PATRICK'S
          PERSPECTIVE

Issue #3 - March 1993

The Hastening Time Is Upon Us
D&C 141:5

This prophetic announcement first came to the church sixty-eight years ago (D&C 135:2b). We are about to close the door on the twentieth century, and as the name of the church implies, we are living in the "latterdays". The hastening time is upon us. Members of the Reorganization have long been stirred by this phrase, "the hastening time". It stands along side other similar restoration utterances such as, "the dispensation of the fullness of times: (D&C 110:20d), "the times of the Gentiles" (D&C 45:3f), or "the great day of the Lord" (D&C 49:5a).

What does the hastening time really mean? Perhaps, there is no set of words which can fully or adequately disclose its meaning to us, yet, there is a deep sense of urgency felt on the part of many due to its prophetic heritage: "and except those days be shortened, there should be no flesh saved; but for the elect's sake, according to the covenant, those days shall be shortened" (Mark 13:22).

Surely its fundamental and dynamic message to us is that time is running out and there is an ever increasing need to respond with unreserved devotion to the cause of Christ. On every hand we see the tempest of economic, social, political, moral and spiritual upheaval. America the beautiful is beginning to unravel. A new civil war has broken out in our Republic. It is being waged in our streets, schools, businesses and homes, as well as the church. There is a clear and unmistakable testimony of those insidious forces at work, attempting to overhaul, in a single generation, those godly values which have under girded and sustained us, both as a nation, and as a church.

For latter-day Israel there is however, great reason for hope. That hope is Zion. Zion is the ideal toward which this church marches, revealing our purpose, as well as foretelling our divine destiny; and yet for one hundred sixty-three years the cause of Zion has eluded us. As one latter-day preacher has so poignantly stated: "Zion has not been weighed in the balances and found wanting, she has been tried, found difficult and left undone."1

The demand for Zion is still here. The gospel is still true and the changed emphasis of our day should only be a means of vindicating its claims and enhancing its ministry. Zion is the chief function of this church and the heritage of the people of God. The promise has been given that as "the church shall move forward in its great work, the fulfillment of prophecy may cause the Saints to tremble at the exhibition of divine power, yet they shall rejoice in the protection of his grace" (D&C 135:4b).

Zion shall be realized even as the poets and seers of the Restoration have testified: "Though the vision may linger, and the time seem o'er-due it is writ by God's finger, it must surely come true"2

The hastening time should prompt a sense of urgency and renewed passion within us to rise above the carelessness and indifference, which has weakened our testimony, and begin to consider with earnestness and sincerity, the promise of the Kingdom while it is yet called today.

Patrick S. McKay Sr.

Endnotes:

1 Seventy T.E. Thomas

2 "Like the Brook to the Valley" Elbert A. Smith