"Sunday
keeping must be the mark of the beast."— The Marvel
of Nations, by U. Smith (page 183).
"The
seal of God is his holy Sabbath."—Thoughts on
Revelation (page 452).
These give the Seventh day
Adventist doctrine in its full force. All, then, who keep
the Jewish Sabbath are sealed for eternal bliss. This
would include the Pharisees, and all Jews, Seventh day
Baptists, and Seventh day Adventists. The teeming millions
of earth that do not keep the seventh day are not sealed;
cannot be. If the Sabbath is the seal of God, then all who
disregard it, and keep the Lord's Day, are not sealed.
What, then, is their condition? Smith answers "Sunday
keeping must be the mark of the beast." All who keep
Sunday, therefore, are of necessity beast worshipers.
Listen. "Sunday keeping is an institution of the
first beast, and all who submit to obey this institution
emphatically worship the first beast and receive his mark,
'the mark of the beast.' . . . Those who worship the beast
and his image by observing the first day are certainly
idolaters."—Advent Review Extra (August, 1850,
pages 10, 11). Uriah Smith says that those who keep the
first day are "thereby marked" (The Marvel of
Nations, pages 174, 175). The Revelator says that all who
worship the beast and receive his mark will be cast into
eternal torment (Rev. 14:9-11). So, to sum up the whole,
all who keep the Sabbath are "sealed" for
eternal glory, while all who observe the Lord's Day are
"beast-worshipers," "idolaters,"
"marked," and doomed to "eternal
torment."
Surely such absurdity should awaken
even those who have been ensnared into that dark yoke of
legal bondage. Luther, Wesley, Huss, Bunyan, Milton,
Baxter, and all the other great and good men down through
the ages who effected mighty reformations in the earth and
were powers in the hands of God, all rejected the seventh
day and were Sunday keepers. But according to the
foregoing quotations from the Adventist literature, they
were all "marked by the beast" and were
"idolaters." But the Adventists themselves admit
that these very men were Christians. This admission
overthrows their position that Sunday-keeping is the mark
of the beast. I again quote from Adventism Renounced:
"Mrs. White says of him
[Luther]: 'Zealous, ardent, and devoted, knowing no fear
but the fear of God, and acknowledging no foundation for
religious faith but the holy Scriptures,' etc. 'Angels of
heaven were by his side, and rays of light from the throne
of God revealed the treasures of truth to his
understanding.'—Great Controversy (pages 94, 97). Good.
Now hear Luther. Carlstadt, a zealous and learned
Sabbatarian, laid his arguments for the seventh day before
Luther, who examined them. Here is Luther's decision in
his own words: 'Indeed, if Carlstadt were to write further
about the Sabbath, Sunday would have to give way, and the
Sabbath—that is to say, Saturday—must be kept holy; he
would truly make us Jews in all things, and we should come
to be circumcised; for that is true and cannot be denied,
that he who deems it necessary to keep one law of Moses,
and keeps it as the law of Moses, must deem all necessary,
and keep them all.' —History Sabbath (page 457)."
Luther heard the teaching on
Sabbath observance; but he, like true Christians today,
rejected it. Mrs. White admits that "angels and light
from God's throne" revealed the truth to Luther.
Amen. Then, Luther was clear in his observance of the
Lord's Day and his rejection of the Jewish Sabbath.
"Hear Mrs. White on John
Bunyan: 'John Bunyan breathed the very atmosphere of
heaven' (Great Controverse, page 174). Well, now hear
Bunyan: 'As for the seventh day Sabbath, that, as we see,
is gone to its grave with the signs and shadows of the Old
Testament; yea, and it has such a dash left upon it by
apostolic authority, that it is enough to make a Christian
fly from it forever (2 Corinthians 3)'—Complete Works
(page 915)." So Bunyen, who breathed "the
atmosphere of heaven," rejected and opposed the
observance of the Jewish Sabbath.
Thank God for these admissions from
the great prophetess of Adventism. So we today, with
Luther, Wesley, Baxter, and Bunyan, reject the Jewish
Sabbath, and keep the great memorial day of the gospel;
and while doing so breathe the atmosphere of heaven.
Halleluiah!
Instead of Sabbath keeping being
the seal of God, the Bible plainly states that the seal is
the Holy Spirit. "Who hath also sealed us, and given
the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts" (2 Cor.
1:22). "In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard
the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom
also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy
Spirit of promise" (Eph. 1:13). "And grieve not
the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day
of redemption" (Eph. 4:30).
Nowhere does the Bible state that
the observance of the Lord's Day is the mark of the beast.
To assert such a thing is bare assumption, without one
text of proof. It is false for the following reasons:
1. The first day of the week was
the day upon which the early Christians held their
meetings and met for divine worship. This we have
conclusively proved.
2. The united testimony of the
early Christian writers who wrote but a few years after
the death of the apostles, and during the first few
centuries of the Christian era, testify that the church in
their time regarded the resurrection day as the great
memorial day of the gospel, and termed it the Lord's Day.
This was long before the beast arose.
3. The Catholic sect did not change
the observance of days from the seventh to the first. This
we have abundantly proved.
4. The Adventists quote a few old
Catholic catechisms as their only proof that the beast
changed the Sabbath; and in this they misrepresent the
Catholic teaching, as any scholar knows. So whatever the
mark of the beast in the forehead and right hand may
signify, it cannot be the observance of the great memorial
day of the gospel.
