Beginning of the End - Ellen G. White

Deuteronomy 17:7.]
Should Sabbath Breakers Be Stoned?
If this man's sin had been allowed to go unpunished, others
would have been encouraged to do evil, and as a result many people
would eventually have died.
The mixed multitude that came up with the Israelites from
Egypt claimed to worship the true God and to have given up
idolatry, but they were more or less corrupted with idolatry and
irreverence. They seeded the camp with idolatrous practices and
grumblings against God.
Soon someone violated the Sabbath. The Lord's announcement
that He would disinherit Israel had awakened a spirit of rebellion.
One of the people, angry at being excluded from Canaan and
determined to show his defiance of God's law, dared to transgress
the fourth commandment openly by going out to gather sticks on the
Sabbath. During the stay in the wilderness, building fires on the
seventh day had not been allowed. This rule was not to continue in
the land of Canaan, but in the wilderness fire was not needed for
warmth. This was a willful and deliberate decision of breaking the
fourth commandment--a sin of presumption.
Moses brought the case before the Lord, and the direction was
given, "The man must surely be put to death; all the congregation
shall stone him with stones outside the camp" (Numbers 15:35). The
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