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God’s Call to Modern Apostates
85
God set up a signpost for those journeying through this world.
One arm pointed out willing obedience to the Creator as the road to
life, while the other indicated disobedience as the path to death. But
in an evil hour for our race, the great enemy of all good turned the
[64]
signpost around, and many people have mistakenly taken the wrong
way.
Through Moses the Lord instructed the Israelites, “Surely My
Sabbaths you shall keep, for it is a sign between Me and you through-
out your generations, that you may know that I am the Lord who
sanctifies you.” “It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel
forever; for in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, and
on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed.”
Exodus 31:13, 17
.
The Lord clearly defined obedience as the way to the City of
God, but the “man of sin” has changed the signpost. He has set up a
false sabbath and has caused men and women to think that by resting
on it they are obeying the command of the Creator. When “the
heavens and the earth ... were finished,” God exalted the seventh-
day Sabbath as a memorial of His creative work. “God blessed the
seventh day and sanctified it.”
Genesis 2:1, 3
.
At the time of the Exodus God brought the Sabbath prominently
before His people. In Egypt their taskmasters had tried to force
them to labor on the Sabbath by increasing the amount of work
required each week. But God delivered the Israelites from slavery
and brought them to a place where they could freely observe all the
instructions of the Lord. At Sinai God spoke the law and delivered a
copy of it to Moses on two tables of stone, “written with the finger
of God.”
Exodus 31:18
. And through forty years of wandering the
Israelites were constantly reminded of God’s appointed rest day
because every seventh day the manna did not fall, but the double
portion that fell on the preparation day was miraculously preserved.
The Lord intended that by observing the Sabbath command,
Israel would be reminded of Him continually as their Creator and
Redeemer. While they kept the Sabbath in the proper spirit, idol
worship could not exist; but if Israel set aside the claims of this divine
instruction, they would soon forget the Creator. Yet “they rejected
My ordinances and did not observe My statutes, and profaned My
Sabbaths; for their heart went after their idols.”
Ezekiel 20:16
, NRSV.