The Third Angel's Message by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 11, 1909

The Third Angel's Message

By C. M. S.

What Does It Mean to Us?

For eighteen hundred years men have been reading the messages of the three angels of Revelation 14. In spite of the fact that the prophet was forbidden to seal “the words of the prophecy of this book,” which contained these messages, and in spite of the fact that the messages committed to these angels contained the most striking, emphatic, and solemn language used in the Bible, no people ever took up those messages to give them to the world until the time of this last generation came. As the book containing them is the book of God, and the messages his messages, we know that his hand has overruled in reserving these for the people of our day.

In this is shown the logical consistency of the gospel plan and work. The first message declares that “the hour of his judgment is come.” That message was not due in the days of the apostles, nor in the days of the Reformation. It was not due until the work of the investigative judgment was to be taken up in heaven. But it was due then, and began to be given then.

Likewise the message of the second angel was not due until Babylon—the fallen church—could be pronounced by heaven as “fallen,” and the cause of the ruin of nations.

Neither could the message of the third angel have been given with consistency to any generation earlier than our own. A generation ago there was no “image of the beast” in visible process of formation. To-day there is; and so comes the warning: “If any man worshipeth the beast and his image, and receiveth a mark on his forehead, or upon his hand, he also shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is prepared unmixed in the cup of his anger; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb.”

The conditions which make such warnings necessary have all come to pass.

The investigative judgment has been entered upon, and in harmony with the declared purpose of God to do nothing without making it known to his servants, the prophets (Amos 3:7), that act is made known in the first angel's message.

When fallible men deigned to impute the characteristic of deity to a mere man—the head of the papal system—thus exalting him to the place of God, heaven's declaration of the complete fallen condition of that system was due; and it was given. Men declared the pope infallible. God declared the whole system of which the pope was the head, “fallen, fallen.” That message, like the other, has gone through the earth, and Babylon herself has heard it. Her priests deny the charge, while they preach the doctrines of darkness that make it apply. They bind the consciences of men that would lead them to the light, and they put out the light itself by withholding and burning the Word that contains it. They preach Christ crucified, and then put him away from us by putting another who has no power to help us between us and him. They exalt and carry about his crucified image, and then crucify him afresh in the persecution of his humble followers wherever they can so shape the laws of the land as to make such persecutions possible. They reap a golden harvest from their living devotees by pretending to pray their departed loved ones out of a place of torment invented for the occasion. Thus do they, as the prophet declares (Rev. 18:13), traffic in the “souls of men.” A glance at the history of the system wherever it has dominated any land, compels one instinctively to declare with the prophet, “fallen, fallen, is Babylon.”

But we are living in the days when the warning of the third angel is due. The “beast” which John saw did not pass away with the reception of its “deadly wound.” “His death stroke was healed.” Another power was to come upon the scene that would have sufficient influence to speak to the world and have its suggestions heeded. It speaks, and an image to that death-smitten “beast” is formed, and life is given to it, and it also speaks, demanding for itself what had been exacted by the “first beast,”—the worship of the world, with the penalty of death for refusal to worship. The “first beast” had demanded such worship under threat of a similar penalty, and had carried out the penalty. The “image” proposes in all things to be like the original.

Now forces are at work with feverish haste to bring about the very conditions foretold by the prophet. The whole plan has been laid out by the master of deception with cunning exactness. The proper conditions are being rapidly brought about in all parts of the world, and just such forces are wheeling into line as would be needed for the execution of his plans. A church losing the sense of the supreme value of souls, has been blinded by a sense of the supposed sacredness of a papal institution, and the necessity of forcing it upon the people. Through that procedure the way is opened for the combined forces of Protestantism to bring themselves under the leadership of the papacy, and bring about the consummation foretold in the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of Revelation. Such a course is the most disastrous recorded in the Word of God. It is the last great apostasy of the professed church of Christ, and brings to a completion the work of sin in the earth so far as its power to influence future results is concerned.

It is not to be supposed that God would permit such a terrible consummation without warning the world concerning it and its consequences; neither has he. The third angel's message is God's protest against men's yielding to the deceptions that bring about that disastrous consummation. The time has come for the message, and the message is being given to the world. The people who are giving it are few in number when compared with the great religious bodies of the world, and when compared with the population of the great nations of the world. But this people is not set the task of converting the world, but of warning the world. The prophecy itself indicates that the great majority will turn a deaf ear to the warning. The warning is given not only to save souls, but to witness against those who would not be saved through its instrumentality. “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all the nations; and then shall the end come.” Matt. 24:14. If each of the one hundred thousand Seventh-day Adventists would give the message to ten persons each year, the remainder of the work of warning the world would be accomplished in a few years. Many are doing much more than this. Some are doing practically nothing. Many who long for the eternal rest and joy in the mansions of the redeemed are doing nothing to bring about the completion of the work that must first be accomplished. Such are not ready for the promised rest, and could not expect to hear the Master's “Well done,” if he were to come while they are thus idle. Every believer in this message should be a dispenser of the light which he has received. Every church of Seventh-day Adventists should be a light that could not be hid or quenched. We “believe the message;” but if we let it fall dead upon our doorstep, we can not consistently expect a share in the reward of the faithful workers. Bearing it in person to others, sending it in printed form where we can not go ourselves, and giving liberally of the means over which God has made us stewards,—these are the ways whereby we can share in the closing work and in the rest beyond.

While God's restraining power is being withdrawn from the earth, and calamity after calamity is befalling the people; while the powers of darkness are marshaling the forces for the last powerful onset, it behooves every lover of this message to stand in his lot and place, ready to go, give, or send, that a quick work may be done, and the saints be gathered home.

C. M. S.