Objection 20: Seventh-day Adventists declare that the seventh day of the week was set apart as a Sabbath by the blessing and sanctification of God at the creation of the world. They thus seek to prove that the Sabbath preceded the Jewish race and applies to all men. But Genesis, which contains the record of God's resting upon and blessing the Sabbath, was written by Moses two thousand five hundred years after creation, or about the time of the Exodus. Moses simply set down in that Genesis reference to the Sabbath a statement of what God actually did for the seventh day at Mount Sinai.
First, please note that this objector has admitted a very important fact: that the Genesis record of God’s blessing of the Sabbath at the creation is an extremely powerful argument for the universal applicability of the Sabbath.
Also note that the objector purports to have a remarkably intimate knowledge, to say the least, of how Moses wrote his history. How did the objector gain such knowledge? He has access to no other sources of knowledge than those known to all Bible students. And such students, including eminent commentators, have always held that Moses, in the book of Genesis, is narrating, or believes he is narrating, the historical record of creation week when he mentions the blessing of the Sabbath day. And they have held this view despite the fact that they were Sunday keepers. But, in all honesty, what else could they do but hold this view? Let us examine the facts.
1. What is the nature of the book of Genesis? It is plainly, from beginning to end, a book of history. It sets forth a narrative, in chronological order, of events from the creation through the death of Joseph. Therefore, in the absence of clear evidence to the contrary, we should consider the various parts of it, the accounts of what men said and did, and likewise the accounts of what God said and did, as being historical incidents occurring at the time indicated in the narrative. The account of God's resting on the seventh day of creation week and blessing and sanctifying it fits as naturally into the historical sequence as do any other incidents mentioned in Genesis. There is nothing in the context to suggest otherwise.
2. The fact that the book of Genesis was written some twenty-five hundred years after creation has no bearing on the matter whatsoever. All books of history are written after the events described, and obviously any historical work that recited twenty-five hundred years of history would have to have been written at least that long after the beginning of the story narrated. To say that a history writer projected back into the year one an event occurring in the year 2,500, or thereabouts, is to charge the author with fraud and deception. Why should we be willing to charge Moses with fraud?
3. But note the point at which the objector claims the record ceases to be historical and becomes a throwback from an incident that occurred twenty-five hundred years later. He carries the narrative through the creation week, including God’s resting on the seventh day from all His work. (Gen. 2:2) At this point, the objector declares, the break comes, and the immediately following words are a throwback: “And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it lie had rested from all his work which God created and made.” Verse 3.
Now why should God rest? Not because He was weary. His resting, which is faithfully recorded by Moses, must have had a meaning. The next verse reveals the meaning. The resting was the reason for the blessing. He blessed and sanctified the seventh day “because that in it He had rested from all his work.” Verse 3. And what reason is there for contending that God rested on the seventh day of creation week in order to provide the occasion for blessing it, and then waited twenty-five hundred years to pronounce the blessing? None whatever.
4. The blessing of the seventh day, or Sabbath day, is not the only blessing in the creation narrative. Let us note all the blessings that are recorded in the creation narrative:
Fifth Day:
“And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly.” Gen. 1:20.
“And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply.” Verse 22.
Sixth Day:
“And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature . . . Let us make man in our image.” Gen. 1:24-26.
“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply.” Verse 1:28.
Seventh Day:
“And he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.” Gen. 2:2.
“And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it.” Verse 2:3.
The objector is willing to agree that the blessings upon the acts of the fifth and sixth days follow immediately the events described. Parallel literary construction and the complete absence of any suggestion of a break in narration require him to agree that the blessing of the seventh day follows immediately upon God's resting on that day.
5. Now let us examine how God describes the Sabbath commandment when he is giving it to Israel in the wilderness at Mt. Sinai. Does he say, “I am now going to bless the Sabbath”? No he says, “Remember the Sabbath day.” The meaning of “remember” is to call to mind a past event or experience of some kind. Israel was commanded to “remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” Exodus 20:8. Why? Because God was now going to bless it? No, God tells Israel to “remember” the Sabbath because God had already blessed it, long ago. What could possibly be more obvious?
The other actions of the Fourth Commandment are also in the past tense:
a. “In six days the Lord made heaven and earth.”
b. “And rested the seventh day.”
c. “Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.”
Note the four verbs, all in the past tense: “made,” “rested,” “blessed,” and “hallowed.” The rationale, the basis, for the Fourth Commandment in Exodus 20:8-11 is what happened during the creation week. This is why the history of the creation week is being recited in Exodus 20.
With these facts before him the reader should have no difficulty in deciding the question in controversy.
Objection 21: Exodus 16:29 and Nehemiah 9:13-14 prove that the Sabbath was not given until Israel left Egypt. The very silence of the Scriptures regarding anyone's keeping it before that time is strong corroborative proof.
Two claims are here made: First, that the Sabbath was instituted in a Jewish setting. This claim is intended to prepare the way for the next claim, which is that the Sabbath was made only for the Jews.
The objector seems to believe that Exodus 16:29 and Nehemiah 9:13-14 neutralize the statement in Genesis 2:2-3 and expunge it from the record. But does one Scriptural statement do that to another? No. We must interpret all texts on a given topic to be in harmony with each other; if we are interpreting them to oppose each other, we are misinterpreting.
We have already seen—objection 20—that Genesis 2:2-3 firmly establishes that God rested on the seventh day of the first week of time, and then and there blessed the seventh day. If we are rightly interpreting the Scriptures, we must believe that whatever Exodus 16:29 and Nehemiah 9:13-14 teach, they do not teach contrary to Genesis 2:2-3.
Exodus 16:29 is part of the narrative of the giving of the manna, which was to be collected each day for the six working days, with twice as much to be collected the sixth day, because God gave no manna on the seventh day. But some of the Israelites, contrary to God's command, went out on the Sabbath day to collect it. This caused the Lord to inquire of Moses: “How long refuse you to keep my commandments and my laws? See, for that the Lord hath given you the Sabbath, therefore he gives you on the sixth day the bread of two days.” Ex. 16:28-29.
Nehemiah, long afterward, recalls what God did for Israel in bringing them out of captivity, declaring in part: “Thou came down also upon mount Sinai, and spoke with them from heaven, and gave them right judgments, and true laws, good statutes and commandments: and made known unto them thy holy Sabbath, and, commanded them precepts, statutes, and laws, by the hand of Moses thy servant.” Neh. 9:13,14.
These passages deal with the same incidents and are so similar in construction that they may be considered together. Let us note certain phrases:
1. “The Lord bath given you the Sabbath.” Ex. 16:29.
2. “Gave them right judgments, and true laws, good statutes and commandments.” Neh. 9:13.
3. “Made known unto them thy holy Sabbath.” Neh. 9:14.
Clearly, the third of these three phrases, “made known”, implies that the Sabbath already existed. God declares, “I made myself known unto them [Israel], in bringing them forth out of the land of Egypt.” Ezek. 20:9. Obviously, God existed prior to the Exodus and “making Himself known” to Israel. By the same token, the Sabbath existed before it was made known to Israel during the exodus. The knowledge both of God and of the Sabbath had largely faded from the minds of the Israelites during their long Egyptian bondage
But what of the first and second construction, “giving” the Sabbath and other laws? First, we should note that the manna narrative takes place before the formal giving of the tables of stone on Mt. Sinai, which indicates that the Sabbath was already in existence before the formal “giving” of the law. That alone proves that the term “giving” cannot mean that the moral law was not in existence before it was formally given on Mt. Sinai, as the objector implies.
But let us follow the objector’s argument to its logical end. If we are to interpret Exodus 16:29 to mean that the Sabbath law did not exist until it was “given” at Sinai, we must interpret Nehemiah 9:13 by the same rules of construction, which would mean that none of the moral laws existed until they were “given” at Sinai. Therefore, not only would it have been no sin to work on the seventh day, but it would have been no sin, previous to Sinai, to have done any of the things prohibited by the various laws and commandments which God “gave them” at that time.
But are not the other nine of the Ten Commandments an expression of eternal moral principles? Does anyone believe for a moment that previous to the giving of the Sixth Commandment against adultery from Mt. Sinai, there was no divine ban on adultery and therefore no sin in taking one’s neighbor’s wife? The testimony of Scripture is that adultery was commonly known to be a sin long before Sinai. (See, e.g., Gen. 12:10-20; Gen. 20)
Even so with the Sabbath law. It, along with the other great precepts of the Ten Commandments, and many other statutes, was “given” to Israel in the sense of being made known to Israel as they began their national life. The long darkness of Egypt had quite blurred their understanding of God's will. They needed to be reminded of the divine precepts. Now by the light of the pillar of fire, God made clear to them all His requirements, including the Sabbath.
Only a word need be said in reply to the claim based on the fact that the Scriptures are silent about keeping the Sabbath before the Exodus. The few pages of the Bible that precede the account of the Exodus cover some twenty-five hundred years. Obviously, only a few highlights of that eon could be included in the Bible. Chiefly, Moses sought to provide a running narrative to connect creation with the events that followed the fall of man, on down through the Flood, the call of Abraham, the rise of Israel, and their exodus from Egypt. Little is mentioned of the religious activities in which men engaged during those twenty-five hundred years. To present this silence of Scripture as a proof against the seventh-day Sabbath is to rely on an exceedingly weak argument.
Those who promote the importance of Sunday generally include in their reasoning that man needs a recurring day of worship each week, and set no bounds of time or place on that claim. Hence, those who lived before the Exodus were also in need of such a recurring day. Seeing they were, would God fail to provide for that need? Indeed, did He not do that very thing when, at creation, He set apart for a holy use the seventh day? We do not need a specific mention of their keeping that day before we reasonably conclude that holy men like Enoch, Noah, and Abraham kept the Sabbath holy.
Objection 22: The Sabbath is Jewish. It was given only to the Jews and was part of the old covenant that was made only with the Jews. Further, Deuteronomy 5:15 states explicitly that God commanded the Jews to keep the Sabbath as a memorial of their deliverance from Egypt. Therefore it has no meaning for us who are Gentile Christians.
This reasoning goes over much the same ground covered by the claim that the law given at Sinai was intended only for the Jews. See, objection 4, where we discuss that the whole Bible was written by Jews, much of it directly addressed to Jews, that both old and new covenants were made with the “house of Israel,” and that Christ Himself declared that “salvation is of the Jews.”
Yet all Protestantism turns to the Bible, both the Old and the New Testament, for spiritual guidance. We all claim a right to the new covenant relationship, and we all preach that the salvation which Christ said is of the Jews is for every man in every land.
The Westminster Confession, which is the clearest expression of the Protestant view on the sacredness of a weekly rest day, declares that the Sabbath “from the beginning of the world till the resurrection of Christ, was the last day of the week.” That is a period of at least four thousand years. Yet for the first half of this long period there were no Jews.
Did the seventh day of the week suddenly acquire a different character and quality at Sinai as God was leading His chosen people from Egypt to the Promised Land? Someone may venture to say yes, and to support his answer by reference to those Old Testament declarations that the Sabbath was a distinguishing mark and a sign between God and the children of Israel.
But if this answer proves anything, it proves too much, for the very same Old Testament records which thus describe the Sabbath reveal to us also that God describes Himself as being in a very peculiar and distinctive way the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Why should not the Lord enjoin the Sabbath of the Lord upon these faithful followers of God?
The reason that the observance was confined to the Jews in the last part of that long period before Christ was that no other people on the face of the earth were true followers of God. They were pagans and heathen. Of course the Sabbath was closely associated with the Jews during the time of their national history; and as we have noted, so was everything else that God revealed regarding his will, including all the prophets of God and all the writings that make up the Holy Bible.
“But,” someone may reply, “The Bible does not say anywhere that the Savior and salvation were to be confined to the Jews.” This is true, but neither was the Sabbath to be confined to the Jews. To the contrary, we have very specific declarations of Scripture to show that the Sabbath was intended of God to have a worldwide application. Let us enumerate a few of these:
1. The Sabbath commandment itself specifically declares that not only were the Jews to rest but also the stranger that was within their gates. (Ex. 20:10) The strangers were those not of the family of Israel; they might belong to any other race or people or nation.
2. Christ declared that the Sabbath was made for man. Mark 2:27. He did not say “for the Jews,” but for man, and there is no justification for confining the meaning to less than all of mankind. If we thus confine the word, we will soon come into great difficulty. For example, we read that Christ is “the true light, which lights every man that comes into the world.” John 1:9. Did Christ bring light only to such men as are Jews? Furthermore, the Sabbath was given so that men might have the blessing of rest and the worship of their Creator. Why should God desire that only a small fraction of His created beings—for the Jews have ever been but a very small part of the world's population—should partake of the happiness of rest and worship?
3. How could the Sabbath have been given only to the Jews, when it was made at creation, which was long before the days of Abraham, father of the Jewish race? (Gen. 2:2-3).
4. The prophet Isaiah, speaking of the closing days of earth's history, when God's “salvation is near to come” (Isa. 56:1-2) talks of the blessing that will come upon “the sons of the foreigner” that is, the gentile, who “keeps the Sabbath.” (Isa. 56:6-8)
5. Finally, in the new earth, where there will be people of every race and nation, the Sabbath will be kept. (Isa. 66:22-23)
Now what of Deuteronomy 5:15, which is said to prove that the Sabbath was given only to the Jews? The text reads as follows:
Remember that thou was a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched-out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day.
Note that “deuteronomy” means “second law,” or the second recitation of the laws. Deuteronomy is a reminder, with appropriate comments, of the great event that had taken place at Mt. Sinai forty years before, when God spoke the Ten Commandments. That Moses was not attempting to repeat verbatim the commandments is shown by verse 12, where he says “Keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee.” As the Lord thy God commanded you at Sinai, that is, both orally and by His writing on the tables of stone.
This recital of the commandments in Deuteronomy cannot be taken as a substitute for the form found in Exodus 20. In Exodus we find the record of the commands as God spoke them, to which Moses specifically referred Israel when he urged them, “Keep the Sabbath day to sanctify it, as the Lord thy God bath commanded thee.” Whatever reasons or appeals are presented by Moses must be considered as additional to, and not as a substitute for, the reasons given by God when He originally spoke the commandments.
God declared that the seventh day is the Sabbath on which all should rest, because “in six days the Lord made heaven and earth,... and rested the seventh day. Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.” Ex. 20:11.
Let us look again at the context of Deuteronomy 5. Moses proceeds with his paraphrase of the Sabbath command, and closes the fourteenth verse—which describes how servants as well as masters were to rest—by adding: “That thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou.” Then follows immediately verse 15, which reminds the Israelites of how they were servants in Egypt:
“. . . nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt . . .”
The natural way to read the passage is not that Moses was telling the Jews to keep the Sabbath only because they had been servants in Egypt, but that Moses foresaw that, in more prosperous future times, the Jews would be tempted to make their own servants work on the Sabbath, and he wanted to add a pointed rationale as to why they should not do that: “Don’t make your slaves work on Sabbath; remember that you were slaves in Egypt and God delivered you from bondage.”
This is the natural interpretation of the passage. It becomes the inevitable interpretation when certain parallel passages are quoted. A little further on Moses gives instruction as to the treatment of a servant, and how, after he had served six years, he should be released in the seventh and sent away with liberal provisions from the flocks and herds of the master. (Deut. 15:12-14) “And,” added Moses, “thou shall remember that thou was a bondman in the land of Egypt, and the Lord thy God redeemed thee: therefore I command thee this thing to day.” Deut. 15:15.
Shall we conclude that liberality toward servants is a command originating at the Exodus; hence, it applies only to the Jews, and all others may deal harshly with their servants without incurring God's displeasure? The Scriptures, with one voice, obliterate any such notion. (Col. 4:1; James 5:1-6; Deut. 24:14-15; Lev. 19:13; Jer. 22:13; Mal. 3:5; Eph. 6:5-9; Col. 3:22-25) Yes, as people freed from bondage, the Jews had an extra reason to be kind to their own servants, but the underlying obligation is universal.
Again, let us read a more detailed command:
“You shall do no injustice in judgment, in measurement of length, weight, or volume. You shall have honest scales, honest weights, an honest ephah, and an honest hin: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God, which brought you out of the land of Egypt. Therefore shall you observe all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: I am the Lord." Lev. 19:35-37.
Shall we take this verse and argue that the command to deal justly in the various affairs of life originated with the Exodus, that previous to that a man might defraud his neighbor with impunity, and that only Jews are required by God to refrain from shortchanging anyone?
Or take this further statement: "I am the Lord that brings you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: you shall therefore be holy, for I am holy." Lev. 11:45. Are we to conclude that the command to be holy is only for the Jews who were freed from bondage? We believe that even the most vigorous opponent of the Sabbath would hesitate to endorse such an idea. But if both holiness and Sabbath keeping are enjoined upon the Jews in part because they were delivered from bondage in Egypt, and we agree that holiness remains the Lord’s command, we surely cannot use Egypt as an excuse for violating the Sabbath.
In the light of these passages, and others that might be given, how evident it is that the fact of their Egyptian bondage, when they were treated unkindly and unjustly, was cited by Moses simply as an added reason why they, now that the Lord had graciously delivered them from such conditions, should deal justly and lovingly with others, especially including their own servants. The law of just dealings with others, especially with those of vulnerable status, has been binding on men from the beginning of the world. But it took on added force and obligation when applied to those who had been so lately compelled to work as slaves in Egypt.
Instead of weakening the Sabbath command, Deuteronomy 5:15 simply serves to show how exceedingly broad and important is the command, and how God intended the Sabbath to prove a source of refreshment and blessing even to servants.
Objection 23: In Exodus 31:14 we read that Sabbath violators were to he stoned to death. Do you believe the same penalty should be enforced today? If you claim that the penalty for Sabbath-breaking is done away with, you have admitted that the Sabbath has been abolished, for a law is not really a law if there is no penalty for its violation.
God gave the Israelite theocracy a series of prohibitions on idolatry, disobedience to parents, adultery and incest that all prescribed the death penalty for violation. See, Deuteronomy 13:6-10; 21:18-21; 22:21-28; Leviticus 20. Indeed, someone has estimated that no less than nine of the Ten Commandments are specifically mentioned in connection with the penalty of death for their violation.
Now we would ask the objector: Do you believe that the idolater ought to be put to death, or the son who curses his father? According to your logic, if you believe that this penalty should not be enforced today, you evidently believe that it is no longer wrong to be an idolater or for a son to curse his father.
Such a conclusion would obviously be absurd, yet it would be no more unreasonable than the contention that because present-day Sabbath keepers do not believe Sabbath breakers should be put to death, therefore the Sabbath law is abolished. This kind of reasoning proves too much, and thus proves nothing.
We agree that if a law has no penalty, it has no force. But it does not follow that because we do not believe in stoning people, therefore we believe there will be no ultimate punishment for those who violate the Sabbath or any other part of the law of God.
The difference between the ancient Jewish order of things and ours today is the time, place and executor of the punishment. When Israel was a theocracy and God its direct ruler, He saw fit to legislate immediate punishment. Now the lawbreaker must look forward to that great day of judgment at the end of time. (See Heb. 10:26-29)
Therefore, let not the Sabbath breaker feel at case in his mind simply because God has not suddenly brought judgment upon him for his violation of the fourth precept of the Ten Commandments, which declares that the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, Creator of heaven and earth.
The story is told of a certain godless man who found special delight in flaunting his disobedience of the Sabbath command. He lived in a locality where the other farmers near him were devout Sabbath keepers. When October came and he harvested his crop, he found that he had even more in his barn than his neighbors. Meeting the Sabbath keeping minister on the street one day, he gloatingly mentioned this fact. The minister's only reply was: “God does not always make a full settlement in October.”
No better answer could have been given.
The faithful Sabbath keeper awaits the day of final judgment to receive his full reward for obedience to God, the Creator of the whole earth. And likewise, the Sabbath violator must await that last great day of accounting in order to receive the final reward for his failure to obey the explicit command of God. The violation of the law of God is sin, the Scriptures inform us (1 John 3:4), and the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23). Is that not sufficient penalty?
A variant of this objection is that Exodus 35:3 forbids starting fires on the Sabbath. If you believe the Sabbath law is still in force, why do you kindle fires on that day?
What of the command against kindling fires on the Sabbath? Exodus 35:3 reads, “You shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the Sabbath day.” Our answer, briefly, is this:
1. The prohibition against kindling a fire is not part of the Fourth Commandment of the Ten Commandments, and it is these that we consider binding on the Christian.
2. Many civil as well as ceremonial statutes were given to Israel that were of limited duration. For example, rules were given regarding how a Hebrew slave or indentured servant should be treated. (See Ex. 21:1-11) No one would argue, from civil laws wherein God was endeavoring to soften the institution of slavery, that we must therefore continue the institution of slavery today. Obviously, many of the statutes given to Israel through Moses reflect an adaptation of moral principles to the existing level and understanding of the Israelites, or to other local and temporal concerns.
Therein lies the basic distinction between the moral commands of the Decalogue given to Israel directly by God on Sinai, and the host of other statutes given through Moses.
Now if the Sabbath objector feels free to admit that the provisions on the care of slaves were for a different time and place, while at the same time holding that nine of the Ten Commandments are still in force, should we not feel equally free to hold that the prohibition on kindling fires on the Sabbath was for a different time and place while at the same time holding that all ten of the Ten Commandments are still in force?
3. It is not clear that the command to the Jews against kindling fires on Sabbath was intended to apply beyond their wilderness journeying. Some Jews believe it is still in force, many others do not see it as having a continuing application. It comes just prior to a series of commands concerning the erection of the tabernacle, which were valid only so long as the tabernacle was under construction.
In the wilderness, the climate was very warm (although in an extremely arid desert climate, it gets cold at night). The conditions the Israelite encampment were faced with were already moderated by a cloudy pillar to cool the day and a pillar of fire to warm the night (Ex. 13:20-21). The Israelites were instructed to bake and seethe oil the sixth day such of the manna as they desired to eat in that form on the Sabbath day. Hence there was no need to kindle a fire for cooking on that day.
Again, to “kindle” a fire in those times meant to engage in very real and extended labor. As the Pulpit Commentary observes of Exodus 35:3:
“The kindling of fire in early times involved considerable labor. It was ordinarily effected by rubbing two sticks together, or twisting one round rapidly between the two palms in a depression upon a board. Fire only came after a long time. Moreover, as in the warm climate of Arabia and Palestine artificial warmth was not needed, fire could only have been kindled there for cooking purposes, which involved further unnecessary work. . . . The Jews generally view the precept as having had only a temporary force.”
In the light of these facts, how could the prohibition against kindling fires raise any possible doubt as to the permanency of the fourth of the Ten Commandments?
Objection 24: When we as Sunday keepers declare that the ten-commandment law was abolished at the cross, Adventists try to embarrass us by asking us if we believe it is now lawful to steal or kill or do any other of the heinous deeds prohibited by the Ten Commandments. We do not. We believe that God has great moral principles that have governed the universe from all eternity and will continue to govern it to all eternity. The Ten Commandments were but a partial reflection of these principles. The principles remain, but the Ten Commandments are gone. Hence, the Sabbath is gone.
In essence, this objection contends that there is another repository of law where principles binding upon the Christian are to be found. It is a variant of Objection 12, which contended that it is now the “law of Christ,” not the Ten Commandments, that is binding upon Christians.
Where is this repository of great moral principles found? Does the objector have access to heavenly information that we do not have? Obviously not. Perhaps this is an appeal to “natural law,” to our innate sense of right and wrong, as described by the Apostle Paul in Romans 2:14-15.
If so, we are obliged to point out that Christianity is a revealed religion and does not rest upon our innate sense of right and wrong. Rather, it explains why we have a sense of right and wrong, something Darwinism cannot explain. (Seemingly, if we evolved as is taught in the atheistic origins myth, we should have evolved an ethic that allows and indeed sanctifies whatever is most successful at getting our genes into the next generation; needless to say, such an ethic would not include the Sixth Commandment.)
Again, Christianity is a reveal religion; God has revealed its principles in the Holy Bible. What we infer from studying nature or from our own philosophical musings must always be subject to correction by what we read in God’s word. That is the historic Protestant position, and a position that Seventh-day Adventists share. The objector is correct in affirming that God has had moral principles in force through all eternity, but only by a study of the revealed will of God in the Bible can we know with certainty what those principles are.
We do know from the Bible that when God first called out a people for His own name He delivered to them in His own handwriting the Ten Commandments. We could ask the objector whether he believes that any of the ten were part of the eternal moral laws to which he refers, and he would agree that many of them were, such as the prohibition against murder, adultery, stealing, lying, covetousness, and the command to honor our parents. Thus by the admission of the objector himself, when God saw fit to reveal to men His eternal moral laws, He gave commandments consisting of eternal moral laws.
God's speaking from Sinai made those eternal moral laws audible to men, and His writing them out made them visible, that men might both hear and see, and thus know for certain, the eternal moral laws that should govern their lives. To say that the Ten Commandments was simply a “reflection” of eternal moral laws, as though it were a shadowy image and not the enduring reality, is to attempt to confuse that which should be simple. We might as appropriately say that God's voice that spoke the Ten Commandments and His hand that wrote them down were merely “a shadowy reflection” of Himself.
If the Ten Commandments were an accurate reflection of those “great (but unwritten) moral principles” to which the objector refers, we might well ask why God would abolish them at Calvary? What changed at Calvary that made them inapplicable? Are not men still married, do they not still own property, do they not still testify in court? If these rules were good for people 4,500 years ago, they are still good for us today.
To be clear, we understand, of course, that those who think the Ten Commandments abolished do not actually believe themselves at liberty to kill, steal, and commit adultery. But we are seeking to show that their logic leads to that conclusion, and that the defenses they erect to try to avoid that logical conclusion do not withstand scrutiny. Either the commandments were abolished or they were not. If they were, then yes, we are all free to kill, steal, and commit adultery. If they were not, then neither are we free to disregard the Sabbath day that God commanded us to remember.
How do the advocates of this abolition doctrine seek to avoid this conclusion? By a variety of arguments, some of which have already been considered. For example, they argue that in the Christian Era we are fulfilling the law if we love God and man, per the Golden Rule. Yes, of course love to God and man summarizes the Ten Commandments (Mat. 22:37-40), but the details of how we love God are set forth in the first four commandments, and the specifics of how we love our fellow man are set forth in the last six commandments.
If we love God, we will not have other gods, nor worship idols of our own making, nor claim God’s name when we are not His children, nor profane the day of rest God has commanded us to remember and observe. If we love our fellow man, we will honor our parents, not murder our fellow man, not break the marriage bond and dishonor our spouse, not steal another’s property, not perjure ourselves in court or otherwise lie when it matters, and not covet what belongs to our neighbor.
The Ten Commandments are love in action; to say that love has abolished them is the exact opposite of the truth. Love established them. If we have the spiritual discernment and tenderness of heart that genuine love brings about, we will see that these commandments embody love and must be obeyed.
The objector's primary reasons for claiming that the abolition of the Ten Commandments permits him to break the fourth commandment, but does not permit him to break the other nine, are these:
1. The fourth commandment alone, of the ten, was ceremonial, and with all the other ceremonies, expired at Calvary. Therefore we are not required to keep it.
2. The other nine commandments, because they are moral, were re-enacted by the apostles, and thus are binding on us.
These two contentions carry us into new areas of discussion. Hence they will be examined separately in the next installment.
Objection 25: The fourth commandment is not inherently a moral precept, but the other nine are self-evidently moral commands. All moral principles are discoverable by the light of nature or reason. For example, all men naturally know that it is wrong to steal, kill, and commit adultery, but no one would naturally know that a particular day had been set apart as holy. Hence the Sabbath command is simply ceremonial, and hence was nailed to the cross.
The most direct reply may be presented in terms of answers to the following questions:
First Question:
Do all men naturally know that it is wrong to steal, commit adultery, worship idols, or violate any other of the nine commands that the objector certainly agrees are moral?
This question obviously challenges the very foundation on which the objection before us rests. Fortunately, a clear and sure answer can be given. Let us start with the first commandment. This command not only forbids polytheism but also requires that we worship one certain God, the true God. Do all men naturally know that it is wrong to worship more than one god? Or do they naturally know who the true God is? The answer to both questions is no.
Although most men of all nations and in all ages have felt that they should worship some god or gods, they have disagreed as to which god or gods should be worshiped. Says Paul, “For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” 1 Cor. 1:21 (emphasis added). Paul’s sermon on Mars Hill is an example of such preaching. And how did Paul know all the idols on Mars Hill were false gods, and that the “unknown god” must therefore represent the one true God? Because of the revelation given to him, and by his study of that revelation called the Scriptures.
The one true God is pure and holy and, though just, is merciful. The various pagan gods have been anything but holy, and their mercy at best has been capricious. Now, the first commandment calls on us to worship the one true God. Hence we must know His nature and holy requirements if we are truly to obey that command. But only revelation can provide that knowledge.
Let us take the second commandment. Do men know by reason or nature that it is wrong to make a likeness of God or of any creature and use it as an object of religious worship?
No. The history of almost all mankind is a history of idolatry. The temples of the Greeks and Romans—and, indeed, almost all other pagan nations—were full of statuary intended to be worshiped. The papacy carried these same statues into its own churches; Roman Catholics have long proceeded as though there is nothing sinful or wrong in venerating them. The Orthodox churches are full of painted Icons. How do we, as Protestants, seek to show the evil of idols and Icons? Do we rest our case on reason and nature? Not at all. We rest our case on revelation.
Take the third commandment. The reason why we see force and meaning in the prohibition against taking God's name in vain is that revelation presents to us a picture of a most pure and holy God to whom we owe all and to whom we must someday give an account. But the heathen, even the most enlightened Greeks, who possessed no revelation, thought of their gods as altogether like themselves, lustful, depraved, vindictive, even murderous. Would it have seemed reasonable to a Greek to believe that there was anything wrong in taking lightly the name of any of his gods?
Let us turn to a commandment that deals with man's relation to his fellow man and see whether reason and nature prove sufficient here. We who are Christians are shocked at the thought of adultery in any of its evil manifestations. And when we send missionaries to far lands we seek to turn men from this evil, along with all other evils. But these missionaries do not make their appeal on the basis of reason and nature. They would be ridiculed if they did. That is the testimony of many who have preached to non-Christian peoples. Instead, they preach morality and chastity in terms of a revelation from God and a command of God.
But why lengthen the survey of the nine commands that the objector admits are moral? We believe that reason and nature play some part in giving us a knowledge of right and wrong, of God and the judgment, so that men are without excuse. But how limited a part they play is sadly revealed in the long, sinful history of man.
We believe that the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah had enough knowledge of God and right and wrong to be morally accountable and justly entitled to the fiery destruction that descended upon them. But our Lord declared that it would be more tolerable in the day of judgment for Sodom and Gomorrah than for those cities that refused to receive the message that His disciples would bring to them.
Why? Because the disciples brought a revelation from God, received through Jesus Christ. Said Christ, “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no excuse for their sin.” John 15:22.
How clear it is that a divine revelation is needed, not simply in regard to the fourth commandment, but in regard to the others also! Thus the very foundation on which this impressive objection has been reared, disappears.
Strictly speaking, this cuts the foundation from under this objection, such that it is unnecessary to labor with it further. But let us briefly review why Seventh-day Adventists insist that the Sabbath commandment is not merely “ceremonial.”
Second Question:
What are the proofs that Seventh-day Adventists can offer to support their claim that the fourth commandment is moral rather than ceremonial, and thus eternally binding like the other nine?
We Seventh-day Adventists answer:
1. God placed the Sabbath Commandment among the other nine commandments, which are generally acknowledged to be universally applicable precepts. The very fact that God placed the Sabbath command in the heart of the Ten Commandments, accepted by all Christians as moral law, is in itself the most convincing proof that that the Sabbath command is moral law of universal applicability, not merely “ceremonial.” How absurd to believe that, with weighty and eternally moral precepts on both sides of it, God should insert in their midst a ceremonial statute that was to expire at Christ's first advent!
2. The last six commandments are the “horizontal” commandments, meaning that they govern a person’s ethical or moral duty to other people. The first four commandments are “vertical” in the sense that they govern how we are to worship and relate to God. But the fact that these first four commands govern our relationship with God does not render them “ceremonial.” Yes, the first four commandments have to do with “religion,” but are not tied only to the religion of the Jews. Having no other gods before God is for everyone, certainly all monotheists, including Christians, Jews, and Muslims; not worshiping idols applies to all Christians and, again, all monotheists; not taking the Lord’s name lightly is a warning for every believer.
3. The universality of the Sabbath commandment is proved by the fact that it is a memorial to the creation in six literal days and God’s resting on the Seventh Day. (Gen. 2:3; Ex. 20:11)
“but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” Ex. 20:10-11.
How, could language make more clear that a particular day is involved in the Sabbath command? Or how could language make more clear that the sanctifying of this particular day springs from the fact that this specific historical event occurred on that day, the seventh day? The “therefore” in the Sabbath command refers back to this incident and to the particular day God blessed. Remove the “therefore,” and the reason for the Sabbath command disappears.
But that is exactly what Sunday advocates do when they invoke the Sabbath command in favor of one day's rest in seven, but argue that it could be any of the seven. When they contend that the weekly rest-day is moral, but the seventh-day is merely ceremonial, and hence of relatively minor importance, they are in the curious position of asserting that a great moral principle enunciated in the Ten Commandments rests upon a ceremonial, and relatively minor, act of God.
4. Marriage was instituted at the same time as the Sabbath—at the creation—and is universally regarded among Christians as not only “moral” but indeed “holy.” Marriage is based upon the fact that God created mankind as men and women, male and female, on the sixth day of creation (Mat. 19:4-5) The Sabbath is based upon the fact that God created in six days and rested on the seventh. To whatever extent we regard marriage to be moral and holy, the Sabbath is moral and holy for the same reason and to the same extent. Only those who are ready to contend that marriage rests on a ceremonial law may contend that the Sabbath is “ceremonial.”
5. The various ceremonial laws were all given after man sinned; they were made necessary in some way or other by man's fallen, sinful condition and usually illustrate some aspect of the plan of salvation. That is not true of the Sabbath (nor of marriage); the Sabbath was given to sinless Adam and Eve in Eden, and the Sabbath will be kept by the redeemed in Eden restored. (Isa. 66:23)
All this surely adds up to the conclusion that the real controversy is not really about whether the Sabbath is rightly part of the moral law or Ten Commandment law, but which day of the week ought we to observe, the seventh or the first?
Objection 26: The Sabbath was not a day of special religious worship until it was connected with the annual feasts. Hence, the seventh-day Sabbath was simply one of the ceremonial Sabbaths, and all those Sabbaths, in common with every other ceremonial statute, were abolished at the cross.
According to Scripture, the seventh-day Sabbath by God during the creation week; hence, it possesses an inherent holiness given to it by God in Eden. There were no annual feast days with which seventh-day Sabbath could have been connected until twenty-five hundred years after God established the Sabbath in Eden. (Gen. 2:2-3)
When the manna was first given, Moses described the seventh day as “the holy Sabbath,” though no annual feasts, with which it might be connected had yet been given to the Israelites.
When God announced the Sabbath as a part of the Decalogue, it could be described as His “holy Sabbath.” But the giving of the Ten Commandments preceded the setting forth of the laws that created the annual feast days. The weekly Sabbath of the Fourth Commandment was not connected with any of these feast days.
Let us study the annual feast sabbaths to see how they are essentially different from the seventh-day Sabbath. From Leviticus 23, we learn that there were seven of these festival sabbaths:
1) The 15th day of the first month was the first day of Feast of Unleavened Bread (Lev. 23:6-7);
2) The 21st day of the first month was the seventh day of Feast of Unleavened Bread (Lev 23:8);
3) The 50th day after “the sabbath” of Unleavened Bread was First Fruits, later known as the Pentecost (Lev 23:16-21);
4) The 1st day of the seventh month was the Feast of Trumpets (Lev 23:24-25);
5) The 10th day of the seventh month was the Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur (Lev 23:28-32);
6) The 15th day of the seventh month was the first day of the feast of Tabernacles (Lev 23:34-35);
7) The 22nd day of the seventh month was the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles (Lev 23:36).
These annual convocations were properly called sabbaths, because the Hebrew word shabat, from which our English word is translated, simply means “rest,” and the people were commanded to do no “sevile work” or work for hire on these annual feast day sabbaths.
But the mere fact that these ceremonial days of rest are called sabbaths does not warrant placing them in the same class with the seventh-day Sabbath. They are rest days, to be sure, but that does not mean that they are of the same character or standing as the weekly Sabbath.
We could describe a Christian Era holiday as a “sabbath” because such holidays are a day of rest for most people. But it would be foolish to try to elevate our annual round of religious and civic holidays—New Years’ Day, MLK day, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Veterans’ Day, Columbus Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas—to the same stature as the Sabbath of the Fourth Commandment. Though they have one point in common, namely, rest, their dissimilarities are many.
Thus also it was with the annual Sabbaths of the feast days and the seventh-day Sabbath. Their dissimilarities are many and great. Let us note them:
Above, the Fourth Commandment Sabbath,
Below, the ceremonial Sabbaths connected with feast days:
1. Made at the creation of the world. Gen. 2:2-3
1. Made at Sinai, about twenty-five hundred years after creation. Leviticus 23
2. Memorialized an event at the beginning of time, the creation, long before there ever was a Jewish people.
2. Memorialized events of the Jewish calendar, for example, Feast of Tabernacles. Lev. 23:43
3. Intended ever to turn men's minds back to creation. Ex. 20:8-11
3. Intended to turn men's minds ever forward to cross, as “a shadow of things to come.” Col. 2:16-17. For example, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.” 1 Cor. 5:7
4. God rested on the seventh day Sabbath and specifically blessed and sanctified it. Gen. 2:2-3
4. God did not rest on these ceremonial sabbaths, nor set them apart with distinctive blessing or sanctification.
5. Commemorates a world that had come forth perfect from Creator's hand.
5. Commemorates and Foreshadows events in a world plagued with sin.
6. Tied to the weekly cycle and hence always the same day of the week.
6. Tied to the Jewish calendar, and thus a different day of week each time celebrated.
7. Could be kept anywhere in world, because weekly cycle is universal.
7. Could be known and kept only where the Jewish calendar is known and kept.
8. Kept every week.
8. Each ceremonial sabbath kept only once a year.
9. “Made for man.” Mark 2:27
9. A part of the ceremonial law “which was against us.” Col. 2:14
10. Will continue beyond this world. Isa. 66:23
10. Abolished, taken “out of the way,” at Christ's crucifixion. Col. 2:14
Although it is true that all things that pertain to the service of God at any time have a holy quality, and although these annual Sabbaths had some features in common with the seventh day Sabbath, the dissimilarities are so marked and substantial that the former cannot and must not be confused with the latter.
When the Lord instructed Moses concerning the annual feasts which revolved around the seven annual Sabbaths, He declared in conclusion, “These are the feasts of the Lord, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations . . .beside the Sabbaths of the Lord.” Lev. 23:37-38. Thus are we instructed by God Himself that the annual Sabbaths are apart from, and in addition to, “the Sabbaths of the Lord,” i.e., the weekly Sabbath. As the Bible commentary by Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown well observes:
"Leviticus 23:38 expressly distinguishes ‘the Sabbath of the Lord’ from the other Sabbaths." - Comment on Col. 2:16.
Ed. note: Ron du Preez has written an excellent article for the SDA Encyclopedia on this topic of the ceremonial sabbaths versus the weekly Sabbath. He notes:
“Each of these annual times fell on specifically identified days within the first, third and seventh lunar months of the yearly religious calendar of ancient Israel. Of these, only the Day of Atonement is directly labelled a “sabbath” in the original Hebrew language (e.g., Lev 23:32), as it is the exclusive annual ceremonial day on which all work was prohibited (v. 28). The other six sacred occasions were days when only “servile” or “regular” or “laborious” or “occupational” work was prohibited (vv. 7, 8, 21, etc.), thus permitting the cooking of food (e.g., Ex. 12:16).”
Objection 27: That the fourth commandment is ceremonial "is clearly proved by the fact that Jesus, according to the strictest Sabbatarians of His day, broke the fourth commandment, and the priests in the temple broke the 4th commandment. Would Jesus have broken the fourth commandment if it were eternal moral law?"
Two questions:
1. If Christ broke the fourth commandment, then why did He say, “I have kept my Father's commandments”? John 15:10.
2. The objector insists that all laws, both moral and ceremonial, were in force until the cross. Then if Christ actually did break the Sabbath commandment, even if that commandment was merely ceremonial, was He not a sinner? And yet we know that Christ did not sin (1 Peter 2:22; 2 Cor. 5:21). Something is wrong with the assertion that Jesus broke the Fourth Commandment.
What proof is offered that Jesus “broke the fourth commandment”? An inspired declaration of Holy Writ? No, only the assertion that the “strictest Sabbatarians of His day" said He broke it. The accusation that Jesus broke the Sabbath were made because Jesus healed on the Sabbath.
On a certain Sabbath day, while our Lord was in a synagogue, there came before Him a man with a withered hand. Divining that Christ might plan to heal the cripple, some “strict Sabbatarians” asked the Master:
"Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath days? That they might accuse him. And he said unto them, What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the Sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days." Matt. 12:10-12. Whereupon He immediately healed the cripple. “Then the Pharisees went out, and held a council against him, how they might destroy him.” Verse 14.
Another instance of Christ's healing on the Sabbath is recorded in John 5:2-18. In verse 18 we read that the judgment of the Jews was that Christ “had broken the Sabbath.” Here we see the charge of the “strictest Sabbatarians” in its Scriptural setting.
But note the question: “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath days?”
When the Samaritan woman at the well asked Christ where men should worship, a question that through the past centuries had had genuine importance, He dismissed it summarily by informing her that the time was at hand when the question no longer had significance. If Christ was soon to abolish the Sabbath law on the cross, would we not expect Him to dismiss it? And yet He gave no hint of impending abolition, but replied, “It is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days.”
There is no suggestion that Jesus considered He was breaking the Sabbath. Instead, He was interpreting its true meaning. Nor is there anything in His interpretation, or His miraculous action that followed, that warrants the conclusion that the Sabbath rests on a ceremonial law. it is always lawful to do good, or to do well, in relation to moral laws.
The “strict Sabbatarians” also accused Jesus’ disciples of harvesting grain, by snapping off a little wheat and eating it, but Jesus replied that David and his men ate the showbread; and likewise declared that the priests “profane the Sabbath, and are blameless.” (Mat. 12:1-8) Even the “strictest Sabbatarians” would agree that what the priests did on the Sabbath was in harmony with the law, and therefore they were acting lawfully, even though the priests each Sabbath had to engage in the work of slaying and offering sacrifices.
Christ's use of the word “profane” must be understood in the context of the controversy. His reasoning appears to be this: If His and His disciples' deeds were profanation of the Sabbath, then by the same token the deeds of the priests were profanation. To contend that Christ really meant that the priests, whose Sabbath deeds of sacrificing were done in harmony with the law, did, in truth, desecrate the Sabbath, would lead to an impossible conclusion. Christ would really be saying that God gave a holy law to guard the sacredness of the Sabbath and then gave to Moses another law that resulted weekly in the desecration of the Sabbath! Those who wish to may hold this conclusion. We do not.
Objection 28: Though the Ten Commandments were abolished at the cross, nine of them were re-enacted in the New Testament, and thus are binding on Christians, but the fourth command was not; hence we are not obligated to keep it.
Two fallacies underlie this reasoning:
1. People often speak of the Old Testament in the same breath with the old covenant, and of the New Testament in the same breath with the new covenant. The almost unconscious effect upon both speaker and hearer is a minimizing of the Old Testament to the point of considering it nonessential and quite superseded by the New. And if one adds to this the idea that the Ten Commandments are part of the old covenant, the way is paved for the kind of reasoning set forth in the objection now before us.
But we have already shown (Objection 5) that the Ten Commandments are not the old covenant, and that the New Testament in no way supersedes the Old Testament (Objection 1). When we keep clearly in mind that both the Old and the New Testament are our inspired guides, much of the force of this objection disappears.
2. The claim is that the Ten Commandments were abolished at the cross, but as already noted (Objection 24, Objection 25) those who make this claim admit that nine of the ten commands state eternal moral principles or laws. He therefore finds himself in the curious position of declaring that eternal things can be abolished. Does he hesitate to admit this? Then we would ask him: How can you abolish the ten-commandment law unless you abolish the ten precepts that constitute it? There is only one answer to this question, as the objector himself evidently realizes, for he speaks of the re-enactment of nine of the ten.
His dilemma is this: He must needs abolish the Ten Commandments in order to do away with the Sabbath command, which is in the heart of it. But abolishing the Ten Commandments creates moral chaos, so he must promptly re-enact nine of the precepts.
Now there are two things to remember about these eternal moral laws that constitute the nine commands:
1. They cover virtually the whole range of moral conduct.
2. Because they are eternal moral principles they are an expression of the very nature of God Himself, as Christian theologians have ever held, and govern all moral beings in the universe.
In the light of these facts the claim that the Ten Commandments were abolished at the cross takes on a monstrous quality. When Christ died on the cross, was the moral nature of God changed? It is sacrilege even to ask the question. So long as God is unchanged (Mal. 3:6) the moral principles radiating from His nature remain unchanged. So long as God abhors lying, stealing, killing, adultery, covetousness, false gods, etc., so long will the universe to its farthest corners be controlled by moral laws against these evil deeds. But we are told that the Ten Commandments was abolished at the cross, which, if words mean anything, means that the prohibitions of that holy code, the "Thou shall not's" have disappeared.
Now, either these precepts were abolished, or they were not. There is no middle ground. For example, either the sixth command, which prohibits murder, was abolished, or it was not. And so with the other commands.
The objector hopes to avert the appalling conclusions that inevitably flow from the logic of his position by hurrying out his re-enactment theory. The casual onlooker may feel that probably all is well, for does not the re-enactment thus preserve the continuity of moral law in the universe? Well yes, if we might think of the re-enactment as we would think of the changing of gears in an automobile traveling the highway. But to make this kind of comparison is to violate both language and history. The idea of gear shifting, with forward motion continuing, has nothing in common with the thought of abolition.
Furthermore, the figure of gear shifting implies essentially no tinier interval in the transition. But it is this point of time interval that brings to light the most incredible feature of this whole re-enactment theory. The apostles, from whose New Testament writings certain lines are quoted to prove the re-enactment of nine of the ten commands, did not pen their inspired manuscripts until twenty, thirty, forty years after the cross!
This simple historical fact leads to the fantastic conclusion that the whole world, if not the whole universe, was free from the great moral laws for this period of time. For example, when we inquire of the objector if he believes it proper to kill, steal, lie, et cetera, seeing that the Ten Commandments were abolished, he replies no, and informs us that the New Testament has re-enacted laws against these. Then he will probably quote Romans 13:9, where there is certainly found explicit prohibition of these crimes. But there is general agreement that Paul wrote Romans around the year 58 AD. What about the 27 years between 58 AD and the crucifixion? Was there no moral law during this time?
But there is a further dilemma that confronts those who present the re-enactment theory. They seem hard pressed to find in the New Testament explicit restatements of all the nine commands. So they generally draw on Christ's words recorded in the four Gospels. But those words were uttered before His crucifixion! We cannot speak of re-enacting a law before it is abolished. Nor can the objector consistently contend that the cross marks the dividing point between the old and the new, with all things becoming new at the resurrection, and then at another time offer Christ's words before His crucifixion as exhibits of the reenacted law.
Nor is this all the perplexity that confronts those who set forth this re-enactment theory. They are really not able to find in the New Testament a clear and sufficiently detailed restatement of the second commandment. We must turn to the words of the Ten Commandments if we, as Protestants, are to bring a convincing indictment against Rome for the copious statuary in the Catholic churches.
This is strange, indeed, if the re-enacted law should be wholly adequate for every situation in the Christian Era! Will the objector have the hardihood to affirm that the great God, in writing out the words of the second command, was needlessly detailed; or that, in inspiring New Testament writers, He failed to have them be as specific as needed? Either conclusion would be sacrilegious. We need accept neither.
As earlier set forth in the discussion on the equal authority of the Old and the New Testament (Objection 1), the New Testament writers give no suggestion that they are enacting a new code, or giving us a new revelation in the sense of superseding a former revelation in any area of our spiritual life. They quote many passages from the Old Testament in illustration of what they are presenting, and sometimes those quotations are from the Ten Commandments. At times the quotations are brief; at other times, more extended. That explains why the precepts of the Ten Commandments are not generally found in exactly the same form or so detailed as in the Old Testament. Why should they need to repeat verbatim? They constantly referred their readers to the Scriptures, which at that time meant the Old Testament, and in the Old Testament could be found the more detailed and explicit statement of the precept to which the apostle made reference.
In the light of these facts, there is no point to the contention that the fourth command is not re-enacted in the New Testament. But to remove the last shadow of plausibility from the objection, let it be said in conclusion that the New Testament is not silent regarding the fourth command. To the contrary, the references to it are as plentiful as to any other command. Note the following:
1. Our Lord declared, "The Sabbath was made for man." Mark 2:27. Mark, in writing down these words of our Lord years after the cross, felt no necessity to qualify His words with the comment that the Sabbath was made for man only until the cross. In the absence of that comment, what would Mark's readers naturally deduce from that statement by Christ? Obviously, that the words of our Lord still stand, and that the Sabbath remains. Yes, the writers of the New Testament were silent at times regarding the Sabbath, but not the kind of silence that the objector refers to.
2. Matthew records what Christ said regarding it being lawful to do good on the Sabbath day. (Matt. 12:12) Now if the Sabbath law were abolished at the cross, how important that Matthew should add immediately a comment to explain to the early Christians who might read his gospel in some far corner of the world, that the whole discussion of the lawfulness of this or that on the Sabbath day is merely a bit of history, for the Sabbath law was abolished shortly after Christ made His statement! In the absence of such a comment, Matthew's readers must conclude that Christ's counsel on the matter doing good on the Sabbath is still very much binding upon them.
3. When Christ described to His disciples the destruction that was to come on Jerusalem, and told them that they were to flee when the Roman armies drew near, He added, "But pray you that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath day." Matt. 24:20. Cestius Gallus temporarily besieged Jerusalem in 66 AD, but 35 years after the crucifixion, there is the Sabbath day, standing in distinction as God’s holy day of rest, just as always.
The force of this question is so great that some have sought to weaken it by declaring that on the Sabbath the gates of Jerusalem would be shut, hindering flight. But Christ, who knew all the future, knew that, when Jerusalem was first compassed with Roman legionaries in 66 AD, the Jews would go out to fight the Romans on the Sabbath day! (See Flavius Josephus, Jewish Wars, book 2, chap. 19) Further, the command to flee is addressed to everyone “which be in Judea." (Matt. 24:16) Obviously, the whole of Judea was not surrounded with walls and gates. Yet all the Christians in Judea were to pray that their flight should not be on the Sabbath day! Could it be clearer that Christ viewed the Sabbath day as distinct, even decades after his crucifixion?
When we read Christ's counsel to His disciples to pray regarding the Sabbath, and when we couple with that His words regarding certain things being lawful on the Sabbath, with both statements being recorded by Matthew decades after the Christian Era had begun, should we not conclude that the Sabbath law is binding for Christians? Matthew says nothing to stop us from drawing this logical conclusion.
It is hard to speak restrainedly of so fantastical a proposition as that the Ten Commandments were abolished at the cross, and then nine of the precepts were later re-enacted. Perhaps some reader, fully persuaded of the folly of such a view, may inquire in bewilderment: Is it really true that the great body of Protestant leaders through the years have believed and taught so incredible a doctrine? The answer is no, they did not. The classic position of Protestantism, as we have earlier stated, is that the Ten Commandments are the eternally binding rule of life for all men in all ages, and that only the ceremonial law was done away. Those who set forth the Decalogue abolition doctrine and its re-enactment corollary, forget the historic Protestant position regarding the Ten Commandments.
Objection 29: Paul specifically declares, in Colossians 2:14-17, that the Sabbath is abolished.
The passage reads as follows:
“Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; and having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it. Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days: which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.”
Under objection 2 we learned that there are two laws, one moral, the other ceremonial, and that it was only the latter that was abolished by Christ. Under objection 11 we learned that Paul, in Colossians 2:14-17, is speaking of the ceremonial law. Under objection 26 we learned that the ceremonial law had certain annual Sabbaths. Hence we may properly conclude that Paul, in the passage before us, is not referring to the seventh-day Sabbath.
If Paul here was referring to the weekly Sabbath of the Ten Commandments, then the only conclusion to reach would be that in the Christian Era there is no weekly holy day of rest. Does Christendom, in general, believe that? No. The severely enforced Sunday laws of the various Christian lands of generations past provide proof—embarrassing proof, given today’s disregard of a weekly day of rest—that the general belief within Christendom was that a weekly Sabbath day was proper, right, and Scriptural.
Often, Sunday advocates have employed as first proof in defense of Sunday sacredness, the fact that the Fourth Commandment directs a weekly holy day. That they have substituted the first day of the week for the seventh day, and plugged that into the Fourth Commandment, only proves more eloquently that they believe that the obligation to keep a weekly sabbath is clearly found within the Ten Commandments.
Though Seventh day-Adventists have consistently denounced Sunday laws as an infringement of conscience, they have conceded that those who enacted Sunday laws generally acted in good faith, in harmony with what they thought the Bible commanded.
But the person who raises an objection based upon Colossians—unless he claims the true meaning of Paul’s words eluded all his Sunday-keeping forebears—must charge those forebears with flying in the face of Scripture, because Paul says, “Let no man therefore judge you ... in respect of an holy day, . . . or of the Sabbath days.” Do not Sunday laws judge men in respect of a holy day, a Sabbath day, and with a vengeance? Yes, they do judge men with respect to the Sabbath day.
Which goes to show that Christendom, in general, has never believed that Paul's declaration wiped out the weekly Sabbath, such that a person may, with complete spiritual immunity, refrain from considering any Sabbath day or weekly holy day.
True, some theologians, as certain Bible commentaries reveal, have thought they found in Paul's words the justification for turning their back on the seventh-day Sabbath, although they always hasten to add that in the Christian Era we have a new Sabbath—Sunday. But that is playing fast and loose with Paul's words. Paul does not even intimate that a new holy day is to be substituted. He speaks only of how we are not to let anyone judge us about any such day. Hence, if in fact we are obligated to keep a holy day in the Christian Era, that obligation must be found in a law that is above and beyond the range of Paul's declaration. And that law is clearly and obviously the Ten Commandments, which Paul was not discussing in this passage in Colossians.
That Paul was not discussing the Sabbath of the Ten Commandments is freely admitted by some of the best Bible commentators, and with their comments we will close this discussion.
Says the Methodist, Adam Clarke, in comment on Colossians 2:16:
"There is no intimation here that the Sabbath was done away, or that its moral use was superseded, by the introduction of Christianity."
Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, in their comment on this text, note first that the annual Sabbaths “have come to an end with the Jewish services to which they belonged.” Then they add immediately:
“The weekly Sabbath rests on a more permanent foundation, having been instituted in Paradise to commemorate the completion of creation in six days.”
Albert Barnes, eminent Presbyterian Bible commentator, observes:
“There is no evidence from this passage [Col. 2:16] that [Paul] would teach that there was no obligation to observe any holy time, for there is not the slightest reason to believe that he meant to teach that one of the ten commandments had ceased to be binding on mankind. ... He had his eye on the great number of days which were observed by the Hebrews as festivals, as a part of their ceremonial and typical law, and not to the moral law, or the Ten Commandments. No part of the moral law—no one of the Ten Commandments—could be spoken of as 'a shadow of good things to come.' These commandments are, from the nature of moral law, of perpetual and universal application.”
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.
Objection 31: Many who were converted to Christianity in apostolic times came out of heathenism and lived in countries where Sabbath keeping was unknown. Hence, it would have been necessary to tell them to keep the Sabbath day, but the New Testament is silent on the point. If the Sabbath is still in force, why was it not mentioned in Christ's reply to the rich young ruler (Matt. 19:17-19), or in the gospel commission (Matt. 28:16-20), or on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2), or in the decision of the council at Jerusalem (Acts 15)?
This is simply a variant of a claim made in connection with a number of objections. The churchman who zealously opposes the Sabbath also ardently believes that the first day of the week has been sanctified. Ironically, he attaches tremendous significance to the fact that the New Testament writers nowhere re-issue or reiterate the Fourth Commandment, but he attaches no significance to the fact that Scripture never sanctifies the first day of the week.
The complete silence of all the Scriptures concerning transferring the solemnity of the Sabbath to Sunday sounds more impressive to him on behalf of Sunday than the awesome thunder and lightning of Sinai sounds on behalf of the Sabbath.
One is almost tempted to believe that the objector's repeated statement that the New Testament issues no new command for the Sabbath is intended to draw attention away from the fact that the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is completely silent about a command for Sunday.
But what about those converts from heathenism who needed instruction as to a weekly holy day?
Undoubtedly they did need instruction. So if Sunday were the day to keep holy, where is the record of apostolic instruction saying that? Except for 1 Corinthians 16:1-3, which instructs the Corinthians to lay by some funds on the first day of the week for a future offering for the poor at Jerusalem, there is no suggestion as to anything of any kind, secular or religious, that the apostles ever asked any Christians to do or not to do on the first day of the week. (See Objection 42 for a discussion of 1 Corinthians 16:1-3)
This is strange indeed. One searches the New Testament in vain, not simply for a Sunday command, but for any formula of service, any suggestion of holiness to the day, any counsel on the proper way of living for that day. The point bears repeating: The churches raised up among the gentiles would never have stumbled onto the idea of Sunday sacredness from reading what the apostles wrote.
But what of the seventh day Sabbath? The gentiles, in reading the gospels and other New Testament writings, would have read fifty-nine references to Sabbath, and in those references it is uniformly shown as the weekly day of worship, when Paul and others might most often have preached. They would have read Luke's description of it as “the Sabbath day, according to the commandment.” Luke 23:56. Most of these fifty-nine references are almost casual; that is, they take for granted that their hearers are conversant with the Sabbath.
The other Scriptures available to the early Christians were the Hebrew Scriptures that we call the Old Testament; these had been translated into Greek (the Septuagint) and were simply “the Scriptures” to Jesus and his disciples. (Jesus used solely these Old Testament Scriptures to make the case that He was the Messiah. Luke 24:27) Obviously, there was only one Sabbath in all of these Scriptures, and it was not Sunday.
In view of the fact that the converts from among the gentiles would naturally, based upon all the Scriptures available to them, conclude that the Sabbath should be kept holy, how strange is the silence of the apostles about abolishing the Sabbath—if, as some contend, they actually did preach its abolition.
In the light of these facts it is hardly necessary to examine in any detail the specific texts cited in the objection.
We are supposed to conclude that because the Sabbath command is not mentioned in these texts, therefore it is not in force in the Christian Era. By the same logic we should therefore conclude that if any other of the Ten Commandments are not mentioned in these texts, they likewise are not in force. In Matthew 19, the commandment against idolatry, for example, is not mentioned. Shall we conclude that idols are acceptable? In the gospel commission (Mat. 28) none of the commandments are mentioned. On the day of Pentecost, Peter preached a great sermon, but he mentions none of the commandments. Not many of the commandments were mentioned at the Jerusalem council, either.
Now the typical Sabbath objector agrees that nine of the Ten Commandments are binding in the Christian Era, even though he cannot find those nine all listed in these texts. Why may not we be permitted to believe that the fourth is also binding, even though it is not mentioned in these texts?
Objection 32: If Paul were living, he would condemn Seventh-day Adventists in the same terms as he condemned the Galatians. (See Gal. 4:9-10.)
The passage in Galatians reads: “But now, after that you have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn you again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto you desire again to be in bondage? You observe days, and months, and times, and years.”
We have earlier found (under Objection 7) that the yoke of bondage was the endless series of ceremonial observances, particularly in view of the fact that those rites had been heavily encrusted with rabbinical (traditional) teachings.
It is evident that Paul is not here speaking of the moral law, for the Ten Commandment law, particularly the Fourth Commandment, deals only with one day, the weekly seventh-day Sabbath. Paul must be speaking of the other laws, including the ceremonial laws, where we do find commands regarding, “days, and months, and times, and years.”
How could Paul possibly say that the seventh day Sabbath was one of “the weak and beggarly elements,” and that the keeping of it would bring men into “bondage”? Paul was the man who instructed Timothy that, “all scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” 2 Tim. 3:16. To call the weekly Sabbath “weak and beggarly” would be an attack on the whole moral law.
Paul would have been guided, in his appraisal of the weekly Sabbath, by the prophets’ appraisal of it. Isaiah, for example, declares that the Lord calls the Sabbath “my holy day,” and then appeals to us to call it “a delight, the holy of the Lord, honorable.” Isa. 58:13.
Christ died on the cross to redeem men from sin and to sanctify them, to blot out from this world everything that relates to sin, and to restore this world to its original Edenic glory. Why, then, would Christ seek to abolish the Sabbath, which God set aside and hallowed in the sinless beauty of Eden? The Sabbath is not a post-Fall accommodation of sin. Sabbath objectors make no serious attempt to face this question.
There is another question we would ask: If Paul would indict those who keep the Sabbath, why would he not also indict those who keep Sunday? Is there not as much the keeping of a day in the one case as in the other?
But let us take the matter a little further. Paul's indictment is against those who observe a variety of days and seasons, which Seventh-day Adventists do not do. We do not observe the liturgical calendar, with its holy days and seasons; we do not observe Advent, Ash Wednesday, Lent, Good Friday, or Easter. We keep only one day holy. We thus could not be a target of Paul’s warning about observing “days and months and times and years.”
We wonder, however, what Paul might say if he could speak today to Sunday-keeping Protestants, who are giving ever-increasing attention to a variety of religious days and seasons. One current Protestant paper, under the title “The Increasing Observing of Lent,” remarks: “Lent has a most important place in the calendar of the Roman Catholic, the Greek Catholic, the Episcopalian, and the Lutheran Churches,” and then goes on to add that “in our churches there is an increasing acknowledgment of Lent.”
Another Protestant paper is not content simply to promote the observance of Sunday, Good Friday, Easter, Christmas, and Lent, but wishes to add another. It regrets that “Ascension Day” has not loomed more largely in Christian thought and the calendar of the churches. The editorial states what it believes the observance of Christmas has done for men, and likewise the observance of Easter and other days, and goes on to argue that the observance of Ascension Day would further enrich the spiritual life of Christians.
This is the same kind of reasoning that governed the theologians of the Middle Ages as they kept adding one holy day after another, building the crowded calendar of the Roman Catholic Church, which was so sweepingly indicted by the great Reformers. Yet we are not quoting from a medieval Catholic writer, but from an editorial in the Christian Statesman, the official organ of the National Reform Association, which works for rigid Sunday laws throughout the whole United States!
If Paul's words have a present-day application, the unbiased reader to judge as to which group would be indicted, Seventh-day Adventists or the Sunday-keeping Protestant bodies? In view of the fact that Adventists are often considered defective in their Christianity because they do not observe Good Friday, Easter, the Lenten season, or any special days or seasons, we would ask: Why should Adventists be indicted for failing to observe a variety of days and seasons, and at the same time be indicted by Paul as being guilty of that very thing?
Objection 33: The Old Testament prophets foretold that the time was coming when the Sabbath would be done away. (See, Hosea 2:11) In Amos 8:5 the question is asked, "When will the Sabbath be gone?" The prophet answers that this would take place when the sun went down at noon and the earth was darkened in a clear day. (Amos 8:9) The earth was darkened when Jesus was crucified. Hence the Sabbath came to an end at the cross.
To the credit of Sunday advocates, it should be said at the outset that this rather flimsy objection is not frequently presented against the Sabbath.
Hosea 2:11 reads as follows: “I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her new moons, and her Sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts.”
First, please note that Hosea 2:11 recites the same language we find in Colossians 2:16: “festival or a new moon or sabbaths” which we have shown in previous answers to be the ceremonial sabbaths, not the weekly Sabbath. This is clear from the immediate context in Colossians 2:17, which says that festivals, new moons, and sabbaths “are a shadow of the things to come, but the reality is found in Christ.” The festivals, new moons, and sabbaths were part of system of types and shadows that foreshadowed or symbolized Christ and his sacrifice to save us.
Another instance of this same language is found in Isaiah:
“To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? Says the Lord: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. When you come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts? Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them. And when you spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when you make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil. ... If you be willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land.” Isa. 1:11-19
Note Isaiah’s language, “the new moons and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies,” the same language we have seen in Colossians and Hosea. Here, God’s prophet Isaiah is painting a picture of backsliding Israel, practicing idolatry, oppression, injustice, and every other evil, yet observing the forms of the ceremonial law, bringing the sacrifices to the temple and observing the annual feast days and ceremonial sabbaths. By observing the ceremonial law intended to prefigure Christ’s salvation while at the same time neglecting justice and morality, the Jews made a mockery of the ceremonies, and angered God.
[The analogy is to contemporary “cheap grace” Christians who keep invoking God’s grace and mercy without working, in response to grace, to reform their own lives and live in obedience to God’s moral law. —Ed.]
God declared that fearful judgments were to come upon them. No more would they engage in a round of services; no more would mirth or the sound of gladness be heard in the land. The very trees and vines were to be destroyed. (Hosea 2:12) God would shut His eyes from seeing them and His ears from hearing them.
When were these fearful prophecies fulfilled? In the destruction of the kingdom of Israel, with its capital in Samaria, and in the destruction of Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple and the Babylonian captivity of Judah. Hence, these judgments came on Judah and Israel several centuries before the cross, and do not fit the objector’s theory that the Sabbath ended at the cross, and Sunday took its place.
Yes, the ceremonial sabbaths connected with the annual feasts ended at the cross, but Hosea is prophesying not the end of any law but, rather, the punishment of a rebellious people who would not do right, regardless of being God’s chosen people and having been given the law and the special blessings of God.
Now, what of Amos 8:5? The passage, including the immediately preceding and succeeding verses, reads:
Hear this, you who swallow up the needy,
And make the poor of the land fail, saying“When will the New Moon be past,
That we may sell grain?
And the Sabbath,
That we may trade wheat?
Making the ephah small and the shekel large,
Falsifying the scales by deceit,
That we may buy the poor for silver,
And the needy for a pair of sandals—
Even sell the bad wheat?”
Here, Amos describes a greedy, grasping mercantile class that oppresses the poor, cheats its customers with false scales, and even sells bad merchandise. It is clear that they value nothing but gain. Nothing was allowed to be sold on the Sabbath, so the merchants ask when the Sabbath would be over, down to the minute, so they can open their stores and re-start their crooked commerce. To argue that they are wanting to know when the Sabbath will be abolished, by the death of Christ even (!), is beyond absurd.
And what of the claim that Amos, in verses 9 and 10, is predicting the darkening of the sky at the crucifixion of Christ? Let Amos interpret his own words:
“Woe unto you that desire the day of the Lord! to what end is it for you? The day of the Lord is darkness, and not light. . . . Shall not the day of the Lord he darkness, and not light? Even very dark, and no brightness in it? I hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not smell in your solemn assemblies. . . . Therefore will 1 cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus, says the Lord, whose name is The God of hosts." Amos 5:18-21, 27.
It is evident that this darkening of the sun was a synonym for the fearful day of God’s judgment, and the sun's going down at noon on a clear day, a figurative way of describing the suddenness and unexpectedness of that awful judgment. And this judgment, this sudden blackness that was to envelop Israel, was their being led “into captivity beyond Damascus.” That judgment fell on the kingdom of Israel (the northern 10 tribes) about seven hundred years before the cross, when they were destroyed by the Assyrians.
It is obvious that the judgments on Israel and Judah did not abolish the Sabbath; God will always have created the world in six days and rested on the seventh day, and His moral character, as expressed in the Ten Commandments written by His own finger, could not be changed by Israel’s failure and the resulting judgment. But just to cement that point, we note that when Nehemiah was gathering the remnant of Judah from Babylon back to Jerusalem, one of the things he endeavored most valiantly to do was to revive the true keeping of the Sabbath. (See Neh. 13:15-22)
Objection 34: The psalmist prophesied that there would he a new day of worship. (See Psalm 118:22-24) The “day” mentioned in Psalms 118:24 can refer only to Sunday, the day on which Christ became the headstone of the corner.
Psalms 118:22-24 reads as follows:
"The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner. This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it."
The objector's reasoning is this:
(1) Christ became "the head stone of the corner" by the act of rising from the grave
(2) He rose on Sunday.
(3) The statement, "This is the day which the Lord bath made," applies to a twenty-four-hour day, and the day referred to is Sunday.
(4) Therefore, "we will rejoice and be glad" on Sunday by keeping it as God's holy day.
But nowhere does the Bible say that Christ became the chief cornerstone by the act of rising from the dead. In the New Testament, Christ is frequently referred to as “the chief corner stone" (Eph. 2:20; 1 Peter 2:6) and as "the head of the body, the church" (Col. 1:18), but these references do not narrow down to any one act of Christ's life, or to any moment of time, His acquiring of this title of headship.
The context of Colossians 1:18 would indicate that if any one act is focused upon, it is the death of Christ, which occurred on the sixth day of the week.
It is true that the reference to Christ as “the head over all things to the church,” in Ephesians 1:22, is found in a context that mentions the resurrection of Christ. But a reading of the context of verses 18 through 23 shows that Paul is discussing a whole series of important events in connection with Christ, events which are given in sequence, with no warrant for concluding that they are to be understood as having occurred on the same day. We read that God (a) "raised him from the dead," (b) "set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places," (c) "put all things under his feet," and (d) "gave him to be the head over all things to the church."
An examination of Paul's further writings indicates clearly that Christ's sitting at God's right hand is in His capacity as our High Priest: “We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; a minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.” Heb. 8:1-2. Certainly Christ did not enter on His work of ministry that Sunday morning He rose. He was with His disciples on earth for forty days after His resurrection.
Further, the phrase, "put all things under his feet,'' brings to our mind another passage of Paul's, in which he says of Christ: "But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God. From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool." Heb. 10:12-13.
Without taking the matter further, it is evident that Paul's statement in Ephesians 1:22 concerning Christ's headship of the church does not warrant the conclusion that the acquiring of His headship took place on the Sunday of the resurrection. On the contrary, the related passages in Hebrews would rather indicate it involved a sequence of events over a period of time.
Sometimes another text is quoted by the advocates of this Sunday theory who seek to prove that Christ became the chief cornerstone precisely on the first day of the week, the resurrection Sunday. That text reads, "Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; and declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." Rom. 1:1-4. That passage parallels the one in Ephesians that we have just analyzed, particularly Ephesians 1:19-20. Hence it gives no further proof in support of the theory.
Any theory that depends for its strength on focusing everything on one act of Christ's life, to the exclusion of all other acts, should be viewed with suspicion. The salvation of man depends on a whole series of momentous events. The incarnation was an event of vast significance; had God the Son, who was with God the Father in heaven, not agreed to become a lowly mortal man, the plan of salvation could not have been put into effect.
The crucifixion holds the central position; without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins. The substitutionary atonement, the mystery whereby Christ died for our sins, and we are saved by His perfect righteousness is at the center of the plan of salvation. The resurrection is also of great importance; for if Christ is not raised, then we who die in Christ must perish; our hope is in vain.
Finally, the Second Advent is the culmination of the plan of salvation; for it is then that the promise becomes reality, and we go to live with our Saviour in a paradise free of sin and death. (Heb. 9:28; John 14:3) It is then that He becomes King of kings and Lord of lords and sees all His enemies put under His feet.
Only the need to load the first day of the week with sufficient sanctity to command reverence for it can explain the theological reasoning of those who seek to convey the impression that everything of significance for the salvation of man occurred on the resurrection morning.
But that simply is not biblical. True, the Scriptures give profound meaning to the opened tomb, but they also give similar meaning to Bethlehem's manger, Calvary's cross, and the rolling back of the heavens at the last day to reveal the face of our Lord.
So much for the part of the argument that would narrow down the fulfillment of Psalms 118:22 to a certain twenty-four-hour day, the resurrection day. Let us now inquire as to what the Psalmist meant when he said, “This is the day which the Lord hath made; We will rejoice and be glad in it.”
An examination of the verses that immediately precede and follow the passage under consideration reveals that the psalmist is treating the broad subject of salvation. Verse 21 reads thus, “I will praise thee: for thou has heard me, and art become my salvation.” Verse 25 reads, “Save now, I beseech thee, O Lord: O Lord, I beseech thee, send now prosperity.”
Compare with this the New Testament comment by Peter: "This is the stone which was set at naught of you builders, which is become the head of the corner. Neither is there salvation in any other." Acts 4:11-12.
The natural conclusion is that, “This is the day which the Lord hath made” is referring to the day of salvation that would be ushered in by the Advent of our Lord as the Savior of men. The Bible frequently uses the word “day” to describe an indefinite period of time. For example, we read of the “day of the Lord,” the “day of judgment.” We know these cover very much more than a twenty-four-hour period.
Likewise, the Bible speaks of the “day of salvation.” In Isaiah's prophetic writings we read, “Thus says the Lord, In an acceptable time have I heard thee, and in a day of salvation have I helped thee.” Isa. 49:8.
Note, now, Paul's comment on this prophetic declaration as he addresses the church at Corinth. After quoting a portion of Isaiah 49:8, the apostle affirms, "Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation." 2 Cor. 6:2. According to the apostle Paul, the "day of salvation," of which the prophets had written, was "now," when he was writing to the church at Corinth, many years after the day of the resurrection. It is evident that he understood the "day" to refer to the whole period of God's grace, which was to continue on until the close of man's probation.
In a discussion with the unbelieving Jews, Christ spoke of those who were the servants of sin, and of how they could be saved from sin: “If the Son therefore shall make you free, you shall be free indeed.” John 8:36. The Jews did not understand this divine plan of salvation, and scornfully declared that they were Abraham's children and were never in bondage to anyone. Then Christ replied, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad." Verse 56.
Abraham, with prophetic eye, looked forward to the very time when Christ would stand before men to offer salvation to them, and Abraham "rejoiced." Quite evidently the "day of salvation" began before the resurrection.
Now let us view together the statement by the psalmist and the statement concerning Abraham, remembering that they both looked forward to the coming of the Messiah: “This is the day which the Lord bath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24. "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad." John 8:56.
The parallel is perfect. We need not search further to discover the meaning of the psalmist's words. As stated in the opening paragraph, some earnest Sunday advocates, hard pressed for a Bible command to keep holy the first day of the week, fasten on this passage in the Psalms, and declare that the Bible commands us to "rejoice and be glad" on Sunday.
The Bible reveals that Abraham rejoiced and was glad in the "day" of which the psalmist spoke. Is there any Sunday advocate so foolish as to assert that Abraham kept Sunday?
Objection 35: Noted astronomers have discovered that our world is twenty-four hours behind the rest of the universe. The Bible record of Joshua's long day—twenty-three hours and twenty minutes—and of the turning back of the sun forty minutes in Hezekiah's day, accounts for this twenty-four hours. Hence both Jews and Seventh-day Adventists are wrong about the time of the Sabbath. Our blessed Lord brought the Sabbath and the first day of the week together, merging them into the glorious day on which He arose from the dead, the day we celebrate as the Sabbath.
Briefly, the answer to this remarkable objection is as follows:
1. In effect, this theory is arguing that the Jews began to keep Sunday way back in the time of Joshua (or at least Hezekiah). And if the Jews are keeping Sunday, most Christians today are actually keeping Monday, because they are keeping the day that follows the day held sacred by Jews.
2. Is it reasonable to believe that God would answer the prayer of His servant Joshua in such manner as to confuse the reckoning of time so that it would be difficult or impossible to give obedience to the Sabbath law?
Sunday keepers today argue the legalism of the Hebrew dispensation, declaring that everything was governed then by rigid adherence to the law, in contrast to our present period of grace. And they never fail to remind us that the Sabbath law was so exacting in those times that a man could be put to death for breaking that law.
But now we are asked to believe that Moses had scarcely gone to his rest when the Lord worked a miracle that broke the cycle of time and changed the Sabbath in a way completely unknowable to the people whom God demanded keep the Sabbath?
Neither Nehemiah nor any other of the inspired writers were aware of shifting time. Their messages all breathe the conviction that the Sabbath is a fixed day, the reckoning of which can be easily computed, so definite indeed that the guilty have no excuse, and should justly suffer dire punishment.
3. The closing verses of the twenty-third chapter of Luke and the opening verse of the twenty-fourth chapter forever settle the question of the relationship of a certain day to the Sabbath command. Christians generally are in agreement that Christ was crucified on Friday, and that He rose on Sunday. The day in between is described as “the Sabbath day according to the commandment.” The language is simple and explicit. Anyone who wants to follow the Sabbath commandment and wishes to free himself from any uncertainty as to which day is the Sabbath day has only to read this passage in Luke.
We need not be astronomers, we need not have a knowledge of all past time, or be able to settle all the dark questions about chronology in order to be clear concerning the Sabbath commandment. Luke, who along with the other Gospel writers gave us the inspired record of the Savior on which our Christian religion depends, informs us that there is a certain day which is “the Sabbath day according to the commandment.” It is the day following this that Sunday keepers revere.
We need not speculate about a merging of days in the time of Joshua and Hezekiah, because Luke has cleared up any confusion. The day that Christ lay in the grave is “the Sabbath day according to the commandment,” and the next day is described simply as “the first day of the week.”
4. However, someone may inquire at this point, “But what are you going to do about the Bible record concerning Joshua and Hezekiah?”
We don't believe we need to do anything about the record. We are very willing to let it stand, and we believe it. We insist only that all the rest of the record in the Bible also be permitted to stand, such as the references that have been cited. The Bible is always its own best interpreter. If, despite amazing and baffling miracles, we still find God's prophets commanding obedience to a definite holy day, and Luke informing us that the seventh day of the week is the Sabbath day according to the commandment, then we are in no darkness whatever as to how to give explicit obedience to God's command.
The shadow on Hezekiah's sundial was never intended to cast a shadow on the Sabbath, nor did God work a bright miracle to help an ancient warrior in fighting the battles of the Lord so that modern warriors might find weapons to aid them in their fight against God's Sabbath command. What an irony if the additional light given on that eventful day of battle long ago should throw darkness ever afterward on the Sabbath, indeed, should give us neither a definitely defined Sabbath day nor a clear-cut Sunday, but something that was forty minutes from being either until Hezekiah's day.
5. It is always a favorite strategy in debate to claim that eminent scientists are on your side. Perhaps some astronomer has worked out certain cycles back through the millenniums that lead him to conclude there is a difference of twenty-four hours in time between our world and the rest of the universe. We say “perhaps,” for we have never heard of such a discovery. But what of it?
We do not have to travel into interstellar space to find a difference in reckoning. We can cross the Pacific and find a difference of twenty-four hours [at the international date line]. Yet no matter on what side of the Pacific a man lives, there seems to be no difficulty in keeping the accurate reckoning of time down through the centuries.
In fact, Sunday keepers in Australia are just as certain that they are keeping the correct first day of the week in cycles of seven from the resurrection day as are those in the mother country, England. Indeed, in both countries the certainty is so great that Sunday laws have been enacted to enforce observance of the day.
It is bad enough for Sabbath opponents to attempt to lose track of the seventh-day Sabbath by traveling around the world (although, oddly enough, they never seem to lose track of Sunday), but what is to be said for the man who seeks to carry us into the uncharted reaches of interstellar space in order to lose track of God's holy day? We should say his claims are outlandish.
6. Finally, it should be remembered that the Bible way of reckoning days is from sunset to sunset. Therefore, the lengthening out of the day in some miraculous way in Joshua's time would not break the cycle of seven in counting days according to Bible reckoning. After all, we are dealing with a Bible institution and not with a question of chronometers or stop watches or even astronomers. We need not explore the mystery of the long day in Joshua's time in order to be sure that we keep the correct time in relation to God's holy Sabbath day.
Objection 36: The Sabbath day is abolished, because Paul says that it is all right to consider every day alike in the Christian Era. (See Rom. 14:5)
Let us give, first, the passage mentioned, in its context:
“Him that is weak in the faith receive you, but not to doubtful disputations. For one believes that he may eat all things: another, who is weak, eats herbs. Let not him who eats despise him who eats not; and let not him who eats not judge him who eats: for God has received him. Who art thou that judges another man's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. Yet, he shall be held up: for God is able to make him stand. One man esteems one day above another: another esteems every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He who regards the day, regards it unto the Lord; and he who regards not the day, to the Lord he does not regard it. He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks; and he who eats not, to the Lord he eats not, and gives God thanks.” Rom. 14:1-6.
Further in the chapter Paul refers to the matter of drink as well as food. (See verses 17, 21)
Here Paul is alluding to meat offered to idols, the ceremonial law, and perhaps rabbinic traditions about food and drink that do not even rise to the level of the ceremonial law. Paul's counsel is that no believer should judge any other believer in such matters, which is strikingly similar to Paul's counsel to the Colossians: “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days.” Col. 2:16. But we found, in responding to objection 29, that Paul was not writing to the Colossians about the moral law and its seventh day Sabbath.
Let us look a little more closely at the passage in Romans: “He who is weak in the faith.” What faith? The faith of the gospel of Christ, which teaches that we receive pardon from all our sins and acceptance by our Lord without the works of the law. Some coming in from Jewry, who had long been immersed in the ritual of the ceremonial law, seem not to have had a faith quite strong enough at the outset to grasp fully the truth that we are saved wholly by the grace of God, without any good deed on our part, and certainly without observing any food taboos.
Others who had stronger faith, or who were Gentiles and thus were never taught the ceremonial law, were tempted to judge critically those whose faith was weak and who thus continued to make certain ceremonial distinctions in meats and drinks and holy days. Paul counseled against this critical attitude.
The crux of the passage, of course, is this statement: “One man esteems one day above another: another esteems every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” And the key phrase is, “every day alike.” The reasoning of the Sabbath objector might be summarized thus: Doesn’t every day mean all seven days in the week? And if a believer considers all days alike, doesn’t that mean he attaches no special sacredness to any day? And doesn’t Paul rebuke those who would pass critical judgment on the believers who thus viewed every day alike"?
The reader will have noticed that the word “alike” is italicized in the King James Version. Such italicized words are supplied words, meaning that the English word has no one-to-one analog in the Greek manuscript. Rather, the translator has supplied the English world to best express the meaning of the original Greek. This is done in all translations and is inevitable. The scrupulously conscientious Bible translators indicate supplied words, such as by printing them in italics.
We have no way of knowing whether Paul, if he were alive and could speak to us in English, would use the word “alike” to round out his sentence. That no argument can properly be built on the supplied word “alike” vitiates the plausibility of the objector's series of questions.
But he will probably still inquire confidently: Does not “every day” mean all seven days in the week? And he may add for good measure: Do not the Scriptures mean just what they say? What he forgets is that though the Bible writers were inspired, they used human language to convey their heavenly instruction, and human language is an inexact and constantly changing medium for expressing thoughts.
We must remember also that all languages have idioms, those singular combinations of words that often defy translation. For example, we may say in colloquial English that certain facts “center around this point.” But how can they both center and yet be around? We understand perfectly what this idiom means, but it does not make sense if we take each word separately and literally.
Christ told His disciples that He would "be killed, and after three days rise again." Mark 8:31. The Sabbath objector might plausibly ask: Does not "after three days" mean just that? In other words, does it not mean at least the fourth day, or perhaps later? The Bible also informs us that Christ told His disciples that He must "be killed, and be raised again the third day." Matt. 16:21. Why should not the Sabbath objector now ask: Does not “the third day” mean just that? Only as we concede that the phrase “after three days” was an ancient Jewish idiom that meant to them the equivalent of “third day” can we harmonize the two passages.
Now to borrow our English idiom, the question before us centers around this point of the proper understanding of a Bible phrase. If we carefully compare scripture with scripture, both as to constructions of phrases and as to doctrines taught, we shall have no more trouble over the Bible's literary forms than over those in any other book.
To the Sabbath objector who insists that "every day" in Romans 14:5 means all the days of the week, we would direct this question: Does the phrase "every day" in Exodus mean all the days of the week? In Exodus 16 is the record of the giving of the manna. The Lord through Moses instructed the Israelites to "go out and gather a certain rate every day." Verse 4. But when the sixth day came they were told to gather a double portion, because on the seventh day they would find none in the field. (Verses 22-26) But some went out to gather on the seventh day, for which God rebuked them, saying, "How long refuse you to keep my commandments and my laws?" Verses 27-28. There is no record that any Israelite replied, "Every day" means every day in the week, and therefore I thought it proper to consider the seventh day just like every other day. Evidently they had not heard of the modern "every day" argument against the Sabbath!
Exodus 16:4 clearly reveals that the word "every" may be understood to have a qualified meaning at times in the Bible. We must read the context and compare scripture with scripture to discover whether there are possible qualifications.
The same is true of the word “all.” Paul said, "All things are lawful unto me." 1 Cor. 6:12. A libertine, who isolated that statement from all other scripture, might possibly seek to prove thereby that his wastrel life and scandalous deeds were altogether “lawful.” But we protest that Paul's statement must be kept in its context, and when we do so we have no trouble with the passage. Paul clearly did not mean that everything was lawful, because in the next few verses he says that fornication is not allowed. He made the all-embracing statement, “all things are lawful,” in order to give force to the qualifying words, “But all things are not expedient.”
If we view Paul's words in Romans in terms of these simple rules of Bible study, we shall see their true meaning. "Every day” meant every one of the days that were regarded as holy under the ceremonial law, which is the law obviously under discussion here. Why should Paul need to interject that he did not mean to include the seventh day, when the seventh day Sabbath was not part of the controversy before him. Nowhere in all Paul's writings is the seventh day Sabbath the subject of controversy!
We close with a comment on Romans 14:5 by two commentators. First from the Methodist commentator Adam Clarke:
"Perhaps the [Greek] word hemera, “day,” is here taken for time, festival, and such like, in which sense it is frequently used. Reference is made here to the Jewish institutions, and especially their festivals; such as the Passover, Pentecost, feast of tabernacles, new moons, jubilee, etc. . . . The converted Gentile esteems every day, that is, considers that all time is the Lord’s, and that each day should he devoted to the glory of God; and that those festivals are not binding on him.
"We [the translators] add here alike, and make the text say what I am sure was never intended: that there is no distinction of days, not even of the Sabbath, and that every Christian is at liberty to consider even this day to be holy or not holy, as he happens to be persuaded in his own mind."
Second, from the commentary by Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, which is highly regarded in Fundamentalist circles:
“From this passage about the observance of days, ALFORD unhappily infers that such language could not have been used if the Sabbath law had been in force under the Gospel in any form. Certainly it could not, if the Sabbath were merely one of the Jewish festival days. But it will not do to take this for granted merely because it was observed under the Mosaic economy. And certainly if the Sabbath was more ancient than Judaism; if, even under Judaism, it was enshrined amongst the eternal sanctities of the Ten Commandments, uttered, as no other parts of Judaism were, amidst the terrors of Sinai. And if the Lawgiver Himself said of it when on earth, 'The Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath day' (see Mark 2:28). It will be hard to show that the apostle must have meant it to be ranked by his readers amongst those banished Jewish festival days, which only 'weakness' could imagine to be still in force, a weakness which those who had more light ought, out of love, merely to bear with."
If the Sabbath objector still demurs at the thought of letting words and phrases be understood in certain contexts and according to current usage, we would ask him this question in closing. Do you understand the phrase, “every day clothes” to mean clothes worn every day in the week, that is, all seven days of the week? If not, why seek to build an anti-Sabbath argument out of “every day” in Romans 14:5?
Objection 37: The days of creation were not literal, twenty-four-hour days, but long indefinite periods, millions of years in length. Therefore Seventh day Adventists are not warranted in using the creation story of Genesis 1 as an argument for the holiness of the literal seventh day of the weekly cycle.
First, we note at the outset that this objection goes too far for the majority of Christians, who worship on Sunday. For the most part, Sunday keepers agree that the days of creation were literal 24-hour days. They argue that the seventh day, the Sabbath, was binding until the Resurrection, after which the solemnity was transferred to Sunday. But the objection before us, if true, would have been valid throughout the history of the world, and hence there was no binding literal Sabbath day at any time in all earth's history!
Second, we note that if the person making this objection accepts the Darwinian/evolutionist view of origins, and thus does not believe that Genesis gives a dependable history of earth’s origins, we would need, in order to address that objection, to go beyond the scope of this book. That issue would need to be addressed by a more basic order of apologetics. In this book, we believe, and we assume that our various objectors believe, that, “all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.” (2 Tim. 3:16)
The issue we will address here is whether one who believes in the inspiration of Scripture, and that Scripture is therefore more reliable than “science falsely so called” (1 Tim. 6:20), should read Genesis literally or in some non-literal, spiritual, or allegorical manner.
As to the specific charge that Adventists are not warranted in using the creation story as an argument for the holiness of the Sabbath, we note that this is not an Adventist invention; rather, it is the simple declaration of the Fourth Commandment. “In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.” Ex. 20:11.
Certainly when God spoke those words to Israel they understood Him to mean that the seventh day of the weekly cycle had been blessed, for it was that particular day in the cycle they were called upon to honor. Indeed, there would have been no point to the command that they should work six days and keep the seventh day of the week, in memory of creation, if creation had not taken place on that same pattern—six days God labored and the seventh day He rested. To make the days of creation long periods is to ruin the parallel that God Himself, not Seventh-day Adventists, set up between the days of creation and the weekly cycle of human activity and rest.
The whole creation account is written as a simple narrative. There is nothing in the record to suggest that words should not be understood in their ordinary meanings. In each day of that first week there is “the evening and the morning.” Indeed, that is how each day is marked off. Evening and morning are the dark and light portions of a literal, twenty-four-hour day; evening and morning indicate that Genesis One is describing literal, 24-hour days, not long, indefinite periods of millions of years.
The Hebrew word for “day,” yôm, can refer to something other than a literal twenty-four-hour period. In Genesis one, however, each yôm of the creation week is modified by an ordinal number, as in “the first day,” “the second day” etc. When so modified, yôm always means a literal twenty-four hour day.
One has to wonder why, if the days of creation were intended to indicate multi-million-year epochs, the writer of Genesis didn’t just say that? It isn’t as though ancient people could not conceive of an earth millions of years old. On the contrary, most ancients believed the earth to be much older than the Bible indicates.
For example, Plato believed that the Flood had occurred two hundred million years ago. The Babylonian historian Berosus placed the creation two million years ago. Hindu traditions that were committed to writing 1,500 years ago teach that the earth’s history can be divided up into endlessly repeating cycles of 4.32 billion years, each of which can be further subdivided into 1,000 subcycles of 4.32 million years duration. The ancient Chinese adopted similar teachings of long cycles.
Obviously, the ancients were familiar with “old earth” histories and legends; it is the Bible’s “young earth” narrative that is unique. This is a powerful indication that Scripture was uniquely inspired by God, and not influenced by the surrounding pagan cultures.
In the biblical creation account, God speaks the creation into being ex nihilo (out of nothing). There is no reason this should have taken hundreds of millions of years. The long ages are necessary to allow time for Lyellian geological “history” and Darwinian biological “history”—not because God needed more than an instant, much less more than a day, to speak the creation into being.
The day/age theory assumes that the geological strata are not the residue of the Genesis Flood, but rather a record of evolution over hundreds of millions of years. Hence, the day/age understanding of Genesis (and earth history) presents violence, predation, and death as part of the creation that God declared “very good,” and not as the results of Adam’s sin. It also leaves no geological work for the Genesis Flood to perform.
Furthermore, the order in which animals appear in the Genesis narrative does not always correspond to the order in which they appear in the geologic strata. For example, the Bible teaches that birds were created on the fifth day, and then the land animals on the sixth (Gen. 1:20-25), so birds come before land animals in the biblical narrative. But the fossils of land animals are found in lower sedimentary strata than the fossils of birds, and therefore land animals are thought to have lived many millions of years before the birds ever appeared. Thus, the order in which creatures appear in the Genesis days does not correspond to the order in which they appear in the “ages” of geology.
The plain fact is that there is nothing in the text itself to indicate that the days of Genesis One are anything other than literal days, 24-hour periods. The idea that the days are not literal, but correspond to geological ages, is entirely imported from contemporary origins sciences. It is not textually driven, a fact that is freely admitted by even the most liberal theologians. “The problem with all of these interpretations [including the gap theory and the “day/age theory],” wrote the Left-leaning Adventist theologian Fritz Guy, “is that they are not indicated, much less demanded, by the biblical text; they are simply ad hoc attempts to make Genesis agree with geology.” (Fritz Guy, “Negotiating the Creation-Evolution Wars,” Spectrum, vol. 20, No. 1 (October 1989)) The day/age theory is clearly not derived from the text.
Part of the process of the Reformation was to abandoned the allegories and overly spiritualized interpretations of Scripture that had characterized medieval thinking and return to the literal narrative. An important part of this was to allow Scripture to interpret Scripture. Gerhard Hasel writes:
“We must not superimpose external meaning on [the Bible], as had been the practice during medieval Catholicism. Rather, we should approach the Bible in its literal and grammatical sense. Martin Luther, accordingly, argued for the literal interpretation of the creation account: ‘We assert that Moses spoke in the literal sense, not allegorically or figuratively, i.e., that the world, with all its creatures, was created within six days, as the words read.’ The other Reformers understood the creation ‘days’ in the same way.”
If we allow Scripture to interpret Scripture—if we allow Exodus 20:8-11 to interpret Genesis 2:1-3—we will eschew allegories and figurative interpretations, and accept the plainly intended meaning, which is that the days of Genesis One are literal days.
For the man who believes that the Bible is inspired, and is trying to understand what Moses wanted us to know from what he wrote, there can be no doubt whatsoever that the days of Genesis One are literal days.
Objection 38: The phrase, “the seventh day,” in the fourth commandment, means simply one day in seven. Therefore I am keeping the spirit of the Sabbath law so long as I keep one day in seven. And is not Sunday one day in seven?
There are some very real reasons why “the seventh day” means a specific day, not simply one day in seven:
1. The Sabbath is based upon the events of the creation week. (Gen. 1:1-2:3) All other time cycles are tied to the movements of celestial objects—the month is measured by the phases of the moon, the year is the time it takes the earth to orbit the sun—but the Sabbath exists only in reference to the creation week. Now, in reference to that first week we ask: Was the Sabbath simply one day among the seven days in that first week? No, it was the seventh and last day of that original week. Why would the Sabbath become less specific in succeeding weeks and years and centuries?
The Sabbath command refers back to the creation week, and it is in the historical setting of that week that the phrase “the seventh day” must be understood. God did not simply rest one day in seven in the creation week. He rested on the seventh day of that week.
2. The Sabbath memorializes a certain historical event, the completion of the creation of this world, and God taking a day to rest from His work of creation. Memorial days, if they are to have significance, must be anchored to definite points of time. They are intended to recall a particular day of past history.
For example, to Americans, “the Fourth” means the Fourth of July, not just any old fourth, or the fourth of any month. Why? Because on the fourth of July in 1776, our founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, by which we formally severed our bonds from the mother country. What would we think of the man who reasoned that he can keep any “Fourth” and still be commemorating our national independence?
But there are Sunday advocates, devout and sincere men, no doubt, who contend that they are obedient to the Fourth Commandment, which calls for the keeping of the seventh day of the week in honor of God’s having rested from His work of creation, when they keep the first day of the week in honor of the resurrection!
3. No day was so solemnly set before Israel as the weekly Sabbath day. When certain Israelites went out to gather manna on “the seventh day” they were rebuked. (Ex. 16:22-30) When one of them gathered sticks on the Sabbath day he was stoned to death. (Num. 15:32-36) After the return from the Babylonian captivity, the city gates of Jerusalem were closed on Sabbath to prevent commerce, and anyone who tried to skirt this law against commerce on the Sabbath was denounced. (Neh. 13:15-22)
No one told these people, nor did they themselves plead in their defense: “hey, as long as you are keeping one day of the week as a day of rest, it is okay to gather firewood, or manna, or keep your shop open, or buy and sell, on the Seventh day Sabbath.” No, under the theocracy of ancient Israel the law was enforced to keep a specific one of the seven days holy—the seventh day. From that day to this, no one has ever been silly enough to dispute this.
4. Christendom in general believes that our Lord was crucified on Friday, lay in the tomb on Saturday, the 7th day of the week, and rose from the dead on Sunday, the first day of the week. How does Luke describe the day on which Christ rested in the tomb? “The Sabbath day according to the commandment.” Luke 23:56. That one inspired statement is sufficient to prove that the Jews were keeping the seventh day as their day of rest, and that this was done in accordance with the Fourth Commandment.
5. As noted above, no one doubts that those who lived before Christ kept the seventh day of the week. In other words, "the seventh day" in the command unquestionably meant the specific seventh day of the week. Then, what rational ground can be found for claiming that when Christ came, the plain and specific meaning of the commandment suddenly became vague and nonspecific, and now means merely one day in seven?
No one at the time of Christ or for almost sixteen hundred years afterward ever thought of making so astounding a claim. Until the year AD. 1595, Christians, as certainly as the Jews, understood "the seventh day" in the commandment to mean the seventh day of the week. Far from having any foundation in Scripture, this one-day-in-seven theory was not even heard of until fifteen hundred years after the last of the apostles had gone to his grave.
6. The very phrase "the seventh day" makes evident that a particular day, not merely one day in seven, is meant. If we told a friend that we lived in the seventh house on a certain street, what would we think of him if he went looking for us by knocking on the door of the first house on the block, or on the third, or on the fifth? What would our neighbors think of the sort of friends we had?
7. Over the centuries, Sunday advocates have succeeded in passing laws requiring observance of Sunday. Such Sunday laws have always been based upon the Fourth Commandment. Yet no one who violated such laws was ever given leniency on the basis that he need not rest on Sunday so long as he kept one day of the week as sacred and did no work on it. To the contrary, the makers of such laws have invariably shown themselves ready to imprison the man who should thus interpret the Sabbath as it was enforced by their Sunday laws!
Now a word regarding the matter of “keeping the spirit of the law.” The Bible has much to say about the letter and the spirit, and some have obtained the mistaken idea that the spirit of a law means less than the letter of it, at least as regards divine law, and particularly as regards God's Sabbath law. It is difficult to understand how such an idea has any credence. Perhaps it is due to the fact that the word “spirit” conveys something airy, elusive, or shadowy, and hence the “spirit of a law” means something something only vague and shadowy.
Nothing could be further from the truth. When we speak of keeping the “spirit of the law,” we meaning honoring the principle the law enforces, and honoring it even beyond the letter of the law. The keeping of the spirit of a law requires much more of a man than merely keeping the letter of it. Christ explains that the letter of the law forbids murder, but the spirit of the law forbids even anger and violent language:
“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother, ‘you fool’ . . . will be in danger of the fires of hell.” Mat. 5:20-25.
How evident that those who keep the spirit of a law go far beyond the letter of it, not by disregarding the letter, but by seeing a greater depth of meaning. Since keeping the spirit of the law might mean going far beyond the letter of the law, no one should be so foolish [pardon my language] as to think that being faithful to the spirit of the law releases him from obeying the letter of it.
Objection 39: Seventh-day Adventists insist that a particular seventh day, coming down through from creation in cycles of seven, is the day God blessed and therefore the day that all should keep as the Sabbath. But no one now knows what that day is. Besides, calendar changes have confused the reckoning.
Preliminarily, we would like to ask the objector a question: Why do you keep Sunday? If you answer as Sunday keepers have routinely answered through the centuries, you will say, Because Christ rose on the first day of the week. Then we would ask, “Are you sure that you and your spiritual ancestors have been keeping the particular first day of the week that has come down in cycles of seven from the resurrection Sunday?”
You can hardly answer “no,” for that would indict all your Sunday keeping forebears, including those who sent men men to jail if they failed to give due reverence to Sunday. But if you answer “yes,” you have refuted your own objection—if the first day of the week came down safely through the centuries, then so did the seventh day.
Strictly speaking, we need go no further. We can revisit the question when Sunday advocates say that they are not sure they are really keeping the first day of the week. Yet, so often is this “lost-time” objection made, when all other arguments against the Sabbath are lost, we will give it some attention.
What proof is offered that time has been lost? None. We are simply supposed to believe that in the long ago everybody woke up one morning and decided that Monday was Tuesday, or something like that.
Of course we do not have a history that tells us all that has happened since creation. But we do know that when we come down to the time of Christ's crucifixion “the Sabbath day according to the commandment” was definitely known, and that that day was the day between crucifixion Friday and resurrection Sunday, the seventh day of the weekly cycle. That makes it unnecessary to peer into the vistas of the time before Christ.
And what of the centuries since Christ? What about the calendar change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar? Here are the facts: The Julian calendar had been based upon a year lasting 365.25 days, but this was slightly too long; the real length of a year is closer to 365.2422 days. Over the course of twelve centuries, the calendar had drifted increasingly out of alignment with earth’s orbit of the sun; hence things like the summer and winter solstices were, per the calendar, on the wrong day.
Pope Gregory the XIII’s scientific advisers told him he needed to delete 10 days from the calendar to bring it back into alignment with the heavens. Consequently, the pope issued an edict that 10 days would be omitted from the month of October in the year of the Lord (Anno Domini, [A.D.]) 1582. That year, the change to the new calendar was made in most Catholic Spain, Portugal, and Italy. This is why the present calendar is known as the Gregorian calendar.
The way the change was effected was that Thursday, the fourth of October, was followed immediately by Friday, the fifteenth. The result was that although 10 days were removed from the month, the order of the days of the week was not interfered with. And it is the cycle of the week that measures off the Sabbath day for us.
As the years passed by, the other nations gradually made the change, with those waiting until the 18th century needing to drop 11 days, and those waiting until the 19th or early 20th centuries, 12 days. And every nation, in making the change, employed the same rule of dropping out days from the month without touching the order of the days of the week.
But the case is even stronger than this. Not only was the week not tampered with in the revision of the calendar, but even the idea of breaking the weekly cycle in any way was not thought of. Speaking of the variety of plans suggested for the correction of the calendar, the Catholic Encyclopedia says,
“Every imaginable proposition was made; only one idea was never mentioned, viz., the abandonment of the seven-day week.” - Volume 9, p. 251.
Why should time be lost? Who would want to lose it? Civilization and commerce have existed all down through the centuries, and can we not believe that those who lived before us were quite as able to keep count of the days as we? Surely all wisdom and knowledge is not confined to the present. Furthermore, the accurate keeping of time records is a vital necessity in religious worship, both for Christians and for Jews. Christianity and Judaism have come down through all the centuries since Bible times. They are probably the most definite links binding us to ancient times.
Would it be conceivable that all Christian peoples and Jews would lose the reckoning of the weeks, which would involve confusion for all their holy days? And if such a thought be conceivable, could we possibly bring ourselves to believe that all the Christians in every part of the world and all the Jews in every part of the world would lose exactly the same amount of time? To such incredible lengths must one go in order to maintain the idea that time has been lost!
Objection 40: Seventh-day Adventists declare that the Sabbath was intended for all men in all lands. But it is evident that it was intended only for the Jews in the little land of Palestine. How could anyone keep the definite seventh day Sabbath up in the Arctic circle, where there is six months day then six months night? Or how would a person keep track of the order of the days of the week in traveling around the world, for you lose a day if you travel in one direction and gain a day if you travel in the other direction?
The fact that the sun never sets for some months in the arctic and antarctic, and then never rises for a long period in these places, bears not on whether all people were intended to keep the Sabbath, but much more on whether anyone was intended to live permanently in such inhospitable places. As near as we can tell, no one has ever lived permanently at the North Pole, and until very recently, no one ever lived on the continent of Antarctica.
We note however, that arctic and antarctic explorers and scientific teams do keep track of the days and weeks, and record in their diaries what they did on certain specific days. Obviously, it is possible to keep track of days and months even in these strange and forbidding parts of the earth.
If a Sabbath keeper should find himself in that weird world of ice and had any fear that he had lost his reckoning of the weeks, he need only go to a mission conducted for the Eskimos by some Sunday keeping church and compare his reckoning with theirs.
And what of the problem of traveling around the world in relation to keeping a correct reckoning of the weeks? The simple fact is that wherever we find ourselves, the people around us will have kept track of the days, and one day will be the Seventh Day. That is the day the traveler should observe, even if he cannot count off seven days from the Sabbath he observed on the other side of the world. We note, once again, that this objection is never urged against Sunday-keeping travelers, only against would-be Sabbath-keeping jet-setters. But if it is an objection to Sabbath-keeping, it is an objection to Sunday-keeping by the same token and to the same extent.
The objector will probably now say: “The facts are that the people in one part of the world cannot keep the Sabbath at the same moment of time as the people in other parts of the world, because, for example, the people in Europe begin their day several hours earlier than we in America. What are you going to do about that?”
The Sabbath commandment says nothing about keeping the Sabbath at the same moment of time everywhere over the earth. It simply commands us to keep “the seventh day.” And does not the seventh day arrive everywhere over the earth? It does, just as Sunday does for the Sunday-keepers.
When we reach any country in our travels we find all the people there-scientists and laymen, Jews, Christians, and infidels-in perfect agreement as to the days of the week. Indeed, this is probably one of the few facts of everyday life in which such a mixed group are in agreement. Ask them separately or collectively, and they will all give the same answer as to when the seventh day of the week arrives.* Then how simple is God's command to keep “the seventh day.” Once again, neither of these objections are deemed applicable to invalidate Sunday-keeping, only Sabbath-keeping.
*Nichol’s assertion in the above paragraph is, alas, no longer true. Some Pacific Islanders have, in fact, taken issue with a governmental decision to move the International Date Line, so that there is, in fact, disagreement as to what is the Seventh Day among some Seventh-day Adventists on some Pacific islands. More about that here.
Our position, which again is discussed here, is that Sabbath-keepers should keep what is officially deemed Saturday, the seventh day of the week, wherever we are, regardless how vexing we find a seemingly unnecessary movement of the International Date Line.
Objection 41: The Sabbath was changed from Saturday to Sunday at the time of Christ's resurrection. One of the strong proofs of this is the fact that Christ, after His resurrection, always met with His disciples on Sunday. A further proof is the fact that the Holy Spirit was poured upon the disciples on Sunday.
We are asked to believe that Christ somehow changed the day, but on so important a matter as a weekly holy day we cannot be content simply to presume. We need a clear and explicit command from Christ and, of course, there is no such clear and explicit command anywhere to be found in the Scriptures.
By contrast, we do not have to presume as to the holiness of the seventh day of the week. We have a clear command (Gen. 2:2-3; Ex. 20:8-11), often repeated in the sacred writings (Isa. 58:13-14; Deut. 5:15; Luke 4:16; Ex. 31:13-17), so that no one should be in doubt, and those who are inclined to forgetfulness might always be reminded. That is the picture up to the time of Christ.
There is no command from Christ to keep Sunday; in fact, we look in vain for a command for Sunday keeping from anyone, anywhere in the New Testament. What warrant have we for believing that suddenly after the time of Christ men would no longer need to be given a clear command as regards the keeping of a holy day, or to be reminded of that command from time to time?
What warrant is there for thinking that the followers of God in the Christian Era should conclude, from a combination of circumstances, that two crucial events have taken place: (1) The explicit command of God to keep the Seventh Day have been revoked; and (2) Christians are ordered to keep the first day of the week in its stead?
Only one text in the New Testament speaks of the abolition of Sabbath days (Col. 2:16), but we have found that this text is not speaking of the weekly Sabbath, as eminent Sunday keeping Bible commentators admit. (See Objection 29.) And, as just stated, no text in the New Testament contains a command to keep Sunday. Yet despite all this, we are asked to believe that the seventh day Sabbath was abolished at the cross and that Sunday took its place as the weekly holy day!
We shall find, in examining this objection and the ones immediately following, that the case for Sunday sacredness in the New Testament is built on surmises, deductions from shaky premises, and wishful thinking. Let the facts speak for themselves.
We are asked to believe (1) that after the resurrection Christ always met with His disciples on Sunday, and (2) that that provides unanswerable proof that Christ changed the weekly holy day from the seventh to the first day of the week.
Only six texts in the New Testament mention the first day of the week in connection with Christ's life: Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2, 9; Luke 24:1; John 20:1,19. (John 20:26 is often thought to refer to Sunday, and will be discussed a little later on.) These four Gospel writers penned their narratives anywhere from twenty or thirty years up to nearly seventy years after the ascension of Christ. These and other New Testament writers all speak of the seventh day as “the Sabbath,” with no suggestion that this weekly holy day had been abolished or was in process of being abolished.
When the New Testament writers mention the first day of the week they do not suggest that it had acquired, or was in process of acquiring, any sanctity. This is very strange if, as Sunday advocates so confidently declare, Sunday began to be regarded as the Christian holy day immediately after the Resurrection.
From a study of the six texts before us the following facts come to light:
1. Each time Sunday is called simply “the first day of the week.” No title of holiness or other indication of sanctity or holiness is employed or hinted at.
2. There is no statement by Christ in connection with His meetings with the disciples, either in these texts or in their surrounding context, that even suggests that special significance should henceforth be attached to the first day of the week.
3. The reason why the disciples were all in one place on the resurrection day was not because they were holding a religious service to institute Sunday worship but because they were in “fear of the Jews.” (John 20:19.)
4. Three of the four Gospel writers plainly state that the Sabbath had ended when the first day of the week began.
5. The true significance of the mention of the first day of the week is evidently merely the desire of the Gospel writers to give an accurate history of the events surrounding the crucifixion, and to show that Christ's declaration that He would be raised on the third day was fulfilled.
In addition to His meetings with the disciples and certain women on the resurrection day, as mentioned in the six “first day” texts, what other visits, which state the time of His visit, are recorded? There are two:
1. The day of the ascension (when Christ was taken up into heaven), which occurred forty days after the resurrection (See Acts 1:3-9). By counting off cycles of seven, we can determine that since the Resurrection was on Sunday, Ascension Day, 40 days later, must have been a Thursday. Those churches that honor Ascension Day do so on a Thursday, the 40th day after Easter Sunday.
2. A meeting held a week after the resurrection day. The time is thus given: “And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, ‘Peace be unto you.’” John 20:26. “After eight days” is a Hebrew idiom for one week [see, e.g., the NIV translation]. Thus, this took place a week later.
Hence, Christ met with His disciples the first two Sundays after the Resurrection. The first Sunday meeting proves nothing except that Christ would not want to delay the encouragement of His disciples provided by the fact of His resurrection from the dead.
That being the obvious case, all of the evidence for Christ’s changing the day of worship must be found in this second appearance. Perhaps Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, in their Bible commentary, present the case for Sunday as favorably as possible:
“They [the disciples] probably met every day during the preceding week, but their Lord designedly reserved His second appearance amongst them till the recurrence of His resurrection day, that He might thus inaugurate the delightful sanctities Of THE LORD'S DAY.” - Comment on John 20:26.
Here is an admission that the disciples were not singling out Sunday for a meeting. In fact, the record gives no suggestion of any “meeting.” When this twenty-sixth verse is compared with the nineteenth verse, we conclude that the disciples were cowering behind closed, locked doors; they feared to be out on the streets. But the text gives no hint that Jesus specially “reserved His second appearance amongst them” until Sunday, and that He did so to “inaugurate the Lord's day.” What phrase or words in the text even suggests such an idea?
The text does indicate the reason why Jesus appeared at this particular time:
“And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them.”
John specifically mentions Thomas' absence from the upper room on the resurrection Sunday, and his refusal to believe what the other disciples told him about Jesus having risen from the dead. (John 20:24-26) This might well have been the first day after Christ’s resurrection that Thomas was with the other disciples. But this day he was with them in the upper room, so it would seem that Christ’s visit was timed specifically to be present with Thomas. Beyond Christ’s desire to show Himself to “Doubting Thomas,” nothing can reasonably be deduced from the record, certainly not the idea that Christ was thereby transferring the solemnity of Sabbath to Sunday.
Of course, it is true that He did meet with the disciples at other times, but no day of the week was specified in these other instances. Perhaps the Sabbath objector will wish to affirm—though without any textual proof whatsoever—that such meetings were on Sunday. So let us examine the account of the third time Christ met His disciples after His resurrection. (See John 21:1-14)
The disciples were fishing! Evidently they considered fishing proper on that day, and there is no suggestion that Christ rebuked them for it. Instead, He instructed them how to catch fish! If this was Sunday, and the solemnity of the Sabbath Day had been transferred to Sunday at the Resurrection, wouldn’t Jesus have scolded them for working on Sunday? Sunday advocates tend not to talk about this occasion.
What of the proof for Sunday sacredness that is supposed to reside in the fact that the Holy Spirit was poured upon the disciples on the day of Pentecost? We will pass by the fact that some Sunday keeping theologians are not even certain that Pentecost fell on Sunday that year. We think it probable that Pentecost did fall on Sunday that year, but we would never discover that fact from the Biblical record. No mention is even made as to which day of the week is involved. The record informs us only that “when the day of Pentecost was fully come” the outpouring of the Divine Spirit took place. (Acts 2:1.)
Surely, if any Bible writer saw any connection between the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and Sunday, he would have at least disclosed the fact that the event took place on a Sunday, even if he made no other comment!
But the objector may reply: Everyone reading the book of Acts knew that Pentecost was on Sunday that year, and could thus draw his own conclusions as to the relationship between the divine outpouring and the first day of the week. If this reply means anything, it means that so far from Acts 2:1 being an inspired reference to Sunday sacredness, or even a mention of the day of the week involved, the reader must rely on his own knowledge of the facts and draw therefrom his own deductions. That is surely a long way from a “Thus says the Lord” for Sunday.
But would every reader of the book of Acts know that Pentecost came on Sunday that year? Of course not. Luke wrote Acts about AD. 63, or some thirty years after the Pentecostal event. The annual Jewish festivals, of which Pentecost was one, came on different days of the week each year, even as, for example, does Veterans’ Day [formerly Armistice Day]. But does everyone today, five generations after November 11, 1918, know what day of the week the armistice ending the First World War went into effect? Of course not!
Even so with the day of Pentecost in the year our Lord ascended. The reader of Acts, which was written a generation after Christ, and subsequent readers of it up to the present day, would no more be aware of the day of the week involved in that great Pentecost than we would be aware of the day of the week on which the 1918 Armistice went into effect, unless we researched the issue.
The very words of Luke reveal that he desires the reader to note the fact, not that the Holy Spirit was poured out on a certain day of the week, but that it was poured out “when the day of Pentecost was fully come.” Do we not find an evident explanation for the timing of the incident in the fact that certain events in connection with Christ's first advent were the fulfillment of certain typical services of the Jews. "Christ our Passover" (1 Cor. 5:7) fulfilled the typical Passover service and was sacrificed on the very day that the Passover lamb was slain, the fourteenth day of the first month (Ex. 12:1-6).
The offering of the first fruits on the sixteenth day of the first month met its fulfillment in Christ's resurrection on that day, the first fruits of them that sleep. (Lev. 23:5-11; 1 Cor. 15:20-23) Then “when the day of Pentecost was fully come,” a further typical service evidently met its fulfillment. (Lev. 23:15-2l) If we are to deduce anything from the timing of the Holy Spirit's outpouring, it is this: Luke is seeking to show that Christ is the great anti-type of the Jewish services.
Objection 42: From earliest apostolic days Christians kept Sunday in honor of Christ's resurrection. This is clearly revealed in two scriptures, Acts 20:7 and 1 Corinthians 16:2.
We have already learned (Objection 41) that there is no Scriptural foundation for the statement that “from earliest apostolic days Christians kept Sunday,” because there is no proof that Christ instituted Sunday worship on the resurrection day, or during any time that He appeared to His disciples in the forty days before His ascension. Nor is there anything in the Scriptures to show that during that forty-day period the apostles gave any kind of veneration to Sunday.
Therefore, if there is Biblical proof that the apostles kept Sunday, it must be found some decades later in the two texts cited in this objection, and in one further text to be considered in the next objection.
Strange, is it not, that a practice so revolutionary as the keeping of a new weekly holy day, by Jewish Christians as well as Gentile, and thus the abandonment of the seventh day Sabbath, should not have been the subject of extended and repeated discussion in the writings of the apostles? When they said that circumcision was no longer necessary, a hurricane was let loose, and the wind of that controversy blows through the pages of the New Testament (See, e.g., Rom. 2:25-29; 1 Cor. 7:18-19; Gal. 2:3-5; 5:1-9; 6:12-15; Col. 2:11-12).
But we are asked to believe that they told the Christian converts that the Sabbath need no longer be kept, and yet no tempest ensued—at least nothing important enough to be mentioned in the New Testament. Yet the Jews were fanatically zealous about the Sabbath!
In the light of these facts we have a right to be suspicious of the Sunday claim that is based on the two texts cited. And remember, they are the only two in the Bible that mention the first day of the week subsequent to the resurrection day. The first one reads thus:
“On the first day of the week we came together to break bread. Paul spoke to the people and, because he intended to leave the next day, kept on talking until midnight. There were many lamps in the upstairs room where we were meeting. Seated in a window was a young man named Eutychus, who was sinking into a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on. When he was sound asleep, he fell to the ground from the third story and was picked up dead. Paul went down, threw himself on the young man and put his arms around him. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “He’s alive!” Then he went upstairs again and broke bread and ate. After talking until daylight, he left. The people took the young man home alive and were greatly comforted.”
This passage is part of a narrative, covering two chapters, describing various incidents on Paul's homeward trip to Jerusalem at the close of his third missionary journey. When we read the whole story of the journey we find that Paul preached in various places along the way as he traveled to Jerusalem. Were all these sermons preached on Sunday?
When the exact time of the Troas meeting is noted, this passage in Acts 20 becomes even less convincing as a proof for Sunday. The service was held at night, for “there were many lights in the upper chamber, where they were gathered together.” The record declares also that Paul “continued his speech until midnight,” the reason being that he had to “depart on the morrow.” His sermon continued past midnight, “even till break of day,” and “so he departed.”
It is a well-known fact that the Bible reckons days from sunset to sunset, not from midnight to midnight, as we do today. (See Gen. 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, 31; Lev. 23:32) Therefore the dark part of that “first day of the week” was what we would describe as Saturday night.
Conybeare and Howson, in their authoritative work, Life and Epistles of the Apostle Paul, write as follows concerning the time of the meeting:
“It was the evening which succeeded the Jewish Sabbath. On the Sunday morning the vessel was about to sail.” - Page 520 (One Volume Edition).
[Among the more recent translations, unavailable to Nichol, the Complete Jewish Bible notes that the meeting was on Motza’ei-Shabbat, meaning the time in the evening immediately following the Sabbath. The Good News Translation renders it, “On Saturday evening we gathered together for the fellowship meal.” The Jubilee Bible renders it, “And the first of the sabbaths, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them, ready to depart the next day, and continued his word until midnight.”]
Thus, we see that Paul held a Saturday night meeting, and started off on his long journey Sunday morning. If this record proves anything, it proves (1) that this first-day meeting was held not because of a religious custom but because of Paul’s travel schedule, and (2) that Paul was not keeping Sunday sacred, since it was a travel day for him.
We do not see Sunday keepers today attaching any sacredness to Saturday night, yet they wish to rely upon this record of a Saturday night meeting as a proof of Sunday sacredness. It was only because Paul preached a very long sermon that this meeting even stretched over into what Sunday keepers regard as their holy day.
Augustus Neander (1789 – 1850), the Sunday-keeping German theologian and church historian, remarks thus concerning Acts 20:7 as a supposed proof of Sunday sacredness:
“The passage is not entirely convincing, because the impending departure of the apostle may have united the little Church in a brotherly parting-meal, on occasion of which the apostle delivered his last address, although there was no particular celebration of a Sunday in the case.” —The History of the Christian Religion and Church, translated by Henry John Rose (1831), Vol. 1, Page 337.
If this “passage is not entirely convincing” to a Sunday keeping church historian, it should hardly be expected to prove convincing to a Sabbath keeper who rests his belief on the overwhelmingly convincing command of God: “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord.” For a Sunday advocate to declare that he looks to Acts 20:7 for proof of Sunday sacredness is only to reveal how weak is the case for Sunday in the Scriptures.
The second of the two first day texts before us reads thus:
“Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, even so do you. Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come.” 1 Cor. 16:1-2.
This is interpreted as Paul instructing that a religious service be held at on the first day of the week, at which an offering is taken up. We are expected to conclude that if a service was held on Sunday, Sunday is sacred as the new Sabbath, and the Sabbath of the Ten Commandments has been abolished.
This is a great deal to attempt to find in one text, and it cannot be found in this text. Instead of describing a church offering where the communicants pass their offerings over to a deacon, the record says that each one was to “lay by him in store.” The most recent and most widely accepted version of the Scriptures translates the text thus: “On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and save, as he may prosper, so that contributions need not be made when I come.” R.S.V.
In other words, when the first day of the week had come, each one was to decide from the last week's earnings how much he wanted to set aside for the special collection that Paul was going to take to the poor at Jerusalem. And lay it by in a special place apart from the other money of the house. This was an act of bookkeeping rather than an act of worship.
That this is the correct understanding of this passage is admitted by scholarly Sunday keeping theologians, whose desire to translate the Scriptures accurately exceeds their desire to find proofs for Sunday. Take, for example, the typical comment that is found in The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, a commentary on the Scriptures published by Cambridge University Press, and edited by Church of England clergymen. Speaking of this text, the commentator declares that, as to the practice of Christians to meet on the first day of the week, “we cannot infer it from this passage.”:
“lay by him” —i.e., at home, not in the assembly, as is generally supposed. . . . [Paul] speaks of a custom in his time of placing a small box by the bedside into which an offering was to be put whenever prayer was made."—The First Epistle to the Corinthians, edited by J. J. Lias, p. 164.
Certainly it requires much more than that the disciples were gathered in fear at home on the first day of the week, or that Paul once preached on Saturday night and into Sunday morning, or that he asked the Corinthians to set aside some money in their homes the first of each week—much more than all this—to give any Bible-believer a reason for supposing that one of the eternal Ten Commandments, which declares that “the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God,” has been changed or done away with.
Objection 43: The apostle John calls Sunday the "Lord's day," (Revelation 1:10) and declares that he was in the Spirit on that day. This proves that Sunday is the sacred weekly rest day of the Christian church and that the Sabbath has been abolished.
In Revelation 1:10, John says, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet.”
The question is, what day does John mean by “the Lord’s day”? There is no reason to imagine that John meant Sunday, but even if John called Sunday “the Lord’s day,” that would not provide sufficient proof that the fourth commandment of the Ten Commandments had been abolished or changed. Let that fact be clear at the outset.
So how do Sunday advocates attempt to prove that John meant Sunday? They declare that the phrase “Lord’s day,” began to be used as a synonym for Sunday by church fathers in their writings very soon after John's death, and that therefore he used the phrase in the same sense.
What are the facts? There have come down to us certain writings attributed to “church fathers” who lived in the generations immediately following that of the apostles. Many of these writings are spurious, and of those that are genuine, most are so garbled or emended by later writers that it is almost impossible to know what portion was written by the original author. This, coupled with the fact that some of these earliest fathers employed unusual, if not incoherent, literary constructions, has caused scholars great uncertainty as to the true meaning of many passages in those writings.
The church German church historian Augustus Neander sums up the problem:
“The writings of the so-called apostolic Fathers have unhappily, for the most part, come down to us in a condition very little worthy of confidence. Partly because under the name of these men, so highly venerated in the church, writings were early forged for the purpose of giving authority to particular opinions or principles. And partly because their own writings which were extant, became interpolated in subservience to a Jewish hierarchical interest, which aimed to crush the free spirit of the gospel.” -- General History of the Christian Religion and Church (1854), vol. 1, Appendix, sec. 4, p. 657.
The reader can see that any argument based on what the “church fathers” are supposed to have said is on shaky ground. Only if we are ready to add a little wishful thinking to our translation of certain questionable passages can we accept the claim that the phrase “Lord's day” began to be used by the church fathers shortly after John's death.
We believe that there is no clear use of that phrase in any writings of the fathers until near the end of the second century. And if that be true, the argument for Sunday based on John's use of the phrase stretches out so thin—for it must stretch out over nearly a century—that it cannot carry the weight of argument suspended on it.
But so plausible can even a doubtful passage sound to those who need the support it provides that, despite the damaging evidence here presented, there will still remain in many minds a feeling that the phrase was actually used by church fathers to describe Sunday within a generation or so of John's day. Furthermore, so intriguing is the fact that John uses a phrase that is later used to describe Sunday that those same minds will naturally lean toward the conclusion that probably, after all, John likewise used the phrase to describe Sunday.
Besides the emotional weakness that afflicts that kind of conclusion, there is a glaring fallacy that invalidates it, the fallacy of concluding that because a word has a certain meaning at one time, it has the same meaning at an earlier time. This is one of the worst fallacies into which a person can fall in reading writings of a former day. Because in the writings of a Second-Century father the phrase “Lord's day” meant Sunday, it does not therefore follow that in the writings of John the phrase meant Sunday.
Words change and even reverse their meanings, and sometimes in an amazingly short period. Until the seventeenth century the word “Sabbath” had rather uniformly been used by Christian speakers and writers to describe the seventh day of the week. But in the British Isles, in that century, there was a great Puritan revival of religion, which focused on an endeavor to secure better observance of Sunday. Sunday was declared to be commanded in the Ten Commandments, with simply a change from the seventh to the first day of the week. In order to make their language consistent with this view the Puritanical reformers began to call Sunday “Sabbath.” In almost one generation the change was made. So far as a large segment of the population was concerned, and the term “Sabbath” now meant Sunday, the first day of the week.
Hence, the word “Sabbatarian” for many decades meant a Sunday advocate who believed that Sunday should be rigorously kept, often with the aid of civil legislation. But today “Sabbatarian” is used nearly exclusively to describe a Seventh-day Adventist who keeps Saturday and who is opposed to civil laws enforcing the observance of Sunday. Here again is a complete reversal of meaning, and in a rather short space of time.
As late as the 1840s in America the word “spiritualist” meant a person who “spiritualized” away the literal meaning of Scriptures, or one who had very spiritual views. But in less than ten years the word began to be used to describe those who had taken up with the Hydesville rappings of 1848, which started modern spiritualism, i.e., the belief that disembodied conscious spirits of the dead continued to haunt the living.
[To adduce an example from after Nichol’s time, the word “gay” went from meaning “happy and carefree” to “homosexual”—a radically different meaning—in the space of less than a decade in the 1970s.]
By examining an unabridged dictionary, one can compile a near-endless list of such changes in the meaning of words and, after such an examination, one will be highly suspicious of any argument that would seek to read back into the words of a man who wrote at one time the meaning given to those words by men who wrote at a later time.
We may properly understand a writer's words in the light of the meaning that those words have had up to the time he wrote. But we cannot safely read back into his words a meaning acquired by those words in later years.
John wrote the Revelation about the year AD. 90. Up to that time had the Bible writers ever used the term “Lord's day” to describe Sunday? No. They uniformly described Sunday simply as “the first day of the week.” (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2; Mark 16:9; Luke 24:1; Mat. 28:1) Even more striking is the fact that John himself, in his Gospel calls Sunday by the same colorless phrase as the other Bible writers used, “the first day of the week.” (John 20:1, 19)
There is only one day described in the Bible that could lay claim to being the Lord's day, and that is the Sabbath. The Ten Commandments describes it as “the Sabbath of the Lord.” Ex. 20:10. Isaiah tells us to call this day “the holy of the Lord.” Isa. 58:13.
Christ described Himself as “Lord also of the Sabbath.” Mark 2:28. John had heard the Savior utter these words. He knew also the words of the Ten Commandments and the words of Isaiah. How reasonable, then, to conclude that he meant the Sabbath when he said “Lord's day.” If we allow Scripture to interpret Scripture, there is no other conclusion we can possibly come to regarding what John meant by the phrase, “the Lord’s day.”
But why, we might ask, did John use the phrase “the Lord’s day” in Revelation whereas in his own gospel he always simply called it the Sabbath? We do not know. However, the history of John's day, when Christianity was coming into greater conflict with pagan Rome, offers an interesting suggestion:
The Caesars were often deified, and Christians were called on to offer incense to them—or forfeit their lives. Days such as an emperor's birthday took on a religious quality because of the cult of the emperor. Domitian, who was emperor from 81 AD to 96 AD had himself and his entire family deified, and went by the title Dominus et Deus, roughly “Lord and God.” John, who almost certainly was on Patmos writing the Book of Revelation during Domitian's reign, was likely anxious to set the record straight as to who was the real Lord and God—Jesus Christ! He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords (Rev. 19:16), and also Lord of the Sabbath (Mat. 12:8).
Objection 44: Although there is overwhelming evidence that the first day of the week was observed beginning with the Savior's resurrection, Adventists teach that the change from Sabbath to Sunday was instituted by Constantine in the early part of the Fourth Century (GC p. 53) while at the same time teaching that “the pope” changed the Sabbath to Sunday. (EW, p. 33)
We have already noted that no passage of Scripture can be found to support the claim that Christians ever held Sunday sacred during the early apostolic era, the time from 34 AD to 90 AD when the Scriptures were being written. There is no evidence that Sunday was venerated earlier than the Second Century, and much of that evidence can be challenged by church historians in regard to authorship, date, and exact meaning.
Moreover, what seems often to be left out of the discussion is that in the years immediately after the death of the apostles many pagan ideas and customs began to infiltrate the church. Strikingly, the apostles warned that this very thing was going to happen. Speaking to the elders of the church at Ephesus, about the year AD. 60, Paul warned:
“Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood. For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.” Acts 20:28-30.
A few years earlier he had written to the Thessalonian church of a falling away from the faith that was to come and that would result in the exaltation of the “man of sin.” This “mystery of iniquity” was already at work, he warned. (2 Thess. 2:3-7)
Most Protestant theologians through the centuries have regarded this as a prophecy of the growth of the Papacy, the great Roman Catholic power. In his general comments on this passage, Wesleyan theologian Adam Clarke, though uncertain in his own mind on various points, states:
“The general run of Protestant writers understand the whole as referring to the popes and Church of Rome, or the whole system of the papacy.”
Clarke quotes Thomas Newton (1704-1782), as saying:
“The mystery of iniquity was already working; the seeds of corruption were sown, but they were not grown up to maturity. . . . The foundations of popery were laid in the apostle's days.”
Protestant historians are generally agreed that the roots of Roman Catholicism can be found in the early Second Century, at the latest. The eminent church historian Philip Schaff, declares:
“The first example of the exercise of a sort of papal authority is found towards the close of the first century in the letter of the Roman Bishop Clement to the bereaved and distracted church of Corinth.”—History of the Christian Church (8th ed., 1903), vol. 2, p. 157.
“He [Clement] speaks in a tone of authority to a sister church of apostolic foundation, and thus reveals the easy and as yet innocent beginning of the papacy.” Ibid., p. 646.
Paul died a martyr at Rome about AD. 68. Clement, bishop of Rome, was a disciple of Paul and died circa AD. 102. Schaff describes “the interval between Clement and Paul” as a “transition from the apostolic to the apocryphal, from faith to superstition.” - Ibid.
The Sunday advocate speaks warmly of “primitive Christian authors,” who are alleged to have provided such good proof for Sunday keeping in the early church. But what is here revealed of the early beginnings of the Papacy casts a heavy shadow of suspicion over these authors.
Clement was one of the earliest “church fathers,” although he did not write on the question of Sunday. Of the so-called fathers of the church who lived in the two centuries immediately following the apostles, Schaff says:
"We seek in vain among them for the evangelical doctrines of the exclusive authority of the Scriptures, justification by faith alone, the universal priesthood of the laity. And we find instead as early as the second century a high estimate of ecclesiastical traditions, meritorious and even ‘over meritorious’ works, and strong sacerdotal, sacraments, ritualistic, and ascetic tendencies, which gradually matured in the Greek and Roman types of catholicity.” - Ibid., p. 628.
We have learned (under Objection 43) that we cannot even be sure, when we read the so-called apostolic fathers, that we are actually reading what they said rather than what some later forger introduced into their writings.
Schaff quotes a distinguished writer as declaring that when we move from the inspired writings of the New Testament to the uninspired writings of the fathers, it is “like passing, by a single step, from the verdant confines of an Eastern city in the desert out into a barren waste.” (Ibid., p. 636) And it is into this “barren waste” that the Sunday advocate leads us for proof of Sunday keeping!
Even if we could be sure of what the fathers said on the matter, what value is their testimony, given that the roots of various false teachings, even of the whole Roman Catholic system, run back to the days of those earliest fathers?
Now, because these various false teachings and practices, when crystallized by custom and the centuries, finally culminated in the Papacy, it is natural to speak of these different errors as having been brought into the church by Rome, which is equivalent to saying that they were brought in by the popes. We have found that Sunday-keeping is not Scriptural; therefore, it is one of those un-Scriptural teachings that came in later, which eventually constituted the Roman Catholic system of doctrine.
Hence Mrs. E. G. White made no historical mistake in saying that the Pope changed the day of worship. Nor is there any conflict between that statement and her other statement, that Constantine “issued a decree making Sunday a public festival throughout the Roman empire.”—The Great Controversy, p. 53. Mrs. White does not, in fact, say that the change from the Sabbath to Sunday was effected or completed by Constantine, but simply that Constantine issued a law making Sunday a holiday, which is a statement of historical fact.
It is true that the church historians we have quoted—all of them Sunday keepers—believe that Sunday had the sanction of apostolic custom, even if not of apostolic command. But the only real argument they offer, in the complete absence of Scriptural proof, is this: Surely we would not find Sunday veneration so widespread in the Second Century unless it had had apostolic sanction?
Astonishingly, they forget that they have just told us of a wave of false doctrines and practices that washed over the church in the Second Century, supported by the writings of the “fathers.” Did all these practices have apostolic sanction? They further forget that this same argument they use to prove apostolic beginnings for Sunday worship, Rome uses to prove apostolic authority for the whole panoply of her un-Biblical teachings and practices. The argument is as good in one instance as in the other—and obviously worthless in either.
No, we find no safe place to establish doctrine in the barren wastes of post-Biblical times and writers. If we would walk in the path of truth, we must keep on the highway of the Scriptures, hand in hand with our Lord and His holy apostles.
If it still seems incredible to any reader that so great an apostasy could set in within the brief compass of, say, half a century from the last part of the First Century to the early part of the Second Century, let him note a modern parallel. In the latter part of the nineteenth century most of the Christian ministry could be described as Fundamentalist (although Darwinism was catching on with some). But by the end of the first decades of the twentieth century, a revolutionary change in religious belief, known as Modernism [or liberalism], had overtaken the major branches of Christendom, including “mainline” American Protestantism. By 1920, most mainline Protestant clergy did not believe the basics of Christianity—the deity of Christ, the atonement, the virgin birth, miracles, the doctrine of creation, the inspiration of Scripture—to be literally true, as most of them had a mere three decades before. There was a sea change in religion in less than two generations (and the reaction to this is what precipitated the fundamentalist movement).
How unwarranted a future church historian would be in reasoning that because, by the 1920s, mainline Protestant leaders held Modernist beliefs, therefore those views must have been generally held in the nineteenth century!
The evidence before us regarding the first and second centuries leads us to conclude that historians are equally unwarranted in reasoning that because certain beliefs were held in the Second Century, therefore they must have been held in the first—or even promoted by the apostles. What nonsense!
Objection 45: The resurrection is the greatest event in the history of Christianity; therefore we keep Sunday. Sabbath keepers are not Christians, because they do not commemorate the great event of Christ's rising from the dead.
Even if we agree that the resurrection is the greatest event in the history of Christianity, it does not therefore follow that the Sabbath of the Ten Commandments should be abolished and Sunday worship substituted in its place.
God has specifically commanded us to keep the Sabbath as a memorial to God’s creation of the world in six days, and His resting upon the seventh day. By contrast, nowhere in Scripture has God commanded us to observe the first day of the week—not as a memorial to the Resurrection nor for any other reason.
If human beings are to decide which is the greatest event and how it should be commemorated, then Sunday sacredness rests upon a human rather than a divine foundation. All that would be needed in order to change the day of worship would be for Christians to agree that some other event is the greatest in Christianity's history.
We frail mortals are not qualified to decide which is the greatest event in human history. The Bible has never pronounced on this question. Furthermore, who are we to say how a holy event in Christ's life shall be commemorated?
An excellent case can be made that the crucifixion was the most important event, for then the world witnessed the supreme example of unselfish love—the Son of God giving His life for a rebellious world. Christianity without Christ’s substitutionary death on our behalf would be meaningless. Should we then keep Friday as our sacred day? And if Christians then proceeded to keep Friday, how could we say they were not as consistent as the Sunday keeper, who attempts to build his holy day on his own view as to which is the most important event in the history of Christianity?
By this logic, a man might keep any one of several days, depending only on his appraisal of notable events, and still be a good Christian. Apparently the only day a Christian must not keep holy is the seventh day of the week. The Sabbath keeper is to have leveled against him the charge that he is not a Christian, because he does not honor the event that the Sunday keeper has decided should be honored, or rather because he does not honor it in the way the Sunday keeper has decided it should be honored.
In reality, God has decided how the death, burial, and resurrection of the Savior are to be commemorated; He has given us the ordinance of baptism, which is intended to commemorate the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. (Rom. 6:3-6) The Sunday keeper has in effect substituted Sunday sacredness for baptism as method of memorializing the Resurrection.
We note that baptism by immersion is the only accurate way to memorialize the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord and Savior. Having substituted their own memorial for the biblically prescribed rite, most Sunday-keeping churches have reduced the rite of baptism to the sprinkling of a few drops of water, a procedure that conveys no idea whatever of baptism into death, or of rising again to walk in newness of life.
Objection 46: Seventh day Adventists make a great point out of the fact that the Sabbath memorializes creation. But we are not so much concerned with creation as with redemption, which is greater. Therefore, we keep Sunday, the great memorial of our redemption.
This objection has much in common with the immediately preceding one, and all that is said in reply to that one is also pertinent here. But the rationale is here carried much further.
Not only is the Bible an inspired book; it is an historical book. Indeed, much of the inspired counsel in that book is presented in a historical framework. Or to use a figure of speech, the Bible is a tall, imposing edifice. The foundation rests in the Garden of Eden, the glittering pinnacle points to Eden restored. The various stories, or levels, of the building represent the different centuries in which God's revelations have been given to men. A great dividing point between foundation and pinnacle is that level where God was revealed in His Son to save men on the cross.
All rests on the foundation; destroy that and the whole structure of revealed truth loses symmetry and beauty, and is ready to fall. To speak literally, all the Bible writers build their images on the assumption, implied or expressed, that man was created and placed in Eden and then fell from his holy estate into sin, which fall is the explanation of all the tragedy of the world. The burden of the prophets in the Old Testament is to present heaven’s plan of salvation, whereby man may be lifted up again, redeemed, and restored to Eden. The burden of the apostles in the New Testament is to announce that what the prophets foretold regarding a Savior had been fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and that men should believe on His name. The last book of the Bible shows us returning to the blissful abode of Eden.
But what if the Genesis record of man's beginning is a fable? Can that which rests on a fable have more substance or value than the fable? No. The whole Bible loses its rugged historical character, loses its meaning, if the Genesis record of creation is a fable.
Obviously, a person's belief as to the origin of man and of this world is tremendously important. That is why the evolution theory, so largely accepted today in place of the Genesis creation account, has such tremendous religious significance. When the evolution theory was first gaining acceptance, Joseph Le Conte, a university professor, wrote a book entitled Evolution and Its Relation to Religious Thought, in which he set forth the relation of this new theory to religious belief:
“Its truth or falseness, its acceptance or rejection, is no trifling matter, affecting only one small corner of the thought-realm. On the contrary, it affects profoundly the foundations of philosophy, and therefore the whole domain of thought. It determines the whole attitude of the mind toward Nature and God.” - Pages 3,4.
Just how the evolution theory affects the “attitude of the mind toward Nature and God” is tersely set forth by a spokesman for Bible-deriding skeptics who, significantly, were among the first to accept the theory:
“But-no Adam, no fall; no fall, no atonement; no atonement, no Savior. Accepting evolution, how can we believe in a fall? When did man fall; was it before he ceased to be a monkey, or after? . . . And if there never was a fall, why should there be any atonement?”—Robert Blatchford, God and My Neighbor, p. 159.
The relation of belief in the first chapter of Genesis to belief in all the rest of the Bible was vividly brought out by a writer early in the twentieth century:
“When we found that . . . Adam was not made directly from dust, and Eve from his rib, and that the tower of Babel was not the occasion of the diversification of languages, we had gone too far to stop. The process of criticism had to go on from Genesis to Revelation, with no fear of the curse at the end of the last chapter. It could not stop with Moses and Isaiah; it bad to include Matthew and John and Paul. Every one of them had to be sifted; they had already ceased to be taken as unquestioned, final authorities, for plenary inspiration had followed verbal inspiration just as soon as the first chapter of Genesis had ceased to be taken as true history.” - New York Independent, June 24, 1909.
How evident, then, that the Genesis creation account is the foundation of the whole edifice of Bible revelation. And how evident that when men forget, or deny, creation they open their minds to endless untruthful, unholy theories as to their origin and destiny. The awful account of the descent of men into the pit of pagan idolatry and immorality, as given in Romans 1, would never have had to be written if they had kept ever before their minds the holy record of their origin at the hands of the one and only true God, who is of too pure eyes to behold iniquity.
The evolution theory of our day could never have gained acceptance if men had believed in and kept bright in their minds the creation account of Genesis. There never would have been such an extreme departure from the true God, and such a ruinous plunge into idolatry, if men had not forgotten, and ultimately disbelieved, the heavenly account of their beginnings in Eden.
How important, then, above all else that we should remember creation! How strange if God should not have made careful provision for the keeping of it in mind! But, in fact, God did make exactly such a provision, He created a memorial to that opening event of our history. He set that memorial at the very beginning of man's journey. (Gen. 2:2-3), and when He delivered His one audible, brief address to His people salvaged out of Egyptian idolatry and vice, He called upon them to “remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.” They were to remember each week that “in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is.”
Remembering creation, they would remember the God of creation. And remembering the God of creation as holy, and who created their first parents holy, they would constantly see in the Sabbath a sign and a pledge that the God whom they served could sanctify them, make them holy, by creating in them new hearts and right spirits. (See Ex. 31:13; Ps. 51:10.)
Remembering creation, with its beauty and purity and perfection, they would be led to look forward with earnest and contrite eagerness to the coming of Christ, who, by His death and resurrection, would make possible their release from sin and death and their restoration to Eden.
The Sabbath command is part of that great code of laws that is the foundation of morality, and memorializes an event that is the foundation of the whole historical revelation of God's ways toward man. Without the creation truth memorialized by the Sabbath the cross has no foundation and the resurrection no meaning. That is evident.
It is by keeping creation in mind, and the original sinless condition of our first parents, that we give maximum meaning to both the cross and the resurrection. And that is but another way of saying that by keeping the Sabbath, the memorial of creation, we place under both the cross and the resurrection a sure and solid foundation, and allow them their true force and meaning.
We keep the Sabbath because we wish to give greatest glory to God the Father and to His Son, through whom He created all things. We keep the Sabbath because we wish to give greatest glory to the God’s revealed word, which rests upon the foundation of Genesis. We keep the Sabbath because we wish to witness before all men that we are on the side of God against the great apostasy [Modernism, liberalism] that has developed in the Christian church because of the widespread acceptance of the evolution theory.
In the light of these facts, how groundless are the indictments brought against our Sabbath keeping! In keeping the Sabbath, we are not Jews, we are not legalists; rather, we believe wholeheartedly in the entire story of salvation, including the sinless creation, the Fall, Calvary, the Resurrection, and Eden restored at long last! We stand solidly for the Scriptures—and against all doubts and disbelief brought in by the evolutionist and the Modernist [liberal].
With religious bodies on every side of us split asunder by the evolution theory, if not wholly committed to it, Seventh-day Adventists stand solidly for the Genesis account of creation and for the inspiration of the whole Book of God. How could we ever believe in evolution when each week we take a whole day solemnly to “remember” God's awesome act of creation—to “remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy”?
Objection 47: The phrase “the first day of the week” in Matthew 28:1 should be translated “the first of the Sabbaths,” or “one of the Sabbath.” This proper translation indicates that the apostle spoke of the resurrection Sunday as the first of a new order of Sabbaths.
Most English translations of Matthew 28:1 read something like this:
“After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.” (NIV)
The Greek word here translated “week” is actually sabbaton. The objector believes the text should be translated more like this, “at the dawn of the first Sabbath,” signifying that the solemnity of the Sabbath was transferred to Sunday at the Resurrection. The basic premise is that the Greek word sabbaton— translated “week” in Matthew 28:1 and in parallel passages—should be rendered “Sabbath.”
The Greek word sabbaton occurs in the New Testament sixty-eight times, and is translated “Sabbath” fifty-nine times, and “week” nine times. These nine references are Matthew 28:1; Mark 16:2, 9; Luke 18:12; 24:1; John 20:1,19; Acts 20:7; and 1 Corinthians 16:2.
To someone reading the English translation, it may come as a surprise that both “week” and “Sabbath” should be translated from the same word in the Greek, which is what gives a superficial plausibility to the objector's claim. But a double or triple meaning is not peculiar to this instance. In English, as earlier noted, the word “day” can refer to the light portion of a day, the entire twenty-four hour period, and even a vague, indefinite period corresponding to contemporary times, as in “the present day” or “in this day and age.” The context determines the exact meaning of the word “day.” So also with sabbaton.
Happily, this matter is not in any serious dispute. Scholars are in agreement as to the correctness of translating sabbaton as "week" in Mat. 28:1, as well as in the other eight instances. The explanation is straightforward: The Jews sometimes called a week a “sabbath,” and although there is a Greek word for “week,” hebdomas, the New Testament writers do not use that word. Instead, they follow the Jewish custom of calling a week a “Sabbath.” The rabbis would speak of the “first day of the sabbath,” the “second day of the sabbath,” etc. with only the seventh day being the actual Sabbath day. Any competent scholar can explain this, and the following statements are typical:
Authorities Agree as to the Double Value of Sabbaton "WEEK (Hebrew, 'shabua',' plural 'shabu'im,' 'shabu'ot'; ... New Testament Greek, sabbaton, sabbata): A division of time comprising seven days, thus explaining the Hebrew name." - The Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 12, p. 481,. art.: “Week.”
"The expression hebdomas [a Greek word for "week"] is not found in the New Testament, but rather sabbaton (e.g., Luke 18:12) or sabbata (e.g., Matt. 28:1) is used in the sense of it." - Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (ed. 1891), vol. 4, 13.2484, art. "Week."
“Of the two Hebrew names for 'week' one is derived from the number seven, and the other is identical with 'Sabbath,' the day which completes the Jewish week. The New Testament takes over the latter word, and makes a Greek noun of it.”—Hastings' Bible Dictionary (ed. 1924), p. 936, art. "Time."
“The Hebrew shabhua', used in the Old Testament for 'week,' is derived from shebha', the word for seven. As the seventh day was a day of rest, or Sabbath (Hebrew, shabbath), this word came to be used for 'week,' as appears in the New Testament (shabbaton,-ta), indicating the period from Sabbath to Sabbath (Matt. 28:1). The same usage is implied in the Old Testament (Lev. 23:15; 25:8).” - The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ed. 1915), vol. 5, p. 2982, art. "Time."
"The plural sabbata ... means a week as well as a Sabbath or Sabbaths (comp. Mark 16:2; Luke 24:1; John 20:1, 19; and Matt. 28:1). ... Sabbata in the second clause [of Matt. 28:1] certainly means 'week' and not the Sabbath day."—John Peter Lance, A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, translated by Philip Schaff, in Comments on Matthew 28:1.
Luke 18:12, which is one of the nine texts in which the Greek word sabbaton is translated "week," is a choice illustration of where sabbaton must be translated "week" in order to make sense. The Pharisee declared in his prayer, "I fast twice in the week." It would have been pointless for him to say that he fasted twice in the Sabbath day. There would be no mark of distinction in refraining from eating between breakfast and dinner and between dinner and supper. Doubtless even the publican did that. Only when translated "week" does the passage even make sense.
The Sabbath objector tries diligently to break the force of this passage by declaring that Luke 18:12 should read, "I fast two Sabbaths," that is, two of the fixed Sabbaths in the year. But the Greek will not permit this. The word dis, the word the objector wants to translate as “two” is an adverb, and cannot properly be translated that way. The word sabbatou, is in the singular number, which is never translated by the plural form “Sabbaths.”
The second part of the objector's contention is based on the fact that in the Greek the word “day” is not found in the phrase "first day of the week" in Matthew 28:1. But competent Sunday-keeping Greek scholars admit that you simply cannot do what the objector wants to do:
"This widely heralded Klondike discovery as to mian sabbaton turns out to be only the glitter of fool's gold. It rests upon the profoundest ignoring or ignorance of a law of syntax fundamental to inflected speech, and especially of the usage and influence of the Aramaic tongue, which was the vernacular of Jesus and His apostles. Must syntax die that the Sabbath [Sunday] may live?
"Let these affirmations [of the theory] be traversed: '4. No Greek word for "day" occurs in any of the passages [that is, in Matthew 28:1 and parallel passages].' Made for simple readers of English, that statement lacks candor. Said word is there, latent, to a much greater degree than it is in our phrase, 'The twenty-fifth of the month.' Upon being asked, 'The twenty-fifth what?' The veriest child instantly replies, 'Day.' But stronger yet is the case in hand. The adjectival word miart is in the feminine gender, and an immutable law requires adjective modifiers to agree with their nouns in gender. Sabbaffin is of the neuter gender, and out of the question. What feminine Greek word is latent in this phrase, and yet so patent as to reflect upon this adjectival numeral its feminine hue? Plainly the feminine word hemera, 'day,' as analogously it is found in Mark 14:12, prote hemera ton azumon, 'the first day of unleavened bread.' Boldly to aver that 'no Greek word for "day" occurs in any of the passages,' is to blind the simple English reader to the fact that an inflected language, by its numerous genders and cases, can indicate the presence and force of latent words to an extent undreamed of in English....”
"As a vital or corroboratory part of any argument for the sanctifying of the Lord's day [Sunday], this travestied exegesis, instead of being a monumental discovery, is but a monumental blunder. Thereby our foes will have us in derision. —Dr. Wilbur Fletcher Steele, “Must Syntax Die That the Sabbath May Live?" in The Methodist Review (New York), May-June, 1899.
Since Sunday-keeping theologians have so thoroughly exposed this specious argument, it is hardly necessary for me to add anything, except perhaps the following note.
Note: A brief word about arguments related to translation from the biblical Greek into English. This type of objection often has to be met by lay Adventists who have not had the opportunity to study the original languages, or may not have access to the standard commentaries (which typically reveal the falsity of the claim that some different translation should be given than that found in the well-known translations, such as the KJV, NKJV, RSV, NIV, etc.).
What, then, is the layman to do when he is confronted with such an argument? Become confused and withdraw from the field? Not at all. Instead, he should reply that the translations of the Bible into the English language are the product of the united endeavors of a large number of the most learned Greek scholars ever gathered together, and that the special pleading of someone—typically someone with no scholarly standing—who is trying to win a doctrinal argument by changing the accepted translation is no reason to reject the finest Greek scholarship of the last four centuries. That is all the answer that is needed, and will appeal to the reason of any unprejudiced person.
Of course, this does not mean that a clearer understanding of a word or a passage cannot sometimes be obtained by reference to the original language, as is well illustrated in the matter of the original terms for “soul” and “spirit.” But calling attention to the widely accepted meaning of the words of the original language is an altogether different thing from an agenda-driven mis-translation that ignores known facts or violates universally accepted rules of grammar.
Objection 48: Seventh-day Adventists say that everyone who keeps Sunday has the mark of the beast. Such a teaching places under God's condemnation all other Christian people and dooms forever all Sunday-keeping Christians who died before Seventh-day Adventists began to preach.
Seventh day Adventists do not say that everyone who keeps Sunday has the mark of the beast. We do not place anyone, dead or alive, under condemnation. Note this authoritative statement from the writings of the best recognized of Adventist writers, Ellen G. White:
“Christians of past generations observed the Sunday, supposing that in so doing they were keeping the Bible Sabbath: and there are now true Christians in every church, not excepting the Roman Catholic Communion, who honestly believe that Sunday is the Sabbath of divine appointment. God accepts their sincerity of purpose and their integrity before Him. But when Sunday observance shall he enforced by law, and the world shall be enlightened concerning the obligation of the true Sabbath, then whoever shall transgress the command of God, to obey a precept which has no higher authority than that of Rome, will thereby honor popery above God. He is paying homage to Rome, and to the power which enforces the institution ordained by Rome. He is worshiping the beast and his image. As men then reject the institution which God has declared to be the sign of His authority, and honor in its stead that which Rome has shown as the token of her supremacy, they will thereby accept the sign of allegiance to Rome 'the mark of the beast.' And it is not until the issue is thus plainly set before the people, and they are brought to choose between the commandments of God and the commandments of men, that those who continue in transgression will receive 'the mark of the beast.’”— The Great Controversy, p. 449.
Take this further word from the pen of Mrs. White:
“No one has yet received the mark of the beast. The testing time has not yet come. There are true Christians in every church, not excepting the Roman Catholic communion. None are condemned until they have had the light and have seen the obligation of the fourth commandment. But when the decree shall go forth enforcing the counterfeit Sabbath, and the loud cry of the third angel shall warn men against the worship of the beast and his image, the line will be clearly drawn between the false and the true. Then those who still continue in transgression will receive the mark of the beast.” — Evangelism, pp. 234-35.
Paul said to the ancient, idolatrous Athenians, “The times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commands all men every where to repent.” Acts 17:30. It is not what we do ignorantly that brings God's condemnation, but what we do willfully after we have a clear knowledge of the truth. “Therefore to him that knows to do good, and does it not, to him it is sin.” James 4:17.
God sent the Advent movement into the world, not to condemn the world, but to preach the truth. We have no desire to judge any man, as judgment belongs to God. In view of this fact it is not an accurate statement of our position to say that we hold that a person cannot be saved unless he keeps the seventh day Sabbath.
Objection 49: I don't believe that a God of love would keep men out of heaven just because of a day. I think Seventh-day Adventists put too much emphasis on a certain day that should be kept holy.
Scripture teaches us that God can be very particular about many things, very much including the Sabbath. In the theocracy of ancient Israel, God prescribed the death penalty for those who intentionally and rebelliously violated the Sabbath. (Ex. 31:14-15) This penalty was executed on a Sabbath breaker on at least one occasion. (Num. 15:32-36) This was not something that Moses dreamed up; no, God directly ordered that the penalty should be carried out:
“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘The man must surely be put to death; all the congregation shall stone him with stones outside the camp.’ So, as the Lord commanded Moses, all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him with stones, and he died.”
A case in which God Himself executed judgment was that of Nadab and Abihu, who brought “strange fire” into the sanctuary, and were immediately killed. (Lev. 10:1-7) “There went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. (Lev. 10:2) Aaron was forbidden to mourn for his two dead sons in the customary way of disheveling his appearance and tearing his clothes. (Lev. 10:6)
Nadab and Abihu failed to distinguish between the sacred and the profane, and profaned what God had set aside to be sacred and holy. How remarkable is the parallel to the Sabbath! The Fourth Commandment is intended to mark out a very distinct difference between the Sabbath, as a sacred, hallowed day, and the other six days of the week: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy."
Another case of God Himself executing immediate punishment is that of Uzzah. Those set apart to transport the tabernacle when disassembled, the Kohathites, were forbidden to touch the furniture of the sanctuary, including the ark (Num. 4:15). But centuries later, during the time of King David, when the ark was being moved over rough ground in an ox cart, the oxen stumbled and Uzzah put his hand on the ark “to steady it.” (2 Sam. 6:6-7). Uzzah’s sin was presumption; he presumed to touch something sacred, something that God had set apart as holy, that he was not authorized to touch. Those who urge Christians to disregard the Fourth Commandment are guilty of similar presumption; presuming to profane that which God Himself made holy.
Is God less particular today than in former years? “I am the Lord, I change not,” he tells us (Mal. 3:6). Is He not the same yesterday, today, and forever? (Heb. 13:8) And was not this history written down for our admonition, upon whom the end of the ages has come? (1 Cor. 10:11)
Scripture informs us that the destruction of Solomon's Temple and the Babylonian captivity were divine judgment for the desecration of the Sabbath. (Jer. 17:21-27; Neh. 13:17-18; Eze. 22:26)
The objector who breezily declares that, “a God of love would never keep men out of heaven just because of a day” exhibits appalling ignorance of the Scriptures. If God sent His chosen people into captivity for their disregard of the Sabbath, how unreasonable, how absurd, to think He will admit us to heaven if we willfully disregard that holy day, and teach others to do likewise.
Objection 50: The Sabbath cannot save anyone. Why not preach Christ instead?
We do preach Christ, and if we love Christ, we will keep His commandments, one of which is to honor his Sabbath day. (John 14:15) Salvation in Jesus Christ means walking in obedience to his commandments, indeed to all the light God gives us concerning how we should live. The Christian walk is one of sanctification, which means growing in the Grace of God and receiving His imparted righteousness. The Bible says that “the path of the just is as the shining light, that shines more and more unto the perfect day.” (Prov. 4:18).
Being a Christian does not mean merely believing in Christ Jesus as your savior, and nothing more; it means growing in righteousness, grace, and obedience. You do not stop at faith; rather you “add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.” (2 Peter 1:5-7) So long as we continue to walk in the light and add graces and Christian practices as they are revealed by that light, we grow in grace, and continue on the road to heaven.
When we willfully refuse to go forward along the path because some divine command is unwanted, we reject Heaven's light. When we do this, we jeopardize our hope of salvation. Of the Jews who refused to accept the light that Christ brought, He declared, “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no excuse for their sin.” John 15:22.
The Christian missionaries of the various denominations preach Christ crucified, presenting the love of God and the atoning sacrifice of Christ. They preach to natives who have, perhaps without a twinge of conscience, been violating the whole range of the Ten Commandments. As the natives are touched by God's Spirit and express their sincere desire to accept Christ's proffered salvation, what do the missionaries do? They explain that Christ offers them salvation as a free gift, but that if they desire to be true children of God, they will walk in the path that God has revealed.
The missionaries probably add:
Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who have sex with men, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” 1 Cor. 6:9-11.
The missionaries will say to them, as Paul said to the Ephesians: “Let him that stole steal no more.” Eph. 4:28. And it isn’t just theft that the follower of Christ must turn away from, but idolatry, murder, adultery, lying, Sabbath-profaning, etc.
This, in substance, is what missionaries of all denominations preach as they bring men to God. But we have never heard anyone charge that they are thus substituting obedience to the law for the grace of Christ. Why, then, should Adventists be accused of substituting Sabbath-keeping for the grace of Christ, simply because our appeal to men to walk by grace in the way of truth includes a presentation of all Ten Commandments?
The reason why some men do not want to hear the Sabbath preached is not that it is contrary to preaching Christ but that it troubles their consciences, and they feel condemned before God as violators of His law. It is not the preaching that is wrong, but their lives.
Objection 51: I have the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit has given me to understand that I do not have to keep the Sabbath.
This statement reflects the teaching of a certain denomination that believes it possesses the gift of the Holy Spirit in a special way, different from other Christians. The members believe themselves guided by the Holy Spirit, very directly and personally, in matters of doctrine.
Now, it is true that the Bible says much about the presence of the Spirit in the lives of Christians, but it also warns against the presence of another kind of spirit that will lead men away from truth. The mere fact that one is possessed by a supernatural power does not prove that that power is the Holy Spirit of God.
The Bible instructs us to “try the spirits” (1 John 4:1). It does not say we should try a Bible doctrine by the spirits, but that we should try the spirits by the Bible:
“To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” Isa. 8:20.
Was not the Bible inspired by the Holy Spirit?:
“For prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Peter 1:21)
It is beyond question that the Holy Spirit inspired the Bible writers, and God does not contradict Himself. He will not inspire the Bible writers to write one thing, and then tell you to do something different. So if you claim to have a spirit that is telling you something other than what the Bible says, that spirit does not belong to the kingdom of light but to the kingdom of darkness.
A spirit sent from God does not diverge from God's Word. Said Christ to His disciples,
“When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you things to come." John 16:13.
This is telling us that Spirit of God brings to the believer only what He has heard in the courts of heaven, and violation of any of God's commandments is never advocated in heaven (that is, not since the day that Satan and his evil spirits were cast out).
We read that one of the duties of the Spirit of God is to “convict the world of sin” (Verse 8) and sin is the transgression of the law (1 John 3:4). But the spirit the objector presents to us here is not convicting us of our sin but condoning our sin by telling us we may transgress one of the commandments—the Fourth Commandment.
What the objector has is not the Holy Spirit but a demon, from which the objector should immediately pray for deliverance. The Sabbath was established at the creation by God Himself; it is not on trial. Rather, try the spirits!
Objection 52: We should keep all days holy in the Christian dispensation. But inasmuch as the law of the land has marked out a certain day, Sunday, as the particular day of rest, we should obey the law of the land, and keep Sunday.
First, there is nothing in the Scriptures that indicates that all days are alike holy in the Christian dispensation. We know that it was Christ’s custom to attend the synagogue on Sabbath. (Luke 4:16). The apostles left no instructions telling us that all days were now to be considered equally holy; certainly nothing that could possibly countermand the Fourth Commandment, telling us to,
“Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” Ex. 20:8-11.
Second, it has long been the custom within Christendom to observe a weekend consisting of two rest days, two non-working days, Saturday and Sunday. Hence, it is not, at the present time, necessary to observe only Sunday in order to obey the law of the land; Saturday works just as well, insofar as the civil authorities are concerned.
Why would it ever become necessary to disobey the law in order to keep Sabbath and not Sunday? Would it not be only because Sunday advocates have worked zealously to elevate Sunday, and have enshrined their views in law?
So we see that the objector is at war with himself: he posits that all days are equally holy, but at the same time he posits a legal environment that fanatical Sunday-keepers have imposed because they do not consider all days equally holy. In the event we find ourselves in a situation where worshiping on Sunday has been made mandatory, our duty is clear: “We ought to obey God rather than men.” Acts 5:29.
Objection 53: If Saturday is the right Sabbath, why do not more leading men believe it? If what you preach about the Sabbath is true, why wasn't it discovered before?
Christianity itself was once considered new and strange. When Christ rebuked an evil spirit, commanding it to come out of a man, the people, “were all amazed, insomuch that they questioned among themselves, saying, What thing is this? What new doctrine is this?” (Mark 1:27). When Paul came to Athens and began to preach Christianity, the people inquired, “May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou spoke, is?” (Acts 17:19). Various other passages might be given, showing that the teachings of Christianity were considered new and strange.
Come down to the time of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, where we find that the most common argument against the Reformers was that their teachings were new. “If what you Reformers say is true, how is it that these doctrines were not discovered before?” But did such charges against Christ and the apostles and the Reformers prove that their teachings were not of God?
No. Doctrines must be judged by a different standard, not their seeming newness, or strangeness. Doctrines must be judged only by the revealed truth in the word of God. When Christ or His disciples were confronted with the charge of “newness”, they always denied it, declaring that they preached “none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come.” Acts 26:22.
And when the same charge was made against the Reformers, they proceeded to show from the Bible that the doctrines they preached were not new but very ancient. And, further, they could show that all down through the centuries there had been a few faithful children of God who had known and preached these doctrines.
Along with Christ, the disciples, and the Reformers, we Seventh-day Adventists affirm that the Sabbath doctrine is not new; it is as old as creation, and has been known and kept by a few godly believers throughout all the centuries. Granted, the Sabbath truth was almost completely suppressed for centuries, and did not burst forth again until relatively modern times. But we can say the same thing about righteousness by faith—it was almost wholly lost for more than a thousand years, until Martin Luther brought it again into great prominence in the sixteenth century.
Now a word as to why more “1eading men” do not believe this Sabbath truth. What of the leading men in the days of Christ? Who does not know that it was the common people, not the Pharisees, who heard Christ gladly; that His disciples were ordinary people, such as fishermen? And who does not know that the learned men, the members of he Sanhedrin, endeavored to argue people out of accepting Christ by inquiring, “Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him?” John 7:48.
Paul notes that it wasn’t the “leading men” who accepted the gospel of Jesus Christ and spread it throughout the civilized world, “Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth.” 1 Cor. 1:26. And speaking of Paul, who was a scholar and a member of the Sanhedrin, look what extraordinary measures God was put to in order to recruit Paul to the gospel! (Acts 9) In Luther's day, many of the leading men, the dignitaries of the church, were trying to capture Martin Luther and burn him at the stake, as they had done to Hus and so many others before him.
Objection 54: If I should keep the Sabbath, all my friends and neighbors would ridicule me.
First, you might be surprised at how little attention your friends and neighbors are paying to you. Typically, they are wrapped up in their own lives, trials, concerns, and pleasures, and have but little time to spend worrying about others. As my grandmother used to say, “they ain’t studyin’ you.”
Second, the kind of friends you want are those who will appreciate you for being guided by conscience and conviction based upon your reading of God’s word. Decent people, people of high morals and refined character, will admire your conscientious submission to your understanding of the Bible, even if they do not share your conviction.
Third, those who would ridicule you are not the kind of people you want for friends. The Bible had much to say on this subject:
“Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company ruins good morals.’” 1 Cor. 15:33
“Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.” Prov. 13:20
“Leave the presence of a fool, for there you do not meet words of knowledge.” Prov. 14:7
“A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” Prov. 18:24
“Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?” 2 Cor. 6:14.
“Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers . . .” Psalm 1:1
The Bible does not attempt to hide the fact that those who obey God will often suffer reproach in this life, and often it will come from those who are closest to them. Said Christ:
"Suppose you that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division: for from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law." Luke 12:51-53.
The secret of becoming immune to the ridicule of friends, neighbors, and even family members is to have confidence in the recompense of the reward (Heb. 10:35-36) and to fix your eyes on that “better country”:
“They desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city." (Heb. 11:16)
Objection 55: If I keep the seventh day Sabbath, I won't he able to make a living.
This objection betrays a lack of faith that is unbecoming to the Christian. Here is an opportunity to trust God, indeed to test Him. What does God say of entrusting just ten percent of your income to him?:
Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.” Mal. 3:10
The one who tithes is putting but ten percent (10%) of his income in God’s hands, whereas the Sabbath-keeper is entrusting God with his entire ability to earn a living. But if God will “throw open the floodgates of heaven” to the man who returns a mere ten percent, how carefully and lovingly will He look after the one who risks all for obedience’ sake?
“If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Matt. 6:30-33.
And David wrote,
“I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.” Psalm 37:25.
God still lives, and loves those who show their love for Him by obeying His commandments. Why not have faith in Him, and believe that He will enable you to make a living if you keep the Sabbath?
There are many thousands of men and women throughout the world who have displayed just that sort of obedience and trust in God, and have stepped out in faith to keep the Sabbath. And has God failed them? He has not. True, some of them have had their faith tested for a time before they were able to find employment as Sabbath keepers. But they have not starved. The testimony of millions of Sabbath keepers disproves completely the objection we are here examining.