THE SEAL, SIGN, OR MARK OF GOD.
By G. E. Fifield
It is evident that the fourth commandment, and that only, contains the seal of the law; for it is the only one of the ten that reveals who the Lawgiver is, and what is the extent of his dominion, distinguishing him from all false gods. I do not propose to make any new argument on this point. Now, as the fourth precept of the Decalogue is the only one that distinguishes the Giver of that law from all other deities, marking him as the Creator, and as that very command enjoins the observance of a memorial of creation, it is not strange that such observance should be spoken of in the Bible as the sign, or mark, of the worship of the true God. Says the Lord:— "Verily my Sabbaths ye shall keep; for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you." "Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath. . . . It is a sign between me and the children of Israel forever." Ex. 31: 13, 16, 17. Who this Israel is Paul plainly tells: "For the promise, that he should be heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith." So then "they which are the children of the flesh" (is merely the literal seed), "these are not the children of God; but the children of the promise are counted for the seed." "And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." To this spiritual Israel, who, like Jacob, have learned that of themselves they can do nothing, but who have had power to prevail in prayer till they too have become princes of God,—to them Paul says pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the services of God. Of course, if both the covenants and the whole law pertaineth to this Israel, it is evident the Sabbath is included. Jesus also says salvation is of the Jews, that is, of this same spiritual Israel to whom belong all the promises of God. In fact, the city of God has only twelve gates, and they are named after the twelve tribes of Israel, so, although the city is built on the foundation of the apostles, the twelve foundations bearing their names, yet all who enter are numbered under Israel, and classed as belonging to one of the tribes. The meaning of all this is plain. The promises of God, the covenants, the glory, the adoption, the mansions Christ has gone to prepare, the eternal city, in short, all the fullness of God, is for everyone who will take it by a faith that prevails with God; and this company, gathered out of every nation, constitutes the true Israel, and it was God's design that the keeping of his Sabbath should be in all generations the outward sign of such faith in him as brings obedience. It must be evident to every thoughtful mind that the Sabbath is just such an outward sign, or mark. There are many men who are too moral, in the ordinary acceptance of the term, to openly lie, or steal, or kill, or violate any other of the last six precepts; they would regard it foolish to openly bow down to idols, or to make graven images to worship, and they are too gentlemanly to swear; yet these men have no respect for the Sabbath day. They fish, and hunt, and play games on that day. Why do they not at least outwardly observe this precept as much as any of the others? The answer is evident; it is because they do not recognize the authority of God over them. There are so many human and worldly motives for the observance of these other precepts, at least outwardly; but when a man constantly and conscientiously refrains from worldly work or worldly amusements on the Sabbath day, it marks him as one who recognizes the authority of God, and seeks humbly to obey. This was its intent. What right, then, has man to enforce this mark by human laws and penalties upon those who do not by voluntary obedience show their allegiance to God? Who cannot see that wherever this is done, and just to the extent it is done, the Sabbath will be unfitted to fulfill the very object of its existence, and will cease to be the mark of the worship of the true God? Who does not see that by such laws the State puts itself in the place of God, and makes the Sabbath a mark of obedience to it? What wonder that, when the Roman State did this, Church and State first changed the day from the day that God had blessed and set apart, to one of their own choosing,—to one that was not a memorial of the creative power of God, but rather a memorial of her own power to create a false system of worship! Does not Rome boast of the Sunday sabbath as such a memorial? Hear her:— "How prove you that the church has power to command feasts and holy days? Ans.—By the very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday, which Protestants allow of; and therefore they fondly contradict themselves by keeping Sunday strictly, and breaking most other feasts commanded by the same church."—Abridgment of Christian Doctrine. "Had she not such power she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday, the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday, the seventh day, a change for which there is no scriptural authority."—Doctrinal Catechism. This is sufficient to show that an enforced Sunday sabbath is regarded by the one who made it, not as a memorial of divine creative or redemptive power, but as an evidence and mark of the power of the Papacy to create a false, a human system of worship. It is true that some honest Christian men are still ignorant of this. It is true that when a man honestly and conscientiously, and of his own free will, without compulsion of human law, keeps Sunday, really thinking that in that act he is obeying God, even that marks him a child of God. But when the origin and meaning of both Sabbath and Sunday observance are fully known, as they are bound to be through the constantly increasing discussion, in the near future, then both institutions will stand before the world in their true light. The Sabbath will mark a man as a worshiper of the true God, and him only; and Sunday keeping will mark a man as a worshiper of the papal beast. It is not simply the Bible that proves that Sunday is the mark of the Papacy. Nothing could be plainer than history on this point. As a system of religion, it is a fusion of paganism with Christianity. Says Gavazzi:— "Almost all forms of paganism are found in the Roman Church. The pagans had their Pontifex Maximus; Rome has her supreme pontiff; paganism262had its purgatory with material fire; Rome has the same. Paganism had expiations for the dead; so has Rome. Paganism had its vestal virgins; Rome has her nuns. Paganism had its processions and sacred images; Rome abounds in hers. Paganism had its penates. Rome has her peculiar saints. Paganism had its sanctuaries, holy water, pilgrimages, votive tablets; Rome has all these too. Paganism had the perpetual fire of Vesta; and Rome has the perpetual sacrifice of the mass." All this is sufficient to show that Romanism is but baptized paganism; and even the baptism is a pagan one, taken from the ceremonies in the ancient sun temples. Speaking of Constantine, the man who, more than any other, built up this system, and speaking of him long after his pretended conversion, the Encyclopedia Britannica says:— "At best he was only half Christian, half pagan; a man who sought to combine the worship of Christ with the worship of Apollo, having the image of one and the name of the other engraved on the opposite sides of his coins." Now what was the point of contact between the two religions? How was such a compromise brought about? In speaking of Sunday and Constantine's law enforcing it, Dean Stanley says:— "It was his mode of harmonizing the discordant religions of the empire under one common institution."—History of Eastern Church, p. 291. The discordant religions were paganism and Christianity. The harmonized religion, resulting from this compromise, is the Papacy. The historian plainly says that Sunday is the one institution through which this compromise was made. It stands therefore as THE MARK OF THAT COMPROMISE.
Thus when we consider the Papacy as a system of religion, the Sunday sabbath institution is its mark. It is the same when we consider the Papacy as a system of government. As a system of government, it is a union of Church and State. How was such union made. After speaking of several different Sunday laws, secured by the church from the State in the fourth century, Neander, the great church historian, says: "In this way the church received help from the State for the furtherance of her ends." It was over Sunday laws that this answer was made, and an enforced Sunday stands as its mark. Soon after, by the force of this precedent, they were led to enforce baptism, the Lord's Supper, and finally the whole creed. When we look at the prophetic word and compare it with history, the point is still plainer. The prophet, speaking beforehand of the great papal apostasy, says: "Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped" (2 Thess. 2:4), and "he shall think to change the times and the law" of God (Dan. 7:25, Revised Version). In this institution of the Sabbath the Papacy has done this, and so it has marked itself as the power fulfilling those prophecies. Moreover, as we have seen, it boasts of this very institution as a mark of its power and authority to make as many commands as it sees fit and to enforce them under pain of mortal sin. In other words, this is its boasted mark of power to build up a human religion and a man-made creed in the place of the religion of the crucified Christ. How plain it is that the mark, or sign, of the worship of the true God was the voluntary recognition of the authority of the Creator, by the keeping of his Sabbath sacredly; and what marks men as the worshipers of the papal beast is the yielding to his authority by accepting from him an enforced Sunday in the place of the Sabbath of the Lord. True, through ignorance this has been somewhat mixed and lost sight of, but in the near future both marks will stand out clear and plain before all men, and they will deliberately take their choice. Of that time the prophet says: "Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision; for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision." The seal will be placed back upon God's law. Everyone will know the origin of the Sunday sabbath, and in that day they will choose, each man for himself, whom he will serve. Those who choose to serve Baal (the sun) will be classed as sun worshipers, and those who choose to recognize God's authority and his only, will be marked and sealed as the worshipers of the Creator.