Objection 30: “The word 'Sabbath' occurs some sixty times in the New Testament. In every case except one, the Adventists admit that the weekly Sabbath is meant. In one case (Col. 2:16), they insist it means something different (a ceremonial Sabbath) even though the underlying Greek word is identical. Why? Isn’t it because they know that this one verse completely shatters their arguments that Christians must keep Sabbath?"
The eminent Bible commentators quoted near the end of our answer to the preceding objection admit that the weekly Sabbath is referenced in the fifty-nine instances, but they likewise declared that this sixtieth instance (Col 2:16) deals with the annual Sabbaths. Please note, however, that they had no interest in proving anything in behalf of the seventh-day Sabbath! We quoted Sunday-keeping commentators.
To the Greeks, the word (Sabbaton) meant simply “rest” and in itself gave no indication as to what kind of rest or what day of rest. The Greek-speaking Christians assigned the meaning to the word based upon the context in which they found it, even as we do with many words.
To repeat an illustration earlier given: When we use the word “day,” we might mean the light part of the twenty-four hours, the whole twenty-four hours, or an indefinite period, as in “in the day and age we are living in.” Simply because a writer uses the word “day” fifty-nine times to mean twenty-four hours, is no evidence that his sixtieth use of the word must mean the same time period of time! Context must decide.
If a writer, for example, wrote that “the day ended as the western horizon glowed red from the setting Sun,” the context shows he was not using the word “day” to mean twenty-four hours, but only the daylight part of it. The writer's fifty-nine or five hundred and fifty-nine previous uses of the word to mean twenty-four hours would not affect our conclusion that here he obviously intended only the daylight part of the day.
Is it Adventists who place too much weight on Col. 2:16, or is it rather those who oppose the continuing validity of the Fourth Commandment that put tremendous weight on Col. 2:16? The answer is obvious, isn’t it? We Adventists have many other verses, among those 59 instances, upon which to base the keeping of the Sabbath. We also have the Fourth Commandment. (Ex. 20:8-11) But those who oppose Christians keeping the Sabbath confine themselves to this sixtieth reference, in Colossians 2:16.
That is a great weight to place on one text; it is enlightening to know that the discussion of the word “Sabbath” in the New Testament can be narrowed down to this. If this text does really thus teach Sabbath abolition, how shocked must have been the believers scattered over the Roman Empire as the Colossian letter slowly made its way, in the form of handwritten duplicates, to the different churches. We might imagine their saying something on this order:
“We have read the Scriptures from Moses to Malachi, and we find there a command to keep holy the seventh day Sabbath of the Ten Commandments. We have read numerous references to the Sabbath in the writings of the apostles, but they have given no hint that the Sabbath was abolished at the cross. Why have they failed to do this in all their references to it?"
But would those early Christians have found it necessary to raise such a question? No. They knew that Paul, throughout the epistles to the Christian churches, taught that the ceremonial rites and services of the Jews were abolished, and they knew that those services included regulations of meats and drinks and various feasts, new moons, and annual Sabbath days.
What Sabbath, therefore, would they conclude Paul was discussing when they read, in his letter to the church at Colossae, that the ritual of meats and drinks, new moons, Sabbaths, et cetera, was abolished? Honestly, what would he their conclusion? The same conclusion we would reach after we had read in a book fifty-nine references to “day” as meaning twenty four hours, and then read the sixtieth reference to “day” in the context of red sky and setting sun. They would conclude that Paul was speaking of annual Sabbaths, not the weekly ones.