Wednesday: Creation, the Sabbath, and the End Time
The great controversy, which began in heaven millennia ago, was over the question of God’s authority. The challenge remains the same today, as well.
Read Revelation 14:7, Revelation 14:9, and Revelation 14:12. Summarize these verses by completing the sentences on the lines below.
Revelation 14:7 is a call to _________________
Revelation 14:9 is a solemn appeal not to _________________
Revelation 14:12 describes a people who _________________
Image © Phil McKay
These passages make it clear that the central issue in the conflict in the last days between good and evil, Christ and Satan, is worship. Do we worship the Creator or the beast? And because Creation forms the ground of all our beliefs (after all, what do we believe that makes any sense apart from God as our Creator?), the seventh-day Sabbath — embedded in the Genesis Creation account itself (Genesis 2:1-3) — stands as the eternal and immutable sign of that Creation. It’s the most basic symbol of the most basic teaching. The only thing more fundamental to it is God Himself.
Hence, to usurp the seventh-day Sabbath is to usurp the Lord’s authority at the most prime level possible, that of Him as Creator. It’s to get behind everything and uproot it at the core. It is, indeed, to seek to take the place of God Himself (2 Thessalonians 2:4).
Of course, the real issue in the last days is our love and loyalty to Jesus. But according to the Bible, this love is expressed in obedience to the commandments (1 John 5:3, Revelation 14:12) — and the Sabbath alone among the commandments gets behind everything because it alone points to God as Creator (Exodus 20:8-11). No wonder it will be the outward symbol of the final divide between those who worship the Lord and those who worship the beast (Revelation 14:11-12). Considering how basic and fundamental the Sabbath is to everything else, it’s hard to see how the final issue of worshiping the Creator could be about anything else.
| Many people argue that it makes no difference what day one keeps as the Sabbath, as long as we keep one. How do we answer that argument with the Bible? |
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I signed papers about 55 years ago saying that Carmel and I are legally in a husband/wife relationship. It is a legal and binding agreement. We are living in what some people perceive as the end-time of that agreement. Circumstances have changed. At least one of us is wrinkled, decrepit, slightly forgetful, a bit cranky, and coughs and sneezes in the middle of the night (not attributing any of these to one particular participant). Yet we stick together because we have that binding agreement.
Now if you believe that last bit, you have rocks in your head. We still love one another. We cannot even find the legal bit! Someone in our house forgot where they put it. Yet we still stick together because, even before we signed the legal bit, we loved one another.
The Sabbath is part of the love bit between us and God (or God and us, if you think order is important) We need to understand that the testing is our love for God. We need to be very careful about how we say all this about testing in the final days. Just because we have Seventh-day in our church name does not mean that we love God. I know plenty of marriages that are legally binding where the partners hate one another's guts (excuse the Australian language).
It would not surprise me if "End-time" testing of true worship is not about which day, but about whether we worship God or not. The alternative to worship is apathy and ultimately just ignoring God altogether. And in that respect that is happening right now.
Amen. Such an appropriate and meaningful analogy. Thank you for sharing, Dr. Maurice.
My adoration of beautiful Father and Savior - and of His Sovereignty and amazing grace and love is the basis of my worship. He is the air I breathe, every moment of life. And I love our special times on Sabbath, worshipping Him as our Creator. Love is the basis of our relationship.
The Jews kept the Sabbath faithfully and still killed Jesus. And then they went to keep the Sabbath...
I believe in the Sabbath and what it stands for, but I sure hope it goes deeper than just a sign to keep to show we're loyal to God. I've seen enough nasty Sabbath keepers in my lifetime. If we truly experience the Sabbath, we should be different.
Well said, Maurice. And I think you're excused for your Aussie slang.... As long as you're not eating shrimp on your Barbie:)
Definitely not chucking shrimp on the Barbie (Hey, that ages you a bit to remember that!) but I got some great photos the other day of a Little Egret surrounded by jumping shrimp.
Worship
The feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for a deity.
"the worship of God"
New day new questions. Who or what do I worship? Success, money, material things, spiritual, transcendent values, goodness, God? May we all, in whatever dealings we have today, be conscious about a God Who gives us life, breathing, intelligence, and creativity! May we all be inspired by the Holy Spirit to excellence!
We are called to turn to God, dropping our previous other gods: money, and pleasures of the world. I would say not money, but the love of money, is a god. When we turn to God, we reverence and give God the glory for our deliverance. Worshiping our Father in heaven has now become a part our daily lives.
Revelation 14:7.
By turning to God, giving Him reverence and glory, and worshiping Him who created us, we have avoided worshiping the beast, receiving the mark of the beast.
Revelation 14:9
We are now labelled as commandment keepers, who worship God, giving Him our love in obedience, who have the gift of patience from God. Revelation 14:12. Awesome, absolutely awesome! I dig it. As the King's Heralds sang, "I want to dig a little deeper into the storehouse of God's love."
"Many people argue that it makes no difference what day one keeps as the Sabbath, as long as we keep one. How do we answer that argument with the Bible?"
In Genesis 1 there is no day blessed by God as a day of rest:
“And God saw the light, that it was good:...” (Gen 1:4, KJV)
“...and God saw that it was good.” (Gen 1:12, KJV)
“...and God saw that it was good.” (Gen 1:18, KJV)
“...and God saw that it was good.” (Gen 1:21, KJV)
“...and God saw that it was good.” (Gen 1:25, KJV)
“And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good....” (Gen 1:31, KJV)
"God blessed them"
Verses 22 & 28
In Genesis 2:1-3, God blesses a day as a day of rest:
“1. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” (Gen 2:1-3, KJV)
Very good, Peter A. Rothernbach. But isn't it interesting as to how at first it says that In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and how the earth was without form and void, and how light is made on the first day, but yet the sun, moon, and stars are not made until the fourth day? So then, light must not have had anything to do with the sun, moon, or stars -- right? But these then were to divide that light from the darkness -- right?
There are many, many mysteries in the six days of creation in the book of Genesis, to say the least. But this is also why I feel that verses 1 and 2 are a space of time that has nothing to do with the seven days of creation for Genesis, but a time that may have been millennia, in our accounting of time in our space and age.
Hi, Pete. I must confess that your logic escapes me. Why should the existence of mysteries -- things that we cannot understand -- lead us to doubt the plainest statements of Scripture? The lessons have clearly pointed out that the Hebrew word for "day," as found in Genesis, chapters 1 and 2, is always a 24-hour period when accompanied by a number. Questioning that scenario raises all kinds of problems, so I'd like to know what problem you are trying to solve by doing so.
Maybe this will help: God is light, no darkness can dwell where God is... Simple answer: God was there...
Does it matter which day we set apart as a special day for God?
Isn't the important thing just to worship Him; does the day matter?
One person, in a class, stated, "In the Old Testament, people worshipped on the 7th-day Sabbath to commemorate creation.
In the New Testament, people worship on the 1st day of the week to commemorate recreation, as Christ rose to recreate us. See Romans 6:4 and 2 Corinthians 5:17.
Sounds reasonable, EXCEPT:
1. Nowhere in the Bible does it say God blessed and sanctified a different day.
2. Jesus never referred to Sunday (1st day) with references of it being a new Sabbath.
3. The disciples never mentioned that Christ had instituted a new Sabbath day in honor of His resurrection, or of recreation.
4. There are other days one might consider, if man is left to choose a day. Without the death on the cross, on Friday, there would be no resurrection or new creatures recreated in Christ. So maybe Friday should be the day?
So basically, Sunday has no command or blessing as a new Sabbath from the Lord.
Yet, as we study the three angels' message, we see a struggle concerning right worship and wrong worship, with life-and-death results! The devil is out to war against those who worship God and keep His commandments. (Rev. 12:17) The saints are described as keeping the commandments of God. (Rev. 13:12) And the urgent call is to worship the One Who made (created) heaven and earth, the sea and fountains, (Rev. 14:7) using language that sounds very much like the fourth commandment (Exodus 20:11), which takes us back to Genesis 2:2-3.
So, does it make a difference?
Did it make a difference when Cain worshipped, bringing garden produce, while Abel worshipped, bringing a lamb?
Can we bless, and make holy, a day of our choosing? That's actually presenting our own righteousness to God, saying we can make a day holy.
Or do we respond to God's call to His day that He blessed and made holy and called us to remember, thereby coming into His holiness and accepting His righteousness for us?
Thanks Ulrike, this may come in handy as I visit and stay with my Baptist parents, this weekend. I cringe when they say that Sunday is ‘their sabbath’.
Pardon me for interjecting a thought into this conversation ...
When you talk with your parents, remember there will be many Sunday-Sabbath-keeping followers of Jesus in heaven. Your parents are likely correct when they say that Sunday is their Sabbath. After all, "Sabbath" simply means "rest." But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord our God (Ex. 20:10), and He invites us to enter into rest with Him, both literally every single day and symbolically and in a special way on the Sabbath. Witnessing to family is a very delicate situation that requires a lot of thought and prayer. But God has promised that He will give wisdom to everyone who asks. (James 1:5)
I pray that you may be "wise as serpents and harmless as doves" (Matt. 10:16), and I pray that your parents may see that you have been with Jesus. (Acts 4:13)
Yes, I understand. I usually try to avoid the topic. And most other Seventh-day Adventist beliefs. It's easier that way I've found. Everyone has their own way of interpreting scripture I guess.