Adventist Faith in "Soon and Very Soon"

Time seems to be gaining speed every day, we are in a late fall and it fells like our summer chores are not done yet. 161 years ago this time of the year believers chose not to harvest their fields expecting Jesus to come.
Imagine counting days, looking around at things you got used to and expecting it all to be burned up. How exactly should one be living when expecting to face his or her life's record at the judgment bar of God in just a few more weeks? Am I really ready to meet Jesus? Have I done all in my power to help others—my friends, relatives, and even strangers—to be ready to meet Him too?
This month (October 2005) marks an important anniversary for Seventh-day Adventists. It holds the 161st anniversary of both the Day of Great Expectation—October 22, 1844—and the Day of Great Disappointment—October 23, 1844. This anniversary brings year after year a degree of embarrassment for some within our ranks whom, I suspect, would just as soon forget anything and everything connected with 1844.
Why did they preach the “soon” coming of Jesus? Well, because Jesus Himself said so—four times, for instance, in the very last book of the New Testament—and three times alone in its very last chapter!”
“Behold, I come quickly” (Rev. 3:11).
“Behold, I come quickly” (Rev. 22:7).
“Behold, I come quickly” (verse 12).
“Surely I come quickly” (verse 20).
And He said that almost 2000 years ago. How soon is soon? I don’t know. All I know that His patience allowed the delay, not wishing that anyone would perish. (2Peter 3:9) Since then, 2000 years ago Peter wrote to the Christians of his day, telling them not only to earnestly “look” for Christ’s second coming but also to attempt to “hasten” it along, by quickly finishing the work Christ had given them to do in spreading the gospel to everyone (2 Peter 3:12).
Eighteen hundred years later Ellen White underscored the same idea. Less than two years before her death in 1915 she wrote: “By giving the gospel to the world, it is in our power to hasten the coming of the day of God.” (Review and Herald, Nov. 13, 1913; cited in God’s Amazing Grace, 353.)
LeRoy Edwin Froom, in his monumental work, Movement of Destiny, helpfully points out that Ellen White echoes Peter a total of 45 times in the 61 years between 1850 and 1911. Each time she says essentially the same thing: If we Adventists had properly done our job, the Lord would have come before now.
Apostle Paul preaching in Athens teld the Greek philosophers of that city, “[God] hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained” (Acts 17:31).
Dr. Froom goes on to cite another 13 statements, made between 1863 and 1915—a parallel period of 52 years—in which Ellen White echoes Paul, indicating that there is a final “backstop” date, a “predetermined boundary line irrevocably ‘fixed,’” beyond which God will not indefinitely wait.
My dear brothers and sisters, we’ve got work to do! And we should pull together closer in support of each even more as we see the Day Approaching.