This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
Lesson 12: “The Seal of God and the Mark of the Beast”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- The conclusion of this lesson, that Sabbath is the Seal of God and Sunday the Mark of the Beast, is entirely construed upon false assumptions.
- Understanding the New Covenant would destroy Adventism’s mark of the beast doctrine.
- The Sabbath is never equated with the seal of God in Scripture.
This week’s lesson opens with a reference to the Waldenses who were persecuted and killed in the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. Interestingly, the lesson does not state what EGW taught and which previous generations of Adventists learned: that the Waldenses kept the Sabbath and were persecuted for it.
Interestingly, without mentioning this central feature historically attributed to the Waldenses by Adventism, the significance of their persecution is unknown. The author, however, seems to depend upon the collective Adventist memory of the Waldenses being Sabbath-keepers in opposition to the Catholic Church to make his opening point: true worshipers will be persecuted for their loyalty to key beliefs.
In fact, author Mark Finley ends Sunday’s lesson with these words:
History, unfortunately, is often repeated. The “mark of the beast” prophecy is about the final link in an ungodly chain of religious persecution that goes back through the ages. Like the persecutions of the past, it is designed to force everyone to conform to a certain set of beliefs and an approved system of worship. As always, though, God will have a people who will not capitulate.
The scene has been set. Using the Waldenses, the historic Adventist example of people killed for Sabbath keeping (a claim that has been proven to be false—read Did The Waldenses Keep the 7th Day Sabbath?) and using the phrase “the mark of the beast” juxtaposed to “persecutions” and God’s people who won’t capitulate, the reader will know what’s coming: an apologetic for Sunday worship to be the deadly “mark of the beast” and loyalty to the Sabbath the mark of those who “keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus”. After all, the Waldenses showed us how to stay obedient in the face of persecution.
Day for a Year
Sunday’s lesson is an eye-crossing attempt designed to prove that the time prophecies in Daniel and Revelation must be interpreted as a day-for-a-year. In fact, the Teachers’ Comments devote nearly a page and a half to attempting to “prove” that the day-for-a-year principle is the only right way to understand the biblical references to 1,260 days, 42 months, and time, times, and half-a-time.
In fact, if one reads prophecy using the normal rules of grammar, vocabulary, and context, the prophecies of Daniel and of Revelation do not have to be tortured to make the words refer to YEARS. Christians for hundreds of years have been understanding these time periods to mean what they say, and these calculations using normal meanings yield consistent results that tell us the same information in each case about a future tribulation.
The Adventist version is unique. The Teachers’ Comments go into detail to prove that the 1,260 years began in 538 and ended in 1798 when Napoleon’s armies captured the pope. This calculation is central to their establishment of the papacy/Catholic Church as the antichrist power and of Sunday as the mark of the beast.
In fact, this quote appears on page 160 in the Teachers Comments (emphasis mine):
According to Romans 4:11, a sign and a seal are interchangeable. Seals were well known in the ancient world. They were used to authenticate documents. They were also a sign of ownership. Seals were often made of wax or stamped on freshly formed clay. Of all the commandments, the Sabbath is the only one that qualifies as God’s seal. It contains the name, title, and domain of the lawgiver. As P. Gerard Damsteegt observes: “The Sabbath commandment can therefore be considered a seal because it ‘is the only one of all the ten in which are found both the name and the title of the Lawgiver. It is the only one that shows by whose authority the law is given. Thus it contains the seal of God, affixed to His law as evidence of its authenticity and binding force’ (Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 307). The Sabbath helps to give the ten commandments their unique significance. ‘The Sabbath was placed in the decalogue as the seal of the living God, pointing out the Law-giver, and making known his right to rule.’ Thus the Sabbath is the sign of a relationship between God and His people, serving as ‘a test of their loyalty to Him’ [Signs of the Times, May 13, 1886]. The mission of Seventh-day Adventists can be described as ‘presenting the law of God as a test of character and as the seal of the living God’ (Testimonies for the Church, 2:468).”—Damsteegt, “The Seal of God,” Adventists Affirm, vol. 8, no. 3, Year End 1994, pp. 37, 38.
First, Romans 4:11 does NOT make the case that signs and seals are interchangeable. The verse says this:
…and [Abraham] received the sign of the circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had while uncircumcised, so that he might be the father of all who believe without being circumcised, that righteousness might be credited to them…
Clearly the Romans passage is explaining the purpose of Abraham’s circumcision; it is not establishing an equation between “signs” and “seals”. This eisegesis (as opposed to exegesis) is only one step in the convolutions of this lesson which attempt to make the Sabbath the sign of the seal of God, or the seal of God, as EGW said.
In fact, the Adventist equation of the Sabbath with the seal of God is blasphemy. The Holy Spirit is God’s seal on believers, never the Sabbath (Eph. 1:12,13; 4:30). The Sabbath was the sign of the Mosaic covenant (Ex. 31:13), but it was never called the seal of God on Israel.
The New Covenant Destroys Adventism’s Mark of the Beast
If Adventists understood the biblical teaching of the new covenant, the reality taught in Galatians, Hebrews, Ephesians, Colossians, and Romans, the fearful teaching of worship on Sunday dooming Christians to eternal death would disappear.
Adventism’s doctrine depends upon their version of the eternality of the Ten Commandments. The lesson emphasizes that the fourth commandment at the center of the Ten has to be eternal as well as the other nine because it’s part of the Decalogue.
Yet Galatians is clear: the law was temporary; it was given 430 years after Abraham until the Seed would come (Gal. 3:17–21). It was intended for Israel, and Jesus came and FULFILLED the entire law! Further, the Decalogue is only part of the Mosaic covenant, the entire law is a UNIT. It can’t be separated from the rest of the law.
Hebrews 6 and 7 clearly explains, further, that the Mosaic law—the entire law—was established on the basis of the levitical priesthood. Without the levitical priesthood, there cannot be the Old Testament law. Now, because we have Jesus in the order of Melchizedek, a brand-new priesthood that was DISALLOWED by the law (because Jesus is of the tribe of Judah, not Levi, and because He is eternal and sinless, unlike the levites), the law must OF NECESSITY be changed (Heb. 7:11, 12)!
Read it:
Now if perfection was through the Levitical priesthood (for on the basis of it the people received the Law), what further need [was there] for another priest to arise according to the order of Melchizedek, and not be designated according to the order of Aaron?For when the priesthood is changed, of necessity there takes place a change of law also (Heb. 7:11, 12).
The new covenant removes the sacredness of any day. In fact, Paul puts it this clearly in Colossians 2:16, 17:
Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day—things which are a [mere] shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ (Col. 2:16, 17).
There would be no issue whatsoever of a sacred day, of a required Sabbath, if people understood the new covenant and the significance of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling of believers. The thing that sets apart those who are saved from those who are not is the new birth.
True believers are alive in Christ, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, and kept by the Father for the day of salvation. Whatever the mark of the beast will be in the future, it will be something assigned to those who do NOT believe in the Lord Jesus. It will not be loyalty to a day.
Days are not sacred. Days are created things, and only God is holy—God and those who are born again with the life of God. Believers are a “holy priesthood”, set apart for God’s purposes. Never, however, does the New Testament teach the sacredness of ANY DAY.
The New Covenant utterly destroys the Adventists’ teaching of the mark of the beast. If there is any doubt as to whether or not the law defines believers on this side of the cross, read 2 Corinthians 3 below:
Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some, letters of commendation to you or from you? You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men; being manifested that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
Such confidence we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as [coming] from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate [as] servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. But if the ministry of death, in letters engraved on stones, came with glory, so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, fading [as] it was, how will the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory?
For if the ministry of condemnation has glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory. For indeed what had glory, in this case has no glory because of the glory that surpasses [it.] For if that which fades away [was] with glory, much more that which remains [is] in glory. Therefore having such a hope, we use great boldness in [our] speech, and [are] not like Moses, [who] used to put a veil over his face so that the sons of Israel would not look intently at the end of what was fading away.
But their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ. But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, [there] is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3) †
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