SUN-WORSHIP

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 21, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 34.

THE most glorious object in all the universe to the visible eyes of earth-born children is the sun. From the effulgent luminary earth receives its light and warmth. Passing from our sight, the earth grows chill and dark. Swinging low in yearly journey, and the tropical summer changes to the frigidity of winter. The seed is warmed into life at the presence of the sun. The little shoot or blade springs from the bosom of mother earth at his morning call. The bud opens to a flower at his repeated kisses, and in his daily visits the green fruit turns to luscious ripeness.

Part of the Ruins of the Magnificent Temple of the Sun in Old Palmyra, or Tadmor, in Syria. Literal Temples All Crumbling; the Old Worship Does Not Exist in Form; but Is It Not Here in Fact?

IT is not to be wondered at that Lucifer, the light-bringer, as his God-bestowed name indicated, chose the sun by which to deceive men, and draw them away from the worship of the invisible God, the Creator, to the worship of the creature. It is not to be wondered at that when men became blinded to God, they turned to the greatest and most glorious object visible, that one the potencies of which were ever manifest, and clothed it with all the attributes of Deity. True, the moon and stars, the earth and trees and rivers, and even down to the vilest insect, were worshiped; but the sun was regent, and all these other things of minor majesty connected more or less with sun-worship.

THE worship of the great Creator is spiritual. While His power and wisdom and love were manifest in everything, in all His works, before marred by sin, He Himself was invisible. Men must come to know Him in character before they could look upon His unvailed glory.

YET He “made His wonderful works to be remembered.” As by His mighty power He in six days brought the chaotic earth into that condition that fitted it to be the home of man, and rested the seventh day, refreshed and delighted for His children’s sake, so He gave them the Sabbath of holy rest and refreshing, a special worship day, laden with double blessing, as a constant reminder of His love and power to save and keep. The one day—the seventh—was not itself alone the

reminder of God, but every day, numbered with respect to that Sabbath day, became a memorial of God’s work. It was not “Sunday,” “Monday,” that God named the days, but “First Day” to the Sabbath, “Second Day” to the Sabbath, and so on to the Sabbath. And the command, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it ‘holy,’” included in its scope every day of the week.

WHAT a blessed thing it would have been for this world if the Sabbath, instituted by Christ under God, the Creator, had always been observed in the spirit! There would have been no multitude of gods, no bestial idolatry, no warring of creeds, no hecatombs of heretics. God alone would have been glorified in worship, and His manifold brightness would have been reflected in manifold glory from all His children.

WHEN Lucifer rebelled, he said, “I will be like the Most High.” Isa. 14:12–14. He must deceive God’s children so as to make them forget the Creator; He must get them to substitute for the mightier, clearer vision of faith that of sensuous sight, to exalt self to the place of God, to forget the Creator in the worship of the creature. He blinded man through self. He entered his heart through the perverted senses. Desire of God and goodness was changed to selfish lust; worship of God, to glory of man. And then man clothed the great created things which he felt were above him with his own conceptions of Deity.

OUT of this grew the worship of the sun, the chiefest of all visible objects. With this worship naturally came in all kinds of nature worship. As the warmth of the sun caused the earth to bring forth, so sexuality came to be inseparably connected with sun-worship; and the worship of the sun became the most grossly licentious of all systems of idolatry. An example is given in Numbers 25.

AS GOD had a day to commemorate His created work, so the great false god was given a day, the first day of the septenary cycle, that in the very beginning of the week man might forget his Maker. Yet, missing the object of the Sabbath, Satan chose the only day in the week that could not, in the nature of the case, be a Sabbath. The Sabbath was a holy day, freighted with blessing. The day of the sun was made a holiday, filled with lustful curses. One writer well calls it “the wild solar holiday of all pagan times.” Its name, Sunday, or something equivalent to that, was known in nearly all the great pagan nations of antiquity. Connected with the day, as with the worship of the sun, has been the large indulgence of the flesh, a thing impossible for the devotion of an earnest Christianity (wrongly directed) to even approximately overcome.

IN honor of the great sun-god some of the most glorious temples of earth have been erected, of which we have an illustration on our first page. These temples have mostly crumbled into ruins before the truth of God’s Word, the Gospel of Jesus Christ; but of late men are seeking to erect a temple of law,—national and international,—to uphold the day dedicated to the great luminary from time immemorial, and in which earnest devotees are seeking, contrary to the Gospel of Christ, to compel all men to worship. The question is now as ever of old, even now as never of old in intensity and importance, Will we worship the creature or the Creator? Will we bow to the mandates and ordinances of Lucifer, the revolting one, or will we obey God and keep His commandments forevermore? Sun-worship is not dead; it is a question of earth’s ages. How many will decide with Elijah, as between Baal the sun-god and Jehovah the Creator?