“NEITHER SO DID THEIR WITNESS AGREE.”
It is not an uncommon thing for two witnesses to disagree. Less frequently we find a witness contradicting himself. That he does directly or indirectly is proof positive that he does not speak the truth. It is a common thing among opponents of the Lord and His work to be self-contradictory. It was so when men endeavored to substantiate a charge against Jesus. It is equally true when the efforts of men are directed against the Lord’s Sabbath. Before us lies a paper of prominence in the country, a chief organ of a great denomination. In it is an article, written by one man, which takes these positions:— 1. As Christ came to fulfil the law and the prophets, all types and sacrifices, and therefore the Sabbath and law, were then done away. 2. The Sabbath was observed by Christ. It was a type of God’s rest after creation and of the deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage. This Sabbath applied to the Israelites. 3. Jesus said He was Lord of the Sabbath; and He said this with the thought of changing it (a thought of which He has said nothing in His Word). 4. He changed it and called it the “Lord’s day.” 5. The observance of the seventh day is “going back to the law.” Now it is strange that any one can not see the inconsistency of the above propositions. It is strange that any one can not see that the Sabbath as a memorial of God’s creative work can not be a part of the law of sacrifices; that it was made before sin entered, while sacrifices came as a consequence of sin; that God made the Sabbath law, in order to forever settle its character, a part of the Ten-Commandment moral law, and that what is true of the Sabbath is true of every other part of that law. God condemns those who are “partial in the law.” The law of which Paul wrote to the Galatians was the living law which brought him and the Galatian brethren to Christ—Paul from a dead Judaism, the Galatians from heathendom—years after the resurrection of Christ. It is the law that points out sin, the law that declares, “Thou shalt not covet,” the Decalogue. See Gal. 3:22-24; Rom. 7:7. It fills the same office to the truly converted sinner to-day. Christ did fulfil the law; He kept it perfectly, and by His “obedience” we are made righteous. His seventh-day Sabbath-keeping justifies the sinner for his Sabbath-breaking; but Christ has no first-day sabbath-keeping to justify a sinner who has not observed the Sunday. In fact, according to the Word, “Where there is no law there is no transgression,” and there is no law for Sunday sacredness. Jesus says, “The Sabbath was made for man,”—all men,—and that is true; then it was not made for one nation. But nowhere are we told that Jesus changed the Sabbath, or that He intended to change it. In fact, it could not be changed without altering more than one jot or tittle. And what Bible authority is there for the statement that John calls the first day of the week the Lord’s day? He does not so say. Going back to the law to observe the Sabbath which Christ kept, we are told is fraught with the most disastrous consequences!! And yet Jesus says, “Follow Me.” Do those who take such positions expect Christians to refrain from stealing, to honor father and mother, to keep the sixth and seventh commandments? But is not this “going back to the law”? No true seventh-day Christian keeps the Sabbath in order to be saved; he keeps it because he is saved, as the memorial of Christ’s rest in creation, as a sign of His power in redemption. He keeps the third, fifth and sixth commandments for the same reason. And the Spirit says: “This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not grievous.”