In my last article, I suggested that we can picture the seven thunders as seven chapters that make up Daniel’s little book of end-time prophecy. The importance of the seven thunders in end-time events is not small. These are the “big seven” waymarks of the final crisis. Ellen White describes their central role during Earth’s closing scenes in these words:
After these seven thunders uttered their voices, the injunction comes to John as to Daniel in regard to the little book: "Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered." These relate to future events which will be disclosed in their order. Daniel shall stand in his lot at the end of the days. John sees the little book unsealed. Then Daniel's prophecies have their proper place in the first, second, and third angels' messages to be given to the world. {7BC 971.4}
Notice the bolded sentence. White not only says the thunders are “future events” that “will be disclosed in their order,” she tells us that 1) they originate in Daniel’s little book and 2) they will successively supplement each of the three angel’s messages.
That’s both exciting and comforting because it assures us that, as each thunder utters its voice, we’ll know with a high degree of confidence and precision where we stand prophetically in relation to these three messages. The thunders will be an anchor for our souls and a guide as they progressively confirm the first angel’s message, then the second, and finally the third.
Based on this knowledge, we can narrow down the first thunder to some event and/or prophecy that confirms the first angel’s message, “Fear God and give glory to him for the hour of his judgment is come. . .” The first thunder will provide tangible evidence that the world is now standing in judgment before the bar of God.
Ellen White states:
God is sending to the world a solemn message, warning them of His soon coming in the clouds of heaven. This message is to call a people out from the world to obtain a fitness for His appearing.
As it was in the days of Noah, so it is now, just prior to the final destruction of the wicked. Today the masses are slighting and rejecting the warning message. Like the antediluvians, they are given up to eating and drinking, planting and building, marrying and giving in marriage. Their minds are engrossed with things of minor importance. Men are heaping to themselves treasures for the general conflagration. They indulge pride, appetite, and passion. They practice abominable wickedness, fast filling up the cup of their iniquity.
In the bowels of the earth God has in reserve the weapons that He will use to destroy the sinful race. Since the flood, God has used, to destroy wicked cities, both the water and the fire that are concealed in the earth. In the final conflagration God will in His wrath send lightning from heaven that will unite with the fire in the earth. The mountains will burn like a furnace and pour forth streams of lava.
“The [mountains] quake at Him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned at His presence, yea, the world, and all that dwell therein. Who can stand before His indignation? and who can abide in the fierceness of His anger? His fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by Him.” Nah 1:5, 6. {Ms 21, 1902, par. 24-27.}
Five years later, in 1907, in a letter to her son Edson, she made a similar statement:
I have been shown that the Spirit of the Lord is being withdrawn from the earth. God’s keeping power will soon be refused to all who continue to disregard His commandments. . . I have been shown that the whole world is fast becoming as it was in the days of Noah. . .
Before the Son of man appears in the clouds of heaven, everything in nature will be convulsed. Lightning from heaven, uniting with the fire in the earth, will cause the mountains to burn like a furnace and pour out their floods of lava over villages and cities. Molten masses of rock, thrown into the water by the upheaval of things hidden in the earth, will cause the water to boil, and they will send forth rocks and earth. There will be mighty earthquakes and great destruction of human life.
But as in the days of the great deluge Noah was preserved in the ark that God had prepared for him, so in these days of destruction and calamity God will be the refuge of His believing ones. . . Then shall we not make the Lord our surety and our defense? {Lt 258, 1907, pars. 7, 8.}
Before the seven vials of God’s wrath are poured out on the earth, the Lord sends warning judgments of what is ahead. Global-scale seismic and volcanic activity are among the most potent warning judgments God can send because these remind the world that the God who called the Antediluvians and Sodomites to account has not changed; with a voice of thunder, He will put the world on notice that he is soon about to consume the remainder of the earth for the same reasons and by the same means that he overthrew the cities of the plain.
But these judgments do not fall randomly on different parts of the earth. The apostle states that judgment begins with the household of God. I Pet 4:17. Those who have had the greatest light will be the first to feel his wrath. This principle should be applied to the first thunder. Where has the light of truth shone most brightly? In America, the United Kingdom, the British Common Wealth nations of Canada, Australia and New Zealand, in Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Scandinavia, and especially among Seventh-day Adventists. If God’s wrath falls first on Adventists and the most enlightened nations of the earth where volcanic activity is seldom deadly and leaves untouched nations that are prone to volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, that would indeed be evidence not only that “the hour of his judgment is come” but also that judgment begins with the household of God.
Am I sure the first thunder is global-scale seismic and volcanic activity? No, the thunder is still sealed. But, based on the Spirit of Prophecy and scripture we can be sure of this much: 1) The first thunder will directly supplement the judgment hour message of the first angel and, 2) we can expect that whatever the thunder is, it will begin with the people and nations who have had the greatest light but not walked in it and then expand to other nations and people groups.
The first thunder therefore is not Sunday rest legislation because: 1) The passing of Sunday laws is not a judgment by God, it is an act of man. 2) Sunday laws do not bring direct attention to the judgment hour message of the first angel. Instead, Sunday laws mark the fall of Babylon which is the second angel’s message. 3) The assertion that Sunday laws will act as the catalyst for setting end-time events in motion doesn’t agree with Daniel 7 – 12 which tells us that the little horn’s trampling of the law and the saints comes at the height of its attack on the saints rather than at the beginning of it.
That said, Sunday legislation is almost certainly one of the thunders, but it’s not the first one.
According to Jesus, the end-time scenario starts with wars and rumors of wars followed by famines, pestilences, and earthquakes, then followed by persecution, false prophets, and false miracles. This agrees with the sequence we find in Daniel 7 to 12:
And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come. Mat 24:4-14.
But, as previously mentioned, the seven thunders draw from the book of Daniel. So we should especially look there to see which of the great prophecies of the little book point humanity unmistakably to “the hour of his judgment”. The Lord willing, that is what we’ll do in Part 2.