In vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. Matthew 15:9, NKJV.
The enemy has worked in the religious world to deceive people into the belief that the law of God can be set aside. He has had long years of experience in this work, for he began with our first parents, using his powers to cause them to distrust God. If he could interpose himself between their souls and God, he knew that he would succeed. The prospect of becoming gods, knowing good and evil, was pleasing to Adam and Eve, and they yielded to the temptation.
In receiving a knowledge of good and evil, human beings feel that they are gaining much; but they do not understand the purposes of Satan. They do not understand that they are taken in his snare when they tamper with the law of God. The enemy knows that if the church can be controlled by political enactments, if it can be led to unite with the world, it virtually acknowledges him as its head. Then the authority of human-made commandments will work to oppose the rule of the government of heaven. Under the leadership of Satan there are those who will dispense with the righteous, holy enactments of God concerning the Sabbath, the observance of which is to be a sign between God and His people forever.
Satan's plan has taken with the religious world. He has created an order of things entirely his own, making void the law of God. Through his deceptive working he has gained in the professedly Christian world that which he thought to gain in heaven—an abrogation of the laws of Jehovah. Through the Roman power he has worked to remove God's memorial, and has erected a memorial of his own to sever God from His people. Today the Protestant world is estranged from God by its acceptance of a spurious sabbath. Not one iota of sacred authority can they find for doing this; yet, full of zeal, they assert that the Lord's memorial given at creation should be ignored, despised, trampled upon, and the first day of the week take its place.
No deeper wound could be inflicted on God than to ignore His holy day, and place in its stead a spurious sabbath that bears no mark of sanctity. God gave the Sabbath to the world to be set apart for His name's glory. He says: “It is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you.... Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant.”—The Signs of the Times, November 22, 1899.
From To Be Like Jesus - Page 139
To Be Like Jesus