Sabbath and Sunday

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 27, 1908

Sabbath and Sunday

IT is now easier than ever before to see that the final issue will be over the question of the Sabbath. In one way and another the attention of the public has been constantly called to this subject, aside from the direct teaching of the third angel's message. As an example of this we note that a correspondent of the Sunday School Times writes to the editor as follows:—

Now really, did God give us the Sabbath? I have been under the impression that the Sabbath was one of the institutions peculiar to the Jewish dispensation, and that it, together with the “law of Moses,” was taken out of the way and nailed to the cross. Paul says the Sabbath was a shadow of things to come.

Why do men call the “first day of the week” the Sabbath? In the Bible the seventh day was the Sabbath. The first day of the week (Sunday) is never called a Sabbath in the Bible. Is it not a fact that the Sabbath was given to the Jews, not to the Gentiles and that if it is still in force, the penalty for breaking it is still in force? Would not a law without a penalty be a farce? If the Sabbath is still in force, with the penalty, who is to be the executioner?—seeing that the one who breaks it must be stoned to death.

In his reply the editor states some facts which many observers of the first day of the week fail to recognize. He says:—

The Bible record would seem to show that the Sabbath as a permanent institution for the world was ordained a good while before Israel . . . came into existence, and that it was observed and honored by Jesus Christ and by those whom Christ taught, after the Hebrew dispensation had come to an end. The Old and New Testaments leave no doubt on this point. . . . Christ never did away with the ten commandments, each one of which formulates a principle as eternal as God himself.

It would hardly seem possible that one who expresses himself in this way could justify Sunday-keeping, but this he does by adopting that modern perversion of the commandments which teaches that “which particular seventh day seems to have been a detail of comparative unimportance.” And yet the particular day seems to have been important enough in the olden time so that a series of miracles covering a period of forty years testify to it, and in later times Jesus taught his disciples to pray that their flight from Jerusalem should not be on that day. But it is practically impossible for one who accepts the Bible as it reads to be consistent in his advocacy of Sunday observance.