THREE ANGELS MESSAGE – ESSENCE OF ADVENTISM

This month I had a privilege to study with you the meaning of Revelation 14:6-12 which inspired our pioneers and motivated them to organize the movement of which we are all part today – the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
We’ve looked together at the call of the 1st Angel to worship God Creator on His terms, and the invitation for complete physical, emotional and spiritual restoration through right worship, in the midst of age-long worship war. We looked at the 2nd Angel’s call of warning that the Babylon of human effort is fallen, and God’s people should stay separate, live countercultural, and not participate in world-hysteria of materialism, and downward spiraling moral decay. I’ve invited you to examine ourselves, instead of judging other Protestant churches, to look inside and make sure our motivations are from the Holy Spirit.
Today I will share the last message. I invited you for a few years already to read the Bible with the “Trinitarian lens.” Just as the Three Angel’s Message begins with the Trinitarian perspective: Fear and Reverence of God the Father, giving Glory in Christ, who was the glory of the Father, and who invited us to do everything in our physical living to the Glory of God, and worshipping God in Spirit, so does the Message end with Trinitarian identification of God’s people.
Revelation 14:12, chosen as the motto of our movement in the late 1840s presents the Trinitarian living:  patience of the saints – the central part of a set of the Fruit of the Spirit, (Galatians 5:22-23);  keep Commandments of God, emphasizing the old Testament Decalogue, Father’s Will;  and having the faith in/of Jesus.
I knew the last two – we always took extra pride in our identity as people who accept both, the Old Testament, Torah & the New Testament, Gospel, for we are not “evangelical” only, but wholly Biblical. We build our faith on Moses, the Prophets as the foundation for the Messiah and Apostles, understanding that the New Covenant does not reject the Old, but brings it deeper, from the outside to the inside, from tablets of stone, to being written on our hearts. My discovery was the role of the Holy Spirit in our identity. This whole quarter, all around the world, Adventist churches are especially blessed studying the Fruit of the Spirit, learning to thirst for the Spirit to work in us. I invite you to surrender yourself to the Holy Spirit, so His fruits would be evident.