The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign

Now what is to be appended to this everlasting covenant (called new not in respect of its date: it being made from everlasting, and will continue forever,) to ensure us an entrance into the gates of the holy city. Answer. The testimony of Jesus. Rev. xii: 17. "That old dragon the devil is pursuing the remnant (the last end) of God's children, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ." In the xiv: 12, John says the faith of Jesus, (same meaning.) Now what is this faith or "testimony of Jesus?" John shows that he was banished to Patmos for the "word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ." Rev. 1, 9, he says he "bore record of the testimony of Jesus," "and what he saw." 2 v. Just what Jesus had directed his disciples to do. See Math. xxviii: 19, 20. "Teach all nations to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you." This then is what makes the covenant new, appending to it the teaching or testimony of Jesus, after the ceremonial law had been "nailed to the cross." Here it is perfectly clear that the everlasting covenant the ten commandments have undergone no change whatever. Indeed it is impossible that the law of God could be changed; do you say it is possible I may be mistaken? Then I will appeal to Jesus. He says "it is easier for heaven and earth to pass than one tittle of the law to fail." You say this is no proof, for the law of God is the word taught in the old and new testaments. See here then, in Matt. v: 17, 18. Is not this the same law as in Luke 16: 17? Yes. Very well then, see next verse, here he unhesitatingly calls them the commandments; for proof that he means the ten commandments, read 21st verse, "shall not kill," now 27th "nor commit adultery," then 33d, "nor take God's name in vain." His exposition of them as a whole is certainly as clear as this in Matt. xxii: 35-40, reduced to two precepts, love God, and love your neighbor, on these two hang all the law (ceremonial) and the prophets. Dont you see then that if this law is taken away, changed or abolished, that the prophets must fall with it, as certainly as a building would if the foundation was swept away? – The argument is clear that the prophecies cannot be sustained without the law. Again, see Luke x: 25-28. The lawyer says, "Master what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus "said unto him what is written in the LAW? how readest thou?" He begins and quotes the two precepts (the essence of the ten commandments) given by the Saviour in Matt. xxii. Jesus says "thou hast answered RIGHT, this do and thou shalt live." Is this a safe rule for us? Yes, if you can believe the Saviour. I ask if it could be so if any of the law should fail? No, that would undermine the foundation. Then I have not appealed to Jesus in vain. If all of this does not convince you, just hear the Prophets. "The good man's delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night." Psl. i: 1, 2. "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul." xix. "The law of thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver." xix: 72. "Great peace have they that love thy law, and nothing shall offend them." 165. Does the changing of the law by the little horn bring peace? "He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be an abomination." Prov, 28: 9. Read this passage again. You that say the Lord is not so particular about his law, whether we keep this day or that for a holy day. He says "every thing upon his day." "Seal the law among my disciples." Isa. viii: 16. What for? "It will be binding on them in the new heavens and the new earth." 66: 22, 23, "To the law and the testimony." 20. What can you prove by it if it is changed or abolished? "He will magnify the law and make it honorable." 42: 21. How could he do that if he was going to change or destroy it. "The people in whose heart is my law, fear ye not the reproach of men." 51: 7. "After those days saith the Lord, I will put my laws in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts." Jer. 31: 33. Then we are certainly bound to obey them. "Her Priests have violated my law– and have put no difference between the holy and profane – and have hid their eyes from my SABBATHS, and I am profaned among them." Ezek. xxii: 26. It is just so; we believe it, Lord. It is even among them that say they are looking for Jesus daily.

Hear the Apostles. "We establish the law." Rom. iii: 31. "The law is holy, just and good." What do you mean Paul? The professed Christian world dont believe your testimony: they are teaching that certain part of this law was changed or abolished 25 years before you made this assertion. See chronology. "Love is the fulfilling of the law." xiii: 10. See Matt. vii: 12, and Gal. v: 14. James says it is a "perfect Royal law of liberty." See page 26, ch. 1: 25, and ii: 8, 9, 10, 12, and iv: 2. This testimony is also rejected as an absurdity, being no better than Paul's, 25 years out of date, for they will have it that the 4th commandment, the Sabbath, was changed at the Resurrection.

The commandments of God mean the same as the law. – "All his commandments are sure, they are established forever and ever." Who then can change the Sabbath? "A good understanding have all they that do his commandments." "Blessed is the man that delighteth greatly in his commandments." Psl. cxi: and cxii. "O let me not wander from thy commandments." xix: 10, and 35. "I will delight myself in thy commandments which I have loved." 47. "Thy commandment is exceeding broad." 96. "All thy commandments are truth." 151. Can it be proved that God ever altered or changed the truth? Yes, if it can be proved that he changed the Sabbath. "O that thou hadst harkened to my commandments, then had thy peace been as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea." Isa. 48: 18. See Jesus' exposition and reference to the commandments Matt. v: 19, xv: 3-6. We are told by those who can hardly bear a contradiction, that the 5th commandment means Jesus for father, and New Jerusalem for mother. Jesus shows it is our natural parents, and so does Paul to the Eph. vi: 1-3. See also Matt. xix: 17-19, and xxii: 35-40. Mark xii: 29-31, John xiii: 34, xiv: 31, and xv: 12. The last three quotations relate to his own commandment. See John's testimony on this point. 1st John ii: 4, 7, iii: 21, 24. Rev. xii: 17, and xiv: 12. Now let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter, "fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man," "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life and may enter in through the gates into the city." Rev. xxii: 14, Ecc. xii: 13. Do you ask for the foundation for this mass of evidence? When Israel violated the holy Sabbath of rest given in the beginning, Gen. ii: 2, 3, 1 John ii: 7, the Lord said unto Moses, how long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws? What are they, Lord? Answer, the seventh day Sabbath. See Exo. xvi: 27-30. Now if we trace the bible through in relation to the Sabbath we shall learn that the Lord's threatenings, judgments, and promises, are more than ten fold in comparison with the other nine commandments. What is the reason of this? Answer, the keeping of GOD'S SABBATH HOLY SANCTIFIES AND SAVES THE SOUL! but the keeping of one, or all the other nine without it will not.

Now, dear reader, if you are still undecided about the keeping of God's Sabbath, let me persuade you to read these two pages over again, and settle in your mind what you will do with this mass of testimony, directly from God; his Prophets; Jesus Christ and his Apostles. Dare you say you are now 'living by every word of God,' and yet reject all this, with what other testimony is here presented to prove the keeping of the seventh day Sabbath? Dare you run such a risk because the great mass of professed believers in Christendom are doing so? Do you think you can be saved by such a faith and practice? Your ministering spirit (if you yet have one,) says no, no! utterly impossible! Then receive the truth in the love of it. Do you perceive that the seventh day Sabbath is God's first law for man? Gen. ii: 2, 3, and the very last promise he ever made to man of a future inheritance is based on the 'doing of these commandments.' It would not help your case at all if you could make out five thousand, instead of ten, commandments; for you would still have to include the ten to get them all.

What a beautiful delineation the cxix Psalm is, of this wonderful prototype delivered by God to Moses at Mount Sinai. The Commandments are rehearsed twenty-two times. The Law twenty-three. The Testimony twenty-three. The Statutes twenty-one. The Precepts twenty-two. The Judgments twenty-two. The Word thirty-eight. All referring to the Ark of the Covenant of God. See how perfectly David and Nehemiah links them together with the Sabbath in the xix Psl: 7-9; Neh. ix: 13, 14. 'The Commandments, Law, Testimony and Judgments, are true and righteous all together.' Proof —Commandments and Laws, Exo. xvi: 28-30; Testimony, Exo. xxv: 16; Isa. viii: 20; Word, Exo. xxxiv: 27; Mark vii: 10, 13; Statutes and Judgments, Deut. vi: 17, 20; x: 13; Lev. xviii: 5; Precepts, Neh. ix: 13, 14; Dan. ix: 5.

Who believes that the person that refrains from worshiping 'idols or images,' will be saved for that? or because he honors his father or mother? or because he is no murderer? or does not commit adultery, or steal, or bear false witness, or covet, or not swear? Thousands on thousands have conformed to some and even all the nine, that made no pretensions to religion. We must keep the whole if we would be saved; neither can we be saved by keeping the Sabbath alone. James says 'If we fail in one we are guilty of the whole.' God says 'verily my Sabbaths ye shall keep – that ye may know that I the Lord do SANCTIFY you.' Exo. xxxi: 13. Now I ask if there is any wise men among us that can tell us how the soul is sanctified unless he keeps the Sabbath HOLY. Ezekiel says the Sabbath was given that we might know that the Lord SANCTIFIES. xx. Says the reader, what do you think about those that have died in faith, keeping the first day Sabbath? Just as I do of those that never heard the everlasting gospel at the hour of his judgment. Look at the state of the world now, since they have rejected this message, the answer is plain then that condemnation comes, when light or present truth is presented and rejected. We may think our plea of ignorance may excuse us now. But just think of that awful hour, that gathering storm that is now clothing the moral world with darkness that may be felt. The sure and certain precursor of that tremendous "rush" when God roars out of Zion, and utters his voice from Jerusalem, preparatory to the sign of the Son of man in heaven and the trump of the archangel and a great sound, with so much power that earth and sea will reel, and rock, and rend; and cast forth the righteous dead, and the living saints changed; all going up together to meet their glorified Lord. No plea of ignorance will then answer our purpose: thoughts then rushing through our minds with more than lightning speed, will touch every point as on the magnetic telegraph, and show us where and when we rejected the present truth. Good God help the honest ones to see it now, for then it certainly will be forever too late. That God's holy Sabbath is a present truth I have not a shadow of a doubt; that it is stamped with immortality and will be present truth forever and ever, no mortal can dispute: – It was established in Paradise without limitation. Gen. ii: 2, 3. God says "my covenant will I not BREAK nor ALTER." Jesus has shown that not one tittle of this covenant can be altered, and told his children (not the Jews only) how they should pray about the Sabbath 36 years after his death. A little farther in the distance stands John the last of the disciples pointing us to Paradise for the commandments. After wading through a few years tribulation, in vision he sees the new Jerusalem, the Mother of us all, the Paradise restored, and cries out "blessed are they that DO (that practice) his commandments, they are going into the city." There they will keep the Sabbath without opposition, as at the beginning. Isa. 66: 23, Heb. iv: 9. This looks just like God's work. Man has undertaken to "break and alter" this law by changing the Sabbath. It would be much easier for him to bail the ocean dry, and carry the water to Jupiter by the spoonful; and sweep the thick clouds from the heavens in a thunder storm with the wing of a raven. Who then can alter this covenant? Echo answers, who can alter this covenant?

Now who cannot see clearly that the main pillar and foundation of this Everlasting covenant is the ten commandments, the law of God, the constitution of the Bible: for every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, given first in Paradise, re-enacted with the nine additional commandments, written on tables of stone by the finger of God on mount Sinai, giving it the form of a statute, then delivered to Moses, broken by the Jewish, just as men break any law without destroying it. The same ten commandments and laws, called by Paul the new or second and everlasting covenant, confirmed by Jesus, and sealed with his own blood eighteen hundred years ago, written in our minds and our hearts from one generation to another to the present time, always understood when developed in the believer's practising and doing them, with the promise annexed that such obedience will be rewarded by an entrance into the holy city. Rev. xxii: 14.

Now in this covenant or ten commandments God has given us a perpetual covenant, a sign forever, and this is the seventh day Sabbath. See Exo. 31: 16. This may bear some comparison with the visions of Ezekiel and John. "Their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel." "I will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name." So with the Sabbath it is the main and essential thing. It is clearly that if we keep this holy as God has shown us, then we shall be SANCTIFIED. So we see a holy sanctified soul cannot violate the commandments. But if we reject the light and still persist in saying we will keep one of the working days holy which God never sanctified nor set apart for us, "how does the love of God dwell in that soul?" "If ye love me keep my commandments." Now the history of God's people for the last seven years, or more, is described by John in Rev. xiv: 6-13. An angel preaching the everlasting gospel at the hour of God's judgment. This without any doubt represents all those who were preaching the second Advent doctrine since 1840. During this proclamation, there followed another angel, saying "Babylon is fallen, is fallen." This angel was some of the same Advent lecturers, (for invisible angels dont preach to men.) And the third angel follows them, showing the curse that befell all such as "worship the beast or his image, or receive his mark," that is, if they go back again. The same angel or voice that is brought to view in ch. 18: 4, you see he follows the one that announces the fall of Babylon, and cries, come out of her my people: this was a little before and during a cry at Midnight in the fall of 1844. And God's people did respond to that call and come out, does any one ask where from? Answer, the professed churches and no where else. These churches then are Babylon! Now when this cry ended, John describes another very different company, in their patience, (or trying time,) keeping the commandments of God and the faith or testimony of Jesus; who are they? Why, the very same that came out of Babylon. Well, were they not all good christians that obeyed and came out of Babylon? They will be if they belong to this last company and pass through the trial. But did they not keep the commandments of God before this company was developed? Yes all but the 4th commandment. Therefore as I have shown, John gave us no credit for keeping the first for the seventh day Sabbath, neither could it be called keeping the commandments, for if we did it ever so ignorantly, even, we still violated the very essential law in the commandments, and all that John could say therefore was, that them which had the mark of the beast kept some of the commandments. James says "if we fail in one we are guilty of the whole." Now that such a people can be found on the earth as described in the 12 v. and have been uniting in companies for the last two years, on the commandments of God and faith or testimony of Jesus, is indisputable and clear. I say here then is demonstrated proof that Babylon has fallen, and whoever undertakes to prove the contrary must annihilate this people, or "pervert the scriptures." John further shows that this is a remnant (which of course means the last end) made war with, (his meaning is clear,) for "keeping the commandments of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ." xii: 17. Here another question arises, why this people should be persecuted for keeping the commandments, &c., when all, even them which have the mark of the beast, profess to keep them. I suppose all that enrages the Devil and his army is this; that this remnant are actually practising what they believe is the testimony of God and the testimony of Jesus, selling what they have, giving alms, laying up their treasure in heaven, casting themselves entirely loose from this wicked world; doing as their master told them to do, "washing one another's feet," and as the apostles have taught, 'greet all the brethren with an holy kiss,' 'salute every saint in christ Jesus.' Living 'by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God,' practice keeping the Sabbath holy, just as God has told them in the commandments. But says the reader, there are tens of thousands that are looking for Jesus, that dont believe the above doctrines, what will become of them? Consult John, he knows better than we do; he has only described two companies. See xiv: 9-11, 12. One is keeping the commandments and faith of Jesus. The other has the mark of the beast. How? See page 45. Is it not clear that the first day of the week for the Sabbath or holy day is a mark of the beast. It surely will be admitted that the Devil was and is the father of all the wicked deeds of Imperial and papal Rome. It is clear then from this history that Sunday, or first day, is his Sabbath throughout christendom. And that he has succeeded among other civilized nations to sanctify and set apart for holy days every working day which God gave us, that he did not sanctify. See page 8th. He will be very careful therefore not to make war on any but those who keep God's Sabbath holy. Contrast this with page 30. John shows that these will all be judged according to their works, or as their work shall be. But them that do (that practice) his commandments may enter in through the gates into the city. But do not some of the rest go in? He does not say they do. He says his reward is with him to give to every man according as his work shall be. Well, who are left out? See 15 v. "And whosoever loveth and maketh a lie." Now see 4 of John ii. "He that saith I know him and keepeth not his commandments is a liar." But does not the vii Rev. describe a great multitude saved after the 144,000? Yes, but I conclude that these were raised from the dead. The original design of sending out this work was to show that these commandments, the keeping of the Lord's Sabbath, would save the living saints only at the coming of Jesus. Now that the keeping of the seventh day Sabbath has been made void by the working of satan, and is to be restored as one of the all things spoken of by all the holy prophets since the world began, before Jesus can come, is evident. See Acts iii: 20, 21. "And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places – thou shalt raise up the foundation of many generations, and thou shalt be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in." Isa. 58: 12. The two following verses show that keeping or restoring the Sabbath is the special work. Jesus says, "they shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven, that do and teach the commandments." That there will yet be a mighty struggle about the restoring and keeping the seventh day Sabbath, that will test every living soul that enters the gates of the city, cannot be disputed. It is evident the Devil is making war on all such. See Rev. xii: 17. "Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy." Amen.