Satan's Challenge to God's Authority
God denounces Babylon “because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.”...
God made the world in six days and rested on the seventh, sanctifying this day, and setting it apart from all others as holy to Himself, to be observed by His people throughout their generations. But the man of sin, exalting himself above God, sitting in the temple of God, and showing himself to be God, thought to change times and laws. This power, thinking to prove that it was not only equal to God, but above God, changed the rest day, placing the first day of the week where the seventh should be. And the Protestant world has taken this child of the papacy to be regarded as sacred. In the Word of God this is called her fornication [Revelation 14:8].—The S.D.A. Bible Commentary 7:979 (1900).
During the Christian dispensation the great enemy of man's happiness has made the Sabbath of the fourth commandment an object of special attack. Satan says, “I will work at cross purposes with God. I will empower my followers to set aside God's memorial, the seventh-day Sabbath. Thus I will show the world that the day sanctified and blessed by God has been changed. That day shall not live in the minds of the people. I will obliterate the memory of it. I will place in its stead a day that does not bear the credentials of God, a day that cannot be a sign between God and His people. I will lead those who accept this day to place upon it the sanctity that God placed upon the seventh day.”—Prophets and Kings, 183, 184 (c. 1914).
The Sabbath the Great Point at Issue
In the warfare to be waged in the last days there will be united, in opposition to God's people, all the corrupt powers that have apostatized from allegiance to the law of Jehovah. In this warfare the Sabbath of the fourth commandment will be the great point at issue, for in the Sabbath commandment the great Lawgiver identifies Himself as the Creator of the heavens and the earth.—Selected Messages 3:392 (1891).
“Verily My Sabbaths ye shall keep,” the Lord says, “for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you” (Exodus 31:13). Some will seek to place obstacles in the way of Sabbath observance, saying, “You do not know what day is the Sabbath,” but they seem to understand when Sunday comes, and have manifested great zeal in making laws compelling its observance.—The Kress Collection, 148 (1900).
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