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An Improbable Probability

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 20, 1909

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 86, No. 20.

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An Improbable Probability

By F. M. W.

THE advocates of error are often driven to illogical reasoning and strange conclusions in their efforts to defend unscriptural teaching. Especially is this true in the defense made for first-day observance. Unable to find Bible proof that Sunday was set apart for sacred use, many speculative theories are brought forth to make up the lack.
Commenting on the “Lord’s Day,” the Christian Endeavor topic for April 18, the Christian Herald speaks truly of the recognition given the weekly period and the special regard in which the seventh day was held even by the heathen nations of antiquity:—
The Egyptians divided their year into weeks of seven days each, calling the seventh the “day of Chronos;” and even among the Romans there are traces of a special regard for the seventh day. The heathen world very generally separated the year into weeks with some regard for the seventh day.
The Herald then seeks to account for the change of the Sabbath from the seventh to the first day of the week on this purely imaginative hypothesis:—
Probably, after the death of Christ, and his resurrection upon the first day of the week, that day was always observed by the disciples as the sabbath. The Jewish spirit dominated the part of the country where they lived. It was almost inevitable that they should make the day most hallowed to them into a sort of imitation of the Jewish sabbath, and apply to it the great commandment regulating that day.
That the disciples did any such thing is not only a very improbable probability, but entirely contrary to the facts in the case, as evidenced by the spirit and letter of all Bible teaching. Christ, throughout his earthly ministry, by both precept and example, showed his great regard for the Sabbath of the Lord, the seventh day of the week. He kept it himself, and enjoined its proper observance on others. He made no suggestion of a change in the day of its observance after his death. Matt. 12: 1-12; Luke 4: 16, etc. This spirit of Sabbath regard had taken fast hold of the disciples, and led them, after the death of their Master, to defer the anointing of his body, that they might observe the Sabbath “according to the commandment” (Luke 23: 56), thereby keeping the day enjoined by the commandment. On the first day of the week they went to the tomb to perform a service which their conscientious regard for holy time would not permit them to do on the seventh day. Luke 24: 1. In all their subsequent experience and teaching we do not find one suggestion of regard for the first day of the week as a Sabbath day. The apostle Paul, years after the resurrection, manifested the same regard for the Sabbath of the commandment, not only in that he used it as a day of worship in his labor for the Jews, but in his public work for the Gentiles as well. Acts 17: 1-3; 18: 4, 11; 13: 42-44. True, as the Herald says, the disciples did “make the day most hallowed to them into a sort of imitation of the Jewish sabbath, and apply to it the great commandment regulating that day,” but the hallowed day to them was the seventh day of the week, and not the first day. F. M. W.