The Three Messages

1. Lo! An angel loud proclaiming,
    With the gospel of good news,
To all kindred, tongue and people,
    “Fear the Lord, give glory due!”
Proclamation to each nation
    Of the hour of judgment near;
Proclamation to each nation
    Of the hour of judgment near.

2. Lo! Another angel follows,
    With another solemn cry,
“Babylon the great is fallen!”
    Peals like thunder thru the sky.
“Come my people, come my people,
    Now forsake her pois’nous creeds;
Come my people, come my people,
    Now forsake her pois’nous creeds.”

3. Yet a third and solemn message
    Sounds a final doom abroad:
“All who worship beast or image
    Soon shall drink the wrath of God!”
Without mixture, without mixture,
    Mercy now no longer pleads;
Without mixture, without mixture,
    Mercy now no longer pleads.

4. Here are they who now are waiting,
    And have patience to endure;
While the dragon’s hosts are raging,
    These confide in God secure;
Faith of Jesus, faith of Jesus,
    And commandments keep them pure;
Faith of Jesus, faith of Jesus,
    And commandments keep them pure.

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The first three angel’s messages of Revelation 14:6-12, combined with the angel of Revelation 18:1-4, constitute God’s final message to the world, and the answer to the “image and mark” of the beast power.

All interpreters of prophecy in our day, who do not understand nor proclaim these messages, are not bringing the message of God for our time, and are imposters. They are the “thieves and robbers” Jesus spoke about.

They enter not by the door, which is Jesus, but by “another way.”

But Jesus is the only way, and these 4 messages constitute the voice of Jesus to the sheep of our time. Any other message, though it may say it is from Jesus, is the voice of a false shepherd.

The text for this hymn was composed by H. S. Gurney, a convert to Adventism via Joseph Bates, and one who helped Bates in his ministry.

A member of this group was an Adventist blacksmith, H. S. Gurney. His son, Charles H. Gurney, now living in Michigan, tells us that his father’s blacksmith shop was at the head of the river, about six miles out of New Bedford. As a youth, before his marriage, H. S. Gurney toured the South with Elder Bates, in the 1844 advent preaching campaigns. He was six feet tall, of powerful physique, and was noted, his son tells us, for his fine, strong musical voice. “He did not pose as a preacher; but as an ‘exhorter’ his work was effective.”

It is interesting to be told that he was with Elder Bates on that island in the Chesapeake, when, as the autobiography of Joseph Bates tells us, a mob threatened to ride Elder Bates on a rail. Readers of that book will remember that Elder Bates, who was then a fairly old man, won some friends by boldly accepting the situation and asking that a saddle be put on the rail. Then it was that a husky man of the island took Elder Bates by the arm and led him safely away. The presence of the six-foot blacksmith, young Gurney, may also have helped to restrain boisterous elements.

Brother Gurney became one of the veteran burden bearers in our early cause in New England and in Michigan. Many years ago he put on our record a note about Elder Bates’ first effort to promote the Sabbath truth in the New Bedford group. Joseph Bates had evidently brought back for New Hampshire a tract on the Sabbath–perhaps one of those that Rachel Preston had brought into Washington village from her former Seventh Day Baptist associates, or possibly Preble’s first tract had come to him. H. S. Gurney wrote about it in 1888:

“At this time we were still waiting for something, we hardly knew what. The third angel’s message was still shaded, and the Sabbath truth had not shone out. In the spring of 1845, Joseph Bates came into our meeting with a little tract showing that we were keeping the wrong day for the Sabbath. He said he had examined it, and found it to be the truth, and he was going to keep the seventh day according to the commandment. A few of us investigated the subject, and came to the same conclusion. We then realized as never before the force and bearing of the text in Revelation 14:12: ‘Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.’ The little company felt that another stone was laid in the foundation, and we were joyful in God, believing that He was leading us in our work.” (Review and Herald, Jan. 3, 1888) (Quoted in Heavenly Vissions, J. N. Loughborough, p. 108)

Tags: Babylon, Gospel, Image, Judgment, Mark, Three Angels