The Sabbath a Test by L. A. S.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 15, 1902

The Sabbath a Test

By L. A. S.

THE Sabbath of the Lord is a test of man’s allegiance to his Creator. It was given to the people of God to be a sign between them and him, pointing out the true God, and distinguishing between his worshipers and those who served other gods. While God’s people observed his Sabbath, they necessarily remained true to him; but when they began to slight his memorial, they began in the same degree to transfer their allegiance to another, and to depart from the commandments of Jehovah. As the Sabbath was fundamental in the true worship, so another day was fundamental in the false religions into which God’s people were often led, and that day was the most prominent one in the pagan system—the day of the sun. It was the constant effort of the great adversary of Jehovah’s law, the father of paganism, to obliterate from the earth the observance of the true rest day, the memorial of creation, and substitute in its place the observance of the day which was the sign of a false worship.

The time came finally when the plottings of the evil one against God’s memorial appeared to be crowned with success. There came a falling away from the truth of God, culminating in complete apostasy and the setting up of the “man of sin . . . the son of perdition,” who usurped the place of God as the head of the church and the guide of conscience, and pointed to the day of the sun as having been set up in the church as the sign of his religious authority. A religion of works, pointing only to some human means of salvation, was substituted for a religion of faith in the

works and merits of Christ. Through the darkness of this spiritual night there broke at last the light of the Reformation, and again was proclaimed the Christian doctrine of justification by faith, which pointed men to God alone as the only Saviour. Against the spread of this light and truth Rome employed all her resources, calling upon the civil powers allied with her to put down heresy by legal pains and penalties. Men were not then tested by the proclamation of the Sabbath, but by their adherence to the truth of salvation by faith, contrary to the papal system of salvation by works, in the face of the most cruel punishments inflicted by the civil powers, which were drunken with the wine of Rome’s doctrines.

Again, after the Reformation had done its work, and the long period of papal supremacy had reached its end, the world was tested by the proclamation of another message, declaring to men that the hour of God’s judgment was come. The people were told to prepare to meet their Saviour, who was to come visibly in the clouds of heaven to gather his elect and set up his everlasting kingdom. Those who truly loved the Lord received the message with joy, gladly enduring persecution and reproach for the sake of the blessed hope. They passed through a severe trial, and very many of them failed to endure the test. Their test was not that of Sabbath observance, because the time for that test had not yet come.

But to-day, when the last work for man’s salvation is being accomplished, the world is brought again to the test of adherence to the day which is the sign of the true God, and of true worship. Under the proclamation of the third angel’s message the mystery of godliness is to be finished, the work of Christ as mediator between God and sinners is to reach its end. The world must be prepared for this most solemn culmination. When the mediatorial work of Christ shall end, all who are to be saved must stand complete in him. No more can there be an atonement for sin or error, willful or committed in ignorance. Therefore the full light of God’s truth must shine out, and men must be brought to take their stand upon one side or the other, for the truth or against it. The message of to-day is a compelling message; men are compelled to take a decided stand, and thus to prepare themselves for the issue that awaits them. For Christ is not arbitrarily to close the probation of any by the mere act of finishing his mediatorial work in the heavenly sanctuary, but men are to be brought to decide their own destiny by their attitude toward God, before that work shall end; and thus God is to be cleared of all responsibility for the state in which men find themselves when probation ends. And that which brings men to the test to-day is the truth which points out God’s memorial day, the sign given by him to those who would know him as he is, and would worship him in spirit and in truth. By this men are being tested, and will be tested until the light of God’s truth shall fill the earth, and all people shall have accepted it or turned from it. The Sabbath is to become a sign throughout the world, as it already is in many places, distinguishing between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not; not the mere formal observance of the seventh day, however, but that Sabbath keeping which hails the coming of the sacred day with delight. Never before was the world brought to the issue which confronts it to-day. This is why the Sabbath must necessarily be proclaimed openly, and everywhere to-day, as it was not done in the reformations of former times.

L. A. S.