p. 6 | The Sabbath and the Date Line by C. F. MCVAGH

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 19, 1915

The Sabbath and the Date Line

By C. F. MCVAGH

C. F. MCVAGH

The Seventh-day Adventist interpretation of the Bible with reference to Sabbath keeping requires that the seventh day of the week be identified beyond reasonable doubt.

Most persons are satisfied with the evidence of the Bible, together with the information furnished by the calendars in use throughout the world. However, in modern times we hear considerable about the date line, and some cannot understand how we can keep track of the days on a round world, especially as it is quite well known that ships crossing the Pacific Ocean change their reckoning at the one hundred and eightieth meridian, this meridian being commonly called the international date line, or perhaps more accurately, the nautical date line. The practice of the people on the islands and on the shores of the Pacific, according as they used American or Asiatic time, developed what may be called the historical date line.

With reference to the date line, I quote from Questions and Answers No. 8, pages 10 and 11, of Hydrographic Information, published under the authority of the Secretary of the Navy, Sept. 30, 1909:—

“In making voyages across the Pacific Ocean, it is the practice of those naval and maritime vessels whose reckoning is kept with reference to the meridian of Greenwich to change the date on arrival at the one hundred and eightieth meridian. . . . This meridian is considered from the viewpoint of navigators as the international date line. Closely associated with this, and sometimes called the international date line, is the line which separates those lands on the Pacific side of the world where the inhabitants keep the same date of the calendar as is kept by the people of North and South America, from the islands and other lands where the people keep the same date as is kept in Asiatic countries. . . . This dividing line coincides for long distances with the one hundred and eightieth meridian from Greenwich, and does not anywhere depart very much from this meridian, but in former generations the departures from the one hundred and eightieth meridian were very wide.”

This nautical international date line was agreed upon ad referendum by forty-one delegates representing twenty-six countries, in session at Washington, D. C., in October, 1884, and has been since quite generally accepted by navigators of the Pacific Ocean. The object of the quotation is to show that all the charted date lines in use today rest upon nothing more authoritative outwardly than human convenience. But we see the hand of God shaping the events, which, when the time came, influenced the decision of this local problem in harmony with the existing world reckoning. No one, I believe, will claim

for the one hundred and eightieth meridian from Greenwich any scientific preference. It is simply chosen because Britain and her colonies and allies formed a dominant maritime power, and other countries adopted it in order to be in harmony with the majority. How did our present reckoning originate, and on what authority does it rest?

From the earliest time historically men have regarded the day as starting in the Pacific Ocean, because to the ancients that was as far east as they could go; therefore it was to them the place of the sunrising.

How does this affect the finding of the Bible seventh day of the week on a round world? Quite generally the question is raised by opposers of the seventh-day observance simply as a quibble, and without considering that if we cannot identify the seventh day on a round world it is equally impossible to identify Sunday, the first day. Luke 23: 56 and 24: 1 say that the Sabbath according to the commandment is the day just before the resurrection day; so as long as any one can find Sunday, his neighbor can observe the day just before it, and know that it is the Sabbath day.

The date-line controversy is of very modern origin. The necessity for it was never felt till men of all nations became globe-trotters, which cannot go back of the discovery of the west boundary of the Pacific Ocean. For nearly six thousand years the world got along without a date-line controversy, and, according to the Bible, in all generations some obeyed God with reference to the Sabbath. Acceptable Sabbath keeping, then, cannot depend upon the scientific location of the date line. Some will say that all that is required is the seventh part of time; and were it not for this stubborn little minority of seventh-day keepers, we might have peace and uniformity by all keeping Sunday.

Well, if God does not require the observance of a definite day, why did he at the time of the exodus from Egypt perform a threefold miracle every week for forty years, in order to identify and enforce a particular day? If the day given in the law at Sinai was not the true seventh day, and God is not particular which day we rest upon, then it certainly is impossible to find out from the Bible anything definite with reference to the will of God. Those who believe in the Bible need not go back of the sixteenth chapter of Exodus in their efforts to identify the definite day. God set the Jews right there. Then also Jesus by his practice and teaching identified, or at least indorsed, the reckoning of the Jews at the time of his first advent. And we have the united testimony of the Jews, supported by the agreement of all the rest of the nations of the earth, that there has been no variation in the order of the days of the week to the present time. The seeker after truth has all the evidence there is that the day we now commonly call Saturday is the seventh day of the week. It is reckoned so by all nations of mankind, and was accepted by the Lord while upon the earth:

Christians will surely admit that the Creator knew all the circumstances that sin would bring in, and also that the Sabbath command given in Eden to mankind would not require of man in any age that which is impossible. The week has been in common use from the earliest times to the present, and is in itself one of the best witnesses to the universal knowledge of the Sabbath; for there is nothing except the Sabbath institution to suggest the cycle of seven days.

Clearly, the first week as well as the first day began in Eden, and there was the true date line. After sin came in, God removed Eden from the earth, and the deluge so changed the surface that Peter says, in 2 Peter 3: 5-7, that the world that then was perished. And so on the world that now is, it is impossible to identify the location of Eden.

After the flood, man migrated eastward and westward from Central Asia, and in every age some obeyed the commands of God; but under the darkening influences of sin the knowledge of the rotundity of the earth was for a long time preserved only by the Bible prophets. After the discovery of America the two streams of migration met on the shores of the Pacific Ocean, and then followed this age of travel. Immediately the necessity of all beginning their reckoning at the same place suggested itself to the travelers.

God put it into their minds to adopt a plan that would permit the globe-trotters, as well as those who stay at home, to keep the Sabbath if they want to. All the circumstances indicate that the beginning be reckoned from such place in the uninhabited wastes of the Pacific as would produce the least local confusion. And it is quite possible yet that some international commission may make additional suggestions in order to bring the practice of the inhabitants of some of the islands into more complete uniformity with the whole world.

Under the gospel, man is only required to manifest obedience to the light available to his location and mentality. The difficulty today is not so much lack of knowledge of the days of the week as a woeful and almost universal unwillingness to obey the Bible as the word of God.

Many of us were taught that we kept Sunday in obedience to the fourth commandment, and doubtless remember the perplexity that came when we were shown that Sunday is not the seventh day. Most people who observe Sunday frankly acknowledge that it is another day, and they rest upon it for an altogether different reason from that given by the Bible in the fourth commandment.

So it has come about that a respectable minority, after diligent search, failing to find any command to rest on the resurrection day, have decided to obey the Bible and rest on the day which, according to all the evidence there is, is the identical one that God commanded. Their numbers are growing, and God has blessed this people and their work in all lands.

In the judgment such can say, I obeyed all the light that came to my attention. Such texts as Isa. 58: 1, 12, 13, and Rev. 14: 6-14, offer a Scriptural foundation for such a movement in preparation for the second advent of Christ. On the other hand, if when perplexed, one decides to ignore the evidence and to go with the majority for the sake of convenience, what answer can he give in the judgment? He cannot say he kept the day the Bible commanded, for the evidence was all to the contrary. Nor can he say that he manifested faith by walking in all the light he had. Would not the Judge be justified in saying, “Out of your own mouth are you condemned”?

In view of the rapidly fulfilling prophecies indicating that the hour of his judgment is come, it behooves all to think seriously of these things, according to the warning in Amos 4: 12: “And because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel.”

Grand Rapids, Mich.