Genesis 2:3, commentary and pictures

After finishing six literal days of creating and making the heavens and the earth and all their host, God ended His work and rested on the seventh day and was refreshed, and because He had rested in it He blessed the seventh day and sanctified it as His own holy Sabbath to be kept ever afterward. His rest was not as one weary but as well pleased with work pronounced very good, and it did not stop His sustaining work by which all things continue. The Sabbath was instituted in Eden at the beginning of earth's history before sin and before Israel existed, made for all mankind and committed to Adam for all descendants. It stands as the weekly memorial of six-day creation, declaring the true living God as Creator and rightful Sovereign worthy of worship and distinguishing Him above all false gods. The blessing and sanctification have never been removed or transferred to another day, so the specific seventh day, Saturday, remains binding as God's sign and seal and great test of loyalty, while Sunday remains a common working day of human and papal origin with no divine sanction.

Meaning of Blessing Rest

After six days of creating and making the heavens and the earth and all their host, God ended His work, rested on the seventh day and was refreshed, and because He had rested in it He blessed the seventh day and sanctified it. That blessing and setting apart made the seventh day holy as His own Sabbath and rest day, instituted in Eden for His honor and glory to be kept ever afterward. The blessing and sanctification then placed have never been removed.

His rest was not as one weary but as well pleased and satisfied, looking with satisfaction upon work pronounced very good as perfect and worthy of Himself, rejoicing in the fruits of wisdom and goodness and manifestations of glory. He saw that a Sabbath was essential for man even in Paradise, considering man's spiritual and physical health in giving it. The angelic host took up a song of triumph and rejoicing at its appointment.

His rest meant ceasing from the work of creating, not stopping the sustaining work by which sun, waters, crops, nature, life and worlds continue. The Sabbath is therefore sacred rest, not useless inactivity, for people to cease ordinary work and devote its hours to healthful rest, worship and holy deeds. Work for worldly livelihood, pleasure, profit or gain is not lawful on it and its claims are not reduced or ended, but doing good honors it. Caring for the sick, healing, meeting urgent needs and relieving suffering accord with its purpose because God's work continues.

Even urgent sacred work such as building the tabernacle for His worship must give way to sacred observance, for the day is the Lord's rest day and God is jealous for its honor. Acts of necessity and mercy, such as Christ's Sabbath healings, do not break the Sabbath. Physicians must plan work to meet its requirements, not traveling or making appointments except to relieve real suffering and deferring unimportant cases, for withholding relief brings guilt and calling sacred what God calls sacred brings knowledge of true sanctification. The fixed distinction between the seventh day and six working days is not left for human wisdom to cut and carve or weave in amendments.

The rest followed six literal days and was itself one literal seventh day, not indefinite periods, and the first week was just like every other week. That first cycle was measured off as the sample and pattern for successive weeks till the close of time, establishing a seven-day week with six days given for labor because God worked then and the seventh reserved for rest in commemoration of His rest. To say the first week required seven vast indefinite periods obscures what God made plain, charges Him with commanding a literal week in commemoration of periods unlike His dealings with mortals, impeaches His wisdom, and makes the reason spoken from Sinai for the fourth commandment senseless.

His rest sets the example and pattern for man to follow the Creator, leave the occupation of daily life, lay aside own interests and pursuits, ordinary work for livelihood and worldly pleasure, profit or gain, and devote those sacred hours to healthful rest, worship, contemplation of God and holy deeds. Man was to look upon heavens and earth, reflect upon the great work of creation, behold evidences of wisdom and goodness, and be filled with love and reverence, gratitude and remembrance that all enjoyed came from the beneficent hand. This Sabbath rest belongs to the original plan joining equal use of mental and physical powers, as in man's work of dressing and keeping the garden.

Its foundation was laid when the foundations of the earth were laid, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. It bears the sanction of God and angels, established by the Ancient of days and commanded by His eternal word, ordained by no human authority and resting on no human tradition, plainly defined in Eden alongside the marriage law. For that reason it demands reverence and careful holy treatment as God's appointed day celebrating Him as Creator of heaven and earth.

Instituted in Eden

The seventh day was blessed and set apart at creation, at the very beginning of earth's history in Eden, before sin entered, before the Fall, and before Israel or the Jews existed as a people, so that it is as old as the world itself and as old as the human race. After heaven and earth and all their host were finished in six days, God ended His work, rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had created and made, and because of that rest He blessed the seventh day and sanctified it and gave it to the world as a memorial of His creative work. It was made for all mankind, for all human intelligences and every person upon the earth, committed to Adam as father and representative for all his descendants, not for Jews only but as God's message to all people upon the face of the earth.

The moral law with the blessing and sanctifying of the seventh day was given in Eden to Adam and Eve and through them to all descendants, requiring perfect obedience to all of God's requirements and commandments, with true holiness being obedience to God and not transgression. The Eden home lost when Adam and Eve transgressed God's law is regained through obedience to all of God's requirements, by those bending their footsteps heavenward overcoming as Christ overcame through perfect obedience and pointing others to it. Adam and Eve with angels and the heavenly host observed the day before the Fall, Adam kept it in innocence and continued to observe it in repentance after expulsion from Eden, and it will continue to be observed by the redeemed and the angels in honor of the Creator throughout eternity. From the beginning mankind divided into loyal observers and those like Cain and his descendants who chose their own time for labor and rest, and the day was kept from Adam onward by the patriarchs from Abel to Noah to Abraham to Jacob and by faithful souls through apostasy, persecution and reform, so that setting aside God's day for a man-made day repeats Cain's sin.

The antediluvians did not obey or honor it but followed inclination rather than commemorating creation, and its knowledge was largely lost when Israel was enslaved, corrupted by idolatry and forced to violate it in Egypt for four hundred years. After deliverance by mighty power in spite of Pharaoh's opposition, God called them out of Egypt so they might obey His laws and keep that Eden Sabbath, and brought them to Sinai to hear and obey the same Eden-given law proclaimed amid terrible majesty and awful grandeur. There He spoke the Ten Commandments to show the sacred and enduring character of the law, placing the seventh day in the bosom of the Decalogue as the fourth commandment declaring who the living God is, to lay the foundation for many generations by teaching children its binding claims line upon line and precept upon precept. To discard and scorn the Sabbath repeats Adam's sin and tramples God's law underfoot, while widespread neglect does not lessen anyone's responsibility to keep God's precepts.

The weekly miracle of manna repeated and constantly testified to the Eden lesson as a standing witness, with a double portion given on the sixth day for two days and none falling on the Sabbath. The Sabbath commandment was thus given in Eden before it was given from Sinai, and the miracle of giving manna from heaven testified constantly to that Eden-given commandment. The Sabbath was made for a round world controlled by the sun that rules the day, so when the seventh day comes in that round world it is the time in all countries and lands to observe it in honor of creation of the heavens and the earth in six literal days. In countries where for months there is no sunset and again no sunrise for months, the period of time is to be calculated by records kept, and God accepts obedience according to the circumstances of time in the sun-rising and sun-setting world, requiring obedience in perfect consistency with His created world.

Memorial of Creator

The seventh day is the weekly memorial of six-day creation and of God's rest and creative works, commemorating that He made heaven and earth in six working days and rested the seventh, testifying to His creative power, calling the Maker to mind, awakening gratitude, and pointing all to Him alone. He finished His work, ended His work of creation, was refreshed, and blessed and hallowed the day on which He rested, setting it apart to be observed as His memorial of creation, which is why the seventh-day Sabbath is kept. The Lord of heaven instituted it when Jehovah made the world and all things therein in six days through His appointed agency, One equal with Himself, and it is specified in His law given in Exodus 20 as the day to be observed as part of the laws of His kingdom given by Him who created the world and made man. It declares the true and living God as Creator, Maker, source of life and only true God worthy of reverence and worship, bearing witness to the power and Godhead of the everlasting God, distinguishing Him above heathen gods and all false gods. Unlike circumcision which was a sign in the flesh it is a sign in the mind.

It defines and identifies the living God who created the heavens, earth and all things as their Author, to whom all beings owe existence and reverence, with all nature testifying as designed to illustrate His Word. Diligent investigation and witness to vital doctrines concerning the salvation of the soul will bring even judges and kings in courts of justice, parliaments and councils to acknowledge Him as supreme. It reveals Him as the only true and living God, the Author of Christianity and the Author of all truth, instituted when the foundations of the world were laid, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. Keeping it is grateful acknowledgment that God is Creator and rightful sovereign, preserving a clear knowledge of the only true God. Had it always been kept human thoughts and affections would have been led to the Maker as the object of reverence and worship, and there would never have been an infidel, idolater, atheist, or infidelity about six-day creation.

As man looks upon the earth beneath and the heavens above as tangible proofs of God's infinite wisdom, his heart is filled with love and reverence for his Maker, and in a special sense on that day man draws his mind away from things of earth to contemplation of God and His mighty power. The institution is wholly commemorative, with nothing shadowy in it and no restricted application to any people. God made only one Sabbath. Its original and supreme object is to lead men to recognize duty to the Creator instead of glorifying themselves. Setting aside the fourth commandment tears down this great memorial and causes men to forget God altogether.

It reveals God's supreme rulership as King of kings and Creator and the sacredness of His law as the standard of right-doing and action. Persistent refusal to render obedience and persistent disregard of that law will be visited in wrath. It is eternal truth that can never be changed, to be received with the fear of God and constant devotion, and to guide youth trained to connect with the Lord's work so they will be blessed and have wisdom to do work aright in meekness and lowliness of heart. Keeping the day identified in the fourth commandment honors the living God as Creator and declares loyalty to Him as Sovereign of the universe. God's rest on the seventh day after six days of creation made the Sabbath a memorial of creation and a pledge and sign of the relation existing between the Creator and His created beings. The earth came holy and beautiful from God's hand, and the day is especially suited to teach children about the Creator and connect its meaning with trees, flowers, hills and fields, knowing God through the works of creation and the beauty of nature.

Christ Creator and Redeemer

All things were made in six days through the appointed agency of One equal with God, Jesus Christ the Son, with man as the last crowning work formed in God's own personal form and image, and for that reason the Sabbath blessed because God rested in it is also a token of Christ's love and power and a memorial of His creative work. The Lord of heaven Himself instituted that creation Sabbath as a memorial when Jehovah made the world and all things therein, setting it apart to holy use and giving it to Adam in the joy of a finished and very good work while the morning stars sang together. After resting on that day He placed His sanctity and blessing upon the day of His rest, ordaining it to be sacredly observed as a day of rest and worship throughout all time, when men look upon heaven and earth to honor, worship, praise and exalt God who created all things by Jesus Christ. Keeping the day wherein God rested thus preserves the knowledge of God, marks the line between him that serves God and him that serves Him not, and reveals its keepers as His peculiar people whose Maker sanctifies them.

The Father and the Son rested together when the heavens and the earth and all their host were finished, with rejoicing and contemplation of the glorious scene, and that completed work followed by rest set the pattern for redemption. It means completed work is followed by Sabbath rest, fulfilled when Christ's appointed sacrificial work was completed and He rested, just as the Father and Son had rested after creation. Christ worked with the Father in creating the earth and made the Sabbath as a reminder of His love and power and creative work, and the seventh day is God's memorial to be sacredly observed to keep ever fresh that God made the world by the hand of Jesus Christ in six days and rested, blessed and sanctified the seventh.

The Christ of the New Testament is the Christ of the Old who gave the Sabbath law in Eden, plainly defined so there could be no ignorance, as part of God's guarding law, and He is Lord of the Sabbath. Jesus Christ, equal with the Father, worked with Him in making the world in six days, then God sanctified and set apart the seventh day as the day of rest to stand forever as a memorial of the Creator laying obligation to keep holy the day Jehovah blessed. He placed His own divine sanction on that blessing, ordained the seventh day as a memorial of His creative works, and carries the plan from the Alpha of Genesis through incarnation, sacrifice, death, burial, resurrection, ascension and heavenly advocacy to the Omega of Revelation. Adam kept it in innocence in holy Eden and in repentance after expulsion, and it was kept by all the patriarchs from Abel to Noah to Abraham to Jacob, then proclaimed again in grandeur at Israel's deliverance after its knowledge was largely lost in Egyptian bondage, with the weekly gift of manna repeating the Eden lesson by a double portion on Friday and none on the Sabbath. Christ honored and kept it according to God's law, not according to human rules that misrepresented God.

He freed the day from the human traditions, maxims, rigorous exactions and rubbish piled on by Jewish teachers who had buried it and turned it into a yoke of bondage, and restored it by precept and example to reveal its true spiritual and holy character. In His precepts and example He joined heaven and earth in harmonious action, and His disciples kept gaining new discoveries of truth about the day from Him.

In God's plan His death was timed so His great sacrificial work as a lamb without blemish and spot would be completed on Friday the sixth day at the very time designed, and He would then rest in Joseph's tomb through the sacred Sabbath hours in quiet uninterrupted peace with folded hands behind a great stone. Just as Father and Son had rested after creation, so His hour of apparent defeat was the hour of His victory, when the great plan devised and laid before the foundations of the earth were laid was successfully carried out. That creation rest on which Jesus lay is forever linked with the promise of a restored creation and a redeemed race that having conquered sin can never fall, glorious to heavenly beings, and because His work is perfect and whatsoever God does lasts forever it will still be a day of rest and rejoicing at the restitution of all things when heaven and earth unite in praise as the nations of the saved bow in joyful worship to God and the Lamb from one Sabbath to another.

Unlike the Sabbath, the resurrection did not occur on a serial day of the week and does not establish a weekly sacred day in its place, for the seventh day alone is the day God rested from creation and set apart as a creation memorial. Jesus Christ Himself ordained, sanctified and blessed the seventh-day Sabbath as a memorial of His creative works, and the Sabbath remains His day now when He comes with converting power to touch the human heart, to cause the love of Christ to spring forth, and to lead people to give themselves to Him to suffer for His name and afterward receive glory.

Unchanged Holy Law

The blessing and setting apart placed on the seventh day have never been removed, and no human being can change the institution, for there has been no change in the divine mind and no other day was ever sanctified. The verse is eternal truth that can never be changed, abrogated or lessened, standing on an eternal basis with the divine signature and pledge to bless the obedient. It remains binding as a sign for a thousand generations until the people of God are in the city of God and on the renewed earth.

The specific day blessed is the seventh day, which is Saturday, not the first or second or third day nor any common working day. Sunday, the first day of the week, remains a common working day with no sanctity, blessing, requirement or divine sanction, which was never set apart, ordained or instituted. To honor the first day in place of the seventh casts aside the seventh-day Sabbath and gives to the first what belongs only to the seventh, declaring Sunday the Sabbath sets aside God's day and puts an idol where the Lord's day should be.

There is no Scriptural warrant or foundation in the open Bible for keeping Sunday instead of the seventh day. Keeping Sunday follows human invention and Roman and papal authority and the canons of Rome, while keeping the seventh obeys the command, even when poor and needing money, trusting God for strength. Resting on another ordinary working day does not honor the day sanctified, and substituting one day for it insults the Creator whose command is to be followed exactly without treating another day as acceptable.

No human invention, no exaltation of a common working day or Sunday festival by the man of sin under Satan, no acceptance by all the churches, no numbers observing it, no age, universal reverence, institution or honor from man can give any sanctity to another day. Such power cannot transfer the blessing belonging to the seventh alone to the first day, displace the memorial, convert Sunday into a sanctified day, or place heaven's seal upon it. The distinction between the seventh day and the six working days made in Eden is not left for human wisdom to decide, men are not left to sanctify or profane the day or to cut and carve the law with amendments, and the only question to be settled is what God requires and has said.

God gave six days for common labor, temporal work and secular business but put His sanctity upon the seventh day and declared it holy, reserving it from common use for Himself for rest, worship, holy communion and sacred rest. As He gave Adam and Eve in Eden the use of every tree save one, so He reserved the seventh day, and as He gives nine-tenths while reserving the tenth, so He reserves this portion of time especially for rest and worship when men look upon heaven and earth and honor, worship, praise and exalt the Creator of all things by Jesus Christ. The day belongs to God as a day to rest from labor, worship, and improve the spiritual condition, with no secular, servile or common work, own pleasure, interests, words or excursion, so appropriating His holy time, doing own work in its hours or presenting another day robs God, offers common for holy, brings judgment and forfeits blessing.

The Eden blessing was spoken again at Sinai amid terrible majesty where Father and Son were together, proclaimed with His own voice as Ruler of the world on two tables of stone to Moses for the people delivered from Egypt despite Pharaoh's opposition. After creating the world in six days and finishing His work He rested on the seventh day and was refreshed, and He blessed the seventh day and sanctified the day on which He rested. That seventh day was placed in the bosom of the Decalogue as the fourth commandment declaring who the living God is, specified in His law in Exodus 20 as the day to be observed as a memorial of creation, part of the laws of His kingdom given by Him who created the world and made man.

The fourth commandment begins with Remember, proving it was not then instituted but points back to creation for its origin. It joins duties to God and fellow men as part of the firm immutable moral law, unchanged and binding on all inhabitants, its light uniting Mosaic and Christian dispensations as shown by the heavenly sanctuary, to be kept and taught with Jesus' teachings as an inseparable whole and a perpetual covenant memorial throughout generations. The holy commandments were given by God at the creation of the world and later recapitulated from Mount Sinai, the earlier teachings of Christ given through Moses belonging with the new teachings of Jesus.

The creation Sabbath is the same Sabbath required in the fourth commandment and identified as the sign between God and His people, the day Christ kept and the women kept according to the commandment when they rested and then came to the tomb on the first day. Keeping that memorial requires observing the very day of the week on which God rested, just as the Fourth of July is kept in commemoration of national independence.

Observing that seventh day is one of Christ's precepts and God's commandments, and those who through faith in Christ obey all the commandments testify to their love for Christ and will reach the sinless condition in which Adam lived before transgression. If the Sabbath is accepted the rest of the commands in the Decalogue will be obeyed, for no one can truly keep the Sabbath and disregard one precept of the law. Its principles with the whole law will decide the destiny of every soul in the day of judgment, and in the final decision of every case people will be judged by this Word, with those who keep an unblessed day without searching the Scriptures left without excuse for ignorance.

The institution is to stand forever as a memorial laying obligation on men and women to keep holy the day Jehovah blessed, in contrast to a spurious rest exalted by the man of sin above God. Tearing it down and putting the first day where the seventh should be dishonors God, divorces from God, obscures His sign, and is transgression of the law, while keeping it holy bears His sign in contrast to worship of the beast and his image and the mark of the beast.

The Lord's day on which John received his vision of events before the end is the seventh-day Sabbath blessed at creation. John sacredly observed it upon Patmos just as when he was among the people preaching upon that day, contemplating Horeb, Adam's breach and God's love in giving His Son. Christ does not own the first day as Sabbath, and the day's holiness rests on God's act of blessing and sanctifying it, which Christians originally guarded as sacred before the seventh-day Sabbath was changed by human action into Sunday.

It will continue through the Christian age to the end of time, lasting through eternal ages as a perpetual covenant and token as long as creation is a reason for worship and man exists. Christ gave no new Sabbath but gave it to be perpetuated until He takes His people, so it was still observed after the crucifixion, and it will be kept in the new earth where from Sabbath to Sabbath all come before the Lord and where the redeemed and angels observe it in honor of the Creator.

Jehovah conferred special honors upon the seventh day by resting upon it, blessing it, sanctifying it, and commanding it to be kept holy, requiring His people to number time by sevens lest they forget their Creator who made heaven and earth in six days and rested on the seventh. The same God who gives sunshine that makes the earth bring forth, fruitful showers, heavens with sun and stars, human reason and daily watchcare rested upon the seventh day and set His blessing upon it, so simple justice as stewards requires respecting the day He blessed instead of robbing His treasury of what belongs to Him. Lightly esteeming that day is transgression whose reward is death, choosing one's own time for labor and rest regardless of that command is open rebellion dividing mankind as from the beginning, and stealing even a little of that reserved time robs God.

God rested on the Sabbath from the work of creation and was refreshed, and He blessed the day of His rest and made keeping the Sabbath obligatory upon man as a sacred command of God to be observed. Followers of Christ must therefore be exemplary Sabbath keepers, and all who are not must reform and plant their feet firmly upon obedience.

Sign Seal and Test

The blessed and sanctified seventh day was given as a continual sign of divine love and mercy and of human obedience, a constant reminder of inclusion in the covenant of grace and a pledge throughout generations that the Lord sanctifies, chooses and sets apart His peculiar people, so that as they keep it holy they bear testimony to the nations that they are His chosen people. It is the sign, seal, mark and covenant between Him and His people forever for a perpetual covenant, designating His separate peculiar people from all other peoples and nations and marking loyalty. It shows they are sanctified and reveals the Lawgiver's authority, preserving among the nations a clear knowledge of the only true God above all gods, and preserving it puts His seal upon them, while ignoring it wounds God and casts off allegiance.

The divine blessing and setting apart makes the seventh day the Sabbath required by the fourth commandment, standing as God's great test and everlasting memorial of making the world and all nature in six days and resting the seventh, and as the sign of loyalty to Him in contrast to worship of the beast and his image and the mark of the beast. Observing it identifies His people as loyal and acknowledges His power as Creator, with obedience reflecting His government and law in daily life. That creation Sabbath is to be kept holy not merely legally but with understanding of its spiritual bearing on daily life, as a sign of sanctification through obedience and evidence of true conversion by which the loyal are set apart in body, soul and spirit, spoken to all created intelligences and testifying through eternal ages that God is the only living true God.

Keeping it denominates God's people and distinguishes the obedient from the disloyal, the just from the unjust, the righteous from the wicked, the saved from the unsaved, marking the line between him that serves God and him that serves Him not. It is the test of obedience to honor and glorify God in these last days, in all ages the test of loyalty to God whose importance must be presented so plainly that no transgressor hearing it is excusable, bringing joy among angels yet bringing persecution on the militant church. It is His sign distinguishing the obedient from the disobedient and His memorial to be upheld in churches and institutions in witness against the false sabbath, against which every species of deception is worked so that the day shall not be respected.

Observing the seventh day acknowledges God as Creator before the churches and the world and distinguishes Sabbathkeepers from all who disregard it, and its observance is enjoined on all who belong to Christ as true Israel. No human invention, no exaltation of a common working day or Sunday festival by the man of sin, no acceptance by churches, no numbers observing it and no honor from man can give sanctity to another day, displace the memorial, convert Sunday into a sanctified day or place heaven's seal upon it. Keeping the true day acknowledges God's government while keeping the spurious first-day sabbath acknowledges the kingdom of rebellion, for resting the seventh upholds the dignity of the law, counteracts pleasure and self-gratification and builds barriers against ungodliness, while resting the first instead transgresses and bears false testimony.

Those who obey by keeping the blessed day bear the seal of the living God in contrast to the mark of the beast enforced by human law, since the blessing and setting apart point to God as Creator and are the sign of His rightful authority over the beings He made. Sanctification from God is bestowed only on those honoring Him by obeying all His commands including the Sabbath criterion in the bosom of the Decalogue, whose original and supreme object is to lead men to recognize duty to the Creator instead of glorifying themselves, while sanctification claimed while ignoring His rest for a spurious sabbath and continuing in transgression is spurious and deceives the religious world. Obedience to the sanctified seventh day, given at creation and later recapitulated from Sinai as God's special appointment for spiritual duties and service, marks those who love, fear and serve God and distinguishes them from the disobedient, unholy and those who fear Him not. Disregarding that law and instituting another day in its place sets human way and will against the Word, breaks the law and plunges the world in rebellion and sin, while keeping it holy shows loyalty.

All who observe the Sabbath honor God and will themselves be honored, and observing it is the test upon every professed Christian and the sign between him that serves God and him that serves Him not in the face of a world worshiping a false sabbath. God's rest gives the Sabbath its significance as a reminder of creation, and resting the sanctified day, calling sacred what God calls sacred and keeping it pure with no work or own pleasure and no desecration, honors the Creator and shows He is chosen as Leader. Sacred observance in words and actions shows love and honor for Him as Creator and reveals before neighbors a spiritual relation to God. It is a day of joy and a witness that He is omnipotent and full of goodness and mercy, preserving knowledge of Him as the true and living God through knowing whom is life and peace, a peculiar treasure and trust to be carefully cherished as a day to rest and reflect upon sacred things and to be observed through every age as a perpetual covenant.

It was given for humanity's benefit and God's honor as the connecting link between God and man continuing as long as He has a people on earth, by which all who observe it signify they are worshipers of the living Creator of heaven and earth. Honoring God by keeping it confesses truth, leaves the enemy's ranks and places one on Christ's side in loyalty, bringing divine comfort, strength from God, knowledge of true sanctification and abundant entrance to the kingdom. Trampling it after light has come, bowing to Sunday after knowing the commands, transgressing it or exalting Sunday as a false rest day decides destiny, cuts off from His people and chooses death and bondage for worldly interest as Adam lost Eden for the least test, so those reasoning God will not condemn Sunday-keeping will be condemned. Disregarding explicit directions, setting aside His commands to teach another day and trampling what God made holy will not leave men guiltless but they will be regarded according to works. After light has come, willful violators cannot be saved in breaking the fourth any more than thief, murderer or adulterer, for mercy does not excuse transgression and each precept is equally sacred, and to ignore His holy day inflicts a deep wound upon God and casts off allegiance.

Persisting in violating the holy day God Himself set apart transgresses His law for which He will punish, for men reap as sown, and treating it lightly brings death. Disregarding it and choosing other times for labor and rest is disobedience, violation of His command and rejection of the Creator, and desecrating it through love of gain, pursuits, pleasure and sin breaks His binding law during probation given to prepare for eternity. Trampling upon the blessed day to accept a counterfeit transgresses His holy law. Resting on Sunday instead of the seventh annuls His commandment and causes the earth itself, in distinction from those who dwell on it, to do homage to the power that originated Sunday. Using the seventh for own business withholds what He claims and appropriates what He reserved for His own honor and majesty, repeating Adam's transgression against covenant and law and partaking of the forbidden tree.

Putting a man-devised sabbath where the memorial should be, setting aside the day declared holy for a common working day, trampling the seventh-day Sabbath underfoot and compelling reverence for the man-made first day brings contempt for law and order, violence, crime, wretchedness and misery. To steal the Lord's day for self-serving and self-pleasing robs God and is exceedingly offensive to Him, making the world guilty, and accepting a common working day as holy while His set-apart day is trampled insults God and stamps the man of sin upon the world.

Counterfeit and Final Conflict

Because the seventh day points to God as Creator, Satan makes it his special work to misinterpret its purpose and object and directs his efforts especially against it to turn men from allegiance to God and obedience to His law, seeking to set it aside and exalt in its place the heathen festival of the venerable day of the sun. God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it as a blessing given to man, not merely as a form but as a test and an everlasting memorial that He made the world and all nature in six days and rested on the seventh, keeping Him ever before minds as the source of being and the object of reverence and worship and distinguishing Him from all false gods. To move or transfer this memorial destroys its significance and its sanctity.

Ever since that institution in Eden Satan has made a determined effort to destroy this memorial of the creation of the world and all things therein and to institute a spurious sabbath in its place, so that the memorial of God's great and wonderful works might be lost from the mind and a worldwide apostasy against God's law brought about. Working with the papal power as helper with masterly power, he has worked to make the holy seventh-day Sabbath null and void by changing times and laws, treading the true seventh day underfoot and casting it aside while exalting a spurious idol sabbath upheld by princes and rulers, and the whole Christian world has been led to depreciate the seventh day. Leading men and women to disregard the fourth commandment places them on Satan's side of the controversy, because whosoever keeps the whole law yet offends in one point is guilty of all. Searching the Scriptures after 1844 revealed that God's people were not keeping this seventh-day Sabbath set apart and ordained by God and sanctified by Jehovah Himself, for it had been exchanged for a spurious sabbath born of papal authority that human laws seek to compel in strict observance and worship under penalty.

Sunday as a sacred day was a day devoted to vile heathen sun worship, a foundling of heathenism that was cherished and nourished by the church of Rome and clothed by her in garments of sanctity. It was set up by Roman and papal power, Catholic authority, the man of sin and canons of Rome as a spurious, false, idol sabbath of human origin with no foundation in God's Word, which God never set apart or ordained. Protestants have no biblical basis for keeping it holy while Rome claims delegated church power, setting itself above God, and long universal keeping gives it no sanctity nor excuses disobedience. To exalt Sunday universally in place of the seventh day is to offer a spurious Sabbath, putting the common working day for the sacred, failing to distinguish between the sacred and the common. That transgression of God's supreme authority will surely bring punishment, for the first day kept as a Sabbath is an idol sabbath and false sabbath that God no more accepts than the strange fire of Nadab and Abihu.

The true Sabbath was kept by all Christians in the first centuries as the holy of the Lord and sacredly observed while Sunday was only a festival in honor of the resurrection and a day of recreation, until Constantine enjoined Sunday observance, the bishop of Rome titled it the Lord's day, and church councils pressed the instituted Sabbath lower and exalted Sunday higher until the pagan festival was honored as a divine institution and the Bible Sabbath was pronounced a relic of Judaism. Sunday's later use as a festival did not make it the Sabbath, for the day's sacredness began at creation and it remained the Sabbath Christians were to observe. Replacing God's day with another disregards His law and positive teaching, tears down the great memorial representing His power in creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh, and exalts above God in an effort to supersede God and maintain a power in opposition to and above Him. The seventh-day Sabbath was later changed by human action into Sunday, a change that tampered with God's law and placed human authority above God, for its sacredness comes from God consecrating the seventh day, not from human authority, and the institution by which it was supplanted is of human origin.

To change the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week is the work of satanic agencies by the man of sin who thought to change times and laws, for God made the seventh day of the week the Sabbath, and not the first, second, or third day. Disregarding the Sabbath and accepting a spurious Sabbath dishonors that memorial of creation and confirms disobedience like eating the fruit of a forbidden tree, giving Satan in the fallen world what he failed to gain in heaven, power to change God's immutable, enduring, perfect, soul-converting law that binds man to his Creator. Honoring a day of men's own inventing instead of the one God has blessed is a human substitute God will never accept for the true, for as Cain offered the firstfruits of the ground according to his own human ideas while Abel obeyed God in offering a lamb, so men today honor a false day rather than the blessed seventh day, disregarding a Thus saith the Lord, and as Cain's offering was rejected the spurious sabbath is rejected. Exalting the false and spurious Sabbath above the Sabbath blessed and sanctified by the Lord Jehovah for the use of man, joined with the kindred heresy of the immortality of the soul, and these heresies with the rejection of truth turn a church into Babylon, which is the wine of Babylon.

Transferring that benediction put on the seventh day to the first day is credulity that amazes the heavenly universe, for God put His benediction on the seventh day, not on the first day of the week, and the Sabbath commandment guards this original blessing by opening with the warning to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. To claim Sunday is the Sabbath of the Lord takes minds away from the very day He blessed and oppresses the people of God who obey His specified law, for there is no requirement in His Word to observe Sunday. Men treated the account of creation's Sabbath with contempt even as God powerfully defended the work associated with it. Many true Christians in every church, even in the Catholic Church, keep Sunday believing it is the day God sanctified and blessed, and while this ignorance and sincerity remains God accepts them, but when light falls upon their pathway God requires them to come into harmony with His law and observe the Sabbath of His appointing.

The true day of rest is the seventh day that God blessed and sanctified, to be known from Scripture itself and not from human sayings and opinions, and to be kept in earnest obedience to the Lord with God sanctified in the heart, bringing a blessing not found in keeping Sunday and preparing for entrance into the city of God, so obedience in this matter means everything. The Sabbath question is a test that will come to the whole world, for rulers will take the spurious sabbath under legal care and place divine honors upon a false sabbath, and when that is fully done persecution will break forth upon those who observe the Eden Sabbath given as a memorial of creative power. The whole battle before God's people hinges on keeping the true Sabbath of Jehovah and refusing to give it up for the first day of the week, Sunday, which the world keeps, and all human and satanic sophistry to the contrary should only make God's children cling more firmly to it, triumphant as conquerors and more than conquerors by Bible truth and the love shown at the cross applied by the Holy Spirit over all opposing, persecuting elements. Observing the Sabbath is the test upon every professed Christian and the sign between him that serves God and him that serves Him not, obedience in the face of a world that worships a false sabbath, in contrast to worship of the beast and his image and the mark of the beast.

Refusing the false sabbath and obeying God's law will bring persecution by stocks, prisons and fires, forcing the choice to worship God or Baal, to bow to an idol or to obey a Thus saith the Lord. In the last days church and state united will compel conscience to yield obedience to the spurious Sabbath, the child of the papacy to be worshipped as an idol, and will cast contempt on the Sabbath the Lord sanctified and blessed and will accuse, slander and persecute those who remain loyal and true to it, while statesmen uphold the spurious sabbath mingling religious faith with its observance and placing it above God's Sabbath in a mingling of churchcraft and statecraft that weakens the churches. But God will punish those who make void His law and their evil work will recoil upon themselves, working to purge His people and to avenge them with double punishment and destruction upon their persecutors. The living, testing Sabbath principle that was lost is to be exalted to its true position by the third angel's message and stand fast as God's testing truth for the last days, with God's requirements given in all their original freshness and power.

That Eden Sabbath is present truth to be proclaimed everywhere with great distinctness and power as part of the third angel's message, which embraces the messages of the first and second angels and is based on the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, and it is not to be clouded by human theories and sophistries. It is the same Sabbath observed by the patriarchs, proclaimed from Sinai, and emphasized when the two tables of stone were given to Moses, whose proclamation is made prominent in the third angel's message including the first and second angels' messages of Revelation 14, having lost none of its meaning, still and ever a sign between God and His people to be exalted before the world with courage and unfailing perseverance. Giving the spurious sabbath legislative protection and divine honors clothes the commandments of men in sacred garments as holy, and when divine honors are fully placed on the false sabbath, persecution will break forth upon those who observe the Sabbath God gave in Eden, so their testimony for God's memorial must be borne openly and esteemed more highly rather than hidden or relaxed. By methods of work, especially in sanitariums, God's memorial with binding claims that remain forever is to be exalted, and the light on it is to shine forth openly and not be hidden, taught as God's memorial yet presented in a way that does not offend but illuminates minds, while preserving that day puts God's sign and seal on His people marking them as a separate and peculiar people who keep His commandments and proclaim the third angel's message.

God's people are in no case to pay Sunday homage, yet they are not to do God's will by braving opposition over it or making demonstrations on Sunday in defiance of law, lest bitter prejudice make it impossible for the truth to be proclaimed. They are to work with all meekness and lowliness and use Sunday as a day to carry forward work that tells on the side of Christ, for the first day of the week is a different day with no such blessing and the law requiring its observance is the production of apostate Christendom, a child of the papacy exalted by the Christian world above God's rest day. The effort to bring in a law for the better observance of that unsanctified day is the work of the power of darkness, opposed by the Spirit of God in answer to prayer, and the warfare over the two days is not ended but is to be carried forward, with God's power and authority more distinctly seen on behalf of those who love and fear and honor Him. God Himself sanctified the seventh day and bade it be kept holy, and His word about the day is His voice addressed directly and must be given more than respect, treasured in the heart and applied in daily life, for no one is left to decide what will please God or to conclude that keeping another day in its place will be acceptable to Him, and safety is only in living by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

Keeping and Proclaiming Sabbath

As He rested and was refreshed after finishing the heavens and the earth and all their host, He desires His people to rest and be refreshed on the seventh day He blessed and sanctified. The day was made for humanity to set aside labor and secular pursuits, to look at the work of His hands in earth and heavens as tangible proof He created them in six days and rested the seventh, and to reflect, remember Him as Creator and true and living God, and grow in love and reverence for the Maker. It draws the mind from earthly things to contemplation of His power, wisdom, mighty power, wonderful goodness and infinite wisdom, and brings into close fellowship in worship in which all heaven is interested.

It was given to created beings and man for benefit and need as a day of rest and worship when His people assemble to worship Him, bearing witness to the power of the everlasting God who in six days created the heavens and the earth. It is a merciful limit to toil and a period of rest for good as well as for His glory, since health and life would be endangered without relaxation from labor, care and anxiety, and it is a day of rest, peace, delight and refreshment for spiritual and physical health. Families are to share communion with God, with nature and with one another, studying the messages written in nature and Christ's parables where He spoke them in fields and groves under open sky among grass and flowers, which makes His presence real and speaks peace and love to the heart. Keeping it holy does not require staying indoors or drudgery but laying aside secular matters to be happy, walk outdoors, center thoughts on God and heaven, and let time in nature refresh and elevate the mind to recognize His love and creative power, following Christ who led disciples outdoors by the lakeside to teach. Parents are to teach children from trees, flowers, hills, fields, buds and grass that God made all in six days and rested and hallowed the seventh, so seeing nature reminds them of the Creator and carries thoughts back to creation when all the sons of God shouted for joy, making it the best day.

Holy beings in the heavenly courts observe the sacred hours specified for rest, assembling before the throne to worship in the beauty of holiness crying Salvation to God and to the Lamb. They look upon companies all over earth who honor God by keeping holy the seventh day and let light shine amid moral darkness following transgression, acknowledging their observance as a sign of allegiance to Christ who bought them with His blood, a sign between God and His people throughout generations forever never to be removed. On the day He blessed He draws very nigh to His people, blesses the obedient in keeping it, causes joy among angels as when the morning stars sang together, and gives evidence of love and kindness and assurance of covenant blessing, sanctification and fulfilled purposes to those contemplating His wonderful works and praising His goodness and love. At its appointment the whole angelic host took up triumph and rejoicing as evidence He made the world in six days, and keeping it preserves a clear definite knowledge of Himself as Creator and that He is the Lord who sanctifies.

Public restaurants are to remain closed with workers free for worship, while necessary meals are still provided with as little labor as possible as in any family. Fathers must not send children to school on the Sabbath or any part of it as on a common weekday with common lessons having no sacredness, since that brings it down to working days and makes void the law, whereas keeping it separate bears testimony to allegiance to the Creator and Governor, elevates the standard, and upholds it as test and sign. Families should prepare to honor the day God blessed as holy, and the blessing He placed upon it is to be sought and received on Sabbath morning by prayer and faith. Its requirements must govern planning of work, so regular travel and labor are laid aside and only relief of real suffering makes travel not a desecration, while unimportant cases are deferred.

It must not be made a day of pleasure and excursion but kept with quiet reverence without levity, boisterous noise, contention, loud-toned commands, confusion, rushing about or hasty speech, including in dressing and at the table. Persons appear with cleanliness, neatness and order before a jealous God, children's clothing laid out by their own hands under mother's direction during the week and looked after Friday so they can dress quietly, and common work is finished beforehand with no worldly business, secular work, own pleasure, earning work by self, children, animals or business. All preparation is finished before sunset with Friday provision including clothing, body cleansing, blacking boots early and household readiness, workers allowed hours from noon Friday, families assembling early to read the Word, sing and pray, children instructed and taken for walks rather than left to selfish pleasure, physicians making no appointments or travel except to relieve real suffering. Worship is cheerful with singing, prayer, feeding on the Word and assembling with God's people, seeking a retired place to pray and read, spending the day conversing on religious subjects, writing and reading, meditating and closely examining spiritual condition, listening with sanctified ears and perceiving hearts, making the Bible companion by searching Scriptures and investigating every point of faith.

The Lord is present in the assembly to bless and sanctify with Jesus as honored guest and angels present, so even little companies gathered to worship have right to claim rich blessings of Jehovah, and every true worshiper keeping it holy with faith is specially blessed, refreshed, accepted, and may know the Lord who sanctifies. It carries blessing and privilege for families honoring the Creator in obedience to the fourth commandment, calling for finishing business before Friday sunset, preparing Sabbath school lessons from the week's beginning, putting away work the day before to attend worship without hurry and worry, not lying abed Sabbath morning, hailing it as joy, giving parents' time to children, taking them for walks, reading the Bible and religious instruction, explaining Scriptures, praying with them and refusing selfish pleasure-seeking. The creation Sabbath is to be kept not merely legally but with understanding of its spiritual bearing on all transactions of daily life, as a sign of sanctification through obedience to truth and evidence of true conversion with body, soul and spirit set apart to God.

The day set apart from toils and cares and reserved for Himself and His honor is for holy communion contemplating greatness of power and love in creation and how greatly they are engaged for redemption. Forsaking ordinances and trampling the holy Sabbath is marked robbery offering common for holy, robbing selves of rich blessing, bringing a curse and separating from God the source of good, while its faithful witness every Sabbath carrying the mind back to creation is never to be put in background out of sight. Keeping it aright is far more important and essential than realized, meaning everything as obedience sanctifying Him in the heart, putting on the eternal rock and God's platform and bringing all powers into missionary labor for souls. Neglect by bringing own work, words and unsanctified thoughts and failing to revere requires confession to God and one another, reconversion in observance, and new special family arrangements to greet it with quietude of mind.

Accepting and keeping it in truth with intelligent understanding sanctifies soul, body and spirit, gives knowledge of true sanctification, evidences genuine conversion, new birth and surrender to Christ with self abased and Christ exalted, places the true sign and mark of government upon the person, and brings divine comfort, abundant entrance to the kingdom and light shining in good works. It unites man to God in supreme obedience as a golden clasp and to fellow man in the other commandments, while continuing to trample it opposes Creator and Redeemer and taking feet off acknowledges truth and renders fruit of obedience. The light in the Bible convicts readers by the Spirit to leave Sunday-keeping at once and hold firmly to the seventh even when family do not join, with no temporal loss in honoring it by thorough preparation. By methods of work, especially in sanitariums, the memorial is to be exalted and its light shone openly without offense so minds are illuminated, planting truth in many localities until Sabbathkeepers are doubled.

The verse is to guide youth trained to connect with the Lord's work so they will be blessed and have wisdom to do work aright in meekness and lowliness with fear of God and constant devotion as eternal truth that can never be changed. The seventh day is the Lord's rest-day, the true Sabbath to be embraced and faithfully kept with great blessing, calling for courage to confess and surrender will and heart fully even when obedience brings loss in temporal matters, position, poverty and want for self and children, holding to faith and prayer. It is to be held sacred through all time as His memorial of creation, making the Sabbath question most vital. Those keeping an unblessed day without searching Scripture will be left without excuse, and faithfulness requires observing the sanctified day and refusing a day God has not sanctified, since people will be judged by this Word as God's great test and sign of loyalty required by the fourth commandment.

The verse gives reason for gathering on the seventh day, which belongs to the Israel of God as long as they live on earth, and is God's decided word requiring observance of that very Sabbath in His law marking His chosen people. It requires coming out of the world to keep it holy in contrast to wickedness as in Noah's days before the Son of man comes. It is the Word given for observance and proof He set it apart, to be read before congregations and before those determined to enact Sunday laws with no controversy and no words of men, exalting a plain Thus saith the Lord, so the burden rests on rejectors and their controversy is with God not men. It declares the sacredness and binding claims of the seventh-day Sabbath as God's message to all people on earth, gives evidence for its sanctity, establishes its importance, and accepting what God declares brings full conversion. It gives authority for keeping the original Sabbath and establishes the law's perpetuity, which ministers must present everywhere without delay leading people to reason from cause to effect.

It gives a plain Thus saith the Lord specifying which day is the Sabbath, to be read, printed, published, vindicated and brought before all classes without human argument, since arguments against it are against God. It has been loyalty's test in all ages as the conflict nears earth's end and every soul must watch against deception to overcome amid moves to bring in Sunday as false rest. Keeping that memorial uplifted proclaims the law's binding claims to a fallen world as part of the last message of mercy and the third angel's message, to stand as witness and constant reminder attracting notice, calling inquiries, bringing answers arousing investigation and awakening hunger after righteousness. The Sabbath truth with its texts is to be gathered, read and plainly presented as part of the last warning, present truth and reformation, with little companies going two and two as missionaries into cities to tell the creation story as the warning gospel message for this time.

God's loyal people keep the seventh, establish churches and houses of worship as memorials continually proclaiming its holiness and Satan's treason, let light shine amid moral darkness, have a special work to teach the world, and need to be aroused and baptized with the Spirit. Keeping the Eden Sabbath gives Seventh-day Adventists their name and marks them as God's denominated people keeping the Sabbath while looking for Christ's coming, a name not to be ashamed of but to be worthy of, and the truth that the seventh day is the Lord's Sabbath is to be presented as pointedly as possible, including to outsiders. The Sabbath is present testing truth embracing the first, second and third angels' messages to be proclaimed everywhere with distinctness and power, exalted as truth's standard, and agitation of the Sunday question brings knowledge and divides the world into elevators and tramplers exalting Sunday, while in the last days a commandment-keeping people will be raised to honor it openly.