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Selected Messages Book 2
The Three Angels’ Messages in their Larger Setting
The proclamation of the first, second, and third angels’ messages
has been located by the Word of Inspiration. Not a peg or pin is to
be removed. No human authority has any more right to change the
location of these messages than to substitute the New Testament for
the Old. The Old Testament is the gospel in figures and symbols.
The New Testament is the substance. One is as essential as the other.
The Old Testament presents lessons from the lips of Christ, and these
lessons have not lost their force in any particular.
The first and second messages were given in 1843 and 1844, and
we are now under the proclamation of the third; but all three of the
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messages are still to be proclaimed. It is just as essential now as ever
before that they shall be repeated to those who are seeking for the
truth. By pen and voice we are to sound the proclamation, showing
their order, and the application of the prophecies that bring us to the
third angel’s message. There cannot be a third without the first and
second. These messages we are to give to the world in publications,
in discourses, showing in the line of prophetic history the things that
have been and the things that will be.
The book that was sealed was not the book of Revelation, but
that portion of the prophecy of Daniel which related to the last days.
The Scripture says, “But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal
the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro,
and knowledge shall be increased” (
Daniel 12:4
). When the book
was opened, the proclamation was made, “Time shall be no longer.”
(See
Revelation 10:6
.) The book of Daniel is now unsealed, and the
revelation made by Christ to John is to come to all the inhabitants of
the earth. By the increase of knowledge a people is to be prepared to
stand in the latter days.
The Sabbath the Great Issue
“And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the
everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to
every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a loud
voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is
come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and
the fountains of waters” (
Revelation 14:6, 7
).