Letter to Rev. J. Litch, on the Second Coming of Christ

ADDRESS TO THE READER

Reader! have you attentively considered the truth presented in the foregoing pages? Are you prepared for the fearful events which God is about to bring to pass? Do you feel ready to see Christ in the clouds,-the heavens rolling together as a scroll, and passing away with a great noise,-the elements melting,-the earth and the works thereof burning,-all faces turned into paleness,-the dust of the earth becoming brimstone, and the streams pitch, and the land becoming burning pitch,-the people becoming as the burnings of lime, and like thorns cut up, being burned in the fire? “Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong in the day when God shall thus deal with thee?” “Thus saith the Lord God; howl ye, Wo, worth the day! for the day is near, even the day of the Lord is near.” Ezekiel 30:2, 3. LJL 64.1

Are you a minister of the gospel? Have the people of the land taken you from their coasts, and set you for a watchman over them? Have you been carefully watching that you might see when the sword was coming; and have you faithfully blown the trumpet, and warned the people? If not, when the wicked shall be taken away in his iniquity, his blood shall be required at thine hand. Are you joining in the delusive cry, “My Lord delayeth his coming?” and promising the world long centuries of unexampled and uninterrupted peace, when the mighty God declares, “My determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour upon them mine indignation, even all my fierce anger; for all the earth shall be devoured in the fire of my jealousy!” Your Lord “shall come in a day that you look not for him, and in an hour that you are not aware of.” LJL 64.2

Are you a man of wealth, hoarding the Lord’s silver and gold, and leaving it to rust in your coffers, or squandering it upon your lusts; when it is needed to spread abroad light and truth, and wake up a slumbering world, as the wrath that is coming upon them makes haste, that they may turn to the strong hold, while prisoners of hope? Then weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and your silver is cankered, and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire; a witness that you have hid your Lord’s talent, instead of faithfully appropriating it to arouse the perishing, and pull them out of the fire. O, I should be afraid to be a rich man, when Christ appears! LJL 65.1

Are you an oppressor, keeping back by fraud, the hire of the laborers that have reaped down your fields? Remember, the cries of them that have reaped, are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth,-and that his high command is, “Deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor, lest my fury go forth like fire, and burn that none can quench it, because of the evil of your doings.” That fire will be kindled soon. LJL 66.1

Are you a scoffer, saying, where is the promise of his coming? We are foretold that there shall be such as you in the last days. You stand as an evidence, that the end of all things is indeed at hand. Beware! LJL 66.2

Are you a stupid, hardened sinner? “He that being often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.” LJL 66.3

Are you a worldly-minded professor of religion? Your worldliness will soon have an end. God grant that your own end may not be destruction. LJL 66.4

Are you one that trembles as you think of the approaching terrors of the Lord? See! there is Christ, who died that you might live. Confess all your guilt, put away all your sins, throw yourself into his arms. “He will in no wise cast you out.” Take him, as he is of God, made unto you, wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification and redemption. Then fear not. Confess him as your Savior now, and he will confess you before his Father and the angels, when he appears. O, stay not,-haste,-haste, lest thou be consumed. Look not behind thee. Remember Lot’s wife. LJL 66.5