Anno Domini

“ The date of the Nativity as fixed according to our common computation of Anni Domini (first put forward by Dionysius Exiguus at Rome early in the 6th century) has long been recognized to be too late. The fathers of the primitive church had been nearer the truth with the years 3 or 2 B.C. (see Irenaeus, Haer. 111. xxi. 3 [xxiv. 2] ; Clement of Alexandria, Strom. i. 21, p. 147; Hippolytus, in Danielem, iv. ed. Bonwetsch, p. 242; [Tertullian] , adv. Judaeos, 8) . ”

“ For as Christ at His first Advent came in great infirmity of the flesh, in poverty and contempt, so He hath thereby deserved to come in His second Advent with great strength, glory, and majesty. His Power and strength shall appear in that at His command all the dead shall arise in a moment; in that all men, angels, and devils shall behold and worship Him as their God, their Lord, and their judge ”

“ And those who participated in that movement are not the only ones who can now go back in their experience, and feast upon the faith-reviving, soul-inspiring realities of the past. Those who have since embraced the Advent faith and hope, and who have seen in the three messages, of Revelation xiv, the past consecration and blessedness, the present work of preparation, and the future glory, may go back with us to the autumn of 1844, and with us share the rekindling of the heavenly illumination. Was that our Jerusalem, where we waited for, and enjoyed, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit? ”

“ Seven scores, seven scores, seven hundreds of saints,
And seven thousands and seven ten scores,
November a number implored,
Though martyrs good they came.
Fifteen scores of saints there were
And three thousand children of Morialis.
In these Decembers above relatives
Over the head of Jesus utter sighs.
Twelve thousand in the convention
Believed through the voice of John.
They worship, they deserve a portion,
In heaven they will not be angry. ”

“ From Advent, with which the Church Year begins, to Trinity, our Lord is set before us in His life and His work. "We live over again, year by year, the time of the Incarnation from Bethlehem to Bethany." The design is to "bring out, and to bring home to the minds and hearts of all who shall reverently use these holy festivals and fasts, the great representative facts of Christ's life—to exhibit and to glorify Him. ”

“ If the true history of the advent doctrine from 1842 to the autumn of 1844, had, with the subsequent events in our history up to 1848, been published 1800 years ago from the Advent Heralds, and their conductors had been called the fathers—it would have puzzled all the wise heads in Christendom, in this age, to have expounded their meaning; for we see it requires all the energies of the human mind to trace their crooked tracks, even when right before us. ”

“ Therefore it is the intention of the Church that we should every year contemplate with her the life of Christ from its beginning to its end. In Advent we should, by repentance and longing expectation, prepare the way for the coming of our Redeemer into our hearts; in Lent we should, by penance and mortification, participate in His sufferings, die to sin, and spiritually rise with Him to a new life at Easter. ”

“ All this may possibly serve as some explanation for the fact that the Christian Church, as such, has no fast for the last day of the year, no festival for New Year's Day except one quite unconnected with the lessons which may be drawn from the flight of time. The death of the old year, the birth of the new year, have touching associations for us. But the Church consecrates no death but that of Jesus and His martyrs, no nativity but that of her Lord, and of one whose birth was directly connected with His own—John the Baptist. ”

“ Every New Year’s Day the sacristan comes and puts a morsel of the holy bread in her mouth, and that is all she has to live on. Long, long has she rued her fatal wish who set this transient life above the eternal joys of heaven. ”

“ Let the painful history of the past relative to those who have said in their hearts, “My Lord delayeth his coming,” have apostatized and have been scattered to the world and to Satan, be a warning to all to be ever “looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God.”
When the warning voice of the first angel was first heard, it found the nominal churches asleep upon the subject of the second advent, dreaming of the world’s conversion. But the truth was clear, and in the hands of devoted men, was powerful. Every where the message was proclaimed it produced general conviction. ”

“ When Jesus Christ, our Saviour, was born on Christmas-day.
God rest ye, little children; let nothing you affright,
For Jesus Christ, your Saviour, was born this happy night;
Along the hills of Galilee the white flocks sleeping lay.
When Christ, the child of Nazareth, was born on Christmas-day.
God rest ye, all good Christians; upon this blessed morn
The Lord of all good Christians was of a woman born:
Now all your sorrows He doth heal, your sins He takes away;
For Jesus Christ, our Saviour, was born on Christmas-day. ”

“ It may be that the event expressed by the dramatic picture of the Second Advent of the Christ is simply the revelation of the fact of His Eternal Presence at once as Saviour and as Judge; however this may be, the picture stands for the assurance of His final triumph, and the vindication of His Kingdom in its fulness: and as such it is the object of Christian hope—"Hallowed be Thy Name; Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done; in earth, as it is in Heaven." ”

“ The infinite love of God the Father, Who, according to His promise, sent His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem mankind. This holy season begins with the first Sunday in Advent, and ends with the sixth Sunday after Epiphany.
What does the Church commemorate at Easter?
The infinite love of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Who, by His life, His works, His passion, death, and resurrection, accomplished our redemption, and then ascended into heaven there to be our mediator. This holy season begins with Septuagesima Sunday, and ends at the vigil of Pentecost. ”

“ Two distinct advents are plainly taught in Scripture. The first, of Jesus’ birth as a Babe in Bethlehem, the second as ‘Son of Man’—glorified, who shall come in the clouds. Now, every Christian will admit, nay, more, the very worldling admits the fact that every Scripture relating to the first advent, as to time, place, circumstances, was literally fulfilled, even to the minutest [125] detail. Then, in the name of common-sense, with the same covenant Scriptures in our hands, why should we not expect to see the predictions relating to the second advent also fulfilled to the very letter? ”

“ Many of you, my brethren, can witness to the saving influence of preaching “the kingdom of God at hand,” as a motive to repentance, and to a godly life and conversation. 5. We have the consolation of seeing many of our best ministers renouncing the doctrine of the temporal millennium, believing in the Second Advent as near at hand; and the kingdom of God in its glorified state about to be established on the ruins of the kingdoms of this world; the resurrection of the just, and judgment of the saints; the reign of Christ on the earth 1000 years ”

“ The first Sunday may be as early as 27 November, and then Advent has twenty-eight days, or as late as 3 December, giving the season only twenty-one days. With Advent the ecclesiastical year begins in the Western churches. During this time the faithful are admonished to prepare themselves worthily to celebrate the anniversary of the Lord's coming into the world as the incarnate God of love, thus to make their souls fitting abodes for the Redeemer coming in Holy Communion and through grace, and thereby to make themselves ready for His final coming as judge, at death and at the end of the world. ”

“ The Nativity has become a subject for private contemplation, for individual devotion, instead of, as in the later Middle Ages, a matter for common jubilation, a wonder-story that really happened, in which, all alike and all together, the serious and the frivolous could rejoice, something that, with all its marvel, could be taken as a matter of course, like the return of the seasons or the rising of the sun on the just and on the unjust. ”

“ HAVING taught us on the first Sunday of Advent to sigh with the prophets for the redemption through Christ, the Church on this day reminds us, in the holy sacrifice of the Mass, of the joyful promises of God for the salvation of the gentiles, and of Jesus Christ's actual coming, in order to quicken our desire for it, and to produce in us an alacrity in making ready our hearts by penance and love. ”

“ On Christmas Day, however, several masses are said on account of Christ's threefold nativity. Of these the first is His eternal birth, which is hidden in our regard. and therefore one mass is sung in the night, in the "Introit" of which we say: "The Lord said unto Me: Thou art My Son, this day have I begotten Thee." The second is His nativity in time, and the spiritual birth, whereby Christ rises "as the day-star in our [Vulg.: 'your'] hearts" (2 Pet. 1:19) , and on this account the mass is sung at dawn, and in the "Introit" we say: "The light will shine on us today." ”

“ Surely no religion in the world can equal the sublime teachings of the New Year's day and the Day of Atonement, first filling the heart of mortal man with awe before the Judge of the world and then cheering it with the assurance of God's paternal love being ever ready to extend mercy to His repentant children. ”

“ It is the key to the great Advent movement, making all plain. Without it the movement is inexplicable.
Seventh-day Adventists dwell upon this subject with great delight. It opens to them the ark of God, in which is seen the ten precepts of his law. They keep them. It presents Jesus before the mercy-seat, ready to plead the cause of sinners, who in the spirit of penitence and confession, go to him for help. They love and seek to obey him, so that it is said of them, “Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” ”

“ The world can bear testimony to this. The cry, ‘The hour of his Judgment is come,’ sounded through all Christendom. The multitudes heard, and scoffed, or trembled. By what body of believers was this proclamation made? Not by those who taught that that Judgment was a thousand years in the future. No church which holds to the doctrine of a spiritual reign can be that body, as the elements of their proclamation flatly contradict those elements above stated. Such a body now existing can be found alone among those who constitute the Advent believers in Europe and America. ”

“ The teaching of Advent, all important as it is, too often affects but little such poor creatures of the present as we are. We are exhorted to look back to the first coming of Christ, to see what He suffered and did for us, what a foundation He laid for us to build on. We are exhorted to look forward to the second advent, to consider what Christ will do, to anticipate the glorious completion of us in Him as the building of God. ”

“ They are to her an earnest of what is coming, an earnest of the Advent of her Lord. St. Bernard says that His Advent is threefold, that He comes in three different ways: (1) In the flesh and in weakness, (2) in the spirit and in power, (3) in glory and in majesty. [Pg 2]
The Church knows how much these three Comings mean to her children, and so at the first sign of dawn she forgets the long weary night, and calls to each one: "Arise, be enlightened for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee." "Behold the Bridegroom cometh, go ye forth to meet Him." ”

“ They are a part of the Divine order, stamped on all lives, on all worlds. Our days and nights keep their alternate step; our seasons observe their processional order, singing in antiphonal responses; while our world, geared in with other worlds, strikes off our earthly years and days with an absolute precision. So, now, the time of the Advent has been Divinely chosen, for whole millenniums unalterably fixed; nor have the cries of Israel's impatient hopes been allowed to hurry forward the Divine purpose, so making it premature. ”

“ The future Coming, in "glory and in majesty" when He shall "come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead," and when all will be forced to rise and go to meet Him whether they will or not. It is those, who have risen voluntarily to meet their God in His second Coming, who will have no fear of the third. The second Coming, then, the Coming in grace, is the most practical one for us as we begin our Advent, and upon it we will meditate in our third point. ”

“ Allusion is made to Sunday under the character of a festival, as a symbol of a new life, consecrated to the Lord in opposition to the old Sabbath, in the epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians: “If they who were brought up under the Old Testament have attained to a new hope, and no longer keep [Jewish] Sabbaths holy, but have consecrated their life to the day of the Lord, on which also our life rose up in him, how shall we be able to live without him?” ”

“ You through whom the whole blessed Trinity is glorified and adored, through whom the precious cross is honored and venerated over the whole world, through whom heaven exults, the angels and archangels rejoice, the devils are banished, the tempter is disarmed, the creature that was fallen is restored to heaven, and comes to the knowledge of the truth, through whom holy baptism is instituted, through whom is given the oil of exultation, through whom churches are founded over the whole earth, through whom nations are brought to penance. ”