April 11, 2024 | Silver Spring, Maryland, United States | Ted N.C. Wilson, President, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists
Greetings, Friends! In our previous video we considered the very important question of “What Is the Mark of the Beast?” We saw that rather than it being some kind of physical mark, it is a symbol representing a choice of loyalty that people will need to make at the end of time. That choice will involve worship—and at that time there will be only two choices—1) to follow the beast and its false day of worship, and by so doing receive the Mark of the Beast; or 2) choose to follow God by keeping His true day of worship and receive the Seal of God.
Today in our time together we will be looking at what this “Seal of God” is, and how one receives it.
Once again, we turn to the Bible for answers. In Isaiah 8:16 the Lord commands, “Bind up the testimony, seal the law among My disciples.” God’s law, of course, is found in the Ten Commandments and His seal is found in the fourth commandment, where we read:
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it” (Ex. 20:8-11, NKJV).
Now, this commandment, out of all the 10, is the only one that mentions the name and the title of the Lawgiver. “It declares Him to be the Creator of the heavens and the earth, and thus shows His claim to reverence and worship above all others” (The Great Controversy, p. 452).
Another important point is that this is the one place in the Decalogue that shows by whose authority the law is given. However, “When the Sabbath was changed by the papal power, the seal was taken from the law.” As followers of Jesus, we “are called upon to restore it by exalting the Sabbath of the fourth commandment to its rightful position as the Creator’s memorial and the sign of His authority” (The Great Controversy, p. 452).
Friends, we are safe only as we follow the Word of God, and it gives us a way to test all opinions, doctrines, and theories to see if they are true or not. In Isaiah 8:20, we read: “To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (NKJV). So, everything I say, or you hear others say, should be tested by the Word of God to see if it is true.
Although the Sabbath is enshrined in God’s Ten Commandments, it was established long before the commandments were given on Mt. Sinai. That is why the fourth commandment begins with the word, “Remember.”
Going all the way back to Creation, we see God establishing this special day for the entire human family. We read in Genesis 2:2,3—“And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it” that is, made it holy, “because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made” (NKJV).
Adam and Eve kept the seventh-day Sabbath, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Joseph all kept God’s special day holy. When the children of Israel were in bondage in Egypt, many lost their knowledge of God’s law, but when God delivered them, He proclaimed His law, asking them to “Remember” His special holy day.
In the New Testament, Jesus and the apostles kept the Sabbath, and down through Christian history, there have always been faithful believers, sometimes in hiding, who have remembered God’s holy day.
In Revelation 14, we hear echoes of the fourth commandment declared by the first angel: “Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water” (verse 7).
This is a clarion call to again remember who our Creator is and to worship Him on the day that He made holy. It is an invitation to receive the seal of God.
And while this message is clear in the Bible, it has been overlooked and obscured by a false day of worship that has been declared the “Lord’s Day” for more than a thousand years. But in Matthew 12:8 we read that Jesus “is Lord even of the Sabbath” and He is the one who has declared what day is His special holy day.
This is not a popular message. It is much easier to go along with what seems everyone else is doing. But a time is coming when each of us must make the choice between God and His day, or a human-made counterfeit.
In The Great Controversy we read: “The great obstacle both to the acceptance and to the promulgation of truth is the fact that it involves inconvenience and reproach. . . . But this does not deter the true followers of Christ. These do not wait for truth to become popular. . . . We should choose the right because it is right, and leave consequences with God” (The Great Controversy, p. 460).
Friends, I realize that for some this may be the very first time you have heard about the Seal of God. I want to encourage you to study more about what the Bible says on this vital topic by visiting the URL shown at the bottom of the screen [Insert: adventist.org/the-sabbath/].
We can fully trust God and His Word. He longs to draw us to Himself and wants to spend an eternity together with you and with me. But we don’t have to wait until then. He wants to spend special time with us each week on His special, holy Sabbath day.
I invite you to join me as we pray to Him just now.
Father in heaven. Thank you for creating this earth in six literal days and creating the seventh day, the Sabbath of the Lord our God. Thank you for giving us this special connection in time with you. Thank you for the opportunity of worshiping you on that day and not doing secular work on the holy seventh day Sabbath. Thank you that this beautiful day of rest and of allegiance to you as our creator will be a special seal that you will place on your people as we humbly and through your power, obey the command to remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Thank you for hearing us in this prayer. Bless each one who has heard this presentation, and may the Holy Spirit convict them of Bible truths regarding the seventh day Sabbath. In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.