few months ago I attended the funeral of an 89-year-old member of our little church in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. In his homily the pastor assured the mourners that they would soon be reunited with the loved one from whom they were now parted. Why? Because Jesus was coming back to earth “soon,” to put an end to sin, misery, unhappiness, sickness, and death.

Seventh-day Adventists have been preaching the imminence of the Second Coming for 156 years. But how near is “near”? How soon is “soon”? One hundred fifty-six years is a long time to wait!

This month (October 2000) marks an important anniversary for Seventh-day Adventists. It holds the 156th anniversary of both the Day of Great Expectation—October 22, 1844—and the Day of Great Disappointment—October 23, 1844. It may likely be an anniversary that will bring with it a degree of embarrassment for some within our ranks whom, I suspect, would just as soon forget anything and everything connected with 1844.

On October 23, 1844—the day after Jesus did not return as foretold by William Miller and his followers—the Millerite movement (estimated at between 50,000 to 250,000 strong by various historians) disintegrated for two cogent and very compelling reasons: They no longer had a message, and they no longer had an audience willing to listen to them. The movement broke up into four splinter groups.

The largest group abandoned religion of any kind. They had been greatly embarrassed, even mortified, when the predicted return of Jesus did not occur as they had believed it would. They were angry with God and, truth to tell, not a little with themselves. They saw themselves as having been duped into joining a movement that was alternately reviled and derided by most segments of the populace. In frustration and weariness they gave up all religion altogether.

The second group went off into various forms of fanaticism, many successively setting new dates for the Lord’s return in the process. But they continued to cry “Wolf, wolf” just one time too many. Soon no one listened to them anymore. Within a half dozen years they disappeared from the scene.

The third group continued to look for the Advent—near, but without setting any dates. And they continued, like the vast majority of the Millerites before them, to worship God on Sunday, the first day of the week. In 1860 they formed themselves into a denomination known as the Advent Christian Church. They’re still around, though their numbers continue to decline year by year. In recent years the Advent Christian membership in North America has slipped from something more than 31,000 members to something less than 19,000 members—a drop of more than one third.

The fourth and smallest group to emerge from Millerism was a body of perhaps half a hundred, scattered throughout New York and New England, who coalesced around the leadership of James and Ellen White and retired sea captain Joseph Bates. In 1860 they too organized and took to themselves the name Seventh-day Adventist. They accepted the seventh-day Sabbath; they believed that God had bestowed upon Ellen White the spiritual gift of prophetic utterance; and they believed that Christ had entered a new phase of His heavenly high priesthood on October 22, 1844.

Like their Advent Christian friends, these Saturday-keeping Adventists continued to believe the return of Jesus was near, and they too refused to set any dates. In 1863 their half dozen state conferences organized a General Conference, and they were off and running. Today they number some 11 million around the globe.

But 156 years is a long time to wait. How soon is “soon”? How near is “near”?

The Seventh-day Adventists’
“Twin” Sister—the Advent Christian Church
Ellen White’s parents, Robert and Eunice Harmon, believed that Ellen had a special gift from God. They finally—hesitantly, perhaps even reluctantly—accepted the Sabbath in 1850 or 1851. Of Ellen’s seven brothers and sisters, only two, Robert, Jr., and Sarah Harmon, became Sabbathkeepers.

Her twin sister, Elizabeth, or “Lizzie,” as Ellen fondly called her, probably the only other sibling still remaining at home with Ellen as 1844 ended, never accepted the Sabbath.

Just so, the Seventh-day Adventist Church also has a “twin sister”—the Advent Christian Church. They share our common roots within the Miller-ite movement and are quite friendly with Adventists. But they never accepted the Sabbath, the prophetic gift, or the doctrine of the heavenly sanctuary. Their ardor for the doctrine of the Second Coming has substantially waned, however, as their numbers have dwindled.

At a 1961 Advent Christian Church state conference, the delegates passed a resolution, without a single dissenting vote, that was subsequently published in their Present Truth Messenger of September 7 and 21 (vol. 64, No. 13). It declared, in part:

“For some years many of our people have been suggesting various answers to the anxious question, ‘What is wrong with us?’ Others have impatiently come up with the criticism that the form of the question is wrong. We ought to ask, ‘What is right with us?’ . . .

“A little thought should make it very evident to any of us that we can never again preach the kingdom message as our fathers preached it and make any impact upon the church or the world. We don’t understand the time periods. We still believe we were basically right about the symbols of Daniel and Revelation, and yet the whole subject of predictive prophecy is so involved that it is utterly impossible for any Adventist preacher to go to the people with the deep conviction and sense of certainty that our fathers did.

“And because we can’t and don’t it seems to the church that we have lost our message and our reason for being. You cannot rejuvenate the Advent Christian people unless and until a sense of certainty and urgency gives wings to our words and we can speak with confidence and certainty. People often ask, Why don’t we have any great prophetic preaching any more?

“The simple fact is that such preaching is today utterly impossible. For ‘prophetic’ preaching [of the Historicist School] to carry any weight with intelligent audiences in our day we shall have to know a lot of things that we don’t know. And can’t know. . . .

“But to keep our self-respect and win the respect of the people we must refrain from pretending to know what we do not know. To keep on saying that He’s coming ‘soon’ will impress no one, least of all the kind of audience that we have great need of reaching.”¹

If the truth be known, some of our own Seventh-day Adventist members and even a few of our ministers share kindred feelings with these sincere, but oh, so disappointed people.

One Sabbath afternoon nearly seven years ago one member attending a public question-and-answer forum I was conducting handed in a written question: “Why did the New Testament writers say He was coming ‘soon’? How can 2,000 years be ‘soon’? Was the Lord deceiving us for 2,000 years, so we would live in readiness?”

Good question!

Here’s how I responded: “Because Jesus Himself said so—four times, for instance, in the very last book of the New Testament—and three times alone in its very last chapter!”

“Behold, I come quickly” (Rev. 3:11). “Behold, I come quickly” (Rev. 22:7). “Behold, I come quickly” (verse 12). “Surely I come quickly” (verse 20).

In terms of relative time relationships, God’s people in the Old Testament had to wait 4,000 years for His first coming, while we’ve had to wait only half that long—nearly 2,000 years, so far—for the Second Coming. And remember that Peter said that a day with the Lord was as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day (2 Peter 3:8).

But it remains a legitimate question, and it still deserves a good answer. How near is “near”? How soon is “soon”?

Can Adventists still preach the imminence—the nearness—of the second coming of Christ more than 150 years after He “failed” to appear, as expected and preached by our Millerite forefathers in 1844?

Ellen White’s Problem
Ellen White faced the same perplexity in her day. In 1851 she had declared in one of her earliest writings: “I saw that the time for Jesus to be in the most holy place was nearly finished and that time can last but a very little longer.”²

Thirty-two years later, in 1883, critics resurrected this potentially damaging and embarrassing statement and threw it in her face, declaring it proof that she was a false prophet.

Note her stirring, ringing defense, found today in Selected Messages, book 1: “As the subject was presented before me, the period of Christ’s ministration seemed almost accomplished. Am I accused of falsehood because time has continued longer than my testimony seemed to indicate? How is it with the testimonies of Christ and His disciples? Were they deceived?

“Paul writes to the Corinthians: ‘But this I say, brethren, the time is short. . . .’ (1 Cor. 7:29, 30). Again, in his epistle to the Romans, he says: ‘The night is far spent, the day is at hand. . . .’ (Rom. 13:12). And from Patmos, Christ speaks to us by the beloved John: ‘Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand’ (Rev. 1:3). ‘The Lord God of the holy prophets sent his angel to shew unto his servants the things which must shortly be done. Behold, I come quickly; blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book’ (Rev. 22:6, 7).

“The angels of God in their messages to men represent time as very short. Thus it has always been presented to me. It is true that time has continued longer than we expected in the early days of this message. Our Saviour did not appear as soon as we hoped. But has the word of the Lord failed? Never! It should be remembered that the promises and threatenings of God are alike conditional.”³

Two points, first of all, are worth noting:

1. Ellen White always went straight to the Bible to find her best and most effective answers.

2. The presence of a conditional element, in some prophetic writings, was her theological explanation for resolving this particular problem.

The Conditional Element
There is an often-overlooked element, present in some (but not all) heaven-inspired prophecies, which theologians refer to by the category of “conditionality.” Some prophecies by genuine, Spirit-led prophets are essentially and inherently conditional. If hearers respond in a particularly stated way, then what is predicted—good or bad—will surely come to pass.

But if they should change their mind, their attitude, their response, the predicted threatening or warning—yes, sometimes even God’s promises—will not come to pass.

Fulfillment of prediction is generally recognized as one of at least four biblical tests that every true prophet must pass in order to be accepted by God’s people. This test applies to Ellen White, in her day and ours.

Jeremiah identifies the test positively: “When the word of the prophet shall come to pass, then shall [it] . . . be known that the Lord hath truly sent him” (Jer. 28:9).

Moses, on the other hand, shows the negative side: “If the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him” (Deut. 18:22).

Both prophets go to extended lengths to introduce the conditional element in some prophecy. Jeremiah gives the test in chapter 28, verse 9. In addition to that oft-quoted line, Jeremiah introduces the conditional element 10 chapters earlier, in 18:6-10, and again in 26:2-6.

Moses also discusses the conditional element in some prophecy in three other locations in Deuteronomy (4:29; 8:19; 28:1-15).

A number of other biblical writers, in historical and prophetic passages, also discuss this conditional element of prophecy.⁴

Failure to take into account this important biblical principle can lead into dangerous paths. The most well-known case in Scripture is that of Jonah, God’s reluctant prophet to Nineveh, who complained bitterly to God when the Ninevites profoundly repented and thus (for some decades) were spared destruction. Jonah’s story illustrates the perils of pervasive “unconditionality,” for it forgets the moral purpose of prophecy, through which God intends to correct, reshape, or renew His people.

Applied to the biblical doctrine of the Second Coming, this understanding of conditionality leads to two major points:

1. The fact of the Second Coming is not conditional and is not up for grabs. Nahum movingly asks: “What do ye imagine against the Lord? he will make an utter end: affliction shall not rise up the second time” (Nahum 1:9).

2. The time of the Second Coming, however, is conditional—which helps to explain a seeming contradiction between the words of Peter and the words of Paul in the New Testament.

Apparent “Contradiction”
Between Peter and Paul
Peter wrote to the Christians of his day, telling them not only to earnestly “look” for Christ’s second coming but also to attempt to “hasten” it along, by quickly finishing the work Christ had given them to do in spreading the gospel to everyone (2 Peter 3:12).

Eighteen hundred years later Ellen White underscored the same idea. Less than two years before her death in 1915 she wrote: “By giving the gospel to the world, it is in our power to hasten the coming of the day of God.”⁵

But hear Paul, preaching in Athens, as he tells the Greek philosophers of that city, “[God] hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained” (Acts 17:31).

Little wonder, then, that some Christians are puzzled—and that some skeptics have scoffed—at this apparently opposed set of assertions in the Bible. But the critics fail to recognize two facts: (1) These two statements form a paradox, not a discrepancy (two contradictory statements that are mutually exclusive); and (2) both statements are true—when correctly understood in their total context.

In her introduction to The Great Controversy Ellen White wrote: “As several writers [in the Bible] present a subject under various aspects and relations, there may appear, to the superficial, careless, or prejudiced reader, to be discrepancy or contradiction, where the thoughtful, reverent student, with clearer insight, discerns the underlying harmony.”⁶

God has “appointed a day”—a backstop date—beyond which sin and sinners will no longer be allowed to continue to operate in opposing God and His work, as He now permits.

But He has also given it into the hands of His followers—and even earnestly invited us—to “hasten” that day by bringing it to pass even earlier than His final backstop date. It’s certainly true that it is in our power to “hasten” His return. But, on the other hand, it’s not true that we can hinder it indefinitely from coming to pass.

The Two Motifs
I’m fascinated to discover both motifs in the writings of Ellen White. LeRoy Edwin Froom, in his monumental work, Movement of Destiny, helpfully points out that Ellen White echoes Peter a total of 45 times in the 61 years between 1850 and 1911. Each time she says essentially the same thing: If we Adventists had properly done our job, the Lord would have come before now.⁷

But Dr. Froom then goes on to cite another 13 statements, made between 1863 and 1915—a parallel period of 52 years—in which Ellen White echoes Paul, indicating that there is a final “backstop” date, a “predetermined boundary line irrevocably ‘fixed,’” beyond which God will not indefinitely wait.⁸

Many of these latter statements are couched in a metaphor of the “cup of iniquity,” which, when full, will instantly trigger the Second Coming and God’s judgments against the wicked. So while the fact of the Second Coming is not up for grabs, not subject to conditionality, the time of the Second Coming is conditional.

Why would God passionately wish for Christ to return earlier than the final “backstop” date He has already determined?

In a famous saying, Jesus declared that not one sparrow falls dead to the earth without the Father’s notice (Matt. 10:29). Then, in the very next breath, Jesus declared that one human being is worth more to God than many sparrows (verse 31). If God notices and is pained by the death of just one insignificant sparrow, how much more is He pained by the deaths of millions of unsaved persons who pass into eternity each day!

God passionately seeks to terminate the reign of sin and death as early as possible. No wonder the “whole creation groaneth” with each passing day (Rom. 8:22).

Hints About the Future
Ellen White, albeit reluctantly, seems to hint in at least three places that, in all likelihood, we believers probably won’t do our work thoroughly enough to enable Christ to come in advance of His predetermined “backstop” date.

She made two statements in 1885 that seem to indicate that she believed we will run out the string of time to the final irrevocable date set for Christ’s return:

“When divine power is combined with human effort, the work will spread like fire in the stubble. God will employ agencies whose origin man will be unable to discern; angels will do a work which men might have had the blessing of accomplishing, had they not neglected to answer the claims of God.”⁹

In a letter written from Europe to a conference president in North America eight weeks earlier, she had penned: “The loud cry of the third angel shall be heard. . . . Light goes forth to lighten the earth. . . . Let me tell you that the Lord will work in this last work in a manner very much out of the common order of things, and in a way that will be contrary to human planning. . . . God will use ways and means by which it will be seen that He is taking the reins in His own hands. The workers will be surprised by the simple means that He will use to bring about and perfect His work of righteousness.”¹⁰

She uses a remarkable phrase: “It will be seen that He is taking the reins in His own hands.”

Her metaphor was doubtless more familiar to her contemporaries than to us today. We’re more accustomed to travel in automobiles with steering wheels rather than in horse-drawn conveyances for which the driver holds the reins in his hands. But for the carriage driver of the late nineteenth century, taking the reins in one’s hands portrayed an assumption of control and authority over a situation.

Paul may have been indirectly hinting at the same thing when he told the Christians of his day: “For he will finish the work, and [He will] cut it short in righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth” (Rom. 9:28).

Perhaps guided by the sad thought that human beings might never really finish the work of God on earth earlier than the final “backstop” date, Ellen White wrote concerning the first coming of Christ: “Like the stars in the vast circuit of their appointed path, God’s purposes know no haste and no delay. . . . So in heaven’s council the hour for the [first] coming of Christ had been determined. When the great clock of time pointed to that hour, Jesus was born in Bethlehem.”¹¹

Likewise, for Christ’s second coming, God also has appointed a day.

The Ultimate Urgency of the Second Coming
In the end, the real, ultimate urgency of the Second Coming has nothing to do with the signs that Jesus foretold would precede it, important as they are for us to understand.

It has nothing to do with the charts so meticulously made in an attempt to log those signs in a linear manner, as helpful as those charts may well be. The urgency of the Second Coming has nothing to do with the haste— or the lack of haste—with which we Christians may pursue our work of warning the world of its imminence.

The message of the Second Coming is an urgent truth because none of us knows for sure how many breaths we will be allowed to take before we close our eyes in the dreamless slumber of death.

This is doubtless why Ellen White wrote in 1882: “We are today to watch that we offend not in word or deed.

. . . We must today seek God and be determined that we will not rest satisfied without His presence. We should watch and work and pray as though this were the last day that would be granted us. How intensely earnest, then, would be our life. How closely would we follow Jesus in all our words and deeds.”¹²

How soon is “soon”? How near is “near”?

“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter” (Eccl. 12:13).

Bible truths spoken by Habakkuk, Jesus, Paul, and John highlight the central point. Five hundred years before Christ, Habbakuk wrote: “The vision is yet for an appointed time: but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because [in the end] it will surely come, it will not tarry” (Hab. 2:3). God is here telling us that that which may seem to us to be a delay in the fulfillment of His promises is not necessarily viewed as such in His eyes. He urges great patience while we endure what seems to be an unendurably long waiting period.

This promise helped the disconsolate Millerites through their extended disappointment in the aftermath of October 22, 1844.¹³ It will also be of great consolation to believers today who wait for “His appearing.”

Jesus Himself warns us against saying, “My Lord delayeth His coming.” He characterizes such a one as an “evil servant,” undeserving of the Master’s great gifts (Matt. 24:48; cf. Luke 12:45).

Paul also picks up on Habakkuk’s theme, urging those living in the end-time: “Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him” (Heb. 10:35-38).

“As the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts, as in the provocation” (Heb. 3:8; see also Heb. 3:15; 4:7).

John adds the important ethical point: “And all who have this hope in him [Christ] purify themselves, just as he is pure” (1 John 3:3, NRSV).

Just as children sometimes prattle while playing hide-and-seek, so the Lord also solemnly calls out to us from the heavenly courts “Here I come, ready or not!”

May we respond today as John responded, breathing out his love for his Master: “Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:2)—and come quickly!

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 ¹ Cited in Robert W. Olson’s 10-page monograph, “Pluralism—How Much?” June 1, 1986, pp. 1, 2.
 ² Ellen G. White, Early Writings, p. 58.
 ³ Ellen G. White Manuscript 4, 1883; cited in Selected Messages, book 1, p. 67. (Italics hers.)
 ⁴ 2 Chron. 15:2; Zech. 6:15; Ex. 19:5, 6; and 1 Kings 9:4-7, to mention only a few.
 ⁵ E. G. White, in Review and Herald, Nov. 13, 1913; cited in God’s Amazing Grace, p. 353.
 ⁶ ———, The Great Controversy, p. vi.
 ⁷ LeRoy E. Froom, Movement of Destiny (1971), pp. 571-588.
 ⁸ Ibid., pp. 597-600.
 ⁹ White, in  Review and Herald, Dec. 15, 1885, cited in Selected Messages, book 1, p. 118. (Italics supplied.)
¹⁰———, Testimonies to Ministers, p. 300. (Italics supplied.)
¹¹———, The Desire of Ages, p. 32.
¹²———, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 5, p. 200. (Italics supplied.)
¹³Ibid., vol. 1, p. 52.

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Roger W. Coon, Ph.D., is a retired associate director of the Ellen G. White Estate. He continues to serve as adjunct professor of prophetic guidance at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan.