The text says that these people that are in their patience, their _trying time_, keep the commandments of God, besides the testimony of Jesus. Here then, we are absolutely directed, not only to the old testament but to the decalogue—Exo. xx: 1-17, and even before there was any decalogue in the form of a precept; see Exo. xvi: 27-30. This one text, in itself, positively overthrows all of their unscriptural teaching about their New Testament commandments, and clearly demonstrates the perpetuity of God’s holy Sabbath, because the commandments of God are one thing, and the testimony of Jesus is another. These are the people, then, and the only ones too, who abide by the whole word of God, in the Old and New New Testament teaching, and they that deny the teachings of this text, deny the word of God, and trample down His Holy Sabbath. In the three preceding verses, God’s people are called away, and required, under penalty of their salvation, to continue disconnected from Babylon, the churches to which the great mass before this belonged. Now the very next thing after these messages, John declares that they are keeping the commandments of God; that is, they are keeping the seventh-day Sabbath. Where is the proof? says the objector. Here it is—when this same people were making their sacrifice, in 1843 and ’44, expecting the Lord to come, they were walking out in all the commandments of God, as far as they were taught or knew them at that time; and we all fully believed then, and do now, that _all_ the honest ones were in a saved state; and if called away then, as was brother Fitch and others, the same hope would follow them; but we know that they could not be honest, nor be saved, if they were knowingly living in violation of any of God’s commandments; and yet we all positively know _now_, that with a very few exceptions, we were all living in open violation of the 4th commandment, which we were taught to do, (though not always designedly,) in the churches to which they belonged, and where they are still continued to be taught; and our staying with them, _we now see_, would not have altered, for they _fell_ for rejecting the message that came before this, and therefore the subject of this 12th verse was not presented to them. Our keeping the first day of the week for the fourth commandment, never was, nor ever will be, fulfilling it, any more than keeping Friday for the Sabbath. John, who kept the right Sabbath, and was now describing our real labors and characters, could not have said that we kept the commandments, unless we were keeping the seventh-day Sabbath, according to God’s direction and _his_ practice. This, then, being the only commandment that ever had been objected to, from the days of the Apostles, by those who pretended to keep them, makes it clear that John could not have had any reference to either of the others, but the Sabbath only. Here then, for the first time, they were