Wrath of God

“And the third Angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, if any man worship the Beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation: and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the Lamb, and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever, and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the Beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name. Here is the patience of the saints, here are they that keep the commandments of God and have the faith of Jesus.” (Revelation 14:9-12)

The third angel’s message has been sent forth to the world, warning men against receiving the mark of the Beast or of his image in their foreheads or in their hands. To receive this mark means to come to the same decision as the Beast has done, and to advocate the same ideas, in direct opposition to the word of God. Of all who receive this mark God says, “The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured without mixture into the cup of his indignation, and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the Holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb…”

If the light of truth has been presented to you, revealing the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, and showing that there is no foundation in the Word of God for Sunday observance, and yet you still cling to the false Sabbath, refusing to keep holy the Sabbath which God calls “My holy day”, you receive the mark of the Beast. When does this take place? When you obey the decree that commands you to cease from labour on Sunday and worship God, while you know that there is not a word in the Bible showing Sunday to be other than a common working day, you consent to receive the mark of the Beast, and refuse the seal of God.

If we receive this mark in our foreheads or in our hands, the judgments pronounced against this disobedient must fall upon us. But the seal of the living God is placed upon those who conscientiously keep the Sabbath of the Lord. (R & H, July 13, 1897).

Introduction

1T 344: God’s word, rightly understood and applied, is a safe-guard against spiritualism. As eternally burning hell preached from the pulpit, and kept before the people does injustice to the benevolent character of God. It presents Him as the variest tyrant in the universe. This wide spread dogma has turned thousands to universalism, infidelity and atheism.

GCx: Satan’s efforts to misrepresent the character of God, to cause men to cherish a false conception of the Creator, and thus to regard Him with fear and hate rather than love, his endeavours to set aside the divine law, leading the people to think themselves free from its requirements, and his persecution of those who dare to resist his deceptions, have been steadfastly pursued in all ages.

GC 525: The errors of popular theology have driven many a soul to skepticism who might otherwise have been a believer in the scriptures. It is impossible for him to accept doctrines which outrage his sense of justice, mercy, and benevolence, and since they are represented as the teaching of the Bible, he refuses to receive it as the Word of God.
And this is the object which Satan seeks to accomplish. There is nothing that he desires more than to destroy confidence in God and His word.

Adventist Evangelists clearly explain the text. “If any man worship the beast, and his image and receive his mark in his forehead or in his hand…” as:

Beast—Catholicism—papal power
Image—the use of the state by the protestant churches to enforce religious observance
Mark—the observance of Sunday as the Sabbath of the Lord after light has come. (Letter 31, 1898).
Forehead or hand—compliance by consent or practice (understanding or doing).

Drink Cup

Rev. 14:8 Babylon is fallen is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication. Rev. 18:2,3,5,6; Rev. 17:2,4,6; Rev. 16:19; Jer. 51:7.

The great sin charged against Babylon is that she “made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.”
This cup of intoxication which she presents to the world represents the false doctrines that she has accepted as the result of her unlawful connection with the great ones of the earth. Friendship with the world corrupts her faith, and in her turn she exerts a corrupting influence upon the world by teaching doctrines which are opposed to the plainest statements of Holy writ. GC 388 (see 380-390).

Isa. 51:21-23: “…Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling, even the dregs of the cup of my fury; thou shalt no more drink it again: But I will put it into the hand of them that afflict thee;…” (of verse 17). Ps. 60:1-3; 75:8; Ezek. 23:31-34.

Jer. 25:14-33: …I will recompense them according to their deeds, and according to the works of their own hands. For thus saith the Lord God of Israel unto me; Take the wine cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to drink it. And they shall drink, and be moved, and be mad…. (Job 21:19-20).

PK 431: He bade Jeremiah liken the fate of the nation to the draining of a cup filled with the wine of divine wrath. Among the first to drink of this cup of woe was to be “Jerusalem, and the cities of Judah and the Kings thereof.”

Others were to partake of the same cup—Pharaoh, King of Egypt, and his servants and his princes, and all his people. And many other nations of earth—until God’s purpose should have been fulfilled. See Jer. 25.

GC 627: The nation with which he bears long and which he will not smite until it has filled up the measure of its iniquity in God’s account, will finally drink the cup of wrath unmixed with mercy.

GC 35: The Jews had forged their own fetters, they filled for themselves the cup of vengeance. In the utter destruction that befell them as a nation and in all the woes that followed them in their dispersion, they were but reaping the harvest which their own hands had sown. Says the prophet, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity.” Hosea 13:9; 14:1.

GC 21: In the temporal retribution about to fall upon her (Jerusalem’s) children, he saw but the first draft from that cup of wrath which at the final judgment she must drain to its dregs.

PK 421: When called to drink of the cup of tribulation and sorrow and when tempted in his misery to say, “My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord.” He (Jeremiah) recalled the providences of God in his behalf and triumphantly exclaimed, “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning, great is thy faithfulness.”

EW 47: God has shown me that He gave His people a bitter cup to drink, to purify and cleanse them. It is a bitter draught, and they can make it still more bitter by murmuring, complaining, and repining. But those who receive it thus must have another draught, for the first does not have its designed effect upon the heart. And if the second does not affect the work, then they must have another and another, until it does have its designed effect, or they will be left filthy, impure in heart. I saw that this bitter cup can be sweetened by patience, endurance, and prayer, and that it will have its designed effect upon the hearts of those who thus receive it, and God will be honoured and glorified. See GC 389:2; 390:0; MH 248.

John 18:11. The cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it? See. Matt. 20:22, 23.

DA 548-9: “Ye shall drink indeed of my cup and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with,” he said; before Him a cross instead of a throne…

In the Kingdom of God, position is not gained through favouritism. It is not earned, nor is it received through an arbitrary bestowal. It is a result of character. The crown and the throne are tokens of a condition attained, they are the tokens of self-conquest through our Lord Jesus Christ…

The one who stands nearest to Christ will be he who on earth had drunk most deeply of the spirit of His self-sacrificing love… Love that vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up… seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil. (1 Cor. 13:4, 5). Love that moves the disciple, as it moved our Lord to give all, to live and labour and sacrifice, even unto death, for the saving of humanity. The spirit was made manifest in the life of Paul. He said, “For me to live is Christ,” for his life revealed Christ to men; “and to die is gain”… gain to Christ; death itself would make manifest the power of His grace, and gather souls to Him. “Christ shall be magnified in my body,” he said, “whether it be by life or by death.” Phil. 1:2, 21. See 2 Cor. 1:7; Romans 1:16, 17.

Wrath of God

Romans 1:18-32 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against… Wherefore God also gave them up to… The hour of hope and pardon was fast passing, the cup of God’s long-deferred wrath was almost full. The cloud that had been gathering through ages of apostasy and rebellion, now black with woe, was about to burst upon a guilty people. And He who alone could save them from their impending fate had been slighted, abused, rejected, and was soon to be crucified. When Christ should hang upon the cross of Calvary, Israel’s day as a nation favoured and blessed of God would be ended. GC 20.

GC 21: In the temporal retribution about to fall upon her children. He saw but the first draft from that cup of wrath which at the final judgment she must drain to its dregs. Divine pity, yearning love, found utterance in the mournful words: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and ye would not.” O that thou, a nation favoured about every other, hadst known the time of thy visitation, and the things that belong unto thy peace: I have stayed the angel of justice, I have called thee to repentance, but in vain. It is not merely servants, delegates, and prophets, whom thou hast refused and rejected, but the Holy One of Israel, thy Redeemer. If thou art destroyed, thou alone art responsible. “Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.” Matt. 23:37; John 5:40.

“The waves of mercy, beaten back by those stubborn hearts, returned in a stronger tide of pitying, inexpressible love. But Israel had turned from her best friend and only Helper. The pleadings of His love had been despised. His counsels spurned, His warnings ridiculed.” GC 20.

Christ saw in Jerusalem a symbol of the world hardened in unbelief and rebellion, and hastening on to meet the retributive judgments of God. The woes of a fallen race, pressing upon His soul, forced from His lips that exceeding bitter cry. He saw the record of sin traced in human misery, tears, and blood; His heart was moved with infinite pity for the afflicted and suffering ones of earth. He yearned to relieve them all. But even His hand might not turn back the tide of human woe. Few would seek their only source of help. He was willing to pour out His soul unto death, to bring salvation within their reach, but few would come to him that they might have life.

The Majesty of Heaven in tears! The Son of the infinite God troubled in spirit, bowed down with anguish! The scene filled all heaven with wonder. That scene reveals to us the exceeding sinfulness of sin. It shows how hard a task it is, even for infinite power, to save the guilty from the consequences of transgressing the law of God. Jesus, looking down to the last generation, saw the world involved in a deception similar to that which caused the destruction of Jerusalem. The great sin of the Jews was their rejection of Christ, the great sin of the Christian world would be their rejection of the law of God, the foundation of His government in heaven and earth. GC 22: 1,2.

Because of her sins, wrath had been denounced against Jerusalem, and her stubborn unbelief rendered her down certain. GC 26:1.

The parable of the unfruitful tree represented God’s dealings with the Jewish nation. The command had gone forth, “Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?” Luke 13:7, but divine mercy had spared it yet a little longer. GC 27:3.
The long-suffering of God toward Jerusalem only confirmed the Jews in their stubborn impenitence. In their hatred and cruelty towards the disciples of Jesus they rejected the last offer of mercy. Then God withdrew His protection from them and removed His restraining power from Satan and his angels, and the nation was left to the control of the leader she had chosen. Her children had spurned the grace of Christ, which would have enabled them to subdue their evil impulses, and now these became the conquerors. Satan aroused the fiercest and most debased passions of the soul. Men did not reason, they were beyond reason—controlled by impulse and blind rage. They became satanic in their cruelty. In the family and in the nation, among the highest and lowest classes alike, there was suspicion, envy, hatred, strife, rebellion, murder. There was no safety anywhere. Friends and kindred betrayed one another, parents slew their children, and children their parents. The rulers of the people had no power to rule themselves. Uncontrolled passing made them tyrants. The Jews had accepted false testimony to condemn the innocent Son of God. Now false accusations made their own lives uncertain. By their action they had long been saying, “Cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before us.” Isa. 30:11. now their desire was granted. The fear of God no longer disturbed them. Satan was at the head of the nation, and the highest civil and religious authorities were under his sway. GC 28:1.

GC 29: But Israel had spurned the divine protection and now she had no defense.

GC 35-37: The Jews had forged their own fetters, they had filled for themselves the cup of vengeance. In the utter destruction that befell them as a nation, and in all the woes that followed them in their dispersion, they were but reaping the harvest which their own hands had sown. Says the prophet, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself:” “For thou hast fallen by thine iniquity.” Hosea 13:9; 14:1.

Their sufferings are often represented as a punishment visited upon them by the direct decree of God. It is thus, that the great deceiver seeks to conceal his own work. By stubborn rejection of divine love and mercy, the Jews had caused the protection of God to be withdrawn from them, and Satan was permitted to rule them according to his will. The horrible cruelties enacted in the destruction of Jerusalem are a demonstration of Satan’s vindictive power over those who yield to his control.

We cannot know how much we owe to Christ for the peace and protection which we enjoy. It is the restraining power of God that prevents mankind from passing fully under the control of Satan. The disobedient and unthankful have great reason for gratitude for God’s mercy and long-suffering in holding in check the cruel, malignant power of the evil one. But when men pass the limits of divine forbearance, that restraint is removed. God does not stand toward the sinner as an executioner of the sentence against transgression, but He leaves the rejecter of His mercy to themselves, to reap that which they have sown. Every ray of light rejected, every warning despised or unheeded, every passion indulged, every transgression of the law of God, is a seed sown which yields its unfailing harvest. The spirit of God, persistently rejected, is at last withdrawn from the sinner, and then there is no protection from the malice and enmity of Satan. The destruction of Jerusalem is a fearful and solemn warning to all who are trifling with the offers of divine grace and resisting the pleadings of divine mercy. Never was there given a more decisive testimony to God’s hatred of sin and to the certain punishment that will fall upon the guilty.

The Saviour’s prophecy concerning the visitation of judgments upon Jerusalem is to have another fulfillment, of which that terrible desolation was but a faint shadow. In the fate of the chosen city we may behold the doom of a world that has rejected God’s mercy and trampled upon His law… Terrible have been the results of rejecting the authority of Heaven. But a scene yet darker is presented in the revelation of the future. The records of the past,–the long procession of tumults, conflicts, and revolutions, the “Battle of the warrior…with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood.” (Isa. 9:5)…What are these, in contrast with the terrors of that day when the restraining spirit of God shall be wholly withdrawn from the wicked, no longer to hold in check the outburst of human passion and satanic wrath. The world will then behold, as never before, the results of Satan’s rule.

Like Israel of old the wicked destroy themselves; they fall by their iniquity. By a life of sin, they have placed themselves so out of harmony with God, their natures have become so debased with evil, that the manifestation of His glory is to them a consuming fire.

GC 614-15: When He leaves the sanctuary, a darkness covers the inhabitants of the earth. In that fearful time the righteous must live in the sight of a holy God without an intercessor. The restraint which has been upon the wicked is removed and Satan has entire control of the finally impenitent. God’s long-suffering has ended. The world has rejected His mercy, despised His love, and trampled upon His law. The wicked have passed the boundary of their probation, the spirit of God persistently resisted, has been at last withdrawn. Unsheltered by divine grace, they have no protection from the wicked one. Satan then will plunge the inhabitants of the earth into one great, final trouble. As the angels of God cease to hold in check the fierce winds of human passion, all the elements of strife will be let loose. The whole world will be involved in ruin more terrible than that which came upon Jerusalem of old.

GC 615: When God’s presence was finally withdrawn from the Jewish nation, priests and people knew it not. Though under the control of Satan, and swayed by the most horrible and malignant passions, they still regarded themselves as the chosen of God… The forms of religion will be continued by a people from whom the spirit of God has been finally withdrawn, and the satanic zeal with which the prince of evil inspire them for the accomplishment of his malignant designs, will bear the semblance of zeal for God.

PK 535: Every nation that has come upon the stage of action has been permitted to occupy its place on the earth, that the fact might be determined whether it would fulfill the purposes of the watcher and the Holy One. Prophecy has traced the rise and progress of the world’s great empires – Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome. With each of these, as with nations of less power, history has repeated itself. Each has had its period of test, each has failed, its glory faded, its power departed.

While nations have rejected God’s principles, and in this rejection have wrought their own ruin, yet a divine, overruling purpose has manifestly been at work throughout the ages.

PK 536: The history of nations speaks to us today. To every nation and to every individual God has assigned a place in his great plan. Today men and nations are being tested by the plummet in the hand of Him who makes no mistake. All are by their own choice deciding their destiny, and God is overruling all for the accomplishment of His purposes.

GC 632: In the form of men, angels are often in the assemblies of the righteous, and they visit the assemblies of the wicked, as they went to Sodom, to make a record of their deeds, to determine whether they have passed the boundary of God’s forbearance. The Lord delights in mercy; and for the sake of a few who really serve Him, He restrains calamities and prolongs the tranquility of multitudes. Little do sinners against God realize that they are indebted for their own lives to the faithful few whom they delight to ridicule and oppress.

GC xi: In the great final conflict, Satan will employ the same policy, manifest the same spirit, and work for the same end as in all preceding ages. That which has been, will be, except that the coming struggle will be marked with a terrible intensity such as the world has never witnessed. Satan’s deceptions will be more subtle, his assaults more determined. If it were possible, he would lead astray the elect.

ST 135-6: The world is fast approaching that point in iniquity and human depravity when God’s interference will become necessary… Already the judgments of God are in the land, as seen in storm, in floods, in tempests, in earthquakes, in peril by land and sea. The great I AM is speaking to those who make void His law. When God’s wrath is poured out upon the earth, who will be able to stand? (see next paragraph for God’s coming on the field and turning the tide)

GC 627: God’s judgments will be visited upon those who are seeking to oppress and destroy His people. His long with the wicked emboldens men in transgression, but their punishment is nonetheless certain and terrible because it is long delayed. “The Lord shall rise up as in Mount Perasin. He shall be wrath as in the valley of Gibeon, that He may do His work, His strange work, and bring to pass His act, His strange act.” Isa. 28:21. To our merciful God the act of punishment is a strange act. “As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” Eze. 33:11.

The Lord is “merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,… forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.” Yet He will “by no means clear the guilty.” “The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit the wicked.” Ex. 34:6-7; Nahum 1:3. By terrible things in righteousness He will vindicate the authority of His downtrodden law. The severity of the retribution awaiting the transgressors may be judged by the Lord’s reluctance to execute justice. The nation with which He bears long, and which He will not smite until it has filled up the measure of its iniquity in God’s account, will finally drink the cup of wrath unmixed with mercy.

When Christ ceases His intercession in the sanctuary, the unmingled wrath threatened against those who worship the Beast and his image and receives his mark (Rev. 14:9,10) will be poured out. The plagues upon Egypt when God was about to deliver Israel were similar in character to those more terrible and extensive judgments, which are to fall upon the world just before the final deliverance of God’s people.

GC 614: A single angel destroyed all the first-born of the Egyptians and filled the land with mourning. When David offended against God by numbering the people, one angel caused that terrible destruction by which his sin was punished. The same destructive power exercised by holy angels when God commands, will be exercised by evil angels when He permits. There are forces now ready, and only waiting the divine permission to spread desolation everywhere.

GC 628-9: The plagues are not universal or the inhabitants of the earth would be wholly cut off. Yet they will be most awful scourges that have ever been known to mortals. All the judgments upon men, prior to the close of probation, have been mingled with mercy. The pleading blood of Christ has shielded the sinner from receiving the full measure of his guilt, but in the final judgment, wrath is poured out unmixed with mercy.

In that day, multitudes will desire the shelter of God’s mercy which they have so long despised 4T 191: The Lord will not be trifled with, those who neglect His mercies and blessings in this day of opportunities will bring impenetrable darkness upon themselves and will be candidates for the wrath of God. Sodom and Gomorrah were visited with the curse of the Almighty for their sins and iniquities. There are those in our day who have equally abused the mercies of God and slighted His warnings. It will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for those who bear the name of Christ, yet dishonour Him by their unconsecrated lives. This class are laying up for themselves a fearful retribution when God in His wrath shall visit them with His judgments.

Sinners who have not had the light and privileges that Seventh-Day Adventists have enjoyed will, in their ignorance, be in a more favourable position before God than those who have been unfaithful while in close connection with His work and professing to love and serve Him. The tears of Christ upon the mount came from an anguished, breaking heart because of His unrequited love and the ingratitude of His chosen people. He had laboured untiringly to save them from the fate that they seemed determined to bring upon themselves, but they refused the mercy and knew they were so blinded by sin that they knew it not. Jesus looked down through the centuries even to the close of time, and taking in all the cases of all who had repaid His love and admonitions, with selfishness and neglect, and all who would thus repay Him, He addressed to them those solemn words, declaring that they knew not the time of their visitation.

The Jews were gathering about themselves the dark clouds of retribution; and many today, in like manner, are drawing upon themselves the wrath of God, because of opportunities unimproved, the counsels and love of Jesus scorned, and his servants despised and hated for speaking the truth.

GC 659: For six thousand years, Satan’s work of rebellion has “made the earth to tremble”. He has “made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof”. And he “opened not the house of his prisoners”. For six thousand years his prison house has received God’s people, and he would have held them captive for ever; but Christ has broken his bonds and set the prisoner free.

DA 763-4: Then the end will come. God will vindicate His law and deliver His people. Satan and all who have joined him in rebellion will be cut off. Sin and sinners will perish, root and branch (Mal. 4:1)… Satan the root and his followers the branches. The word will be fulfilled to the prince of evil. “Because thou hast set thine heart as the heart of God,… I will destroy thee, O covered cherub from the midst of the stones of fire…” “Thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more.” “They shall be as though they had not been.” Ezek. 26:6-9; Ps. 37:10; Obad. 1:16.

This is not an act of arbitrary power on the part of God. The rejecters of His mercy reap that which they have sown. God is the fountain of life, and when one chooses the service of sin, he separates from God, and thus cuts himself off from life. He is alienated from the life of God.

Christ says, “All they that hate me love death.” Eph. 4:1; Prov. 8:36. God gives them existence for a time that they may develop their character and reveal their principles. This accomplished, they receive the results of their own choice. By a life of rebellion, Satan and all who unite with him, place themselves so out of harmony with God that His very presence is to them a consuming fire. The glory of Him who is love will destroy them.

At the beginning of the great controversy, the angels did not understand this. Had Satan and his host then been left to reap the full result of their sin, they would have perished; but it would not have been apparent to heavenly beings that this was the inevitable result of sin. A doubt of God’s goodness would have remained in their minds as seed to produce its deadly fruit of sin and woe.

But not so when the great controversy shall be ended. Then, the plan of redemption having been completed, the character of God is revealed to all created intelligences. The precepts of His law are seen to be perfect and immutable. Then sin has made manifest its nature, Satan his character. Then the extermination of sin will vindicate God’s love and establish His honour before a universe of beings who delight to do His will, and in whose heart is His law.

Dear reader, may these lines prove a blessing to you, and all the dear children who may read them. I hope you will take the wise and safe course pointed out to us by the following passages of Scriptures. “Despise not prophesyings. Prove all things: hold fast that which is good.” “To the law and the testimony, if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” Isa. 8:20.
AMEN.

Golden Kayawa Hingabantu
Zambia