A Post-apostolic Institution

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

A Post-apostolic Institution

CANDID students of the New Testament, who are not held in bondage to a church creed, are constrained to admit the entire absence of any inspired testimony for the observance of the first day of the week as the Sabbath. One of the latest witnesses to this fact, patent to all unprejudiced readers, is Professor Stevens, a member of the faculty of the Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Conn. In one of his lectures, Professor Stevens said:—

How much is said in the New Testament concerning the observance of Sunday? There are only three possible references to it. In Acts 20:7 we are told of a meeting that was held on the first day of the week, that might have occurred on any other day of the week. Again in Paul's [first] letter to the Corinthians, the sixteenth chapter, the first and second verses, he commends the laying by in store on the first day of the week for the poor saints at Jerusalem; and in Rev. 1:10, John mentions the Lord's day, which may or may not have been the first day of the week. This is all; and there is absolutely no ground for claiming the Sunday sabbath is a New Testament or apostolic institution. In fact we know that it was not, but that it came in after apostolic times.

Such frank and straightforward statements as these do credit both to the scholarship and the mental honesty of the man who makes them. Only the extreme necessity of attempting to cloak a man-made institution with the semblance of divine authority prevents any reader of the New Testament from coming to the same conclusions. The Roman Catholics, who are willing to rest their case solely upon the authority of the church, do not hesitate to declare that there is no Bible authority whatever for the observance of the Sunday sabbath. With the same Bible before them, Protestants ought to arrive at the same conclusion.