About Us! Who we Are? Why does this religion exist? Why is it not like other religions, and what is its special calling? To answer these questions we must look to Rev. 14. In Rev. 14:6-12 three angels' message are given by God to men (vs. 10,11); the third angel warns of the worship of the beast and his image and forbids men to receive the "mark of the beast". This event of the mark is not yet fulfilled, but is soon to be, thus we come right down to the very last moments of the earth's history when men face their greatest moral crisis and the final warning is given to the teeming population of the earth. After the warning, the second coming of Jesus Christ to take His people with Him and to destroy the wicked is presented in the symbolism of Rev. 14: 14-20. So the verses of the chapter we have just discussed are complete, touching the final warning to the earth and the second coming of Christ with the destruction of the wicked that follows. But who are the people that give this solemn warning? Does the chapter (Rev. 14) mention them at all? Certainly it does! It says: "Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus". Rev. 14:12. The word patience as going through a terrible persecution, thus they are the ones who are facing the trouble of the mark of the beast and his image. At that time they are identified as keeping "the commandments of God..." James 2:10,11 says: "For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law." James 2:10,11. Now if this people are identified as keeping the commandments of God, then they must keep all ten, and this includes the Sabbath, or else they will be guilty of transgression of the Law, thus this people must be Sabbath-keepers, and they are who have the Sabbath as the sign of being sanctified by the one true God - YHWH (Ex. 31:13). Thus the people who give the last warning to the earth - the three angels' messages - are the people who keep the whole Law of God and have the Sabbath as a sign. There is only one religion that fulfills these specifies and that is Seventh-day Adventism. They are called "Seventh-day Adventists' because they have God's only sign the "seventh-day Sabbath" and they are looking for the advent or second coming of Christ and live in the time when He is indeed coming. Thus Adventism is in Bible prophecy. But when did this movement arise? The time was in 1844. To understand how this happened we must understand the history of Christianity as it pertains to the great apostasy. In II Th. 2: 3-9 Paul revealed that the second coming of Christ would not occur until a great apostasy from the Truth first developed bringing into existence a system dubbed "the man of sin". In Dan. 7:8,11,20,21,24-26 this system is called a "little horn" who persecutes the people of God for many years. This power made war with the saints and prevailed against them...", spoke "...great words against the most High...", thought to "...change times and laws...", and in Dan. 8: 11-13 he removed the "daily..." ministration of Christ in the heavenly sanctuary from the minds of people by casting down the sanctuary, casting "...down the truth to the ground..." and putting in their place his own "...abomination of desolation..." (Dan. 11:31), or his false teachings. This power we all know is none other than the Roman Catholic Papal Church. How long was the Papacy allowed to succeed in his evil? We are told it was for a "...time and times and the dividing of time". Dan. 7:25. This is 31/2 times of years. In symbolic Bible prophecy one year or time is 360 days, and a day equals to a year. (See Num. 14:34; Eze. 2:6). This would give us 1260 days which are years. Did the Papacy operate according to the specifics of the prophecies for 1260 years? It certainly did. In 538 A.C.B. The Papacy assumed religious authority over all religions by civil law. The length of time it legally exercised this authority in persecutions was 1260 years, and at the end of this time the Pope was taken captive by Napoleon Bonaparte of the French Revolution and the Papacy was abolished. All this occurred in 1798. And from 538 A.C.B. to 1798 A.C.B. we have 1260 years. Thus the Roman Catholic Papacy fulfills the specifics of the prophecy down to the very year. During this long period of Papal dominion the Gospel was greatly obscured. The Reformation came and people began to understand real Bible truths but this reform back to apostolic Christianity was to happen until the trend of time. However the Bible tells us that the Papal dominion over the Gospel, and obscuring dominion were to end when a judgement were to begin. "But the judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end." Dan. 7:26. When did this happen? When did this Judgement begin at which the Papacy lost its obscuring dominion over the gospel? In Dan. 8: 13 the length of time allowed to the Papacy to obscure the Gospel is questioned, and in Dan. 8:14 the time is given when he loses this dominion. It says "And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed." That is, at the end of the 2300 days (or years in Bible prophecy), the time when the sanctuary (in heaven) is to be cleansed, that is the time the Papacy loses its obscuring dominion over the Gospel. The fact that the Judgement sits when the Sanctuary is to be cleansed is confirmed in Rev. 11:18,19. If we can now find when the 2300 years begin we shall find the date of its ending. Dan. 9 gives us the answer, it says: "Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem..." Dan. 9:25. This command was given to the Jews by Persian King Artaxerxes Longimanus in the year 457 B.C.B. Ezr. 7: 11-26 is a record of that command. Now starting the 2300 years from the year 457 B.C.B. from exactly the fifth Jewish month when Ezra came to Jerusalem (this is from July-August), would bring us to the year 1844, September-October. So that the year 1844, October to be exact, the Judgement began in the heavenly Sanctuary, and from this time onwards the Papacy's obscuring dominion over the Gospel was ended. How this occurred is simple. Then the Judgement began in heaven, God's people discovered it by the study of the scriptures, and so this truth came to be among God's people as the final pillar of the whole Gospel that was lost from the earth in a large way through the Papal dominion. God's people also discovered that the Law of the Ten Commandments was the standard of Judgement and that all 10 laws were to be kept according to Jam. 2:8-12, thus they found that they were to keep the Sabbath (Heb. 4:3-11), and they also learned of its great significance (Ex. 31:13). Thus the people identified as giving to the world the three angels messages or the final warning of God to an apostate earth are those who rediscovered the final pillar of the great, grand atonement, the investigative Judgement. They truly arose in 1844 as God's church, God's one true people for the last days of the earth's history. Since the year 1798 - the year the Papacy was temporarily overthrown and the year from which governments have been in the period called the "time of the end". Dan. 12:6-9 identifies the 1260 years ends in 1798, and from then we are in the period called the "time of the end". Dan. 11:40 reveals the significance of that period. It is the time of the "king of the south" better known as "Communism" or the "forces of atheism", it is the time the king of the South - the forces of atheism - pushes against the king of the North which is the Papacy. In 1798 the forces of atheism did push at the Papacy wounding it. But since that time these dark forces have been fighting against all known religions to bring about a one world socialist state at which Christianity will be abolished. This spiritualistic power has been using evolution and many various sciences against the Bible and against the fact that God created. Now 46 years into the period of the "time of the end", that is in 1844, a people were raised up by God with the Sabbath as their distinctive sign, a sign that God created, (Ex. 20:8-11), to counteract all the deceptions of the forces of atheism, this people are to fight the evolutionary sciences with the rational Faith of Jesus Christ. Also, as there is to be a revival of Papal influence through the exaltation of Sunday holiness all over the world, this people, by the Sabbath as their sign is to show the world the day the Faith of Jesus makes us keep. Truly a great and wonderful purpose has been given to God's special end time people, a solemn witness upon which the lives of billions depend. Should we then give up this high calling? NO! NO! |