The Book of Daniel - Number One-Hundred and Two

The triple application of Elijah addresses the message, the messenger and the movement during the time period of God’s executive judgment, which begins at the Sunday law in the United States and continues until the close of probation. The executive judgment escalates from a period where God’s judgment is mixed with mercy unto the time when His judgments are poured out without mercy in the seven last plagues.

The triple application of the messenger who prepares the way for the Messenger of the Covenant addresses the message, the messenger and the movement during the closing period of God’s investigative judgment, that identifies the period of the sealing of the one hundred and forty-four thousand. That period ends at the soon-coming Sunday law in the United States, which is when God’s executive judgments begin.

John the Baptist prepared the way for Christ, the Messenger of the Covenant to confirm the covenant in fulfillment of Daniel chapter nine, verse twenty-seven. In so doing he also prepared the way for Christ to suddenly come to His temple and purify the sons of Levi, which He did at the beginning and ending of His ministry of three and a half years. The cleansing of the literal temple was the symbol of His work of cleansing the soul temple of those represented as the sons of Levi.

His literal work of cleansing the temple was a fulfillment of prophecy, and when He accomplished the work in John chapter two, verses thirteen through twenty-two, the Holy Spirit led the disciples to remember a passage from the Old Testament that was part of His work of purifying and purging the disciples in fulfillment of Malachi three.

In the passage in John, Christ identified that when His body temple was destroyed, He would raise it up in three days. The interaction with the quibbling Jews added that the remodeling of the literal temple that had been carried out by Herod, and which had finished that very year, had taken forty-six years. Jesus was purifying His disciples through an example of one of the rules associated with the prophetic word that Jesus had enshrined within His Word, through the work of angels, the Holy Spirit and the prophets.

He provided the prophetic example that the literal represents the spiritual. He put in place the prophetic key of the number “forty-six,” as a symbol of the temple. “Forty-six” had been the amount of days Moses was on the mount receiving the instructions for the temple. “Forty-six,” is the number of chromosomes that make up the human temple. “Forty-six” is the number of years (1798 to 1844) that were accomplished in restoring the spiritual temple which had been trampled down by paganism and then papalism.

The two temple cleansings include the symbolism that three days equals forty-six years. It includes the principle that the literal represents the spiritual. It represented both a fulfillment and a prediction of prophecy. The two cleansings represent a truth that is misunderstood by one class, and revealed unto another class.

The two cleansings identify a period of time when God’s church has been corrupted to the point where it is “an adulterous generation of vipers,” who are seeking for a sign, when the sign is being directly explained to them, for the only sign to be given is the sign of the destruction of the temple that is raised up in three days.

All these prophetic dynamics are represented in all three fulfillments of the Messenger of the Covenant suddenly coming to His temple, as He did in John chapter two.

The Messenger of the Covenant was to purify and also purge the sons of Levi as “silver” which represents God’s Word, and “gold,” which represents faith. The Messenger of the Covenant would purify His disciples by increasing their “faith” in His prophetic “word”. That prophetic word was designed to purify, but also to purge. His prophetic Word always represents a test, and it is through His prophetic Word that the sons of Levi’s are purged in the period when He suddenly comes to His temple.

Those “souls that were tested” in “the synagogue at Capernaum,” refused to understand that when Christ told them they must eat His flesh and drink His blood, that He was employing His literal body to convey a spiritual truth. It was the identical prophetic representation He made of the temple in John chapter two. When the principle that the literal precedes and represents the spiritual was recognized as “an hard saying” which they were unwilling to “hear,” they turned and walked with Him never again. That took place in John chapter six, verse sixty-six (666), which represents the soon-coming Sunday law, which was typified by October 22, 1844, which in turn was typified by the cross of Calvary.

In John chapter two, the Holy Spirit had led the minds of the disciples to “remember” the prophecy describing God’s zeal, and the word “zealous” is the same word as “jealous” in both the Hebrew and Greek.

God’s zeal, which is His jealousy, represents the element of God’s character as a jealous God, whose jealousy is manifested in the third and fourth generation upon those that hate Him. In John chapter two, the Holy Spirit was putting in place that the purification accomplished by the Messenger of the Covenant occurs in the fourth and final generation, though there are always some of the third generation still standing when the cup of the final generation is filled. That generation is an adulterous generation of vipers.

Moses represented the fourth generation, and it was then that Moses, during forty-six days, received instruction on erecting the temple. In those days He received the law, which in the second commandment identifies that God’s jealousy is manifested in the third and fourth generations.

In the final generation of ancient Israel, the temple of the Christian church, which Peter called a “spiritual house,” was erected. During that history God manifested His jealousy twice when in His zeal He cleansed the temple. In 1844 God had raised up the spiritual temple of the Millerites, and once again He had passed by the former chosen people. In that history the Messenger of the Covenant came suddenly on October 22, 1844.

His appearance had been prepared for through the ministry of William Miller. As the Protestants and Millerites approached October 22, 1844, two classes were tested. The Protestant’s test arrived at the time of the end at the arrival of the first angel in 1798. After the message that was to both “purify and purge” the sons of Levi was formalized in 1831, the testing of the Protestants began when the message of the first angel was empowered on August 11, 1840. On April 19, 1844, the Protestants failed the test, and became the daughters of Babylon.

The second angel then arrived and the Millerites faith was then tested, and a purification and purging was accomplished. When the message of the second angel was empowered at the Exeter camp meeting on August twelfth through the seventeenth, the testing of the Millerites’ separation of the wise and foolish Millerites was accomplished.

The distinction between the wise and foolish was the oil, which was the prophetic message of the Midnight Cry. When the third angel arrived on October 22, 1844, the temple had been erected (in forty-six years). At that point the Messenger of the Covenant came suddenly to His temple.

It was then that the Messenger of the Covenant began His work of purifying and purging the Millerite disciples, identified in Malachi chapter three, as the sons of Levi.

When the first angels’ message was empowered on August 11, 1840, multitudes joined the Millerite movement. Then on April 19, 1844, a large class left the movement. On October 22, 1844, the traditional view is that there were about fifty souls that entered by faith into the Most Holy Place. Assuming the number is roughly fifty souls that initially followed the light of the third angel, what does it mean when we are informed “many” who had accepted the first and second angel’s messages, “refused the third, the last testing message”?

The Messenger of the Covenant suddenly came to His temple and opened the light of the sanctuary in heaven and the third angel’s message to the fifty that followed on into the experience of the third angel, but they were initially scattered. Their disappointment then was greater than the first disappointment, though we are informed by Sister White their disappointment was not as great as the disciples after the cross.

In both parallel histories, Christ opened His prophetic Word to the disappointed ones, and by 1850, Sister White states that she was shown that the Lord was then stretching forth His hand again to gather His people.

At the cross the disciples had been scattered, and in that history, three days later He began to gather His scattered disciples. It was roughly three years after the end of 1844, that Christ began to gather His scattered flock. In that history He led His people to begin the publishing work and to publish the second of Habakkuk’s two tables, which was manufactured at the end of 1850, and then began to be offered for sale in the Review and Herald, in January of 1851.

The 1843 chart had been the physical representation of the message that cleansed the temple that was erected in the history of the first and second angels’ messages. With the arrival of the third angel, God designed to finish His work and take His people home, but they rebelled as did ancient Israel, and both ancient and modern Israel were then assigned to wander in the wilderness. Had those Adventists who had initially accepted the light of the third angel followed on by faith, bearing the physical representation of their message which was the 1850 chart they could have ushered in the second coming of Jesus and gone home. But they were destined to repeat the history of Joshua and Caleb, and the ten unfaithful spies.

John the Baptist and William Miller prepared the way for Christ to suddenly come and purify a people who would take the message of salvation under the power of the Holy Spirit to the entire world. The disciples of Christ accomplished their assignment, but the beginning of Adventism did not. By 1856 they had fallen into the condition of Laodicea, refused the advanced light of the “seven times,” and in 1863 began the process of escalating rebellion all the way through to the soon-coming Sunday law. The rebellion of 1863 was typified by the rebellion of the ten spies. At the end of the forty years of wilderness wandering ancient Israel was brought back to the same test, thus providing example of modern Israel being brought back to the beginning test.

The rebellion of the ten spies at Kadesh, was repeated at Kadesh forty years later. The rebellion of the ten spies that brought about the forty years of wilderness wandering, that represents the rebellion of 1863, when modern Israel brought about their own wandering in the wilderness of Laodicea. At the end of the forty years ancient Israel was brought again to Kadesh, thus identifying that the test which purged Millerite Adventism at the rebellion of 1863, is to be repeated when the Messenger of the Covenant again suddenly comes to His temple again.

We will continue this study in the next article.