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Dr. H. D. Mitchell, pastor of the Metropolitan Methodist Church, Wash ington, D. C., says':- ' “ I protest against the persistent misrepresentation of those who believe and teach the premillennial coming of Jesus. It is, in my estimation, a distinct loss to the church not to see the plain Scriptural setting of this truth. It is the how which spans the darkened heavens during this stormy period in history. It is the abiding hope of the believer. If it pleased God in the fullness of time to manifest Himself in the flesh, as He did two thousand years ago, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem, who will dare to deny Him the right to send the same Jesus again, when the fullness of the Gentiles be come in, to establish the long delayed King dom? How dare we put our opinions against the revealed purposes of God?” Bishop Stephen Merrill says: “ I believe in the bodily and visible appearing of the Lord Jesus a second time without sin unto salvation.” Bishop Wilson T. Hogue says: - “ According to the Scripture the dawning of the age so long foretold hy prophecy and so long and ardently hoped for by devout men in all the ^world, awaits the return of Jesus Christ to our world to consummate redemption s pur pose and to gather in the final harvest of His redeeming work. Hence the Chris tians of the apostolic age and of the early centuries of Christian history, made much of the doctrine of the Lord’s return and the hope of His epiphany was to them a constant motive to all sobriety, diligence, watchfulness, zeal, patience, heroism and also to purity of life, and was likewise a source of deepest consola tion in times of darkness and sorrow and of abounding peace and triumphant joy under all the adverse conditions of their career.” Dr. J. Forest Silver, preacher and author of Pittsburgh, says : “ I took up the study of second coming truth With a very firm belief that the wotld would become better and that the preaching of the Gospel would bring the millennium before the return of Christ. The idea of a premillennial return^ of Christ was regarded as a dream of fancy, a foolish heresy. But after reading what historians have to say about the faith of the early church during the first three centuries of the Christian era, and especially after examining the original evidence contained in the ancient manuscripts, it seemed irreverent to scoff at that which our fathers proclaimed as the teaching delivered unto them by Christ and the apostles. Laying aside all prejudice, a sober exhaustive study was begun. It led to a conviction of mind and heart that our Redeemer will appear before the millennium.” Dr. C. F. Wimberly, B.A., Methodist preacher and author, says: “ These days can be none other than the ‘perilous times’ that try men’s souls — the last days. Thank God, we believe with an unfaltering trust in the early
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