Part 2: The Third Angel's Message
The Third Angel's Message is an old Adventist teaching based on a misunderstanding of Revelation 14. It has played an important role in shaping both Seventh-day Adventist and Church of God (Seventh Day) concepts of their mission. The passage in question reads:
And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth.... And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication. And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive [his] mark in his forehead, or in his hand, The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God. (Revelation 14:6-10)
After the Great Disappointment of 1844-45, the Adventist movement gave birth to the doctrine of the Third Angel's Message. It brought solace to Sabbatarian Adventists attempting to cope with their humiliation. The Third Angel of Revelation was delivering its message, they believed, and that because of this, faithful Adventists had become Sabbathkeepers. When the Sabbatarian Adventist movement split into various camps, the doctrine of the Third Angel's Message followed its divisions.41
In the 1920s the Church of God (Seventh Day) preached the Third Angel's Message with vigor. Recent events had convinced them that the Great Tribulation was about to come. The Church of God (Seventh Day) believed these angels' messages referred to their work. They explained Revelation 14 in this manner:
There is no question; but, after a thorough consideration is given all texts concerned, that the First Angel's Message embraces the proclamation of the everlasting gospel in the apostolic age, which continues to the end. The Second Angel's Message includes the great Protestant reformation which illuminated the earth with light and was a direct cry against the corruption of Babylon, while the Third Angel's Message sounds forth the final warning to the world, taking with it all accompanying light as yet unrevealed, preparing a people who will worship God "in spirit and in truth."...
The Church of God is the body of people called to carry forth this wonderful work. (A.N. Dugger, The Bible Home Instructor, Jerusalem, Israel: Mt. Zion Press, 1982 reprint of an earlier Church of God publication, 338, 335)
The Church of God (Seventh Day) taught that the commandments were associated with that final warning — especially the Sabbath.
Again the Third Angel's Message has for its creed "The commandments of God and the testimonies of Jesus".... It is the remnant church that holds to the commandments of God and the testimonies of Jesus.... The commandments of God and the testimonies of Jesus and no other testimonies form the creed of the last message....
Everyone knows that the Catholic church... observes Sunday today.... It was one of the doctrines, with many others, that they forced upon the world under penalty of death, and Sunday stands out prominently in this age as a sign to the world of their past greatness. It is a memorial of the dark ages when they ruled the world, and by taking away the Sabbath of God, which was declared to be His memorial forever, and putting in its place Sunday, they have exalted themselves above God, usurping a place not divinely given, and as the Third Angel's Message advances the matter is being squarely put before the people of the whole world, Which will they obey, the pope of Rome or the God of heaven? (The Third Angel's Message, Stanberry, Missouri: Church of God Publishing House, 1925, 10-11, 20. See also Nickels, 199, 216)
Herbert Armstrong and the Third Angel's Message
In 1928, Herbert Armstrong also believed in the Third Angel's Message. He wrote:
These men [the original apostles], carrying the FIRST Angel's Message, had the faith to perform miracles of healing. These miracles... greatly aided in winning lost souls to Christ....
Then, glance for a moment, at the men whom God raised up to carry the Second Angel's Message out to the world. Luther, Calvin, Wesley. Men who were filled with this wonderful power. Men who were heard around the world! Men who shook the world with their message and won millions to the side of Protestantism, out of the darkness and spiritual chaos of Roman Catholicism.
Now let us look frankly to the results being achieved by those who claim to be carrying the Third and last Angel's Message. The prophecy says this Third Angel's Message shall go forth "with a LOUD shout."...
The average man and woman today is not aware of the fact the Message has been going forth.... Most folks, it is true, are passively aware that there has been some agitation over the Saturday-Sunday question. But the question has not gotten actively into their consciousness....
The Third Message is no more unpopular than were the First and the Second. And we are blessed with facilities for spreading the message which never were so much as dreamed of in the days of the First and Second Messages. (Herbert W. Armstrong, "Have We Tarried for the Power to Carry the Third Angel's Message?," The Bible Advocate, 16 October 1928, 1)
Later Mr. Armstrong would come to renounce the doctrine of the Third Angel's Message, but in 1928 he united it with Anglo-Israelism. He took Anglo-Israelism to its logical conclusion. Previous Anglo-Israelites emphasized God's blessings to Israel. Nobody said anything about the curses. Herbert Armstrong noticed the curses. He realized that to be consistent, an Anglo-Israelite needed to preach them as well. In Ezekiel, God foretold Israel's defeat and enslavement.
Herbert Armstrong failed to see that Ezekiel was written to Israel in anticipation of Jerusalem's fall in 587 b.c. Beginning from an Anglo-Israelite world view, he saw Ezekiel's references to the House of Israel not as evidence of an Israelite presence in Judah, but as proof that Ezekiel was written to the lost tribes. Ezekiel was, he believed, not for the Jews but for Israel.
Even though Ezekiel clearly spoke of the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of its temple, Herbert Armstrong concluded that Ezekiel's message actually dealt with end-time events. He insisted on an Anglo-Israelite interpretation. From this faulty premise he reasoned that God intended Ezekiel's book to be a warning to end-time Israel. Since Mr. Armstrong believed that the Anglo-Saxons were the remnant of the House of Israel, he believed the message of Ezekiel was a warning for the United States and British Commonwealth.
Herbert Armstrong noticed something else as well. He noticed what he thought were the reasons for the curses. Listed prominently among those reasons was Sabbath-breaking (Ezekiel 20 and 22). It was then a simple step for Mr. Armstrong to merge Anglo-Israelism with the Sabbatarianism of the Third Angel's Message.
Mr. Armstrong's manuscript was over 260 pages long, and most of it has survived.42 He called it What Is the Third Angel's Message? By February 1929 Dugger had received its first few chapters.
When Herbert Armstrong mailed his manuscript to Dugger, Burt Marrs, not Dugger, was the president of the General Conference. It would seem that if Herbert Armstrong were simply testing the church, he would have mailed his manuscript to Marrs. But this was more than a test. Mr. Armstrong was looking for a publisher, and Dugger was responsible for the church's press.
By the time he began mailing his Third Angel's manuscript to Dugger, Herbert Armstrong had become convinced that God had given him a special calling. In a letter to G.A. Hobbs written in February 1929, he claimed, "I was made to see clearly that I have been given a commission to get this warning message out with the loud shout to the world" (Armstrong to Brother Hobbs, 6 February 1929, HWAP, #850, emphasis mine).
How was Herbert Armstrong "made to see" that his God-given commission was to shout the Third Angel's Message to the world? The answer is a "mysterious woman." By early 1929 Herbert Armstrong became totally absorbed in his studies. He devoted most of his time to writing What Is the Third Angel's Message? Mr. Armstrong has described this time as one of economic "desperation."
We had reached another crisis of hunger and desperate need. Again I prayed earnestly for God to either send us some money or provide a way for me to earn it.43
In a crisis of desperate need, he must have asked himself if he should be spending so much time writing. Yet in his letter to Hobbs, he confesses, "I am writing for Bro. Dugger about the `Third Angel's Message'.... I have spent all the time I had for writing on that."44 But writing and studying did not put food on the table. In his desperation he prayed.
An hour or two later, a strange woman knocked on our front door. Mrs. Armstrong opened the door. There was something mysterious about the woman's appearance. Who was she? She did not introduce herself. She gave no inkling of her identity.
"If your husband isn't too proud to do it," she said in a low, quiet voice, "there are two truckloads of wood he can throw in at this address."... The mysterious woman walked quickly away and disappeared.... We were totally perplexed as to the identity of this strange woman. How did she know we were in such desperate need? Who was she? We never knew....
No matter who this mysterious woman was, I knew God sent her! And I realized instantly that God was answering my prayer his way, and not mine. I knew he was giving me a test to see whether I could accept a humiliating job. (The Autobiography of Herbert W. Armstrong, 1973 edition, 330-31)
In writing to Hobbs about this incident, Herbert Armstrong commented:
We simply reached the end of the rope about a week ago, and I decided the time had come to fast and pray until I received a definite answer from the Lord. I received it. Will explain how when I see you, but the answer was to go ahead with this work as hard as I can and trust the Lord to take care of us. All our immediate needs have been taken care of. In fact, we were out of wood, and it came to our front door from a most unexpected source even while I was yet praying for it. I was made to see clearly that I have been given a commission to get this warning message out with the loud shout to the world. The true, full message never has been carried at all, much less with the shout. I don't see how I am to do it. The Lord will open the way, and I must simply trust him and look to him for guidance. The means will be provided and the way opened, I am sure. (Armstrong to Brother Hobbs, 6 February 1929, HWAP, #850)
As one can see from his letter, Mr. Armstrong believed that the manner in which God provided for his family proved that he was doing God's will in spending his time writing The Third Angel's Message, even if his family had been going hungry. He saw the "mysterious woman" as a sign that God had commissioned him, above all other humans on earth, to proclaim that message worldwide. He further believed that no one, not even the original apostles, had been so commissioned. "It never has been carried at all."45
There was no vision. There was no dream. There was no voice. There was only the woman at the door with an offer for him to stack wood, which he concluded was an answer to prayer. That offer to stack wood kept the Armstrongs from starving and enabled him to continue to write. This was all it took to convince him that he had a unique calling — a God-ordained commission to shout the Third Angel's Message to the world.
This incident, above all others, defines the remaining 57 years of Herbert Armstrong's life. Uncertain how he would fulfill such a commission, he must have wondered if the Church of God (Seventh Day) would provide the means. Inadvertently, Dugger encouraged Herbert Armstrong in these opinions. After receiving the first few chapters of Armstrong's book he wrote,
I presume you think I am very neglectful of duty in not answering your letter before this, but it was a long while before your manuscript reached me on the Third Angel's Message....
I feel that we are entering into a new era for the message and that it is going to take on new life. In fact the time for the message is now here which I have long contended it would be when the events of the last few weeks came to pass. (Dugger to Armstrong, 26 February 1929, HWAP, #830. A photograph of this letter appears in Vol. 1 of the 1986 ed. of the Autobiography)
Excited, Mr. Armstrong shared his self-image with others. To Lt. Col. Mackendrick, (author of The Destiny of Britain and America), he wrote:
I am writing you for two reasons: I am going to point out what I believe to be a slight error in your argument.... and I feel that a great message based on this Israel truth has been revealed to me which must be powerfully broadcasted to the whole world without delay. (Armstrong to Mackendrick, 4 March 1929, HWAP, #848)
In this letter, Mr. Armstrong stated plainly that his understanding of Anglo-Israelism came not simply as a result of study, but of revelation. He felt this revelation "must be powerfully broadcasted [sic] to the whole world without delay." If this was revelation, then who could argue with it?
By 1929 the word broadcast had come to refer to radio. Therefore, two years before his ordination, Mr. Armstrong had already envisioned a worldwide radio ministry whose primary purpose was not to preach the gospel of salvation (the so-called First Angel's Message) but an Anglo-Israelite message that he called the Third Angel's Message. Years later, as his ministry expanded, it is not difficult to see how he viewed its success as God's confirmation of his views.
A few weeks after writing Mackendrick, Herbert Armstrong informed Dugger that he was sending him 10 more chapters of What Is the Third Angel's Message? He promised that four more would soon follow. Eventually, there were to be 20 chapters.46 Subsequent letters show he planned to write even more. By July 1929 Dugger had finished reading most of Armstrong's chapters. It was then that he wrote, "You surely are right."47
What separates this doctrine from others that Herbert Armstrong investigated is its extrabiblical nature. The Sabbath, baptism and creation are all obviously biblical subjects. But The United States and Britain are not biblical words. Anglo-Israelism, though claimed to be biblical, is actually extrabiblical.
In studying Anglo-Israelism, Mr. Armstrong's methodology differed from that which he had earlier applied to the subject of baptism. With baptism, he investigated many different opinions before reaching a decision. Yet where has he commented on how he studied Anglo-Israelism in the same manner? He said so little on how he came to this conviction that some have thought the doctrine originated with him. Because he often said that God revealed this truth to him, it is not difficult to see how someone might reach this conclusion. Placing this doctrine in the realm of divine revelation also had the additional effect of making it more difficult for many of his followers to question it.
In arriving at his prophetic doctrines, Mr. Armstrong seems to have assumed an overall literalist hermeneutic, influenced by dispensationalist and Adventist perspectives. He never questioned whether these perspectives were valid, or if valid, whether they were valid in every case.48
As time went on, Mr. Armstrong eagerly waited for Dugger's response. Would Dugger and the church acknowledge the truth — acknowledge not only Anglo-Israelism, but that Herbert Armstrong was the one to whom God had revealed the truth? Would they recognize his commission to proclaim the Third Angel's Message? Would they pass the test that Herbert Armstrong felt they had to pass?
As we've shown, Dugger had heard of and even promoted Anglo-Israelism before he ever heard of Herbert Armstrong. Yet Dugger had never heard Anglo-Israelism associated with the Third Angel's Message. Such a presentation must have been enticing. No wonder he responded, "You surely are right." Yet in the end Dugger decided that he would not include Anglo-Israelism in the church's publications. Still, he encouraged Mr. Armstrong with the words,
There is a purpose in your having gone into this matter so deeply right at this time which it is not difficult for me to fully see through, and you will hear more from these truths and the light herein revealed later. (Dugger to Armstrong, 28 July 1929. Also see note .)
Dugger knew that trouble was brewing in the church. He may have hoped for a more convenient time to spread Mr. Armstrong's views. Yet Herbert Armstrong concluded that Dugger would preach only those truths he found convenient.
Undeterred, Mr. Armstrong continued to write. By early 1930 he began circulating the text of his book among those expressing an interest.49
41 P. Gerhard Damsteegt, Foundations of the Seventh-day Adventist Message and Mission (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1977), 135-46.
42
The surviving manuscript shows evidence that it has been edited. Pages 1-19[a] have been typed on a newer typewriter than the rest of the manuscript. The book title for these pages is The Real Truth About Israel. Based on a comparison of the manuscript with other writings of Mr. Armstrong from the late 1920s, it is my judgment that the surviving first 19 pages represent a rewriting of the original text. Pages 19[b] onward have been typed on a typewriter of much poorer quality. The themes of these pages are those with which Mr. Armstrong concerned himself in the late '20s. The title of the book for this older section is What Is the Third Angel's Message? The entire manuscript, as it now exists in its rewritten form, is document 8850 of the Herbert W. Armstrong Papers [HWAP] collection of the Worldwide Church of God. Correspondence that shed light on the development of the manuscript include documents 828, 829, 849, 850, 884, 931, 2559. Many additional letters of Herbert Armstrong's from 1929 deal with Anglo-Israelism and its relationship to the Third Angel's message. The surviving manuscript shows evidence that it has been edited. Pages 1-19[a] have been typed on a newer typewriter than the rest of the manuscript. The book title for these pages is The Real Truth About Israel. Based on a comparison of the manuscript with other writings of Mr. Armstrong from the late 1920s, it is my judgment that the surviving first 19 pages represent a rewriting of the original text. Pages 19[b] onward have been typed on a typewriter of much poorer quality. The themes of these pages are those with which Mr. Armstrong concerned himself in the late '20s. The title of the book for this older section is What Is the Third Angel's Message? The entire manuscript, as it now exists in its rewritten form, is document 8850 of the Herbert W. Armstrong Papers [HWAP] collection of the Worldwide Church of God. Correspondence that shed light on the development of the manuscript include documents 828, 829, 849, 850, 884, 931, 2559. Many additional letters of Herbert Armstrong's from 1929 deal with Anglo-Israelism and its relationship to the Third Angel's message.43
43 The Autobiography of Herbert W. Armstrong (Pasadena, California: Ambassador College, 1973 ed.), 330.44
44 Does he mean "I have spent all my available time writing" or "What time I had available, I have used for writing"? Either understanding is grammatically possible. But note the context of his comments.45
45 Within the Worldwide Church of God, some came to believe that this woman must have been an angel, yet Herbert Armstrong never made such a claim. A careful reading of the context shows her to have been mysterious only because they did not know who she was or how she came to know their need. The wood he stacked was at the "mysterious" woman's house, and it was she who paid Mr. Armstrong. Despite this, the Armstrongs never learned her name.46
46 Armstrong to Dugger, 19 April 1929, HWAP, #842.47
47 Dugger to Armstrong, 28 July 1929. For additional bibliographic information see note .48
48 That Herbert Armstrong was influenced by a dispensationalist hermeneutic is evident from his approach to Daniel and Revelation, as well as his respect for the Scofield Reference Bible, the dispensationalist commentary. Using classic dispensationalist language, he wrote in What Is the Third Angel's Message, page 147, "this present age, or dispensation" is called "the Church, or Gospel Dispensation." His Adventist influences have already been addressed.49
49 Armstrong to Mr. and Mrs. Gross, 18 January 1930, HWAP, #806. Armstrong to Ballenger, 9 August 1930, HWAP, #931. The Grosses apparently were the Pentecostal family through whom he learned to trust God for healing.
by Ralph Orr
Copyright 1996 Worldwide Church of God