Editorial Comment  - HT 60

"Ain't it Funny, How Time Slips Away" is the title of an old song that can be recalled by many of us who are part of the older generation. Anyone over fifty years old can recall so many events of the past years which have left their marks upon our memories. It still seems like just yesterday when some of those occurred. But pondering on them alerts us to the hard-to-imagine understanding that it may have been twenty, thirty, forty or more years since their occurrence. Hard to imagine, isn't it?

Today, through the events happening around the world and through our insights into the Scriptures, we have come to more fully understand that we are truly living in the latter days; the days of hastening are upon us.

As Latter Day Saints, we have always been intrigued by the expression, "the hastening time." It brings to our minds the fulfillment and completion of many events prophesied for these days, such as 'the fullness of times,' 'the times of the Gentiles,' 'the restitution of all things,' and other such statements which point our minds to the future days. Seldom do we hear any other body of faith quote this phrase as often as we do within the Restoration Movement.

So, what does 'the hastening times' mean as related to us and the days ahead for mankind? Likely each and every member of the Church, every Christian in fact, would have his or her own definition of it, but we can rest assured that its full impact is most assuredly beyond our current understanding of time and circumstance. But we do know what is at the heart of this idea of "the hastening time" – that time is running out and there is the urgent need for each of us to be about the business of the Father, to prepare ourselves and this world for the coming Kingdom. And within that realization comes also the understanding that there must be great spiritual energies extended from God to mankind to meet the deepest and most urgent needs of our time.

As we of the Remnant Church, and those of our brothers and sisters within the Restoration Movement, have come to know, much of the past understanding of religious practices and beliefs of God's relationship with His children no longer go deep enough. Through revelation and the heavenly insights available to us in these latter days, and ultimately to the world through our witness, many leaders of religious thought are beginning to use terms and language which once were only common within our faith. Words such as Zion, consecration, communion, and heavenly glories are now beginning to take on deeper meanings with people of other faiths. They are beginning to understand that the gospel of salvation must justify itself on this earth as well as be relevant in heaven. They are acknowledging that the only hope for sinful men, and for a sinful society, is the intervention of Divinity to cleanse their lives and offer them full salvation. We pray that God will guide, strengthen, and quicken us as we will allow Him, lest all mankind be lost. The grace of God, blended with our efforts to become like the Christ, affords us that promise.

The Apostle Paul wrote:

"...where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." Our "hastening time" testimony is a very simple one: that when sin has spread beyond all its earlier barriers and has taken to itself the wings of the morning, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ does "much more abound."

THE FIRST PRESIDENCY.