78
Amen dear Sister Dorine! Soon Caiaphas will be raised from his grave to witness the coming of His Messiah, our Savior.
There is a mighty earthquake, “such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great” ( Revelation 16:17, 18). The firmament appears to open and shut. The glory from the throne of God seems flashing through. The mountains shake like a reed in the wind, and ragged rocks are scattered on every side.... The whole earth heaves and swells like the waves of the sea. Its surface is breaking up. Its very foundations seem to be giving way. Mountain chains are sinking. Inhabited islands disappear. The seaports that have become like Sodom for wickedness are swallowed up by the angry waters.... Great hailstones, every one “about the weight of a talent,” are doing their work of destruction ( verses 19, 21) ....Graves are opened, and “many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth ... awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” ( Daniel 12:2). All who have died in the faith of the third angel’s message come forth from the tomb glorified to hear God’s covenant of peace with those who have kept His law. “They also which pierced Him” ( Revelation 1:7), those that mocked and derided Christ’s dying agonies, and the most violent opposers of His truth and His people, are raised to behold Him in His glory, and to see the honor placed upon the loyal and obedient.—The Great Controversy, 636, 637 (1911).
If the people were to lose confidence in their rulers, the national power would be destroyed. Caiaphas urged that after this miracle the followers of Jesus would likely rise in revolt. The Romans will then come, he said, and will close our temple, and abolish our laws, destroying us as a nation. What is the life of this Galilean worth in comparison with the life of the nation? If He stands in the way of Israel's well-being, is it not doing God a service to remove Him? Better that one man perish than that the whole nation be destroyed. whole nation be destroyed. DA 539.
The sin and ruin of the nation was due to their religious leaders. So it will be today. The sin and ruin of all nations will be due to their religious leaders. They all have the opportunity to follow the law of God, but choose to follow the laws of man and reject the simple truth that God gave us the Sabbath that we might rest from our labors and remember our God of great power who spoke the world into existence and who breathed life into man. In the Word of God we read the truth about which day is the day of rest, the only day God has blessed. "And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 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." Gen. 2:2,3.
The law of God clearly spells out which day we are to rest on. It is not the first day, but the seventh day. The ten commandments was never changed. The moral law always was and always will be. God does not change. "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, 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 six 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." Exodus 20:8-11.
As the Sabbath has become the special point of controversy throughout Christendom, and religious and secular authorities have combined to enforce the observance of the Sunday, the persistent refusal of a small minority to yield to the popular demand will make them objects of universal execration. It will be urged that the few who stand in opposition to an institution of the church and a law of the state ought not to be tolerated; that it is better for them to suffer than for whole nations to be thrown into confusion and lawlessness. The same argument eighteen hundred years ago was brought against Christ by the “rulers of the people.” “It is expedient for us,” said the wily Caiaphas, “that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.” John 11:50. This argument will appear conclusive; and a decree will finally be issued against those who hallow the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, denouncing them as deserving of the severest punishment and giving the people liberty, after a certain time, to put them to death. Romanism in the Old World and apostate Protestantism in the New will pursue a similar course toward those who honor all the divine precepts. l the divine precepts. GC88 615.