Memory Text: “Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth — to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people” (Revelation 14:6, NKJV).
The three angels’ messages are first and foremost about the gospel.
The Everlasting Gospel
What is the gospel? The gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ died on the cross to save us from our sins. What we could not do for ourselves, God stepped in and did for us. We cannot build a Tower of Babel to heaven, so God lowered a ladder down to us in the form of the only begotten Son of God, God incarnate, whose perfect life and substitutionary death makes heaven possible for us.
“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Rom 5:6-8. NIV
“being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Rom. 3:24-26 NKJV
Notice four points in these passages from Paul’s epistle to the Romans:
1. We are justified freely by grace. “For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, lest any should boast.” Eph. 2:8-9. “knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.” Gal. 2:16. “He saved us, not by the righteous deeds we had done, but according to His mercy, through the washing of new birth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” Titus 3:5
2. Grace is a declaration of God’s righteousness. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16. “It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.” Rom. 9:16.
3. Grace justifies those who by faith accept Jesus. “We believe it is through the grace of the Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are." Acts. 15:10. “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” Mark 16:16.
4. God’s love was demonstrated for us while we were yet sinners. “But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved!” Eph 2:4-5. “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things . . . but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you” 1 Peter 1:18-20. “He has saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but by His own purpose and by the grace He granted us in Christ Jesus before time began.” 2 Tim. 1:9.
Christ experienced the fullness of the Father’s wrath against sin; He was rejected so that we could be accepted. He died the death that was ours, so we could live the life that was His. This is the everlasting gospel, what the angel has for us, and for the whole world.
The three angels messages in Revelation 14 are first and foremost about the gospel, the good news of Christ’s saving death on our behalf.
“He said in a loud voice, ‘Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water.’” Rev. 14:7
How is this specific message of the first angel about the gospel?
The Hour of His Judgment is Come
Seventh-day Adventists have always read the phrase “because the hour of his judgment has come” in light of our interpretation of Daniel 8:14, “Unto 2,300 days, and then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.”
William Miller correctly discerned that the 2,300 were prophetic days/literal years, that began in 457 BC and ended in 1844 AD. But Miller believed that the cleansing of the sanctuary referenced in Daniel 8:14 was the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to this earth when, in fact, the prophecy refers to the cleansing of the sanctuary in heaven in the anti-typical day of atonement. It was this heavenly sanctuary that would begin to be cleansed in 1844.
Part of this cleansing process is the investigative judgment, during which is determined the genuineness of every claim on the blood of Christ. The sins of those who are adjudged redeemed are placed upon the scapegoat, who symbolizes Satan, and removed from the sanctuary that way, whereas the sins of those whose claim upon Christ is adjudged false go back on themselves. In both cases, the sins are removed from the sanctuary and consumed in the lake of fire, after the millennium, when the New Jerusalem descends to the earth. It is only then that the earth is cleansed in the manner William Miller believed would happen in 1844.
So “the hour of his judgment is come” refers to a most solemn spiritual reality taking place in the heavenly sanctuary. Armed with this interpretation of Daniel 8:14, the Adventist pioneers realized that the first angel of Revelation 14 was speaking directly to them. The hour of God’s investigative judgement in heaven had indeed come, but only the early Adventists knew this, and it dawned on them that God was specially commissioning them to share that knowledge with the whole world.
What must be emphasized, for present purposes, is that the heavenly sanctuary is all about the gospel. The author of Hebrews explains that Jesus is our heavenly high priest, pleading his merits on our behalf before the Father in the sanctuary in heaven. He is our high priest, after the order of Melchizedek. Heb. 5:6-10; 6:19-20.
“. . . because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood. Therefore, he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. Such a high priest truly meets our need—one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. Unlike the other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices day after day, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. Now the main point of what we are saying is this: We do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, and who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by a mere human being.” Heb. 7:23-8:2.
“But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands, . . . he entered the Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. . . . For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.” Heb. 9:11-15.
“But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.” Heb. 9:26-28
The heavenly sanctuary is all about the gospel, all about Christ our heavenly mediator, pleading His blood and righteousness on our behalf. When we think of the heavenly sanctuary, we should be thinking gospel, more gospel, and everlasting gospel.
Even the investigative judgment, the thought of which seems so frightening, is all about the gospel of Jesus Christ, and His grace to us in blotting out the record of our trespasses:
Jesus will appear as their advocate, to plead in their behalf before God. “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” 1 John 2:1. “For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.” “Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them.” Hebrews 9:24; 7:25. Great Controversy, p. 482.4
All who have truly repented of sin, and by faith claimed the blood of Christ as their atoning sacrifice, have had pardon entered against their names in the books of heaven . . . The Lord declares, by the prophet Isaiah: “I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions for Mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.” Isaiah 43:25. Said Jesus: . . . “Whosoever therefore shall confess Me before men, him will I confess also before My Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father which is in heaven.” Revelation 3:5; Matthew 10:32, 33. GC. 483.2
Worship Him Who Made the Heavens, the Earth
How is worshipping the Creator God about the gospel? For one thing, the whole gospel is contingent upon Darwinism being false and Biblical creationism being true. I’ve a written much about this, including this passage from my book Dinosaurs- An Adventist View:
“The doctrine of creation is central to the doctrine of Christ, because it is central to the purpose of Christ’s death on the cross. The central Christian belief—a doctrine not peculiar to any sect or denomination—is that Christ, through His atoning sacrifice as the Lamb of God, is the Redeemer of mankind. This is the sine qua non of Christianity. But why does mankind need redemption? Mankind is sinful and is in need of redemption because of Adam’s sin and the resulting fall of the human race. The Bible specifically teaches that Christ was the second Adam, who overcame where the first Adam failed.
But according to the basic tenets of Darwinism, there never was an Adam. Darwinism teaches that man evolved from lower primates. Since there was no Adam, Adam never sinned, and there never was a fall of mankind. Far from suffering the effects of a “Fall,” mankind has experienced a spectacular rise from bacteria to Beethoven, from microbe to Mozart, from single cell to Shakespeare, from ameba to Einstein. Although not created in the image of any god, mankind has somehow managed to separate himself from all other animals by developing self-awareness and civilization, with its government, religion, commerce, law, science, technology, art, literature, theater, philosophy, etc.
Since there never was a Fall, mankind does not need redemption or atonement. Christ’s role as redeemer of a fallen humanity is obliterated. One commentator on the relationship between science and theology put it this way: “The traditional view of redemption as reconciliation and ransom from the consequences of Adam’s fall is nonsense for anyone who knows about the evolutionary background to human existence.”
Those who would delete the first ten chapters of Genesis would fatally undermine the entirety of Scripture. The creation, the Fall, the plan of salvation, the sacrificial system—these are all laid out in the first ten chapters of Genesis. Without this foundation, none of the rest makes sense. Jesus pointed out that Moses’ writings were about Himself (Luke 24:25-27; John 5:39) and that faith in Moses’ writings was a prerequisite to faith in Himself: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” John 5:46, 47 (RSV).
Yes, the gospel is at the very heart of the first angel’s message to worship the Creator God.
For Seventh-day Adventists, the first angel’s message to “worship him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water” is a reference to Exodus 20:11, the Fourth Commandment, telling us to worship the Lord of the Sabbath, the Lord who made the heavens and the earth in six literal, 24-hour days, and rested on the seventh day, setting it aside and making it holy. How is the Sabbath about the gospel?
In one of the most prominent Sabbath passages in the New Testament, the author of Hebrews tells us that the Sabbath symbolizes God’s finished work of salvation on our behalf; indeed, the Sabbath is a type of justification by faith—resting from your own works to celebrate what God has accomplished on our behalf:
“There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his.” Heb. 4:9-10.
Again, the Sabbath symbolizes the Gospel. It is all about what Jesus has done for us!
We could go on and talk about the second angel’s message that “Babylon [Rome] is fallen, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.” What was Rome’s unfaithfulness, which she enforced on the whole Christian world? She compromised with, syncretized, and incorporated into herself all the pagan religions—all of which were, and are, based upon salvation by human effort—and lost sight of the pure gospel. The Reformation came when Martin Luther rediscovered the truth that “the just shall live by faith.” (Habakkuk 2:4; Rom 1:17; Gal. 3:11; Heb. 10:38) The thunderous truth of the Reformation, which shook the Christian world to its foundations, was that all Rome’s schemes and artifices to sell salvation and paradise were a fraud, because salvation is a gift Christ has given us with His death on the cross of Calvary. (John 3:16; 4:10; Rom. 5:15; 6:23; 8:32; Eph. 2:8)
What is the third angel’s message about? About a Beast substituting human effort, and a humanly-devised day of rest, for the Sabbath that God created and made holy, which, as we have just seen, symbolizes resting in Christ’s salvation freely given us. The mark of the Beast is to build a Tower of Babel to reach the heavens by our own efforts and might, instead of relying upon the ladder that God in His mercy has lowered to us.
We cannot discuss the second and third angels in depth here. The point is that the three angels’ messages, as understood and taught by Seventh-day Adventists, are all about the everlasting gospel! We need not be bashful, but rather should be bold, in teaching and preaching these messages God has given us, because they are, in verity, about justification by faith in the saving merit of Jesus Christ. They are about the everlasting gospel.