THE SEVENTH DAY OR A SEVENTH DAY.
By J. W.
(From Les Signes des Temps.) A FRIEND sends us an article written against the duty of remembering the rest day of the Creator. He requests us to notice the arguments therein contained, which we proceed to do. The writer of the article begins by the acknowledgement that the Sabbath originated at creation when God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it. Gen. 2:2,3. He says that God did this to teach men their duty, to set apart this day for him. Now this is in truth the foundation of our argument for the perpetual observance of the seventh day. It was ordained of God when he created man. It was therefore made for the whole race, and not merely for the Jews who did not exist till 2000 years later. It originated in immediate connection with marriage (see Gen. 2) and both these institutions were made for man. Mark 2:27; 1 Cor. 11:9. Both were equally sacred in the sight of God when he gave the moral law, for he devoted the fourth commandment to the protection of the day which he had sanctified, and the seventh commandment to the protection of the institution of marriage. As the seventh day was sanctified while man was yet in Paradise, an unfallen being, it follows that the observance of that day is not a yoke of bondage but a sacred duty. The importance of the Sabbath can be stated in one sentence: It is the memorial of the creation of the heavens and the earth. But when this writer has admitted these important facts how does he contrive to escape their just force? How is it that instead of hallowing the seventh day he contends that it ought to be made a day of ordinary business, and that a day which God has never sanctified ought to be honored by us instead of the seventh? This is the answer: In the first declaration which he makes he mixes error with truth in such a manner as to enable him to elude all that God commands in this institution and yet to maintain the appearance of obedience. He calls the Sabbath “the institution of a day of rest after six days of labor.” Why does he speak in this manner when the Bible never uses such language? This form of expression is used on purpose to deceive. It attempts to give the idea that no definite day was sanctified by God, yet the language of the Bible is as definite as can be framed. The first six days were employed by God in the work of creation. The first seventh day God rested from all his work, when he had rested upon it he blessed the seventh day and set it apart to a holy use. This was the act of setting apart the next seventh day and all subsequent seventh days in regular succession as the memorial of his rest on the first seventh day of time. But this writer seeks to render this act vague and indefinite. God did not sanctify the definite seventh day but he sanctified “a day of rest after six days of labor.” If he had sanctified the definite seventh day the day of rest would always be the last day of the week, that is to say, it would always be the same day of the week as that on which God rested. But if he sanctified “a day of rest after six of labor,” meaning thereby no particular day, that day can be made to come on any day of the week that the will of man may ordain. Thus even the first day of the week on which God began his work is by the sleight and craftiness of men made to serve as the memorial of his rest on the seventh day. All this is done by changing “the seventh day” into a term that is so vague that it can be applied to the first day of the week. When there was apostasy in Israel and the majority followed Baal, the worshipers of the God of Israel contended with the Baalites. They said it is written: “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.” Matt. 4:10. And they contended that this signifies that Jehovah alone should be adored. But the Baalites could respond in the style of this writer: This text means simply that we should all worship a supreme being and this is what we do in the worship of Baal. The controversy turned on the question whether the commandment was definite or indefinite, and so it is with regard to the seventh day. If the first commandment is indefinite it is not difficult to substitute Baal for Jehovah; if the fourth commandment is indefinite it is equally easy to substitute the first day for the seventh day. In each case those who take these liberties think themselves models of obedience. Thus our friend after this effort to change “the seventh day” into “the first day,” seems totally unconscious of the sinfulness of such conduct and quotes Deut. 8:3, which says that man shall live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God, as though he were doing this while deliberately changing the fourth commandment. He next questions whether the Sabbath was observed from Adam to Moses. It is sufficient to say that God set apart the seventh day to a holy use as soon as he had rested upon it. To thus set it apart it was necessary that he should tell Adam that it was to be used only for holy purposes. Adam lived nearly 1000 years, so that this commandment must have been known to all the world in that age. We read of Enoch and of Noah that they walked with God (Gen. 5:24; 6:9), and of Abraham that he kept God's commandments, Gen. 26:5. This writer quotes Deut. 5:15 to show that the Israelites could not keep the Sabbath in Egypt. The text does not affirm this. God uses the same language with respect to their duty toward widows and orphans, Deut. 24:17, 18. This does not signify that they could not act justly toward such persons in Egypt, but the reference to the deliverance from Egypt is an appeal to what God had done as motive to move them to obey. He refers to the fall of the manna (Ex. 16) as the time at which the Hebrews commenced to take a special interest in the Sabbath. They had occasion for this. God sent them bread from Heaven six days. He sent none on the seventh day. He preserved the manna of the sixth day for their food on the seventh, whereas it would spoil if kept to the next day in any other case. Here were three miracles a week, or one hundred and fifty-six in a year. As this continued for forty years, there were in all six thousand two hundred and forty miracles, all marking the definite seventh day and all proving that that day and no other is the Sabbath.