Produced by Cally Soukup, Heiko Evermann, Lisa Reigel, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE SEVENTH DAY SABBATH, A PERPETUAL SIGN, FROM THE BEGINNING TO THE ENTERING INTO THE GATES OF THE HOLY CITY, ACCORDING TO THE COMMANDMENT. BY JOSEPH BATES: "Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the _beginning_. The old commandment is the WORD which ye have heard from the _beginning_." _John_ ii: 7. "In the _beginning_ God created the heaven and the earth." Gen. i: 1. "And God blessed the seventh day, and rested from all his work." ii: 3. "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life and enter in," &c. _Rev._ xxii: 14. NEW-BEDFORD PRESS OF BENJAMIN LINDSEY 1846. [1]PREFACE. TO THE LITTLE FLOCK. "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy." "Six days work may be done, but the _seventh_ is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work." This commandment I conceive to be as binding now as it ever was, and will be to the entering into the "gates of the city." Rev. xxii: 14. I understand that the _seventh_ day Sabbath is not the _least_ one, among the ALL things that are to be restored before the second advent of Jesus Christ, seeing that the Imperial and Papal power of Rome, since the days of the Apostles, have changed the seventh day Sabbath to the first day of the week! Twenty days before God re-enacted and wrote the commandments with his finger on tables of stone, he required his people to keep the Sabbath. Exo. xvi: 27, 30. Here he calls the Sabbath "_my commandments and my laws_." Now the SAVIOR has given his comments on the commandments. See Matt. xxii: 35, 40. "On these two (precepts) hang ALL the law and the prophets." Then it would be impossible for the Sabbath to be left out. A question was asked, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? Says Jesus, "If thou wilt enter into life keep the commandments"--xix. Here he quotes five from the tables of stone. If he did not mean all the rest, then he deceived the lawyer in the two first precepts, love to God and love to man. See also Matt. v: 17, 19, 21, 27, 33. PAUL comments thus. "The law is holy, and the commandments holy, just and good." "Circumcision and uncircumcision is nothing but the keeping the commandments of God." "All the law is fulfilled in one word: thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." JOHN says, "the old commandment is the WORD from the beginning."--2, 7. Gen. ii: 3. "He carries us from thence into the gates of the city." Rev. xxii: 14. Here he has particular reference to the Sabbath. JAMES calls it the _perfect_, royal law of liberty, which we are to be doers of, and be judged by. Take out the fourth commandment and the law is imperfect, and we shall fail in one point.