Glossary of the Teaching

The everlasting gospel

Revelation 14:6; Mark 1:15

Also: The eternal gospel · The gospel of Revelation 14:6

The one message of salvation God has sent from age to age — repentance towards God and faith in Jesus Christ. Revelation 14:6 shows it carried by an angel “to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people” as heaven’s final appeal to a rebellious planet. It is the first of the Three Angels’ Messages and the message this ministry exists to preach. Read the study: The Everlasting Gospel →

The Three Angels’ Messages

Revelation 14:6–12

Also: Revelation 14:6–12 · The three angels of Revelation 14

The three proclamations of Revelation 14:6–12, delivered “with a loud voice” — heaven’s last warning to the world before Christ returns. The first angel carries the everlasting gospel and calls every people to fear God, give glory to Him, worship the Creator, because the hour of His judgment is come. The second announces that Babylon is fallen. The third warns against worshipping the beast and receiving his mark. Together they divide the whole earth into two groups. Read the study: The Three Angels’ Messages →

The hour of His judgment is come

Revelation 14:7; Daniel 7:9–10; Daniel 8:14

Also: The judgment-hour message · The investigative judgment

The first angel’s announcement that God’s judgment has begun — not a future event to fear from afar but a present work in the heavenly sanctuary before Christ returns, which is why the appeal is to fear God, give Him glory and worship Him now. This ministry teaches it as the investigative judgment foreshadowed by the Day of Atonement and timed by the 2300 days of Daniel 8:14. Read the study: The Everlasting Gospel →

Babylon is fallen

Revelation 14:8; Revelation 18:4

Also: Babylon · The second angel’s message

The second angel’s message. Babylon takes its name from Babel — confusion — and stands for a religious system that has made the nations drink “the wine of the wrath of her fornication”, that is, false teaching mixed with truth. Its fall is announced, and God’s people are called out of it: “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins.” Read the study: The Three Angels’ Messages →

The mark of the beast

Revelation 14:9–11; Revelation 13

Also: The third angel’s message · The beast and his mark

The sternest warning in the Bible, carried by the third angel. The mark is not a barcode or a chip but a symbol of rebellion against the government of God and against true worship — a mark of allegiance in the final conflict over whom the world will worship, and the opposite of the seal of God. To know what the mark is, the study first asks who or what the beast is, and reads Revelation 13 and 14 together rather than in isolation. Read the study: The Everlasting Gospel →

The seal of God

Revelation 7:2–3; Exodus 20:8–11; Ezekiel 9:4

Also: God’s seal · The sealing

God’s righteous character formed in His people, of which the outward sign is the observance of His true Sabbath — the seventh day, kept holy because in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and rested the seventh. The seal stands opposite the mark of the beast: all who are sealed keep God’s Sabbath, though not all who keep the Sabbath are sealed, for the seal is character and not merely a day. Read the study: The Everlasting Gospel →

The sanctuary

Exodus 25:8; Hebrews 8:1–2; Daniel 8:14

Also: The heavenly sanctuary · The sanctuary message

The system of types God set up on earth — the tabernacle, its furniture, its priesthood and its offerings — to teach of the coming Messiah, His sacrifice, His work as High Priest in heaven, and the final result of sin. There is no better way to get acquainted with Jesus Christ than to study it: what the earthly sanctuary showed in shadow, Christ carries out in the heavenly one, ending with its cleansing at the close of the 2300 days. Read the study: The Sanctuary →

The 2300 days

Daniel 8:14; Daniel 9:24–27

Also: The 2300-day prophecy · Daniel 8:14 · The cleansing of the sanctuary

The longest time prophecy in the Bible: “Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” Given to Daniel in the vision of the ram, the he-goat and the little horn, and explained by the seventy weeks of Daniel 9, it reaches from the decree to restore Jerusalem to the beginning of the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary — the judgment the first angel announces. Read the study: Daniel Chapter 8 →

“The time is at hand”

Revelation 1:3; Revelation 22:10; Revelation 10:6

Also: Time is at hand · Time shall be no more

The phrase the ministry takes its name from — “blessed is he that readeth … for the time is at hand.” It means the events of Bible prophecy are near enough to act on now: a call to read, understand and be ready, not to set dates. The mighty angel of Revelation 10 swears that “there should be time no longer” — prophetic time has run out, and what remains is probation, still open. Read the study: Time Shall Be No More →

Present truth

2 Peter 1:12

Truth that is always true, but which God brings to the front for a particular time — the message His people most need to hear and act on in their own generation. For this generation the ministry holds present truth to be the Three Angels’ Messages: the judgment hour, the call out of Babylon, and the warning against the mark of the beast. Read the study: The Three Angels’ Messages →

The Day of Atonement

Leviticus 16; Hebrews 9:23–28

Also: Yom Kippur · The cleansing of the sanctuary

The one day in the year when the high priest entered the most holy place to cleanse the sanctuary of the sins confessed over it through the year, while the people afflicted their souls and searched their hearts. The ministry reads it as the type of the final judgment: Christ, our High Priest, cleansing the heavenly sanctuary in the last days, while His people on earth examine themselves and put away sin. Read the study: Time Shall Be No More →

Probation

Revelation 22:11; Luke 13:24–25

Also: The close of probation · The door of mercy

The time of mercy still open — the period in which a person may yet repent and be forgiven before the judgment closes and “he that is unjust” is left unjust and “he that is holy” holy still. Prophetic time has ended (Revelation 10:6); probation has not. It is why every study on this site ends with an appeal to decide now. Read the study: Time Shall Be No More →

The Godhead

Deuteronomy 6:4; Matthew 28:19; Colossians 2:9

Also: The eternal Godhead · The Trinity

“The Lord our God is one Lord” — and Scripture speaks of Father, Son and Holy Ghost as three distinct Persons, in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. The ministry teaches that this is a mystery revealed rather than a contradiction to be explained away, and that the doctrine cannot be dismissed without dismissing the Scriptures that state it. Read the study: The Mystery of the Eternal Godhead →

The great controversy

Genesis 3:15; Isaiah 14:12–14; Revelation 12:7–9; 1 John 3:8

Also: The origin of evil · The enmity of Genesis 3:15

The war between Christ and Satan that began in heaven when Lucifer, created an upright angel, chose rebellion, and that has run through earth’s history since Eden. Evil had no part in God’s plan; the Son of God was manifested for one purpose — to destroy the works of the devil and make an utter end of them. The enmity God put between the serpent and the woman’s seed is the first promise of that victory. Read the study: The Origins of Evil →

The church

1 Timothy 3:15; Matthew 16:18; Ephesians 5:25–27

Also: The true church · The remnant · The pillar and ground of the truth

Not a denomination but the people God has called out and established as “the pillar and ground of the truth” — the bride of Christ, built on the seven pillars the study names, and given one mission: to carry the everlasting gospel to every nation, kindred, tongue and people. Long before the denominations, God had a church; the question is whether we are in it. Read the study: The Church and Its Mission →

The mystery of the gospel

Ephesians 6:19; 1 Timothy 3:16; Colossians 1:26–27

Also: The mystery of godliness

A mystery in Scripture is not something that cannot be understood, only something not known until God reveals it. The mystery of the gospel is Christ Himself — God manifest in the flesh, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” — searched for by the prophets and now made known. The study follows it from the prophets who sought it to the Christ in whom it stands revealed. Read the study: The Mysteries of the Gospel →

Knowing Christ

Philippians 3:10; John 17:3

Also: The knowledge of Christ · Philippians 3:10

More than knowing about Him: the personal knowledge Paul counted everything else loss for — “that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings.” Scripture calls this knowledge eternal life itself. The ministry places it first: every other study begins here, because doctrine without the Person is not the gospel. Read the study: Getting to Know Jesus →

The ministry of healing

3 John 1:2; Psalm 67:2; Isaiah 58:8

Also: The health message · Saving health

The ministry’s teaching on health, healing and the whole person — the body, the mind and the soul God made to work together — drawn from the Scriptures and from the book *Ministry of Healing*. “I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” Not medical advice, but the principles by which God’s people are to live well and carry “saving health” to all nations. Read the study: Ministry of Healing →

These are the ministry’s terms in the ministry’s sense, drawn from its own studies; they are not a general theological dictionary. For a passage rather than a term, see Studies by Bible passage; for a question, Questions people ask.