Tom Hammond was alone in his editorial office. He had come to the day, the moment at last, when he felt constrained to write out of his full heart, to the readers of his paper, all that he yearned that the world should know of the imminence of the Return of the Lord.
Before he put pen to paper to write on this supreme theme in his “Prophet’s Chamber” column, he bowed his head on his desk and prayed for guidance and help. Then he began to write out his heart fully, telling first of his conversion, and of the wondrous meetings conducted by Major H——.
His whole being was fired with holy purpose. “Had ever a preacher such a pulpit as has the editor of “The Courier?” he wrote. “Had any preacher ever so mighty a privilege, so great a responsibility as is mine to-day? This paper circulates through more than a million people’s hands, even allowing that only the one person purchasing the paper, reads it—though one might almost safely double that million, since there are very few of the papers which will not be read by two, or more persons.
“This ‘Prophet’s Column’ will likely overflow all its ordinary banks, as does the Great Nile in its season, but if my overflowing but carry life on its tide, as does the tide of the overflowing Nile, then, all will be well.
“As a converted Editor of a great daily, I have put my hand, my pen, my mind into the mighty, unerring hand of God, praying that I may write only that which will reach the hearts of my readers. And the question comes to me, ‘what word does London, does England most need to-day?’
“This—that all the world should know, and realize, that any day, aye, any hour, Christ may return—not to the earth but into the air—”
Here followed the teaching of the Gospel and Epistles, as he had learned it from Major H——, and from his own subsequent personal study of the Word of God.
“I appeal to the most thoughtful of my readers, I appeal to the unthinking, as I say, ‘do you not see how a real belief, in this near coming of Christ would revolutionize all our national, commercial, domestic, and church life. How, too, it would immediately settle every social problem.’
“If our legislators, sitting in council at St. Stephens, realized that before the present Parliamentary session could end in the ordinary way, that Christ might come, what a speedy end they would seek to put to every national iniquity.
“The hideous drink traffic would be swept, root and branch, from our land. And, in sweeping that curse away, the awful problem of the unemployed, the homeless, the starving, all that inures to our national poverty would be swept away.
“The shameful opium traffic with China; the national Greed for territory; the Traffic in White Slaves; and every other national iniquity would be abolished.
“Christian churches, (so-called) would become worthy of the name Christian. All those bits of devilish device used to extract, and extort money from the pockets of the people would end, as by magic. Theatricals would be left to the theatres; nigger entertainments would be left to the music-halls; the church would leave all these things to their master—the Devil.
“In social life, people would pay their debts; the wild, mad, sinful extravagance that marks the life of to-day, would cease. Christians would love one another. Every Evangelical denomination would be inter-denominational in the truest sense, and be one wholly in their Crucified, Risen, coming Lord. A love for the poor fallen world, such as has never been since our Lord spent Himself in service, would be the order of the day, and not the vision of a few. Every missionary society would have more men and women and money than they actually needed.
“But, even as I pen this millennium-like picture, I know, from the Word of God, that it cannot be before Christ comes. But I seek to arouse every Christian to God’s call to them on this matter. You, who profess to be Christ’s, dare not refuse this truth, save at the peril of losing the Crown of Life.
“The vast bulk of the churches, I know, preach, that the world will continually improve until the earth shall be fit for Christ to come and reign. But I defy any cleric or layman to show me a single word of scripture that gives the faintest colour to that belief, or statement—unless the person wrests the passage so advanced from its distinctly marked dispensational setting.
“Things (spiritual) are growing worse and worse. There is a wholesale down-gradeism, too awful to contemplate. ‘Priest and people have erred alike!’ I take up the official organ of a section of the church that has ever been regarded as the most out-an-out, in all that pertains to Evangelical truth, and I find its great head saying ‘The Bible is not the sole spiritual guide for the christian, for, practically, the Bible is a dead book!’
“The chief leader-writer of that same paper—himself usually regarded as the soundest of Believers, the most trenchant of all Evangelical preachers, writes in one of a series of articles, ‘That the so-called Finished work of Christ, is a doctrine not to be found in scripture,’ and glories in the fact that ‘we never have, and, I trust, we never shall, preach this doctrine.’
“All this but proves the truth of the New Testament prophecies, ‘Perilous times shall come,’ ‘Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.’ If only we could all be induced to read the signs of the times in the light of scripture! we should then realize that we were in the thickest darkness of the world’s blackest night, the darkness immediately preceding the dawn, and we should be looking for ‘the Morning Star.’”
Here, writing with swift, eager pen, he went over the ground covered by Major H——, as regarded the signs of the coming of the Lord—the movement among the Jews; their excitement, as a race, over the date discovery 5,666; the preparations for the rebuilding of the Temple. Then the increased effort in the Foreign Mission fields. The growth of the spirit of lawlessness in the world, and in the church. The multiplicity of spiritualistic devices—doctrine of Devils. The awakening of all real, true, spiritually-minded Bible students to the fact of Christ’s near Return. And the great, but often disregarded sign, “the scoffers who shall say where is the promise of His coming? for, since the Fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.”
“But He will come! He is near at hand! Every sign of the times proclaims this! It is night, now, and He will come as a thief in the night. At any moment now we may look for Him. Before this news-sheet, damp from the press, is in the hands of my readers, Christ may have come and taken away every one of His own Believing people—I shall be missing, another here, and another there will be missing.
“And when a puzzled, troubled London shall be gathering in business, that saying shall have come to pass, ‘The one shall be taken, the other left!’ (For though this word is primarily Jewish in its application, it will yet have a measure of meaning for the world, when the Church is taken away).
“May every Christian be ready to meet His Lord, when He shall come, and every unready, unsaved soul who reads these ‘Prophet’s Chamber’ columns, seek the face of God through faith in the Atoning work of Jesus Christ. For, believe me, His Return is very near, to some of us the sound of His footfalls is even now in our ears.”
He bent his head over the written sheets, praying God to bless the message. Then an interruption came. A knock at the door, and his sub, Ralph Bastin entered.