If you were to come to my office, you would see most of my shelves are rather empty—in fact, bare. I’m still getting settled and trying to decide what goes where. Of the items displayed, you would see I have a few books and a few airplanes my son, Joel, made.
As the father of three amazing boys, I take great pride in what my kids create. And I absolutely love watching Joel, my middle son, build airplanes from scratch out of cardboard. It amazes me the amount of detail he puts into each one, and it brings me great joy to observe his creativity and craftsmanship.
While I do not worship my son or his models, I do like to put them on display for others to see and admire. I can just image how God the Father must have felt when Jesus started to create planet Earth and fill it with living things. Earth was put on display for the whole universe to admire and worship its Creator.
Pastor Puia Fanai from the Waianae/Waipahu district writes about the final part of the first angel’s message and explores the aspect of our Creator and the privilege we have of worshiping Him:
The first angel’s message in Revelation 14:7 ends with the call to “worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water” (NKJV). It means everyone should worship God because He is the Creator of all life. Every living being—creatures of the sky, the land, and the sea—owes their existence to the Creator God. The language of this call makes an unmistakable connection to Exodus 20:8-11, the fourth commandment, in which God commands, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.… For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day” (NKJV).
It is interesting to note that the proclamation of this message started to gain momentum around 1844, the same year Charles Darwin wrote an essay with his theories of evolution by means of natural selection. This influenced the world to reject the biblical truth about the Creator.
So, recognizing the Sabbath as a reminder of God the Creator has become ever more important. By resting on the Sabbath, we proclaim that Jesus is our Creator and Redeemer, acknowledging that we did not make ourselves or redeem ourselves by our own works.
Because God includes this call to worship Him in the final message before the return of Jesus, it appears that in the final crisis of the Earth, the main point of controversy will be between worshiping the true God (Revelation 11:1, 11:18, 14:7) and worshiping the dragon and the beast (Revelation 13:4-8, 14:9-11). There will be no middle ground. Everyone will have to make a choice of whom to worship.
Worshiping God is not just about going to church on the correct day of rest; it also means resting in Jesus. He is Lord of the Sabbath and the everlasting gospel. Out of the joy of salvation, we serve Him as the Lord of our lives each day.
Erik VanDenburgh, President Hawaii Conference of Seventh-day Adventists
