While in school, listening to lectures and doing laboratory assignments, you are collecting in your mind the data and questions that you think the professor might ask on a test, and you store these items in your memory so that you will be ready to pass the course.
Our entire life in this world is simply a course of study for which we will be tested before the end of the world. The test will be concerning the law of God. In the final judgment, only one question will be asked—Did this person keep the law or not? The one-word answer will determine your eternal destiny.
The apostle James says, “For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.” James 2:10. If you break even one of the commandments, you are a lawbreaker. There is a single point that will be most under attack in the law of God.
The fourth commandment is the longest, most-detailed commandment of the ten. This commandment alone tells us explicitly who the author of the law is and why He has such authority. God has also used it as an outward sign or seal so that the whole universe will know who His people are. (See Ezekiel 20; Isaiah 8; and Exodus 31.) It also directs us to rest on the seventh-day Sabbath (Saturday), keeping His day holy and refraining from any work. In keeping all of God’s law, and specifically the Sabbath day, we show to the universe that we are God’s people.
The Bible tells us explicitly that in the last days God’s people will be commandment keepers (Revelation 12:17; Revelation 14:12) and that the commandment breakers will eventually be destroyed (Revelation 14:9-12; Revelation 21:8, 27; Revelation 22:15; Matthew 7:21-23).
So friend, where do you stand today? Are you on God’s side of the great controversy or are you at present on the devil’s side. Obedience or disobedience—what does your life show?
“Be sure the Sabbath is a test question, and how you treat this question, places you either on God’s side or Satan’s side. The mark of the beast is to be presented in some shape to every institution and every individual.” The Ellen G. White 1888 Materials, 477