Third Angel's Message
Enter the Third Angel
Enter the third message. It has to do with the image to the beast, or a union of church and state in America that mirrors the union of church and state in the Vatican. What is this as an experience? It is trying to be religious (church) through one’s own secular (state) strength. Apart from Christ all effort is secular, even if one is trying to be religious. Now let’s put the three messages together: By beholding Christ I am being changed, so that I no longer depend upon myself, even to the extent that I no longer try to be religious through my own strength. Here is a picture of total dependence upon Christ, the same kind of dependence that Israel had in the Red Sea, the same kind of dependence that the saints will have in the end-time. This is completely opposite to the self-dependence of the Egyptian army, the Babel builders before them, and Satan and his angels in the beginning.
The faithful ones in Rev 14:12 are the same group of believers as “the remnant” of the woman’s seed in Rev 12:17 (KJV). Both Scripture passages stress the point that the end-time people of Jesus are keeping God’s commandments through a living faith in Jesus and in His testimony to them (Rev 19:10). They hold on to or maintain the apostolic gospel message that unites God’s saving grace and His sacred law as the standard of character in the judgment (Rom 2:12–16). For this sacred testimony of Jesus or “Spirit of Prophecy” the apostles and their followers had suffered persecution (Rev 1:9; 6:9 NIV; 19:10). The end-time church of Christ shall have or hold on equally to the commandments of God and to the testimony of Jesus (Rev 12:17).
the Church is the historical-spiritual community that gathers around, coheres in, stands on, and testifies about Jesus.
Historians of Christian theology label this process the “hellenization” or alternatively the “de-Judaization”16 of Christianity. By adapting to the cultural trends of their days early Christians progressively and radically replaced the macro hermeneutical presuppositions New Testament writers took from the Old Testament canon.
Unfortunately, they progressively neglected Isaiah’s injunction to use Scriptural teachings as interpretive principles to evaluate new spiritual events (Isaiah 8:20). Moreover, they also failed to follow Christ’s hermeneutical practice when He used Old Testament teachings and categories as interpretive principles necessary for a proper explanation of His salvific ministry and death on the cross to his disciples (Luke 24:27).
Nevertheless, from an historical perspective the Protestant “turn to Scripture” involves the progressive emergence of an incipient “anonymous” remnant. It is a remnant because it springs into existence from faithfulness to Scripture rather than tradition and philosophy.