The wickedness of the world is exceedingly great and its corrupting influence has been unchecked in every branch of society. Nevertheless, the cause of truth has pressed forward with ever-increasing glory, few though they be who have received it. How it came to be that a small and unworthy company of believers were honored to receive such a wealth of wisdom and understanding is a story that blends grace and wonder with tragedy and unspeakable woe. It is a story of prophecy and revelation, of surprise and incredulity.
In this section, you will read about that story—all traceable in the inspired testimony of the prophets—and you will see how the authority of Jesus Christ accompanies this testament. As did the Adventist pioneers, so have the testators lived out the prophecies, and like a publicly recorded contract, their story of prophecy fulfillment is a witness to the world of what the Lord has done for His people.
In this section, you will see how God has fulfilled His Word, and thus His obligations according to the terms of the everlasting covenant that He made with the Advent people, for the benefit of the world. This section explains how this testament is connected to the everlasting covenant, and as the heirs read these pages, they will gain an appreciation for its origin and value.
The covenant, or testament, is a subject that is fraught with egregious misunderstanding among Christians, but when we look at the big picture, it comes into clear focus. From the beginning,[1] God made a covenant of peace[2] with the fallen race, that there would be salvation, that God would purge the sin from among His people, and dwell among them forever more.
The same covenant was confirmed with Abraham, when the burning lamp and smoking furnace passed between the pieces of the sacrificial animals in a solemn promise to give Canaan to Abraham’s seed.[3] The covenant concerning earthly Canaan was symbolic of that concerning the heavenly Canaan, where the children of faith would dwell with the Lord.
In olden times, contracts were made in different ways than today. Instead of using pages upon pages of legal documents to permanently fix the contract in the enduring ink of the civil records offices, people in ancient times just agreed upon the terms and in a special sacrificial custom, they swore before God that they would uphold their end of the bargain. This form of covenanting was not just a strange ancient ritual, but it precisely foreshadowed how the breach would be repaired between God and the remnant of His people at the end of time. It was, in fact, a type of this very testament!
God renewed the Abrahamic covenant with Moses and all Israel, and the essence of the covenant was written on tables of stone, representing its eternal nature, and given to the people. Every contract between parties relies on the principle of acting in good faith.
In law, the phrase “good faith” refers to a requirement to act honestly and to keep one’s promises without taking unfair advantage of others or holding others to an impossible standard.[4]
It had been by faith that Abraham learned to walk in righteousness, but through a lack of the same, the children of Israel were cut off from realizing the fulfillment of God’s promise to them to bring them into the Land of Canaan. God’s original plan for them was not fulfilled! Instead they perished in the wilderness, and only those two among them who demonstrated faith could see the promise realized.
But the covenant to bring Israel into the literal land of Canaan was only a foreshadowing of the everlasting covenant. The former was an object lesson for understanding what God was really doing with the latter. The latter—the “new” covenant—would be made based on better promises[5]—those of Jesus Christ, in whose heart the same law—the words of the first covenant—were written.
But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. (Jeremiah 31:33)
You know that Jesus had the law of God written in His heart, and in His entire life, He never once transgressed one of its precepts. But is this verse just about Jesus? It speaks of the house of Israel and “their hearts,” plural, and is thus not only about Jesus! When believers put their faith in Jesus, believing that He, being without sin, died in their stead, He begins to impart to them His own righteousness, and His own faith, by which His law is written in their hearts. By this wondrous means, the very mind of Christ in all its purity and holiness, is imparted to the believer, and he is changed from the inside out. This is righteousness by faith, and results in a life of conformity to the law of God, just as Jesus’ life was. The new covenant was not completely fulfilled by Jesus; it fulfills His part, but it must also be fulfilled by His people—the other party to the contract! That is His people “acting in good faith,” and that is what this testament is all about.
This is the work of the Holy Spirit, and requires the cooperation of the human element, for He will not force any change against the will of the individual, but rather presents the light of truth and brings conviction to the heart. Then the choice must be made to surrender the will, so that He can effect the change in the believer. Many who are eligible under the terms of this testament may find it only after probation has already closed. Thus, only through continual surrender, will they win the victory. Those who have the faith of Jesus will receive the law written in their heart as under the extreme pressure of the situation they find themselves in, as the plagues are falling, they will yield every selfish inclination before it manifests itself as sin. This is their high calling, and this testament is necessary for their success!
It has ever been the threat of Satan to destroy those who conform their lives to God’s law. This is the persecution of the church of Smyrna, which represents the faithful martyrs. And if he cannot silence them in death, he seeks to weaken their faithfulness through compromise, which would separate them from God and bring them under the condemnation of the law.
Can God deliver the everlasting covenant to a people who are unfaithful to His law? Absolutely not! Not even if they are His chosen people! Acting in good faith with respect to the law of God is the distinguishing characteristic that separates God’s people from the rest of the world.
It is for this reason that this is not the testament of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, as it should have been! Like the priests and prophets of ancient Israel who desired to kill Jeremiah, saying “This man is worthy to die; for he hath prophesied against this city, as ye have heard with your ears,”[6] so also have Adventists wished to silence us for speaking against their city, the church. They blindly parrot that “the church will go through to the end,” completely ignoring all the apostasy and sin that would prevent God from fulfilling His promises to them! But God has an unchanging standard:
…if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. (Matthew 19:17)
Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus. (Revelation 14:12)
Before Jesus can return, He must have a people in whose hearts is written the law of God. Not just the letter of the law, but the Spirit of the law must be in their heart—love for God and love for their fellow man. We will understand later what that really means, and at what point that love was exemplified by the testators, to whom God’s promises were delivered!
There are two movements of prophecy that contrast the difference between having and lacking that complete demonstration of love. First, we will look at the prophecy of Revelation 10 and what has become a clear prophetic fulfillment in history. As one sees it in the light of present truth, one will understand it as never before! This will prepare the reader for understanding the contrasting prophecy, and in the process, learn how the present condition of things came to be.
Some things—especially prophecies—are best understood after the lapse of some time. Jesus laid out this principle at His last supper with the disciples:
And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye might believe. (John 14:29)
God’s ways are higher than man’s ways, and typically, He works in unexpected ways. Many prophecies and biblical types have dual or even multiple fulfillments at different periods of history that share similar characteristics. As Jesus said, the Scripture cannot be broken,[7] and His word will not return void.[8] If it is not fulfilled in one way, it will be fulfilled in another, and the symbolism of prophecy can take shape in many ways. In hindsight, we see many of the same, familiar prophecies in a brighter light, and the additional experience provides depth and harmony not possible when the events have but freshly transpired. In the light of Time, the familiar prophecies grow in beauty as the history of His work with man is recounted.
During the Great Advent Awakening of the 1830s and 40s, the Holy Spirit was moving among the people, and many hearts were stirred to interest in the prophecies of the Second Advent, and people conformed their lives to the principles of truth. Its culminating messages were prophesied in the Bible as three angels flying in heaven with the everlasting gospel to be preached to the world, so that the everlasting covenant could be delivered. The first angel delivered the keynote message of the movement:
Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters. (Revelation 14:7)
The Holy Spirit worked through the study of a simple farmer by the name of William Miller in America, as well as others in Europe, to lead people to give glory to God and worship the Creator. Millers’ experience, and that of all the believers, was well illustrated in Revelation by the following description:
And I went unto the angel, and said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey. And I took the little book out of the angel's hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter. (Revelation 10:9-10)
The angel holds the book open, and John must receive it from the angel’s hand before it can be “eaten” or understood. Thus, the angel is none other than Jesus Christ, who gave the understanding of the little book to Miller by His representative, the Holy Spirit. The people were eager to read and “eat up” that little book of the prophecy of Daniel 8,[9] and as they contemplatively “chewed on it,” it was sweet as honey to them.
But William Miller and the Adventists of that time did not grasp the greater meaning of the prophecy. By identifying the endpoint as the return of Jesus in the clouds, their anticipation ran high, but proportionally great was their disappointment when Jesus did not return as they had believed. Thus, the sweet experience in their mouth was turned to bitterness in their stomachs, as their understanding was confronted with the digestive acids of reality. That the Holy Spirit was leading them, however, is evidenced by the fact that the prophecy of Revelation 10 foretold their experience with the little book with great accuracy.
Their severe disappointment tested their character to the core, proving the depth of their love for truth. Many immediately vomited up the book and had nothing further to do with it, for the pain that it inflicted to their ego by not proving them right, as they had hoped. Others sought diverging explanations or dates, undermining the truth of the first studies.
Only those who laid self aside with all its prideful ambitions, sincerely seeking the Lord and His word for guidance, could find a complete harmony that did not deny the Spirit’s leading in the Millerite movement, yet explained what took place. This has ever been the attitude of those who sincerely love the truth. They knew Him and could not deny His leading. Their belief was based on love for Jesus and the truth, and no selfish purpose or hope for self-exaltation. That kind of good faith in God’s promises is what drives the testators of this testament today, and it should be the good faith of the heirs as well.
It is not just the little book experience that applies to the Millerite believers; the description of the Angel Himself was also a fitting representation of Jesus as they would have related to Him:
And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire: (Revelation 10:1)
It was Jesus who led them as a pillar of fire, lighting their way as they sounded the cry, “Behold, the bridegroom cometh!”[10] It was He, who was to come with the clouds of heaven, brightly shining as the sun. This was the promise they hoped in, like the rainbow above His head.
Although the midnight cry to announce Jesus’ return did not culminate in His coming in that generation, that experience served as a bright light shining on their path, as they understood that Jesus came to the Father:
I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. (Daniel 7:13)
He was leading them both before their disappointment and after, like the two pillars of fire that were the Angel’s guiding feet. Step by step, He led them, never allowing His light to grow dim, just as He did for ancient Israel in their desert wandering with His cloud by day and fire by night. In this vision, there are other symbols that relate directly to the advent movement! John sees the Angel standing on the earth and the sea:
And he had in his hand a little book open: and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth, And cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth: and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices. (Revelation 10:2-3)
Ellen G. White, who participated in the culminating experience, noted the geographical scope where the message was taught:
Like the great Reformation of the sixteenth century, the advent movement appeared in different countries of Christendom at the same time. In both Europe and America men of faith and prayer were led to the study of the prophecies, and, tracing down the inspired record, they saw convincing evidence that the end of all things was at hand. In different lands there were isolated bodies of Christians who, solely by the study of the Scriptures, arrived at the belief that the Saviour’s advent was near. {GC 357.1}
The enrapturing revelation was the understanding of the time prophecy of the 2300 days, which was due to conclude in 1844. The message was embraced by many and taught widely in Europe, which is biblically represented as the sea for the multitudes of various nations and tongues living there,[11] as well as in sparsely populated America, whose relationship to the multitudes of Europe is presented biblically with the contrasting symbol of the “earth.” In other parts of the world, the message was not so widespread (nevertheless, “the first angel’s message was carried to every missionary station in the world”[12]). Thus, His standing on both the sea and the earth foretold how the understanding of the book would gain a firm foothold in Europe and America.
After describing the Angel, John heard “seven thunders” when He spoke, and he was going to write their words, but was bidden not to:
And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not. (Revelation 10:4)
The diligent Bible student seeks to understand every aspect of a vision, recognizing that God is speaking, and nothing should fall to the ground. What then should we make of the seven thunders that John was bidden not to write!? Is it possible to know what was spoken? Why didn’t God allow John to write them? The answer to these questions reiterates that this vision applies to the Millerite movement—one which would not reach to the end when all mysteries would be expounded.
However, the Angel’s roaring as a lion is suggestive of the content of the Millerite message as it was then preached: that Jesus, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, was returning, and that He was revealing the secret of the time:[13]
Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets. The lion hath roared, who will not fear? the Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy? (Amos 3:7-8)
The Millerites had preached a time that they believed was for the Second Advent, but was it really the midnight cry, as they called it? The term is taken from the parable of the ten virgins, who “went forth to meet the bridegroom” (Jesus).[14] For the disappointed Adventists, it found application to Jesus’ coming to the Ancient of Days in heaven, and the reality of the passing of the generations indicates that there must be another application, because the virgins did not meet Jesus in 1844 or soon thereafter. One must concede that there is another midnight cry, “Behold, the bridegroom cometh!” as the last message just before the Lord’s Advent.
The Angel spoke a prophecy that John, representing the Millerite Adventists, was not to write, because it was not possible for them to have knowledge of it. John could only write about their experience during that time. He heard the story of a future history of the Adventist people that was just beginning to be written, but it was a future message that was to be unsealed at a later date—after the yet-future Advent experience had become history. It was a prophecy of the Fourth Angel’s message, which includes the story of how the provisions of this testament reached the hands of the testators over the course of the generations from the Millerites to the present.
The time message had served its purpose for the Adventist community, and no later times were prophesied in God’s word for the movement of that day. The Angel’s solemn oath reflects this:
And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer: (Revelation 10:6)
His oath that “there should be time no longer” referred not to the end of time for the world, but to the end of time prophecy as found in the little book. That is, Jesus declared with this oath to the Millerite movement that there was to be no more prophetic reckoning past 1844 in connection with the little book that included Daniel 8:14. The Millerite movement preached 1844 with the blessing of the Holy Spirit, who gave the open book to consume. However, they had no authority to set future dates for that prophecy, because it would undermine the truth of the 1844 date, as though it were in error and needed to be adjusted. The oath protects the authenticity of that time message!
In general, the presence of an oath, a swearing, means that a legal document of high importance is involved here. It signals a transaction with regard to the everlasting covenant, which took place in the wake of the Millerite movement. Indeed, it was the renewing of God’s covenant with another denominated people: Seventh-day Adventists. By accepting the truth of the seventh-day Sabbath of the fourth commandment in 1846, they held in their hands the title deed to the heavenly Canaan. Although they did not go to heaven with Jesus in 1844, they received the contract in hand. This is the biblical prophetic proof that the Seventh-day Adventist Church was God’s chosen people.
The authority of the oath is given by noting His attributes as Creator of heaven, earth, and the sea. Not only is that the seal of God in the fourth commandment, but it is a clear parallel with the first angel who was flying in heaven in the last years of the Millerite movement; the oath was the follow-up to the message:
In other words, the first angel warned “Pay attention to God, because He is about to do a judgment transaction with the seal of His authority!” That transaction was the conveying of His Law—the everlasting covenant—to His new denomination of people.
From these evidences, it should be very clear that the vision of the Angel with the little book was a specific prophecy about the early Adventist movement. It would be incongruent, therefore, to suggest that the oath made by the Angel was universally applicable to all time, when John, the only witness to the oath, was not even permitted to write that which pertained to the future after that period! No, it was not a universal declaration for all remaining time.
However, until there should be a future authorization to prophesy the time again, it was indeed true that “there should be [prophetic] time no longer.” In other words, only the same Authority that swore “there should be time no longer” could certify time prophecy again. For the Adventist Church, time prophecy implies their breach of the testament—of the oath—which God had given them, because to accept a time message, the Church would have to admit that their time was over, and that Jesus didn’t come for them, and that they failed to uphold their obligations under the covenant. But the church’s leader, Ted Wilson, doesn’t eat such humble pie about breaking the Sabbath!
A time message by its very nature, necessarily comes with a unique testing function that other messages do not possess. Every reader familiar with the Great Disappointment understands that the passing of the time was a means of testing the hearts of God’s people. It tested their love for God and His truth, separating those who loved His appearing from those who joined the movement for fear or other selfish purposes.
But did you know that there is another test that the message administered? It was also a test of love, but love for our fellow man! In the case of love toward God, there were but few who passed the test, but in the case of love toward man—that’s brotherly love—sadly, there was not one who passed! No, not one!
What would that brotherly, Philadelphian love have looked like? In the face of a time message, there is but one answer. If you are familiar with our articles, then you already know what it is. But if not, to understand what it looks like, consider that God needs His people to reach the high standard of the character of Jesus Christ before He can come. The love of Jesus ran very deep, and He enjoined upon His disciples—including us, His present-day disciples—to follow His example.
Jesus now explained to His disciples that His own life of self-abnegation was an example of what theirs should be. Calling about Him, with the disciples, the people who had been lingering near, He said, “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” The cross was associated with the power of Rome. It was the instrument of the most cruel and humiliating form of death. The lowest criminals were required to bear the cross to the place of execution; and often as it was about to be laid upon their shoulders, they resisted with desperate violence, until they were overpowered, and the instrument of torture was bound upon them. But Jesus bade His followers take up the cross and bear it after Him. To the disciples His words, though dimly comprehended, pointed to their submission to the most bitter humiliation—submission even unto death for the sake of Christ. No more complete self-surrender could the Saviour’s words have pictured. But all this He had accepted for them. Jesus did not count heaven a place to be desired while we were lost. He left the heavenly courts for a life of reproach and insult, and a death of shame. He who was rich in heaven’s priceless treasure, became poor, that through His poverty we might be rich. We are to follow in the path He trod. {DA 416.3}
What love! Yet think about what that means! If Jesus did not count heaven a place to be desired while we were lost, and we are to follow in His footsteps, then neither should we count heaven a place to be desired while others have not had the opportunity to be saved.
When the prophesied time came, did the fullness of Christ’s love shine from the faces of the Millerites? What would have been the heart-cry of one in whom was born a love where heaven is not desired while others may die without opportunity? Would it not be, “Lord, wait! There are others who have not heard yet!”?
What would have been the result if this were the prayer on the lips of those early Adventists? Would they have been disappointed? No! With that prayer, they would have passed both tests of the law of love, including brotherly love, and God would have been able to fulfill the promises of the everlasting covenant to them in a short time! With joy, the understanding of the event would have come before the time passed, and all would have been different. They would have sensed God’s approval of their unselfish desire to reach the rest of the world, and they would have received from Him special authority and power to do so!
The Holy Spirit leads His people one step at a time, and the time had not yet come that both parts of the covenant—the two great commandments—could be written in the heart. There was still more work to be done. It is for this reason that the angel’s oath is in the context of the Millerite Adventist movement, whom John represented, being the only witness to the oath. It was they who received the little book from the Angel’s hand and ate it, but they did not sacrifice their own desire for heaven that more might be saved, and as a consequence, their own stomachs churned. To walk in the steps of Jesus is to demonstrate the two great commandments of the law:
And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:29-31)
More time was needed to prepare God’s people for this. Interestingly, there is another oath that gives the time until that process had to be accomplished. It is the oath that is deciphered in the Orion presentation and lies at the heart of God’s last message to humanity:
Then I Daniel looked, and, behold, there stood other two, the one on this side of the bank of the river, and the other on that side of the bank of the river. And one said to the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, How long shall it be to the end of these wonders? And I heard the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever that it shall be for a time, times, and an half; and when he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people, all these things shall be finished. (Daniel 12:5-7)
The oath recorded in the last chapter of Daniel was a solemn oath of Jesus to the Father and gave the time “to the end of these wonders,” as two men observed from the banks of the river. As soon as we see an oath involved, we should recognize that it has to do with the everlasting covenant; it is a legal act. Although there are similarities between the oath in Daniel 12 and that described in Revelation 10, they cannot represent the same oath, because the latter did not truly lead to the end! In Daniel 12, the oath is “to the end of these wonders,” whereas after John ate the little book in Revelation 10 and his belly became bitter, he was told by the same Angel who gave the oath, that there must come yet more prophecy:
And I took the little book out of the angel's hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter. And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings. (Revelation 10:10-11)
We can understand that the necessity of prophesying again must have been because the first attempt to reveal the time of Jesus’ return resulted in the bitter disappointment due to the missing sacrifice that would have demonstrated that both great commandments were written in their heart. There was still something missing from the contract: the signature of the receiving party, which represents the sacrifice of brotherly love.
Thus, when the court opened in 1844, the Ten Commandments (the legal contract) had to be given to the church for them to sign it! They received the whole law of God including the Sabbath truth in 1846, but how long would it take for the church to comprehend the contract and finally sign it themselves?
There are specific conditions that must be met before Jesus can come. The great controversy between Christ and Satan is not just a cosmic scuffle, but a formal court proceeding over the custody and governance of the universe. The defense case for God’s character requires evidence to be presented and witnesses to be called, who give acceptable testimony for God. The heavenly court was seated in 1844, according to the prophecies given to Daniel,[15] whose name means “God is my Judge” or “Judgment of God”.
I beheld till the thrones were cast down [set], and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened. (Daniel 7:9-10)
Daniel was commanded to seal the book of his prophecy that revealed the time when the Judgment would begin. It was not to be sealed forever, but only “to the time of the end.”[16] Then that prophecy[17] would be understood, and immediately afterward, Daniel was shown that highly symbolic scene where a question was asked:
Then I Daniel looked, and, behold, there stood other two, the one on this side of the bank of the river, and the other on that side of the bank of the river. And one said to the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, How long shall it be to the end of these wonders? (Daniel 12:5-6)
The man asked the question that was burning in Daniel’s heart: “How long until this is all over, and God can be vindicated?” Is that question burning in your heart? Are you anxious to see your Father vindicated and the Judgment ended? He is in the dock as the accused, and those who love Him will also want to know how long until the trial will end, and what their role in it is! The heirs to this legacy have a critically important role that needs to be understood and filled. All that is needed has been provided, but they must receive the covenant written in their hearts and stand in the light of Jesus in Orion without falling.
The answer to the question, “How long?” is given, but God would not reveal such secrets in plain text. He couched it in symbolism that would only be understood when the time came for it to be revealed.
And I heard the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever that it shall be for a time, times, and an half; and when he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people, all these things shall be finished. (Daniel 12:7)
The Lord knows how to pack a lot of information in a small space, and this is a good scriptural example! One of the earliest revelations that God gave to Brother John was the understanding of the duration of the Judgment—first from a different prophecy, and then later he found that the same timeframe was revealed in this oath. It has been featured and explained in the earliest versions of the Clock of God in Orion presentation. The symbolism depicts a two-fold confirmation of the covenant (12 + 12), or testament, by Jesus’ oath (×7).[18] Jesus shows (without words) that this phase of the Judgment would last 168 years: (12 + 12) × 7. This brings us from the beginning of the Judgment in 1844 to the autumn of 2012 as the end of the phase of the heavenly judgment for those who have died professing the name of Christ: the judgment of the dead.[19]
Throughout the 168 years of the judgment of the dead, the book of seven seals was opened, one seal after another, beginning with the first in 1846, shortly after the Judgment was set. The book was written within and on the backside,[20] so part could be read without unsealing the book. The relationship of the seals with the history of Christianity is represented by the part that could be read without opening them. The hidden part of the book could not be read or understood until the seals were opened after 1844. This follows the pattern of the conquest of Jericho, as we have described at length in the History Repeats series and summarized in Babylon Is Fallen – Part I.
When you understand that the first six marches were repeated on the marches of the seventh day, and thus the seven seals were indeed opened during the time of the judgment, then you realize that the truth about the seventh-day Sabbath was just the beginning of the church’s understanding of the divine contract! Only the first seal was opened in 1846 as they realized that they were receiving a contract from the highest Authority of heaven, but the church had much more to understand.
After the sworn 168 years, the end of this long phase of the Judgment finally came on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) of 2012. It was the sevenfold High Sabbath of October 27, 2012;[21] the day of decision for the Judgment people—those who recognized what took place in heaven in 1844. This could have been arguably the most momentous occasion in heaven since the death and resurrection of Jesus! How intently the on-looking universe must have been watching the lead-up to that day! What would become of it!? Would God’s people get themselves ready to witness for Him?
What began as a small, but fervent company had multiplied throughout the 168 years after the judgment began, and they collectively transitioned through the stages of development as represented by the series of letters to the churches in Revelation 2 & 3. Sadly, though predictably, by 2012, the words of Jesus to the church of Laodicea could not have applied more:
I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: (Revelation 3:15-17)
The church had taken the attitude of ancient Israel, that because God had chosen them, they would forever be His chosen, regardless of their behavior. Clinging to the (conditional) promise that “the church would go through,” they counted it as faith to disconnect from reality as the highest leaders turned a blind eye to every form of sin and rebellion. They ignored the history of Israel, and the walls of separation from worldly practices were broken down until their union with the world was complete. From the standardless ones who just used the church for good feelings, to those who religiously embraced every aspect of conservative doctrine and church culture, they all denied the power of the gospel to write the law in their hearts. They had the testimony, but did not fulfill their part of the bargain. Like Laodicea (literally, “the judgment people”), they were neither cold nor hot, yet they believed themselves to be in need of nothing.
Do you also believe that God’s plans are fixed, rigid, and inflexible; that everything will happen literally as prophesied and nothing we do or don’t do will change anything in His plan? It is not so! He may know the end from the beginning, but we do not, and He calls us to walk in righteousness by faith so that His work may be accomplished and He may come! It did not have to take 2000 years, but because of the despicable attitude of indolent waiting as though Jesus is the One who is wasting time, the cause of God is in a time of crisis. We’re at the last opportunity to finish His work or lose the war! There will be no more delay. Stand up and let Him accomplish His work in you!
Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame. (1 Corinthians 15:34)
The Seventh-day Adventist Church had a high responsibility to give the last message of mercy to the world, and lead them through the final events of the Judgment as a nation of priests. This was the purpose of the Orion message. It was given to them to cleanse them and prepare them to serve as priests at the close of this earth’s history. However, instead of recognizing the weight of their responsibility in the plan of God, accepting the high honor, and rising to the occasion by faith, they turned away from Him who was speaking from heaven. They misused the great spiritual riches with which God had blessed them, turning them into a curse, and counted His voice from heaven a common thing of human origin. In so doing, they showed their lack of the fear of the Lord and added to this injury the great insult of their own “Creation Sabbath”[22] on the very culminative day of their judgment. They could no longer escape their corporate fate:
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children. (Hosea 4:6)
Heavy was the sentence pronounced on that day! Though greatly privileged, the Seventh-day Adventist Church would not be allowed to fulfill the role God had designed for it. What began with a great disappointment for God’s faithful on earth in 1844, ended with God’s great disappointment in heaven in 2012. But to this heavenly reality, they were and continue to be completely oblivious. They keep on getting their fix of formalism each Sabbath as they pursue the world, believing they have a foot in heaven’s door because they are Adventist, and Adventists “have the truth” (not anymore).
For 168 years, He worked with this church, protecting, correcting, and empowering it as a loving Father toward His child. But like ancient Israel, they began to turn away and sought to live like the surrounding denominations, until their heart was so estranged from Him, that when He spoke from Orion, they could not even recognize His voice! How this must have wrenched the heart of God as He foresaw the inevitable result! Hear His mournful and bitter lament:
And now go to; I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard [the Seventh-day Adventist Church]: I will take away the hedge thereof, and it shall be eaten up; and break down the wall thereof, and it shall be trodden down: And I will lay it waste: it shall not be pruned, nor digged; but there shall come up briers and thorns: I will also command the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry. (Isaiah 5:5-7)
Their lack of repentance and reform in the allotted time made it impossible for God to use them to give the world the last testimony, which requires a firm and faithful people. What was God to do? His people had refused Him! By whom could He give the last warnings to the world?
The temple of God had been measured, and it came short. God needed faithful priests, but He found them not at all prepared for battle, but erring and unstable, drinking the wine of the falsehoods of Babylon. The ugly result of the church party is vividly described:
For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, so that there is no place clean. (Isaiah 28:8)
Because of this horrible condition in which God found His people—His cherished vineyard—so few among them were able to hear His voice from Orion and respond. Not twelve men could be found among them to give testimony for the Father, because no one regarded. Thus, it was necessary that the final events of the Judgment proceed in a different way. In silent anticipation, the heavenly observers watched to see what God would do.
An emergency contingency was invoked, allowing a change of venue for the heavenly court. No longer would the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the antitype of Israel, serve to raise up the priests of the Most High God in the last generation. Instead, He chose those few individuals who responded to His voice, and gathered them together, whether physically or representatively, on the White Cloud Farm in Paraguay, South America. From that small group, He is raising up the nation of priests who will replace those who were “out of the way through strong drink.”[23]
The scene of Jesus’ oath in Daniel 12 gives the duration of the Judgment in two parts. The visual part, as we saw, reveals a time of 168 years for the first part of the Judgment. The spoken part of the oath tells us about the end of the Judgment and concludes with events connected with the Second Advent. This second phase is needed because the “record books” for the living have not been completed, but are still being written as life continues on earth. The time for the living is a time when polarizing influences cause the people to take a clear and visible stand either for or against the principles of God’s law. The law of God is the great standard by which all are judged!
There are two different principles from God’s law that especially relate to the two parts of the Judgment. The Sabbath was the overarching principle for the long phase of the judgment of the dead, but the judgment of the living is driven by a different, though connected principle of the law! Marriage is the twin institution that is indissolubly linked with the Sabbath. God’s specifications for marriage are based on Creation, just as His specifications regarding the Sabbath, and both institutions present a test of one’s loyalty to God’s authority as the Creator.
There is no single consequence of the failure of the Adventist Church that has proved to be more damaging to their hope of salvation than the tragedy of their 1888 Minneapolis General Conference. If they had responded to the Lord’s voice, they would have followed the Sunday Law developments as the fulfillment of Bible prophecy right through till Jesus’ return in that generation. But since they rejected the Lawgiver while professing to hold His law, He withdrew Himself from them and could not fulfill the prophecies as given, any more than He could bring the children of Israel into Canaan before the wilderness wandering.
At once traumatized and energized, the church fixed its focus on the Sabbath/Sunday question as the way to heavenly Canaan. Like the children of Israel, they said:
And they rose up early in the morning, and gat them up into the top of the mountain, saying, Lo, we be here, and will go up unto the place which the Lord hath promised: for we have sinned. (Numbers 14:40)
That is the response of Adventism to the 1888 fiasco: “will go up unto the place which the Lord hath promised” “by keeping the Sabbath.” But Moses said:
And Moses said, Wherefore now do ye transgress the commandment of the Lord? but it shall not prosper. (Numbers 14:41)
The Adventist Church has increased in numbers, but has it prospered toward entering the heavenly Canaan? Not at all—to the contrary, it has sunken into total apostasy by submitting to the world’s laws on all matters that conflict with God’s law. To keep God’s law, every commandment must be kept, not just one or more. Today, the state powers are legislating against God not on the Sabbath question, but on the marriage question—and the church has failed the test miserably.
Because the Adventist church rejected the Fourth Angel’s message—up to and including the voice of God from Orion, God’s emergency contingency plan has come into force. That called for additional time—time that allowed for Satan’s attack against marriage to become fully mature and bear its abominable fruit. Had they remained faithful, the final events would have transpired in a way that they would have recognized, but now, they are under strong delusion:
And then shall that Wicked be revealed, … Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in [approved of] unrighteousness. (2 Thessalonians 2:8-12)
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man [an Adventist, being spiritually rich] to enter into the kingdom of God. (Mark 10:25)
The more universal the laws become that disannul God’s order in marriage, the more Adventists wait expectantly for a coming Sunday law. They fail to realize that their own church worships the image of the beast through tacit approval of perverted marriages, not correcting the offenders in their ranks. In the judgment of the living, all must take a stand and become as chaste virgins, undefiled with women (representing churches),[24] or they will receive of the plagues to be poured out on Babylon and all who have fornicated with her, including the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her [Babylon], my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. (Revelation 18:4)
This testament is for those who come out of ALL the organized churches, including the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which is specifically disinherited in Section 1.
The transition from the Sabbath question to the marriage question, or from the judgment of the dead to the judgment of the living, is depicted in the oath of Daniel 12. While still holding His hands up to heaven, portraying the duration of the former, He verbally spoke the duration for the latter. Likewise, as the one was coming to its end, the next was beginning.
The church made its first serious efforts to embrace the world’s desecrated form of marriage in the Spring of 2012, when the issue of women’s ordination, which is decided by the same principles and arguments as LGBT tolerance, began to receive the church’s official attention.[25] At that time, God’s need for witnesses who would stand for His law led us to make a call for participation in the Lord’s supper with us on Passover day in 2012, which we recognized as the beginning of the “time, times, and an half” of the spoken part of Jesus’ oath. The 1290 days thus represented,[26] began exactly on that day, April 6, 2012.
The question may come to your mind, “Can God really experience an emergency?” We express it in a way we can understand it, but God is all-knowing—even of the future. He foresaw that the Adventist Church would fail, but it was not His will. To provide it with every opportunity, He built into the prophecies a certain flexibility, such that everything could have fulfilled perfectly for the church if they were faithful, or had at least repented in time. He did everything possible for them, but the choice was entirely theirs; God did not restrict their freewill. Nevertheless, the prophecies were not so rigidly worded as to preclude a second perfect fulfillment: that of the emergency contingency plan. The genius of God’s word is that this flexibility is not provided by a separate conditional clause, saying “if you are unfaithful, then this will happen instead,” lest it inadvertently suggest that God did not expect His people to be faithful. Instead, it was by means of a different, but equally valid application of the same prophecies.
The Church could have fulfilled the prophecies perfectly, and if they had, the final events of the world would have already come to their decisive conclusion in response. The world’s harvest would have been reaped, and Jesus would have come on October 23, 2016, on the very anniversary of the beginning of the Judgment.[27]
That is what could have been, but when God measured the temple and found it short, He began to prepare and fortify His little remnant of priests—the few who were still following Him whithersoever He went. He gave them clock cycles of trumpets and plagues, but they were strangely not performing as expected. It was a trying time, and their experience was well-described by the Psalmist’s cry,
My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God? (Psalm 42:3)
Little did we understand then that prophecy fulfillment was suffering the consequence of the church’s apostasy. In fact, it was not until the sixth trumpet period that we finally realized that God had irreversibly rejected the Adventist Church, and we withdrew our membership and began to call people out of it. Until then, there was always a lingering hope that the church might yet be cleansed!
Although those first trumpets did not wake people up according to our expectations, we could see the trumpet angels, as it were, with their places set and music on the stands. Strangely, however, the players were not ready to play! There was just enough happening in confirmation of the clock cycles that our expectation was held in anticipation of what was to come. Everything was coming to pass, but in a different way than expected, which we began to understand was due to the failure of the Adventist Church to fulfill their divinely appointed duty.
How little did we understand what God was doing with us, yet we recognized that it was the Lord! He was the health of our countenance and was preparing us for the sacrifice of Philadelphia, when we would lay down our joyous expectations so that the failure of the Church could be compensated. More time was needed, so for more time, we asked, trusting that Time would provide. Then, little by little, God began to open to us the full glory of His wondrous plan, which this testament conveys to the interested parties.
The plan involving Adventism under the covenant (the Law) conveyed to them in 1846 was the subject of our writings up until the sacrifice of Philadelphia. The testimony we wrote prior to that time was not annulled any more than the Old Testament of the Bible was nullified when the New Testament shed about it a new light, after Israel had finally crossed the line of God’s forbearance.[28]
Yet how should we understand Jesus’ oath in the light of the additional time, since the time, times and a half does not actually point “to the end of these wonders” anymore, now that the extension is in place? Is there a biblical prophecy that points to this emergency change? By whose authority do we prophesy these extended timelines? These are questions that are answered when we study the subject matter that was to be prophesied again!
We have seen how the Angel of Revelation 10 prophesied of the Millerite movement and the great disappointment, protecting the accuracy of the interpretation of the 2300 days and the importance of what happened in 1844 by forbidding them to make any further time proclamations of any kind. The Judgment having then begun, we saw how Jesus’ oath in Daniel 12 revealed how much time would transpire—both for the dead (168 years) and for the living (1290 days)—until its conclusion. But we also saw how the “judgment people,” the Seventh-day Adventist Church, failed in their mission by tolerating sin and apostasy, trusting in their spiritual riches, unaware that they had become poor, blind, naked and disqualified from running for God in the last race. The very small and feeble remnant, who were left standing to serve as witnesses for God, needed more time than what would have been sufficient if a significant part of the church had heard God’s voice. Yet Jesus swore a solemn oath to Him “that liveth for ever,” that there would be a time, times, and a half! How could the need for additional time be accommodated without breaking the oath!?
Our first clue comes from the last verse of Revelation 10, which segues into the next prophecy:
And he [the Angel; Jesus] said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before [or about[29]] many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings. (Revelation 10:11)
Adventists have traditionally interpreted that which must be prophesied again as the third angel’s message, but the language suggests otherwise. While the first angel’s message went “to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people”[30] this is not said of the third angel’s message, nor are kings included in the list. However, the Fourth Angel’s message of Revelation 18 is indeed about “all nations [and thus, the many peoples and their languages]… and the kings of the earth.” [31]
In the vision, John represents the servant of God to whom the message was given. At first, he represents William Miller, but at this transition point to the Fourth Angel, it is clear that he must represent another: the second Miller. Like the first, this second Miller would prophesy the time again, this time bringing a sacrifice. Time is the theme of the vision of Revelation 10. It was time prophecy that Miller preached, time prophecy that the Angel declared would cease, and time prophecy that must be prophesied again.
Brother John, through whom this “prophesying again” message was given, was not called without a thrice-repeated commitment that he desired the truth, whatever the cost, a commitment that was also made later by all within the movement. With the words, “Thou must prophesy again,” the final time message for humanity had begun, for it was this verse where God led Brother John to begin his studies, even before he flew to Paraguay to build his mission there.
But was he truly given authority to preach a message about time again? By 2010, when he first published the Orion message to the public, many frowned upon setting a time for any prophetic event, and quotes of Ellen G. White that reflected the authority of Jesus’ oath in Revelation 10 were oft repeated as evidence that it could not be truth. It was like the Jews quoting the law of Moses in the time of Jesus: they didn’t realize that One greater than Moses was walking among them, and that He was here to establish a better covenant. Adventists failed to realize that the oath of Revelation 10 was limited to the three angel’s messages, and that the Fourth Angel’s message came with authority and indeed must be a time message! And like the naysayers of the first Miller’s message, the naysayers of the second Miller’s message did not truly have a love for Jesus’ appearing, and simply hid behind any convenient excuse to disbelieve. But divine authority was indeed given to the new movement, as we will see shortly.
It is Jesus who is depicted by the Angel in Revelation 10, and it is Jesus whom Orion reveals, so we find a certain resemblance between the Angel and the Orion message. For example, His face like the sun is a hint to the star Alnitak, by which He is represented in Orion, and being clothed with a cloud, like the cloudy nebulae that surround it. These little connections hint to the way the Fourth Angel’s message refers back to the time of the Millerite movement, even though the message itself arose in a time far removed. In Miller’s day, the message could not travel quickly, and it took years to establish its foothold in Europe and America, but today, with the increase of knowledge, the message was at once available throughout every inhabited continent. The vision of Chapter 10 only fits the time of the first Miller and the great disappointment, but the timeframe of Brother John’s work is described in prophetic detail in the last verse, as well as the following chapter.[32] The prophecy of Chapter 11, including the two witnesses, is directly fulfilled by the Fourth Angel’s movement of High Sabbath Adventists.
The two witnesses of Chapter 11 are described there as follows:
And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth. (Revelation 11:3)
Regarding the identity of the two witnesses, the Adventist Bible Commentary brings out the following biblical evidence:
My two witnesses. A variety of interpretations of this symbol have been proposed. The allusions of vs. 5, 6 have led some to identify these witnesses as Elijah and Moses (see on vs. 5, 6), but the significance of these “two witnesses” goes beyond this. In v. 4 they are identified as “two olive trees” and “two candlesticks,” symbols drawn from Zech. 4:1–6, 11–14. There they are said to represent “the two anointed ones, that stand by the Lord of the whole earth” (v. 14). As the olive branches are portrayed furnishing oil for the lamps of the sanctuary (v. 12), so from these holy ones before the throne of God the Holy Spirit is imparted to men (see on Zech. 4:6, 14; see COL 408; cf. TM 338). Inasmuch as the fullest expression of the Holy Spirit to men is contained in the Scriptures of the OT and the NT, they may be considered to be the two witnesses (see GC 267; cf. on John 5:39). Concerning the Word of God the psalmist declares, “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path”; “the entrance of thy words giveth light” (Ps. 119:105, 130; cf. Prov. 6:23).
In a nutshell, the two witnesses are the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.[33] That is the foundation upon which we now build.
There are several connections between the prophecies of Zechariah and Revelation 11, as indicated by the Bible Commentary, but those prophecies are also intimately connected to the Fourth Angel’s message. For example, Zechariah 2 describes the man with the measuring line who measures Jerusalem, corresponding to the beginning of Revelation 11, which as we saw corresponds in turn to the work of this movement. Zechariah 5 describes the “flying roll,” which is the book of seven seals in Orion, flying in the heavens.
The vision of the olive trees is about the oil of the Holy Spirit flowing from the olive trees into the lamps.[34] The two witnesses are likened to the two olive trees because they are inspired by the Holy Spirit.
For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. (2 Peter 1:21)
As Christians, we know that the oil for our lamps comes from the Word of God in the Old and New Testaments.[35] Zechariah was a prophet before there was a New Testament, but there has ever been a dual expression of the Holy Writ. For Zechariah, as it was in Jesus’ day, the Scriptures consisted of the Law and the Prophets. Then it became the Old and New Testaments. Today we have the “old” testimony to Adventism that was finally fulfilled to the remnant of the remnant, Philadelphia, and this new testament that the testators are hereby providing to the heirs.
There are two testaments in every case. They are two legal instruments—the old contract with the fathers of the previous era, which aggregates all the previous contracts, and the new contract made by those who faithfully met the conditions of the old contract and thus received the benefits it conveys.
Now hear what Jesus says that He will do for the two witnesses, which represent the two testaments—old and new:
And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. (Revelation 11:3)
The two witnesses would be given power, or authority, to prophesy, albeit while clothed in sackcloth for mourning. The two witnesses are the Spirit-inspired writings of God’s Word. In the past, the power given to His Word corresponded to the 1260 years from 538 to 1798, when the Bible was kept from the public eye, and there was heavy persecution against those who ventured to teach it with the simplicity of faith. But as we saw before, there are multiple ways prophecy can be fulfilled. Now we recognize that this passage is related to the command to “prophesy again” given at the end of Chapter 10, and that the Word of God now includes more than just the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. The Spirit of Prophecy—the writings of Ellen G. White, the messenger of the Lord—are now summed with the Bible as the “old” testament, summarized and completed by our own writings that led up to the sacrifice of Philadelphia.
How can we understand the 1260 days in the present context? Indeed, there is a modern application of this period! The key is in the fact that the two testaments are personified as two witnesses. In Revelation 10, John was the only witness to the Angel’s oath, but in Daniel 12, the prophet saw two men witnessing the oath. They are like the two witnesses of Revelation 11.
Do you see it? In His oath in Daniel 12, Jesus speaks of a time, times, and a half, representing 1290 days, since an intercalary month is encompassed. In Revelation 11, a similar timeframe is given: 1260 days. Recall that the 1290 days began with Passover on April 6, 2012. But God’s people were not ready to begin giving their witness for Him, and so a second month Passover was called, as it was done in the days of Hezekiah.[36] That lunar month was 30 days long, leaving 1260 days remaining after the second Passover on May 6, 2012. Could the two men in Daniel 12 be the two witnesses described in Revelation 11? The relationships between the two reveal that they belong together, and complement each other! Indeed, Jesus’ promise of power for the two witnesses is nothing less than another perspective of the oath in Daniel 12!
Thus, the 1260 days began when Jesus, through this promise, gave authority to prophesy, to His witnesses. It was also the beginning of the special daily rations of the Holy Spirit that would continue until the end of the 1260 days.[37] These rations gave strength to the Fourth Angel’s ministry in the form of spiritual meat in due season. That was the power to prophesy and the strength to do it amidst ridicule and disbelief. In that time, the inspired writings of the past were gathered together and brought to completion, culminating in God’s delivery of the everlasting covenant.
The personification of the two testaments as the “two witnesses” is an important point. It explains why the testaments—the legal instruments—are called witnesses. They were written by people who were serving as witnesses, giving their testimony by writing the testaments. But the people involved in this process are not the “two witnesses” from the Bible, themselves. They (the people) just write the testaments, which are called the “two witnesses,” but this term does not refer to the people themselves, but rather for the two testaments as living documents.
The giving of power to the two witnesses describes two different processes. On the one hand, the authority is given to proclaim the time again, and on the other hand, the witnesses are given a timeframe for the execution of their order. The authority was already given with the command to prophesy again, when God began to pour out the latter rain. This was the time of the fulfillment of Jesus’ last words to His disciples before His Ascension:
And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you [the Fourth Angel’s message, which is the Latter Rain—a time message]: and [then] ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. (Acts 1:7-8)
Clearly, Jesus meant that the disciples would only become His witnesses after receiving the Holy Spirit, and indeed, they wrote part of the Bible after that (but, of course, at that time, they did not give witness to the time of Jesus’ return). For us, receiving the Holy Spirit refers to the first two years in which we received the latter rain message in the form of the clock of God in Orion and the Vessel of Time. Only when the message had reached a certain maturity and the minor mistakes had been corrected, did the commissioning of the witnessing begin in 2012 for those people who would figuratively stand in the heavenly court for the Father’s trial, as explained in the Final Warning article series. These people received the special daily rations of the Holy Spirit from the beginning of the 1260 days; from May 6, 2012 onward. Before then, they were not fully prepared for their duty as witnesses. Nevertheless, the prophetic times prophesied by the Fourth Angel deal with the judgment of the living, including the preparatory departure of the Father from the Most Holy Place to sit in the dock.[38] This means that the judgment of the living had officially begun with the 1290 days of the oath in Daniel 12:7, even before the witnesses could enter the witness stand.
Do you see what is so profound and humbling in giving the authority of Revelation 11 to the two witnesses?! With this prophecy, the Lord personally points to the movement of the second Miller by saying, “Here are My witnesses, to whom I personally give authority to prophesy.” Thus, what they prophecy and write becomes canon Scripture and receives the stamp of divine authority! The Fourth Angel’s message is the message of the Holy Spirit, and it is the oil that is flowing to two candlesticks—the two websites with the Scriptures, through which this light shines out to the world. That is the modern equivalent of the mode through which the Old and New Testament Scriptures were written! But there’s more: it is also the conclusion of the writing of the divine plan for mankind’s salvation.
Consequently, the two witnesses of Revelation 11 are something like two “testaments” of the Fourth Angel’s message. In fact, we had recognized during the period of the first time-proclamation up to 2016, that the two witnesses represented the Orion message and the Vessel of Time, which was accurate and valid for that time. In the same way, the Law and the Prophets had to give way to the Old and New Testaments after the great sacrifice was given on the cross. One looks forward to the cross, while the other looks back at the cross. Likewise in our modern times, the two witnesses went through a transition. The Orion Message and the Vessel of Time had to give up their special position as the two witnesses, in deference to our old and new websites as the two testaments, which look forward and backward to the Sacrifice of Philadelphia, respectively.
Of course, we do not print actual hard-copies of our “books” Today. In this technological age, we do everything electronically, using websites to publish the material. So we have two websites: one looking forward to the sacrifice of Philadelphia (LastCountdown.org) and the other looking back on the sacrifice (WhiteCloudFarm.org). The LastCountdown website explains the old prophecies that led to the sacrifice of Philadelphia (though we did not realize it at the time) just as the Old Testament pointed to the cross, yet no one really understood it. And the WhiteCloudFarm.org website looks backward and explains the earlier experience of the sacrifice of Philadelphia in the same way that the New Testament pointed back to Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and explained the prophecies that had become reality.
These websites are the “Old and New Testaments” of our writings. The four authors—like the four evangelists—wrote specifically about the sacrifice of Philadelphia after it occurred in October 2016. Each of them wrote about their shared experiences and what they meant, from their individual perspective, as the four gospel writers wrote about their experience with Jesus. Today, we are in the phase of writing the “letters” of the New Testament as we continue to report about the trumpet prophecies and the apocalyptic signs in heaven. These two websites are today’s Scriptures, which were and are being written with the oil of the Holy Spirit. They are the completion of the Bible—the writing of the unwritten things that are mentioned in Revelation: the inside of the book of seven seals, and the seven unwritten thunders. But to God be the glory!
Revelation 11 speaks of the two witnesses; that they prophesy for 1260 days in sackcloth, and finish their testimony shortly before their death and subsequent resurrection. By understanding that the two witnesses represent our writings about the message of the Fourth Angel, we can start to decipher the symbolism more precisely.
Furthermore, it should be noted that there are different characteristics of the two witnesses that do not necessarily describe the pair, either exclusively before their transition, or after, but often apply generally. For example, we have already stated that the two witnesses were previously understood as the Orion and Vessel of Time messages. And these are foundational studies that continue to be valid for both our old website as well as our new website.
The prophesying in sackcloth before the two witnesses are resurrected and glorified, takes place in a period of three and a half years well before the sacrifice of Philadelphia—the symbolic sacrificial offering of our cherished hopes, which was prophesied through the LastCountdown ministry. The LastCountdown.org website, representing one of the two witnesses prophesying in sackcloth, has always had a dark and reddish appearance, with stars in the background, as though it were “clothed” with sackcloth and only little dots of light peek through the background of the night sky.
The clothing of sackcloth explains the continual state of mourning while the message was given. Not just because of the sighing and crying[39] for the abominations that were committed by the professed people of God, but also for the lack of belief that we met on every side. Ellen G. White used the symbolism of sackcloth while describing the work of Luther:
God had a work for him to do. He must yet suffer for the truth. He must see it wade through bloody persecutions. He must see it clothed in sackcloth, and covered with reproach by fanatics. He must live to justify it, and to be its defender when the mighty powers of earth should seek to tear it down. He must live to see it triumph, and tear away the errors and superstitions of the papacy.... {GW92 61.1}
On the other hand, the WhiteCloudFarm.org website was raised up after the sacrifice of Philadelphia, as a second witness to Jesus’ work. It is no longer clothed in the darkness of the starry night, but shines in the brightness of day, representing the two witnesses after their symbolic resurrection after the sacrifice of Philadelphia. It shows our hope for the Holy City in the form of the shadow of a towering mountain that is cast upon the clouds. The design of the websites was settled long before we understood the whole symbolism that God inspired Brother John to employ. The shadow, of course, symbolizes the subsequently discovered Mt. Chiasmus, about which we have written in The Seven Leans Years. This new website now ushers in the morning of the coming of Jesus with the loud trumpet sound of the second time-proclamation.
And in spite of the bright hope that has existed since receiving the second time-proclamation, we are still left wearing the sackcloth, for the rejection of the message wasn’t diminished. No, but the nearer we get to the end, it becomes ever more violent. The two websites, the two testaments and witnesses of today, who were to serve as the rescuers of the last faithful of God, stand under the shadow of death, which is cast upon them by the blind rage and persecution of the God-haters.
Now let’s come to the question as to how the oaths of Daniel 12 and Revelation 11 could have fulfilled, when the extension of time that we prayed for on the summit of Mt. Chiasmus was actually granted. By definition, the fixed timeframe indicated in the oath would suddenly be prolonged until “the end of these wonders” in a yet-unknown way! This is where the genius of God’s word bears fruit. When we hear Jesus’ words, we typically relate to them as though we were the only one on the planet. Now, however, put yourself in the place of the witnesses on either side of the river, who both look intently at Jesus. In the shoes of the first witness, we hear Jesus’ oath as He conveys to us the period of 1290 days. Then we go to the other side of the river and put ourselves in the shoes of the second witness, and we hear the same words, but from the opposite direction with respect to the river. Jesus, from His standpoint, swears regarding the duration of 1290 days in two different directions! The answer to the riddle becomes apparent: Jesus spoke to two witnesses on two different banks, and thus, there are two separate periods of 1290 days each!
Daniel sees Jesus standing in the middle between two men who witness His oath. Revelation 11:3-4 portrays the same scene that we just saw, in which He gives His two witnesses the promise of His authority to witness. Revelation paints the picture with the symbols of Zechariah as the background, whose vision of the two olive trees is incorporated by reference:
And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees, and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth. (Revelation 11:3-4)
Then answered I, and said unto him, What are these two olive trees upon the right side of the candlestick and upon the left side thereof? And I answered again, and said unto him, What be these two olive branches which through the two golden pipes empty the golden oil out of themselves? And he answered me and said, Knowest thou not what these be? And I said, No, my lord. Then said he, These are the two anointed ones, that stand by the Lord of the whole earth. (Zechariah 4:11-14)
The two witnesses of Revelation 11 are the two olive trees, while in the book of Zechariah, the two olive trees are also two witnesses who have been anointed with oil. Both, therefore, prophesy with the power of the Holy Spirit to provide light.
There is still much to be said about who and/or what the two witnesses represent, and that will be presented in the inheritance section, but for our purposes now, we can generalize the two witnesses as two reports, through which God gives light regarding these times today. The first witness gives his light during the first time-proclamation through our LastCountdown.org website, while the second witness conveys his light of the second time-proclamation through our WhiteCloudFarm.org website. In this way, the two witnesses are directly connected to the two websites, and correspond to today’s two testaments.
The promise of Jesus in Revelation 11:3-4 is no less sure than that of Daniel 12:7, where with His oath, Jesus answered the question of how long it would take “till all these things shall be finished.” And it is also no less sure than the oath of Revelation 10, where Jesus stated that there would be “time no longer” until the time of the second Miller. In fact, it proves that this promise given by authority in Revelation 11 is the counterpart to the promise of Jesus in Revelation 10. Here, the power of time prophecy is given once again. But it should be prophesied again to herald the end of the things spoken of in Daniel 12. The oath of Revelation 10 is followed by a big BUT, which is a clear indication that there would once again be a new time prophecy that would truly lead to the finishing of the things:
But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished. (Revelation 10:7)
Revelation 11 describes this final phase of the witnessing before the end of the mysteries of God.
The visual message in the form of the two olive trees that are to the left and right of Jesus also incorporates the notion of swearing, or promising by the highest authority (from whom comes the oil of the Holy Spirit in the olive trees). The Strong’s concordance defines swearing as to “seven” oneself:
H7650, שׁבע, shâba‛, shaw-bah'
A primitive root; properly to be complete, but used only as a denominative from H7651; to seven oneself, that is, swear (as if by repeating a declaration seven times).
The solution to the riddle of duplicity also applies to the two witnesses of Revelation 11, and we end up with two time periods: a pair of 1290 days from the oath in Daniel 12, and a pair of 1260 days from Revelation 11. Thus, what was prophesied on our old website, even before the sacrifice of Philadelphia, is still valid and still refers to the same oath and promise. Yet at the same time, we have the other set of timelines for the second proclamation! God’s Word is infallible. He made provision in His Word long before we made our prayer for more time!
Many of the words and dates from the old website should now be examined more deeply, looking beyond the surface application of that time. In so doing, we will encounter the more fundamental message. We do the same with the Bible when we take the promises given to Israel, for example, and apply them to ourselves. We come to a deeper understanding of the importance of Israel when we understand that nation to be the original recipient of God's blessing through the legacy. This legacy, however, could have been received only if they had become “overcomers”. These are all teachings for today’s believers, who should learn from the sad example of Israel and make right what Israel did wrong.
The question for us now is, how does this new understanding harmonize with what we have already known since Mt. Chiasmus? For comparison, we can more distinctly show the existing timelines of the (twofold) 1260 and (twofold) 1290 days on our current diagram as follows:
For both the first witness (LastCountdown.org) and the second witness (WhiteCloudFarm.org), we see that the 1260- and 1290-day timelines end together: on October 18, 2015 for the first witness, and April 6, 2019 for the second, respectively.
Yet the much more important question is, Does the chart on the whole, match the oath of Daniel 12, where two men stand on either bank of the river and look at Jesus standing over the river? It is an interesting observation that there is a gap of seven days between the two 1260-day timelines, that separates the end of the first from the beginning of the second timeline. Does this gap of seven days have a meaning in relation to the scene of the oath?
Yes of course! We have seen how “swearing” literally means “to seven oneself” in Hebrew, and that Jesus (who is represented by the number 7, the number of completion) stands between the two witnesses who heard His oath about the timelines. In the diagram, He is located in the middle of the two time-proclamations, just as His crucifixion stands centrally between the Old and the New Testaments.
With this understanding, we can draw the diagram even better. In order for both the oath of Jesus in Daniel 12 and the promise to the two witnesses in Revelation 11 to become perfectly harmonious, the upper blue line should not lay over the gap of seven days. Thus, we push the beginning of the blue 1290-day timeline by 30 days, thereby eliminating the overlap, and let it start in line with the blue 1260-day timeline, as shown below:
We receive a new date that we have not known yet: May 6, 2019—30 days after the familiar April 6, 2019. Our observation regarding the 1290 days of Daniel 12:6-7, which should last until “the end of these wonders” is especially important because it depicts an anchor for another event. This date will soon play an interesting role for the heirs of this testament.
Important: the reader should not confuse these 1290 days with the 1290 days of the abomination of Daniel 12:11, which indeed began on September 25, 2015, as shown in the first and original diagrams. There, it is not referring to the same events as in the 1290 days of the oath of Daniel 12:7, which are given as “a time, times, and an half”!
Our newly found period gives us the biblical basis to expect an event 1290 days from October 25, 2015, falling on May 6, 2019. To find out what it is, we should look at the chiastic structure of the periods: The judgment of the living began in 2012 with the events of April 6 and May 6, and will finally end with the mirrored dates in 2019; exactly seven years later!
This arrangement does not place Jesus on the summit of Mt. Chiasmus. Rather, in the middle of the judgment of the living as the exemplary Standard, to whom all should look who want to reach the summit of the sacrifice of Philadelphia. In truth, Jesus stands in the place described in Revelation 7:1-3: when the contingency plan had to come into effect, since the 144,000 were not all sealed when the time of plagues, or the end of the wonders, had come.
And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree. And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God: and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads. (Revelation 7:1-3)
Without the time extension, His standing in October 2015, would have been at the end of the time of mercy as the goal and model for the saints. The words of the corresponding Biblical prophecies deliberately allow both possibilities; the timelines of the 1260/1290 days can be understood as applying to the two witnesses together, or for each witness individually, being allocated twice. Once again, God consciously made room for human free will. He is omniscient; He knows the end from the beginning, but He does not constrain human will by His foreknowledge. If the Seventh-day Adventist Church had been faithful, or at least repentant in the face of the Orion message, the prophecy of the two witnesses of Revelation 11 could have been completed in a single period of 1260 days, but God made it possible that His Word could be fulfilled in two passes; in the worst case, with one pass per witness—and unfortunately it happened precisely that way.
Jesus standing between the two timelines is deep with symbolism, represented by one of the oldest sacrificial practices. In ancient times, a covenant was made by dividing sacrificial animals in two parts, and the parties to the covenant would walk between the pieces. This is how God covenanted with Abraham when he desired assurance from God that He would fulfill His promise:
And he took unto him all these [sacrificial beasts], and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another: but the birds divided he not. (Genesis 15:10)
And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces. In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates: (Genesis 15:17-18)
The Lord made the covenant with him when He passed between the halves of the sacrifice, that all “the children of the promise”[40] would be counted for Abraham.
Passing between the parts of the sacrifice was a commitment of one’s life to the fulfillment of the agreement. “The lives of the animals pledged the lives of those participating in the covenant.”[41] It was a solemn oath that if they should break the covenant, their life would be made like that of the divided animal!
A blood covenant communicated a self-maledictory oath. The parties involved would walk the path between the slaughtered animals so to say, “May this be done to me if I do not keep my oath.”[42]
It is important to realize what it cost in order that we, as non-Jewish Christians could receive the everlasting covenant directly, independent of the Jews. For about 2000 years, the covenant was between God and the literal descendants of Abraham, who were to be the benefactors of humanity, and salvation was through the Jews.[43]
As a matter of circumstances, the children of Abraham became slaves in Egypt. God delivered them from slavery and renewed His covenant with them on Mt. Sinai, where He delivered the Ten Commandments. Those two tables of the testimony were God’s covenant with Israel, and they spelled out the terms of the covenant. A covenant has two parties, and each party has not only benefits, but also obligations that must be fulfilled.
Israel as a people failed to keep the Ten Commandments, but in sending His Son in the lineage of Israel, God provided Someone to fulfill the terms of the covenant. Jesus came to fulfill Israel’s obligations under the covenant.
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. (Matthew 5:17)
In the end, Jesus was the only one who had kept God’s law, the obligation of the covenant. In so doing, He received God’s promises according to the terms of the covenant, and became the inheritor of everything that God had promised to the human race.
It is often said that Jesus could have come down from the cross with all justification, and returned to heaven as King, because He was victorious over sin. It is true in a sense, but it would be contrary to His character of love, for then the whole world would have been lost forever, because they did not meet the requirements of the covenant like He did. That is why it was God’s will for His Son to suffer and die on behalf of others—to redeem them.
Having overcome all things, and having received all things from God, Jesus made the only decision that Love would make: He chose to sacrifice it all—for others. He made a new covenant with better terms: what He had inherited as a Jew by obedience to the old covenant, He would give to those who believe in Him.
But now hath he obtained a more excellent ministry, by how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises. (Hebrews 8:6)
He fulfilled the terms of the old covenant as its sole heir, and made a new covenant with different terms. Salvation was no longer to come through the nation of Israel as a whole, but through Him in particular.
To bring the new covenant into effect, Jesus had to offer blood—not the blood of a symbolic animal, but His own blood. In so doing, He fully discharged God’s obligations to Israel under the old covenant. God had sworn to His own hurt and would not renege, and by submitting to death, the self-maledictory curse was executed upon Him. In His act of self-sacrifice, Jesus at once signed His new covenant in blood, and met all outstanding obligations under the old covenant, thus freeing God from further obligation toward Israel as a nation and people. From that time until this, the nation of Israel is on equal footing with any other nation, having lost the special role they had before rejecting the Savior.
Everything that happened in terms of the covenant from Abraham to Jesus has repeated. Christians, like the children of Abraham, became slaves over a process of time. Instead of slaves in Egypt, Christians became slaves to paganism and the papal hierarchy. Then God rose up the Protestant Reformers, who, like Moses, brought Christians step by step out from under the bondage of false religion. The Seventh-day Adventist Church was the last Protestant church, and it is the one which received the Law of God anew with the restoration of the seventh-day Sabbath, just as the children of Israel received the Ten Commandments in the time of Moses.
Like the children of Israel, however, Adventism also rebelled on the borders of the Promised Land in 1888, and had to wander in the wilderness. Israel’s wilderness wandering ended when Joshua—a type of Christ—marched into Canaan. Nevertheless, the children of Israel continued to descend in rebellion overall, until Jesus—the true Messiah—came and renewed the covenant as explained above. Similarly in our generation, after a long wilderness wandering by the church, God sent the Holy Spirit with the Latter Rain to reveal Jesus in Orion, so that those who would receive Him could receive the law in their hearts, and thereby meet the terms of the new covenant.
The case with God’s people today is no different than it was in the time of Israel. Adventism failed to meet the terms of the new covenant. They had the Law in hand, but transgressed it in spirit. Only a very small remnant actually clung to the covenant, faithfully keeping its terms of love, and thereby received its benefits.
The two great commandments of the covenant are to love God supremely and to love one’s neighbor as oneself.[44] The terms of the new covenant are that these principles be written in our hearts by faith. To love our neighbor—the whole world—as ourselves, is to work for their salvation as though it were our own. It is to give them the last message of mercy so they may recognize their sin and repent from it before it is too late.
Having shown the needed faith that put love for the lost above their own eternal interest, the small handful of people today—like Jesus—could have theoretically left the cross of this world to go to heaven and receive the eternal reward. Then again, there’s the same catch: it would be contrary to the character of love written in their heart, for everyone else would have been doomed to eternal death, having failed to meet the terms of the new covenant, to have the faith of Jesus. In such a circumstance, there’s only one loving choice to make, so the group offered the sacrifice of Philadelphia, so the covenant in their possession could be made available for others to become partakers in it.
Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? who shall dwell in thy holy hill? ...He that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not. (Psalm 15:1,4)
The testators of today might also have to sign their covenant in blood, as explained in Section 1 of this testament. If so, they will accomplish something similar to what Jesus did: they will bequeath to the heirs the abundant riches they have received under the former covenant. However, while Jesus’ blood was able to atone for the guilt of the people, ours is not. The curse of the oath, therefore, cannot be lifted from the heads of those who reject the last message of mercy—the Fourth Angel’s message of Jesus in Orion. Being the latter rain message, decidedly rejecting it is the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which cannot be forgiven.
Thus will God discharge all His covenantal responsibility toward the former house of God, the Seventh-day Adventists. This present testament will convey all the tangible and intangible assets (itemized in Section 3) to the heirs identified in Section 1.
As the time of the ratification of this testament nears, it is important for the disciples of Jesus today to understand that part of showing their good faith is to pledge their lives. In the time of Jesus, many did not confess their faith openly for fear of the Jews. They were afraid to be persecuted and killed, but they could not remain in that state forever and keep their faith. Faith must lead to visible action!
In this second time proclamation after the sacrifice of Philadelphia, we are figuratively descending from the top of Mt. Chiasmus to the midslopes, where the hidden faithful people of God have climbed in their effort to escape from the valley of Babylon below. The effort to bring help to such ones on this side of the chiastic mountain is depicted with different symbols in the last story of the book of John, Chapter 21.
Seven disciples were present—a number figurative of the testators of this covenant and the seven stars in Jesus’ right hand[45]—and like we, they were waiting by the sea for the risen Lord to meet them. While waiting, they fished on the sea—figurative of our fishing for men in the sea of the people of the world. From the shore, Jesus called to them:
Then Jesus saith unto them, Children, have ye any meat? They answered him, No. And he said unto them, Cast the net on the right side of the ship, and ye shall find. They cast therefore, and now they were not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes. (John 21:5-6)
Casting the net on the other side of the ship symbolizes our efforts after the sacrifice of Philadelphia, on the right-hand side of the chiastic mountain of time. We are still fishers for men, fishing for souls, and the Bible indicates that we will catch a multitude in our Inter-“net” outreach, now that we are working on the other side!
This great catch of fish from the Lord will be valuable, even if it does not come into the boat. The symbolism indicates that the fish are brought to the shore—the heavenly Canaan—through the watery baptism of death. In that way, these treasured prizes—numbering 153 according to the text—will serve the important role of fulfilling part of the fifth seal:
And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled. (Revelation 6:9-11)
In that way, these new converts will have an opportunity to share in this work, adding their crimson signatures to the testament ahead of the testators. Such who believe before the testament is ratified have special recognition:
I noticed red as a border on their garments; their crowns were brilliant; their robes were pure white. As we greeted them, I asked Jesus who they were. He said they were martyrs that had been slain for Him. {EW 18.2}
Peter had denied the Lord three times when Jesus was on trial, for fear of being killed himself. Jesus questioned his devotion three times to allow him to overcome his failure. In the end, Peter also showed his faithfulness by his death as a martyr. The Word of God shows again that there are two classes: the Peters and the Johns—like the symbolic Moses and Elijah. Peter died a martyr, but John lived out his life, his enemies being unable to kill him. The former are those who will swim through the water, symbolizing death, while the latter are those who come above water (alive) to the shore where Jesus is. Some will die, but arrive earlier,[46] while others will live, but arrive later. Each will be kept from the hour of temptation in a different way—either by death or by preservation.
As we contemplate these things, it is natural to wonder about the fate of specific individuals, but Jesus warns not to speculate beyond what is revealed about this:
Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me. (John 21:22)
Jesus reserves the final decision. We are to submit to His will on these matters, and follow Him. Nevertheless, it goes without saying that everyone should examine his own heart and prove himself, whether he is ready to stand without denying the Lord, when faced with the prospect of being killed because of his association with the High Sabbath Adventist movement.
Ours is not the work of a handful of people, and regardless of which class one belongs in, the voice of each one who has believed our report should be heard in this decisive hour!
Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. (Revelation 2:10)
It is necessary that many work together to accomplish the task. It was because we did not have the support of Adventists, who were the only ones equipped to provide it, that we needed more time.
That was the stark reality. Just as God needed man’s cooperation in order to bestow the blessings of His promises under the old covenant, so we were dependent on Adventists’ reception of the message in order to bring the blessings of the new covenant to the multitudes. But like Jesus, we would not change from our oath, though we swore to our own hurt. When our work of reaching the world with the message of salvation should have been finished at the end of the first 1260-day timeline on October 18, 2015, we walked with Jesus through the halves of the sacrifice of the oath, having already pledged by faith to follow Him whatever the cost!
Our pledge of faith was renewed atop Mt. Chiasmus when we asked for more time, and the ratification will come as faith meets the reality or if by Christ who strengthens us, our blood is offered.
For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. For a testament is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth. (Hebrews 9:16-17)
It was through the default of the Adventist Church that the everlasting covenant was delivered to us apart from them, and by our ratification of it through death, it would be delivered in turn by this testament to all who will have believed our report as eligible heirs.
The ritual that Abraham participated in was simply a representation of what would ultimately be required for the covenant to be ratified. It was a covenant of blood, but Abraham did not give his blood, for it was an illustration—a type—of a much grander covenant made with all humanity throughout all generations by faith! Jesus gave His blood on Calvary, demonstrating His commitment and authority to carry out the terms of the covenant. We also offer our blood, demonstrating our commitment to the sacrifice of Philadelphia to make the legacy of Smyrna available to the heirs.
With that seal of blood, it would be forever settled that the victory that Christ gained on the cross was sufficiently powerful to write the complete principle of the law in the hearts of men. Our blood would not atone for anything, but it would be necessary for the ratification of the covenant as the signature of the testators, as pictured in the death of the animals that were divided in half. It would be the final demonstration of the love of Christ in the heart of man, for his fellow man.
God’s covenant cannot be separated from His law, for it is His law. It is written in our hearts in fulfillment of Jesus’ new covenant![47] The process of the judgment is to confirm whether we have indeed ratified the covenant by allowing God to write His law in our hearts, and to finally deliver the covenant. And where does Jesus stand in relation to the covenant? He stands between the two halves of the sacrifice, that is, between the two timelines of the oath specifying the duration of the judgment of the living. Thus, Jesus stands at the center of the judgment as the central focus, the divine Standard with the law written in His heart.
During the first timeline, we were being prepared to make the sacrifice, to reflect the fullness of the stature of Christ. That sacrifice is the evidence that the law was indeed written in our hearts—including the love for our neighbors.
The Judgment of the Living is also the period during which the seventh seal is open! In The Seven Lean Years, we saw that the seals of Revelation form a chiastic pattern where the seals are effectively stacked such that they close in the opposite order that they were opened.[48] The top three seals in the stack were presented as follows:
Now that we have a clearer picture of the overall prophecy timeframes of the two witnesses, the big picture of the seals comes into clearer view as well. Let’s refine the beginning and ending dates of the seals that are affected by this new understanding, beginning with the seventh seal, which now has a clearer meaning:
And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour. (Revelation 8:1)
In our published writings, we have correctly interpreted the half an hour as a measurement of time in relation to the judgment cycle of the Orion clock, which is logical since it is the book of seven seals, and the judgment cycle is the cycle which corresponds to the last day before the fall of Jericho, with its seven marches. The pattern of the marches around Jericho is key, and that has been explained in detail in History Repeats – Part II and also in Babylon Is Fallen! – Part I. The full “day” on the judgment clock spans 168 years, so one hour is simply 168 ÷ 24 = 7 years, which in turn means that half an hour is three and a half years.
The mistake that almost everyone makes—and we did too—is to assume that this period must cover the entire seal. This time of silence is given in the first verse, but the verses that follow are associated, and we must consider them as well. We will come back to this point, for there is a beautiful gem to be discovered there! Suffice it for now to remove the restriction that the seventh seal, corresponding to the judgment of the living, cannot be longer than three and a half years. As we have seen, Jesus’ oath of a time, times and a half, applies to two equivalent periods! Thus, we have a period of seven years for the judgment of the living—one hour on the Judgment clock—instead of just the second half of that timeframe. This refers to the original explanation from The Seven Lean Years (in the chart above), where the judgment of the living is noted as going from Oct. 25, 2015 to April 6, 2019, which is the second half of the seven-year timeframe.
Jesus, who is represented by the number seven, is thus doubly signified during the judgment of the living. Directly in the middle of it is the seven-day period that represents Jesus standing on the river giving the oath in Daniel 12:7. At the same time, the entire duration of the oath is a corresponding seven years, representing Jesus as the theme of the judgment and the Standard by which the living are judged, His law written in the heart.
But that is not all we see when the seventh seal is opened! This is also the prophecy timeframe for the two witnesses! Jesus’ oath in Daniel 12:7 gives the larger timeframe of the whole seventh-seal in two 1290-day segments, while His promise to give power to the two witnesses is the slightly shorter period (but still seven years) inside the larger. Thus, the picture is that of Jesus and to a lesser extent, the two witnesses, which are the written record of His voice from Orion, written through the power of the Holy Spirit in the latter rain to witness for Him in all the world. Those who believe the voice of God from Orion are the redeemed, who also have God’s law written in their heart!
Do you see the beautiful picture that is presented here? Let the words of Jesus satisfy your soul:
I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me [in Orion] no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also. At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father [i.e. Jesus is revealed in Time], and ye in me, and I in you. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. (John 14:18-21)
Jesus stands in His people, and His people in Him, the picture of unity. It is the image of God restored; Christ and His bride—the second Adam, and the second Eve.
For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. (Ephesians 5:30-32)
Do you understand what the theme of the judgment really is? The image of God is now completely unsealed for you to appreciate and to contrast with the image of the beast! With its roots in Eden, the restoration of the image of God will find its completion in the recreation of the earth after the seventh millennium. Then the books of judgment will be closed and the seven seals will forever bind up the evidence of sin and the memory of the disfigurement of the image of God in the earth. The bands of Orion having now been unbound, the sweet influences of its seven stars will be bound up with the people of God, never to be lost again. Once the judgment of the living comes to a close, the remaining seals will confirm the victory of God’s everlasting covenant in the minds of every human being ever born, one step at a time. This is the story of the seven seals.
Looking again at the other seals, a couple of refinements are in order, for they are closed in the reverse sequence as they were opened.
What is the significance of this big-picture view of the Great Controversy between good and evil? The seventh seal spans the culmination of the everlasting covenant between God and man. The opening of the book of seven seals is all about the testaments. It includes the entire file of court papers related to the great casting-out of the evil angels from heaven, and the adoption of humanity in their place as sons of God!
The sixth seal includes the visible appearance of Jesus Christ to the wicked who hide:
And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand? (Revelation 6:16-17)
The wicked try to hide from Jesus’ face, which points to the week when He is visible on the growing cloud. They have been experiencing the increasing severity of the plagues, and Jesus’ return brings only condemnation and a terrible omen of death as they feel His wrath against them. Those who can stand are described in the following chapter, while the rest are left to die during the seven lean years, as the planet succumbs to the long-term effects of global atomic war in combination with the hypernova of Alnitak.[49] With this understanding, the verse above falls into perfect harmony with the closing of the sixth seal on the day of the second coming itself.
As for the fifth seal, we make the minor refinement of moving its end-date to when the wicked have all died, which is the final answer to the question of the souls of the martyrs under the altar:
And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? (Revelation 6:10)
After the seven lean years, all the wicked (“them that dwell on the earth”) will have died, defeated by the cold of atomic winter, and the blood of the martyrs will have been fully avenged by God. Then the remaining seals finally close the record of sin, until the universal acknowledgement of Christ’s eternal victory will be given from every tongue—both of the righteous and wicked.
For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. (Romans 14:11)
One of the most amazing confirmations of God’s leading in this ministry is found in the seventh seal, which encompasses the two testaments of today. We already noted that we shouldn’t assume that the silence in heaven is the only thing described in the seventh seal. How does our new understanding of the seven-year timeframe for the seventh seal fit the prophecy? Note that it comes in the context of Revelation 7 and the sealing of the 144,000:
And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree. And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God [wherewith the 144,000 are sealed]: and he cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads. (Revelation 7:1-3)
The interaction described here is very revealing! The first four angels are holding the winds, but they have power to hurt the earth, that is, to let the four winds go. Nevertheless, another angel prevents them, saying that the servants of God haven’t been sealed yet! This is a very unusual circumstance! These four angels seem to be out of sync with the divine plan, and a special messenger must be sent to them to keep them from getting out of line! Who are these four angels, or messengers, as the word may also be translated?[50] The scene calls to mind the sixth trumpet:
And the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men. (Revelation 9:13-15)
Here we find the same four angels who have power to hurt the earth! Orion’s four outer stars, each bearing a message for a specific time (thus messengers, or angels), figuratively hold back the winds of destruction until the time comes on the clock. So what we see in Revelation 7 is that Orion was pointing to the sixth trumpet—the fourth of the four outer stars (in the early trumpet cycle), when the angels, being prepared for that very hour, were to be freed to do their destructive work. But the problem was that they were bound up in the Euphrates, unable to reach the world! And why? What would cause God to have to send another angel to redirect the four?
Referring to the sixth trumpet, we wrote in The Death of the Twins about these angels:
In terms of the heavenly sanctuary, it is speaking of the four beasts[51] or living creatures[52] which are represented by the four hand and foot stars of the Orion Clock—all symbolized by the four horns of the altar. It speaks of the four angels which are bound, meaning that something has been binding up the message [the Fourth Angel’s Message, represented by the Euphrates] and keeping it from spreading the way it should—namely the existing leadership of the church:
The only thing that prevents God from fulfilling His purposes in a direct way to His children is when there is sin among them. It was the leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church that were an obstacle to the message. Their larger-than-life shadow blocked all light from Orion. We already described it earlier, but despite our optimism that the people would wake up and discern their Lord in Orion, they never did. The Seventh-day Adventist church would not do its part to send out the message—or even LET out the message!
The four angels were acting in perfect harmony with God’s plan, but the church did not cooperate to lend their strength to the message. Thus, the other angel is sent to address the emergency with the message, “Wait! We haven’t had a chance to seal God’s servants yet!”—because of the absentee church! Not understanding these things at the time, we were expecting the sixth trumpet to sound in loud tones, and it wasn’t until we understood the trick that the church played on its members at that time,[53] that we began to understand why a delay was needed. Chapter 8, beginning with the opening of the seventh seal, gives a big-picture perspective on how God would recover the lost time!
We already saw how we need not assume that the half-hour of silence is the whole duration of the seal, but has it settled in your mind yet, why there is silence in heaven? It is the silence of suspense as the heavenly universe watches what would become of the emergency situation! Those three and a half years were also silent on earth in the sense that the necessary warnings from heaven were not being given—either by the church or by world events big enough to wake up and warn the people of what is coming.
Though it was a time of silence, nevertheless, there was activity that could be seen.
And I saw the seven angels which stood before God; and to them were given seven trumpets. (Revelation 8:2)
At this point, the silence has not been broken yet, but a progression of events is being revealed. First, in the silence, John sees the seven angels who stand before God. That represents the seven stars of Orion, for they are the seven angels who stand before God, ready to serve even if the church didn’t desire them.
Next, John sees, still in silence, that they are given seven trumpets. Now that we have the big picture of the two witnesses, we can see that this corresponds to the trumpet cycle during the time of the first time proclamation, when the angels around the Orion clock were first given or assigned to the seven trumpets of Revelation, as of January 31/February 1, 2014, in the Last Race sermon.
Do you see how this description fits with the period of silence mentioned in the previous verse? They were given the trumpets, but so far, they have not made a sound with them! Until we read about something audible, we should understand that it is still referring to the time of silence!
Next, we read about prayers at the altar and the throwing down of the censer:
And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel's hand. And the angel took the censer, and filled it with fire of the altar, and cast it into the earth: and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake. (Revelation 8:3-5)
Who is the Angel who is ministering at the altar of incense? That would be the High Priest of the heavenly sanctuary, or Jesus Himself, of course! Do you remember where Jesus is standing in relation to the diagram above? He is standing at the end of the trumpet cycle where the sixth trumpet ends and the seventh begins—in the middle of the two three-and-a-half-year periods from the oath. It is the point where He could minister equally well for the first time period (if the Adventist Church were faithful) or the second.
This scene corresponds to the sixth trumpet, where the voice is heard from the four corners of the golden altar (the altar of incense). That is when an abundance of prayers from God’s faithful come before God with which thick clouds of incense. Even in the setting of the Seventh-day Adventist Church during the trumpet cycle of the first time proclamation, their rebellion at the San Antonio General Conference Session caused the prayers of those saints who were yet therein, to ascend more than ever! It is easy to see that this scene of intercessory prayer corresponds to the prayers of the faithful leading up to and including our petition on top of Mt. Chiasmus. In response, God uttered the second time proclamation, which explains the voices and thunder, and gives a hint regarding what was happening, as you will see.
Remember, it was during the first time proclamation that we published the prayer of the modern Elijah for the sixth trumpet:
O Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known on that day—Wednesday, July 8, 2015 [the beginning of the sixth trumpet]—that Thou art God in Israel, and that I am Thy servant, and that I have done all these things according to Thy word. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that Thou art the Lord God, and that Thou hast turned their heart back again.
Cleanse Thou, O Lord, Thy house from the stench of the Jesuits and the apostasy! Let Your consuming fire, according to Ezekiel 9, do its work so that Your church can again shine with the light You chose for her, that it may lighten the whole earth.
Why didn’t the fire fall on that day? The skeptics and doubters promptly dismissed the prayer as being uttered from a false prophet. They did not understand that Jesus stands in Time, and that His ways are above man’s ways! But those who knew that God is not just love, kept their faith until the answer came. (Of course, even if the fire had fallen on the church that day, the naysayers would have irrationally attributed it to lying wonders rather than surrender to the truth, for they love the darkness rather than the light. Only those who love Truth will appreciate His light.)
So how was the prayer really answered? When we pray to Him who is, who was, and who is to come, we may find that our prayers are answered in a much more glorious way than we could ever have thought possible! Jesus knew that it would be best to answer the Elijah prayer a little later, not at the sixth trumpet of the silent trumpet cycle, but at the sixth trumpet of the loud-sounding, reversed trumpet cycle! Descending Mt. Chiasmus on the other side, we again pass the same point in time where Jesus previously stood, at the end of the first trumpet cycle. The sixth trumpet of the first cycle lies on the opposite side of the sixth trumpet of the second cycle. This is how Jesus is seen by John standing at the sixth trumpet of both cycles.
This section of our testament shows that indeed, all these things have been done according to the leading of God—so the hindrances would be removed for His light to shine, and so that everyone can have an opportunity to gain an interest in the everlasting covenant of His plan of salvation. The timeline of the second witness is thus no longer a period of silence in heaven: it is a period when people can hear the warnings of God’s Word again and be grafted into the covenant as heirs of salvation without the Seventh-day Adventist Church as an obstacle.
And the seven angels which had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound. (Revelation 8:6)
We are past the place where Jesus stands now, when the sound of His voice giving the oath broke the silence. Yet the above text brings us to understand that there is still a period of time for preparation before the trumpets begin to make their clear warning sounds. This represents the initial part of the prophecy period of the second witness, up until the second website was ready and the trumpets of that trumpet cycle began to sound. During that time, the players were gathering on the world stage, tuning their instruments and practicing their lines. We heard many such sounds during what we expected to be the plagues.
Again, it is important to understand that prophecy could have been fulfilled in various ways, because God does not constrain human will. Jesus would have come according to the first time proclamation if the Seventh-day Adventist Church had been faithful. There was also a preparation period during the timeframe of the first witness, and that interpretation is still valid within the context of the first time proclamation. In that scenario, the first trumpet cycle would have become loud due to the fact that there would have been more voices proclaiming Christ’s coming and more agitation in terms of world events. Since we are in the second time proclamation, however, the seventh seal prophecy takes on a new and deeper meaning, encompassing both time proclamations.
Who can say that we were not led by God to ask for more time after seeing this confirmation! Every step along the way was taken simply by following His lead, and only much later did we see these harmonies that build upon the fact that this was indeed God’s will! To see every part of the judgment of the living referenced, not as we originally expected it, but as we came to understand it in the end, in perfect, straight-forward sequence, compels us to praise our God, who alone knows the end from the beginning! We may safely trust His guiding hand, no matter what the appearances may suggest in the darkness of the moment.
The second time proclamation hit the world with the opening of the WhiteCloudFarm.org website and the publication of the first article of the sacrifice of Philadelphia series on November 22, 2016. Coincidentally (by divine decree) the current trumpet cycle also started with the alarming events of the fires on Mt. Carmel in Israel and elsewhere. For that reason, we have often referred to it as the loud-sounding trumpet cycle, because it began with alarming events that started to wake people up, whereas the trumpet cycle of the first time proclamation during the period of silence in heaven was not heard as an alarm, even though events were seen. But now, the signs in heaven have begun to play out at the time of each trumpet as part of God’s signature of authority to testify that the silence is indeed over! “The first angel sounded,” and the rest is quickly becoming history.
The Fourth Angel’s message is a movement of prophecy. It is the prophecy of the two witnesses. We started with certain expectations, ingrained traditional beliefs, and a childlike assumption that multitudes would believe when they saw the amazing things that God has done. As we journeyed, God guided us, and though we experienced much delay and uncertainty at times, in looking back, we stand in awe at what God has done! It is truly a mark of divine leadership that the things we wrote years ago, that seemed to become outdated with the changing circumstances, have come back with a greater clarity and truth than we could have ever expected, much less planned!
God never leads His children otherwise than they would choose to be led, if they could see the end from the beginning, and discern the glory of the purpose which they are fulfilling as co-workers with Him. {DA 224.5}
So it is with this testament. From the time the first promise of salvation was first given to Adam and Eve, more and more light has been shed upon the everlasting covenant according to the experience and understanding of each generation. How little have we discerned of the glory of the purpose that God has permitted His children to fulfill in relation to the testament of His salvation! It is their cherished treasure, and now it is entering the final phase before its blessing is realized as we are at last united in the physical presence of our Lord, our Savior, our Creator. Yet even in heaven, we will ever be discovering new beauty in God’s testament of love, as it is an inexhaustible fountain of glory.
Although great and talented authors [those who were before us] have made known wonderful truths, and have presented increased light to the people, still in our day we shall find [and have found] new ideas, and ample fields in which to work, for the theme of salvation is inexhaustible. The work has gone forward from century to century, setting forth the life and character of Christ, and the love of God as manifested in the atoning sacrifice. The theme of redemption will employ the minds of the redeemed through all eternity. There will be new and rich developments made manifest in the plan of salvation throughout eternal ages. {1SM 403.2}
In the next section, you will find a description of the rich legacy that the Heavenly Father has endowed us with, which we, by this testament, hereby bequeath to the heirs. It is a legacy like no other, for these treasures, no moth or rust can corrupt; this is the testament of The Eternal.
LastCountdown.WhiteCloudFarm.org (basic Studies of the first seven years since January 2010)WhiteCloudFarm Channel (our own video channel)WhiteCloudFarm.ETH (our censorship resistant ENS website with all our books and videos on the Interplanetary File System—IPFS, Brave Browser recommended)