The Sabbath of God and of the Bible by Samuel Benjamin

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 25, 1909

The Sabbath of God and of the Bible

By Samuel Benjamin

SAMUEL BENJAMIN

The Sabbath of the Bible is the seventh day of the week. This world has never known any other true Sabbath, and never will. The Sabbath was ordained in Eden. It was not founded on a sentiment that could be changed by the caprice of man, but it will stand forever as God’s memorial of creation.

It must appear to the reader as a sensible proposition that God did not celebrate or dedicate his work at the beginning of creation, but at the ending, when he surveyed with loving thought and satisfaction his completed work, and “saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.”

“That glorious scene a holy Sabbath closed; Amid his works the Omnipotent reposed; And as he viewed and blessed them from his seat, All worlds, all beings, worshiped at his feet.”

A memorial day must correspond with the event on which it is predicated, and we can no more change it to some other day than we can change the special event that called it into existence.

The close of that first sixth day marked “the great divide” between secular and holy time, and ushered in the first Sabbath. God sanctified that day for a special and holy purpose; that is to say, he set it apart, and raised it in importance over all its fellows in the weekly cycle, for a special and holy purpose.

Let it be carefully borne in mind that only God could ordain and command a Sabbath. He alone could impart a sanctified and holy character to a day. The divine record shows that he did so sanctify and command just one day,—the seventh, or last, day of the week.

The new-made man and woman had faced the western sunset but once when this law of Sabbath rest and worship was placed before them. That Sabbath was intended for their descendants from time’s morning until its latest sunset. When Jesus, the great teacher sent from God, said, “The Sabbath was made for man,” he gave his personal guaranty and indorsement to the Sabbath of Eden and Mount Sinai.

Any day other than that one, which assumes to be the Sabbath, or to which man ascribes a sanctified and holy character, must be a man-made institution. Each succeeding seventh day in the weekly cycle has been a Sabbath, and by legitimate succession has the same sanctified and holy character that God by special act imparted to the first Sabbath. There it stands, as solid, grand, and immutable as he who built the round earth and sent it rolling with mathematical exactness through illimitable space.

That day, thus divinely established, and thus sanctified and made holy, is fortified and buttressed round about by a law enacted in heaven, and delivered to mankind under circumstances majestic and awe-inspiring beyond all that men had ever seen, or ever will see until they behold the Lord himself in the clouds of heaven.

“Lo, from Mount Sinai’s lofty peak The great Jehovah condescends to speak To mortal man. O, hear his voice; Ye people of his love and choice!”

This is the law, and it still stands without repeal or amendment on the statute-book of God—the Bible: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. . . . The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.”

Truth deals in the open, and courts the sunlight of investigation. It is open-handed and outspoken, and has nothing to conceal from any one.

Blackstone, the learned English jurist, says that a record is a solemn memorial of a fact, and that when a record of a fact or an occurrence has been properly made by a competent authority, it is inviolate and can not be broken. This is heaven’s record with reference to the Sabbath: “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. . . . Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.” God is the author of that record. He came down in person on Mount Sinai to deliver it to mortal man.

Now if we recognize God as a competent authority to make and deliver such a record, then we are in honor bound to

accept the record and believe it, also to obey it and advocate it. Those who really wish to be right on this great and vital question must govern their belief and conduct according to the fourth commandment, which speaks to mankind with the authority of God and the emphasis of Mount Sinai. The reward is ample and sure, and will come in God’s own good time. Rev. 22:14.

Granby, Conn.