National Sunday Law - Fact or Fiction?

Chapter 3

Is the Sabbath the Final Test?

"The time is not far distant when the test will come to every soul. The observance of the false sabbath will be urged upon us. The contest will be between the commandments of God and the commandments of men."1
You have just spent the entire evening with your head buried in your school books studying for your final college exam. You believe you have prepared well. The professor gave you a list of important topics and you have studied them thoroughly. With confidence in your step you walk into class and take your seat. The professor smiles and announces that there will only be one question on the test. You smile to yourself thinking that it will certainly be one of the items the professor passed out last week on the final test study guide. When the exam is placed on your desk your mouth falls open as you stare at the question in utter disbelief. The question is not one of the questions on the study guide. In fact, the question asks you to write a five-page dissertation on a topic that was not even presented in class! As the anger and frustration build inside of you, you find yourself asking,
"What kind of a foolish teacher would test his students on a subject that he never stressed the importance of nor even discussed in the classroom?"

That is a fair question, is it not? After all, we expect the teacher cover the most important subjects in class, and we have every right to expect those same subjects to be part of the final test. If any teacher did what the teacher in the above illustration did, we would be outraged. It goes against every sense of human fairness and decency. We would consider it an offense, a sly trick, a sign of total incompetence. We would have every right to bring this behavior to the school board and ask for the teacher to be reprimanded.

Now consider Jesus. He is the greatest Teacher this world has ever known. There has never been a better teacher. Nor will there ever be another as good as Him. He was simply the best. He knew exactly how to prepare His students for the tests they would face in life. If Jesus and the Apostles understood that the Sabbath was going to be the great "final test" that will come to every soul, then surely they would have spent an appropriate amount of time teaching this to their followers. Surely they would have stressed the importance of Sabbath-keeping to their followers and warned them of the terrible dangers of worshipping on Sunday. If they failed in doing this, then we would consider them to be incompetent teachers.

Jesus an Incompetent Teacher?

Was Jesus an incompetent teacher? Did He somehow fail to get the point across about the Sabbath, leaving subsequent generations in mystery about the overwhelming significance of the Sabbath? The truth is that Jesus and the New Testament authors rarely mentioned the Sabbath, and the few times they did so, they left the impression that the day of worship was not to be a point of contention between believers.

"One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day [alike]. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth [it] unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard [it]."2

"Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath [days]: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body [is] of Christ."3

Instead of focusing on the Sabbath, Jesus and the Apostles focused on the grand Christian themes of salvation, faith, self-sacrificing love, forgiveness, and eternal life. Why would Jesus and the Apostles focus so much attention on these themes if the Sabbath was to be the great deciding factor that would determine who was a true Christian and who was a false Christian? Why did they ignore the topic of the Sabbath instead of preparing us for the great final battle over what day to worship on?

According to prophetess Ellen White, the Sabbath is the great final test of mankind:

"The Sabbath will be the great test of loyalty, for it is the point of truth especially controverted. When the final test shall be brought to bear upon men, then the line of distinction will be drawn between those who serve God and those who serve Him not."4
Contrast this with the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles who never describes the Sabbath as a "final test" of any kind. Jesus is very explicit as to what the "final test" is. In fact, in one of His greatest sermons to His disciples he explains precisely what the "final test" will be when He returns to earth the second time. Here it is in the Adventist-authored Clear Word Bible:
"Everyone on earth will be gathered before Him, and He will separate whose who are genuinely His from those who are not, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats during shearing time. He will call the sheep to His right and the goats to His left. Then He will say to those on His right, "You are God's children because you are so much like Him. Come! It's time for you to receive you inheritance. You have cared about others, which shows that you care about me. When others were thirsty, you gave them water. When they were hungry, you gave them food, and when they were without a place to live, you took them in. When they had nothing suitable to wear, you gave them clothes. When they were sick, you visited and comforted them, and when they were in jail, you didn't forget them."5
Did Jesus say, "You are God's children because you went to church on Saturday and criticized those who went to church on Sunday?" No! The Sabbath has never been a test for gentile Christians and it never will be. The final test will be whether or not a person has the unselfish and loving character of Jesus Christ.

One could argue that the individual who most craves for the Sabbath to be the "final test" is actually Satan himself. Satan has always been portrayed in the Bible as one who seeks ways to distract Christians from the true gospel. For thousands of years he has been seeking to turn our attention to bickering over what legalistic requirements must be met in order to be saved. If he can get Christians arguing over legalism, moral laws, health laws, days and times, and other trivial requirements, then he can divert their eyes from the main theme of Christianity, which is salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Satan's strategy is to get Christians to focus on what legal requirements they must do in order to be saved rather than focusing on Christ's finished work of atonement. If Satan can make the Sabbath the "final test" then he has succeeded in substituting a legal requirement for the true final test, which is to be born again, receiving the self-sacrificing character of the Lamb of God.

NOTES

1. Ellen White, Prophets and Kings, p. 188.

2. Romans 14:5,6

3. Colossians 2:16,17.

4. Ellen White, Great Controversy, p. 605 (1911).

5. Matthew 25:32-36 as found in the Clear Word Bible.

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