The great controversy, which began in heaven millennia ago, was over the question of God’s authority. The challenge remains the same today, as well.

 Read Revelation 14:7, 9, and 12. Summarize these verses by completing the sentences on the lines below.

 Revelation 14:7 is a call to _________________

 Revelation 14:9 is a solemn appeal not to _________________

 Revelation 14:12 describes a people who _________________

 These passages make it clear that the central issue in the conflict in the last days between good and evil, Christ and Satan, is worship. Do we worship the Creator or the beast? And because Creation forms the ground of all our beliefs (after all, what do we believe that makes any sense apart from God as our Creator?), the seventh-day Sabbath — embedded in the Genesis Creation account itself (Gen. 2:1-3) — stands as the eternal and immutable sign of that Creation. It’s the most basic symbol of the most basic teaching. The only thing more fundamental to it is God Himself.

 Hence, to usurp the seventh-day Sabbath is to usurp the Lord’s authority at the most prime level possible, that of Him as Creator. It’s to get behind everything and uproot it at the core. It is, indeed, to seek to take the place of God Himself (2 Thess. 2:4).

 Of course, the real issue in the last days is our love and loyalty to Jesus. But according to the Bible, this love is expressed in obedience to the commandments (1 John 5:3, Rev. 14:12) — and the Sabbath alone among the commandments gets behind everything because it alone points to God as Creator (Exod. 20:8-11). No wonder it will be the outward symbol of the final divide between those who worship the Lord and those who worship the beast (Rev. 14:11, 12). Considering how basic and fundamental the Sabbath is to everything else, it’s hard to see how the final issue of worshiping the Creator could be about anything else.