What is the mark of the beast? Is it Sunday-keeping? Do Seventh-day Adventists teach that it is? INQUIRER. Seventh-day Adventists do not teach that Sunday-keeping is the mark of the beast. There are many thousands of God's children who have observed Sunday and are observing it. They have believed and do believe that it is a holy day, and that they are glorifying God in its observance. In this they are in error. “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” So the voice of God declared from heaven. So His finger wrote in the very heart of His holy law. The good of all Biblical ages from Adam to our blessed Lord and His apostles observed it; and we are over and over assured in the Book of God that His holy law is unchangeable, even to the jots and tittles. Ps. 111:7, 8; Isa. 51:6, 7; Matt. 5:17-20. Thus God has given us law and example for its observance, and its deeper study will show that it is founded on the eternal principles of the character of God. Sunday is an interloper. It has neither divine command nor example. By no word of Inspiration is a sacred character for it predicted or assumed. It is one of the “six working days” and no more. Religiously, it is “the wild solar holiday of all pagan times,” dedicated to the worship of the sun, among the seasons and times forbidden of God. It came into the Christian church thru that apostasy which should “magnify itself,” and “think to change the times and the law.” Dan. 8:11; 7:25; 11:36-39; 2 Thess. 2:3-7. The Roman Catholic Church declares Sunday-keeping in the church to be the mark of her power to command fasts and holy days. “That the (Roman Catholic) church hath power,” she declares, is proved “by the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday.”—“Abridgement of Christian Doctrine.” Protestants have no other authority than that of pagan and papal tradition. Yet many have not understood, many do not understand, that they are in error, and God blesses them, not because of the error, but notwithstanding the error; for “the eyes of Jehovah run to and fro thruout the whole earth to show Himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward Him.” True service is a matter of love; knowledge is a matter of revelation and instruction. There are many who know little but love much, and God is leading them on to greater light and knowledge. It is also sadly true that there are many who know much but love little or not at all. For them God waits. Unless the heart and affections are yielded to Him to be changed by His Spirit, knowledge will avail nothing, and the light which is in them will become darkness. Now in God's providence and plan His great Threefold Message of Rev. 14:6-14 is going to the world to call men from darkness to light; is going to Babylon to call men from confusion of cruel dogma and tradition back to the word of God. Some in every nation, tribe, and people, will hear, and heed, and do; will return to “the everlasting Gospel,” and be found among those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” Rev. 14:12. Others will abide in Babylon, will in Babylon commit spiritual fornication by uniting with civil power to enforce the dogmas and traditions of error, among which will be Sunday. Around this all the union of church-and-state forces are gathering. This union and consequent conditions between church and state compose the beast and the image, till organized apostasy and church-and-state tyranny are world-wide. The mark and test of allegiance to this power will be the legal Sunday, the great mark of apostasy, the change in God's law; and he who in the light of God's word turns from that light, from that law, from that Gospel and its power, to the darkness of tradition and apostasy, to the power of the civil arm, receives in his very worship and yielded allegiance the character of the power he serves, and he crowns that with the badge of beast authority, the mark of his servitude, by the observance of Sunday as enforced by the beast and his image, in contradistinction to the true service of God in the Sabbath of the fourth commandment. This is in principle the mark of the beast. Just the particular form it may assume in the future development, we do not know. Just at what stage of character development men possess that mark and cut themselves off from God, it is not for mortals to say. Judgment rests with God, not man. It is for us to proclaim the solemn warning against false worship, the dread consequences of sin; to set forth the eternal principles of the true; to plead with men to come to Christ in the faith that changes character; to entreat that Spirit which writes God's holy law upon the heart, and makes the doing of His every command a delight. But, praise God, the judgment of those who reject His truth rests not with us, but with Him.