The Sabbath From Adam to Noah
By Editor
IN renewing his subscription to the REVIEW one of our readers says:— I have a neighbor who wishes me to tell him whether the Sabbath was kept from Adam to Noah. Will you please give an explanation through the REVIEW AND HERALD? As an answer to this inquiry we will reprint a portion of the first article in Number 1 of Volume I of the REVIEW, then called Second Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, and dated “Paris, Maine, November, 1850.” The article is not signed, but the names of Joseph Bates, S. W. Rhodes, J. N. Andrews, and James White appear at the head of the column as the publishing committee. The title is “When Was the Sabbath Instituted?” and the whole article occupies half of the first page. We quote as follows:— Some have contended that the Sabbath was not instituted until the law was given to Moses at Mount Sinai. But there are serious difficulties in the way of this belief. In the second chapter of Genesis, after having given an account of the creation, the sacred historian says: “On the seventh day God ended his work which he had made: and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it; because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” Now, if any part of this narrative is to be construed literally, the whole of it must be; and if we may not venture to deny or explain away the account which Moses has given of the creation, then we may not deny or explain away this unequivocal statement respecting the original institution of the Sabbath in paradise. The blessing and sanctifying of the seventh day is mentioned in connection with the first seventh day in the order of time, and it is so mentioned as most forcibly to impress the reader that the Sabbath was then instituted. God’s resting on the day is given as the reason for its sanctification; and it can not be supposed that this reason existed two thousand five hundred years before the institution. We conclude, therefore, that the Sabbath was enjoined immediately after the close of the work of creation. This opinion is corroborated by some facts recorded in the Scriptures. There are frequent and early notices of reckoning by sevens. Noah observed a period of seven days in sending the raven and dove from the ark; the term week is used in the contract between Jacob and Laban; Joseph mourned seven days for his father; and Job and his friends observed the term of seven days. Nor is it in the sacred volume or among the Jews alone that such facts are found. Nearly all the nations of antiquity were acquainted with the weekly division of time: The Assyrians, Egyptians, Indians, Arabians, and, in a word, all the nations of the East, have in all ages made use of a week of seven days. And we find that these nations not only divided time thus, but that they regarded as holy the very day which had been sanctified as a Sabbath, although they had forsaken the true worship of God. Homer, Hesiod, and Callimachus, say, “The seventh day is holy.” Theophilus of Antioch says, respecting the seventh day, “The day which all mankind celebrate.” Josephus asserts that “no city of Greeks or barbarians can be found, which does not acknowledge a seventh day’s rest from labor.” And Philo says that “the Sabbath was a festival not peculiar to any one people or country, but so common to all mankind that it might be called a public and general feast of the nativity of the world.” These authors, who lived in different ages and were of different nations, can not be supposed to have written thus in order to please the Jews, who were generally despised and persecuted; and this universal reverence for the seventh day can not be accounted for upon any other supposition than that the Sabbath was instituted at the close of creation, and handed down by tradition to all descendants of Adam. It is plain that there is nothing new under the sun. The objection which is raised against the Sabbath in 1905 was brought forward and answered in 1850, and it seems fitting that those who defended the truth in those early days of the message should be permitted to bear their testimony to the objectors4of this day—more than half a century after they first presented their views to the world. They gave clear and convincing reasons for their position then, and the ground then taken has never been abandoned. We hope this plain statement of the facts concerning the institution of the Sabbath will be helpful to the neighbor who asked concerning the matter, and that he will decide to join those who, as a testimony to their loyalty to the Creator of heaven and earth are resting on the Sabbath day according to the commandment.