The Time of the Third Angel's Message.
By J.
Having shown that the Third Angel's Message ends with the end of the world, and that the events of which it speaks and against which it pronounces warning are the events which immediately precede the end of the world, we propose now to find by the Scriptures as nearly as possible the time when this message should begin. We believe that the Scriptures reveal the time, and it is only reasonable to expect that they should. For under the threat of the most dreadful penalties, the Third Angel's Message warns all people against the worship of the beast and his image; and if it could not be known when the message should be given, or when it were given, it would be impossible for any one to take advantage of the warning and escape the judgments threatened. From this it would follow that the message could never be given, and consequently it would have been written in vain. But not so. The message was not written in vain. It will surely be given to the world. It will surely gather out a people who will not worship the beast and his image, but who will “worship Him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters;” and so will get “the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name,” and will “stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God.” Jesus said, “The Scripture cannot be broken.” John 10: 35. Then as surely as this scripture has been written, so surely will this message be given to the world, warning them against the worship of the beast and his image; and calling them to the worship of God, by keeping “the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” But for such a message to be given, it must be known; and it can be known only by the word of God—the word of God must reveal the time when it is due to the world. Now let us study this point. Turn to Revelation 14. There, in verse 9, we read: “The third angel followed them.” Followed whom?—Why certain angels that had gone before. The eighth verse says, “There followed another angel.” As this angel likewise “followed” some one, we must go yet farther back. So in the sixth verse we read, “And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come; and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.” We must know then, the time of the angel of the sixth verse, before we can know the time of the angel of the eighth, or of the ninth verse; for the angel of verse 8 follows the angel of verse 6, and the third angel of verse 9, follows both these. Therefore the time of the angel of verse 6 must be known, to know the time of the third angel, verse 9. Notice again verse 6. It does not read, And I saw an angel, but it reads, “And I saw another angel.” By this word “another,” there is direct reference made to some angel or angels that the prophet had seen before. Tracing backward in the book to find what will answer to this we find none until we come to chapter 10: 1, where we read, “And I saw another mighty angel.” But this text also uses the word “another,” and therefore we must go further back. So we go on backward till we come to chapter 8: 13, where we read, “And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven.” Here the word “another” is not used, but simply “I beheld, and heard an angel.” This, then, is the first of certain angels which the prophet saw which the language used will connect directly with the angel of chapter 14: 6, thus: “I beheld, and heard an angel” (chap. 8: 13). “And I saw another mighty angel” (10: 1), “And I saw another angel” (14: 10). Notice further that these angels appear upon the scene in the midst of the events that accompany the last three of the seven trumpet angels. In chapter 8: 2, John saw seven angels to whom were given seven trumpets; and in verse 6 he says, “And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.” Then after the first four had sounded, this angel of chapter 8: 13 appears, when the prophet says, “And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabitants of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpets of the three angels, which are yet to sound.” Now as this angel is connected, by the expressions used, with the angel of chapter 14: 6, and as this angel appears just before the sounding of the fifth trumpet, the sounding of the fifth trumpet is a proper starting point to find the time of the message of chapter 14: 6. If we can find the time of the first trumpet, we can find the time of the angel of chapter 14: 6. In chapter 9: 1—11 is the prophecy of the events of the fifth trumpet, of which says Albert Barnes, “With surprising unanimity, commentators have agreed in regarding this as referring to the empire of the Saracens, or to the rise and progress of the religion and the empire set up by Mohammed.” We cannot see how any one who will read the prophecy, and Gibbon's history of Mohammed and his successors in the light of it, can disagree with the application of the prophecy to the Mohammedans. We cannot here go into a detailed explanation and application of the different points of the prophecy,—for that, see the work, “Thoughts on Daniel and Revelation,” or “The Seven Trumpets,” both published at this office—we can here only notice the time referred to in the prophecy. The rise of Mohammedanism is shown under the symbol of a cloud of locusts, but in verses 7—9 the symbol is explained by the words, “The shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle; . . . and their faces were as the faces of men; . . . and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle.” And says the Scripture, “Their power was to hurt men five months.” Five months are one hundred and fifty days; this being prophetic time—a day for a year—equals one hundred and fifty years, during which they were to hurt men. This one hundred and fifty years is to be counted from the time that they had a king over them, as says verse 11. “They had a king over them . . . whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon (margin a destroyer).” For more than six hundred years the Mohammedans had no regularly organized government, and recognized no such dignitary as that which answers to the title of king. Each tribe, under its own chief, was independent of all the others and came and went as it pleased. While this was the case it is evident, and it is the fact too, that their character as “a destroyer,” was not, and could not be, such as it was after they were solidly united in one government under the sway of a ruler recognized by all. This is made more apparent when it is seen what was to be destroyed by this “destroyer.” The first four trumpets show the ruin of the Western Empire of Rome, and the fifth relates to the destruction of the Eastern Empire. And it is in the character of the final destroyer of the last remains of the Roman Empire that this power acts. It was not as a destroyer of men as such, for of them it is said “that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months,” “and their power was to hurt men five months.” It is evident then that his character and work as “a destroyer,” relates to the final destruction of the Roman Empire which was then represented in the Eastern Empire552with the capital at New Rome—Constantinople. Othman was the caliph who established the organized Government of the Mohammedans, and from him is descended the name and title of the Ottoman Empire. It was under the organized power of Othman that the work of the destroyer began. In closing his account of the devastating rage of the Moguls and Tartars under Zingis Khan and his generals, Gibbon says:— “In this shipwreck of nations [A. D. 1240-1304], some surprise may be excited by the escape of the Roman Empire, whose relics, at the time of the Mogul invasion, were dismembered by the Greeks and Latins.”—Decline and Fall, chap. 64, par. 13. But when the decline of the Moguls gave free scope to the rise of the Moslems, under Othman, of him he says:— “He was situate on the verge of the Greek Empire; the Koran sanctified his gazi, or holy war, against the infidels; and their political errors unlocked the passes of Mount Olympus, and invited him to descend into the plains of Bithynia. . . . It was on July 27, A. D. 1299, that Othman first invaded the territory of Nicomedia; and the singular accuracy of the date seems to disclose some foresight of the rapid and destructive growth of the monster.”—Id., par. 14. The work of destruction, then, which was to subvert the last remains of the Roman Empire began July 27, 1299, and never ceased till the imperial power passed into the hands of Amurath July 27, 1449. Then the first woe was passed, verse 12, and the sixth angel sounded, and the four angels of the Euphrates were loosed “which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year.” This also being prophetic time each day represents a year. A year—360 years, a month 30 years, a day 1 year, an hour, the twenty-fourth part of 360—15 days, altogether—360+30+1—391 years and 15 days. This, from July 27, 1449, onward, gives us August 11, 1840, when the imperial power passed out of the hands of the Ottoman Emperor into the hands of the Great Powers of Europe, just as it passed into his hands 391 years and fifteen days before. Then it was that the second woe passed, and behold the third woe was to come quickly. Chap. 11:14. Then it is between the second and third woes, in the space marked by the word “quickly,” that Rev. 10:1 applies: “And I saw another mighty angel come down from Heaven, clothed with a cloud; . . . and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot upon the earth. . . . And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by Him that liveth forever and ever, who created Heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer; but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.” Notice that this angel refers to the sounding of the seventh trumpet as then future—“the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound.” Of that sounding we read in chapter 11:15: “And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in Heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign forever and ever.” The kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ at the second coming of Christ. Says Paul: “I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom, Preach the word.” 2 Tim. 4:1. When He comes, “He hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, King of kings, and Lord of lords.” Now mark, the sixth trumpet and the second woe ended August 11, A. D. 1840. Then saith the word of God, the third woe and the seventh trumpet comes quickly; and when that comes, the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ. This is at the coming of Christ, and the coming of Christ is the end of the world. The first four trumpets mark the downfall of the Western Empire of Rome; the fifth marks the destruction of the Eastern Empire of Rome; and the seventh trumpet marks the downfall of all empires, all kingdoms, and all nations; for when the God of Heaven sets up his kingdom, “it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms.” Dan. 2:44. The woe of the fifth trumpet was called by Gibbon the “shipwreck of nations;” but the woe of the seventh trumpet will be not only the shipwreck of nations, but of the great globe itself, for in Rev. 11:19, among the events of the seventh trumpet—the third woe—are that earthquake by which every mountain and island are moved out of their places, and that great hail, both of which come in the seventh plague, when God “ariseth to shake terribly the earth,” and the great voice is heard out of the temple of Heaven from the throne, saying, It is done. Rev. 16:17-21. Further consideration of this subject must be deferred until next week.