Is Sabbath-Keeping Legalism?
By Pastor Hal Mayer
Warm Christian Greetings to you and your family. I pray that the Lord is blessing you and making you rich in His glory and character. We are in the last days and it is our privilege to work for God and love Him. This month, we have the second installment of the Sabbath series that I promised you. I want you to understand and be able to have Bible answers for your faith.
Perhaps one of the most persistent errors that has been thrust against the seventh day Sabbath is that its advocates are legalists. It is founded on the idea that the Ten Commandment law is no longer in force, or at least the fourth commandment’s “seventh day.”
I hope that after you hear this month’s message you will see the biblical relationship between the law and the righteousness of Christ, and how the seventh day Sabbath reflects the true principles of Christ’s righteousness and grace.
To truly understand the Sabbath, we must understand the principle of grace. One of the most common statements made about those that advocate keeping God’s seventh day Sabbath is that those who do so are legalists who think they can work their way to heaven. They are said to be ignoring the great gospel truth of salvation by grace through faith. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Bible is very clear that no one can earn salvation by their works. For instance, Galatians 2:16 reads, “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no man be justified.”
As a side note, please notice that it is the faith of Christ that we must have, not our own faith, if we are to be justified. Jesus plants His own faith in us. Paul in Galatians 2:20 reinforces this by saying “and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God…” Paul makes it abundantly clear that we cannot muster up our own faith to somehow be justified. We have to have the faith of Jesus. Then the Apostle and Prophet John concludes that those who are living at the end of time will also have the patience of the saints. Notice the tandem principles that will characterize the last generation on earth. In Revelation 14:12 he writes, “Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” The Ten Commandments and the faith of Jesus go hand in hand. John did not want us to be confused about the deep and inseparable bond between the Ten Commandments and the faith of Jesus. You cannot have one without the other, or it is incomplete. You cannot keep the Ten Commandments without the faith of Jesus. Nor can you, in fact, keep the faith of Jesus without the Ten Commandments.
So, how do you keep the commandments of God? It is obvious. The only way to keep the commandments of God is through the faith of Jesus. If you are going to be part of the last generation of people who give a clear and decided testimony of their love and loyalty to Jesus Christ, you must have the faith of Jesus to keep the Ten Commandments.
We must have Jesus’ faith and a working experience in the Ten Commandments if we ever want to be successful in the battle of life. We must have the faith of Jesus and a experimental knowledge of the Ten Commandments, if we ever want to overcome sin. We must have the faith of Jesus to keep the Ten Commandments if we ever want to survive the coming crisis over Sunday worship.
So how do you get the faith of Jesus? The only way is through surrender of your life to Him, followed by your personal determination to live for Him and do what He says. When Jesus comes into your life, keeping the Ten Commandments is the only thing you can do, ultimately. If you have Jesus in your life, He will lead you into all truth, and into the keeping of His holy Ten Commandments. You may learn more and more as you go along, but eventually, He will place you in the position where you will be living with the same character as He had. You will live by all the Ten Commandments, because sin becomes distasteful to you. And anything that is out of harmony with the Spirit of God, will seem foreign to you and you won’t want it in your life.
Listen to this interesting statement from the book Desire of Ages, page 668. It is powerful. “When we know God as it is our privilege to know Him, our life will be a life of continual obedience. Through an appreciation of the character of Christ, through communion with God, sin will become hateful to us.”
Isn’t that amazing? Sin will actually become hateful to us. That’s Jesus goal for His people on earth. He wants them to hate sin so much, that they will be safe to take to heaven. Sin cannot remain where Jesus is. When He comes into your heart, sin is banished from the soul. You are pure and clean.
My wife and her choir recently went to Japan. They were asked to sing for a vegetarian society which was mostly made up of Buddhists. They sang Christian songs for them. When it was over, the music had so impressed the listeners that they remarked that they felt the music had “cleansed” them. The truth of the matter is, that when you have been with Jesus, He cleanses you. And just as these Buddhists felt cleansed when the heavenly music came into their hearts, you are cleansed when Jesus comes into your heart. Not only are your past sins cleansed and washed away, but He replaces the sin with His righteousness. From then on, you live righteously, unless you tell Jesus to leave. That is what grace does for you. It cleanses you two ways. First it removes the past, but it also empowers the present so that you can stay clean.
Jesus plants His faith in your soul and this transforms your heart. There are temptations, for Satan does not want to lose his victim. But by clinging to Christ and earnestly pleading for His righteousness to overtake your soul, He will answer your prayer and put His faith in your heart. Then you can live for Him. Grace does not merely remove the guilt of the past so that you can go back to your sins. You must ask Jesus into your heart every day, every hour, and in every temptation. He will pour His grace into your soul and you will grow into His image more and more.
But perhaps we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let us come back to the question of salvation. Has there ever been any other way of being justified before God than by the faith of Jesus? Were men before the cross justified “by the works of the law” and since the cross “by grace?” Some people teach that the period before the cross was the dispensation of works, meaning that man was saved by his works. Hebrews 11 clearly tells us that it was by faith that the people of the Old Testament were victorious. Even Moses himself, the very one who was entrusted with God’s holy law, the Ten Commandments on two tables of stone, we are told, “kept the Passover” by faith (vs. 28). He was the one who set up the sanctuary in the wilderness as a miniature model of the heavenly sanctuary which plainly shows how a man is justified by placing his sins on the sin-bearer, the lamb. The salvation was not in the sacrifice of the literal lamb, but in the sinner’s faith in the future sacrifice of the anti-typical lamb, Jesus Christ. Christ’s faith was planted in them too, so that they could be justified then and there by faith in His future sacrifice. The method is no different today than it was then.
Let me ask another question. What is the attitude of a man who is justified by faith toward the Ten Commandments? Does he think that because he is justified by faith that he now has a license to steal, lie, commit adultery, murder, worship idols, or break the Sabbath? Or does he love Jesus so much that he shuns all these things, and refuses to participate in them. The justification of Christ through His grace, is not a license to kill, steal, take God’s name in vain, cheat on your spouse, break the Sabbath, or any other commandment. Quite the opposite, Jesus enables us, He empowers us, to live by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God, including all ten of the Ten Commandments.
Being justified is the opposite of being condemned. Romans 8:1 says, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” The unjustified man is the one who stands under condemnation, while the justified man stands free of it. The unjustified man is “under the law,” or under condemnation. Listen to Romans 3:19. “Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.” This verse clearly shows us that “under the law” means to be under guilt or condemnation. When man transgresses the law, he is guilty and condemned before God. If he lives by the law he doesn’t need to worry about the law’s condemnation at all. When we sin and transgress God’s holy law, we come under condemnation, or in other words, we are lost. And the only way to be free of this guilt and condemnation is to turn sincerely to Christ in repentance and receive His forgiveness and justification.
God cannot cancel out His law to accommodate the sinner. Then Satan would have to be given eternal life and allowed back into heaven. God’s law is eternal and unchangeable. God himself said “I change not.” Malachi 3:6. Some modern progressives, as liberals like to be called, want to change God’s law and accommodate the sinner. They say that the law was done away with at the cross. But this is impossible. If the law was done away with, Satan would then be able to say that he was right all along and that God’s law cannot be kept. He could then accuse God of wrongfully casting him out of heaven, and demand reinstatement in his heavenly position. The unfallen worlds and angels would again have sympathy with Satan’s arguments against God. Those who teach that the law was done away with, are really echoing one of Satan’s lies, that the law is not worth keeping.
Jesus lived and died on earth a law-keeper. Never once did He break God’s law. Never once did He transgress the holy requirements, even when under the severest provocation. He fulfilled the law. In other words, He lived by it. He did not break it. By doing so He showed how that man can also live by that same law. Just as He depended on God for power to overcome Satan’s temptations, so we can depend on Him for power and overcome too.
To do away with the ten commandment law would be saying that it is an unjust law in the first place and that it should never have been made. Satan would love that. It would be saying that he was correct in accusing God of being an unjust tyrant and of creating laws that were unjust and unkeepable. It would be his ticket to spread his work of destruction all over the universe. It would also be saying that any man who violated the law is not condemned, because the ten commandment law is unjust to begin with. God would be rather foolish and evil to put in operation a law that no one can keep, and then hold them guilty for violating it. Man often does that with earthly laws, but not God. No, God cannot do away with His own law, because it is a transcript of His own character. He is eternal and He does not change. Nor does He make foolish mistakes.
So man cannot save himself by law-keeping. But at the same time, the law is still in force. Think of it this way. 1 John 3:4 says “Sin is the transgression of the law,” the penalty for which is death, for “the wages of sin is death.” Romans 6:23. So in order for a man to be truly justified by his own works, he must acknowledge that he has sinned and is under the death sentence. Then he must die to pay the just penalty for breaking the law. Having paid the penalty himself by his own death, he must resurrect himself from the dead. Then he can stand before the law as uncondemned and justified by his own works. And God would then have to give him eternal life.
Perhaps you can see how ridiculous and impossible that would be. From our own legal system here on earth we can understand this problem. When you break a state law, you go to prison. The judge sentences you for a year, or two or whatever your crime requires. While in prison you are under the judicial condemnation of the law. Once you have completed your sentence, you are then free because you have paid the penalty by your works. In a way, this is justification by works. If the penalty is death, there is no amount of works that would pay the penalty, only death would satisfy the law. If the penalty of sin is death, then there is no hope of working your way to justification and eternal life because you can never resurrect yourself. Life only comes from God.
“Therefore,” says Paul in Romans 3:20, “by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight.” And in vs. 28 he says, “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.”
If we are justified by the faith of Christ living in us, do we then have freedom to break the law? No. That would bring us under condemnation again. The only two alternatives in dealing with the sin problem are that either the law has been done away, which it hasn’t, or we have Jesus to give us power to live in harmony with the Ten Commandment law. Those are the only options.
To say that justification does away with the law is saying that justification gives us a license to disobey the law and still have eternal life. This was taught for so long and so often that many people have contempt for God’s holy law. Hundreds of thousands of Christians believe that they can be given justification by despising the law and everything for which it stands. The result is seen in the moral depravity in the churches and in the world today.
Here is a very powerful statement from the book Great Controversy, pg 586, that shows the consequences of the idea that we don’t have to keep the law. You can plainly see that the blame for the moral decline in society is largely laid at the feet of those that promote the idea that the law is of no effect. The main reason that some present this argument is because they do not want to obey God and keep the true Sabbath in accordance with God’s law.
“And as the claims of the fourth commandment are urged upon the people, it is found that the observance of the seventh day Sabbath is enjoined; and as the only way to free themselves from a duty which they are unwilling to perform, popular teachers declare that the law of God is no longer binding. Thus, they cast away the law and the Sabbath together. As the work of Sabbath reform extends, this rejection of the divine law to avoid the claims of the fourth commandment will become well-nigh universal. The teachings of religious leaders have opened the door to infidelity, to Spiritualism, and to contempt for God’s holy law, and upon these leaders rests a fearful responsibility for the iniquity that exists in the Christian world.”
So it is essentially the religious leaders who have taught that it is not necessary to keep the law, or that the Ten Commandments were done away with at the cross, which has brought the moral problems that exist in our world today. But now, many of their successors in these same churches have switched their position. They still teach that it isn’t necessary to keep the Bible Sabbath, but are now urging that the Ten Commandments must be kept, and that Sunday must be observed as a day of rest in order to improve the morals of society. I’ll read it to you from Great Controversy, pg 587-589.
“Yet this very class” that is; those who claimed that the law was no longer binding, “put forth the claim that the fast-spreading corruption is largely attributable to the desecration of the so-called “Christian sabbath,” and that the enforcement of Sunday observance would greatly improve the morals of society. This claim is especially urged in America, where the doctrine of the true Sabbath has been most widely preached.”
Why do so many people want to avoid keeping the seventh day Sabbath? Why is there so much false doctrine being taught about the law? Listen to this statement from the book Great Controversy, page 558. Speaking of end-time spiritualism, the author wrote; “Even in its present form, so far from being more worthy of toleration than formerly, it is really a more dangerous, because a more subtle, deception. While it formerly denounced Christ and the Bible, it now professes to accept both. But the Bible is interpreted in a manner that is pleasing to the unrenewed heart, while its solemn and vital truths are made of no effect. Love is dwelt upon as the chief attribute of God, but it is degraded to a weak sentimentalism, making little distinction between good and evil.” Ah hah. The reason is that they do not want genuine renewal of heart. They want to live by their traditions, an easy religion that does not require serious sacrifice.
I’ll read on, “God’s justice, His denunciations of sin, the requirements of His holy law, are all kept out of sight. The people are taught to regard the Decalogue as a dead letter. Pleasing, bewitching fables captivate the senses and lead men to reject the Bible as the foundation of their faith. Christ is as verily denied as before; but Satan has so blinded the eyes of the people that the deception is not discerned.”
So in reality, it is a form of spiritualism that teaches that God’s law is no longer in force. And it leads to the rejection of the scriptures at least in practice, if not by conscious decision. When an emaciated so-called “love” is taught in place of the true concept, the churches are led to moral corruption. In the name of “love” all manner of sin and false doctrines are tolerated.
Rome has come up with her own solution. She teaches that if you sin, all you need to do is go to confession, pay a little money, do a little penance, and everything will be alright. You don’t have to turn from your sins. Huge numbers of people think that these works will justify them. Many Evangelicals and main stream Protestants believe that you don’t have to do anything except to accept Jesus as your savior. You don’t even have leave your sins, for that would be a form of legalism. Friends, Satan doesn’t care which ditch you fall into. He just wants to keep you wallowing in your sins. So long as you do that, he has you. And moreover, he will let you believe anything you want, even if it is inconsistent, so long as you don’t keep God’s holy seventh day Sabbath.
No reasonable person would argue that the ten commandment law that says “thou shalt not steal” is no longer in force. Human laws against stealing are a reflection of the divine law and are inherently good, protecting society and helping to keep it secure. So also for the commandment that says “thou shalt not covet.” In fact, Paul quotes this commandment in Romans 7:7. “I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.” Was Paul preaching legalism when he said that? How about when he said in Ephesians 6:2, 3, “Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with a promise; that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth?” Was Paul teaching that you earn salvation by your works of keeping these commandments? Of course not. The same arguments against Sabbath keeping would also apply to the other nine commandments as well. If it is legalism to keep the Sabbath, it is legalism to keep from stealing or committing adultery. Paul is saying that the law is still in force and that Jesus will give you power to live by it like He did.
Paul was the great champion of righteousness by faith. We have to understand all that Paul and the other apostles say on this topic, not just what suits us.
Here is one of the finest statements I have ever found on the topic of the righteousness of Christ. It is found in the book Desire of Ages, page 25. It says this. “Christ was treated as we deserve, that we might be treated as He deserves. He was condemned for our sins, in which He had no share, that we might be justified by His righteousness, in which we had no share. He suffered the death which was ours, that we might receive the life which was His. ‘With His stripes we are healed.’”
What a wonderful statement! Our law-breaking is forgiven by His substitution for us. We can gain nothing by our own works. We are justified by His faith implanted in us. Back in Jesus’ day, the religious leaders taught that keeping the law is how you are saved. Today, the opposite is being taught. You don’t have to keep the law, all you need is grace, or in the case of Roman Catholics, all you need is confession, penance and the mass.
Listen to this important statement from the Signs of the Times, July 31, 1901. The author says, “The natural heart rebels against the requirements of God’s law. It was the law against which Satan fought in heaven, and those who are controlled by him will hate its principles. But let them remember that when they cast reproach at the law, they cast reproach at Him with whom the law originated. He who while trampling on the law of God claims that Christ has forgiven his sins, knows not of what he is talking. John declares that sin is the transgression of the law. If there were no law, there would be no sin. Those who claim to love Christ, while at the same time they refuse to obey Him, are like fountains which send forth impure water. Professing to follow Christ, they do the work of the adversary. Their faith is dead; for it is unsupported by good works. They can no more be saved by their faith than can the fallen angels, who believe and tremble, by their faith.”
The fact is that both the law and grace play important parts in the plan of redemption. The law points out our sin and grace saves us from sin. The law points out the principles of God’s kingdom by which all who wish to have eternal life must live. Grace is the operative power in your life and mine to live the character and law of God in our own lives. Both law and grace must be understood in their proper setting. Each have their place. Both are operative and will always be. That is why the apostle James says in chapter 2 verse 18; “Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works.” Then in verse 20 he says, “But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?
In other words, you cannot have a living faith if you are not keeping God’s law. When you have living faith, you are also a commandment keeper, because that is the result of Jesus coming into your heart. You love Him so much for forgiving your sins, and cleansing you from them, that you want to serve Him and do everything He does.
It is therefore not legalism to keep the ten commandment law. It is, in fact, righteousness. It is because Jesus is in your heart, and you have His faith, that you can be righteous. Keeping the law is actually the practical result of faith in Christ. It cannot be legalism. Legalism is the idea that you can earn salvation by keeping the law. That is quite a different thing from keeping the law through faith.
Moreover, grace is not just an external function that happens off in some far distant place that gives you eternal life. Grace actually comes into your heart and transforms you from the inside out and makes you clean and renews your love for Jesus. Then you want to do what He does. Jesus keeps the law, and brings that law-keeping into your life. That’s not legalism.
And this is what the Old Testament has been trying to tell us all along. The scripture shows us that Abel kept God’s law by faith. Enoch kept the law by faith. Noah kept the law by faith. Abraham, the father of the faithful, kept the law by faith. By faith Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, even the harlot Rahab and a host of others acted out their law keeping and their heroism by faith. This is exactly what Hebrews 11 is telling us about these Old Testament characters. God could not have used them as He did, if they did not have the righteousness of Christ transforming their hearts, and empowering them to keep His law.
So today, you cannot have true faith unless it brings you to an understanding that the ten commandment law is still in force and that Jesus will give you the power and strength to keep it, even when the devil tempts you sorely.
Dwight L. Moody put it this way in his book “Weighed and Wanting, page 15.” The commandments of God given to Moses in the mount at Horeb are as binding today as ever they have been since the time when they were proclaimed in the hearing of the people.”
He also wrote on the next page, “The people must be made to understand that the Ten Commandments are still binding, and that there is a penalty attached to their violation.”
But Moody was probably not thinking about the seventh day Sabbath when he wrote that. Moody was a Sunday keeper. Moody probably thought he was obeying the law when he kept Sunday. And therefore he was not accused of being a legalist. Perhaps he did not understand the significance of what he wrote (and certainly preached). In his ignorance or blindness he kept the wrong day and broke the law.
Those who teach the same thing, but who also show that the law concerning the seventh day Sabbath is still in force however, don’t have the same luxury. They are often misrepresented as legalists or fanatics. And all sorts of arguments are presented that have no basis in scripture, or that don’t apply to the issue of Sunday sacredness or Sunday worship. Often those who cannot use scripture to refute their arguments, resort to name calling and verbal abuse.
Some ministers who advocate the eternal, unchanging nature of the Ten Commandments, when they get to the fourth commandment, say that part of it was done away at the cross… Many famous preachers have stumbled on this point. On one hand they advocate that the Ten Commandments were unchangeable moral principles, but on the other hand they say that the fourth commandment, or at least the seventh day part of the fourth commandment, was done away at the cross or is no longer in force. They suggest that the “moral principle” is to keep one day in seven. But that isn’t what the fourth commandment says. The Sabbath commandment is very precise and specific. “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God…” Exodus 20:10.
Here is another very clear and powerful statement from the Signs of the Times, May 19, 1890.
“From the pulpits of today the words are uttered: “Believe, only believe. Have faith in Christ; you have nothing to do with the old law, only trust in Christ.” How different is this from the words of the apostle, who declares that faith without works is dead. He says, “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.” We must have that faith that works by love and purifies the soul. Many seek to substitute a superficial faith for uprightness of life, and think through this to obtain salvation.
“The Lord requires at this time just what He required of Adam in Eden,—perfect obedience to the law of God. We must have righteousness without a flaw, without a blemish. God gave His son to die for the world, but He did not die to repeal the law which was holy and just and good. The sacrifice of Christ on Calvary is an unanswerable argument showing the immutability of the law. Its penalty was felt by the Son of God in behalf of guilty man, that through His merits the sinner might obtain the virtue of His spotless character by faith in His name. The sinner was provided with a second opportunity to keep the law of God in the strength of his Divine Redeemer.
“The cross of Calvary forever condemns the idea that Satan has placed before the Christian world, that the death of Christ abolished not only the typical system of sacrifices and ceremonies but the unchangeable law of God, the foundation of His throne, the transcript of His character. Through every device possible Satan has sought to make of none effect the sacrifice of the Son of God, to render His expiation useless, and His mission a failure. He has claimed that the death of Christ made obedience to the law unnecessary, and permitted the sinner to come into favor with a holy God without forsaking his sin. He has declared that the Old Testament standard was lowered in the gospel, and that men can come to Christ, not to be saved from their sins but in their sins. But when John beheld Jesus he told His mission. He said, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” To every repentant soul the message is, “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
Not long before he died, a very famous evangelical preacher, Dr. D. James Kennedy, the pastor of Coral Ridge Ministries in Coral Ridge, FL, who had thousands upon thousands of followers, published a new book called “Why the Ten Commandments Matter.” In it, he says plainly that the Ten Commandments are still binding today. He even skillfully argues that the Sabbath is still to be kept in modern times. One of the key points he makes is that the morality of a nation depends on it keeping the Sabbath. I’ll read it to you. “Have you ever heard the old saying,” he writes, “‘As goes the Sabbath, so goes the nation’? It’s true. When the Sabbath becomes profaned and desecrated, a nation sinks deeper and deeper into the mire of sin. And that has a profound negative impact upon any country. If we are looking for another practical reason to keep the Sabbath holy, here, surely, is an urgent one.
“Christians need to understand that the keeping of the Sabbath really does create a more moral climate in our culture. It promotes an awareness that God and His ways and His laws are important to all of us. Without public morality, our secular laws have less meaning; the result is that lawlessness rises, and our nation sinks into crime, fear, disorder, and injustice.”
In the last sermon in this series, we discovered that neither Jesus nor the apostles even hinted that there might be a change in the Sabbath. The conclusion then is that man, by his own authority changed the Sabbath. If a man can change the Sabbath by their own will, he makes himself as a god, or equal to god, thinking to “change times and laws.” This blasphemy is the same spirit that Lucifer had in heaven when he said “I will be like the Most High.” Isaiah 14:14. This is actually the spirit of anti-Christ.
This leads us to the prophetic significance of the Sabbath. You may remember that the last great struggle on earth, as depicted in Revelation 13, is over worship. The most contested worship issue in all of history is the seventh day Sabbath. Not the Sabbath itself, but the seventh day. Even the Roman Catholic Church acknowledges that the Sabbath is very important to man, but instead of upholding scripture and the command of God, they substitute the first day of the week, or Sunday instead. Other churches that keep Sunday as the day of rest are merely echoing the claims of Rome, and in fact, are acknowledging Rome’s authority at least tacitly.
The seventh day Sabbath is still at the center of the struggle, and will be until the end of time. Satan has always tried to deceive man into thinking that human reasoning, or human tradition is an acceptable alternative to the word of God and His direct instructions.
In the last days, the final conflict is over the worship of God, vs. the worship of a false God, or Satan. The central issue is over Sabbath observance. Most of the religious world will give obeisance to Sunday. Only a few will remain loyal to Jesus and His Sabbath.
How do we know that? The Bible tells us. Revelation 13 tells us that the beast and the image to the beast require all to worship the beast and his image. All you have to do is pay attention to what is going on in the world around us. For instance, the Pope is continually calling for Sunday worship. D. James Kennedy and other evangelical preachers advocated Sunday worship, and they strongly oppose those who teach the Bible Sabbath. It is as obvious as can be. But most people miss it because they are not aware of Bible prophecy, nor are they aware of the real agenda behind the scenes.
In contrast, Jesus is looking for men and woman who will be loyal to Him no matter what. He is looking for a generation of people who will fly the flag of Prince Emmanuel by keeping His Sabbath holy. He is looking for people who will love Him so much, and so deeply, that they would rather die than break even one of His specific commandments. Keeping the Sabbath truly, and in the righteousness of Christ is the most mature testimony of the grace of Christ in your life. Because it is so different from the way most of the people of the world think, it becomes the singular, identifying mark of the true remnant of God’s people. Because of their loyalty, Jesus can seal His Sabbath-keepers in their foreheads, and allow them to go through the most severe tests of their character. They may be falsely accused of being legalists and persecuted by family, friends, co-workers, the government, or even people they do not know. But they will shine as the sun.
We are living in the last days. We are nearing the time when all of these things will come to pass. Friends, should we not come to Christ now, repent of our sins, and seek forgiveness for our transgression of His law? Should we not take advantage of the true principle of grace that He offers us? Should we not begin now to keep all His commandments, even the seventh day Sabbath?
If you have been a Sabbath keeper, perhaps you have become slack in your experience with Christ, and as a result you have become slack in keeping His wonderful Ten Commandments. Perhaps you have begun to feel that the Sabbath is not so important to you anymore. This is the time to turn to Jesus and ask Him to come back into your life and give you His grace to keep His law.
If you have not been a Sabbath keeper, isn’t it time that you take the next step in your faith relationship with Christ and open the door of your heart to His complete will in your life? Jesus is looking for men and woman who will give themselves unreservedly to His mature will in their lives in these last days. I hope you can see this opportunity and take the necessary steps to follow His law and be like Him.