My family and I have been reading the story of Joseph Bates: After spending nearly all his money supporting God’s work, he felt impressed to write a pamphlet on the newly rediscovered Sabbath. At the prompting of God, and at great personal sacrifice, he wrote and then paid for the printing and distributed of this pamphlet: The Sabbath A Perpetual Sign. (This series of articles are rewritten from his pamphlet.)
People who simply read the Bible as it reads, will easily be able to understand something as plain as this: “And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made.” Genesis 2:3.
Moses referred to this verse when he said to the children of Israel, “This is that which the Lord hath said, to-morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord." Exodus 16:23.
This means that God established the seventh-day Sabbath in Eden—on the very same day that He rested from all His work. The Sabbath wasn’t established a week later, or a year later, and certainly not 2,500 years later (at Sinai). Isn’t it plain that the Sabbath was established to commemorate God’s amazing work of creation? He designed it to be kept by His worshipers every week.
The Passover was designed to do a similar thing: The Israelites were commanded to keep it every year on the exact date they were delivered from Egypt, and they were to do this every year until the death of Christ.
In the United States, we celebrate our independence every year on the 4th of July. It wouldn’t do to celebrate it on the 5th of August, or the 3rd of June!
As all these celebrations commemorate particular events, so the Sabbath will continue to commemorate creation, even to the “keeping of the Sabbath to the people of God” in the immortal New Earth. (Hebrews 4:9, margin.)
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