The Everlasting Gospel and the Glory of God in the Sabbath

Gil Openiano

13 min readJun 3, 2018

Philippine International Church, 02 June 2018

I have a five-point objective every time I preach or conduct a Bible study. So, today, I pray that we will

· Get a fresh glimpse of the glory of God;

· Appreciate better the salvation we have in Jesus;

· Live out more fully, in and as a church, what it means to be disciples of Jesus;

· Love reading and rereading the Bible more; and

· Realize much more our utter dependence on the Holy Spirit for any and all of the above.

If my preaching fails in any of these points, I shall have failed. Brothers and sisters, I challenge you, therefore, to listen carefully and chide me later if I fail in any of these.

I invite us now to have a fresh look at a text central to the Adventist faith, the first angel’s message in Revelation 14:6–7. Let us read and proclaim this together, brothers and sisters:

And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, 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.

“The Everlasting Gospel” — John the Revelator is telling us the importance of this angel’s message, for the angel is proclaiming not just any good news, any gospel, but THE gospel, the EVERLASTING gospel to boot. That is, it is the only gospel for any and all times — in the time of Adam, of Abraham, of Moses, of Jesus, of Paul; by calling it THE EVERLASTING gospel, John emphasizes that it is also the only gospel for our times.

And yet, how is this gospel? How is this gospel at all that does not speak, for instance, of the Kingdom of God, which is central to Jesus’ gospel proclamation? How is this gospel that does not mention Jesus and the cross and the victory over sin and death that are central to Paul’s gospel proclamation?

Indeed, how is this gospel that has reduced all too many SDAs cowering in fear and anxiety, hearing its proclamation of fear and the judgment that has come? Who among us has not been confronted by the fear of not passing muster the investigative judgment?

That in our Adventist minds the first angel’s message speaks not so much of good news but of destruction and disaster is illustrated by our Sabbath School lesson last week. On Friday of last week, the lesson writer gave voice to a common Adventist understanding of the judgment spoken of in Rev. 14:7. Citing an Adventist writer, the lesson says that the phrase “the fountains of waters” recalls Noah’s flood and the judgment that destroyed the world.

Again, how is this gospel? How is it gospel that proclaims destruction? Or does it? Does Revelation 14:6–7 really proclaim a gospel other than that of Jesus, other than that of Paul? Remember Paul’s emphatic proclamation in Gal. 1:8 (let us read together, brothers and sisters):

But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.

So, how is “the Everlasting Gospel” of Rev. 14:6–7 the same as the gospel of Jesus and the gospel of Paul?

John clues us to the answer to this question by his introduction of the first angel’s message (let us read aloud together, brothers and sisters):

And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel …

The words “another angel” naturally alerts us to ask when Revelation mentioned other angels, and especially the last time John mentioned an angel before the one in Rev. 14:6. And we find that this is in Rev. 11:15. This should lead us to understand that the proclamation of the Everlasting Gospel in Rev. 14:6–7 — and, indeed, the three angels’ messages — are to be read in light of its previous context reaching back at the least to Rev. 11:15. We might even understand that the three angels’ messages are a summary of this previous context.

So, how is the Everlasting Gospel gospel? How is it good news the same as the gospel of Jesus and the gospel of Paul? To fully answer this, we need time — much, much more time. Are you willing to listen for, say, a semester? No?

Let me, then, just focus on a very valuable insight provided by our Sabbath School lesson on Friday last week that I have already mentioned. This insight sees the Everlasting Gospel employing the language of the Sabbath commandment, but then diverting from it. Let us read together, brothers and sisters:

The Sabbath commandment:

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. (Exod. 20:8–11 KJV)

The Everlasting Gospel:

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.

What is common between the two? What is different?

“… the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is …”
“… him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters …”

Our Sabbath School lesson on Friday last week says that by echoing and diverting from the language of the Sabbath commandment, Rev. 14:7 relates the judgment of the Everlasting Gospel with God’s destructive judgment of the world through Noah’s flood. This is apparently because Noah’s flood involved waters coming from fountains, as Gen. 7:11–12 says (let us read together):

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. (Gen. 7:11–12 KJV)

Now, let us really pay God’s Word the attention it deserves: Are Gen. 7:11 and Rev. 14:7 speaking of the same fountains?

“… the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up …”
“… worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.”

Thank God that these texts do not speak of the same fountains. The deep in Gen. 7:11 is the same deep spoken of in Gen. 1:2 — the formless, dark void:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. (Gen. 1:1–2 KJV)

“The fountains of the deep” in Gen. 7:11, therefore, implies that Noah’s flood involved reverting the world back to day zero of creation (or 0.00001 or, whatever; you know what I mean), before the creation of light and life on Earth. This is hardly good news.

To what, then, does “the fountains of waters” of the Everlasting Gospel refer?

This phrase seems to be uniquely John’s. It is used four times in Revelation; five, if we include the use in the singular in Rev. 21:6. All five instances use the Greek word πηγή, “fountain,” which is also the same Greek word used in the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman in John 4. There, it is translated “well” by the KJV.

Because the phrase is uniquely John’s, it is important to understand how John uses it. In all instances, John uses the phrase to refer to life — particularly eternal, abundant life — even in the two instances (Rev. 8:10 and Rev. 16:4) that it is used in the context of depriving eternal, abundant life. In all other instances, except in Rev. 14:7, the phrase is clearly used to refer to God giving eternal, abundant life.

Thus, in John 4:14

But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water [πηγὴ ὕδατος] springing up into everlasting life. (Jn. 4:14 KJV)

In Rev. 7:17:

For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters [πηγὰς ὑδάτων]: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. (Rev. 7:17 KJV)

And Rev. 21:6:

And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water [πηγῆς τοῦ ὕδατος] of life freely. (Rev. 21:6 KJV)

Do you now begin to see why Rev. 14:6–7 is good news? The phrase “the fountains of waters” in Rev. 14:7 refers to God’s gift of eternal, abundant life. Without this phrase, Rev. 14:7 only proclaims God as Creator, to which one might very well respond cynically, “Well, okay, duh: He created the heavens with its storms, the earth with its earthquakes, and the seas with its tsunamis.” That is, He is Creator, okay, but look at all the death and destruction and suffering that His creation brings!

The phrase “fountains of waters” in Rev. 14:7 tells us that God did not just create heaven, earth, and sea, but that He created all this to give men and women abundant life. Yes, now, heaven, earth, and sea also bring with them death, destruction, and suffering as a result of the Fall, but this was not God’s design.

This is why the Sabbath commandment tells us to remember. We are to remember the first Sabbath, when Adam and his wife enjoyed all the abundance of God’s creation, glorifying God for creating everything else perfectly before He created them, because everything else was prepared for them — to give them life eternal and abundant. Creation now is not as God intended it, and it causes us much suffering. This is why we need to constantly remember the Sabbath, the rest that we have in a God who not only created the universe, but created it for us.

This is the God that the Everlasting Gospel and the Sabbath both proclaim as worthy of our worship — a God who did not just create the universe and us and then left us in our suffering, but a God who created the universe and us in order to give us life eternal and abundant. And, in Jesus, we see a God who has joined us in all our suffering in order to give us life eternal and abundant together with the Father. And not only we, Paul reminds us in Romans 8 — the whole creation (including the heaven, the earth, and the sea) groans, waiting for the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. God in Jesus joined in the suffering of all creation — no, He took upon Himself the suffering of all creation so that He may restore the whole of creation to what it was originally intended — to give abundant, eternal life; in other words, to be “the fountains of water.” What a glorious God!

Now, listen to this:

The Pharisees — the Pharisees looked at the Sabbath and saw only a commandment, only a law. That is why, regarding the Sabbath, they could talk only of what may or not be done legally on the Sabbath, of how to walk and talk and gawk on the Sabbath, so to speak. They made the Sabbath a burden, not a gospel. That is why Jesus took pains to show them — and us — that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27); that on the Sabbath we are not meant to be doing nothing, but to be doing good for others (Mark 3:4); that He, Jesus, works on the Sabbath because “My Father worketh hitherto” (John 5:17); that the Sabbath was not meant for us to see only a law — the Sabbath was meant for us to see the Lord of the Sabbath (Mark 2:28).

Listen:

The Pharisees looked at the Sabbath and saw a law; John the Revelator looks at the Sabbath and sees the glory of God.

It is not only the Sabbath that displays this glory of God that is proclaimed in the Everlasting Gospel. The Sanctuary does, too — that other pillar of our Adventist faith. And, yet, we Adventists have the tendency to look at the Sanctuary — in particular, the Ark of the Covenant — and see only the Law. We need to be constantly reminded by Heb. 9:4 that testifies of the Ark of the Covenant:

the ark of the covenant overlaid round about with gold, wherein was the golden pot that had manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant. (Heb 9:4 KJV)

What do these objects signify that were specifically ordered by God to be placed in the Ark, symbolizing the foundation of His throne and His Kingship over us? What do these items signify that underlie the Mercy Seat?

Time does not allow me to give more than pointers toward the answer to these questions. Let me just ask you to think of some of the parallels between the Ark of the Covenant and the Lord’s Prayer:

As the Ark of the Covenant in the second compartment of the sanctuary contains three items, the second part of the Lord’s Prayer has three items, too. The pot of manna obviously corresponds with “our daily bread.” The rod — used by shepherds to guide and protect the sheep — obviously corresponds with “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” The tables of the covenant or the Ten Commandments, then, correspond with “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”

We might feel that our Sanctuary doctrine drives us to despair as we are hammered down by the demands of the Law; but in the light of the book of Hebrews, in the light of the gospel, and in the light of the way we should approach the Father as Jesus taught us to, we see the Sanctuary, wherein the glory of God dwells, ever reminding us of God’s daily provision for us, God’s constant guidance and protection of us, and God’s undying forgiveness of our sins, leading us to forgive others.

Oh, what a glorious God of the Sanctuary, as glorious as the God of the Sabbath, as glorious as the God of the Everlasting Gospel!

I just have two more points to share with you, one short and the other shorter:

The shorter is just to mention without elaboration — because I am sure you are already familiar with this, that “fear God” does not mean that we should cower before a punitive God. I will just ask you to ponder why both Psalms (111:10) and Proverbs (9:10; 1:7) say that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” whereas Job (28:28) says “the fear of the Lord — that is wisdom.”

The short one is an appeal and a challenge. This has to do with the history of the proclamation of judgment in Christianity. In the Hebrew Bible and its concurrent Hebrew culture, judgment was good news, because it referred to favorable judgment, a declaration of liberation from bondage and oppression, a vindication. Judgment began to take on negative overtones when the Hebrew Bible was translated into Latin, because in this Roman language and in Roman culture, judgment also had a negative meaning. Moreover, judgment in Latin and in Roman culture was primarily a legal concept, in contrast to the Hebrew, in which judgment was a broader concept of vindication and liberation from bondage or oppression. The Roman concept of a legal judgment, which may very well be an unfavorable sentence, is what Reformation Protestantism inherited, rather than the Biblical. This Latin, Roman heritage of Reformation Protestantism is at the root of, among other things, its primarily legal and individualized understanding of justification and the gospel.

I point this out, though very impressionistically here, because this poses at least two challenges to and among us Adventists, who profess to be the bearers of the gospel in the last days. First, as I have already pointed out, we have to proclaim God’s judgment as good news, as gospel, because “the hour of His judgment is come” means that God has acted to abrogate sin and its results and to restore the goodness of creation — to make the whole of creation “fountains of waters” again, in the language of John the Revelator.

This does not mean that this judgment is good news to all and to everyone; but that is left to the second and third angels, who proclaim the consequence and implications, respectively, of the Everlasting Gospel of the first angel. God had other angels proclaim these other messages; so, we can have other sermons or other preachers proclaim those.

Second, the Roman heritage of Reformation Protestantism has given rise to a highly individualistic view of the so-called “plan of salvation.” It is our task, as the professed bearers of the gospel in the last days, to countervail the self-centered and self-elevating view of the gospel epitomized by that song that proclaims that, on the cross, Jesus “took the fall and thought of me above all” — ME, “above all powers, above all kings, above all nature,” etc. — ME. This so-called gospel common in current evangelicalism has ME at the core of its proclamation, and Jesus is just a tool to place ME at the core. This is an egotistical, people-pleasing brand of Evangelicalism, rather than God-glorifying Christianity.

Listen:

This brand of Evangelicalism looks at the Gospel and sees ME; John the Revelator looks at the Everlasting Gospel and sees God in all His glory.

The Everlasting Gospel countervails this anathema of an “other gospel.” For the Everlasting Gospel proclaims the glorious God, the same glorious God of the Sabbath and of the Sanctuary as the true center of our faith. This glorious God, not the usurper ME, is the true core of the Everlasting Gospel.

No wonder Ellen White said our task as a Church is to finish, not echo, the Reformation. For Reformation theology and the Reformation gospel are yet children of Rome.

Our task is to go where the Reformation failed to reach — to the Bible in all its glorious clarity, proclaiming God in all His glory.

In this light and in this spirit, brothers and sisters, let us close by reading together once more Revelation 14:6–7, loudly proclaiming before all the world the Everlasting Gospel of the glorious God: