Modern Thought and the Sabbath

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 16, 1908

Modern Thought and the Sabbath

A PROMINENT journal which is a leading exponent of liberalism recently contained an editorial on “The Jewish Rest Day,” in which there was about as much misrepresentation and absolute denial of Scripture teaching as it would be possible to crowd into the same space. After a recommendation that the orthodox Jews should “apply to a congress of rabbis, and let them enact that for Jews Monday shall be the first day of the week, instead of the Gentile and pagan Sunday,” this article continues:—

It is curious to consider what the strict notion that God prefers Saturday to Sunday implies. It is based on the assumption that the reason given for the command in Exodus is more correct than that given in Deuteronomy. In

Exodus we are told that the reason is that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh; but in Deuteronomy a different reason is given,—that the Hebrews toiled as servants in Egypt, and God delivered them with a strong hand; “therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day.”

This kind of reasoning betrays an utter failure to recognize the difference between the primary reason given as the basis of the Sabbath commandment, and a secondary reason, given in the restatement of the commandment. The Sabbath is Jehovah’s rest day, the sign of the creative power by which the world was brought into existence in six days. So long as the fact of creation abides, and it remains true that God “rested the seventh day,” so long the Sabbath must remain a definite day.

After the deliverance of the children of Israel from the Egyptian bondage, through the working of the same creative power which brought the world into existence, the Sabbath, which was the sign of God’s power manifested in creation, was presented to them as the sign of the same power manifested in their deliverance. But the deliverance of the children of Israel from Egypt is typical in its character, an object-lesson of the believer’s deliverance from the bondage of sin. By connecting the Sabbath with this experience in the restatement of the commandment in Deuteronomy, the gospel truth is taught that the Sabbath is not only the sign of the original creation, but also of the re-creation by the same power, and of that experience of the rest in Christ which one has who has been enabled through faith to cease from works of sin. “For he that is entered into his [God’s] rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.”

It is clear, therefore, that to advocate a definite Sabbath does not involve the assumption that “the command in Exodus is more correct than that given in Deuteronomy.” Both statements are absolutely true, and taken together give the fulness of the gospel meaning of the Sabbath commandment.

The argument for the rejection of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment is based upon the conclusions of an infidel science, and upon that method of interpreting the Scriptures which enables one to follow the practise of the majority, contrary to the commandment, while professing adherence to the commandment. This is shown in the following extract from the same article:—

Further, the world was not made in six real days; and the Lord did not rest on any one day of the week; and the reason in Exodus does not give the origin of the commandment; and all the old commandment requires of the Jews, and all that the true reason of it requires of us, is to rest a seventh day, and we may appoint it as we please, remembering that our calendar of the week is utterly arbitrary, and any one may begin it for himself when he chooses, and give any name he chooses to the days. But for the convenience of the people we put the general consent into law, setting apart for rest the day we call Sunday, which is the seventh day.

These same assertions, put in their proper form, would read like this: The Bible is not true; and modern thought is a safer guide in interpreting the commandment than the whole history of the Jews; and the Lord left every man free to appoint his own Sabbath; but as human wisdom has perceived the far-reaching defect in such an arrangement, man has supplied what the Lord failed to provide—a definite sabbath day. And yet this article characterizes that interpretation of the commandment which requires the observance of a definite Sabbath day as “nonsense.”

All the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God, but some of it is foolishness even to men. “Woe unto them . . . that put darkness for light.”