The World Is Nearing An End (1899)

Ohio, 1899

THE WORLD

Is Nearing an End the Rev. Mr. Boardman Says.

Annual Meeting of Seventh Day Adventists Near Akron — R. R. Kennedy, of Wheelersburg, Is President.

The Seventh Day Adventists of Ohio are in session at Randolph park, near Akron. The service will continue for ten days. About one thousand members are present. A telegram from there states that Rev. R. A. Boardman, of Mt. Vernon, who several years ago held forth here in a tent at Chillicothe and Eighth streets, in a sermon said the end of the world was near at hand.

"We believe in the near coming of Christ," he said. "The signs indicate that the destruction of the world will come soon. I'll not set a date, but the signs are very strong that the end is near, very near. Noah was many years in building the ark. He was scoffed at when he preached about the destruction of the world by a flood. We are sometimes scoffed at, yet we are faithful in our belief, and have just as good assurance that Christ will come soon as did Noah that the earth would be destroyed by a flood.

"The twenty-fourth chapter of St. Matthew contains in it a reference to many of the signs indicative that the world is near the end. The twenty-ninth verse of that chapter reads: 'Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken.' Now, really that on the 13th day of November, 1833, it was dark throughput the entire world, no moon shone the night following, and the stars fell in showers.

The twelfth verse of the sixth chapter of Revelations also refers in prophecy to the dark day, reading: 'And I beheld when he opened the sixth seal, and lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood.' I might cite many other instances which give us good reason for believing that the world is near the end."

R. R. Kennedy, of Wheelersburg, who is president and state organizer of the Adventists, is present at the annual session mentioned above.

—The Portsmouth Daily Times, Portsmouth, OH, Aug. 2, 1899, page 6.