Are the 3 Angel's Messages for a Future Age? SERIES: Lesson of Thessalonian church

"The first epistle to the Thessalonians may seem to teach that the apostles expected the coming of Christ to judgment in their day. Indeed, it is evident that such an idea was received from it by the Thessalonian church. 

*Hence it was, that in his second epistle to them, Paul found it necessary to speak explicitly on the point. 

--He tells them that the coming of Christ to the judgment could not take place until the great apostasy. 

--And as the result of that apostasy, that the man of sin should be revealed, showing himself that he is God, and exalting himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped. 

That this mystery of iniquity, is the great Romish apostasy, none but a Papist will deny.
--Paul reminds them that he had told the church of these things when he was yet with them. 

Q: And where could Paul have learned this
fact, which he had thus conversed upon to the Thessalonians? 

A: He was accustomed to reason from the Scriptures, and not to deal in assertion. Hence it is very evident that he refers to the prophecy of Daniel, who in his seventh chapter has given the successive events which intervened between his time and the judgment. 

In this series of events he has with wonderful precision described the power to which Paul has referred, as the man of sin. No Protestant will deny the identity of Daniel's little horn and Paul's man of sin. And as Daniel has brought it into a series of events which ends with the judgment and the setting up of the everlasting kingdom, it was an easy matter for Paul to tell where in this series of events he stood, and whether the judgment was its next event or not.
--The Apostle, therefore, plainly tells them that that day was not at hand. For the man of sin, or little horn, must arise and perform his predicted work, and when that should be accomplished the coming of Christ should transpire, to consume "that Wicked" (2 Thess. 2:8) with its brightness  

Q: Now when was the little horn to arise? 

A: Daniel was told that it should arise after the ten horns upon the fourth beast; or in other words, after the fourth empire should be divided into ten kingdoms, which was accomplished about five hundred years after Christ. The judgment therefore could not come prior to that time. 

Q: But how long was this little horn to have power to wear out the saints?
A: Daniel informs us that it should be for "a time and times and the dividing of time." 

Q: How long is this period? 

A: Rev. xii shows that it is 1260 prophetic days, or years. Verses 6, 14. It follows therefore, that the Apostle carries the mind forward five hundred years to the development of the man of sin, and thence 1260 years for his triumph, before the judgment could be preached as an event immediately impending. Whoever will carefully read Dan. vii, will get the original of Paul's argument in 2 Thess. ii, and will without fail see the force of his statement.

The Papal supremacy began in 538 and ended in 1798 with the overthrow of the Pope's temporal power. The warning of Paul against a false proclamation respecting the judgment at hand, therefore, expires at that time, and not before.
For we have then reached the point of time where the last important event in Dan. vii, before the judgment has transpired. 

--An angel from heaven preaching the hour of God's judgment come, many years in the past, would be giving a different gospel from that preached by Paul. Those who locate the angel of Rev. xiv, 6, 7 in past ages, virtually place upon his head the anathema of Paul in Gal. i, 8."  J.N. ANDREWS