XII. Adventists Not Pessimists but Bible Optimists

Sobering forecasts like some of the foregoing—which were simply the application and enforcement of repeated Bible prophecies of somber last-day conditions and events ^{65For example, Isaiah 2:3, 4 sets forth what the nations in the last days will be saying—that they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and not lift up the sword, nor learn war any more. But on the contrary Joel 3:9, 10 portrays what they actually will be doing-preparing war, waking up the mighty men of war, assembling the heathen, and beating their plowshares into swords and their pruning hooks into spears.} -led the early Seventh-day Adventists to predict publicly that gravely troublous times lay before the world, and that war and disaster and “sudden destruction,” instead of “peace and safety” (1 Thessalonians 5:3), faced huge sections of the human race. They refused to be lulled into a sense of false security. They looked for war and disaster, not peace and plenty, and that on a scale hitherto unknown, and unbelievable.PFF4 1017.1

And because they did not join in the popular lullaby of peace, which had enthralled the religious world-that mankind had at last learned its lesson on the folly of war and evil, that humanity was becoming better and better, and that world peace would soon be assured forevermore—they were constantly denounced as chronic pessimists and castigated as calamity howlers. They were labeled preachers of doom and gloom, always painting a depressing picture-sincere perhaps, but sadly deceived and misled.PFF4 1017.2

The passage of time has, however, indicated clearly who were misled by the roseate, un-Scriptural dreams of impending world peace and universal good will. Yet, even after the disconcerting shock of the cataclysm of World War I, that bloody conflict soon came to be explained away and regarded as just the final “war to end all wars.” So men again took heart, and the League of Nations was established. And because the Adventists once more dissented from this wistful view, they were again denominated prophets of doom, out of step with the glorious march of human progress, while the world was alleged to be striding toward the very threshold of universal brotherhood and enduring peace.PFF4 1017.3

But, lo! there burst upon the nations World War II, climaxing with its A-bomb. Then men were thoroughly disillusioned, and many liberal leaders publicly confessed that they had been mistaken and had misread the times and the prophetic blueprint. But again the temporal-millennialist die-hards revived the dream of everlasting peace, and of righteousness covering the earth as the waters cover the sea. Now the haunting fear of World War III looms before mankind, and dark despair fills the hearts of millions. And the world looks to the United Nations and the hydrogen bomb as the only hope for peace.PFF4 1018.1

Such noted religious leaders as Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, in his Faith and History, after referring to “the soft illusions of the previous two centuries,” and how men neither anticipated nor understood the “true nature of the terrors and tumult to which they would be exposed,” says bluntly:PFF4 1018.2

“The history of mankind exhibits no more ironic experience than the contrast between the sanguine hopes of recent centuries and the bitter experiences of contemporary man.”PFF4 1018.3

“The contradiction between the hopes of yesterday and the realities of today has created something like despair in those parts of the world where past stabilities have been most seriously shaken; and it is generating a kind of desperate complacency in those parts of the world in which the crisis of the age is dimly, though not fully, sensed.”PFF4 1018.4

“Insofar as the phenomenal increase in human power in a technical age has created that illusion [that man’s increased emancipation from nature increases his emancipation from himself], it has also involved our culture in the profound pathos of disappointed hopes, caused by false estimates of the glory and the misery of man.” ^{66Reinhold Niebuhr, Faith and History, pp. 1, 12, 13. 234. On page 243, he adds plainly, “Experience has proved that mode of salvation [through historical progress] to be an illusion.” See also Elton Trueblood, Alternative to Futility (1918); Paul Hutchinson, The New Leviathan (1946); Roger Babson and Dudley Zuver. Can These Bones Live? (1946).}PFF4 1018.5

And Samuel M. Shoemaker states with stark frankness:PFF4 1018.6

“Two world wars, the rise of nazism and communism, the realists in literature, the Kierkegaards, Earths, and Niebuhrs in theology, have knocked this kind of sky-blue optimism into irrelevant oblivion.” ^{67Samuel M. Shoemaker, “Recapturing the Lost Radiance,” The Christian Century, March 5, 1952, p. 276.}PFF4 1018.7

And scores of similar or even stronger statements could be cited from statesmen, scientists, educators, editors, writers, and clergymen-but space precludes.PFF4 1018.8

Through it all, Seventh-day Adventists have stoutly maintained that they are not among the world’s pessimists, as many aver, ^{68In Elmer T. Clark, The Small Sects in America, pp. 22, 25, they are listed among the “pessimistic or Adventist sects.”} but are, instead, true Bible optimists. They hold that they are simply realists, with their feet planted squarely upon the rock of Bible prophecy concerning last-day conditions. They believe that Bible prophecy explicitly predicts that times will wax worse and worse—with wars, disasters, destruction, and ruin coming as judgments on the world. ^{692 Tirn. 3:1-7, 13; Matthew 24:7; Luke 21:25, 26.} But that dismal prospect is not the end. Beyond all that, they believe and herald the soon-coming glorious advent of Christ as God’s one way out—the sole hope of a distraught and desperate world. That is the glorious prospect they set forth. Sin and wrong and war and violence will indeed end forever-but the end will come through the intervention of God, not the achievement of man. The darkest hour, they hold, comes just before the dawn.PFF4 1019.1

That is why they are not overwhelmed with depression as they witness the mounting national, international, and racial tensions, the fierce outbreaks of conflict, and the development of increasingly terrible instruments of war, that world leaders fear, and frankly warn, may bring the very end of civilization. The Adventists avow their faith is simply based on the multiple prophecies of the Bible that foretell it all, and that have been illuminated, applied, and brought vividly to their attention, as by a magnifying glass, through the amplifying, steadying declarations of the Spirit of prophecy.PFF4 1019.2

Picture 3: LAVING THE FOUNDATIONS FOR WORLD-ENCIRCLING MOVEMENT
In a series of six Epochal conferences in New England and New York state, the founders of the seventh-day adventist Faith Caunited conclusions and launched the Church on its mission. Joseph Bates is here presenting evidence on one J’oint
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