p. 260 | Untitled article by W. C. G.

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, October 8, 1867

Infidel Objections to the Bible Answered. No. 17.

By W. C. G.

The Sabbath instituted because God rested on the Seventh day. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. Ex. xx, 11.

The Sabbath instituted because God brought the Israelites out of Egypt. And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and a stretched-out arm; therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day. Deut. v, 15.

THIS so-called contradiction is hardly worthy of notice or comment, but as many of the opponents of the Sabbath at the present time are placing themselves upon the infidel's ground by using the latter collection of texts as an argument against the perpetuity of the Sabbath, we give it to show how near opposition to God's truth approximates to infidelity.

The fourth commandment, from which the first proposition is drawn, states unqualifiedly that God blessed and hallowed the Sabbath day because he rested upon it. It therefore is and always will remain a fact that the institution of the Sabbath is based upon the Creator's rest, and any attempt to bring forward something else as the reason for its institution is an effort, either consciously or unconsciously, to establish a contradiction in the Scriptures. If Deut. v, 15, gives a different reason for the institution of the Sabbath from that given in the fourth commandment, then we are ready to admit that there is a contradiction in the Bible.

But as we examine the text we shall find that the reason there given is not why the Sabbath was instituted, but why the children of Israel should keep it. They had been brought from Egyptian bondage where they could not observe it, into a place where they were enabled to comply with all the requirements of God, and hence they were reminded of their obligations. On the same grounds they were commanded not to pervert the judgment of the stranger and the fatherless, nor take a widow's raiment to pledge, the Lord giving as a reason, that he had redeemed them from their bondage in Egypt. Of course no one will claim that the obligations of justice and mercy originated with the deliverance of the children of Israel, but there is just as good reason for such an assertion as for the claim that the Sabbath had its origin in that event.

W. C. G.