, not the way they died, but in full health—hugging, smothering each other in love.

But we have been looking for a long time. Great-grandfathers remember when their grandfathers told them that the Lord’s coming is "near." How near is "near" after a hundred years of being "near"?

Do we give early Adventists A for zeal but F for lousy theology? Not if we let the Word and the Writings speak to us! Delay was imbedded in Christ’s preview of end-time events (Matt. 25) and delay was explained in the writings of Ellen White. Frequently, Mrs. White emphasized: "It was not the will of God that the coming of Christ should be so long delayed and His people should remain so many years in this world of sin and sorrow." 1

In 1901, Ellen White warned us "not to add sin to sin by charging God with the consequence of their own wrong course of action." 2

But we may have done just that with such fanciful thinking as:

1. Jesus has not come because the angels have not yet turned all the pages in the books of judgment—when the last pages of the living have been turned, probation closes, and the plagues will fall.
2. God has his own celestial clock; its hands more inexorably—when the time appointed arrives, probation will close, ready or not. In other words, because he came the first time on time, so he will come the second time, on time, regardless of anything else.
3. The Lord can’t come until the Papacy does even more than it has lately—meaning the Pope determines when the Advent will be.
4. How about the many sermons we used to hear when we were served Turkey most every Sabbath—meaning when the nation of Turkey comes to her end with none to help her (Dan. 11:45) then we will know that the end is near?
5. The Lord can’t come because the world is not evil enough but when the cup is full, then God says, "That’s enough!"—we should rejoice when we see the crime statistics increase every year, for surely God will have an end to his patience.
6. Another reason that has become fashionable in the last few years is we have no idea when Jesus will return but our task is to occupy till he comes—besides, there’s nothing that human beings can do to hasten the Advent.

All of these explanations evaporate when tested by logic and biblical support. But what is worse, these excuses have lifted the responsibility for the delay of the Advent from God’s professed people and "their own wrong course of action" and thrown it back on God. Unintentionally, of course, but the effect is the same: Satan is pleased with these decoys, and the real solution to the delay in the Advent is overlooked.

Peter, among others, keeps us on track: "Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God.…Therefore, beloved, looking forward to these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, without spot and blameless" (3:11–14).

Notes and References

1. The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1888), 458.
2. Ellen G. White, Manuscript Releases from the Files of the Letters and Manuscripts (Washington, D.C.: E. G. White Estate, 1981), 20:313, mss 184 (1901).

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