Sunday Not the True Seventh Day.
By John Nevins Andrews
SEVERAL minor points should be mentioned before we turn from Mr. Fuller to Dr. Akers. 1. When God appointed the seventh day to a holy use, for sanctify signifies to set apart to a holy use, Adam and Eve must have been addressed, for they were the ones to obey the appointment. But the day thus appointed by God was the seventh day (Gen. 2:2, 3), which name, it is certain, was that used by God in the appointment; and he must have used the term to those who understood it as he did, or it would have misled them. 2. The appointment of the seventh day for the Sabbath (Gen. 2:1–3), necessarily established weeks, and made the Sabbath to be the last day of the seven, six days of labor coming first. And the week thus created, and the Sabbath thus appointed, were respectively a model of the Creator's week, and a memorial of his sacred rest. But Mr. F. alleges that the six days of creation do not form a part of the first week of time. He also asserts that the first day of time was given to Adam for the Sabbath. What was there, then, to show when another Sabbath would come? If it be said that it would come in one week, who, on Mr. F.'s ground, could prove the existence of weeks at that time? for Mr. F. destroys the Lord's week by disconnecting the six days of Gen. 1 and the seventh day of Gen. 2, giving those to eternity, and this to time. And he nullifies the appointment of weeks in Gen. 2:1–3 where the setting apart of the seventh day as the Sabbath really divides time into periods of seven days; for in the face of the plain statement of this text that it was the seventh day, Mr. F. asserts that it was the first day thus set apart. Now this being the case, as he has destroyed God's original week, and as he destroys also the week which is created by the appointment of the seventh day by substituting first-day for seventh, it is fair to ask him how often this first day comes. If he answers that it comes weekly, we ask him how he proves the existence of weeks after he has destroyed the week which God observed, and has also destroyed the weeks ordained by him in appointing the seventh day to a holy use? If it be said that Adam constructed a week in imitation of God's week, we ask how this can be when the very existence of God's week is denied? God had a period of six days only, a very poor model for a week. Or, if we give him seven days, we do it by joining the last six days of the eternity of the past with the first day of time; a most marvelous week indeed! But if we grant the existence of such a week as that, how poor an imitation of it did Adam construct! For whereas God has a week which ends with a Sabbath, Mr. F. has a week which begins with one! Nay, this is not all. Adam does not wait for God's week to close, but he seizes the last day of God's week and makes it the first day of his first week! So that God's rest-day formed a part of God's week and a part of man's! But it is folly to talk of such weeks. They have no more existence in the divine plan than has the first-day Sabbath which they were framed to bolster up. As Mr. F.'s theory destroys the institution of the week at the very place where God set it up, we ask him again to tell when his first-day Sabbath would come the second time? He calls the Creator's rest-day the first day of time; but we have proved it to be the seventh. He calls it the first day of the week; we have proved it to be the last. He calls it the first day of Adam's life; we have proved it to be the second. To establish a first-day Sabbath in Eden, it is necessary to assume each of these falsehoods to be a truth; and it is also necessary to destroy the institution of the week in order to set up this costly pretender to Sabbatic honors. But when it has been thus made sacred in the estimation of men, who can tell how often the day would come? As first day of time, it could never return; as first day of Adam's life, he could never again behold it; as first day of the week, it could never return, for the week is destroyed in the very effort to make the rest-day of God its first day. And there is one other reason why the day can never come the second time in any one of these capacities. It is this: it never yet came thus the first time. 3. One thing more in Mr. F. must be noticed before we leave him for Dr. Akers. He asserts the change of the Sabbath in Egypt, inasmuch as Israel, at the fall of the manna, kept the seventh day (Ex. 16), whereas, at creation, God ordained the first day. But what a sentiment is this! The Scriptures just as explicitly represent God as setting apart the seventh day in the beginning [Gen. 2:2, 3] as they represent Israel, at the fall of the manna, observing the seventh day as a sacred rest. And the manner in which Mr. F. has attempted to transform the seventh day of Gen. 2:2, 3, into first day has been proved to be inexcusable and wicked. Mr. Fuller's idea that God's rest-day constituted the Paradisaical first day of the week having been shown to be a most pernicious and costly error, let us next see how well Dr. Akers will succeed in proving that Sunday, which Mr. Fuller asserts is the day of God's rest, is really the seventh day of the original week. How does Dr. Akers prove that Saturday, which the Jews have ever kept as the seventh day, is not such, and that Sunday, which they have always counted first day of the week, is really the true seventh day? Dr. Akers goes down to Egypt for help. Indeed, Egypt is the place of resort for all this class of expositors. There, or in the adjacent, and equally significant, wilderness of Sin, four classes of Sunday advocates find evidence that the Sabbath was changed, though each uses arguments in proof that conflict with those of all the rest, and though three different times and places are assigned for the occurrence of this event which seems to them so very desirable and important. The Jews now observe Saturday as the Sabbath of the Lord, and as the seventh day of the original week. It is an indisputable fact that the Hebrew people have never lost the identical day which they observed at the fall of the manna. Saturday is therefore the day which the sixteenth of Exodus calls the Sabbath. Hence it becomes necessary to show that on the day of unleavened bread in Egypt, or at the crossing of the Red Sea, or at the fall of the manna, no matter which, if only one of these points can be made certain, the true Sabbath was taken from Israel, and a temporary one given to that people in exchange! How remarkable is this statement! God took away his Sabbath, and in place of it gave his own chosen people a shadowy Sabbath, designed to last only from the exodus till the crucifixion! That is to say, he gave Israel a Sabbath of small account, but took from them his own hallowed rest-day! He forbade their labor on a ceremonial Sabbath, but gave them permission to do all manner of work upon that day which he had consecrated to a holy use in memory of the creation of the heavens and the earth! For his own chosen people he turned his own rest-day into a day of common business, and elevated a common working day to be their Sabbath! The Gentiles around retained the ancient Sabbath, but God's chosen people had it taken from them, and a day, which had been nothing but a common working day up to that time, given them to take its place! "What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision?" Paul answered this question by saying: "Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God." Rom. 3:1, 2. But if we can believe Dr. Akers, one of the "advantages" consisted in having the Sabbath of the Lord taken from them, and a ceremonial Sabbath given them in its stead! But why does Dr. A. feel so great an interest in wresting from the hands of Israel the rest-day of the Lord, and in proving that they kept the day next before it? Simply that Sunday, which comes next after the day kept by ancient Israel, may be shown to have a foundation in the Scriptures. And it is to be observed that those who change the Sabbath at or near the exodus, give themselves no trouble to prove its second change at the resurrection of Christ. For if the Jews did not have the true seventh day, but did have for a Sabbath the day that next preceded that real seventh day, then the New Testament first day of the week is actually that seventh day which God hallowed in Eden, and the keeping of Sunday is the observance of the ancient Sabbath of the Lord!