Two Calls with Results

This “coming out” and establishing new sects, as new points of truth were received, continued until the Lord sent a message to his people,-a message on which all might have united, if they would. It was the great advent proclamation,-the announcement that “the hour of his judgment is come.” It was the first call to the marriage supper of the Lamb. This message was to be declared “at supper time,”-at the close of the gospel day,-“to them that were bidden.” Luke 14:17.COOD 80.1

As the gospel message was first declared to the Jews,-those who had the Scriptures, and professed faith in God,-and continued with them until they rejected it (Acts 13:46),-so the first great call at the close of the gospel day was to go “to them who had been bidden.”-to the professed churches of God. But when they rejected and opposed this great truth, the Lord, by a second call (Luke 14:21),-the second angel’s message of Revelation 14:8,-separated a people to go forth to the end, with the advancing light of his truth.COOD 80.2

Those who proclaimed the second angel’s message stated plainly that those who were clinging to the mere opinions of men in place of the plain statements of God’s Word, were following thus far in the steps of the mother church of Rome, and were in danger of placing themselves where the day of the Lord would finally overtake them like “a thief in the night.” The nominal churches were instructed that, in this setting aside of the word of the Lord in order to establish their own opinions and creeds, they were like the papal church, who took “the Bible as explained by tradition, by customs, sayings, and practises of the fathers, popes, and councils: which was a direct departure from the Protestant rule of taking ‘the Bible, and the Bible alone, as the standard of faith.’ “COOD 80.3