Chapter 9—Sunday Laws
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, sancti-
fying 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 happi-
ness has made the Sabbath of the fourth commandment an object of
special attack. Satan says, “I will work at cross purposes with God. I
[124]
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
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