The three angels’ messages of Revelation 14:6-12 are central to the mission of our church and have been from its beginning. The early Adventists saw in these powerful proclamations their mission to the world in preparation for the soon return of our Lord and Savior. But if you are reading them for the first time, you might wonder how they fit with life in the twenty-first century. What do they mean for us today, and how can we share their meaning with our neighbors?
The Layout
The three angels’ messages appear in the central vision of Revelation 12-14.1 In this central vision the great themes of Revelation reach a climax—good versus evil, obedience versus rebellion, true worship versus false worship. Chapter 12 opens with a harrowing picture of a woman (God’s faithful people) chased by a great red dragon (the devil and his earthly puppets, Rev. 12). A battle ensues in heaven with Michael and His angels defeating the dragon and casting him down to earth. But then the dragon chases the woman into the desert and goes off to make war with the last of her children (God’s people in the last days).
Revelation 13 deepens the tension with two beasts (later persecuting powers), one from the sea, the other from land, that continue the persecution of God’s people. It seems good will be defeated and evil will triumph, when the three angels come on the scene (Rev. 14), proclaiming both a message of salvation and a message of destruction. After the angels comes the Son of man on the clouds of heaven, fulfilling what the three angels have proclaimed. So why do we have these three angels’ messages at this point in Revelation?
A Gospel Message?
The first angel’s message reads as follows in Revelation 14:6, 7:
“Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people. And he said with a loud voice, ‘Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.’ ”2
The angel’s message is called an “everlasting gospel,” but it does not seem like that to many readers. There is no mention of grace, faith, hope, love, forgiveness, salvation, or the cross. How can this message be called gospel when it does not contain the words we typically associate with the New Testament message of salvation? The problem resides in our presumption of how to describe the gospel message. We are used to Paul’s depiction of righteousness by faith, reconciliation to the Father through the Lord Jesus, and the story of the cross as depicted in the Gospels.
But another way the gospel message is depicted comes from Jesus Himself. In Mark 1:14, 15 we meet Jesus’ message just after His baptism. “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand;repent and believe in the gospel.’ ” Jesus’ straightforward gospel message here has three parts: the fulfillment of Bible prophecy (here the fulfillment of the coming of the Messiah foretold in Daniel 9:24-27), a covenant promise (the kingdom of God is at hand), and a call to discipleship (repent and believe).3
We see these same three elements in the first angel’s message: the fulfillment of Bible prophecy (here the hour of judgment as prophesied in Daniel 7-8), a covenant promise (the receiving of the kingdom by God’s people in the judgment [see Dan. 7:22]), and a call to discipleship (fear, glorify, and worship God as rooted in the judgment message and God as Creator).4 Thus, the first angel’s message parallels Jesus’ preaching. Jesus proclaimed God’s kingdom at the initiation of the New Testament church; Revelation proclaims the kingdom’s fulfillment at the culmination of earth’s history.
Where Jesus’ preaching called for discipleship in the setting of the Mediterranean world of His day, the first angel’s message calls for discipleship in the setting of the end-time conflict between good and evil. Fear God, not the beasts. Glorify God, not men or evil forces. Worship God alone, not the beasts or their image. So the first angel’s message truly is a gospel message in the setting of the last days of earth’s history. But what about messages two and three?
False worship leads to false ethics.
Why Such Frightening Language?
In light of Jesus’ message we can see that the first angel preaches the gospel in an end-time setting. But messages two and three—the fall of Babylon and the wrath of God on false worshippers—seem to many to be out of step with God’s love for all. How can the God who expresses His great love in John 3:16 (“For God so loved the world,that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”) be the same God who promises fiery destruction to worshippers of the beast in Revelation 14? The language is stark in Revelation 14:9-11: “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.”
What does this all mean?
The Beast: Its Image and Mark
The beast described in the third angel’s message is the sea beast of Revelation 13. A careful study of chapter 13 reveals that the sea beast is the antichrist power that deceives the world, leading people astray from the worship of the true God. More than that, the sea beast and its ally, the land beast (the anti-Holy Spirit in Revelation’s theology), threaten persecution and death for anyone who does not worship the sea beast.5 This concept of worship stands at the heart of the conflict in Revelation. Two sides are drawn: worshippers of the beast versus worshippers of God.
The image of the beast is reminiscent of Nebuchadnezzar’s great golden image in Daniel 3. There everyone was commanded to worship the image representing Nebuchadnezzar’s authority and worldview or face torturous death in a fiery furnace. Three brave young men resisted the king’s demand and miraculously survived the furnace by God’s power. The image of the beast in Revelation 13 therefore represents the authority and worldview of the antichrist power and his allies in defiance of God. Bend to this system or face certain death.
The mark of the beast is simply an emblem of submission to the sea beast’s demands. Since Revelation is by and large a symbolic book, we should not consider the mark some sort of tattoo on a person, but it is an indication the individual has agreed to the beast’s demands either wholeheartedly (a mark on the forehead) or at least in outward actions (a mark of the hand).
The Wine of God’s Wrath
We return to that stark language in Revelation 14:9-11. We can phrase the question a bit differently. Why would God threaten worshippers of the beast with fire and brimstone? What is so very bad about worshipping the beast? It is a principle of our nature that we become like that which we admire. Fans of movie stars or sports heroes will dress like them, talk like them, even act like them. At a higher level we become like that which we worship. Worship the beast, and you will come to think and act like the beast.
Since the beast is antichrist, you come to act in the opposite way that Christ acts. Where Christ loves, you hate. Where He shows compassion to the downtrodden, you show indifference to those who suffer. Where Christ is moral, faithful, abounding in goodness and truth, you become immoral, disloyal, full of evil, hate, and lies. It is a serious thing to worship the beast. Indeed, all the evil, crime, war, abuse, lies, and hatred we see in the world are only symptoms of the true underlying problem—false worship, idolatry. False worship leads to false ethics (mistreating people).
So why would God respond to all this with the wine of His wrath? Suppose you witness an act of egregious abuse and profound injustice. Should it not be addressed? To leave abuse and injustice unaddressed would itself be unjust.
God cannot allow the abuse of the antichrist to continue in our world. Like a compassionate surgeon, He will cut out the cancer that is destroying our world. Sin is that cancer. The first angel’s message points to the solution that God offers to a sin-sick world—turn back to God. Center your life in Him to find true happiness, true moral worth, true meaning, true worship, and compassionate treatment of others. Otherwise, the cancer of sin will consume your life and ruin your relationships. It is that simple and direct.
The Other Angels
There are actually more than three angels in Revelation 14. Three more appear in the last half of the chapter. The turning point of the chapter, and of the book, is Revelation 14:14.6 “Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and seated on the cloud one like a son of man, with a golden crown on his head, and a sharp sickle in his hand.” This is the second coming of Christ on the clouds of glory to redeem His people. Where up to this point in Revelation there has been a movement into God’s heavenly sanctuary, from this point onward the movement is outward. Revelation 14:15 states, “And another angel came out of the temple, calling with a loud voice to him who sat on the cloud, ‘Put in your sickle, and reap, for the hour to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is fully ripe.’” Symbolically, the sickle in Jesus’ hand is a sickle of salvation as He reaps the ripened grain of the earth. Grain is saved, stored in a barn, thus this harvest is a symbol of salvation. These actions are parallel to the first angel’s message of gospel of salvation.
In the rest of Revelation 14 two more angels are involved in the symbolic grape harvest of the earth. Grapes are crushed when harvested, and out flows something the color of blood—a symbol of damnation, the destruction of the wicked. These two angels parallel the second and third angels’ messages, which depict the opposite of the message of salvation the first angel brings.
Conclusion
Revelation 14:6-12 give us the message of warning to the world just before Christ returns, a message of salvation and destruction, a call to discipleship to turn back to God or face the sure result of eternal loss, not because God is mean and unloving, but because false worship will destroy your life, and God will not allow the evil, hatred, pain, and sorrow to continue.
Revelation 14:14-20 show us the fulfillment of that warning message in verses 6-12. Two harvests are coming, the harvest of salvation and the harvest of destruction. God wants you and me, our neighbors, our towns, cities, and countries, to heed the warning and be saved. This is our great mission to share with the whole world.
1 Scholars have various ideas about the outline and center of Revelation. G. K. Beale has a long discussion of the outline in his commentary, and one of the outlines he favors is seven visions with a prologue and epilogue. See G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation NIGTC (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999), pp. 108-151. See also Ranko Stefanovic, Revelation of Jesus Christ, 2nd ed. (Berrien Springs, Mich.: Andrews University Press, 2009), pp. 24-50. Stefanovic favors a chiastic structure with the vision of chapters 12-13 at the center. I favor chapters 12-14 as the central vision, with the turning point at 14:14, marked by the shift to leaving the heavenly sanctuary after that point.
2 Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. ESV Text Edition: 2016. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
3 Daniel 9:24-27 describes the coming of the Messiah and pinpoints the time frame from “the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem.” The final decree to restore Jerusalem was given in 457 B.C. In the prophecy the coming of the Messiah would be 69 prophetic weeks later, or 483 literal years, which reaches to A.D. 27, the very time Christ was baptized, anointed with the Holy Spirit, and began His ministry (see Mark 1:9-11; Acts 10:38).
4 Daniel 7 presents God’s judgment on evil earthly powers. Daniel 8 presents the parallel cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary and the time frame for it to occur, the 2,300 evenings and mornings prophecy. With the beginning of that time frame set by Daniel 9, the coming of the Messiah, the start of the judgment reaches to 1844.
5 The sea beast in history is Rome in its Christian phase and the land beast is the United States of America working in coordination with the sea beast. See C. Mervyn Maxwell, God Cares (Boise, Idaho: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1985), vol. 2, pp. 324-349.
6 Revelation begins with a vision of Jesus walking among the candlesticks in the holy place of the heavenly sanctuary (Rev. 1:12, 13). As the visions progress, movement proceeds inward into the heavenly sanctuary, culminating with Revelation 11:19, with a view of the ark of the covenant in the most holy place. From Revelation 14:15 onward, movement is outward from the most holy place, representing judgment.