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The Warning of the End

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 23, 1873

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 43, No. 2.

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The Warning of the End.

By Uriah Smith

It was shown last week, from reasons which we think all must consider sound, that we may apply ourselves to the study of the book of Revelation with the utmost confidence that earnestness, sincerity, and prayer, will enable us to understand it.
The book is composed, as even a hasty glance at its contents will show, of many separate and distinct lines of prophecy. These are not consecutive, one line being completely fulfilled before another commences; but they are synchronous, the events predicted in one prophetic chain occurring, in many cases, at the same time with those contained in another. Thus the seven churches reveal the internal history of the church during the gospel dispensation; the seven seals, the history of the church, as connected with outside agents, during the same time; the seven trumpets, the great political events occurring during the same period; and so with the other lines of the prophecy.
Having been taken down through one series of events, we are carried back to the commencement of another. Each line of prophecy reaches to the eternal state, and there ends. When we are carried through to the completion of one series of events, another is introduced, and we are taken down through that to the end, in like manner.
According to these principles, we find a new line of prophecy introduced in the sixth verse of Rev. 14. We call attention to this one, because it is as important as any that can be found in the Revelation. With a few brief steps we are brought down to the great event of all events—the second coming of Christ in the clouds of heaven.
Three angels are seen by John flying through the midst of heaven with important and solemn announcements to the children of men; and immediately, following their three-fold message, one like the Son of man is seen, throned upon a great white cloud, and coming with a sharp sickle in his hand to reap the harvest of the earth. This can represent nothing else but the second advent of Christ, so frequently and plainly predicted in other portions of the Holy Scriptures. These messages, then, are preparatory to that event, and are warnings of it. They show that the coming of Christ is not to occur unheralded. Whenever they are given, they not only make known to the world the coming of the great day of Christ's appearing, but they are themselves one of the strongest signs of its near approach.
Verses 6 and 7 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.”
This is a message from God to men. It concerns every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, on the face of the earth. We want to understand it. “Blessed are they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein; for the time is at hand.” When the time comes for this prophecy to be fulfilled, men are to fear God, and give glory to him, for the reason that the hour of his Judgment is come. If they fail to do this, they disobey, or at least fail to come up to, this prophetic requirement. But how can they obey this message, unless they can know when it is fulfilled?
Yet some would have us feel that we must not try to understand this matter, because the language is figurative. That the language is figurative, or that a symbol is made use of in this message, we acknowledge; but shall we take fright at a figure of speech? Shall we refuse to listen, whenever the language is symbolic? No one is alarmed at figurative language in any other kind of writing. The fourth-of-July orator will spread the “wings” of the “American eagle” from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and fill the sails of the “ship of State” with the “prosperous gales of peace,” and send her bounding away over the “billows of national glory;” but no one denounces the speaker or his theme, because he uses a figure. We only ask that the Bible shall have as fair a chance as any other book.
Archbishop Cranmer, when examiner in the university at Cambridge, gave the true rule of Biblical interpretation. D'Aubigne thus writes of him: “He used to say to the candidates for the ministry: ‘Christ sendeth his hearers to the Scriptures, and not to the church.’ ‘But,’ replied the monks, ‘they are so difficult.’—‘Explain the obscure passages by those which are clear,’ rejoined the professor, ‘Scripture by Scripture. Seek, pray, and he who has the key of David will open them to you.’”
On this true Protestant principle of interpretation, the great Reformation was based. And the same principle is the foundation of all the progress which truth has made from that day to this. Let scripture interpret scripture, and let the literal language of the Bible explain its figures.
The prophecy we have quoted says that an angel was seen proclaiming the everlasting gospel. The preaching of the gospel is no figure of speech, but a literal work. The angel is the symbol. But by whom is the gospel literally preached? By angels? No; but by men; for into the hands of men this work was committed by the great Teacher. The angel, then, is a symbol of those who are called among men to preach God's word; and the prophecy is simply an announcement of this fact: that at some time a class of religious teachers would be raised up to make the proclamation here recorded. Have they ever appeared?
U. S.