The Everlasting Gospel

The next several verses, Revelation 14:6–12, are collectively called the three angels’ messages. Notice from the onset the importance of these messages. They are to go to the whole world, “to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people” (emphasis added).

It is no coincidence that the verse is specifically phrased as being broadcast “to those who dwell on the earth,” just like the dictates of the beast in the previous chapter (13:14). It is this message that is to combat those “lying wonders” (2 Thessalonians 2:9). Realize what this means: The three angels’ messages are the last warning to go out to the world before the Second Coming!

Compare today’s verse with Revelation 10:11, which similarly declared, “You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings.” All of God’s people living after the time of the Great Disappointment of 1844 have one message to “prophesy again”: the everlasting gospel of the three angels’ messages.

That’s right: Literal heavenly beings do not deliver this message. This message is the “gospel”—the primary mission of God’s church. “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15)—this was Christ’s great commission to His people. Indeed, the word “angel” is translated as simply “messenger.” If you believe in the God of the Bible, then you are a messenger of God, with the express responsibility of delivering the three angels’ messages to the world in these last days.

This is also the only verse in all of Scripture to describe the gospel as “everlasting”—and appropriately so. At a time when the devil’s counterfeit gospel is sweeping the globe, when it seems that only those with the mark of the beast will be able to buy, to sell, to survive, there is no greater truth needed than the good news of God’s everlasting salvation.

The gospel is “everlasting” because it, like God, never changes (Malachi 3:6). The gospel is everlasting because God’s promises are a guaranteed reality. The gospel is “everlasting” because Jesus Christ died not so that every individual could accept salvation for the present but for all time.

My Savior, help me to be Your messenger, carrying the everlasting gospel to a world perishing under the devil’s counterfeit.

For Further Study: Psalm 90:2; John 10:28; Galatians 1:6–12

Key Bible Texts

And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, (Revelation 14:6 KJV)