p. 2 | 3292.-The Law of God

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 22, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 46.

3292.—The Law of God

Is the law of God, or the Ten Commandments, the law God ruled heaven with before the earth was created? Did they keep the Sabbath, etc., there?

In one record of the giving of that law we read that God "added no more" (Deut. 5:22), showing that it was perfect and complete. In Ps. 19:7 we read, "The law of the Lord is perfect." In Eccl. 12:13 it is said, "Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man." That which is perfect, that which expresses the whole duty of man, must be in itself a complete law of character. That is also shown in the fact that it will be the rule of the judgment. Verse 14; James 2:8-12. As God desired that man should have a character like Himself, that law must express God's character. Matt. 5:48; Lev. 19:2; 1 Peter 1:16. Observing this law man would form a character like his Creator. This would be in perfect harmony of course with God's will; but the prayer that Jesus taught, "Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven," would show that God's will is the same in both heaven and earth; and a half dozen other considerations would demonstrate the same thing. We can then come to but one conclusion, and that is that the great principles of the Decalogue were the principles that ruled in heaven before the earth was created. We would not understand that they were given there in the same form as they are given to sinful man; they were spoken to man as negative prohibitions. To the sinless creatures they were not prohibitions, but enabling acts. Every precept furnished the power to the heart of faith to do what the precept demanded.

The Sabbath day was given of God, not as a day of mere physical rest, but as a worship day; and all the considerations which surround it would seem to demand that wherever God had intelligent creatures the worship day was just as truly needed among them as among the inhabitants of this world. Therefore what would be more fitting than that God's Sabbath law should be a universal law?