I have made a statement, in which many do not agree with me, and that is that the Seventh-day Adventist Church is the church of God in the end times. Now, there is a church that unabashedly calls itself the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but it may be questioned whether this is a Christian church, because this church puts its own ‘bible’, the Book of Mormon, above the Bible and says that The Bible is correct if the Book of Mormon confirms this. However, this is a discussion that I will not take here.
Nevertheless, is it sustainable that a church calls itself the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? It does not matter what denomination it is, be it the Adventists or the Mormons, who trumpet such a claim, for this is such a type of claim that cannot stand on its own two feet, it must be substantiated with the Scripture in order to be valid. By Scripture, of course, I mean the Bible, and that alone. Sola Scriptura.
This is a controversial issue that is very emotional for millions of people around the world, but the Bible itself tells us that God has a special church, or a movement that He himself has raised up in the end times. However, to see the whole of this, we must go through a number of points, and everything we are going to look at must be taken from the Bible in order for it to be correct. Therefore, I need to be able to refer to what the Bible says to substantiate my claim.
The first question that arises is whether there is evidence in the Bible that God will raise up a church in the end times. Another question that forces itself forward is whether we can define when the end time began. When we have to start somewhere, we have to try to figure out if God is going to raise a church in the end times.
The history from creation to the end times begins.
What happened after creation?
Ever since Cain and Abel were old enough to offer their sacrifices to God on their own, the human race has been divided into two. These are 1) those who did according to God’s will, and 2) those who did what was best for them. When we got so far in history as to the time just before the flood, there was only one family that kept God’s commandments, there was only one human being who was found righteous before God’s eyes, and that was Noah. Noah and his family are what we might call the remnant of God in the time before the flood. God has always provided such a remnant on earth. Shortly after the flood, most people began to sin against God again, and few cared about the God of heaven.
Abram (Abraham), on the other hand, was responsive to the voice of God. He and his family and servants were the little remnant when he at the age of 75 years old left his family in the year 1873 BC. (The flood was over in the year 2347 BC; Abraham was born in the year 1948 BC). When we come to Abram who was born 400 years after the flood, almost no one on earth worshiped God the Creator. The same thing happened at the time Jesus was born. Then there were almost no one but some shepherds and three wise men waiting for this great event. After the church, was established on the day of Pentecost in 31 AD it did not take long before the pure church fell, but God preserved a small remnant that kept the word of God and the commandments of God without distorting it.
In 1517, the situation was so terrible that God saw himself forced to raise Luther to reform the church. However, the church did not want to be reformed, it was happy with its decadent existence. As soon as Luther’s Reformation had gained a relatively good foothold among some of the princes of the German Empire, the split of the Reformed Church began. When Satan saw that Luther was beginning to rediscover the ancient truths, he was able, little by little, to destroy the Reformation. Instead of working with Luther, new reformers, such as the French theologian Jean Calvin, began to stake out their own direction. Now, the Reformed Church was divided into two, and gradually it has become totally fragmented, and at the beginning of the 21st century, we have almost 50,000 different denominations, all of which have their own peculiarities.
What will God do in the end times?
We see that God time and time again since creation has preserved a small remnant, and / or raised up people to carry on His work. Then there is the question of whether we can find something in the Bible that tells us that God will reform the fallen church in the end times.
In Revelation chapter 10 and verse 11, we find the following text: And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.
This is the most important verse we have in this context, and the most important words here are: Thou must prophesy again. This does not mean that there has been a period where there has been no one who has purposefully tried and spread the darkness that the Roman Church has placed over the word of God. It probably means rather that God will again raise up a movement, a movement we can call the third Elijah, and which really has the courage and ability to carry on God’s work and end it.
Many will probably be stunned by the phrase the third Elijah, but the phrase refers to the prophet Elijah who defeated all the Baal prophets on Carmel, and is associated with preparing the way for the Lord. This Elias, the original, is the first Elias. The second Elijah was John the Baptist, who prepared the way for Jesus’ first coming, and who baptized Jesus when he began his mission. The third Elijah will prepare the way for Jesus’ return, and it is this event that ends the history of the earth.
But what does it really mean to prophesy? Some will probably say that it is to receive visions and write them down for the future, others may say that it is to rebuke a stubborn people and declare their sins. Both are so far correct. To Ezekiel God said: thou shalt speak my words unto them, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear: for they [are] most rebellious, Ezekiel 2,7. To Jeremiah God said: But the LORD said unto me, Say not, I [am] a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak, Jeremiah 1,7. In Jeremiah 36,2 God says: Take thee a roll of a book, and write therein all the words that I have spoken unto thee against Israel, and against Judah, and against all the nations, from the day I spake unto thee, from the days of Josiah, even unto this day. In Daniel 12,4 it says: But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, [even] to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.. And in Revelation 1,19 God says to John: Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter.
Also in Isaiah chapter 58 we find a couple of verses that point to the end times, and it means that God saw this problem coming and told his people through the prophet Isaiah, approx. 720 BC what was to happen more than 2500 years before it was to happen. Admittedly, it begins with a clear reference to the carnal Israel by the prophet pointing to the house of Jacob, which is the 12 tribes of Israel. Eventually, in this short chapter, we see that it is about the end-time church, and verse 12 begins with the following: And [they that shall be] of thee, who point back to the house of Judah (see verse 1) or Israel. The question is who is coming from the house of Judah or Israel. The answer to that is the Christian church, those who carry God’s pure word further in history. These are the spiritual descendants of Abraham, Isaiah 58,12-13 is all about:
And [they that shall be] of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in. 13 If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, [from] doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the LORD, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking [thine own] words*.
* King James 1611 use own words, other translations use empty words in the sense that they are not the word of God.
Why rebuild the foundations?
What are the foundations to be rebuilt if it is not God’s law and God’s word to be rebuilt so that this appears pure and unadulterated as it was in the beginning? The question is what is the reason that God’s law and God’s word will be rebuilt in the end times. The reason for this is that the fallen church has spoken its own words and empty words contrary to what God has said, and that the fallen church is finding its own pleasure. When I write the fallen church, it is first and foremost the Catholic church I am referring to and which is the origin of the decay that has taken place, and which is still taking place in the church, and which was the catalyst for Luther’s Reformation. After the Reformation, the Lutheran and Reformed churches also fell as deeply as the mother church. They preach in full their own empty words and that which is for their own good pleasure, in other words that which itches in the ear.
The main point, however, is the desecration of God’s Sabbath. It emerges with all the desired clarity in these verses. The Catholic Church has moved the sanctity of the Sabbath from the Sabbath of God, the seventh day of the week and our Saturday, to the first day of the week, which is our Sunday. It is also this theme that will be the core of the last great spiritual battle that will be fought just before Jesus ‘return, and then it is natural that God will raise up a church in the end times that repairs the breach, a church that rises up the old foundations and restores the paths to dwell in. Those who keep the Sabbath of God acknowledge God as the Creator of the universe and worship Him as their God, Creator and Saviour, while those who keep the Sunday, the false Sabbath of the papacy, worship a mortal man, also called the son of perdition, and adhere to the lie.
We can therefore state that God will raise up a church in the end times a church that will complete Gods wonderful work of salvation on earth. This has been prophesied throughout history, something that is very clear in the Bible. God always preserves a small remnant that can carry on His law, words and will in the way He has said it should be.
The beginning of the end times.
Is there something called the end time, and is it in any way possible to set a specific time for when this end time began?
We can very roughly divide time into two large chunks, prophetic time and end time, and we can for simplicity say that prophetic time started once and the end time started where prophetic time ended. There is a sharp distinction between prophetic time and end time. Despite the fact that it seems to be a form of a time of transition, this transition from prophetic time to end time is an event that happened at such an accurate time that we can set a special date for when prophetic time ended and end time began. I will come back to this later.
For the period called prophetic time, many prophecies have been given that have a very specific beginning and an equally specific end. An example of such a time prophecy is the prophecy in Daniel chapter 7 where we find the story of a little horn that will oppress God’s people over a period of a time and times and the dividing of time. This expression a time and times and the dividing of time is a prophetic time period, and represents a certain number of years with an exact start time and an equally accurate stop time. In Daniel’s time it was common to call a year a time, when there are times (plural indefinite) it is always two years. When it is more than two years, it is stated as 7 times, (see Daniel 4,16.23.25.32), a dividing of time is therefore half a year. In total, this prophecy amounts to three and a half years, or 1260 days of prophetic time.
The year / day principle.
A prophecy is in a way like a parable that we should not understand literally. Fortunately, the Bible gives us the key to this principle, which we call the year / day principle, and we find this explained both in Numbers 14,34 and in Ezekiel 4,6.
After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, [even] forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, [even] forty years, and ye shall know my breach of promise, Numbers 14,34
And when thou hast accomplished them, lie again on thy right side, and thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of Judah forty days: I have appointed thee each day for a year, Ezekiel 4,6.
This time period, a time and times and the dividing of time, is then 1260 literal years and began once, and ended exactly 1260 years later. But is there any indication that we can find out when the end time began? We must again go to the book of Daniel, and there we find some texts that clearly point to the end times and one of the texts refers directly to the distinction between prophetic time and end times.
In Daniel 8,14 we find the following: And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed. We must read this verse in light of the temple service in the Old Testament. Leviticus chapter 16 talks about the cleansing of the earthly sanctuary – the tabernacle or the temple. This was cleansed once a year on the day called Yom Kippur, and the earthly temple and the whole temple service of animal sacrifices and purification was only a model that pointed to Christ and the work he was to do both here on earth and in the heavenly temple after his ascension. Therefore, this verse is especially important for understanding this with end times.
A prophecy that reaches the end time.
Here we are talking about 2300 evenings and mornings, which also is prophetic time, and thus we have a time period of 2300 years according to the year / day principle. This is the longest time prophecy in the Bible and the end of the 2300 days marks the transition from prophetic time to end time. However, the prophecy says nothing about when this prophecy began, nor when it ended. The prophecy of the 2300 days ends with the following: And the vision of the evening and the morning which was told [is] true: wherefore shut thou up the vision; for it [shall be] for many days. And I Daniel fainted, and was sick [certain] days; afterward I rose up, and did the king’s business; and I was astonished at the vision, but none understood [it], Daniel 8,26-27.
* For many days point to a time distant from Daniel’s time, more specifically to the end times. The book of Daniel was sealed, that is, the book in its entirety would not be understood by anyone until we first came to the transition period between prophetic time and end time.
This prophecy was also a cause for concern to the prophet Daniel who could not understand the meaning of the prophecy. Daniel’s greatest concern was when the Jews would be allowed to return from their Babylonian captivity, and Daniel as the man of prayer he was did not give up, but begged God for wisdom to understand this. We see from Daniel 9,2 that it was really about the return of the Jews. While Daniel asks for knowledge and wisdom to understand, the angel Gabriel comes with help to Daniel so that he can understand the prophecies. Let us go into the text of chapter 9 verse 20: And whiles I [was] speaking, and praying, and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the LORD my God for the holy mountain of my God. Yea, whiles I [was] speaking in prayer, even the man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, touched me about the time of the evening oblation. And he informed [me], and talked with me, and said, O Daniel, I am now come forth to give thee skill and understanding. At the beginning of thy supplications the commandment came forth, and I am come to shew [thee]; for thou [art] greatly beloved: therefore understand the matter, and consider the vision, Daniel 9,20-23.
Why does Gabriel tell Daniel to understand the matter, and consider the vision? Daniel has not had a vision now. He had asked for wisdom that could help him to understand what he was pondering. The vision he was to understand must therefore be the vision of the 2300 evenings and mornings in Daniel 8:14.
So to the new prophecy Daniel gets in Daniel 9,24-27. To me, this is the most remarkable prophecy in the entire Bible. It tells us exactly when Jesus will stand up and be baptized and when he will die on the cross.
Verse 24: Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy..
Verse 25 Know therefore and understand, [that] from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince [shall be] seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times..
From the word went out to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple, until the Messiah would appear it would be 7 weeks + 62 weeks = 69 weeks. Since this is a time prophecy, we must reckon with the year / day principle. A week consists of 7 days, 7 weeks + 62 weeks (of years) becomes a full 483 years literal. That is, from the Jews were allowed to go home and rebuild the city and temple until the Messiah was baptized, it would take a full 483 years.
Verse 26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof [shall be] with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.
Verse 27 And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make [it] desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.
Verses 26 and 27 tell us that the Messiah will be cut off, and that this will happen three and a half years into the last week, or in the middle of the last week. Now we have some clues, but nothing about when the end time begins. If we look at the text in verse 24, it says that seventy weeks are determined. The idea is that this prophecy of the seventy weeks is truncated another prophecy, and then it must be the one that Daniel had received earlier, the one about the 2300 evenings and mornings.
When did the end time begin?
In order to find the exact time for when the end time began, we must look at what happened in the earthly temple, and the temple service there. We find this described in Leviticus chapter 16. What happened in the Old Testament temple was only an image of what Jesus Christ was to do. Every day throughout the year, two daily sacrifices were made – sin offerings – and all adult men were required to go up to Jerusalem to bring their and their family’s personal sin offerings each year. Some of this blood from all these lambs was sprinkled on the altar of sacrifice which is a symbol of the cross, and in this way the temple was made unclean by the sins the people confessed daily throughout the year. This corresponds to Jesus’ death on the cross when His blood was shed on the cross. When the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur, came, the high priest sacrificed for himself and for the people, and brought this sacrifice into the most holy in the earthly temple to cleanse it of the uncleanness with which all known sins had defiled the temple. Then the sins were spiritually transferred to a scapegoat and carried out of the camp of God’s people. This is an image of the ministry that Jesus performs in the most holy in the heavenly temple today.
Thus, every day of the year, sin offerings were offered in the temple, and all families in Israel / Judah had to offer their sin offerings once a year. When Yom Kippur, the last day of the religious year, came, it was the high priest’s turn to make sacrifices first on behalf of himself and then on behalf of the people, and all were judged according to the deed they had done. Those who had not offered their sin offerings during the year were exterminated from God’s people. It is the same thing that will happen in our time. Jesus Christ, our High Priest, examines the books to see what is written about every human being and on the basis of what He finds there, we are judged, either to eternal life with our Creator or to eternal death. This task Jesus began when he with his own blood entered the most holy on Yom Kippur the year prophetic time ended and the end time began. It happened in 1844, and this year Yom Kippur fell on October 22nd. October 22, 1844, in other words, is the beginning of the end time.
God raised up a movement when we entered the end times.
This is what the Bible says God will do.
The Bible itself says that God does nothing for his people without telling them through his prophets.
Surely, the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets. Amos 3,7.
We must therefore assume that we will be able to find a text that tells us that God really will raise up a movement when we come to the transition time between prophetic time and end time, otherwise the verse in Amos 3,7 will be meaningless.
The verse we are looking for is found in Revelation 10,11: And he said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.
We see that God uses the same procedure in Revelation 10,11 as He uses in Ezekiel 2,7; Jeremiah 17; Jeremiah 36,2; Daniel 12,4 and in Revelation 1,19, which we saw right in front of here. What He, Jesus, says to John, who is a type of God’s end-time church, is that he, John – as a type of the end-time church – will prophesy again. We should take this to heart along with the fact that to prophesy is something must do before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings, and this means that this is a worldwide event. That God will raise up a movement or a church in the end times is to be expected from history, and not least according to what God himself says in Revelation chapter 10 verse 11. That God tells us this long in advance is also in harmony with that way God is working on. Just look at what Jesus himself says to us through John: Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you, John 15,15. In Revelation 1,1 John says this: The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified [it] by his angel unto his servant John,
But, is it enough to refer to just one verse in the Bible to be able to state that ‘this is so’? In the book of Joel we find the following passage. And it shall come to pass afterward, [that] I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions: And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit. And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come. And it shall come to pass, [that] whosoever shall call on the name of the LORD shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, as the LORD hath said, and in the remnant whom the LORD shall call, Joel 3,1-5.
The whole chapter 3 of Joel’s is about the end times and about God’s judgment on the nations (the wicked) and God’s blessing on his people. It is beyond any doubt that God will raise up a prophetic movement in the end times.
Has it happened?
Now there are many denominations that will claim to be prophetic movements. However, I will be careful about judging other people and denominations, but there are certain criteria that must be met before they can label themselves the Church of God in the end times, or meet the conditions to be a prophetic movement. A special characteristic this movement has, is that they keep God’s commandments, all of God’s ten commandments, see Revelation 12,17 and 14,12. When we have come to this time where the end-time Church of God will prophesy again, we have two sets of the ten commandments. We have the Ten Commandments of God, and we have the ten commandments of the pope. Those who keep the pope’s ten commandments cannot possibly be the church of God in the end times, for the pope’s ten commandments are a changed version of the commandments. The original second commandment has been removed, the original third commandment has become the second commandment, etc. The fourth commandment (the pope’s third) has been changed and applies to Sunday as a day of rest not Saturday as God has blessed and santified. The original 10th commandment has been divided into two so that the Catholic Church also has ten commandments, but these are the false commandments.
However, there is a movement, the Advent movement, which arose as a result of the preaching of the three angels’ message in the 1840s, and was an inter-church revival that consisted of people from all denominations of the time. These denominations were Christian Brethren, Seventh-day Baptists, Anabaptists, Baptists, Methodists, Christian Connection, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Dutch Reformers, Quakers and Congregationalists.
As we see, the Advent movement in the beginning was in fact an inter-church movement. SDA was established as a separate church in 1863, and continued the preaching of the three angels’ message. This has been going on since that time with varying strength, but will increase in strength and power as we approach the absolute end time, when the loud cry sounds together with the three angels’ message.
This movement or church upholds God’s ten commandments so highly that they are called legalists by those who keep Sunday as God’s day of rest. He who started this movement was the deist William Miller, who in the times after the American-English War 1812-1815 began to study the Bible after he inexplicably survived a grenade strike just one meter from where he stood. After a thorough study of the Bible, Miller concluded in 1818 that Jesus would return in 1843 (see Daniel 8,14), which was later adjusted to 1844. Miller, a child of his day, believed like everyone else at the time that the earth was the sanctuary to be cleansed, and that this was to happen at the return of Jesus. Miller was wrong about the event, but all his calculations were correct. This God showed to Hasen Foss in a vision just after the great disappointment in 1844 that the sanctuary was not the earth as all Christians believed at that time, but that it was a sanctuary in heaven, and it was this sanctuary that was to be cleansed from this day in October 1844.
The spirit of prophecy given to the Advent movement.
After the disappointment, those who were faithful to God began to search for answers as to where they had gone wrong and what they had not understood correctly. Shortly after the disappointment, probably the next day, some of the brothers gathered to pray to God for light on what they had misunderstood. Among these was Hasen Foss. After the prayer, Hasen Foss and one of the brothers were to visit another brother, and they went through a cornfield. There in the field, Hasen Foss received a revelation from God, which showed him what they had done wrong. William Miller and William Fay also received visions and revelations from God. Soon after, God raised up a young woman, 17-year-old Ellen G. Harmon (later White), as His prophet. The Advent movement had been given the spirit of prophecy, and had become a prophetic movement. All this is according to Amos 3,7 and Revelation 10,11. In 1863, the movement took the name Seventh-day Adventists, forming its own denomination.