Step 3 – The Second Beast in
Revelation 13 Is the United
States
SDAs teach that the second beast in
Revelation 13 is the United
States. (White, pp.
439-441) They believe the Roman
Catholic Church and the United States
government will "join
hands" in the future to enact a
national Sunday law. (White, p. 578
and White, Ellen G., Testimonies
to the Church, vol. 5, Mountain
View:Pacific Press, 1948,
712) United, these two
superpowers will impose a universal Sunday
law on every nation. The
church’s prophet, Ellen White
(1827-1915), wrote: "As America,
the land of religious liberty, shall
unite with the papacy in forcing the
conscience and compelling men to
honor the [Catholic Church’s]
false Sabbath, the people of every
country on the globe will be led to
follow her example." (White,Testimonies
to the Church, vol. 6, p. 18
[insertion mine]) She also
wrote: "The decree enforcing the
worship of this day [Sunday] is to go
forth to all the world. .
. . Trial and persecution will come
to all who, in obedience to fourth
commandment, refuse to worship this
false Sabbath." (6 White, Ellen
G., Seventh-day Adventist Bible
Commentary, vol. 7, Washington
D.C.:Review and Herald, 1970, 976
[Italics mine])
Step 4 – A National Sunday Law
in the United States Signals the End
of the World
SDAs teach that the enactment of a
national Sunday law in the United
States will usher in a worldwide
"time of trouble." (White,
Ellen G., The Great Controversy,
p. 615) They believe that God
will test the world through
persecution to see who will honor
Rome’s false Sabbath and receive
the mark of the beast. They believe
God’s saints must resist a
Sunday law by standing firm in their
faith and obeying the fourth
commandment which declares the
seventh day of the week
holy. (White, Ellen G., The
Great Controversy, p. 625)
What
Will Trigger a National Sunday Law?
Here is a mystery. What will cause
the United States Congress to enact a
national Sunday law? What will cause
Protestants and Catholics to
"join hands" and eliminate
religious freedom in the United
States? Will the 1961 Supreme Court
decision favoring Maryland’s
blue laws provide a loophole around
the First Amendment that eliminates
religious freedom? Will the United
States and the Catholic Church
someday impose a universal Sunday
law on all 194 nations of the world
containing seven billion people?
The recent wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq prove that the outcome of war is
hard to predict. The United States
has sacrificed thousands of lives in
Iraq. It has spent trillions of
dollars and invested six long years
setting up a fledgling democracy in a
tiny country of only twenty-five
million people. (For comparison, the
state of California has a population
of thirty-six million.) If
establishing freedom (a democracy) in
tiny Iraq has been this deadly,
expensive, and lengthy, how will the
United States and the Catholic Church
impose the holiness of Sunday on
billions of devout Moslems, Hindus,
Jews, Pagans, and Communists? This is
a valid question and it deserves a
biblically reasoned answer. Many SDAs
are also asking this question because
today, 93% of SDA Church
members live outside the United
States.
What
Is the Next Prophetic Event?
Revelation
13:1-8 clearly
indicates that worship will someday
become a hotly debated topic all over
the world, but what will trigger this
conflict? What event should
Christians anticipate? What
will cause the United States to
negate the First Amendment and enact
a national Sunday law? What will
trigger the enactment of a national
Sunday law in communist countries
like China, North Korea, and Russia?
What will cancel Sharia Law and
trigger the enactment of Sunday laws
in large Islamic populations found in
Indonesia, Egypt, Iran, and Saudia
Arabia? What will trigger a national
Sunday law in the Jewish state of
Israel where conservatives insist on
observing the seventh day of the
week? What will cause seven hundred
million Hindus in India to worship
the God of the Christians on Sunday?
Today, the total of all the Christian
religions of the world is a mere 25%
of the world’s seven billion
people. So, how is a universal
Sunday law possible?
Ironically, SDAs claim to have a
prophetic end time message for the
whole world, but they have little or
nothing to say to the world about
coming events because (a) their
eschatology is essentially limited to
events occurring within the United
States, and (b) they insist that most
of Revelation has already been
fulfilled. Fortunately, they believe
that Revelation 13:8 is
future, "All inhabitants
of the Earth will worship the beast,"
but they have no idea how this will
happen? What will cause the entire
world to worship the beast?
According to the book of Revelation,
a national Sunday law in the United
States is not the
next prophetic event, and a national
Sunday law in the United States is
not the signal event that
marks the commencement of the Great
Tribulation for the whole world! SDAs
are watching and waiting for a
national Sunday law to usher in the
final days of Earth’s history,
and unfortunately, they are sitting
at the wrong bus stop. Like the rest
of the world (and the ten virgins),
the SDA Church will be caught by
surprise. It is time to wake up and
become serious students of God’s
Word.
A Horrible Mistake!
SDAs have ruined the intended meaning
of Revelation’s story by forcing
the seven trumpets into the past. By
using the correct timing for the
seven trumpets, a Bible student can
understand how, when, and why false
worship becomes an issue that engulfs
the whole world. This is crucial to
understanding Revelation’s story
because the seven trumpets will
change life as we know it and trigger
a worldwide controversy over worship!
SDAs and other evangelical groups
both embrace a prophetic schematic
that denies the importance of the
seven trumpets. The SDA Church
teaches the seven trumpets happened
centuries ago, whereas other
evangelical groups teach the seven
trumpets will occur after a
pre-tribulation rapture. Tragically,
the end result in both cases is the
same: Both groups conclude the seven
trumpets of Revelation are personally
insignificant. This is a horrible
mistake. Let me say it again,
"This is a horrible
mistake!" The first four
trumpets are about to sound and
almost everyone is asleep to their
importance. The rejection of Messiah
at the first Advent and the bitter
Millerite disappointment of 1844
prove that a failed prophetic
schematic can be spiritually fatal.
Several hundred million Christians
are about to wake up and discover
they have been misled by church
leaders, and the irony is, there is
no need for this.
The SDA Position on the Seven
Trumpets
Before we investigate what the Bible
has to say about the seven trumpets,
please consider the historical
interpretation which SDAs hold and
vigorously defend:
There are some variations on the
timing of the seven trumpets among
SDA scholars. The positions stated
here are taken from Thoughts on
Daniel and Revelation, 1944 Edition,
pages 476-490, 512-517, 542, Uriah
Smith. See also God Cares, Volume II,
1985 Edition, pages 238-265, C.
Mervyn Maxwell.
Trumpet
1: A.D. 395 – Alaric
leads the Goths against Rome
Trumpet
2: A.D. 428-465 –
Genseric leads the Vandals
against Rome
Trumpet
3: A.D. 460 – Attila
leads the Huns against Rome
Trumpet
4: A.D. 476 – Odoacer
forces the collapse of Rome
Trumpet
5: A.D. 1299 – Ottoman
Empire founded by Othman
Trumpet
6: August 11, 1840 –
Ottoman Empire falls
Trumpet
7: 1844 until the close of
salvation
What Does the Bible Actually Say
about the Seven Trumpets?
Trumpet
1: Burning hail falls. A
third of the trees and all of
the green grass burned up (Revelation 8:7)
Trumpet
2: Something like a huge
mountain, all ablaze, impacts
an ocean – water turns
to blood, kills sea
creatures, sinks ships (Revelation 8:8,9)
Trumpet
3: A blazing star impacts a
continent – rivers and
springs contaminated, people
drink poisoned water and die
(Revelation
8:10,11)
Trumpet
4: Darkness – the light
from the Sun, Moon, and stars
is obscured (Revelation
8:12)
Trumpet
5: An angel king and his
demons are released from the
Abyss – the wicked are
tormented for five months (Revelation
9:1-11)
Trumpet
6: A great war starts and
Lucifer takes control of
Earth – one third of
mankind killed. (Revelation
9:13-21)
Trumpet
7: Close of Salvation –
Ark of the Covenant shown
from Heaven (Revelation
11:15-19)
Why do SDAs apply the
first four trumpets to the fall of
pagan Rome? The answer is clear when
one studies the early history of the
church. The Millerites put the seven
seals, seven trumpets, Two Witnesses
and even the seven last
plagues into past centuries for
a simple reason. (Froom, LeRoy
Edwin, Prophetic Faith of our
Fathers, vol. IV, Washington
D.C.:Review and Herald, 1946-54, p.
724) The Millerites believed the
world would end in 1844; therefore,
they reasoned, everything in Bible
prophecy must be fulfilled prior to
1844. To make the book of Revelation
meet their prophetic needs, they
researched history and invented
"historical fulfillments."
Think about this. The Millerites were
forced by their end-of-the-world
conclusion to put the bulk of
Revelation’s story in the past.
During the period between 1844 and
1863, members of what would become
the SDA Church reexamined
Miller’s views and they made a
few prophetic changes. Perhaps the
most notable change, in terms of
timing, concerned the worship of the
beast in Revelation
13:8 and the seven
last plagues. Since nothing occurred
in 1844, these events were moved into
the future.
The
First Four Trumpets Are Literal
Events
Contrary to what most SDA scholars
say, the first four trumpets are not
symbolic. The first four trumpets are
four literal, physical judgments that
will soon befall Earth. The first
four trumpets are expressions of
God’s wrath. The first four
trumpets will awaken the whole world
to the reality and holiness of
Almighty God, and man’s
accountability to Him. The first four
trumpets must be treated as literal
descriptions of literal events for
three reasons:
If
the first four trumpets were
symbolic, God would
have clearly defined the
symbols with relevant texts. (Notice
the clarity of symbols
defined with relevant texts.
See Daniel 2:38; 4:20-22; 7:17; Revelation
1:20; 17:15,18.)
Consider this: The Bible says
that people will die from
drinking poisoned waters from
rivers and springs during the
third trumpet. Now, let us
ask a few clarifying
questions. What are people if
they are not literal people?
What are rivers and springs
if not literal rivers and
springs? What is poisoned
water if not poisoned water?
If the language of the third
trumpet is symbolic as SDAs
claim, where is the relevant
text that defines these
symbols? What about the
fourth trumpet? If the Sun,
Moon, and stars are not
literal, what else could they
be? What else could turn dark
so that a third of the day
and night is without
light? There is no
better way to destroy the
intended meaning of "the
more sure word" of Bible
prophecy than to declare
prophetic elements symbolic
which God has not made
symbolic.
The
first four trumpets describe
literal events because the
outcome in each case is
consistent with the laws of
physics. For example, fiery
hail (a meteoric firestorm)
will fall from the sky during
the first trumpet and the
result will be wildfires all
over the world! The Bible
says a third of the trees and
all of the green grass will
be burned up! This
"cause and effect"
is fully consistent with the
laws of physics. Remember,
God destroyed Sodom and
Gomorrah with a fiery
hailstorm (Genesis 19:24)
because ". . .
the men of Sodom were wicked
and were sinning greatly
against the Lord." (Genesis 13:13)
Consider this: During the
second trumpet, the Bible
says something like a great
mountain – all ablaze
– will impact an ocean
and the sea will turn to
blood. Science affirms this
result is physically
consistent with an asteroid
impact. A white-hot asteroid
impact would boil available
oxygen out of the sea. Red
tide algae (which is very
toxic) quickly blooms and
thrives in an
oxygen-deficient environment.
The phenomenon of red tide is
found around the world. In
fact, red tide has covered
areas up to 10,000 square
miles! During July 2009, red
tide caused a near-complete
closure of shellfish
harvesting in the state of
Maine. Red tide killed more
than 23 million dollars worth
of shellfish during 2005 in
Maine and Massachusetts
alone! The Bible says that
sea creatures will die from
the asteroid impact (due to
superheated water and the
growth of red tide algae) and
a third of the ships will
sink (as a result of the
tidal wave that follows)!
What is this great mountain
– all ablaze, the sea
creatures, and the ships if
not a burning asteroid, sea
creatures, and ships? No one
can declare a prophecy
symbolic and then make up a
meaning for the symbol. The
Bible must be permitted to
speak for itself. If
God does not define an item
to be a symbol with a
relevant text, then the item
cannot be symbolic.
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 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)
