Page 114 - Cults and Marginal Groups - Textbook w videos short

The adoption of the Three Angels’ Message was a crucial step for the little branch of Millerites that
would become the Seventh-day Adventists. Ever ready to see themselves in Daniel’s and John’s visions,
they read the judgment of Revelation 14 (angel one) and assumed it was the Investigative Judgment
that Hiram Edson had discovered. The tiny group began keeping the Jewish Sabbath. So, when they
read the warning to “worship Him that made heaven and earth,”, it was then interpreted to mean
Sabbath-keeping, for in keeping the Sabbath you honor the Creator who created in six days and rested
on the Sabbath.
The fall of Babylon (angel two) represented the corruption and idolatry of Catholicism. Angel three
brought the mark of the beast, which they claimed was Sunday-keeping. They then deciphered that
their group must be the saints who kept the commandments and faith of Jesus. The three angels point
to them as the final, chosen of God!

The Three Angels’ Messages Explained.

Angel One – the Everlasting SDA Gospel
The SDA church teaches that the “everlasting gospel” in verse 6 has been entrusted to them alone. The
distinct gospel was revealed to the little flock of disappointed Second Adventists as the “Investigative
Judgment” and “the Sanctuary Message.” Adventists claim the angel exclusively embodied their
movement because they were worshipping the true God while all others were not honoring or
worshipping God (they worshipped on Sunday). So, unless you are worshipping on the Sabbath, you are
not technically worshipping the Creator of the heavens and earth.

The Investigative Judgment and Sanctuary Message
According to SDA theology, beginning on October 22, 1844, Christ entered upon the "judgment phase"
of His ministry, whereby He blots out sin: [The SDA doctrine of the "Investigative Judgment" rests on
Ellen G. White's claimed revelation that Christ entered the heavenly Holy of Holies (the Heavenly
Sanctuary), not at His ascension, but in 1844, wherein He then began to investigate the records of
human works (TGC, pp. 362-373) (cf. Heb. 9).] "When Christ, by virtue of His own blood, removes the
sins of His people from the heavenly sanctuary at the close of His ministration, He will place them upon
Satan, who, in the execution of the judgment, must bear the final penalty" (TGC, p. 422).

Satan, thereby, becomes the scapegoat of Leviticus 16. This lack of clear distinction between the
forgiveness of sins and the blotting out of sins, makes it impossible for anyone to know, even in the hour
of his death, whether he is saved or not. (SDAs are not "allowed" to experience assurance of salvation,
because then there would be no pressure on them to keep the Old Testament law, as interpreted by
Ellen G. White, and especially no pressure to pay the tithe.) Moreover, the concept that the sins of all
men are to be laid on Satan, assigns to Satan an indispensable role in the blotting out of sin, thus
nullifying the all-sufficiency of the finished work of Christ. [When Jesus said on the cross, "It is finished,"
i.e. completed, paid in full, it cannot be that there is yet another salvation event more than 1,800 years
later, just as essential to salvation as Christ's death on the cross, in which one must believe in order to
be saved. This is clearly "another gospel" (Gal. 1:6–9).]

The "Investigative Judgment" and the "Scapegoat Theory of the Atonement" are, by themselves, so non-
Biblical as to contradict Galatians 1:8-9. It is "another gospel," about which the Apostle Paul wrote, "let
such be anathema" (i.e., cursed/condemned). Yet according to Ellen White, one must believe this
doctrine to be saved:

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