The Great Threefold Message
By Roderick S. Owen
VIII. The Seal of God and the Mark of the Beast
As past articles have shown, the Threefold Message of Revelation 14 will divide the inhabitants of the earth into just two classes. Note the description and experience of each. One class fear God and give glory to Him and worship the Creator who made heaven and earth. The other worship the beast or his image. The one class have the seal of the living God in their foreheads; the other have the mark of the beast in their foreheads or in their hands. The one class get the victory over the beast and the image, and stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God; the other receive the wrath of God in the seven last plagues. Under this message "fearful is the issue to which the world will be brought. The powers of earth uniting will decree, under sentence of death, that all shall conform to the customs of the church. On the other hand God's law demands obedience and threatens all who disobey with the wrath of God. While one class, by accepting the sign of submission to earthly powers, receive the mark of the beast; the other, choosing the token of allegiance to divine authority, receive the seal of God." We must now inquire, What is the seal? and, What is the mark? If we can but find the seal, it will be easy to find the mark, for it must be that which stands opposed to the seal and is being substituted for it. As we have seen, this seal is the seal of the Creator, and those who receive it worship and fear God as creator. So let us go back to the account of Creation and see if God there established a sign or seal of His creative power. In Gen. 1:1-5 we read: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. . . . And God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day." The record which follows shows that God in a period of six days, each one of which was composed of a dark portion followed by one of light, completed the work of creating and fashioning the heaven and the earth, and also in calling into existence the creatures, including man, which were to inhabit the earth. At the close of this description of this week we are told that "God saw [looked at, or considered] everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good." In describing the experience of God in looking at what He had made in the first verses of the second chapter, the writer says: "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made." But Isa. 40:28 tells us that "the Creator of the ends of the earth fainteth not, neither is weary." Then God's rest was not a physical rest; yet we are told in Ex. 31:17 that God rested and was refreshed. The principal element in rest is taking pleasure. This is true even of physical rest. Let a person be very tired and let something occur which affords great pleasure, and immediately the tired one feels greatly refreshed and strengthened, and so God's rest of the seventh day was a refreshing pleasure and satisfaction which came to Him as He beheld all that He had made and saw that it was good. He was pleased by contemplating His new creation. Thus by viewing with pleasure what He had made, God entered into His rest and ceased from His works. Heb. 4:4, 10. But the record tells us that when God had thus rested on the seventh day, He also blessed and sanctified (set apart) the seventh day because in it He had rested. By being thus set apart and blessed, the seventh day became the sign of the Creator, a sign of the creative power exercised by the Creator, a sign of the rest of the Creator after the exercise of creative power. A sign or seal of anything depends for its existence upon the existence of that of which it is the sign. To illustrate: The fourth day of July was set apart to be kept as a sign of our independence as a nation. As long as we maintain our independence and exist as a nation, so long the Fourth of July will retain its significance as a sign. The weekly cycle of seven days with the seventh as the crowning day of the cycle has been recognized by all the nations of the earth, both ancient and modern, and God has given the seventh day with its accompanying cycle of time as the universal sign of the true God, the sign of His creative power exercised during the six days and of His rest when His work was finished. And just as long as the creation stands, just as long as the Creator exists, the seventh-day Sabbath must retain its significance, because it will always remain a fact that He rested on that day, constituting it the Sabbath or rest day. But when sin came, God's rest was no longer a perfect rest. Sorrow entered. God's pleasure was marred; for He no longer could look upon all things which He had made and behold them very good. But God would not suffer His creation to be eternally marred nor His rest to be eternally broken; but He immediately introduced the plan of salvation, designed to restore the creation to its perfection, and thus completely restore God's rest. And when this shall be accomplished and the heavens and the earth shall stand forth once more in their original beauty, then shall God's rest be perfect, and from one Sabbath to another shall all flesh come up to worship before the Lord. Isa. 66:22, 23. A Pledge of Future Perfection
But when sin entered, God did not take away the seventh day as a Sabbath, but allowed it to remain with His blessing and sanctification upon it as a token or pledge of the final re-creation of all things, and so it became a sign or assurance of creative power in redemption. While it still points back as a memorial to God's rest on the last day of that first weekly cycle, it also points forward to that perfect rest which shall be the portion of all the universe, when redemption shall be completed and sin with all its direful consequences shall eternally cease to exist. Let us now trace the seventh day through the history of the world as set forth in the Bible and see if it is used as a sign of the Creator, as a sign of His creative power both in creation and redemption, and as the sign of His rest. Aside from the incidental reference to the Sabbath in the fact that the patriarchs measured time by the weekly cycle of seven both in days and years, which cycle owns its origin to the week of Creation, the first positive mention of the Sabbath after Creation's week is found in connection with the deliverance of the children of Israel from Egypt. Of Abraham, the father of this people, we read that he kept God's commandments, His statutes and His laws. Gen. 26:5. But during the captivity in Egypt the people largely lost their knowledge of the true God and of His laws and came to worship false gods. When God sent Moses and Aaron to deliver the Israelites they immediately began to teach the people to fear God and give glory to Him and to worship only the Creator; and in connection with this they taught the people to rest; not ordinary rest which all slaves were permitted to enjoy, but the rest which recognized Jehovah as the true God. Pharaoh not only refused to recognize the true God, but also refused to let the people keep His rest day, and he said to Moses, "Ye make them rest [literally, Sabbatize] from their burdens." And he instructed the taskmasters to compel the people to deliver the full tale, or tally, of bricks every day, and in order that this might be sure to fully occupy every day, they were to gather the straw in the fields. Ex. 5:1-19. So as the servants of Pharaoh, the children of Israel could not keep God's Sabbath.7 Then God set to work to demonstrate the fact that He is the Creator, and to deliver His people so that they might worship and obey Him. This He did by bringing upon Egypt ten plagues in which there were repeated manifestations of creative power. Israel and many of the Egyptians recognized God as the true God and the Creator, for we find them observing the seventh day as the Sabbath when they reached the wilderness of Sin, which they did just one month after the deliverance. Here they murmured against God and He gave them another manifestation of creative power by feeding them with manna. But He recognized the sanctification of the seventh day by ceasing His work of material creation, for while He created the manna on each of the six days, as the seventh He created none. He also recognized its sanctification for man, for He told them not to go out to seek manna on that day, but to make preparation on the sixth day so that they might rest on the seventh. Thus we see that thirty days before they reached Mount Sinai, the people who had been delivered by creative power, and who were being led by creative power, were keeping His sign, by His example and sanction. On the fifteenth day of the second month, just thirty days later, they reached the base of Mount Sinai, and on the third day following, God spoke His law to all the people. This was not a new law unknown and unheard of, for they had been taught before that it was wrong to lie, to kill, to swear, to steal, and to have false gods; and they were already keeping the Sabbath day, but He would repeat to them in a most impressive way the law which was kept by their father Abraham, and upon the keeping of which the Abrahamic covenant rested. He would give it to them in a permanent form so that it might be preserved for future generations. So He came down on Sinai, accompanied by all the holy angels, covering the mount with His glory, and spoke ten precepts, the fourth one of which reads as follows: "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy man servant, nor thy maid servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: 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." Here we find that God sets forth the Sabbath as His rest day, as the seal of His creation, and again states that as such He had blessed and sanctified it. In rehearsing this law to Israel, Moses calls their attention to the fact that they were servants in Egypt and could not keep the Sabbath, but that God by a high hand and a stretched-out arm (even by creative power) had brought them out, and so He commanded them to keep it. But they are to remember that when they were servants in Egypt they were not permitted to keep it, and so they are not to deal with their servants as they had been dealt with, but are to permit their servants to keep it with them. The Saviour says the Sabbath was made (that is, rested upon, blessed and sanctified) for man (Mark 2:27); not for one man or for one class of men, but for man, mankind; so the Sabbath, according to the words of Jesus, is God's sign or seal for the whole human family. We have found that the Sabbath is the sign of creative power wherever exercised either in creation or redemption, and we also have found that God's rest or Sabbatizing was rejoicing in a new creation. We are told in Hebrews that only those who have faith can enter into God's rest, and that we who have believed have entered into His rest. Why? Simply because those who have believed are made new creatures, or creations, in Christ Jesus, and they rejoice in being thus re-created unto good works. This new creature ceases from his former works which were works of sin, and into this new creature God puts His rest, and He blesses and sanctifies this man and thus he is made a Christian. Being thus sanctified or made holy he can keep a day holy; for none but a holy man can keep a day holy, and so the apostle, after speaking of those who believe entering into His rest, says: "There remaineth therefore a rest ["keeping of a Sabbath." See margin] to the people of God." Heb. 4:9. Thus we see according to God's plan, the man into whom God's rest has entered and whom God has blessed and sanctified (the Christian man), will keep holy the day into which God has put His rest and which He has blessed and sanctified (the Christian Sabbath). And so God has held out His rest and His rest day to all the human family. He offered it to Israel in the wilderness saying, "To-day if ye will hear His voice." Again a few hundred years later He limited or set another day or time, through David, saying, "To-day if ye will hear His voice." Again in the apostles' day He limited another day, saying, "To-day if ye will hear His voice." And even to-day under the third angel's message as the ambassadors of God, we limit another day, saying to the people, "To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts." Yes, God is still holding out the same rest to those who will believe, and He sets before us the same day, the seventh day, as the sign of that rest. Yes, reader, the seventh day is the seal of the living God, the sign of His creative power, the token of His rest. Will you be made a new creature in Christ Jesus and, rejoicing in the new creation, enter into God's rest? Then you will wear the badge (the seventh day) of your allegiance to God, even tho the powers of earth may combine to force you to obey an opposing power. Thus we see that the seventh day is the seal of the living God. But we find the mass of professed Christians keeping the first day of the week instead of the seventh. Thus the first day becomes the rival of God's Sabbath and in this way the law has been robbed of its seal among the disciples of Jesus. The work of the third angel's message is to replace the seal of God in His law and thus will be carried out the instruction given by the Lord through Isaiah, in chapter 8:16: "Bind up the testimony, seal [or put the seal to] the law among My disciples."