Signs and Wonders Precede Second Coming

D&C 45:39; These statements found in latter-day revelation continue Jesus' great discourse delivered on the mount of Olives.

D&C 45:39; 39. The Second Coming is not a doctrine to be treated lightly, nor an eventuality to be viewed without concern. Deity well knows that his earthly children need both promised rewards to encourage the works of righteousness and promised penalties to create a dread of doing evil. What doctrine better dramatizes the rewards and penalties awaiting the righteous and the wicked than the doctrine of the Second Coming of the Son of Man? In effect the Lord's saints can be identified by the fact that they are looking forward with understanding "for the great day of the Lord to come."

D&C 45:40-41; 40-41. To understand the nature of the signs and wonders here promised, it is helpful to try and put one's self in the position of the ancient apostles to whom the words were originally spoken. They lived under what we would consider to be comparatively primitive conditions. Travel was at donkey-speed; wars were fought with swords and spears; and the speediest communication was pigeon-slow.

D&C 45:40-41; From their standpoint surely railroads and airplanes, radio and television, and satellites orbiting the earth, were signs and wonders on earth and in heaven. Vapors of smoke remind one of atomic explosions; blood and fire mean war and desolation, all on a scale beyond the imagination of people two thousand years ago. Seemingly, also, the earth itself, and both the atmospheric and sidereal heavens which surround it, are now giving forth more unusual displays of wonderous things than was the case anciently.

D&C 45:42; 42. From the Inspired Version we learn that the signs promised in Matthew 24:29 are to occur after the abomination of desolation sweeps Jerusalem for the second time. They will thus come almost at the very hour of the Second Coming. From other scriptural accounts of these same signs we learn that "the earth shall tremble and reel to and fro as a drunken man" (D&C 88:87), and "shall remove out of her place" (Isaiah 13:10-13); that "the islands shall become one land" (D&C 133:23); and that "the stars shall be hurled from their places." (D&C 133:49.) Thus it would seem, when the Lord makes his appearance and the earth is restored to its paradisiacal state, that there will be great physical changes. When the continents become one land and the earth reels to and fro, with all that then occurs, it will surely appear unto men as though the very stars of heaven were being hurled from their places, and so they will be as far as their relationship to the earth is concerned. That there may be other heavenly bodies, having the appearance of stars, that shall fall on the earth may also well be. Truly the scriptures testify of many signs and wonders in the heavens above. (D&C 29:14; Joel 2:31; Revelation 6:12-17.)