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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Norman McNulty

God’s Sabbath Rest

So today our message is entitled God's Sabbath Rest.

When I heard about the people that are going to India, it made me happy to know that the Gospel Commission is still being carried to every nation, kindred, tongue and people.

And 1 of the distinctive messages of our faith, which is found in our operation of command, if you will, in Revelation chapter 14, in the 3 angels' message, and I'm just going to get right in because of the amount of time we have.

Revelation chapter 14 verse 6 we see the Sabbath message.

Verses 6 and 7, And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation and kindred and tongue and people, saying with a loud voice, fear God and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment is come, and worship him that made heaven and earth and the sea and the fountains of waters." The point I want to focus on here is a message calling us to a judgment hour message and a message reminding us of God as creator.

Now in the book of Revelation there is another place where we have very similar language.

Revelation chapter 10 is the great chapter of the mighty angel Jesus coming down clothed with a cloud, his feet as pillars of fire, having a little book open in his hand.

And in verse 5 it says, And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth, lifted up his hand to heaven, and swear by him that liveth forever and ever, who created heaven and the things that therein are, and the earth and the things that therein are, and the sea and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer.

Now there's 2 elements that are similar in Revelation 14 and Revelation 10.

The first thing you can clearly see is that God is creator.

He made heaven, he made earth, he made the sea.

Revelation 14, Revelation 10, they're nearly identical in that passage.

And then the other thing that is linked is the judgment hour message of Revelation 14 and the fact that time should be no longer in Revelation 10.

In Revelation 10, it's the end of the 2300 day prophecy.

Because Revelation 10 is based on the open book of Daniel and the fulfillment of the 2300 day prophecy.

That's the end of prophetic time And Revelation 14 then tells us the end of prophetic time is the beginning of the judgment hour message.

And linked to that judgment hour message is a message reminding us of God as creator.

Well the importance is that Revelation 10 verse 6 and Revelation 14 verse 7 are quoting a passage in the Old Testament which I'm sure all of you are familiar with.

It's found in Exodus chapter 20 verses 8 through 11.

Exodus chapter 20 verses 8 through 11 and especially in verse 11, but I'll read all the verses here.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

6 days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.

In it thou shalt not do any work, thou nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates.

For in 6 days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day.

Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it." Now if you look carefully, Revelation 14, 7 and Revelation 10, 6 are quoting that very line of thought from Exodus chapter 20, verse 11.

This is important and Bible scholars agree that Revelation 14 and Revelation 10 are in fact quoting Exodus chapter 20.

Well, you have a judgment hour message reminding us that God is creator and He's reminding us of his law, the 10 Commandments, and of all the commandments that he picked to remind us of, it happens to be the Sabbath commandment.

From Exodus 20, verses 8 through 11, reminding us that the seventh day is the Sabbath.

Now just to give a little bit of background, let's look at the immediate context of Exodus 20 and think about why God used the language he did to the children of Israel at this time.

This is of course God speaking from Mount Sinai, giving the 10 Commandments, and he's telling the children of Israel, remember the Sabbath day.

Why did God use the word remember to the children of Israel?

They had been in 400 years of slavery in Egypt.

And essentially, God's people, the children of Israel, had forgotten about the seventh day Sabbath.

In their slavery, they were forced to work on the Sabbath, and it became just another day to them, a day that they did common work.

And so of all the commandments in the 10 Commandments, The 1 that God says especially to remember is the fourth commandment.

And for the children of Israel it was because they had forgotten.

And it's interesting to look at how God led the children of Israel to this Sabbath message.

He led them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

You can read about that in Exodus chapter 13.

And after they passed through the Red Sea, they came to Mara and had a very bitter experience.

They came to the water and the water was bitter and it did not satisfy their thirst.

After that, and that's in Exodus 15, after that in Exodus 16, God teaches them about the Sabbath.

And we'll look at this again later on, but Exodus 16, 25, and 26.

Then in Exodus chapter 20, he teaches them about the 10 Commandments.

And in Exodus 20, he says, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

After that in Exodus 25, God takes them to the sanctuary.

Exodus 25a, let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.

What's interesting to me is that you can see a very clear parallel between how God led the children of Israel in the Old Testament to a knowledge of the Sabbath and the sanctuary and in a similar manner he did that to his people of our day, leading us to a knowledge of the seventh day Sabbath again and of the sanctuary message.

And look at it again carefully in Revelation 10, Just as he did in Exodus 25, Jesus the mighty angel comes down clothed in a cloud, just like he was in a pillar of cloud to the children of Israel.

And after Jesus comes down clothed with a cloud, at the end of Revelation 10, the Adventists have a very bitter experience known as the great disappointment, similar to the bitter experience of Mara that the Israelites had in the wilderness.

And after that, there's the Sabbath message in Revelation 10, verse 6 and 14, 7.

And finally in Revelation 11, 19, we have the sanctuary message, and I'll just read that briefly.

In Revelation 11, 19, it says, the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament.

And that's pointing us especially to the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary, and that can be found in Exodus chapter 26 verses 33 and 34.

Now it's interesting, when God in the 10 Commandments said to the children of Israel, remember the Sabbath day, he needed to say that because they had forgotten through all their years of slavery.

And when Adventists discovered the Sabbath message again in the 1840s, the phrase, remember the Sabbath day, was appropriate again.

Because the Sabbath had again been forgotten through the 1260 years of the Dark Ages, the time in which God's law had been attempted to be changed and Sunday had been given preeminence.

And So again, when Adventists who believed in the near, soon returning of Jesus looked at the 10 Commandments, they saw, remember the Sabbath day.

Now It's an interesting story how the Sabbath message came into existence.

There was a widow by the name of Rachel Oaks, and her husband had recently passed away, and her 18-year-old daughter, Delight, had gone to teach school in Washington, New Hampshire.

Now Rachel Oakes, through her own study of the Bible, had come to the belief that the seventh day was the Sabbath, and that the Christian world of her time did not properly understand when the Sabbath was.

She was just 1 person, but even though she was the only person in all the world that she knew of, she kept the Sabbath holy.

And so she would keep every seventh day holy, as the Bible says, and then on Sunday she would go for fellowship with her Christian friends to the church in Washington, New Hampshire.

And what's interesting is 1 Sunday a pastor by the name of Frederick Willer came to speak at this church.

He was 1 of their visiting pastors who they knew pretty well.

And during the course of the sermon that particular Sunday, Pastor Willer said, we need to keep all 10 Commandments.

Now Rachel Oaks almost felt like getting up out of her seat and telling him that he was not keeping all 10 Commandments, but she kept her peace, didn't say anything, and then Pastor Willer actually came over to her house and to Light's house, her daughter, just to visit, and she said to Pastor Willer, how can you preach that we must keep all 10 commandments if you're breaking 1 of them all the time.

And there she shared with him the truth of the Sabbath.

And he shared this Sabbath message with someone by the name of Pastor Thomas M.

Thomas Preble ended up writing a tract, and this tract was published in February of 1845, and it said, the title of it is, tract showing that the seventh day should be observed as the Sabbath.

So that pretty much gives you an idea of what the tract was all about.

Thomas Preble had gotten this from Frederick Willer, who had gotten this from Rachel Oaks, 1 woman who was the only person she knew of keeping the Sabbath.

Interestingly enough, Joseph Bates, 1 of the pioneers of the Adventist Church, read this tract by Thomas Preble.

He shared this message with James and Ellen White, they were at first resistant, then they accepted it.

And Joseph Bates was very fervent about this message and in November of 1846, 160 years ago now, he went to Rochester, New York and met with Hiram Edson.

Hiram Edson, of course, was the person on the day after October 22 who it was revealed to him that Jesus had entered the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary.

And Joseph Bates shared with Hiram Edson the truth of the Sabbath message.

And after he was done, Hiram Edson said, this is the truth, I believe it, and he changed.

And he started worshipping on the seventh day Sabbath.

But Hiram Edson had something that Joseph Bates didn't have.

He had the knowledge of the sanctuary message and he shared that with Joseph Bates.

And Joseph Bates then accepted the sanctuary message.

And that's how this Adventist message, This Sabbath and sanctuary message came together and it all started with 1 person, a widow, who to her knowledge, she was the only 1 in the whole world that kept the seventh day as the Sabbath.

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God’s Sabbath Rest

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