THE LAST THREEFOLD MESSAGE.
SOMETIME this age will close, as truly as have all the others in the past. Sometime the long night of travail and sorrow, pain and anguish, will be over and the golden dawn which knows no night, will break over the hills of eternity. Of the characters of the inhabitants of that new era it is said: "Thy people shall be all righteous." Surely that is not the condition of this age. Everywhere in God's Word its corruption is pointed out; everywhere we are told it will end. All signs indicate that the end is near. A better age is coming. May we share it? What is necessary on our part that we may? What has God done on His part that we may be ready? What remedy has He provided to heal the world's multitudinous ills? What has He to heal the divisions, the confusion of this age? God calls it Babylon, for "Babylon" means "confusion,"—confusion of creeds and beliefs and non-beliefs and theories and fancies and sophistries and dreams and traditions and philosophies and superstitions, of which the old world is full? How are the scattered, disorganized forces of His remnant army to be rallied? What is His standard to be lifted aloft? What is the rallying cry which will bring order out of the chaos, Zion out of Babylon? For surely without prejudice the present condition of Christendom is well termed Babylon, confusion. Its creeds are numerous as its heavenward-pointing spires. Every "wind of doctrine" is blowing. The old "landmarks" are submerged. Many churches have swung from the rigid power of creed to a liberalism which makes of none effect the work of Christ, and places the salvation of the poor sinner in himself, his hope in long ages of evolution. God has a standard to be lifted; for "when the adversary shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of Jehovah will lift up a standard against him." Isa. 59:19. Therefore God calls to His servants: "Go through, go through the gates; prepare ye the way of the people; cast up, cast up the highway; gather out the stones; lift up an ensign for the peoples" "Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy Salvation cometh; behold, His reward is with Him, and His work before Him." Isa. 62:10, 11. God has a gathering call: "Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation that hath no shame ["longing"]; before the decree bring forth, before the day pass as the chaff, before the fierce anger of Jehovah come upon you, before the day of Jehovah's anger come upon you. Seek ye Jehovah, all ye meek of the earth, that have kept His ordinances; seek righteousness, seek meekness; it may be ye will be hid in the day of Jehovah's anger." Zeph. 2:1-3. This standard and this call are more fully set forth in the great threefold message of Rev. 14:6-12, as follows: "And I saw another angel flying in mid heaven, having eternal good tidings to proclaim unto them that dwell on the earth, and unto every nation and tribe and tongue and people; and he saith with a great voice, Fear God, and give Him glory; for the hour of His judgment is come; and worship Him that made the heaven and the earth and sea and fountains of waters." "And another, a second angel, followed, saying, Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, that hath made all the nations to drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication." "And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a great voice, 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; and the smoke of their torment goeth up forever and ever; and they have no rest day and night, they that worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name. Here is the patience of the saints, they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." Rev. 14:6-12. Of old God desired to cure Babylon. "We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed." In this day He desires to heal the divisions and diseases of modern Babylon. The first angel's message is the potent, healing remedy. It is the everlasting Gospel, the power of God unto salvation to every believing soul. It bears as a part of its all-comprehending burden a special message for the present hour, when human "justice is turned away backward:" "The hour of His judgment is come." The last High Court of Appeal is sitting, and will soon close. In view of that, "Fear God, and give Him glory; worship Him," the Creator of the heaven and earth. It is a time of man-fearing and man-worship. Men bow to men. Men worship creeds in stone and paper, worship idols of silver and gold, worship constitutions and state, worship halting, limping "science," while God is forgotten. Let the church return to the fear of God, reverence for His Word; let her serve God—the highest form of worship (Matt. 4:10); let her turn from her traditions, her creeds, her constitutions of dead hands, to the oracles of the living God; let her cut loose from the world, its pleasures, its follies, its principles, its customs, and let her "fear God, and give Him glory," and "worship Him," the Creator, taking the Lord Jesus Christ in His fulness as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that power and union will be seen for which Christ prayed and suffered and died. John 17. Federation will not then be needed or even asked for. Union, life-union, will bind together the hearts of God's children, error will give place to truth, and condemnation to righteousness, and the glory of God will be seen upon His people. Isa. 60:1, 2. First of all the message has gone to the churches. "Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in My holy mountain;" that ever is the first step, then, "let all the inhabitants of the land tremble." First Jerusalem and Judea, then Galilee, Samaria, and the world. Ever since 1844 that message has been going forth. How has the church, in her Babylon of creeds, received it?—A few have accepted it in every community, evidencing that the message was clear enough and strong enough to reach hearts. But the great majority have turned aside. Some have bitterly opposed it. As a result the spiritual condition of the church has grown rapidly worse. In the words of Jesus, "The love of the many" has waxed cold, and the condition of things foretold by the apostle is everywhere manifest in religious circles. Read 2 Tim. 3:1-5. "Lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God," "lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud," "having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof." Such, and even a worse condition is what the Word of God declares. Such, and even worse condition is what has been voiced by men and journals in every religious denomination in the land. In one long wail of sorrow, reaching over the last fifty years, have we heard in the various branches of God's church that "Babylon is fallen, is fallen." Catholic Babylon rejected the message of the Reformation; she would not be healed. The Babylon of Protestantism, by rejecting God's last healing message, falls from her high spiritual plane, and joins herself to the Babylons of the past.7 The Last Form of Apostasy.
Having chosen the way of error rather than a return to the Word of God; having really set aside that Word through vain philosophy, higher criticism, and hoary tradition, professed Protestantism is doing just what every church has ever done which has passed over the same road—she is seeking to the Egypt and Assyria of earthly power, to maintain her dead traditions and empty forms by civil law. Even so went the early apostasy, and formed the beast power, which tyrannized the world for the centuries of the Dark Ages. Yet in the face of the warnings of God's Word, in the face of all the lessons of history in all the past since Israel of old, Protestantism is turning from the Word of the living God, which made her all that is of worth, to traditions and laws of men; turning to federation of men instead of to life-union with God, and is reaching out eager hands to Rome to secure her co-operation in the control of civic forces for what seems to her to be righteousness, essential and all-embracing, yet which are mere dead forms, as empty of Christ and life as Joseph's tomb to-day. Against this the third angel's warning goes forth. Worship not the beast. Worship not its image of Protestant erecting. Receive not its mark of subjection to pagan Roman authority, the state-enforced sabbath, the Sunday. This last message of protest and awful warning presents in striking, appalling contrast the conditions of last-day apostasy to God's requirements as set forth in the first part of this threefold message. The fear—loving reverence—of God is set over against the fear of persecuting earthly powers (see Rev. 13:7, 8, 14-17); the worship of God is set over against the worship of the beast and his image; the worship of the Creator against the worship of the human creature; the power of the everlasting Gospel against the power of human apostasy crystallized into system and law; the cool, sweet water of life as against the wine of Babylon, and the wine of the wrath of God; the freedom which the everlasting Gospel gives against slavery to the beast and his image; the seal and name of God, assuring everlasting continuance, against the mark of the beast, the badge of everlasting degradation and death. Which shall we choose? The former may mean the shame and obloquy of the world, with sufferings from apostasy, such as the Master endured, but beyond, everlasting life. The latter may promise present ease and prosperity, but these are the prologue to everlasting death. The meaning of these messages is further declared in the class of people developed by them, the class which heeds and obeys: "Here is the patience [the endurance] of the saints, they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." These messages are going to the world, they are gathering out a people. Multitudes are in the valley of decision over the questions which God thus brings before them. Seventh-day Adventists are endeavoring to give this simple, awful threefold message of God. But the message is not thus because of them. They, if true, are what they are because of the message. But if every one should reject these messages of God to-day, the message will go on and do its work for God; because it is of God. And in it is salvation for every believing soul. Reader, friend, it is for you to make the choice. God warns, entreats, pleads, with all the hoarded love of eternity, demonstrated in the eternal sacrifice of Christ; but the choice must be thine. Shall it be man or God? Shall it be tradition or truth? Shall it be obedience to worldly powers or to Him to whom you owe all? Shall it be eternal loss, with the cry of "the harvest is past, the summer ended, and I am not saved"? or shall it be victory over the beast and over his image and over his name, with the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb? Rev. 15:2-4. The next event after these messages have done their work is the second coming of Christ Jesus to reap the harvest of the earth, the wheat and the tares, the wheat for God's garner, and the tares for the burning. In which reaping will you be found? The choice must be thine.