Imagine having your head and hands locked between two pieces of wood. Yuk! And if that's not bad enough, a lot of people would stand around and laugh at you. It would not be nice.

However, no one remembered that that was the punishment.

It had been a long time since anyone had been put on trial for working on Sunday. But that was about to change.

A group of American missionaries arrived in Australia to set up the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Some farmers at Kellyville, near Sydney, were impressed.

By listening to the Americans, the farmers discovered that Saturday was the Sabbath. So instead of working on Saturday, they started going to church on Saturday.

The farmers still needed to work, of course. They needed to earn money to live. Since they had discovered that Sunday was not a sacred day, they decided to work on their farm on Sunday.

The farm was not in an obvious place. It was well off the road. No one would see them working there. No one except people who went there just to see them.

But who would go well off the road just to see two farmers working? No one would do that, would they? Well, some people did. Some people who didn't like the new religion.

As a result, the two farmers were taken to court.

They were found guilty of breaking this very old law that said you couldn't work on Sunday.

What was the punishment they would receive? They were to be placed in the stocks.

The newspapers wrote up the story. They said it was ridiculous. A lot of people worked on Sunday. Why were these two godly farmers punished when so many other people were not?

Until then, hardly anyone had heard of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Now the newspapers were letting everyone know. The whole city of a million people found out that this was a church that went to church on Saturday.

The publicity was very good. But what about the poor farmers? They had been sentenced to the stocks!

How could God rescue them? It was the law. The farmers had to be punished.

The authorities now looked for stocks to punish the farmers. But guess what? They couldn't find any.

They discovered there were no stocks in the whole of New South Wales. They didn't want to make any stocks just for this. So the farmers were not punished.

And that is how God used a very old law to let so many people know that Saturday is the Sabbath.

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You can find God's instruction to keep the Sabbath in the Ten Commandments. Read it in your Bible in Exodus 20:8-11

Author: Phil Ward

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