THE FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.
By Clarence Santee
“Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come.” 1 Cor. 16:2. This text is used to prove that Sunday is the Sabbath. It has been argued that Paul enjoins the putting of offerings in the collection box on that day, that to do this they must meet together, that therefore this was the common gathering day, and hence was the new Sabbath. A moment’s thought will convince a candid person that this view is untenable. Paul says: “Let every one of you lay by him in store.” You can not lay an offering by you when you put it in the public collection box. Greenfield in his lexicon translates the term, “With one’s self; that is, at home.” “Let him do this by himself when he is at home, when he can calmly look at the evidence of his prosperity.”—Barnes. “Lay by him in store; at home.”—Justin Edwards Notes. “Par heauto, At one’s home or house.”—Liddell and Scott’s Lexicon. So we might multiply translations. Paul asked contributions for the poor saints at Jerusalem. Verses 1, 3. “According as God hath prospered him,” “not according to that he hath not.” 2 Cor. 8:11, 12. This was purely a business matter. To look over the receipts of the last week, and so determine the prospering hand of God, is not a business to be entered into on the Sabbath day. In fact, some men in business find a full half-day of close application none too much to decide the profits and losses of a single week. The Lord, speaking through the apostle, suggests this day as one most fitting to balance all accounts before entering the duties of the new week. Thus every text being briefly examined that mentions the first day, we find no sacred title applied to it, no command for its observance as a Sabbath, no blessing upon him who thus observes it. Instead, the disciples are found, after the resurrection, laboring upon that day, and the Spirit of God designating it as a business day. Does not John term the first day, “the Lord’s day”?—No. The text is Rev. 1:10: “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.” The special day is not mentioned further. The question at once arises, Which is the “Lord’s day”? The Lord does not leave us in uncertainty. In Ex. 20:8–11 I read, “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” Again, “if thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord,” etc., Isa. 58:13. Christ says, “The Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath.” Mark 2:28. “The Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath day.” Matt. 12:8. The Lord’s day then is the Sabbath day, and “the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord.” Therefore John was in the Spirit on the Sabbath, the seventh day, which the Scripture “specifically” mentions as “the Lord’s day.” Isa. 58:13; Mark 2:28; etc. The Sabbath day belongs to Christ. He made it: “for by him were all things created: . . . all things were created by him and for him.” Col. 1:16. “God . . . hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, . . . by whom also he made the worlds.” Heb. 1:1, 2. “All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.” John 1:3, 10. As Christ created the world and all things therein, then it was Christ who rested, and thus made the rest day, or Sabbath day. Gen. 2:2, 3. Christ inherits the name “God” from his Father. Isa. 9:6; Heb. 1:4, 8. The Sabbath brings to us our Creator. It was given for this purpose. Ex. 31:13, 16, 17. Without the Sabbath we can not know him as he is. “I gave them my Sabbaths to be a sign that they might know that I am the Lord.” Eze. 20:12, 20. The Sabbath commemorates every act of the first six days of creation. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. . . . For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is.” Ex. 20:8–11. Let us consider a few points that are precious in the true Sabbath: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” Gen. 1:1. How?—“By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.” Ps. 33:6. “The worlds were framed by the word of God.” Heb. 11:3. Then the Sabbath is to us a continual reminder of the power of God’s word. Again: “And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” Gen. 1:3. How did the light come?—From the power in God’s word: “And God said.” Was the sun then shining on the earth?—No, not until the fourth day. Verses 16, 19. The light was as291good before the sun shone upon the earth as it has ever been since. “God saw the light that it was good.” Verse 4. Are we then dependent upon the sun as the great source of light, heat, and reproduction?—No; but upon the power of God’s word. The Sabbath commemorates that power. If the Sabbath had not been forgotten, there could never have been a heathen nor a sun worshiper. Look again: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and the herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit.” Verses 11, 12. Could man look to the sun as the cause of this growth?—Certainly not, as the sun had not shone upon the earth. Could man look to the earth as the power that caused the trees to stand there in full size, “yielding fruit”?—No. Again the Lord has not left us ignorant. “The Lord God made . . . every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew.” Gen. 2:4, 5. Could then our first parents, as they plucked the ripe fruits, have looked to the earth, sun, or sea, and worshiped any of them as the source whence they received these blessings? These were only the servants bringing the blessings that the Lord had provided, and behind them was the only power that man could look to, and that was the never-failing “God said.” The Sabbath reminds us of this fact, and is the pledge of the Lord that the “word” still stands. When the day comes that it can be said that “the flame hath burned all the trees of the field,” and “the seed is rotten,” and “the corn is withered” (Joel 1:17–19), who alone will be strong, depending upon God’s word, to supply their need?—Those who see all this great power in the great remembrance, the Sabbath, the sign of God’s everlasting “word of his power.” God can never fail you as long as he permits you to take hold of all this in the Sabbath. Can these mighty assurances be found in First-day observance?—No; because the call to remembrance comes only from man, and man is powerless. Listen to the statements of eminent men, as to where the First-day sabbath rests. Father Enright, Catholic, says, “I have repeatedly offered one thousand dollars to any one who can prove to me from the Bible alone that I am bound to keep Sunday holy. There is no such law in the Bible. It is a law of the holy Catholic Church alone.” Rev. John Snyder, a First-day observer, said, in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat of April 3, 1887: “Every instructed man knows that there is no New Testament authority for the change of the day of rest from the seventh to the first day of the week. Every instructed man knows that the Catholic Church gave to the Christian world the Sunday, and determined the manner in which it should be observed.” “This commandment has never been repealed by divine authority, and the method of observing it has never been changed one jot or tittle since it was thundered forth from Sinai.”—The Free Baptist, June 1, 1887. Thus we are brought to the alternative of deciding upon whom we can rely for succor in the evil day. God says, “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the Son of man, in whom there is no help.” Ps. 146:3. But instead, “Trust ye in the Lord forever: for in the Lord JEHOVAH is everlasting strength.” Isa. 26:4.