HE NEWS OUT OF ENGLAND WAS ghastly. Suburban British doctor Harold Shipman��a physician so dedicated that he often stopped by his patients� homes between appointments��had been exposed as �the most prolific mass murderer in British history.� Over a period of 24 years he�d �probably killed 236 of his patients.�¹ Just seven days later another gruesome revelation�this one out of the United States, from a quiet Montana ranching community: 43-year-old Nathaniel Bar-Jonah, �a portly, bearded short-order cook with a quarter-century history of molesting children was arraigned . . . for snatching a young boy whose body, prosecutors said, was cut into pieces, cooked into stew and spaghetti sauce, and fed to the man�s unwitting friends and neighbors.�²

Revolting. Disgusting. Repugnant. Yet such incidents blend seamlessly into the tapestry of ugliness that hangs over the closing decades of the past century. Only God knows the full story of horror and savagery. I would hazard a guess that if all the innocent blood shed in just the past 50 years could flow together, it would flood a continent the size of Europe knee-deep.

I may not often cite these as �signs� of Jesus� coming, but they give me reason to yearn ever more intensely for it. What a hideous world!

How Much Longer?
Will the nightmare ever end? Will the curtain ever fall? Do we cling in vain to hope? I remember the first Sabbath of 2000, the Sabbath following the big scare over Y2K. As I stood in the sanctuary talking with two of my colleagues after the service, the reality of the year 2000 began to sink in on all three of us. And in view of the historic date, the question suggested itself: How do we talk about the imminence of the Second Coming now?

For a people who�ve been announcing an impending Advent since the mid-nineteenth century, the year 2000 represented a significant psychological passage. Emotionally, it was as if two centuries had gone by just overnight. And, however fleetingly, the words of the French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre came drifting in. �If we look thousands of years backward to the past,� he said somewhere, �or peer millenniums into the future, life is all the same.� Nothing has changed, and nothing will change. To the idea of a Second Coming, Sartre would have responded: �Nonsense. Rubbish. Prophetic fantasy.�

So how do we talk about the Advent now? Is it a vain hope? I shared that sanctuary conversation with my Review colleagues during our planning session last September, and the issue you now hold in your hand is the result.����

Not Into Fables
We�re an impatient generation. We want everything done now! Not that long ago many of us would have had to go across town on foot to deliver an important message. Today phone companies can market their speed-dialing service to millions of us who no longer have the time (read patience) to dial 10 digits anymore. Even the computer is too slow for us.

That�s why I find it instructive to put things in perspective. Just one example: God promised Canaan to Abraham and his descendants, but they had to wait 430 years for it. For Americans, it would be like receiving an important commitment at the birth of the nation in 1776, and knowing today (2001) that there are 205 years still to go! (Wherever you live in the world, use your own historical markers to make the point.) Clearly, God�s timing is not the same as ours. But His pledge to Abraham did not fail. Nor will His promise of the Advent come to naught. But the stakes are exceedingly high, and no hand-wringing will rush Him. What�s important for us is confidence.

As he neared the end of his life, the apostle Peter had a sense of the disturbing queries that would arise, both in the immediate and in the distant future. He experienced apprehensions of sophisticated Greek audiences questioning whether the Christian story of the cross and Second Coming was not woven from the same fabric as the fantastic tales of gods and goddesses that inhabited the mist-covered heights of Mount Olympus.

But it was not to science or philosophy that he turned to make his case. Instead, his mind went back decades earlier to a Judean mountaintop where, with James and John, he�d been privileged to witness one of the most glorious theophanies ever seen by mortal eyes: the transfiguration of the Son of God. Peter remembered how his attempt to place Jesus on a level with His celestial (human) guests was intercepted by a thunderous voice from heaven that knocked him cold. �This is my Son,� it said. �Listen to him!� (Matt. 17:5, NIV).

The memory of the awesome encounter sank an indelible impression deep in the mind of the intrepid apostle, never to be erased. And it was the hard-nosed factuality of that event that evoked the unequivocal affirmation: �We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty� (2 Peter 1:16, NIV). We have actually seen a dress rehearsal of that stupendous hour. Beyond that, �we have also a more sure word of prophecy� (verse 19).

Peter would be delighted to find the hope of the Second Coming still burning bright in the breast of Christians today. He would thrill, I think, to read the articles carried in this issue. Our people are holding strong. Sample the warm testimonies beginning on page 37. The message is as thrilling now as ever. And as needed. Without the Second Coming, human existence is ultimately a cosmic obscenity.

Our goal for this special issue was that it be upbeat, without a trace of triteness or sentimentality. We wanted it simply to drip with inspiration, confidence, and hope. Let us know if you found it so.

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¹ T. R. Reid, in Washington Post, Jan. 6, 2001.
² Mark Mathews and William Claiborne, in Washington Post, Jan. 12, 2001.

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Roy Adams is an associate editor of the Adventist Review.