ON WHAT AUTHORITY?

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 14, 1880

ON WHAT AUTHORITY?

FOR what reason do men prefer the first day of the week to the ancient Sabbath of the Lord? On what authority do men continually violate the day which God sanctified, and commanded mankind to keep holy? Papists have for Sunday observance the authority of their church. Protestants deny the authority of the church of Rome, and attempt to vindicate the change of the Sabbath by an appeal to the Bible. This is what we wish them to do. We ask them, therefore, to present a single text in which it is said that God has changed his Sabbath to the first day of the week. The advocates of the change have none to offer. If they cannot present such a text, will they give us one which testifies that God ever blessed and sanctified the first day of the week? Its observers admit that they have none to present. But will they not give us one text in which men are required to keep the first day holy, as a Sabbath unto the Lord? They acknowledge that they have none.

On what authority, then, do they exalt the first day of the week above the Sabbath of the Lord, which the commandment requires us to remember and keep holy? There is one reason urged for the observance of the first day of the week, which we will notice. “John was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.” Rev. 1:10. It is claimed that “the Lord’s day” here mentioned is the first day of the week. But we ask, What right have they to assume the very point they ought to prove? This text, it is true, furnishes direct proof that there is a day in the gospel dispensation which the Lord claims as his own; but is there one text in the Bible which testifies that the first day of the week is the Lord’s day? There is not one. Has God ever claimed any day as his, and reserved it to himself? He has. “And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God had created and made.” Gen. 2:3. “To-morrow is the rest of the holy Sabbath unto the Lord.” Ex. 16:23. “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” Ex. 20:10. “If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day.” Isa. 58:13. “Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath.” Mark 2:28.

Then the seventh day is the day which God reserved to himself when he gave to man the other six; and this day he calls his holy day. This is the day which the New Testament declares the Son of man to be Lord of. Is there one testimony in the Scriptures that the Lord of the Sabbath has discarded his holy day, and chosen another? Not one. Then that day which the Bible designates as the Lord’s day is no other than the Sabbath of the fourth commandment.