[Bates’ Pamphlet #2] Second Advent Way Marks and High Heaps

MYSTERY OR SECRET OF GOD FINISHED

The text emphatically declares that when this seventh trumpet begins to sound the mystery or secret of God should be finished as he hath declared to his servants, the prophets. Revelation 10:7. Here is where all the trouble lies. If the mystery of God is finished, then there is no more mediation for the world, and my near and dear friends will be lost. And I am quite uncertain whether I am in a saved state myself. And says the preacher, I must stop preaching and give up my talent and my influence with the world. Well, this is exactly what you was taught and fully believed would be when the 12th Oct. 1844 should come. And because the Lord did not come in ten days afterwards you changed your minds, and would not admit the fulfilment of this prophecy. I admit that the considerations are painful in the extreme. But suppose they were ten times more so, would or could it alter the mind and purpose of God in any way relative to the fulfilment of prophecy? You answer no. As our Lord did not come on the 22nd Oct., we soon began to see clearly that God’s people were now in the furnace being tried (Leviticus 23.32) and that here was the very place for its commencement. We were therefore still right. Then of course we had no right to give up the past. I ask where and how we got the light of a Cry at Midnight. Did we not say we saw clearly that it was through a system of figures or types pointing to Christ and his kingdom? BP2 79.3

The Types. - Malachi in citing our minds to the last days, tells us to remember the law of Moses. Now he of course knew that we should have nothing to do with sacrifice and oblation, a part of Moses’ law, for that would be nailed to the cross; there was nothing else he could point us to in Moses’ law but the law of types. Now when our Lord died on the cross some 430 years after this, he began the fulfilment of these types in this very law, and as our King and High Priest he is still fulfilling them, and will be until he comes the second time. Not one particle can fail. Just see how perfectly to the very hour of the day our Savior fulfilled the type of the passover, about 1500 years from its commencement, at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, on the 14th day of the first month. Surely not one jot of the law failed here. Again, 50 days after this, the anniversary of the giving of the law by God to Moses at Sinai, called the feast of weeks, was fulfilled by the Holy Ghost descending like a rushing mighty wind, and as cloven tongues of fire. Here too was antitype answering to type. Here then are two feasts out of three entirely and forever fulfilled in this state. God said, “Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year.” Exodus 23:14. The first at the Passover, second 50 days after or the Pentecost, third and last seventh month at the ingathering of the harvest. Now here were types to be fulfilled as clearly as those which had already been, and my solemn conviction is that the feast of Tabernacles at the ingathering of the harvest is to be fulfilled here by the ingathering of the whole Israel of God. But to the subject. BP2 80.1

On the first of the 7th month, as we learn from Leviticus 23:24, was to be the memorial of the blowing of trumpets. This is the first type to be fulfilled in this last feast, and was one of the great leading features in the pathway A Cry at Midnight. That this was repeated every seventh month, see Psalm 81:3, “Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on our solemn feast day.” This was a statute for Israel. How often? Once every year preceding the ingathering or harvest. Where shall we find the antitype? At the sounding of the seventh angel. Why? Because the sixth had ceased to sound in August, 1840, just where the flying messengers began to move. That the sounding of the seventh messenger fulfils this type is plain. Says the reader, as you have shown that the seventh trump is entirely separate from the “trump of God when the Lord himself descends,” why may not the memorial of the sounding of trumpet represent the trump of God? Answer - the seventh trumpet is not the last, but the first in this feast. The next and last to this did not sound until ten days after. See Leviticus 25:9. This is the last one which will sound the release and ingathering of all the true Israel of God and the true type of the triumph of God, for it is the Jubilee. Then as in Revelation 10:7, when the seventh messenger begins to deliver his message, i.e. sounds, then the mystery of God should be finished as delivered to his servants the prophets. Now all this was only a statement of what should take place when this messenger began his work. Here it is: BP2 81.1

“And the seventh angel sounded, and there were great voices in heaven saying, the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, etc. etc. 11:15. Now as we have examined all history for a certain series of events among men to fulfil 591 years and 15 days of the sounding of the fifth and sixth, or two first wo trumpets, and did find events so clearly developed (though we had to travel back eighteen generations,) that all our opponents were silenced (see J. Litch’s Prophetic Expositions, vol.2.) Has it become impossible for the present generation to see the fulfilment of prophecy where the light was shining with at least 100-fold more splendor. Away with such treacherous unbelief, and take things as they were in the history. BP2 81.2

THE HISTORY. - In that memorable year when the cry, “Behold the Bridegroom cometh,” was moving with railroad speed, the mighty messenger with a voice of thunder, his hands upraised to heaven, his feet upon the land and sea, declaring by him that liveth forever, there should be no longer delay. The message was literally declared on land and sea, and was so clear that all the virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. Time was seen clearly then. How? Where? Why, the first point was to the sounding of the seventh trumpet, on the 12th of Oct. 1844. With what intense interest we approached it. Where, I ask, is the advent believer who was then in Boston, Providence, New Bedford, Fairhaven, Nantucket, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc. etc., that did not hear the sounding of the “seventh angel,” viz: “The mystery of God is finished,” “The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord,” and also remember distinctly (as it was afterwards stated) the simultaneous movement among them even in the first 48 hours. What a raging among the wicked, and breaking up of the advent meetings! But more striking still was the development of character among the “virgins.” During the ten days to the 22nd of October, the sounding of the seventh message caused simultaneous dispersion among the virgins. Disgust, dismay, disappointment, grief, contempt, scorn, and evil surmisings, on the one hand, while others were boldly declaring that the message was just what we believed, although we were surprised at the effect it was producing. BP2 82.1

Here was the point and peculiar time (don’t forget it,) where the division of the virgins took place. They began to go away for oil, or to look for it from a different source. BP2 82.2

Here is another strong proof of the fulfilment of the parable of the 10 virgins. Sounding of trumpets denotes generally the cause of some mighty movement in gathering and dispersion. When the multitude shut up in Jericho were given up to death, the sounding of the trumpets the seventh time caused the walls to fall and leave them defenseless. When Gideon’s peculiarly reduced little army sounded the trumpet, “the host ran, and cried, and fled.” Confusion, dismay, and death followed in the track. BP2 82.3

“Shall a trumpet be blown in the city and the people not be afraid? Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.” Amos. Then surely the sounding of the seventh trumpet has been revealed, and who is there that is not fast asleep that needs to be told of the divisions and sub-divisions of the once united band that arose and trimmed their lamps for the coming of the Bridegroom, and began immediately to dissolve this union at “the sounding of the seventh angel” on the 12th day of October, 1844. But it is said there were men that did this work. Certainly - so they were men that sounded the first six trumpets. See the effect produced by the trumpet of Joab, 2 Samuel 18:16, and 20:22. BP2 83.1

I am aware that there are thousands of living witnesses to this stupendous and mighty work that have no faith in this part of it, while many say it was false and of the devil! My reply to all such is, that if men and women making their sacrifices and such pretensions to holiness of heart, anxiously waiting in expectation of their coming Savior within ten days, will yield up what then was certainly the most pious effort of their lives, and give all this experience to mesmerism and the devil, they are welcome. If such is our dependence for the kingdom of heaven, farewell all other efforts to obtain it. I would rather ten thousand times believe that their heavy burden was fear and hypocrisy. I praise God that this awful delusion was not universal. Many believed in that day, and I trust they do still. For myself I can truly say it was the most triumphant and soul-stirring point in all my christian experience. Draw back because we were disappointed in our expectations? No; the watchword is onward to victory. BP2 83.2