And hallow my sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between me and you, that ye may know that I am the LORD your God.
To hallow God's Sabbaths means to keep the seventh day holy and reverence it as His chosen and exalted day, not left to human preference or rulers. It was spoken to Israel's children in the wilderness after their fathers rebelled, polluted the Sabbaths and turned to idols, calling the next generation to walk in God's statutes and judgments rather than follow that disobedience. The Sabbath is a sign between God and His people by which they know Him as Lord, for it keeps ever present that He is Creator of all things and Sanctifier of those who keep it. It is His seal of authority and jurisdiction as Creator and Ruler, placed in the mind and upon His people as the mark of loyalty, obedience and belonging to His kingdom, distinguishing those who serve Him from those who do not. Against it stands a spurious first-day sabbath as a rival sign of human authority, so that honoring the seventh day or honoring Sunday in its place becomes the dividing issue in the final conflict between loyalty to God and allegiance to opposing power.
Words and Wilderness Setting
To hallow the Sabbaths is to keep them holy and to reverence them. The holy day so hallowed is the seventh day, God's chosen day, and especially the seventh-day Sabbath is the sign between Him and His people by which they may know that He is the Lord their God. That day is not left to human rulers or to human preference, and in God's work it is to be exalted and made prominent, standing out as a witness.
The command was spoken in the wilderness to the children of Israel after their fathers rebelled, polluted the Sabbaths, and turned to idols. The children were called not to follow their fathers' disobedience and idolatry but to walk in God's statutes and keep His judgments, and to return to Him by keeping the Sabbath holy rather than profaning it. Faithful observance reminded Israel of its accountability to God as Creator and Redeemer, while polluting or setting aside the Sabbath went with turning to idols and forgetting the Creator.
Israel's failure to keep the Sabbath was part of its disobedience and brought threatened judgment, and its profaning of the Sabbath in the wilderness was a reason the first generation was excluded from the promised land. God repeatedly connected keeping the Sabbath with being His chosen people, and Israel's failure to keep it brought sorrow and shame. The children's continued neglect was met with the declaration that they would be scattered among the nations after settling in Canaan.
Sign of Creator and Sanctifier
The Sabbaths hallowed are a sign between God and His people by which they know that He is the Lord their God, and the Sabbath is a memorial of the Creator's work and rest, set apart from secular labor as a memorial of creation and of His wisdom, power, goodness, and Godhead. It keeps ever present the true reason worship is due to God, because He made His creatures and is therefore worthy of their worship, and its significance is meant to keep His people faithful to His requirements and mindful of Him as Creator. It therefore lies at the very foundation of divine worship, teaching in the most impressive manner the distinction between the Creator and His creatures, a great fact that can never become obsolete and must never be forgotten. God instituted the Sabbath in Eden to keep this truth ever before minds, and it was given before Israel became a distinct people, so it is for all mankind.
So long as His creatorship continues to be a reason to worship Him, so long the Sabbath will continue as its sign and memorial. Had the Sabbath been universally kept, thoughts and affections would have been led to the Creator as the object of reverence and worship, and there would never have been an idolater, an atheist, or an infidel. The Sabbath was appointed to keep in memory the message written in nature that Jehovah is God, recalling that He created and sustains all things. It is a sign that brings people to know God as the Creator of heaven and earth, the everlasting Lord who faints not nor is weary.
Beholding His power in bird, trees, sea, sun, and stars gives comfort and brings communion with the Creator, so that the word that created all things speaks life to the soul. To know Him as God is to know Him as the One who commands light to shine in darkness and in the heart, who gives power to the faint and increases strength to them that have no might, who strengthens, helps and upholds with His righteousness, and who alone can save all the ends of the earth. The Sabbath recalls this message of nature: God has power to strengthen and help the weak, and alone is God. It is also a sign by which God's people know Him as the Lord who sanctifies them, marking Him as the One who sanctifies them and pointing to Him as Creator and Sanctifier in perpetual covenant.
Keeping it expresses loyalty to God and helps people know Him as the one who sanctifies them, and obedience in keeping the Sabbath testifies to the sanctification received through keeping it. God's people are to raise memorials of His Sabbath throughout the world, and the Sabbath is to be exalted as a defining truth in missionary work, including efforts to enter new fields and teach the message for the present time.
Seal of Authority and Mind
The Sabbath is God's sign of authority, jurisdiction and power as Creator and Ruler, the seal of His law and His seal upon His royal requirement. It is appropriately said to be placed in the forehead, because the forehead denotes the intellect or mind, and to mark or seal in the forehead is to write the law in the mind and heart. That seal is placed upon His people as a safeguard to preserve them from utter destruction coming upon the ungodly, so that treating the day as ordinary places people outside that protection before judgment. Keeping it holy is exact obedience that distinguishes those who honor God from those who dishonor Him, even when it brings conflict or loss, and minds crowded with worldly thoughts, exciting books, perplexity over eating, drinking and dress, and putting the Lord's coming far off shut out present truth and leave no place for the seal. The time to receive it is very short, so all leisure should be spent searching the Bible with clean hands and a pure heart to stand in the coming trouble.
The Sabbath is an institution like circumcision, with this distinction that circumcision was a sign in the flesh while the Sabbath is a sign in the mind. Token, sign, mark and seal are applied to the same things and used with like meaning. It is a memorial of the Creator's work and so a sign of His power and Godhead, a token of His authority and power by which His people may know that He is the Lord their God.
The Sabbath is the connecting link between God and man, standing with the first four commandments that show duty to God. Hallowing it is a sign between God and His people forever, lasting as long as He has a people on earth to serve Him. All who observe it show by that observance that they worship the living God who created the heavens and the earth. It was given for the good of man and for the honor of God.
Hallowing God's Sabbaths places the sign of His government upon the keeper as a stamp and King's mark showing that he is chosen and set apart to honor God. It is the King's sign and the contract between God and His people, and it is Christ's seal, His sign of obedience and loyalty, which He Himself puts upon all who will come to Him to learn of Him. The Sabbath God established and sanctified in Eden identifies those who belong to His kingdom, while a spurious rest day bears the mark of the man of sin and identifies allegiance with the kingdom of rebellion. Closely examining the Word shows whether a person has the King's mark.
Bearing the sign requires following Christ's tender, compassionate Sabbathkeeping work plainly specified in Isaiah 58, including healing ministry to the blind and lame, and refusing all dishonest transactions, robbery, extortion and fraud, because God will not be a party to dishonesty and the keeper must not dishonor the sign. Breaking God's laws and despising and trampling the Sabbath breaks the contract with God so He cannot work in behalf of the breaker. Those who break it have changed leaders and no longer bear the King's sign, bear corrupted metal and spurious faith, cannot be trusted in test or trial for they will act the traitor's part, and do not draw from the Lord's foundry.
Reverencing and keeping the seventh-day Sabbath holy is God's sign between Him and His people, marking the relationship by which they know Him as their God and identifying them as belonging to Him and as subjects of Christ's kingdom. By keeping it they declare before the universe their acceptance of Jehovah as God, acknowledge that they worship the Creator whose power made the world, and show the world whose subjects they are by obedience and loyalty to the truth. The seventh day is to stand out distinctly in the church's work as a witness to God and His truth, shown in the sanitarium through the way God's character and truth are lived out, and when the right time comes presented as God's seal in contrast with the false rest day substituted for it. The seventh-day Sabbath is the seal of the living God and is to be proclaimed as such, its significance made clear in light of the papal power that has made void God's law. Rejecting the Sabbath after the true obligation has been made clear, and honoring Sunday in its place because of Rome's authority, is allegiance to Rome.
Counterfeit Sign and Final Conflict
Against the true seventh-day Sabbath of the fourth commandment stands a spurious, counterfeit sabbath on the first day, the day of the sun. Rome originated Sunday observance and claims it as the sign of her authority, in enmity toward the true Sabbath and to honor an institution of her own creating. Each Sabbath institution, both true and false, bears the name of its author as an ineffaceable mark showing whose authority it carries, with the seventh day bearing the mark of God's government and the spurious rest day bearing the mark of the man of sin and allegiance to the kingdom of rebellion. The true Sabbath marks loyalty to God and His commandments, while honoring the rival first-day sabbath exalts human authority over the Creator.
The Sabbath question is to be the issue in the great final conflict in which all the world will act a part. It is the dividing line between the true Israel of God and unbelievers, and the central question that unites God's waiting saints. The distinction between honoring the seventh-day memorial of loyalty and honoring a rival first-day sabbath becomes a point of controversy as the conflict between Christ and Satan nears its close. The Sabbath is to be proclaimed more fully before the plagues begin, while Christ is in the sanctuary and the work of salvation is closing, and in that coming conflict keeping the seventh-day Sabbath holy and reverenced is tied to honoring God's commandments and recognizing His authority. Some of God's children do not yet keep it because they have not rejected the light about it.
Enforcing Sunday observance is rebellion against God for which He will punish, and laws that oppose God's law reject the Sabbath sign and bring judgment unless those who follow them change. Receiving the sign shows allegiance to God, while disregarding the plain command casts off allegiance to God, exalts human power in His stead, and places men in opposition to the God of heaven. Those who have the light and close their eyes and ears to it have no justification, take up warfare against God, and their guilt is made manifest. Rejecting the Sabbath after the true obligation has been made clear, and honoring Sunday in its place because of Rome's authority, is allegiance to Rome and acceptance of the mark of the beast. Honoring Sunday in its place honors Rome's supremacy and pays homage to Rome and to the power that enforces Rome's institution, which is worship of the beast and his image.
God accepts the sincerity of those who in ignorance have kept Sunday as the Sabbath. But once the obligation of the true Sabbath is made plain and Sunday observance is enforced by law, those who transgress God's command to obey a precept with no higher authority than Rome honor popery above God and, by continuing to choose the commandments of men over the commandments of God, receive the mark of the beast. Satan leads men to dispense with God's righteous, holy enactment by control through political enactments, union with the world, and man-made commandments set against the government of heaven. The movement to secure State support for church institutions and usages, whose principal object is the enforcement of Sunday observance, follows in the steps of papists and opens the door for popery to regain in Protestant America the supremacy she lost in the Old World. The spirit permeating Protestant churches is conformity to worldly customs and veneration for human traditions above the commands of God, leading them to do the same work of Sunday exaltation which the papacy did before them. Papists and Protestants uniting for the exaltation of Sunday will repeat the means Rome employed in ages past against the Sabbath and its defenders, with the same claim of divine authority for Sunday-keeping without scriptural evidence and the same assertion that God's judgments fall on men for violating the Sunday-Sabbath, and God requires exact obedience even when keeping the Sabbath brings conflict or loss.
Loyalty Shown in Obedience
Keeping the seventh-day Sabbath is a sign of loyalty to the true God who made heaven and earth and the sea and the fountains of waters, marking trust in Him as Creator and His recognition of them as His chosen people. It is God's chosen day, not left to human rulers or preference, and its power as a sign rests on the continuing truth that He is Creator and human beings are His creatures. Therefore the message calling men to worship the Creator and keep His commandments calls especially for keeping the fourth commandment, while those who understand the sign live out the principles of His government in continual submission, with His law in their hearts and obedience in daily life.
Honoring the Sabbath keeps His people in covenant relation with Him and acknowledges Him as their God, and it is a perpetual covenant sign pointing to Him as Creator and Sanctifier. Treating Sabbath observance as unimportant or ordinary dishonors Him, denies His commandments and that relationship, and turns from His commandments and blessings.
The Sabbath distinguishes those who serve God from those who do not, making obedience to His law visible and marking His chosen people as subjects of His kingdom known to the world. Reverence for it declares before the universe acceptance of Jehovah as God, acknowledgment that they worship the Creator whose power made the world, and that life is found in obedience. Receiving the sign shows allegiance to God and places keepers on the Lord's side and belonging to Him in fear and obedience, while disregarding the plain command casts off allegiance, exalts human power in His stead, places men in opposition to God and outside His protection, and for those who with light close eyes and ears leaves no justification and manifests guilt in warfare against Him. This witness must not be erased, as by opening restaurants to serve customers on the Sabbath.
True Sabbath keeping cannot be separated from obedience to the rest of God's law as the standard of duty and truth, requiring submission to His will and His law in the heart. Keeping the Sabbath truly means obedience to the whole law, not observance of the Sabbath while disregarding another commandment, and no human ruler may stand between God and conscience. Bearing the sign requires the tender, compassionate Sabbath work plainly specified in Isaiah 58, including healing ministry to the blind and lame, and honest conduct without robbery, extortion, fraud, or dishonest transactions, because God will not be a party to dishonesty and dishonesty dishonors the sign, a fact revealed by closely examining His Word to see whether one bears the King's mark.
Bearing the sign calls for exact obedience even when keeping the Sabbath brings conflict or loss, for treating it as an ordinary day places people outside God's protection before judgment. It is erased by Sabbath restaurant service to customers, and it is kept in sanitariums by setting aside ordinary work while not neglecting relief of suffering, postponing unnecessary treatments and operations. God's people are to raise memorials of His Sabbath throughout the world by publishing, and in medical missionary and sanitarium work to live out His character and truth so that when the right time comes the seventh day can be presented distinctly as God's seal in contrast with the false rest day. Unity is its remedy for strife, refusal of absorption in political strife preserves it, and because the time to receive the seal in the forehead, which is the mind, is very short with Christ's work in the most holy place nearly finished, all leisure should be spent searching the Bible with heart set in order, clean hands and pure heart, laying up treasure in heaven rather than filling the mind with worldly thoughts and cares, exciting books that lead from present truth and love of the Bible, perplexity over eating, drinking and wearing, or putting the Lord's coming far off.
To hallow God's Sabbaths means to keep the seventh day holy and reverence it as His chosen and exalted day, not left to human preference or rulers. It was spoken to Israel's children in the wilderness after their fathers rebelled, polluted the Sabbaths and turned to idols, calling the next generation to walk in God's statutes and judgments rather than follow that disobedience. The Sabbath is a sign between God and His people by which they know Him as Lord, for it keeps ever present that He is Creator of all things and Sanctifier of those who keep it. It is His seal of authority and jurisdiction as Creator and Ruler, placed in the mind and upon His people as the mark of loyalty, obedience and belonging to His kingdom, distinguishing those who serve Him from those who do not. Against it stands a spurious first-day sabbath as a rival sign of human authority, so that honoring the seventh day or honoring Sunday in its place becomes the dividing issue in the final conflict between loyalty to God and allegiance to opposing power.
Words and Wilderness Setting
To hallow the Sabbaths is to keep them holy and to reverence them. The holy day so hallowed is the seventh day, God's chosen day, and especially the seventh-day Sabbath is the sign between Him and His people by which they may know that He is the Lord their God. That day is not left to human rulers or to human preference, and in God's work it is to be exalted and made prominent, standing out as a witness.
The command was spoken in the wilderness to the children of Israel after their fathers rebelled, polluted the Sabbaths, and turned to idols. The children were called not to follow their fathers' disobedience and idolatry but to walk in God's statutes and keep His judgments, and to return to Him by keeping the Sabbath holy rather than profaning it. Faithful observance reminded Israel of its accountability to God as Creator and Redeemer, while polluting or setting aside the Sabbath went with turning to idols and forgetting the Creator.
Israel's failure to keep the Sabbath was part of its disobedience and brought threatened judgment, and its profaning of the Sabbath in the wilderness was a reason the first generation was excluded from the promised land. God repeatedly connected keeping the Sabbath with being His chosen people, and Israel's failure to keep it brought sorrow and shame. The children's continued neglect was met with the declaration that they would be scattered among the nations after settling in Canaan.
Sign of Creator and Sanctifier
The Sabbaths hallowed are a sign between God and His people by which they know that He is the Lord their God, and the Sabbath is a memorial of the Creator's work and rest, set apart from secular labor as a memorial of creation and of His wisdom, power, goodness, and Godhead. It keeps ever present the true reason worship is due to God, because He made His creatures and is therefore worthy of their worship, and its significance is meant to keep His people faithful to His requirements and mindful of Him as Creator. It therefore lies at the very foundation of divine worship, teaching in the most impressive manner the distinction between the Creator and His creatures, a great fact that can never become obsolete and must never be forgotten. God instituted the Sabbath in Eden to keep this truth ever before minds, and it was given before Israel became a distinct people, so it is for all mankind.
So long as His creatorship continues to be a reason to worship Him, so long the Sabbath will continue as its sign and memorial. Had the Sabbath been universally kept, thoughts and affections would have been led to the Creator as the object of reverence and worship, and there would never have been an idolater, an atheist, or an infidel. The Sabbath was appointed to keep in memory the message written in nature that Jehovah is God, recalling that He created and sustains all things. It is a sign that brings people to know God as the Creator of heaven and earth, the everlasting Lord who faints not nor is weary.
Beholding His power in bird, trees, sea, sun, and stars gives comfort and brings communion with the Creator, so that the word that created all things speaks life to the soul. To know Him as God is to know Him as the One who commands light to shine in darkness and in the heart, who gives power to the faint and increases strength to them that have no might, who strengthens, helps and upholds with His righteousness, and who alone can save all the ends of the earth. The Sabbath recalls this message of nature: God has power to strengthen and help the weak, and alone is God. It is also a sign by which God's people know Him as the Lord who sanctifies them, marking Him as the One who sanctifies them and pointing to Him as Creator and Sanctifier in perpetual covenant.
Keeping it expresses loyalty to God and helps people know Him as the one who sanctifies them, and obedience in keeping the Sabbath testifies to the sanctification received through keeping it. God's people are to raise memorials of His Sabbath throughout the world, and the Sabbath is to be exalted as a defining truth in missionary work, including efforts to enter new fields and teach the message for the present time.
Seal of Authority and Mind
The Sabbath is God's sign of authority, jurisdiction and power as Creator and Ruler, the seal of His law and His seal upon His royal requirement. It is appropriately said to be placed in the forehead, because the forehead denotes the intellect or mind, and to mark or seal in the forehead is to write the law in the mind and heart. That seal is placed upon His people as a safeguard to preserve them from utter destruction coming upon the ungodly, so that treating the day as ordinary places people outside that protection before judgment. Keeping it holy is exact obedience that distinguishes those who honor God from those who dishonor Him, even when it brings conflict or loss, and minds crowded with worldly thoughts, exciting books, perplexity over eating, drinking and dress, and putting the Lord's coming far off shut out present truth and leave no place for the seal. The time to receive it is very short, so all leisure should be spent searching the Bible with clean hands and a pure heart to stand in the coming trouble.
The Sabbath is an institution like circumcision, with this distinction that circumcision was a sign in the flesh while the Sabbath is a sign in the mind. Token, sign, mark and seal are applied to the same things and used with like meaning. It is a memorial of the Creator's work and so a sign of His power and Godhead, a token of His authority and power by which His people may know that He is the Lord their God.
The Sabbath is the connecting link between God and man, standing with the first four commandments that show duty to God. Hallowing it is a sign between God and His people forever, lasting as long as He has a people on earth to serve Him. All who observe it show by that observance that they worship the living God who created the heavens and the earth. It was given for the good of man and for the honor of God.
Hallowing God's Sabbaths places the sign of His government upon the keeper as a stamp and King's mark showing that he is chosen and set apart to honor God. It is the King's sign and the contract between God and His people, and it is Christ's seal, His sign of obedience and loyalty, which He Himself puts upon all who will come to Him to learn of Him. The Sabbath God established and sanctified in Eden identifies those who belong to His kingdom, while a spurious rest day bears the mark of the man of sin and identifies allegiance with the kingdom of rebellion. Closely examining the Word shows whether a person has the King's mark.
Bearing the sign requires following Christ's tender, compassionate Sabbathkeeping work plainly specified in Isaiah 58, including healing ministry to the blind and lame, and refusing all dishonest transactions, robbery, extortion and fraud, because God will not be a party to dishonesty and the keeper must not dishonor the sign. Breaking God's laws and despising and trampling the Sabbath breaks the contract with God so He cannot work in behalf of the breaker. Those who break it have changed leaders and no longer bear the King's sign, bear corrupted metal and spurious faith, cannot be trusted in test or trial for they will act the traitor's part, and do not draw from the Lord's foundry.
Reverencing and keeping the seventh-day Sabbath holy is God's sign between Him and His people, marking the relationship by which they know Him as their God and identifying them as belonging to Him and as subjects of Christ's kingdom. By keeping it they declare before the universe their acceptance of Jehovah as God, acknowledge that they worship the Creator whose power made the world, and show the world whose subjects they are by obedience and loyalty to the truth. The seventh day is to stand out distinctly in the church's work as a witness to God and His truth, shown in the sanitarium through the way God's character and truth are lived out, and when the right time comes presented as God's seal in contrast with the false rest day substituted for it. The seventh-day Sabbath is the seal of the living God and is to be proclaimed as such, its significance made clear in light of the papal power that has made void God's law. Rejecting the Sabbath after the true obligation has been made clear, and honoring Sunday in its place because of Rome's authority, is allegiance to Rome.
Counterfeit Sign and Final Conflict
Against the true seventh-day Sabbath of the fourth commandment stands a spurious, counterfeit sabbath on the first day, the day of the sun. Rome originated Sunday observance and claims it as the sign of her authority, in enmity toward the true Sabbath and to honor an institution of her own creating. Each Sabbath institution, both true and false, bears the name of its author as an ineffaceable mark showing whose authority it carries, with the seventh day bearing the mark of God's government and the spurious rest day bearing the mark of the man of sin and allegiance to the kingdom of rebellion. The true Sabbath marks loyalty to God and His commandments, while honoring the rival first-day sabbath exalts human authority over the Creator.
The Sabbath question is to be the issue in the great final conflict in which all the world will act a part. It is the dividing line between the true Israel of God and unbelievers, and the central question that unites God's waiting saints. The distinction between honoring the seventh-day memorial of loyalty and honoring a rival first-day sabbath becomes a point of controversy as the conflict between Christ and Satan nears its close. The Sabbath is to be proclaimed more fully before the plagues begin, while Christ is in the sanctuary and the work of salvation is closing, and in that coming conflict keeping the seventh-day Sabbath holy and reverenced is tied to honoring God's commandments and recognizing His authority. Some of God's children do not yet keep it because they have not rejected the light about it.
Enforcing Sunday observance is rebellion against God for which He will punish, and laws that oppose God's law reject the Sabbath sign and bring judgment unless those who follow them change. Receiving the sign shows allegiance to God, while disregarding the plain command casts off allegiance to God, exalts human power in His stead, and places men in opposition to the God of heaven. Those who have the light and close their eyes and ears to it have no justification, take up warfare against God, and their guilt is made manifest. Rejecting the Sabbath after the true obligation has been made clear, and honoring Sunday in its place because of Rome's authority, is allegiance to Rome and acceptance of the mark of the beast. Honoring Sunday in its place honors Rome's supremacy and pays homage to Rome and to the power that enforces Rome's institution, which is worship of the beast and his image.
God accepts the sincerity of those who in ignorance have kept Sunday as the Sabbath. But once the obligation of the true Sabbath is made plain and Sunday observance is enforced by law, those who transgress God's command to obey a precept with no higher authority than Rome honor popery above God and, by continuing to choose the commandments of men over the commandments of God, receive the mark of the beast. Satan leads men to dispense with God's righteous, holy enactment by control through political enactments, union with the world, and man-made commandments set against the government of heaven. The movement to secure State support for church institutions and usages, whose principal object is the enforcement of Sunday observance, follows in the steps of papists and opens the door for popery to regain in Protestant America the supremacy she lost in the Old World. The spirit permeating Protestant churches is conformity to worldly customs and veneration for human traditions above the commands of God, leading them to do the same work of Sunday exaltation which the papacy did before them. Papists and Protestants uniting for the exaltation of Sunday will repeat the means Rome employed in ages past against the Sabbath and its defenders, with the same claim of divine authority for Sunday-keeping without scriptural evidence and the same assertion that God's judgments fall on men for violating the Sunday-Sabbath, and God requires exact obedience even when keeping the Sabbath brings conflict or loss.
Loyalty Shown in Obedience
Keeping the seventh-day Sabbath is a sign of loyalty to the true God who made heaven and earth and the sea and the fountains of waters, marking trust in Him as Creator and His recognition of them as His chosen people. It is God's chosen day, not left to human rulers or preference, and its power as a sign rests on the continuing truth that He is Creator and human beings are His creatures. Therefore the message calling men to worship the Creator and keep His commandments calls especially for keeping the fourth commandment, while those who understand the sign live out the principles of His government in continual submission, with His law in their hearts and obedience in daily life.
Honoring the Sabbath keeps His people in covenant relation with Him and acknowledges Him as their God, and it is a perpetual covenant sign pointing to Him as Creator and Sanctifier. Treating Sabbath observance as unimportant or ordinary dishonors Him, denies His commandments and that relationship, and turns from His commandments and blessings.
The Sabbath distinguishes those who serve God from those who do not, making obedience to His law visible and marking His chosen people as subjects of His kingdom known to the world. Reverence for it declares before the universe acceptance of Jehovah as God, acknowledgment that they worship the Creator whose power made the world, and that life is found in obedience. Receiving the sign shows allegiance to God and places keepers on the Lord's side and belonging to Him in fear and obedience, while disregarding the plain command casts off allegiance, exalts human power in His stead, places men in opposition to God and outside His protection, and for those who with light close eyes and ears leaves no justification and manifests guilt in warfare against Him. This witness must not be erased, as by opening restaurants to serve customers on the Sabbath.
True Sabbath keeping cannot be separated from obedience to the rest of God's law as the standard of duty and truth, requiring submission to His will and His law in the heart. Keeping the Sabbath truly means obedience to the whole law, not observance of the Sabbath while disregarding another commandment, and no human ruler may stand between God and conscience. Bearing the sign requires the tender, compassionate Sabbath work plainly specified in Isaiah 58, including healing ministry to the blind and lame, and honest conduct without robbery, extortion, fraud, or dishonest transactions, because God will not be a party to dishonesty and dishonesty dishonors the sign, a fact revealed by closely examining His Word to see whether one bears the King's mark.
Bearing the sign calls for exact obedience even when keeping the Sabbath brings conflict or loss, for treating it as an ordinary day places people outside God's protection before judgment. It is erased by Sabbath restaurant service to customers, and it is kept in sanitariums by setting aside ordinary work while not neglecting relief of suffering, postponing unnecessary treatments and operations. God's people are to raise memorials of His Sabbath throughout the world by publishing, and in medical missionary and sanitarium work to live out His character and truth so that when the right time comes the seventh day can be presented distinctly as God's seal in contrast with the false rest day. Unity is its remedy for strife, refusal of absorption in political strife preserves it, and because the time to receive the seal in the forehead, which is the mind, is very short with Christ's work in the most holy place nearly finished, all leisure should be spent searching the Bible with heart set in order, clean hands and pure heart, laying up treasure in heaven rather than filling the mind with worldly thoughts and cares, exciting books that lead from present truth and love of the Bible, perplexity over eating, drinking and wearing, or putting the Lord's coming far off.