Second
Angel's Message to be Repeated
There
followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city,
because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.
Rev. 14:8.
The second
angel's message of Revelation 14 was first preached in the summer of 1844,
and it then had a more direct application to the churches of the United States,
where the warning of the judgment had been most widely proclaimed and most
generally rejected, and where the declension in the churches had been most
rapid. But the message of the second angel did not reach its complete fulfillment
in 1844. The churches then experienced a moral fall, in consequence of their
refusal of the light of the advent message; but that fall was not complete.
As they have continued to reject the special truths for this time they have
fallen lower and lower. Not yet, however, can it be said that "Babylon
is fallen,... because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath
of her fornication." She has not yet made all nations do this.
God still
has a people in Babylon; and before the visitation of His judgments these
faithful ones must be called out, that they partake not of her sins and "receive
not of her plagues." This is the same message that was given by the second
angel. Babylon is fallen, "because she made all nations drink of the
wine of the wrath of her fornication." What is that wine?--her false
doctrines. She has given to the world a false sabbath instead of the Sabbath
of the fourth commandment, and has repeated the falsehood that Satan first
told to Eve in Eden--the natural immortality of the soul. Many kindred errors
she has spread far and wide, "teaching for doctrines the commandments
of men.". . .
In the
last work for the warning of the world, two distinct calls are made to the
churches. The second angel's message is, "Babylon is fallen, is fallen,
that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath
of her fornication." And in the loud cry of the third angel's message
a voice is heard from heaven saying, "Come out of her, my people, that
ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For
her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities."
