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Chapter 20—The Third Angel’s Message
When Christ entered the most holy place of the heavenly sanc-
tuary to perform the closing work of the atonement, he committed
to his servants the last message of mercy to be given to the world.
Such is the warning of the third angel of
Revelation 14
. Immediately
following its proclamation, the Son of man is seen by the prophet
coming in glory to reap the harvest of the earth.
As foretold in the Scriptures, the ministration of Christ in the
most holy place began at the termination of the prophetic days in
1844. To this time apply the words of the Revelator, “The temple of
God was opened in Heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark
of his testament.” [
Revelation 11:19
] The ark of God’s testament is
in the second apartment of the sanctuary. As Christ entered there, to
minister in the sinner’s behalf, the inner temple was opened, and the
ark of God was brought to view. To those who by faith beheld the
Saviour in his work of intercession, God’s majesty and power were
revealed. As the train of his glory filled the temple, light from the
holy of holies was shed upon his waiting people on the earth.
They had by faith followed their High Priest from the holy to
the most holy, and they saw him pleading his blood before the ark
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of God. Within that sacred ark is the Father’s law, the same that
was spoken by God himself amid the thunders of Sinai, and written
with his own finger on the tables of stone. Not one command has
been annulled; not a jot or tittle has been changed. While God gave
to Moses a copy of his law, he preserved the great original in the
sanctuary above. Tracing down its holy precepts, the seekers for truth
found, in the very bosom of the decalogue, the fourth commandment,
as it was first proclaimed: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it
holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh
day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any
work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy
maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that
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