TO WHOM DOES THE SABBATH BELONG?
By T. L. Waters
"Moreover also I gave them My Sabbaths, to be a sign between Me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify them [margin, 'I Jehovah do sanctify them.']" Eze. 20:12. THE question is often asked me, "As an Adventist, you believe that people will be saved by keeping the Sabbath, do you not?" I always reply, "O, no; people must be saved before they can truly keep it, or have any right to it; like the Lord's Supper, it is exclusively the Lord's, and none but His people have any right to it." They may obtain physical rest, but that is the least part of its blessing. None but God's children—spiritual Israel—can receive the spiritual blessings of the Sabbath. Of these benefits the prophet writes: "If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on My holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable; and shalt honor Him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words; then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth [places of worship], and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." Isa. 58:13, 14. The heritage of Jacob is the new earth. See Heb. 11:8-16. All these promises belong to the people of God—so also the Sabbath; it is a "sign between Me and them," and to all others its observance is mere form without the blessing. God does not make this so arbitrarily; it is so in the very nature of the case. We must be made a new creation in Christ Jesus to do His work; then we shall truly know the rest and blessing of His Sabbath.