4 Elements Contained in the First Angels Message.
“…worship Him who made the heaven and the earth, and sea and springs of waters.” Revelation.14:7.
Of the 8 times the word worship occurs in Revelations 13 and 14, this is the only time it refers to God. The fascinating story of Revelation is that God created a universe in which it is possible for beings He created to deny that He created it. In other words, the fact that people are invited to worship the Creator indicates that God does not force anyone to acknowledge His role in creation. God is both powerful and patient. Nature and the universe can teach us of His power (Rom1:18-20), but He is infinitely patient with the intellectual limitations of His creatures.
Does it make sense in today’s world to worship the One who made heaven, earth, sea, and the fountains of waters? The estimated chance that our universe could arise without a Designer is one in 10/229.
That’s one chance in 10 followed by 229 zeros, a number too large for me to imagine! These numbers suggest that it is virtually impossible that the universe as we know it could have arisen apart from divine design.
I cannot prove to you beyond doubt that God exists or that God’s claims on our lives are what make life meaningful. But do the heavens declare the glory of God? I think so. The universe is so full of such wonderful things that I can hardly think otherwise. (see my series on The Evidence). God does not compel anyone’s worship. In the last days, He invites all, one last time, to acknowledge that we live and move and have our being because of Him.
The last phrase of Rev14:7 contains language from the fourth commandment. “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” (Ex.20:11). Careful research indicates an intentional allusion in Revelation14:7 to the fourth commandment of the Decalogue. In the last days of earth’s history, when everything is on the line, God calls people to give attention to the Sabbath command. Does this make any sense? Isn’t that kind of arbitrary on God’s part? Or did God know that evolutionary thought would be prevailing at this time?
Have we not seen in Revelation the days of creation running backwards in the 7 trumpets (and we will see this again in the 7 last plagues.) The devil has been attacking God’s authority, and this is evident in his attack on creation. We will soon see that God will work to undo satan’s work as God brings creation back to it’s original state in an act of recreation. This begins with a message that includes a call to worship the creator as embodied in the fourth commandment.
It is evident that the call to worship God as the creator (as part of the last warning message to the world) is a call to acknowledge that very truth as embodied in the fourth commandment. – the Sabbath.
If the Sabbath is part of the everlasting gospel of this last message, then we need to also understand that it is the only commandment that actually teaches the gospel of justification by faith in Christ. Let me explain. At creation when the Godhead finished their work Yahweh rested and blessed the Sabbath day. When Jesus finished our work of recreation (2 Cor 5:17), He said, like God at creation “it is finished” and then He rested in the Tomb on the Sabbath. It is finished means our salvation is complete, there is nothing more we can add to it to make it more complete. We rest in a finished work. As Paul outlines in Hebrews 4:1-12 the Sabbath for a New Testament Christian memorializes this rest we have in a finished work. Thus, the two-fold look. We look back to the day that God “blessed, sanctified and made holy.” The day that was memorialized in the fourth commandment of Exodus 20:8-11. But secondly, we look back to the Sabbath that Jesus kept in the tomb that memorializes the rest we have in a finished work of salvation. Adam began His work on the first day of the new week, as do we. We don’t work for our salvation, but our work does begin from a work already completed. We don’t work to be saved, but we work because we have been.