the world today.

It was in the year following 1844 that Joseph Bates, of Massachusetts, a
retired sea captain, and a preacher of the advent hope, began to keep
the Sabbath. Captain Bates wrote and published, and soon others,
following his example, embraced the Bible Sabbath.

As the Scripture teaching concerning the sanctuary was studied, light
came flooding in. It was seen that the great prophetic period of Daniel
8, which ended in 1844, marked the opening of Christ's ministry in the
most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary, the work of the judgment hour
in heaven; and there, plainly revealed in Revelation 14, was a special
gospel message to be carried to all the world while the judgment hour
still continued.

The little company that began to keep the commandments of God as
Adventist believers in 1844, did not understand that they were beginning
the definite movement foretold by the prophecy. They only determined to
turn from traditions that had made void God's law, and to obey the law
of the Most High, whose servants they were.

But in the light of the Scripture prophecy and of events, we can see
clearly the hand of God leading that little baud into the right pathway
when the year of 1844 came; and the work there begun has grown into the
world-wide movement of today.

Nearly two thousand years before, it had been written in the "sure word
of prophecy" that when the hour of God's judgment came, a people keeping
God's commandments would arise and spread forth into all the world with
the last gospel message. The long prophetic period of Daniel 8 had fixed
the year 1844 as the time when the judgment hour would begin and when
the people of the prophecy must appear.

When the year came, that people appeared, keeping "the commandments of
God, and the faith of Jesus." When the hour struck, the work began. This
advent movement was born of God in fulfilment of prophecy. And the
mission of the movement is to lift up again the standard of truths
obscured by tradition and trodden underfoot, and to call all men to the
New Testament platform of the "commandments of God, and the faith of
Jesus," where every believing soul may find safe refuge in these closing
moments of the judgment hour in the courts above.

[Illustration: A CHRISTIAN MOTHER EXHORTING HER DAUGHTER TO MARTYRDOM

"Choose you this day whom ye will serve;... as for me and my house, we
will serve the Lord." Joshua 24:15.]

THE JUDGMENT-HOUR MESSAGE