The National
Sunday Law - Revisited
What will cause seven
billion people
to worship the beast?
Revelation 13:8
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3. Finally, we must
treat the first four trumpets as
literal events because they are
expressions of God’s wrath. The
first four trumpets are deliberately
designed to harm Earth! (This is why
the quantity of one-third is
mentioned twelve times in the seven
trumpets. God generously spares
two-thirds!) We know from Revelation
7:1 that four angels have been
stationed at the four corners of the
Earth. These four angels are holding
back the four winds of destruction.
They have been given power to harm
the earth, sea, and trees. They
have been told to wait until God has
selected and empowered 144,000
servants. Once the 144,000 are
selected and empowered by the Holy
Spirit, the earth, sea, and trees
will be harmed. The harm inflicted on
the earth, sea, and trees is
described in the first three
trumpets! That’s right! The
first three angels in Revelation 7
will harm the trees, sea, and the
earth. Revelation 7:1-3; 8:2, 7-11)
God has carefully
designed the first four trumpets to
tear down and rip up this world. His
patience with man’s degenerate
behavior is limited. God destroyed
the whole world in Noah’s day.
God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah in
Abraham’s day and God twice
destroyed Jerusalem. The first four
trumpets will demolish all of
man’s precious infrastructures.
God intends to get the full and
undivided attention of Jews,
Catholics, Protestants, Hindus,
Atheists, Muslims, and Pagans by
releasing His wrath – although
mixed with mercy.
The seven trumpets are
the seven “first” plagues
and the seven bowls are the seven
“last” plagues. Half of the
world’s population will perish
during the seven trumpets (adding
Revelation 6:8 with Revelation 9:15)
and it is during this overwhelming
despair and drama that mankind will
come together in humility to appease
God. God will confront the false
religious systems of the world with
His truth. He will ensure that
everyone hears and intelligently
considers His everlasting gospel.
God’s servants, the 144,000,
empowered by the Holy Spirit, will
proclaim four distinct messages: (a)
worship Jesus the creator on His holy
day, (b) Babylon’s attempt to
appease God is blasphemous, (c) do
not worship Lucifer (masquerading
among men as Almighty God) or receive
his mark, (d) separate yourself from
false religion or you will receive
the seven last plagues.
Two
Reasons for Keeping the Seven
Trumpets in the Past
SDAs vigorously defend
their belief that the seven trumpets
are in the past. They do so for
several reasons, but these appear to
be the most important two:
1. Ellen G. White, the
church’s prophet, endorsed a
historical setting for the seven
trumpets in her book, The Great
Controversy. This means that SDAs
cannot change their position on the
seven trumpets without contradicting
their prophet. (To date, the church
has not taken a formal position on
any topic that is in open conflict
with her statements.)
2. The fifth trumpet
has a time period of five months
embedded in it. SDAs believe that a
day alwaysequals a year in
Bible prophecy and this rule of
interpretation forces the five months
in Revelation 9:5,10 to equal 150
years (5 x 30 = 150). Adventists
reason that a future fulfillment of
the fifth trumpet would put the
Second Coming more than 150 years
away and this, they say, is not
possible!
Because the world did
not end in 1844, we have the
advantage of reviewing the Millerite
movement to see what went wrong.
Miller’s conclusion about 1844
created a fatal problem that no one
could foresee. The Millerites ended
up reasoning backwards. They let
their prophetic conclusion obscure
prophetic details. The Millerites
(unwittingly) abused the Bible by
forcing it to say things it did not
say. It is very important that we
observe this flaw because it is a
perpetual problem for everyone who
studies the Bible. The Millerite
movement was built on a false
assumption and the movement
eventually imploded because they
forced the Bible to defend their
conclusions rather than allowing the
Bible to speak for itself. At
maximum volume, the Bible speaks so
softly that one must really strain to
hear what it has to say. Personal
bias, tradition, heritage, and
external authority easily drown out
God’s Word.
In 1838, Dr. Josiah
Litch, a scholarly Methodist minister
from Massachusetts, published a
forty-eight-page booklet supporting
Miller’s prophetic position.
Litch had been studying the
prophecies for some time when he
became aware of the Millerite
movement. Litch became involved in
the movement and he produced a
discovery that brought thousands into
the Millerite movement in 1840.
Looking back through the corridor of
history for a fulfillment for each of
the seven trumpets, Litch came up
with an explanation for the fifth and
sixth trumpet that was better and
more concise than anything heard
previously. Litch’s exposition
on Revelation 9 fit within the
paradigm of 1844 like a hand in a
glove. He translated the five months
in Revelation 9:5 to mean 150 years
(using a day for a year) ands the
time period called an hour, day,
month and year in Revelation 9:15
he translated as 391 years and 15
days. In other words, Dr. Litch
calculated that the fifth and sixth
trumpets spanned a total of 541 years
and 15 days.
Dr. Litch concluded
that the fifth trumpet marked the
rise of the Othman, a Moslem
commander who founded the Ottoman
Empire. Litch also concluded that the
five months mentioned in Revelation
9:5 began on July 27, 1299 when
Othman began to assault (torment) the
Greeks, and the 150 years using a day
for a year) of torment ended when
Constantine was crowned at Sparta in
1449. (This Constantine is not to be
confused with the Constantine who
ruled over Rome during the fourth
century A.D.) Shortly after
Constantine was crowned, Constantine
fell to the Moslems and according to
Litch, the Ottoman Empire ruled over
the Greeks for 391 years and 15 days.
Litch concluded in 1838 that the
Ottoman Empire would fall two years
later, specifically on August 11,
1840. Litch’s prophetic position
was hot news! It was widely published
throughout New England and everyone
waited anxiously to see what would
happen. “At the very time
specified,” Ellen White would
later write, “Turkey, through
her ambassadors, accepted the
protection of the allied powers of
Europe, and thus placed herself under
the control of Christian nations.1
The Millerites were overjoyed.
Their prophetic interpretation was on
track. The Ottoman Empire had fallen
and their joy overflowed as hundreds
of new converts swelled the Millerite
movement. Seeing is believing. The
end of the world was less than four
years away!
Ellen G. Harmon-White
came from a family of Millerites. (In
fact, the Harmon family was removed
from the Methodist Church in 1843
because they embraced the
date-setting heresies of William
Miller.) Throughout her life, Ellen
White believed the seven trumpets
were historical in nature, and today,
many church leaders consider any
deviation from the prophet’s
“pen of inspiration” an
abomination. In other words, SDAs
generally believe that God spoke
through Ellen White and her words
have much more weight and authority
than Scripture. Moreover, SDAs are
committed to a historical position on
prophecy because they believe the
historical approach uniquely
identifies the true Antichrist (which
they believe is the pope), and the
mark of the beast is Sunday
observance.
Even though some SDA
scholars have recognized that
Litch’s August 11, 1840 date is
meaningless (for example, C. Mervyn
Maxwell suggests the sixth trumpet
could have ended in 1844), SDAs are
limited to a historical position on
the sixth trumpet because (a) no one
within the church has can openly
promote the idea that Ellen White is
factually wrong without offending the
leaders of the church and (b) the SDA
church believes that a futurist
approach to prophecy undermines its
understanding of the identity of the
Antichrist and the mark of the beast
(Sunday observance).
Over the years, I have
asked SDA pastors about the
church’s view on the seven
trumpets. Usually, they diminish the
importance of the seven trumpets with
one of two arguments. First, the
trumpets are in the past and they are
not essential to our salvation, and
that is the end of the discussion.
The second argument is a bit more
involved. Some leading SDA pastors
and members believe in a dual
fulfillment of the seven trumpets is
possible. To prove their point,
advocates of this view will usually
offer this statement written from
Ellen White in 1890 saying:
“Solemn events before us are yet
to transpire, Trumpet after trumpet
is to be sounded; vial after vial
poured out after another upon its
inhabitants of the earth.”
Dual Fulfillments Is a
Disastrous Concept
Using Ellen
White’s writings to support dual
fulfillment is baffling because it
creates more problems than it solves.
Actually, the dual fulfillment
argument is an apologetic device. It
allows staunch church members to hold
on to the traditional views of Ellen
White while permitting
“progressive members” to
embrace a totally different view of
prophecy endorsed by Ellen White. The
end result is that Ellen White is not
put in an errant position.
Ironically, the Catholic Church did
the same thing at the turn of the
sixteenth century by offering the
preterist and futurist view of
prophecy – simultaneously! But,
the dual fulfillment argument is a
disaster in the making.
Dual fulfillments
really mean two different
interpretations for a given prophecy.
In other words, the third trumpet can
be one thing at one time in
Earth’s history and something
else at another time in Earth’s
history! This nonsense reduces the
“more sure word of
prophecy” to a nose of wax which
expositors can distort to suit their
needs. God’s word is true and
there is one truth. The intended
meaning of Bible prophecy does not
change with time and fulfillment only
occurs when the specifications are
full-filled. Taking the dual
fulfillment device to its logical
conclusion, we have to ask,
“Will the 1,260 years of the
Dark Ages be repeated a second time?
If not, how would you prove it? Will
the seventh trumpet (the close of
salvation) occur a second time? If
not, how would you prove it? Will the
mark of the beast occur a second
time? Will the seven last plagues
happen twice? If not, how would you
prove it? What mechanism determines
which prophecies in Daniel and
Revelation occur twice and which ones
do not?”
Because Ellen
White’s endorsement on the sixth
trumpet is problematic, please
consider these four statements:
1. If Ellen White
believed the seven trumpets were in
the future, why didn’t she
correct her errant position that was
published in the 1907 and 1911
editions of The Great
Controversy? The Great
Controversywas first
published in 1888. Later, it was
expanded and revised in 1907 and
again in 1911. Ellen White died in
1915. If Ellen White believed the
seven trumpets of Revelation were
future events in 1890 when she wrote
the statement in Selected
Messages Volume III, she had
twenty-five years and two published
editions to correct her mistake.
2. If Ellen White
believed the seven trumpets were
future in 1890, why didn’t she
say something specifically about them
and their horrific consequences? For
someone who wrote more than 250,000
handwritten pages during her
lifetime, there is total silence in
her writings on the seven trumpets as
future events. On the other hand,
when she did address the seven
trumpets, she placed them in the
past. An impartial jury would have to
look at this evidence and conclude
that her silence on the seven
trumpets as future events indicates
that she did not believe they were
future events.
3. A computer search
of her writings indicates that Ellen
White mentioned the word
“trumpets” at least
ninety-four times in her writings. In
each case, she either associated the
word with the seven trumpets or she
used the word to identify a warning
instrument, such as: “Blow
the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm
on my holy hill. Let all who live in
the land tremble, for the day of the
Lord is coming. It is close at
hand.” (Joel 2:1) In other
words, Ellen White did not write one
word about the seven trumpets being
future. One would hope that academic
honesty would cause SDAs to keep her
1890 Selected Messages quote
within the context of her historical
understanding, but this is not the
case. Many people continue to take
her 1890 statement out of its context
to make it appear that she endorsed a
future sounding of Revelation’s
seven trumpets. This is inexcusable.
4. Finally, some SDAs
say that her statement on the sixth
trumpet in The Great
Controversy should not be
treated as though she is presenting
her thoughts, but instead she is
presenting Dr. Litch’s view on
the sixth trumpet. This argument is a
smokescreen to protect her
infallibility. If Ellen White knew
that Litch was in error, she would
have said so. Litch’s error
occurred in 1840 and he recanted his
error shortly after 1844.1 Ellen
White lived seventy-five years after
1840 and she did not say one word
about Litch’s 1840 error in all
of her writings. If, after the
passage of sixty years, she still
presented Litch’s position in The
Great Controversy, why would
she leave the reader with the idea
that Litch’s position was
perfectly valid if she knew it was
false? After hearing these four
arguments repeatedly, I conclude that
many SDAs are simply uninformed or
unwilling to admit that their prophet
has made a serious error.
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