This message is given in prophecy as the last merciful warning to mankind. We need no doctor of divinity to tell us this. It is evident to every one who will think upon it. 1. It is followed by the coming of Christ, as symbolized by one like the Son of man, seated upon the white cloud, with kingly crown and sickle, to gather the harvest of the earth. 2. The terms of the message prove it to be the closing message of probation—a judgment message, by which the living at the advent will be judged. Wrath unmixed follows upon all that do not heed it, consequently there can be no later proclamation by which men can be saved. It is evident that when this message is proclaimed, there will be great danger that the very elect, if it were possible, should be seduced to worship the beast. Such a fearful warning and dreadful threatening indicate great danger. This shows that the mass of professed Christians of the last generation will be following some doctrine, custom, or tradition of the papacy; and that there must be a reform in respect to the false teaching of popery, to prepare the saints, living at that time, to be translated at the coming of Christ. The result of the message in developing a people that keep the commandments of God, proves, 1st, That previously they had not all been kept. "Here are they" does not indicate that it had, all the while, been common for Christians to keep all the commandments of God. 2d. That they will be tested by the commandments of God as opposed to the worship of the beast. Before the test they are in error in respect to the commandments, after the test they are right upon them all. We need not labor to prove that the ten commandments are the commandments of God. The phrase must include the ten, whether it excludes others or not; and when coupled with the faith of Jesus, which embraces church ordinances, and all requirements peculiar to the faith of the gospel as a means of salvation from sin, it must mean the ten exclusively, for they embody all the great principles of right, and consequently detect every sin. To be wrong on these commandments, then, is to be in sin. Hence the propriety and the importance of this test. But upon what point in the commandments can the test come? Though some hold that it is impossible for Christians to be perfectly agreed upon the commandments, yet there is no disagreement in respect to nine of the ten. All are agreed that the nine are binding. They are also agreed in respect to their meaning. It is the Sabbath commandment alone upon which there is any disagreement; and to this is the plainest and most explicit of all the ten. It tells us to "remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy." It instructs us how to keep it, tells us which day is the Sabbath and why, and for what reason, it was instituted. Yet the disagreement is all upon this commandment, and consequently the test is upon this alone. Some say the day has been changed, others that the commandment has been abolished, while a few hold the commandment to be unchangeable and perpetual—the only position that can be harmonized with scripture or reason. It is evident then that when the last message is proclaimed, the Sabbath question will be the test question. Just before the wrath is executed which is threatened in this last message, the servants of God are signed or sealed in their foreheads, to prepare them to stand in the great day of wrath. Rev. vii. In Ex. xxxi, and Hos. xx, the Sabbath is four times declared to be a sign between God and his people—a sign of the knowledge of the true God. The reason of this is obvious. The Sabbath commandment is the only one of the ten which distinguishes the giver of that law as the MAKER of all things. We might choose a crocodile for a god, and keep all the commandments, except the Sabbath, to him; but we cannot keep the Sabbath in honor of any but the Maker of the heavens and the earth. On the other hand, the papacy gives us a sign or a mark of his authority and power to make laws, to bind men's consciences, and command them under sin. What is it? In the language of an approved Roman Catholic writer, it is "the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday." If the papal church did change the Sabbath into Sunday, as it claims, to keep its "Sunday" instead of the Sabbath, is an acknowledgment of its power and right to change the law of God, and an acceptance of its proffered mark of the same. Hence, those that keep all the commandments of God will not have the mark of the beast, and those that accept of the mark of the beast will not keep all the commandments of God. This is the test on the commandments. The faith of Jesus—the plan of salvation through Christ, and the ordinances of the Christian church, will be restored to primitive purity, under this last message. When this is done, baptism will commemorate the resurrection of Christ, as in primitive days, and there will be no further need nor excuse for honoring the resurrection day of the Son at the expense and dishonor of the rest-day of the Father. Signs fulfilled declare the coming of Christ and the end of probationary time at hand. Several lines of consecutive prophecy have been all fulfilled, except the concluding act—the coming of Christ, the dashing in pieces of the nations, and the establishment of the kingdom of God, the everlasting kingdom. The events fulfilled are so many signs that the remaining great event will follow. To disbelieve the remaining event or events of a prophecy, is to disbelieve the prophecy; and to disbelieve the prophecy is to disbelieve God, the author of the prophecy. Therefore if you do not believe that the coming of Christ is at hand, you are in unbelief, and so far an infidel. "But," says a friend, "I do believe that the coming of Christ is at hand. I am looking for that event continually." "You are! And what do you think about the third angel's message?" "I don't know anything about that, but I am looking for Christ almost daily, because so many signs have been fulfilled." You are a believer then, and not an infidel. But how is it that a believer ignores the third angel's message? If it is infidelity to reject past fulfillments of prophecy, what is it to reject so solemn and important a message, which is so evidently placed before the coming of Christ! The word being true, he will never come till this message has been proclaimed with a loud voice. It is the most solemn and fearful prophetic message of the word of God. It is placed immediately preceding the coming of the Son of man. It will be the most thrilling, the all-important, all-absorbing truth for the people of that period of time; the great preparing truth, without which no living soul will be prepared to stand in that day. And yet men professing faith in the word of prophecy, tell us that they are expecting Christ immediately, ignoring, if not repudiating and virtually expunging from the word the only message that can prepare any one for that event. If this is not infidelity, what is? But, says one, I believe this message has been fulfilled in the past. Then you believe that probation closed, and wrath unmixed came upon all those that rejected it, or neglected it in the past. Says another, I believe this message will be fulfilled after the coming of Christ. You must have some good reason for placing that after the coming of the Lord, which the word of inspiration has placed before that event. If your position is correct, the beast will be worshiped, and the unmixed wrath of God will be poured out after the beast has been destroyed by the brightness of Christ's coming. But the solemn message has been announced, and is now doing its fearful work. It has come in the order and place assigned it in the prophecy. The reason people do not see it and acknowledge it is, because they are not in harmony with the great test which it brings. But for this test, Adventists would believe this prophetic message just as they do any other prophecy of the kind. But your law-abolishing, no-Sabbath theory cannot be harmonized with the test on the commandments in this message. This is the reason you are not willing to have the message here, where God has placed it, and is fulfilling it. If he should hear your prayer, and put it over beyond the coming of Christ, into the "age to come," you would not like it any better than you now do. The message would mean just what it does now. The worship and mark of the beast would be the same, and the test on the commandments would be the same. The message would cut up your theory just as it does now; and if you will not have it now, you would not receive it then. But the message is doing its work in harmony with the prophecy. That which has been a message in prospect for nearly eighteen hundred years, is now a message in fact. The Most High is redeeming his promise. All the prophecies are like promissory notes; and the Lord has never failed to meet each obligation as fast as they have become due, and never will. Men who will not believe when prophecy is fulfilled, are like those who will not give up a note when it is paid. Anciently God gave circumcision and the ceremonial law as a sign and pledge of his promise, to give Christ to the world, of the seed of Abraham. Time passed on, the obligation came due, and the promise was punctually fulfilled. But the Jews would not give up the note. They hold fast the sign, and thus still claimed the promise made to Abraham, as being yet unfulfilled. Thus they proved themselves infidels. Payment has been made, the obligation canceled, whether they accept it or not, and it will not be fulfilled again to cure their unbelief. Should Christ come and die again, they would still be infidels. It is just so now. God is fulfilling his promises as they mature. In addition to all other signs in heaven and on earth, he has caused the first, the second, and the third angels' messages to be announced in their order. Infidelity is left without excuse. The light upon the work of the beast is clear; being attested by scripture, its fulfillment in history and the claims of the papacy itself, not only that it has power to make laws to bind men's consciences, and command them under sin, but that it is the author of the very change in question, the change of the Sabbath into Sunday, and as papists very truly say, "without any scriptural authority whatever." But still unbelief will not acknowledge that God is fulfilling his word. Men will not give him credit for the redemption of his promises, and would not, of course, should he repeat the fulfillment. This he can never do. He cannot deny himself. His word once fulfilled, is fulfilled forever. To deny that the third message is being fulfilled, is either to deny God's providence in fulfilling his own word, or to deny the existence of facts which are forming a portion of the history of the present time. Could we take a stand-point in the future, and look back upon what God is now doing for this generation, and view the incurable unbelief of the mass of professed believers in the Bible, we should be astonished beyond measure. The unbelief of the Jewish people in the prophecies which they professed to believe, is truly a wonder; but what is that, compared with the present time, a time when the still increasing light of the prophetic word fulfilled, is illuminating our pathway, and showing us where we are in the foretold history of the course of time. Be entreated, dear reader, to believe God's word, and give him credit for what he is now doing in fulfillment thereof. Do not attempt to remove the present message into the past or the future, but investigate its claims, and meet its just demands, while God, in his providence is causing it to be proclaimed. The Lord's own time has come for its fulfillment, the work is being done, and when it is done, it will be done forever. You have no time to spend in ruinous delay, brooding over your doubts of God's faithfulness. The last merciful warning is growing louder and louder, and soon it will be said, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." O let us escape the fate of the unbeliever and the transgressor. Let us not be left to mourn, when salvation's gate is forever barred, that we might have entered, but we are too late!