Tested on Obedience by T. E. BOWEN

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jul 21, 1914

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 41, No. 28.

Tested on Obedience

By T. E. BOWEN

The Seal of the Divine Law — It Will Characterize and Protect in the Final Struggle — A Great Test

By T. E. BOWEN

The beloved disciple John, exiled upon the little isle Patmos because of his testimony, saw in vision an angel ascending out of the east having the seal of the living God. Rev. 7: 2. This was at a time when general war was about to break forth upon the earth. This angel’s work was to seal the servants of God upon the earth in their foreheads. Verse 3.

What Is the Saving Seal?

The query may arise in some mind as to what is meant by this “seal.” In chapter 3: 12 we read, “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of My God [Jesus is speaking], and the name of the city of My God, which is New Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from My God: and I will write upon him My new name.”

Describing in chapter 22 that celestial city of the saved, the revelator says: “And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and His servants shall serve Him: and they shall see His face; and His name shall be in their foreheads.”

The Seal in the Law

God’s name, His seal, is found in His law. In the Sabbath commandment alone appears the name of its Author, the Creator of the heaven and earth.

Hence, in a word, the seal of God that John saw placed upon the foreheads—within the mind—of God’s servants indicates the movement going throughout the earth at the present time, calling people back to the keeping of the true Sabbath enjoined by the fourth commandment—God’s holy rest day, the seventh. His seal is found in this commandment. A company is found in every land who rejoice in keeping the Sabbath in counterdistinction to another company who receive another mark in the

forehead or in the hand—the mark, or seal, of the beast. If the former seal is found in true Sabbath-keeping, the natural conclusion is that the latter consists in false sabbath-keeping.

A Great Test

The Sabbath is a test of obedience. God says the seventh day is the Sabbath; man says the first. Every one, therefore, manifests his loyalty to either the one power or the other issuing the command. Obedience is an act of worship. God told Adam and Eve to let the tree of “knowledge of good and evil” in the midst of the garden alone. He put it where they could get to it and its fruit; but to touch it meant, “Ye shall surely die.” They touched, they ate, they died. Satan ridiculed the restriction then.

He has brought into the world a false sabbath. He still scoffs at the idea that God should require the observance of one particular day.

But in Eden Satan’s scorn or lie did not change God’s purpose, nor save Adam and Eve from sorrow and death. Neither will Satan’s scorn, his ridicule, or even his skilfully planned Sunday laws, change one whit God’s purpose and word. “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” And to-day, as in the garden of Eden, possession of the goodly Canaan is wholly dependent upon implicit obedience.