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Prophets and Kings
“Through my vicegerent, I will exalt myself. The first day will be
extolled, and the Protestant world will receive this spurious sabbath
as genuine. Through the nonobservance of the Sabbath that God
instituted, I will bring His law into contempt. The words, ‘A sign
between Me and you throughout your generations,’ I will make to
serve on the side of my sabbath.
“Thus the world will become mine. I will be the ruler of the earth,
the prince of the world. I will so control the minds under my power
that God’s Sabbath shall be a special object of contempt. A sign? I
will make the observance of the seventh day a sign of disloyalty to
the authorities of earth. Human laws will be made so stringent that
men and women will not dare to observe the seventh-day Sabbath.
For fear of wanting food and clothing, they will join with the world in
transgressing God’s law. The earth will be wholly under my dominion.”
Through the setting up of a false sabbath, the enemy thought to
change times and laws. But has he really succeeded in changing God’s
law? The words of the thirty-first chapter of Exodus are the answer.
He who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, has declared of the
seventh-day Sabbath: “It is a sign between Me and you throughout
your generations.” “It is a sign ... forever.”
Exodus 31:13, 17
. The
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changed signpost is pointing the wrong way, but God has not changed.
He is still the mighty God of Israel. “Behold, the nations are as a
drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance:
behold, He taketh up the isles as a very little thing. And Lebanon
is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt
offering. All nations before Him are as nothing; and they are counted
to Him less than nothing, and vanity.”
Isaiah 40:15-17
. And He is just
as jealous for His law now as He was in the days of Ahab and Elijah.
But how is that law disregarded! Behold the world today in open
rebellion against God. This is in truth a froward generation, filled
with ingratitude, formalism, insincerity, pride, and apostasy. Men
neglect the Bible and hate truth. Jesus sees His law rejected, His love
despised, His ambassadors treated with indifference. He has spoken
by His mercies, but these have been unacknowledged; He has spoken
by warnings, but these have been unheeded. The temple courts of the
human soul have been turned into places of unholy traffic. Selfishness,
envy, pride, malice—all are cherished.