A STIRRING WARNING by A. R. BELL

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 11, 1916

A STIRRING WARNING

By A. R. BELL

The Most Solemn Divine Judgment Ever Pronounced—The “Beast” and His “Image”—“Come Out of Her, My People”—Patience and Commandment Keeping Distinguishing Signs

By A. R. BELL

This seventh article by A. R. Bell, on some of the interesting prophecies of Revelation, continues the study of the fourteenth chapter of this prophecy. This is the third article on chapter fourteen. The two previous articles presented that portion of the prophecy that announces the hour of God’s Judgment, and that tells of the great apostasy that produces the religious despotism against which the warning, as shown in the article this week, is sent. His article next week will be a study of chapter fifteen of Revelation, and will depict the triumphant deliverance of those who stand with God through this great crisis of the world’s history.

“AND the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation.” Rev. 14: 9, 10.

GREATEST JUDGMENT EVER PRONOUNCED

Here is a judgment pronounced, the most awful in the experience of the human race. The time foretold is that beyond which the impudence of man cannot pass. Every overture of mercy will have been spurned. A race will have done despite to the Spirit of grace. In an age and generation of education and enlightenment without a parallel, in a time when never were there so many Bibles, nor such a flood of light shining from heaven upon the pages of Holy Writ, men again, “professing themselves to be wise”—and that, mark you, in the things of God—will have become “fools,” and “changed the truth of God for a lie,” and will be found worshiping and serving a creature in the place of their Creator.

Men are worshiping the beast, and they are worshiping the image of the beast, and are receiving the mark of the beast.

The papacy received the Sunday institution from paganism; and she sets herself forth as having authority to change the law of God, and to command men under sin to obey her.

PAPACY RISING TO POWER

She is surging to power and world supremacy, and to such an extent that it seems, from the prophecy, that every influence of earth has been harnessed to compel men to yield obedience to her commands.

To meet this issue, the third angel’s message is sent, the most startling ever given to lips to speak, or to ears to hear. Each effort is world-wide in its scope. One is to “every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people” (verse 6), in a last supreme effort to save men. Of the other we read, “All that dwell upon the earth shall worship him.” Rev. 13: 8. The worship consists in receiving the mark, or in other words, yielding to the demands, of the beast, and of the image of the beast, in the matter of Sunday observance.

HEALING OF DEADLY PAPAL WOUND

In the Old World will come about the healing of the “deadly wound,” as recorded in Rev. 13: 3; and in the New World the image of the beast will be made; life will be given to it; it will speak; and when it speaks, its voice will be heard demanding obedience under penalty of death; for “as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.” Verse 15.

In proof of the foregoing, we look over to poor, war-stricken Europe, and we see the strenuous efforts put forth by the papacy, to the end that Pope Benedict shall be regarded as the only one to whom all the belligerents and noncombatants can look for settlement of the trouble. The sending of a representative from the court of St. James to the papal court,—a thing not done by England for centuries,—and the fact that other nations who have not been represented at the Vatican are seriously considering following England’s example, are straws showing which way the wind is blowing. All signs point to the great European cataclysm of war as the road over which Rome will ride again to world supremacy.

FEDERATED PROTESTANTISM MAKES AN IMAGE

Here in America, a Protestantism that has ceased to protest, is surging to the front, seeking power. There is such a mingling of the church with the world, and such a growth of the church in numbers, as is causing the church to become popular and very powerful. Religion seems to be touching everything. Church membership is sought as the path toward success in the business world; and men are seeking office in the political world on the strength of their religious connections, and are selling themselves to the church in return for her votes.

Forms of religion are on the increase everywhere, and everything is pointing to the day that the church fondly hopes for, when she shall have power to command the state. That hope is expressed as follows by one of the self-styled “God’s spokesmen” to the state in regard to “Sunday laws well enforced by men in local authority”: “A mighty combination of the churches of the United States could win from Congress, the state legislatures, and municipal councils, all legislation essential to this splendid result.”

Here is a picture of the church intrenched in power, the state simply the tool in her hands to do her bidding—the enforcement of the mark of the beast.

Verse 16 shows that the point of obedience—the matter of worship—will be in receiving the mark of the beast. The image of the beast, in forcing obedience in Sunday observance, and in thus being worshiped, is itself, with all its worshipers, through the very thing done, an acknowledgment of Rome’s authority and power. The image of the beast, from the standpoint of its very formation, thus becomes an act of worship.

A MESSAGE SENT TO HEAL

Let us look for a moment at the message. It is the third message. Two have gone before it. At the conclusion of the 2,300-day prophecy of Dan. 8: 14, the first message, proclaiming the hour of God’s Judgment come, sounded everywhere. But that message, which would have healed a falling church, and would have caused her to be robed again in her beautiful garments of righteousness, prepared to meet her Lord, was rejected, and the whole machinery of her organization was set in operation against it.

Then followed the second message, declaring, “Babylon is fallen.” In her falling, she could have been helped; but now she is declared fallen. The message is not only the stating of a fact, but it is the testimony of Heaven to the fact.

The message under consideration in this study follows the second message; and as the second message is the testimony of Heaven to the fact of the fall of professed Protestantism, this third message is the revelation from heaven of the depth of her fall.

THE UNION THAT MAKES THE IMAGE

In her union with the state, she is to become “an image of the beast,” and she is to enforce “the mark of the beast.” She proves herself in this to be a worshiper of the beast, and stands forth in the prophecy as a power set to compel men to obey her in her apostasy, even to the last extreme.

The message of the third angel, therefore, while it is the warning of Heaven against the worship of the beast and his image, and against the receiving of his mark, is, besides this, the testimony of Heaven in regard to the extent of the fall of professed Protestantism in her apostasy.

“Babylon is fallen.” Her fall is complete. She has fallen. And she has fallen back into the lap of Rome. She has turned from the word of the living God, and is following after the traditions of men. She gives obedience to the commandments of men, and is living in transgressions of the commandments of God. Like Israel of old, she has put the word of God away from her, and judged herself unworthy of everlasting life.

“COME OUT OF HER, MY PEOPLE”

But while, as an institution, the daughters, like the mother, are fallen, the God of heaven still pleads. The heart of the Infinite One is wrung with anguish, and the cry is heard, “Come out of her, My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” Rev. 18: 4.

As it was in the days of the apostles, “even so . . . at this present time”—in these last days, when God’s unmixed wrath is about to be poured out upon an apostasy that has turned a world away from God—“there is a remnant according to the election of grace.” Rom. 11: 5. There was a remnant saved from the wreck and ruin of apostasy into which Israel cast herself when she rejected the Lord of glory, and turned her back upon the Prince of peace; and there will be a remnant saved from the wreck and ruin into which Rome and an unfaithful Protestantism have sunk the world in these last days. They will get the victory over the beast and his image, and over his mark. See Rev. 15: 2.

PATIENCE AND COMMANDMENT KEEPING

The view given in the prophecy is that the message of the Judgment has done its work for them. They have yielded to the molding and fashioning of Heaven, and the obedience of faith is seen in their lives. They have turned from the rubbish of tradition to the word of the living God, and from the commandments of men to the commandments of God. The Sabbath of the fourth commandment—the seventh day of the week—has become the sign or seal between them and God, and the finger of Jehovah points them out as the trophies of the grace of Christ, saying: “Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Rev. 14: 12.

They have stood the test of the Judgment, and they have not flinched in the trial of their faith before the powers of earth. In patience they have waited their Lord’s return. Now their patience and faith are to be rewarded.

SPECIAL BLESSING PRONOUNCED

Verse 13 inseparably connects “the dead who die in the Lord from henceforth” with the messages and the movement. It would

seem that this scripture can only have reference to those who have identified themselves with the message and the movement, but to whom is given “rest from their labors.” Their works follow them. Being dead, yet they speak, and their lives and work are an inspiration to those who follow after them.

A SPECIAL RESURRECTION

The prophecy of Dan. 12: 2 reveals a company who are raised from their graves when Michael stands up—when Christ receives His kingdom from His Father in heaven, and begins to reign. See also Dan. 7: 13, 14. Part of this company are raised to “everlasting life,” part to “shame and everlasting contempt.”

This must be a resurrection separate and distinct from the resurrection of the righteous and the resurrection of the wicked; for in the one, only the righteous come forth, and in the other, the wicked, and that not until a thousand years afterward. See 1 Thess. 4: 16, 17; and Rev. 20: 5, 6.

View in Johannesburg, the mining city of the Transvaal

In Rev. 1: 7 it is told us that when Jesus comes in glory, “they also which pierced Him” shall see Him. It was told Caiaphas the high priest, who was the leading spirit of the movement that had for its object the death of the Son of God, “Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.” Matt. 26: 64. And then we read of those who “crucify . . . the Son of God afresh” (Heb. 6: 6), and further, of those who have “trodden underfoot the Son of God” (Heb. 10: 29). It would seem that men who, down through the centuries, have been guilty, as above noted, of the blood of the Christ of God, are in a class by themselves, and that they will in shame be permitted to behold Him whom they pierced, seated in majesty, upon the throne of His glory.

The other special class who at the same time are raised to “everlasting life,” evidently fit the prophetic mold of Rev. 14: 13, being privileged, because of their faithfulness in the proclamation of the solemn message ordained of Heaven to prepare men for the Judgment and for the coming of the Lord, to come forth from their beds of dust, to share with those who followed them the glory that shall be theirs at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

The next event brought to the prophet’s attention is the Lord’s coming, and the reaping of the harvest of the earth. Verses 14-16.

The end of the world is then reached. See Matt. 13: 39. And what a day! The Judgment is then finished, and the unmixed wrath of God is poured out upon a world from which the Spirit of God has been withdrawn. In that day, right which has been upon the scaffold all down through the centuries, will occupy the throne, and wrong will come to its end “with terrific events.”

A suburb of Cape Town, Table Mountain in the background