The GOOD NEWS in the Three Angels’ Message

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The title of this week’s lesson, “A Message Worth Sharing,” immediately caught my attention. Part of my personality is that I like to share things with others, and I definitely like to share something that is “worth it!” One assumes that a message “worth sharing” is actively passed along, is relevant, and speaks to one’s life. It was with this idea in my head that I approached this week’s text, found in Revelation 14:6–12. Although I examined various commentaries and academic books in relation to the text, I have to admit that I am more a practitioner than academician; thus, my reflection on the text examines more of the practical aspects of this topic.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://spectrummagazine.org/sabbath-school/2020/good-news-three-angels-message
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There’s a book called A Year of Living Biblically By A.J. Jacobs. This guy took a year and tried to follow all the 700 + laws and rules in the entire Bible. One of his major conclusions was that it’s impossible to do that. That’s why we have, what he calls, “cafeteria religions”, where we pick and choose which rules and laws we keep. He also found that there a more than a few contradictory rules, where one cancels the other - which of course need to be understood contextually; but literalists would have a problem trying to keep them all literally. This article has at least one important example of this kind of biblical problem.

Taking the 3AM apart in sections, the writer points out that if we are to “give God glory” (Rev. 14:7b) we must become humble. We must “obey His commandments”, which means we must lay aside our pride. Pride is one of the most destructive and heinous sins you can commit…Unhealthy pride happens when we do or say things for the purpose of people praising ourself or for making ourself feel good…

The entire content of the 3AM ia to call people out of all kinds of churches to join “our” church - the “remnant church”. If one were to ask what is the most prideful aspect of Adventism, it would be the Sabbath. This is how we identify ourselves - " the only church that obeys all the commandments (which focuses on the 4th - only)". So, we are to get rid of pride which is the very basis of our interpretation of the 3AM message - the Sabbath. It can be argued there is no pride involved on the call to worship God on the Sabbath - only loving concern for a fallen world. But the answer for the “fallen world” is not the Sabbath, but “the rest” we have in Christ - of which the Sabbath is merely a symbol. Do we identify the Sabbath as the symbol of that rest as we herald the 3AM?

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My impression is that we make idols out of those things we feel make us special they support our exclusivity. Idolatry comes in all forms. The sabbath was always about rest. I’m sure God did not need it. But the slaves out of Egypt must have dreamt about a day of rest. According to Christ it was for man. God knew that in this world those on top would not give rest to those below them. We in this country have so much rest that the sabbath has become a testament to our lack of rest and trust in the very God we profess.

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Yes, that’s a statement we tend to ignore. We have made the Sabbath a test of discipleship. Jesus said, By this you shall know you are mine, that you love one another."

Another point - the call of the 3AM is calling God’s people out of Babylon. Babylon representing salvation by our works:

So the call is for God’s people who have fallen into a state called Babylon (relying on our own efforts) to come out of Babylon and accept God’s grace through Christ - which gives us rest.

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I agree that the need to make amends or do something is strong in us. Faith that God is big enough to accept everyone is not the first image we as humans tend to imagine in our gods. Do we think that God can only handle people who have at least tried hard. Sounds very far from faith in the goodness of God that Christ proclaimed.

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The Book of Revelation provides Adventists with material for a game we could call LET’S PRETEND. Pretend that the 3 angels aren’t angels at all, they’re Adventists. And that their messages contain terms that Revelation actually missed, like “remnant church”, “Catholic Church”, “Adventist church”, “church”, “sabbath keeping”, “sabbath”’, “Sunday law”, “Sunday keeping”, “Sunday”, “pope”, “ten commandments”.

Adventists infer that “commandments of God” in Rev 14 don’t refer to the commands God gives in this story, but to the ten commandments God gave to the Israelites. He evidently didn’t command anybody else to obey them and nobody thought He did. Consider:

I am the LORD THY God, which have brought THEE out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage"(Ex 20:1)

Adventists decided to mimic the Jews who changed their holy days to BEGIN when daylight ENDS INSTEAD OF WHEN IT BEGINS as described in Gen 1.

“God said let there be light…and God called the light day.”
(God didn’t say, “Let there be night…and God called the night day”!.)

Evidently, the change was not easy. Jewish historians report that some Rabbis didn’t accept the change until the the temple was destroyed. Our pioneers had a lot of trouble deciding between six pm and sundown, neither of which was authorized by the Bible for any sabbath except the Day of Atonement, (which runs from sundown on Tishri 9 to sundown on Tishri 10).

By changing “seventh day” to “seventh day of the calendar week” we see ourselves as the 3 angels.

Incidentally, EGW wrote the “seventh day of the week” 25 times without ever acknowledging that the words “of the week” are nowhere to be found in the Bible. Maybe she hoped that we wouldn’t notice? Well, she almost got her wish.

And so we devote immense time and expenditure convincing the world that whenever anyone–especially Catholics–say, or read, or think, “the seventh day” without mentally adding the words “of the week”, they are not keeping the commandments of God mentioned in the three angels’ messages the way he intended them to be understood but are worshipping the beast and his image.

I believe that if God had meant, “Keep the seventh day of the week holy”, He would would have said it that way.

It’s easy to see why our interpretations of Revelation are such a hard sell.

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I could not find an authentic historical proof for the above incidents. Obviously, they came from traditions.

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