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The Great Controversy 1888
his name.” [
Revelation 13:16, 17
] The third angel’s warning is, “If
any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his
forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath
of God.” “The beast” mentioned in this message, whose worship is
enforced by the two-horned beast, is the first, or leopard-like beast
of
Revelation 13
,—the papacy. The “image to the beast” represents
that form of apostate Protestantism which will be developed when
the Protestant churches shall seek the aid of the civil power for the
enforcement of their dogmas. The “mark of the beast” still remains to
be defined.
After the warning against the worship of the beast and his image,
the prophecy declares, “Here are they that keep the commandments of
God, and the faith of Jesus.” Since those who keep God’s command-
ments are thus placed in contrast with those that worship the beast and
his image and receive his mark, it follows that the keeping of God’s
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law, on the one hand, and its violation, on the other, will make the
distinction between the worshipers of God and the worshipers of the
beast.
The special characteristic of the beast, and therefore of his image,
is the breaking of God’s commandments. Says Daniel, of the little
horn, the papacy, “He shall think to change the times and the law.”
[
Daniel 7:25
, Revised Version.] And Paul styled the same power the
“man of sin,” who was to exalt himself above God. One prophecy is
a complement of the other. Only by changing God’s law could the
papacy exalt itself above God; whoever should understandingly keep
the law as thus changed would be giving supreme honor to that power
by which the change was made. Such an act of obedience to papal
laws would be a mark of allegiance to the pope in the place of God.
The papacy has attempted to change the law of God. The second
commandment, forbidding image worship, has been dropped from
the law, and the fourth commandment has been so changed as to
authorize the observance of the first instead of the seventh day as
the Sabbath. But papists urge, as a reason for omitting the second
commandment, that it is unnecessary, being included in the first, and
that they are giving the law exactly as God designed it to be understood.
This cannot be the change foretold by the prophet. An intentional,
deliberate change is presented: “He shall think to change the times
and the law.” The change in the fourth commandment exactly fulfills