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As noted in the
earlier article about the year
270 A.D., the early advocates of the 7th seal added additional
church ages to the prophetic teachings of what they came to call
“the 6th seal”. Rather than four epics of time, they added three
additional church ages, making a total of seven time epics. They
viewed the number “7” to be a perfect number, therefore, they felt
that their interpretation presented a more complete picture of the
New Testament church age.
In his books, The Last
Reformation and
The
Revelation Explained, F. G. Smith confessed several times to
not having had a complete understanding of the 7th seal biblical
passages. For example, he stated “Upon the opening of the seventh
seal, "there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour."
Whether this interval of silence is intended to be symbolical of any
event on earth I do not know; neither have I seen any solution of
the matter that is consistent or satisfactory.” The 7th seal
advocates took his lack of understanding as proof that they
had a more complete view of the entire Revelation message. They did
not believe that Smith could have foreseen that the Church of God
(Anderson) would ultimately go into “apostasy” since he believed it
to be the “last reformation”. Therefore, they felt that they were
presenting a more mature interpretation.
As the diagram above
shows, the three additional church ages that the 7th seal advocates
presented were said to have existed between the years:
1.) 270 A.D. – 530 A.D.
– This allowed for the “one thousand years”, described in Revelation
20 to be accounted for in a literal manner, i.e., 530 A.D. to 1530
A.D.
2.) 1530 A.D. – 1730
A.D. – This allowed the Wesley brother’s teaching of sanctification
to be included as a major milestone in church history
3.) 1930 A.D. – 1980
A.D. – These were the years that were attributed to the new 7th seal
church age.
The first two church
ages were simply viewed as additional details to the existing 6th seal
timescale.
However, the last church age was believed to be a major revelation and
allowed the 7th seal advocates to see themselves in biblical
prophecy, much in the same manner as D. S. Warner and F. G. Smith
saw themselves in prophecy. It was to the message of this last seal
that they deducted their lives.
It was also at this time
that a major doctrinal change took place with regard to the
alignment of the seven church letters in Revelation chapters 2 and 3
to the seven church ages. Prior to this time, F. G. Smith and others
had made the comparison of these seven letters to spiritual
conditions that existed or would soon exist in the seven literal
churches throughout Asia Minor at the time of John’s recording of
the Book of Revelation in 96 A.D. However, the 7th seal advocates
interpreted each of these seven letters to represent a single church
age in a sequential manner, i.e., the letter to Ephesus was written
to describe spiritual conditions in the 1st seal time period (33
A.D. – 270 A. D.), Smyrna the 2nd seal (270 A.D. – 530 A.D.) ,…
Laodicean the 7th seal (1930 A.D. – 1980 A.D.). J. F. Lawson’s
book, The Seven Church of Asia seemed to be the most popular
book that described this new teaching.
Click
here to view or download Lawson's entire book.
With only a few
exceptions with regard to doctrine, the early 7th seal advocates did
not believe that there was yet a great amount of “new light” to be
discovered. Rather, they believed that God had already revealed a
full understanding of all “truth” during the preceding 3 seals,
i.e., 4th seal – the doctrine of Justification as taught by Martin
Luther, 5th seal – the doctrine of Sanctification as taught by John
Wesley, 6th seal – the doctrine of Unity, or “one church” as taught
by D. S. Warner. Therefore, since they believed that the majority of
the evening light body had gone into apostasy, they felt it their
call and duty to restore the message back to where it was in the early years
of the Church of God reformation movement (prior to 1930).
The three main “pillars”
of truth that the entire 7th seal movement was said to be founded on
became “untouchable” doctrines. It was believed that any change from what
Luther, Wesley or Warner taught regarding Justification (“1st work
of grace”), Sanctification (“2nd work of grace”) or Unity was
heretical and any individual or group who dared “depart from the
faith once delivered to the saints” was worthy of eternal damnation and hellfire!
They backed up their belief by that schismatic attitude and actions.
Interesting enough,
none of the 7th seal advocates or groups actually
teach these three "cardinal doctrines" as did their predecessors in the 4th, 5th and
6th seals. In most cases, they are far from the original teachings
of Luther, Wesley or Warner. With the technological resources that
we have available today, such as the Internet and the readily
availabile original writings, it requires very
little research to show that there are major discrepancies
between the teachings of all of the present day 7th seal bodies and
what Luther, Wesley or Warner actually taught.
In our next articles, we
plan on examining a sampling of the teachings of these famed men and
noting the
differences in their teaching from the modern 7th seal advocates.
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