The Seventh Day Adventists hold to particular views regarding the importance of Sabbath-keeping in the last days.
“The Sabbath will be a special test in the end time. The believer will have to make a choice either to give allegiance to God's word or to human authority (Rev 14:7,12).” (Adventist official website)
“Those who reject God's memorial of creatorship – the Bible Sabbath – choosing to worship and honor Sunday in the full knowledge that it is not God's appointed day of worship, will receive the 'mark of the beast.'” (General Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists 2005)
“The faithfulness of God's sealed people has been tested in every generation. However, the test of faithfulness in the final crisis will be the keeping of God's commandments (see Rev. 12:17, Rev. 14:12). In particular, the fourth commandment will become the test of obedience to God (Rev. 14:7). As the Sabbath has been the sign of God's people in biblical times (Ezek. 20:12,20; Heb. 4:9,10), so it will be the sign of loyalty to God in the final crisis.” (absg.adventist.org)
“Here we find the mark of the beast. The very act of changing the Sabbath into Sunday on the part of the Catholic Church, without any authority from the Bible.” (Ellen G. White, “The Mark of the Beast.”)
“The change of the Sabbath is the sign or mark of the authority of the Romish church...The keeping of the counterfeit Sabbath is the reception of the mark.” (Ellen G. White, “Great Controversy”)
Delving even closer to the source of this teaching, the various Adventist online sites take pains to explain that it did not arise from a prophetic vision but from the earnest Bible study of Joseph Bates, a retired sea captain who wrote his findings down around 1847. Ellen G. White read them and believed his teachings. They were confirmed to her in what is now called the “Sabbath Holy Vision.”
I was glad to learn that this key belief of SDA was not based only on a vision since it is almost impossible to prove or disprove a special message given to an individual from God. Therefore, it is best to reject it out of hand unless there is strong biblical guidance on the same subject. And if there already is adequate teaching in the Bible, why would it be necessary for God to reveal it again to someone? So we are now free to examine this doctrine and its basis as an interpretation of the passages above and set aside any questions regarding the validity of Ellen White's vision.
Right off the bat, we are faced with a rather strange scenario to swallow. Apparently, in the present time the day on which Christians choose to worship is a minor issue, so minor that Adventists consider true believers in all denominations to be as saved as themselves. But for some reason, that situation will change drastically as the Last Days approach. At that point, God will consider that one point of disagreement so important that an error in judgment will result in eternal damnation for those who continue to worship on Sunday, no matter how orthodox their doctrine is and how moral a life they live in accordance with Christ's teaching. If that indeed is to become the point of faith that decides the eternal fate of believers alive at the time, I find it rather unbelievable that it is not clearly taught at least once in the whole Bible. But perhaps it is taught clearly in the Bible; we will have to examine the SDA proof texts to see if that is so.
In the first place, any group that bases one of its main tenets on the Book of Revelation is skating on very thin ice. It is hard enough to definitively pin down the meaning of a prophecy in the OT (see my post on Bible Interpretation: Prophecy) because of its hyperbolic, poetic and figurative language. But the problems multiply when you are dealing with apocalyptic language in the Bible (see Book of Revelation: The Genre).
I would like to start by seeing what if anything we can learn by examining the key texts without heavily leaning on what Bible scholars might have to say on the subject. Parenthetically, I have found out the hard way that some Christians are totally turned off if I quote someone who has spent his or her life studying the Scriptures and is a prominent professor at a recognized institute of higher learning. For some reason, they would prefer to just go with their own uneducated opinion no matter what others might say. So let's see if we come up with the same interpretation as Bates and White using nothing more than a good analytical concordance to help out.
The first fact-checking I wish to do concerns the statement that in biblical times, the Sabbath was the sign of God's people. The two provided proof texts say the following:
Ezekiel 20:12,20: God says that He gave the Israelites His sabbaths as a sign between Him and the people of Israel. Associated with both of these verses is the keeping of all His ordinances, but sabbath-keeping is listed separately from the ordinances and statutes.
Hebrews 4 says nothing whatsoever about sabbath-keeping being a sign – quite the opposite actually. This chapter explains that the sabbath rest was only a type of the eternal rest that Christians now have to some extent and will one day fully inherit.
Searching elsewhere in the Bible for signs between God and man, Exodus 31:12-14 is a much better proof text, but again it treats Sabbath-keeping as a sign, not the unique sign.
Exodus 13:6-10 says that the yearly Passover observance is to be a sign for the Jewish people.
In Deuteronomy 6:1-9 and 11:18 the Shema, the great love commandment, is said to be the commandment that the Israelites are to bind as a sign on their foreheads, etc. And, of course, Jesus later confirms that this is the Great Commandment.
Deuteronomy 28:46 mentions the threatened curses if the people do not obey all the decrees and commandments as another sign for generations to come. Also, Joshua 4:1-6 treats the stones piled in the middle of the Jordan River as being a sign for generations of Israelites to come.
And if we turn to the NT, Romans 4:11 speaks of Abraham as receiving the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness he had by faith.
Revelation 12:17: The dragon made war on the women's children. Fortunately for us, these are explained in the rest of the verse as being “those who keep God's commandments and hold the testimony of Jesus.” That much is clear, but there is no mention of keeping the fourth commandment or even the Ten Commandments. So will have to search the NT usage of the word entole (“commandment”) to see what the authors meant by it in a post-resurrection setting. Entole appears 71 times in the New Testament in either the singular or plural. The more pertinent passages are discussed below:
In a post-resurrection appearance to the apostles, Jesus says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another.” (John 15:13)
Romans 7:7-12 speaks of the 10th commandment as the commandment four times, and James also gives it prominence (James 1:15)
Romans 13:8-10 sums up all the commandments in “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
I Timothy 6:14 talks about “the commandment which should be kept until Christ returns.” Mitchell (New Oxford Annotated Bible) identifies it as the Great Confession (see vv. 12-13).
I John mentions “commandment(s)” twelve times, often in the context of the commandment to love one another.
For two additional references found in II Peter, I will have to get a little outside help from scholars:
II Peter 2:21 talks about “the holy commandment.” All the scholars I consulted are in basic agreement as to what the holy commandment is:
Wheaton: “the ethical consequences of following Christ”
Gangel: “the apostolic message”
Green: “moral law expressed by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount”
Harvey and Towner: “the moral standards the Lord requires”
Neyrey: “the way of righteousness”
II Peter 3:2 mentions “the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken through your apostles.” Whatever that may be, it cannot refer specifically to Sabbath-keeping since that is about the only one of the Ten Commandments that Jesus doesn't mention in the Sermon on the Mount. And he certainly is not recorded as having given any command regarding it elsewhere. Instead he stated that the Sabbath was made for our benefit, not the opposite. It would again be very illogical to believe that something that was strictly for our benefit would in later years be the very thing that damns us. Most scholars agree that “the commandment” here means the whole of Jesus' recorded teachings as transmitted by way of the apostles, but especially his words concerning the Second Coming. Green summarizes it in this way, “There can be no doubt that it is to live holy lives in the light of the Savior's return. Peter wishes to remind his readers of the teaching about the parousia and the moral requirements of the gospel.”
You can see that “the commandment” in both these passages in II Peter refers to the moral law, not the more doctrinal requirements found in the first tablet of the Ten Commandments.
Revelation 14:7,12
These two cited verses must be considered together to make any sense out of the Adventist contention that the fourth commandment will be singled out for special importance in the future. In fact, the whole passage from verses 7 to 12 is vital to the whole scope of Adventist theology, and the three angels mentioned there appear on the SDA logo. I won't pretend to understand all of what they teach in regard to this passage, but suffice it to say that they take the mention of God making “heaven and earth” in v. 7 and couple it with the phrase “keep the commandments of God” in verse 12 to come to the conclusion that it is specifically the Ten Commandments being referred to, and more specifically the fourth commandment since the creation of heaven and earth is also mentioned there. With that contention, they can then assert that the mark of the beast in 14:9 and 11 must mean the worship of God on Sunday rather than Saturday.
It is hard to know where to begin in order to explain that the above is either an extreme example of eisegesis (reading a preconceived idea into the text rather than deriving a meaning out of it) or is based solely on a private revelation given to the founders of SDA. About all I can do is state that (1) “commandments” in post-resurrection passages virtually never refers to the Ten Commandments but instead to Christ's moral teachings; (2) when the word appears in the singular, it never refers to the fourth commandment; and (3) allusions to God creating the heaven and earth appear throughout the Bible, Old and New Testament, and only in one case (Exodus 20) is it associated with the commandment to keep the seventh day holy.
As far as the mark of the beast and its reverse, God's seal, mentioned in the Book of Revelation, no knowledgeable Bible scholar would risk his or her reputation by going out on a limb and categorically stating exactly what those terms mean. However, the suggested possibilities are legion and I would have to place the Adventist “interpretation” toward the bottom of the list in terms of likelihood
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