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Chapter 54—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
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
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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 labour, 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
manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that
is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth,
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