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God’s Law Immutable
249
Those who keep God’s commandments are in contrast with
those that worship the beast and his image and receive his mark.
The keeping of God’s 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 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
, R.V. Paul styled the same power the “man of sin” (
2 Thessa-
lonians 2:3
), who was to exalt himself above God. Only by chang-
ing God’s law could the papacy exalt itself above God. Whoever
should understandingly keep the law as thus changed would be giv-
ing supreme honor to papal laws, a mark of allegiance to the pope in
place of God.
The papacy has attempted to change the law of God. The fourth
commandment has been so changed as to authorize the observance
of the first instead of the seventh day as the Sabbath. An intentional,
deliberate change is presented: “He shall think to change the times
and the law.” The change in the fourth commandment exactly fulfills
the prophecy. Here the papal power openly sets itself above God.
The worshipers of God will be especially distinguished by their
regard for the fourth commandment, the sign of His creative power.
The worshipers of the beast will be distinguished by their efforts to
tear down the Creator’s memorial, to exalt the institution of Rome.
[277]
It was in behalf of Sunday as “the Lord’s day” that popery first
asserted its arrogant claims. (See Appendix.) But the Bible points
to the seventh day as the Lord’s day. Said Christ: “The Son of
man is Lord also of the sabbath.”
Mark 2:28
. See also
Isaiah 58:13
;
Matthew 5:17-19
. The claim so often put forth that Christ changed
the Sabbath is disproved by His own words.
Complete Silence of New Testament
Protestants acknowledge “the complete silence of the New Tes-
tament so far as any explicit command for the Sabbath [Sunday,
the first day of the week] or definite rules for its observance are
concerned.
3
George Elliott, The Abiding Sabbath, p. 184.