Questions on the Sealing Message

TIME OF THE PLAGUES

THE question is asked, “How much time is occupied by the seven last plagues?” The faith and teaching of the Seventh-day Adventists has ever been that it would be the space of one year. They based their faith on such texts as Revelation 14:19, 20, where this is likened to the treading of the wine press, comparing this with the wine press as set forth in Isaiah 61:2; 63:3, 4. It is there called “the day of vengeance” and the year of the redeemed. Taking the acknowledged rule, the day would be one year. Some persons take the position that the pouring out of the plagues cover a period of many years. This seems to be refuted by the fact that under the fifth plague, the people are still suffering from the sores of the first plague. Revelation 16:10, 11. QSM 44.1

During the time of these plagues, according to Revelation 15:6-8, there is no intercessor in the heavenly temple. The condition of the people of God in that time is thus set forth in The Great Controversy, 620: “In the time of trouble, if the people of God had unconfessed sins to appear before them while tortured with fear and anguish, they would be overwhelmed; despair would cut off their faith, and they would not have confidence to plead with God for deliverance. But while they have a deep sense of their unworthiness, they have no concealed wrongs to reveal. Their sins have gone beforehand to judgment.” It would hardly seem like the Lord’s merciful dealing with His people to subject them to such a state for a series of years. Sister White does connect this period of no intercessor with those texts which speak of it as day and year; and often, in her exhortations to us, she has spoken of the year that we should stand without an intercessor. QSM 44.2