SABBATH OBSERVANCE HONORS THE CREATOR

The observance of the seventh day is a repudiation of evolution. It would be absurd for a man who does not believe in the atonement to observe the Lord's Supper. It would be just as absurd for a man to observe the Sabbath who denies that God created the world. The observance of the Sabbath sets forth the observer's belief that God did create the world according to the claims stated in the Sabbath commandment. The importance of the observance of the Sabbath is more clearly and forcibly understood as we continue to search the Scriptures and find that the fact of God's ability to create, as opposed to the inability of other gods to create, is the distinguishing attribute of the true God.

In the following scriptures the true God is contrasted with the false gods by virtue of the fact that He has creative power and the others do not: "For all the gods of the nations are idols: but the Lord made the heavens" (Psalm 96:5). "but the Lord is the true God. ... Thus shall ye say unto them, The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish. ...He hath made the earth by his power" (Jeremiah 10:10, 12).

It will be noted that in the introduction of the true God, as contrasted with other gods, the prophet says, "He hath made the earth." In speaking of the false gods, he says that "have not made the heavens and the earth." The power to create is what marks the true God from the other gods.

When Jonah was introducing the God he worshiped, he said to those on the ship who worshiped other gods: "I am a Hebrew; and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land" (Jonah 1:9).

All through the Old Testament the true God is thus distinguished. It is the same in the New Testament. In Acts 4:24 the disciples prayed, "Lord, thou art God, which has made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is."

These words are from the Sabbath commandment, which says, "the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is." The disciples were praying to the Lord whose creative power is acknowledged in the observance of the memorial of creation. He is the true God.

In making known to the people of Lystra the true God, Paul said, "We preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein" (Acts 14:15).

Here again we find the disciples quoting from the Sabbath commandment.

While Paul waited at Athens, "his spirit was stirred in him, when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry." In introducing the people to the true God, he said, "For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth" (Acts 17:16, 23, 24). In declaring the true God to those philosophers, Paul introduced Him as the One "that made the world," and then said, "He is Lord."

The judgment-hour message that is being proclaimed to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people today calls upon them to "worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of water" (Revelation 14:7).

This array of scriptural references should convince anyone that the great truth which God intended should be perpetuated by the observance of the Sabbath and that the one and only true God is the Creator. By our observance of the Sabbath we show that we repudiate evolution and accept the Genesis account of creation, acknowledging God as the Creator. As long as it is in man's duty to recognize God as the Creator, the Sabbath will endure.

In Psalm 111:4 we are told that God "made his wonderful works to be remembered." The reason is that His works remind us of creation, and creation reminds us of the Creator, and the Creator is the only true God. Since He "hath made his wonderful works to be remembered, “ it would be only natural that, at the close of the week in which these wonderful works were done, He should institute a memorial by which we would be reminded from week to week of them. Thus we would never forget who the true God is, and drift into idolatry, or deny Him as the Creator by accepting the theory of evolution.

So at the close of creation week, on the seventh day, the Creator rested from all His works; and at the same time He "blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it” (Genesis 2:1-3). That the seventh day was sanctified as a memorial is proved by the fact that the first word in the Sabbath commandment is "remember." Remember what? "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy." What for? "For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth." The Sabbath is a memorial of His wonderful works which He "hath made ... to be remembered."

The theory of evolution denies the great truth for which the observance of the seventh day stands. In this generation, when this theory is so widespread, how divinely planned it is that the Sabbath truth should be especially emphasized that all may see its meaning and begin observing it!

In the face of these facts, how can it be intelligently and scripturally claimed that this creation memorial is Jewish in origin or application? Actually the Creator rested on the seventh day more than two thousand years before there were any Jews.

Was it a matter of indifference with God as to whether or not man from Adam to Moses recognized Him as the creator? Then was his recognition to cease at the cross? The claim is that everything about the law system of the Old Testament came to an end at the cross, and yet dispensationalists claim that "almost every intrinsic value contained in the law system is carried forward and incorporated into the present grace system." Since all the fundamentalist adherents of this school are so against the observance of the creation Sabbath, they must feel that its existence had no particular importance and, therefore, was not brought forward. In fact they condemn the observance of the Sabbath day just as vehemently as they would the practice of lying or immortality. They hold that it had not essential value whatever.

Opposers of the seventh-day Sabbath claim that although God made the Sabbath for man, it had no real value to him, physically or spiritually. They claim that man could have gotten along without it just as well; and since that was the case, it came to an end at the cross. It seems strange indeed that God would say so much in favor of the observance of the Sabbath, even to meting out the death sentence to those who presumptuously violated it, if it had not intrinsic value whatever. It is not pleasant to show up such absurd inconsistencies, but at times it is necessary to show how very groundless are the claims of those who despise the Creator's rest day.

-The Law and the Sabbath, Allen Walker, p. 54-56

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