SECOND ANGEL’S MESSAGE

^{15Revelation 14:8.} The Adventists who were thus treated, as above described, quoted to their oppressors the words addressed to the Sardis church: “Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.” ^{16Revelation 3:3.}LDT 161.1

The believers said to their persecutors: “In thus rejecting and opposing the doctrine of Christ’s soon appearance, you will meet with a moral fall, and become the fallen Babylon of the Revelation, of which it is finally said, they are ‘a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.’” ^{17Revelation 18:2.} Thus it is seen how the people who were the first to hear the second call to the supper, as mentioned in Luke 14, ^{18Luke 14:21.} became “maimed,” “halt,” and “blind.”LDT 161.2

Of the situation at that time, George Storrs, one of the leading Adventist ministers of those times, thus spoke: “Which of them [the churches] will suffer a soul to remain among them in peace that openly and fearlessly avows his faith in the advent at the door? Are not the terms of remaining among them undisturbed, that you ‘wholly refrain’ from a public expression of faith in the coming of the Lord this year, whatever your convictions may be on the subject, and however important you may feel it to be to cry, ‘Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come’?”LDT 162.1

It was this condition of things, as above described, that brought about the proclamation of the second angel’s message,—“Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.” ^{19Revelation 14:8.} The wine of Babylon, as explained by the Adventists, was the doctrines by which the church was blinding the eyes of the people as to the great truths connected with the judgment-hour message.LDT 162.2