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God’s Unchangeable Law, Part 5
The Mark of Allegiance
After the warning against the worship of the
beast and his image the prophecy declares: “Here are those who keep the
commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” Since those who keep God’s
commandments are thus placed in contrast with those that worship the beast and
his image and receive his mark, it follows that the keeping of God’s law, on the
one hand, and its violation, on the other, will make the distinction between the
worshipers of God and the worshipers of the beast.
The special characteristic of the beast, and
therefore of his image, is the breaking of God’s commandments. Says Daniel, of
the little horn, the papacy: “He shall think to change times and the law.”
Daniel 7:25, R.V. And Paul styled the same power the “man of sin,” who was to
exalt himself above God. One prophecy is a complement of the other. Only by
changing God’s law could the papacy exalt itself above God; whoever should
understandingly keep the law as thus changed would be giving supreme honor to
that power by which the change was made. Such an act of obedience to papal laws
would be a mark of allegiance to the pope in the place of God.
The papacy has attempted to change the law
of God. The second commandment, forbidding image worship, has been dropped from
the law, and the fourth commandment has been so changed as to authorize the
observance of the first instead of the seventh day as the Sabbath. But papists
urge, as a reason for omitting the second commandment, that it is unnecessary,
being included in the first, and that they are giving the law exactly as God
designed it to be understood. This cannot be the change foretold by the prophet.
An intentional, deliberate change is presented: “He shall think to change the times and the law.” The change in
the fourth commandment exactly fulfills the prophecy. For this the only
authority claimed is that of the church. Here the papal power openly sets itself
above God.
While the worshipers of God will be
especially distinguished by their regard for the fourth commandment,—since this
is the sign of His creative power and the witness to His claim upon man’s
reverence and homage,—the worshipers of the beast will be distinguished by their
efforts to tear down the Creator’s memorial, to exalt the institution of Rome.
It was in behalf of the Sunday that popery first asserted its arrogant claims;
and its first resort to the power of the state was to compel the observance of
Sunday as “the Lord’s day.” But the Bible points to the seventh day, and not to
the first, as the Lord’s day. Said Christ: “The Son of Man is also Lord of the
Sabbath.” The fourth commandment declares: “The seventh day is the Sabbath of
the Lord.” And by the prophet Isaiah the Lord designates it:
“My holy day.” Mark 2:28; Isaiah 58:13.
The claim so often put forth that Christ
changed the Sabbath is disproved by His own words. In His Sermon on the Mount He
said: “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not
come to destroy but to fulfill. For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and
earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till
all is fulfilled. Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these
commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of
heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the
kingdom of heaven.” Matthew
5:17-19.
It is a
fact generally admitted by Protestants that the Scriptures give no authority for
the change of the Sabbath. This is plainly stated in publications issued by the
American Tract Society and the American Sunday School Union. One of these works
acknowledges “the complete silence of the New Testament so far as any explicit
command for the Sabbath [Sunday, the first day of the week] or definite rules
for its observance are concerned.”—George Elliott, The
Abiding Sabbath, page 184.
Another says: “Up to the time of Christ’s
death, no change had been made in the day;” and, “so far as the record shows,
they [the apostles] did not . . . give any explicit command enjoining the
abandonment of the seventh-day Sabbath, and its observance on the first day of
the week.”—A. E. Waffle, The Lord’s Day, pages
186-188.
Roman Catholics acknowledge that the change
of the Sabbath was made by their church, and declare that Protestants by
observing the Sunday are recognizing her power. In the Catholic Catechism of Christian Religion, in answer to
a question as to the day to be observed in obedience to the fourth commandment,
this statement is made: “During the old law, Saturday was the day sanctified;
but the church, instructed by Jesus Christ, and
directed by the Spirit of God, has substituted Sunday for Saturday; so now we
sanctify the first, not the seventh day. Sunday means, and now is, the day of
the Lord.”
As the sign of the authority of the Catholic
Church, papist writers cite “the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday,
which Protestants allow of; . . . because by keeping Sunday, they acknowledge
the church’s power to ordain feasts, and to command them under sin.”—Henry
Tuberville, An Abridgment of the Christian Doctrine,
page 58. What then is the change of the Sabbath, but the sign, or mark, of the
authority of the Roman Church—”the mark of the beast”?
The Roman Church has not relinquished her
claim to supremacy; and when the world and the Protestant churches accept a
sabbath of her creating, while they reject the Bible Sabbath, they virtually
admit this assumption. They may claim the authority of tradition and of the
Fathers for the change; but in so doing they ignore the very principle which
separates them from Rome—that “the Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion of
Protestants.” The papist can see that they are deceiving themselves, willingly
closing their eyes to the facts in the case. As the movement for Sunday
enforcement gains favor, he rejoices, feeling assured that it will eventually
bring the whole Protestant world under the banner of Rome.
The Great Controversy, pp. 445-448
Next part: God’s Unchangeable Law, Part 6: The Mark of the Beast Enforced
All Scriptures are quoted from the New
King James Version, including those originally quoted by Ellen White from the
King James Version.—Editors
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