Discovering the New Covenant by Greg Taylor - exAdventist Outreach

DISCOVERING THE NEW COVENANT
Covenant, to ignore this sign was seen as disloyalty to God
and punishable by death. 1
It is because of this Old Covenant Sabbath law that the
Adventist Church declares that the “Seal of God” is still the
seventh-day Sabbath in the New Covenant. No discontinuance
of the Old Covenant is recognized. Their Old Covenant
eyeglasses make this interpretation of Revelation particularly
exclusive and behavioral in nature.
Furthermore, they take the 1260 day prophecies of
Revelation 12-13 (the passage that refers to the mark of the
beast) to be literal years and attribute these years to the
time period of the authority of the Roman Catholic Church.
They believe that the Catholic Church attempted to change
the Sabbath to Sunday. This “beast power” (interpreted to
be the Catholic Church) along with all Protestants that
insist on Sunday worship, will one day force all people to
observe Sunday instead of Sabbath. 2 They view this to be
in direct rebellion against the Covenant sign or Seal of
God, the Sabbath. The resulting false worship will become
the mark of the beast, and only Sabbath keepers will
receive the “Seal of God.” Therefore, Adventists believe
and teach in their Revelation Seminars and Prophecy
Crusades, that Sabbath observance is the final test of
loyalty to God for all mankind. They emphasize Revelation
12:17 as their identity test because it describes the remnant
church as keeping the commandments of God (Sabbath
observance) and having the testimony of Jesus (Ellen G.
White’s prophecies).
There are numerous problems with this conclusion.
But we will just look at the two that truly opened my eyes
as I studied with the New Covenant glasses on. First, the
New Testament does not anywhere call the Sabbath the
1 Ibid. p. 27-28.
2 Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 605 See also Testimonies
for the Church Vol. 8, p. 117.
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