THE SEAL OF THE LAW by R. F. Cottrell

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 14, 1888

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 14, No. 36.

THE SEAL OF THE LAW.

By R. F. Cottrell

“BIND up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples.” Isa. 8:16. This prophetic command is to have its fulfillment in the time of waiting for the return of the Lord, and of looking for him. The next verse says, “And I will wait upon the Lord, that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him.” An apostle says, “Unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.” Heb. 9:28. It is when the people of God are looking for this second coming, and last-day Spiritualists are saying, “Seek unto them that have familiar spirits” (Isa. 8:19), that the testimony is to be bound up, and the law sealed among the disciples. This is evidently the work of the last message from Heaven before the day of wrath, the fearful warning of Rev. 14:9-12.

The testimony and the law in the text are one. By pleonasm the same thought is repeated in other words for the sake of emphasis. That the two are identical is seen in verse 20, where they are represented in the singular number. “To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” The testimony is that law of ten commandments which was placed in the “ark of the testimony,” being written on two tables of stone. See Ex. 25:16; 31:18.

This testimony has been broken, and must be bound up. The seal has been taken from this law, and it must be restored to the true disciples of the Lord. And it is the Papal church that has thus tampered with and mutilated the divine law. Her leading men teach as follows: “The church, by virtue of the power she has received from Christ, abolished the Jewish Sabbath, and substituted Sunday in its stead.” “During the old law, Saturday was the day sanctified; but the Church . . . has substituted Sunday for Saturday.” A Roman bishop at Belfast, Ireland, recently said, speaking of this change, “We, the church, did that astonishing feat.” And the mass of the Protestants of to-day hold that the Sabbath of the law has been abolished, or changed to another day, and that to commemorate another event than the creation,—an event which, to their minds, seems to eclipse the work of the Creator.

This mutilation of the perfect law of God is the reason why the testimony must be bound up, the law sealed. This reason did not exist before the apostasy of this dispensation; even down to the present day the Jews hold the ten commandments as the perfect and immutable law of God. However much they have transgressed, they have never changed the decalogue. It was after the “falling away” in the Christian church, which resulted in the great apostasy, and the development of “the man of sin,” that it ever entered the human mind that men had the power to change the law of God; therefore the command to bind up and seal can apply nowhere else but to these last days. The command is prophetic; it is a prophecy

that such a work will be done at the proper time; and at the present time we see it being done by the actual preaching of the Third Angel’s Message, the final warning against the worship of the beast and his image. Rev. 14:9-12.

The law has been mutilated by taking away its seal. The seal is that which marks a law as genuine, and thus gives it authority. Every man having the right to command must have a mark or token of his authority. Should the President of the United States issue an order, and simply sign his name to it, it would be of no force. His name alone is not sufficient to enforce obedience; it must be accompanied with his title of office—“President of the United States.” This tells who he is, and shows the extent of his jurisdiction. His right to command extends throughout the United States, and no farther.

Now there is something connected with the law of God precisely analogous to this. As there may be many men in the United States bearing the President’s name, from whom he must be distinguished by his title of office, so “there are many that are called gods,” from whom the true and living God must be distinguished. In the Sabbath precept, and that alone of the entire decalogue, we find that which distinguishes the Creator from all “the gods that have not made the heavens and the earth.” Jer. 10:11. The seal of the “living God” is the fact that he is the Creator of all things. This fact is stated in the Sabbath commandment, and in no other of the entire law. The reason for the giving of this commandment is, “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.” Ex. 20:11. Take this from the law, and there is nothing left to show who is the giver of it. It might be some other god. But in this he reveals himself as Creator; and being the Creator of all things, he has a right to rule, a right co-extensive with the universe which he has created.

The great Papal apostasy corrupted the word of God by removing this seal from his law. To abolish the ancient and only weekly Sabbath of the Bible, and to substitute a memorial of another event in its stead, as the Roman Church claims to have done, is to leave the Creator and his memorial out of his law. Thus have men, to the extent of their power, robbed from the living God the seal of his law. For this reason is the prophetic command given, “Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples.” This is a prophecy that such a work would be done; and now we see it being done.

It is a remarkable, a truly wonderful thing, and would be utterly unaccountable, had not the prophecies foretold it, that now, after the church has slumbered for centuries apparently satisfied with a mutilated law and counterfeit Sabbath, a rival of that of the Creator, there should be in this latter half of the nineteenth century a general awakening all over the earth on this important subject, and people in almost every nation returning to the observance of the long down-trodden Sabbath of the Lord. There is no reasonable way to account for this fact but by recognizing the hand of God in the fulfillment of the prophecies of the restoration of his law in the last days. The promise of God is being fulfilled; the testimony is being bound up, the law is being sealed.

It is not some cunningly devised fable that is leading people of all nations to forsake the prevailing customs of their fellows, to suffer inconvenience, reproach, and persecution. It is the Spirit of God leading them back to his word, the only sure refuge in the stormy time that is just before us, the only secure covering in the day of wrath. “I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. . . . His truth shall be thy shield and buckler.” See Ps. 91.

R. F. COTTRELL.