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The Gospel

Everlasting Gospel

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Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth—to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people— saying with a loud voice, “Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.”

Revelation 14: 6-7 NKJV

A Difference Between Gospel and Everlasting Gospel.

How does the “everlasting gospel” differ from the “gospel“? In no other place in scripture does the phrase “everlasting gospel” appear. But, the simple word “gospel” is brought up 100 times in the New Testament. Of the “Gospel” writers, John is the only one who does not use the word. (Matthew 5 times, Mark 8, and Luke 4, John 0. ) The only time John uses the word is here in Revelation, but he insinuates a gospel that does not end. What does that mean? Please keep in mind that just because the word “gospel” is not used, it does not mean that it is not present in the Bible, even in the Old Testament. Its theme is throughout!

I have cautiously come to the conclusion. that the everlasting gospel is the Good News that will last forever, even in heaven.  What is the Good News that will supersede anything else? It is the theme of redemption and the love of the Godhead—a mystery of sacrifice, love, compassion, mercy, and forgiveness. These mysteries cannot be understood except in the actions of God the Father, Jesus, and the Spirit.

Another author says it this way:

“The theme of redemption is one that the angels desire to look into; it will be the science and the song of the redeemed throughout the ceaseless ages of eternity.  Is it not worthy of careful thought and study now? The infinite mercy and love of Jesus, the sacrifice made on our behalf, call for the most serious and solemn reflection.” (empasis supplied)

Steps to Christ, EG White

What is the Gospel?

The gospel has always been described as the Good News. This Good News comes through the story of Jesus. It is usually divided up into events and actions of the Godhead. The following are the primary parts of the story of redemption.

1.) The incarnation of Jesus (Immanuel-God with us). Even though Jesus is the second member of the Godhead, He became one of us! (Hebrews 2: 14-18) . What a great mystery of love!

2.) He lived a sinless life. (2 Corinthians 5: 21)

3.) He died for our sins, paying the full penalty. We don’t have to work for our own salvation. Any good work or victories over sin are produced by the work of Jesus in our new heart. ( 1 Corinthians 5: 3, Philippians 2: 13, Hebrews 7:25)

4.) He rose again to show that we, too, can be resurrected from the dead. if there was no resurrection, we would still be in our sins and lost. (1 Corinthians 15:4, 1 Corinthians 15: 6-7)

5.) He sent the Holy Spirit to guide, direct, and comfort. (John 14:6)

6.) He became an Intercessor for us. The High Priest we can come to directly for help and forgiveness. (Hebrews 4: 16, 1 Timothy 2:5)

7.) He is coming again to take us where He is now. (John 14: 1-3)

8.) He will create a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness will reign, where sin and death will never raise their ugly heads again. (2 Peter 3: 13, Nahum 1:9)

All of these events are based on the love of God and beautifully summarized by John, who does not use the word gospel except in Revelation. Nevertheless, it encapsulates the eternal gospel that we will ponder throughout eternity…perhaps teach angels or unfallen worlds.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

John 3:16

Prophecies, Hope, and Faith are Fulfilled. Love Remains

The eternal gospel will be our study of the science of redemption. All the prophecies will have been fulfilled; There will be no need for tongues, faith, or hope. Love is the only one of the gifts left standing.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

1 Cor. 13: 8

Although John is skimpy on the word gospel, his message is the theme of love, which is the basis for the gospel.

Of all the apostles, John talks about love more than any other; it appears 39 times in his gospel writing, compared to Matthew (11 times) , Mark (5), and Luke (12). This is more than all the other gospel writers combined! Only Paul exceeds this number (70 times), but Paul was a more prolific writer with 14 books compared to John’s 5 books of the Bible.

It is John alone who records the 11th commandment of Christ regarding loving one another as Jesus loved.

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

John 13:34

Everlasting Gospel Provides a Choice for the Warnings

Before the messages of warning of the three angels are proclaimed, it is the “everlasting” gospel that proceeds the tough announcement of judgment, the fall of Babylon, and a terrible beast that will force people to choose between it or God.

It is this everlasting gospel that will likely cause “Babylon” to fall and counteract the threats of the beast. The dire warnings would be weakened without the preaching of “everlasting gospel” first.

This section of Revelation describes a preparation for the return of Christ. Jesus confirms this activity of preaching the gospel to the whole world before the end comes, as recorded by Matthew :

And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.

Matthew 24: 14 NKJV

The Three Warnings

In the Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, Jesus fills in the blanks between the preaching of the everlasting gospel and warnings to the people of earth. Without first preaching the sacrificial love found in the eternal gospel, the three warnings have no context, power, or choices for those who hear. It will sound to them as just noise…a clanging cymbal.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.

1 Corinthians 13:1

The scene in Revelation 14 is the description of an angel (the first of three) who has the everlasting gospel to preach to everyone on planet Earth. It is visible because it is in the air! Not one person is exempt from the hearing of this everlasting gospel. The power of this message gets attention as insinuated by the sound of a “loud voice.” If you have ever been in a relatively quiet place with the sound of people talking in the background and you hear someone get loud. It gets your attention. With all the activity of earth’s everyday activities, a voice will rise above the clatter. It is the preaching of the “everlasting gospel.” In conjunction with that loud voice comes the messages of the other angels, but the core of their messages is a gospel that will never end.

This angel has the first of three warnings for the people of Earth before the end comes. Note: I am briefly showing the warnings for context to end this article. The study of these messages is deep and requires more time and space to investigate, which I will attempt next time.

Warning #1

 “…saying with a loud voice, “Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water.”

Revelation 14: 7

The first angel that has and proclaims the eternal gospel gives the first warning. Because of God’s great love, he wants all to come to repentance so that no one will perish. He warns that it is time to turn away from earthly idols and life’s priorities to worship the Creator.

Warning #2

A second angel follows who warns:

Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.” Revelation 14: 8

As people hear the eternal gospel of love, it brings down this symbolic Babylon with its truth about Jesus. Fornication is the mixing of two things that do not belong together…. unmarried sexual relations, which symbolizes the mixing of the truth of Jesus and the error of the false teachings from a city…a dwelling place of power. The truth exposes the lies of Babylon (which means confusion), and it brings down this city of error).

Warning #3

Then, a third and final angel warns with a loud voice like the first angel:

Then a third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation. 

Revelation 14: 9-10

Of the three messages, this one is the most descriptive and severe. It has to do with worshipping a beast (symbolic for a religious/political power) and showing loyalty to this power by allowing a symbolic mark that displays loyalty to this antichrist power. That is the choice: loyalty to the God who loves and created you or the beast power that wants to manipulate and use you!

These messages are delivered individually but logically connected in their order. Hopefully, we will discover more next time, but for now, let us focus on the eternal gospel. The story of redemption that we will discuss in heaven after prophecies, these warnings, tongues, faith, and hope have been fulfilled.

If the eternal gospel is understood and accepted now, it becomes the insurance against the three warning messages. Blessings as you consider these things.

Reasons to Believe

Babylonian Tablets Unearth Insights into Judean Life in Exile

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Beyond what the Bible says, mentions of Judean life during the Babylonian exile have generally been scarce throughout history. All of that changed in 2014 when archaeologists discovered about two hundred tablets written in cuneiform script that reveal aspects of the life of Jews who lived in Babylon at the time of the exile.

On November 16, at the 2022 Evangelical Theological Society annual meeting in Denver, Colorado, United States, Assyriologist and expert in Mesopotamic archaeology George Heath-Whyte discussed what the ongoing translation of the tablets reveals, what it doesn’t say, and what conclusions we can and cannot derive from those findings.
The Tablets

The tablets, known as the Al-Yahudu Texts, were acquired from a seller, so the specific place and background of the discovery have been lost. They have been dated between 572 and 477 BCE. This means that the oldest seem to have been written about 15 years after Babylon’s invasion of Israel.

The translation of the cuneiform script on the tablets shows that they are legal documents written in the Babylonian language. Some of them are promissory notes — one party is required to transfer goods to another party on a specific date. There are also receipts, marriage agreements, and other personal documents. Most come from the time of Darius’s reign, Heath-Whyte explained, and reveal the existence of a Jewish community living in the countryside, in a town southeast of Babylon.

“There is much we can learn about how life was for that particular community living in Babylon,” Heath-Whyte said. “They give us a glimpse into the Judean working the land … in the land-for-service scheme. [They show that] some Jews were quite entrepreneurial. Some secured jobs in the Babylonian administration.”

Heath-Whyte said that what the tablets show fits nicely with God’s message to the exiles in Jeremiah 29:4-7, which reads, “Build houses and dwell in them; plant gardens and eat their fruit. Take wives and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons and give your daughters to husbands, so that they may bear sons and daughters — that you may be increased there, and not diminished. And seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the Lord for it; for in its peace you will have peace.”

A Mismatch with the Bible?

Some scholars have been using the findings in the tablets to point out what they call a mismatch with the Bible record. They say, for instance, that even though the Bible talks about the exile as a horrible period, the tablets show the overall situation of the Jews in exile was pretty good.

Heath-Whyte doesn’t think this is an either-or situation, however. “The evidence of the Babylonian sources is being misused. It is a false dichotomy,” he said. “Were Jews living in Babylon able to advance? Yes. Were Jews living in Babylon free people? No. They had to work in a land they didn’t own and render service to a foreign king. They were not entirely free.”

Assyriologist and Mesopotamic archaeology expert George Heath-Whyte shared what the Al-Yahudu Texts reveal and what they do not. [Photo: Marcos Paseggi, Adventist Review]
At the same time, Heath-Whyte explained, the Bible is clear that even though most of the Jews living in exile longed to return to their homeland, when they in fact had the opportunity, some of them decided to stay. Also, we know that Mordecai, Nehemiah, and others achieved relatively high positions in the kingdom.

Critics also point out that no tablet mentions that the Jews knew about Pentateuch and the Sabbath. But those are not things you would expect to find in a Babylonian legal document, Heath-Whyte explained. “The sources do not allow us to determine whether the Sabbath was observed,” he said, “even though one name that appears in one tablet is Shabbataiah.”

Others have pointed out that no tablet mentions the Jews returning to their homeland. Again, Heath-Whyte said, that is not something Babylonians would necessarily include in a legal document. “We have tablets that talk about sale of property, of paying of debts, but we can’t tell if they are connected to the Jews selling their properties before returning,” he said.

Limitations of the Sources

At the same time, Heath-Whyte acknowledged, there are many details these sources can’t tell us. The first has to do with the nature of the sources.

“People imagine they are letters, or fragments of the Psalms. But this is not the case,” he said. “These documents were written by Babylonian scribes in Babylonian legal jargon. There are large areas of the exiles’ lives that these documents do not mention.”

Also, the sources available are insufficient. “We don’t have many of them. Or not enough to paint a whole picture,” Heath-Whyte said.

Regarding the context of the sources, Heath-Whyte reminded his audience that the tablets were found and then sold. “We don’t know where they were found, or in what circumstances,” he said.

Their Given Names

What the tablets do reveal is the names of many of the Jews living in exile. According to Heath-Whyte, who studied the topic extensively, most of the names are not Babylonian but seem to be related to the biblical text and the God of Israel.

“The contents of a person’s name do not tell us what they believe, but it can show the connection with the belief in one God. You can see a sense of identity with God through their names,” he said. And, he added, “just like the Bible said, some Jews prospered in Babylon, and for at least some of them, the God of the Bible seemed to be their only and true God.”

In conclusion, Heath-Whyte emphasized, when we come across claims about these texts, we need to test them. “We must be careful not to assert what the texts don’t say, but we can be modestly optimistic,” he said. “Most of what these sources tell us fit with what the Bible says.”

Marcos Paseggi, Adventist Review December 1, 2022